f'tS^fSL E. =«

- ILIIIBI^^IElf "

Gift of

idy-n

DISCOURSES ON PHILLIPIANS

By Frederick A. Noble, D. D.
Xbe Divine Ufe in Jinan,
and Otber Seflnolis.
i2mo. $1.35.
Intensely practical.— A'^ Y. Observer.
All the sermons are great through the presence of the
Eternal that is in them and because of their practical applica
tion to life. — The Advance.
Abounds in evangelical truth presented in a clear, scholarly
and forcible manner,— Zion^s Herald.
Manly, strong, earnest, sympathetic and attractive — we do
not see how they can fail to be attractive. — Cangregationalist
Packed full of fresh thought, expressed in chaste and force
ful language.— .ff«w«</«fe'c Review.
Scholarly and very logical, and evidence a warm devotion
to Christ with an optimistic outlook over the Christian
World. — The Occident.
Intellectual force, solid convictions and downright earnest
ness are manifested throughout. — Sunday School Times,
I have been struck with the vigor and frankness with which
the most important themes are here discussed. The trumpet
has no uncertain sound. . . . The sermon on '• Christian
ity in the Light of the Parliament of Religions" has a tonic
quality well suited to the times. — Professor George P. Fisher,
of Yale Theological Seminary.
The volume awakens hunger. It tells about the Christly
bread. It teaches men to recognize their hunger— for the fam
ishing sometimes are daft, and insanely refuse food. It
teaches well-fed men how to administer the bread of life to
others, and the book is a tender prophecy of the incompara
ble time in which humanity will beseech tne church, *'give us
this bread," for we hunger. The book was written when its
author was enthusiastic, and he is enthusiastic now that it is
written. It awakens enthusiasm when you read it, and we do
not wonder that the theological seminary of his church in this
city adopted it as a classbook. It is a work which Benson,
Wesley, Fletcher, Bishop Thomson, Melancthon, would have
welcomed, and which all tender soul-winners will welcome.
It reminds us of Bushnell's " Sermons for the New Life." —
Prom Editorial in N. W, Christian Advocate,
Sent post free on receipt of price.
FLEMING H. REVELL CO.
Chicago. .*. New Yorif, ••, Toronto.

Discourses on
Philippians BY
FREDERICK A. NOBLE, D.D., LL.D.
Author qf "Typical New Testament Conversions^'
"Divine Life in Man" "Our Redemption."

Fleming H. Revell Company
Chicago, New York & Toronto
Publishers of Evangtlical Littrature

Copyrighted 1896, by Fleming H. {{evell Compahv.
8*^ fc n

TO THE MEMBERS
OP THE UNION PARK CONGREGA
TIONAL CHURCH, WITH WHOM, THROUGH A
PASTORATE OF EIGHTEEN YEARS, MY LIFE HAS BEEN
SO INTIMATELY CONNECTED, THIS VOLUME IS
AFFECTIONATELY AND GRATE
FULLY INSCRIBED.

CONTENTS.

I. Opening Words  9
II. Loving Interest in the Philippians. . . 25
III. Helped by Misfortune and Opposition. 46
IV. Living to Serve  57
V. Walking Worthy of the Gospel. . . 71
VI. Unity through Love  85
VII. Christ in His Condescension and Exal
tation  101
VIII. Developing and Illustrating Spirit
ual Life  117
IX. Fellowship and Sympathy  , 135
X. Some Wholesome Warnings  151
XI. All Things Loss foe Christ  167
XII. Fellowship with the Sufferings op
Christ  187
XIII. Christian Aspiration.  205
7

8 CONTENTS
XIV. Our Heavenly Citizenship  221
XV. Standing Fast in the Lord  237
XVI. Christianity and Woman  255
XVIL Christian Joy  275
XVIII. Christian Forbearance  289
XIX. From Anxiety through Prayer to
Peace  805
XX. High Ideals  321
XXI. Suiting Life to Circumstances. . . 841
XXII. Fulness of Supply in God  859
XXIII. The Saints of Cesar's Household. 873

®penlnd IKIlorbs.

" Panl and Timothy, esrvants of Christ Jesns, to all the saints in
Christ Jesus -which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:
Grace to yon and peace from God onr Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ."— Ph«.i; 1-2.

DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS.
I.
OPENING WORDS,
Philippi was the first city in Europe in which the
Gospel was preached. It bore anciently the beautiful
name of Fountain City; but at a later period it was en
larged by Philip, the King of Macedonia, and called
after himself. The location of the town was close to the
western border of Thracia, and about nine miles inland
from the upper waters of the ^gean Sea. It was here
that Brutus and Cassius suffered the overwhelming defeat
at the hands of Antony and Octavius, which made the
famous triumvirate — Antony, Octavius and Lepidus —
masters of the Roman world. In commemoration of
the decisive victory of imperialism over republicanism,
Augustus conferred upon Philippi the dignity and priv
ilege of a Homan colony.
Paul was drawn to this city by the voice uttering the
Macedonian cry: "Come over and help us." He
preached his first sermon a little out of the town, on the
river's side, where devout Jews, especially women, were
wont to gather on the Sabbath for prayer. Lydia of
Thyatira— " a seller of purple " — was his first convert.
" The Lord opened " her " heart," so that " she attended
unto the things which were spoken of Paul." The
apostle visited Philippi twice after this initial visit,
and the mutual attachment between him and this church
was very strong and fervent. 11

12 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
This Epistle of Paul to the Philippians was written
during the time of the apostle's imprisonment at Rome.
The internal evidence makes this too clear for reasona
ble question. He speaks of his " bonds," — " both in my
bonds," " so that my bonds," " confident through my
bonds," " thinking to raise up affliction for me in my
bonds." He speaks of the "Praetorian Guard," — "so
that my bonds became manifest in Christ throughout
the whole praetorian guard"; and in thus speaking he
has reference, no doubt, to the soldiers who in turn had
him in charge. He speaks of " the Saints " who " are
of Caesar's household," — " all the saints salute you, espe
cially they that are of Caesar's household." These al
lusions would seem to leave no room for conjecture.
The Epistle to the Philippians, like the Epistles to the
Ephesians and Oolossians and Philemon and the second
one to Timothy, was written from Rome, and is full of
local flavor and suggestion.
By the same token the date of the epistle falls easily
within certain well=defined limits. It was written within
the period of the " two whole years," mentioned in Acts,
of the apostle's imprisonment at Rome. These "two
whole years " began near the close of the year of our
Lord 60. We have, therefore, for our time boundaries
60-63, the latter part of 60 and the early part of 63,
within which this epistle is sure to have been written.
Ramsey, in his recent work on " St. Paul the Travel
ler and the Roman Citizen," seems to set the two
years of the imprisonment back considerably; but this
is of little consequence to our present purpose. It is a
question in debate, also, whether this epistle was writ
ten in the earlier or the latter period of the imprison
ment. In spite of the arguments of able scholars to the

OPENING WORDS 13
contrary, it still appears clear to me from internal evi
dence that the writing of the letter was near the close of
the " two whole years."
The occasion of the epistle was an act of very touch
ing kindness to Paul by the Philippian church. Under
the limitations of his confinement at Rome the apostle
could no longer support himself by the labor of his own
hands as he had done at Thessalonica and Corinth and
Ephesus. In his destitution and distress the Philippian
brethren had come to his help with a liberal contribu
tion. Epaphroditus, one of their own number, had
brought the timely gift. This faithful messenger had
remained, and in some very special and efficient way
had assisted Paul in his work. But in the course of his
services Epaphroditus was seized with a serious illness.
His brethren at Philippi heard of it and became anx
ious. As soon as he was well enough the apostle sent
him back with this delightful letter, in which he ex
pressed his hearty thanks for such generous remem
brance of him in his need, bore enthusiastic testimony
to the love and devotion of Epaphroditus, gave informa
tion respecting his own condition and feelings, and
added such affectionate counsel as in his thought would
be of value to the members of the church which he es
teemed so highly.
In this way then, and at the time and place just indi
cated, the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians came into
existence. It was written in the straits of imprisonment
and under the burden of deep solicitude; but it was writ
ten in love, and the whole atmosphere of the letter is
fragrant with love. As has been said by another:
" There is no letter of St. Paul's so absolutely free from
the necessity of rebuke, and, accordingly, there is none

14 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
SO full of joy, in spite of all the circumstances of suffer
ing and anxiety under which it was written."
This epistle opens with a beautiful picture of com
panionship in love and labor.
The first words are " Paul and Timothy." The same
names are associated in the second letter to the Corin
thians, and also in the letter to the Colossians, with
exactly the same formulary in both these instances:
" Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of
God, and Timothy our brother." The two names re=
appear in the Epistle to Philemon — only there is a slight
change in the way in which they are introduced: " Paul
a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother."
In the two Epistles to the Thessalonians there is the
added name of Silvanus — " Paul and Silvanus and Tim
othy." Paul seems to have been exceedingly fond of having
somebody with him in his Christian work. Fellowship
strengthened and comforted him. It appears indeed to
have been a necessity of his nature. Doubtless the wis
dom of the Master in sending forth His disciples " two
by two," commended itself to his judgment as well as
his heart. On his great missionary tours there was
always some man along with him whose name was
bound up in close connection with his own name. It
was "Paul and Barnabas"; it was "Paul and Mark"; it
was "Paul and Silas." There at Philippi it was
"Paul and Silas" who were arrested and impris
oned, and who held that ever memorable prayer=meeting,
which was followed by the swinging wide open of the
doors of the jail, and converting the jailor, and giving
to the world those words which from that day to this
have been a classic direction to troubled and inquire

OPENING WORDS 15
ing souls: " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou
shalt be saved, thou and thy house." It was " Paul and
Titus"; it was "Paul and Timothy."
Of Timothy Paul was especially fond. He speaks of
him as his " own son in the faith." The probabilities are
that he was brought into the acceptance of Christ on
the first visit of the great apostle to Lystra. He was of
mixed parentage, for though his mother was a Jewess,
his father was a Greek. His religious training began
early, and was tender and thorough. It is more than
any ordinary good fortune to have a mother like Eunice
and a grandmother like Lois. His mind had been fitted
for the truth by the study of the truth, and when He
who is the way and the truth and the life was presented
to him in all the freshness and with all the power at the
command of an inspired apostle, he was quick to re
ceive Him, and make Him the ground of his hope, and
the law and motive of his conduct.
For the seven subsequent years he grew in grace and
knowledge, and when, at the end of this period, the
apostle returned to the scenes of his former labors and
perils and sufferings, the young Timothy was prepared,
in the judgment of his fellow Christians both at Lystra
and Iconium, and in the judgment as well as personal
partiality of Paul, to be dedicated to missionary service.
This was done and he became an evangelist, a messen
ger of the churches, and a worker whose fidelity and
wisdom and love drew the heart of his spiritual father
to him in the bonds of a peculiarly sacred attachment
and made his name fragrant forever with all who love
our Lord. He came into intimate relations with Paul,
and the two were to each other all that is implied in the
endearing name of father and son.

16 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
Timothy was with Paul at Philippi. He was with
Paul at Corinth. Sometimes he went before Paul to
prepare the way. Often he lingered in a place after
Paul had left to finish some work still undone. He
went here and there on mediating and missionary er
rands. He was incessant in Christian activities. Paul
could not have been long a prisoner at Rome when
Timothy found his way to his side, that he might show
to him the tenderness and depth of his sympathy, and
aid him in his struggles, and assist him in his plans.
There will be occasion later on in the study of this
epistle to note the glowing way in which the apostle
speaks of Timothy, and to say somewhat more about his
capabilities and character.
It is not simple courtesy nor mere sentiment which
links these two names of Paul and Timothy together
here in this salutation. The close association of them
means more. It means mutual love and confidence. It
means common desires and interests and aspirations. It
means a strengthening of each other to do and to bear.
The union of the two men in this fellowship of faith
and devotion to duty was not simply the union of Paul
by himself and Timothy by himself. Paul was more
than merely himself because of Timothy, and Timothy
was more than merely himself because of Paul, and the
two together gave a larger resultant of love and confi
dence and zeal and success than would have been possi
ble without the two together. There is no wiser way,
nor more promising way, to do the Lord's work in city
or village, and in far away lands, than the good old way
of " two by two."
But if we have here in these introductory words a

OPENING WORDS 17
beautiful picture of companionship in love and labor, so
also do we have a striking illustration of humility and
consecration. For what is the description which Paul
gives of himself and Timothy? In what attitude are
they represented? " Servants of Christ Jesus," — these
are the words. In the original, as shown in the margin
it is — " bond=^servants."
It is worth our noticing that Paul has joined himself
with Timothy at the outset of his letter on terms of
equality. It is " Paul and Timothy." There is no in
dication in the language used of any sense of superior
ity. When occasion required Paul could assert his apos-
tleship with vigor and dignity; but he did not do it
here. It is not Paul the inspired apostle, and Timothy
the convert, but it is " Paul and Timothy." So in these
added words — "servants of Christ Jesus" — Paul goes
down to the bottom and takes his place on an equality
with Timothy. " Servants " — " bond=servants " — " of
Christ Jesus." They are there together and they are
there in the same spirit, and the consecration of them
selves to the Lord is as complete as they know how to
make it.
This was the sum and substance of Paul's ministry —
service. He was in the ministry not to lord it over
God's heritage, and show his superiority to the average
brother, but to serve. In his estimation to be a servant
of Christ was to be exalted above kings. This was his
conception of the Christian life — service. This is the
conception which he exemplified. His head, his hand,
his heart, his culture, his experience, his faith, his
bounding hope, his visions, were all laid down at the
feet of Christ, and devoted without reserve to the wel-

18 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
fare of humanity. We read of Paul the Apostle, but
we read also of Paul the servant; and in service he was
ready to spend and be spent.
This is the true idea of the Christian life. It is not
ease; it is not self=indulgence; it is not striving for the
highest and softest places; it is service. It is this
spirit in the Christian life which has advanced Chris
tian civilization to its present standing. When there
are more men and womeji in the Church who are ready
to write after their names, " Servants of Jesus Christ,"
and who are willing to do their best to make good the
claim that they are "servants," the Kingdom of God
will move on, and mighty victories will be won. When
we think how brief the time is in which we can labor
effectually for the bettering of the world, and what
rewards and glories await the redeemed in the ages to
come, we can well afford to consecrate our energies to
those ends which will lift humanity nearer to God.
Observe further, that the apostle addresses these
Philippian disciples as " saints " — " to all the saints in
Christ Jesus which are at Philippi." He puts himself
at the bottom; calls himself along with Timothy "a
servant " ; but to them to whom he writes he gives the
highest and most honorable designation at his com
mand — he calls them " saints."
What did he mean by this? Was it a species of
artful flattery? Was he trying to get into the good
graces of these disciples by attributing to them
qualities which, according to any severe standard
of judging, they could not possibly have possessed?
Or had the members of this Philippian church really
made such attainments in the Christian life, grown into
such fulness of faith and love and purity that' they might

OPENING WORDS 19
fitly be called " saints," and accorded this high rank in
the estimation of all?
Hardly. These Philippian '' saints " were not saints
because they were perfect, and there was nothing more
for them to do in the direction of conformity to the di
vine will, but because they had given themselves to
God in faith and surrender, and God in the exercise of
his grace had made them his own. In the days in
which Paul preached and wrote, all Christians were
freely designated as " saints." To the Roman believers
he wrote as to those who were " called to be saints." So
also to the believers at Corinth. The Ephesian Chris
tians were " saints." The Colossian Christians were
"saints." They were "saints" for the reason that
sainthood meant nothing more or less than such a con
secration of the life as is both implied and involved in
the apprehension of us by God in Christ, and in virtue
of which we are no longer our own, but the Lord's. To
be a "saint" in the true sense of the term is to have
been consecrated to God and His service. Any man
who truly belongs to God is a " saint."
But this is far from saying that every man who be
longs to God is a perfect man. These " saints " at
Philippi, good as they were; these "saints" at Ephe
sus, were not perfect. Paul saw a great many particu
lars in which they might be improved. This is why he
prayed for them, and lavished his love and counsel on
them. He wanted them to press on to the full realiza
tion of all it meant to be God's own people.
It is not a mockery to call any man a " saint " who
has really come into the fellowship and under the
power of God. But it would be a piece of presumption
to speak of any saint here on the earth as perfect.

20 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
Men may be saints in the sense that they are blameless,
but not in the sense that they are faultless. Blameless
all may be, and ought to be, but to be faultless is a more
difficult achievement. The little child that takes needle
and thread and sits and sews with faithfulness is to be
commended, but the sewing may be so imperfect that
every stitch of it will have to be taken out and sewed
over again. The Christian who lives up to his light,
and uses his ability to the utmost is blameless, and no
doubt there were not a few of this sort in the Philip
pian communion, and no doubt there are many such all
about us in our day; but when it comes to the question
of perfection we are forced to a different conclusion. A
flawless character is the final achievement. Any man
whom God has set apart to Himself, and who acknowl
edges this consecration, and is trying to realize what it
means, is a " saint."
We must not dismiss the consideration of this clause
without calling attention at least to that little word
"all" — "to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at
Philippi." Paul did not have a few "pet" saints in
his mind when he wrote this letter. Doubtless there
were some of these Philippian disciples who were more
agreeable, personally, than others; they had better dis
cipline and better stored minds, more attractive man
ners, quicker perception of the proprieties, a larger gen
erosity, a profounder sympathy with good causes, a
completer fellowship with Christ. But the apostle
made no distinctions. His love was for them all. His
wisdom and experience were at the service of them all.
His great heart went out to them all, and he took them
all in, and bore them all up to God in the arms of his
faith and love.

OPENING WORDS 21
A few sentences will be enough to devote to the
phrase which follows right after the one we have just
had before us, and which is in fact a part of the whole
clause: "with the bishops and deacons." "To all the
saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the
bishops and deacons." Who and what are these " bish
ops"? Are they more and higher than ordinary pres
byters, or ministers, or pastors, or teachers in the
Church? The Rev. Dr. Alfred Barry, Principal of King's Col
lege, London, and Canon of Worcester Cathedral, in a
remark in which he is endorsed by Bishop EUicott,
says: "There is now no question — and but for sup
posed ecclesiastical necessities, there never could have
been any question — that in the Holy Scriptures . . .
the two titles of ' bishop ' and ' presbyter ' are ap
plied to the same persons." Bishop Lightfoot affirms:
"It is a fact now generally recognized by the theolo
gians of all shades of opinion, that in the language of
the New Testament the same officer in the church is
called indifferently 'bishop,' or' elder,' or 'presbyter.'"
He lends an almost startling emphasis to this statement
by the avowal made in another connection: "For the
opinion hazarded by Theodoret and adopted by many
later writers, that the same officers in the Church who
were first called apostles were afterwards to be desig
nated bishops, is baseless."
At a stroke this sweeps away the whole foolish and
impertinent claim that the New Testament furnishes
any warrant for the assumption of a distinction in
clerical order and an ecclesiastical superiority of those
who are called " bishops."
Bishops, as we know them, are a human invention.

22 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
Churches may have them if they like, — individual
churches and bodies of churches. It is their right.
But when a bishop, other than the New Testament sort,
assumes, on the ground that he finds the word "bishop"
or " overseer " employed by the sacred writers, that he
belongs to another and higher order of ministry than
others who have been called of God and ordained and
set apart to the high service of the Church, — or failing
in this contention, puts forth the claim that in some mys
terious way he and his class alone have come into the
line of the apostolic succession, he needs in the interest
of truth and unity and a real brotherhood, to have his
pretentions punctured. A New Testament " bishop " is
a New Testament "presbyter"; and New Testament
bishops and presbyters are simply ministers of Jesus
Christ and pastors of churches.
It remains to give a thought to the closing sentence
of this opening paragraph: "Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
These words are commonly viewed as a mere expres
sion of courtesy and good will. On this theory, if spoken
instead of being written, they would be equivalent to
our greeting when we say: " Good morning" to a mem
ber of the family circle, or "How do you do?" to a
neighbor or friend. This would make of the phrase
simply a form, and it would have no more meaning or
value than the similar forms used by all letter^writers
of the olden time.
Doubtless so much is in the words, but is this all?
Have they no other and higher significance? Without
falling into sacerdotalism may it not be justly inferred
that the use of this language by the apostle carried with.

OPENING WORDS 28
it the assurance of a divine co=operation in securing the
realization of the wish ?
The late Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, England, in his
" Lectures on the Ephesians," calls attention to the fact
that the apostles, when they were sent out by our Lord
on their evangelistic circuit, were to salute any house
they might enter; and if the house proved worthy, their
peace was to come upon it, but if not their peace was to
return to them. Having brought this fact to mind, he
adds: " It was really to bring peace to those whose
hearts were simple, trustful, and devout. The words of
benediction were to be confirmed and fulfilled by God.
And Paul had equal authority to speak in God's name."
If this be the true view, then these words of salutation
are lifted out of the realm of mere courtesy and become
words of prayer and assurance. They are channels
along which God's blessing flows in upon the hearts of
men who are prepared to receive it. Then, too, as often
as a good man — one called of God to speak in the name
of the Master and to be the organ of spiritual communi
cation — stands up to utter the formulary of grace and
peace on the souls of his fellow=disciples, and his
fellow^disciples are sincere and open in their desires for
a divine blessing, God vitalizes and honors the words,
and they become the medium of a new measure of grace
and an aid to the peace that floweth like a river. In
this spirit and with this hope may my lips be anointed
to utter and your hearts be opened to receive the pre
cious salutation: " Or ace to you and peace from God
our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ."

Xovtng interest in tbe pbilippians.

" I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you, always in
every supplication of mine on behalf of you all making my suppli
cation with joy, for your fellowship in furtherance of the gospel
from the first day until now; being confident of this very thing, that
he which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of
Jesus Christ: even as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf
of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my
bonds and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are
partakers with me of grace. For God is my witness, how I long
after you all in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus. And this I pray,
that your love may abound yet more and more iu knowledge and
all discernment; so that ye may approve the things that are excel
lent; that ye may be sincere and void of oflfense unto the day of
Christ; being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are
through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God." —Phil. 1: 3-11.

II.
LOVING INTEREST IN THE PHILIPPIANS.
This section of the epistle reveals to us what may be
called in the way of a general theme: The Loving Inter
est of the Apostle in the Philippian Brethren.
In the study of this section we shall see how tender
and deep were the feelings of the apostle toward them,
how glad and how profoundly grateful to God he was
for their faith and affection and fidelity, and what were
, the ideals of the Christian life he held up before them,
and with what earnestness he prayed that the best things
might be realized by them. This general theme, how
ever, will subdivide itself into a number of minor themes
as we follow the passage through, clause by clause.
I. First of all we have avowal of the grateful re
membrance in which these fellow-believers at Philippi
were held by Paul.
" I thank my Lord upon all my remembrance of you."
By this remembrance Paul did not mean to say that as
often as he chanced to think of them he was glad in the
recollection, and was ready to make acknowledgment
of his joy; but rather to affirm that he carried them
habitually in his mind, and was profoundly and jubi
lantly thankful in the thought of them.
This grateful remembrance, we are justified in believ
ing, covered or included at least three specifications.
1. To begin with Paul was glad in these Philippian
brethren because of the hearty way in which they came
into the acceptance of Christ, and the fidelity with
27

28 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
which they had continued in Christ, and the spiritual
progress they had made.
The church at Philippi, it will be recalled, was started
by Paul and Silas and Timothy, though Timothy, who
had just been set apart to missionary service, was prob
ably only a quiet worker, during the great apostle's
second evangelizing tour. There were but few Jews in
the city, consequently the distractions and oppositions
and hindrances to spiritual growth which disciples to
the faith were forced to encounter from this source in
some places were almost wholly wanting, especially at
the outset, at Philippi. The converts do not appear to
have been many at first, but they were sincere and ear
nest, and the association of their own original knowledge
of the truth as it is in Jesus with the bitter cost of it in
stripes and imprisonment to Paul, who had brought this
knowledge to them, helped to hold them to high and
exemplary standards of Christian character.
2. Then the heart of the apostle had been deeply
touched by the generous contributions which these
Philippian brethren had made to his needs. No other
church, so far as is reported, ever did this. But these
Philippian brethren came to his aid on three separate
occasions. " Once and again," as he says in the closing
chapter of his letter, soon after he left Macedonia, this
church ministered to his necessities, and a third time
they "revived" their "thought" of him in this practi
cal way during his imprisonment at Rome. This
" thought " of him, and this cheerful supplying of what
hecalls in another epistle " the measure of " his "want,"
gave to these people a warm and permanent place in the
affections of Paul. The more so because this Philippian
church was not rich, but poor. "The abundance of

LOVING INTEREST IN THE PHILIPPIANS 29
their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the
riches of their liberality."
3. But the special ground — the ground mentioned
and emphasized — for this grateful remembrance was
their " fellowship in furtherance of the Gospel from the
first day," until the day Paul wrote this letter. The
little church had been in existence about ten years, and
through the whole of this decade the members of it had
been marked in an eminent degree for their union and
zeal and consecration in the great business of the Gos
pel, — making it known to men, securing the acceptance
of it by men, and building men up in the purity and power
of it. Some would limit this "fellowship in the further
ance of the Gospel " to what these Philippian Christians
had done to second the efforts of Paul; but while this
may be the technical meaning of the language, the
apostle's thought, in my judgment, was larger. He
was glad and grateful for their hearty missionary spirit.
This spirit which they manifested, brought him into
special sympathy with them, and made them one with
him in aim and work. The device on Paul's banner was:
" Furtherance of the Gospel." Whoever cherished the
same high purpose and sought for the same object was
dear to him. The Philippian "saints" were in this
fellowship. " Even as it is right for me to be thus
minded on behalf of you all, because I have you in my
heart, inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defense
and confirmation of the Gospel, ye are all partakers
with me of grace" What is this grace? The high
privilege granted of God to be a witness and a worker
for Jesus Christ. " Unto me who am less than the least
of all saints, is this grace given, that I shall preach
among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ."

30 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
"To you" — you Philippian believers — "it hath been
granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on
Him, but also suffer in His behalf."
II. The next large and commanding fact to arrest
attention is the confident expectation expressed by the
apostle that God who had begun a good work in the
lives of these Philippian believers would carry the
work on to a triumphant completeness.
" Being confident of this very thing, that He which
began a good work in you will perfect it until the day
of Jesus Christ."
The point here to be specially noted — noted both for
the instruction and encouragement which are in it — is
the unquestioning assurance that what God had begun
in the hearts of these men and women He would carry
on toward perfection. He is not to be defeated in His
gracious purposes.
This is a truth to be magnified. It is a deep and in
creasing conviction of mine that in the beginning of our
Christian lives and in the discharge of our Christian
duties, and in the development of our Christian charac
ters, not enough prominence is given to what is done on
the divine side. In the reaction from those extreme
views of the sovereignty of God which left man little or
nothing to do in the working out of his own salvation
we have fallen into a way of thinking in which God has
hardly anything to do and man has nearly everything.
But it is impossible to be long with Paul in his writings
without discovering how pronounced and uniform is the
stress he lays on the help derived from God by every
human soul who succeeds in winning the victory which
overcometh the world. In his way of looking at it God's

LOVING INTEREST IN THE PHILIPPIANS 31
grace in Christ is the beginning and the end, and it is
only by opening the heart to the influences which
reach one through God in Christ, and coming under the
power of them, and keeping under the power of them,
that a person ever sets out or holds on in the divine life.
Paul was certain that no man ever turns his face toward
righteousness with a sincere and earnest desire to win
righteousness without an impulse given him from on
high; but he was just as certain that when God moves
on the heart of a man, and a man yields up his life to
the instruction and guidance of God, God will take him
through. There may be disappointments, there may be
temptations and troubles manifold; but God will see
that he wins in the end. This is His will. This is
what God loves to do. Paul's confidence had its warrant
in the character of God.
III. There unfolds before us now the prayer which
Paul was wont to offer, and which he put on record on
behalf of these brethren at Philippi.
This is the crowning testimony of his loving interest.
In this prayer we shall see at once how tender and
solicitous was his love for the members of this church,
and what was his conception of the aims and attain
ments which should characterize a true church of our
divine Lord.
His approach to the prayer is on this wise: "For God
is my witness, how I long after you all in the tender
mercies of Christ Jesus."
The prayer is in these words: "And this I pray, that
your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge
and all discernment; so that ye may approve the things
which are excellent; that ye may be sincere and void of

32 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
offense unto the day of Christ; being filled with the
fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ,
unto the glory and praise of God."
A little careful examination discloses the fact that
this prayer includes one large general petition, with the
specification of several subordinate ends, which he
hopes may come from the realization of it. This large
general petition is for love. "And this I pray, that your
love may abound more and more in knowledge and all
discernment." He wants them to have love. He wants
them to have a love whose abounding or overflowing
shall be increasingly characterized by knowledge and
discernment, or a clear and sober intellectual judgment.
These Philippian brethren had some measure of love
already. They loved the Lord Jesus Christ. They
loved the apostle Paul. They loved one another. The
faith into which they had come was dear to their hearts.
But this large=souled man whose experiences of the love
of God in the divine Redeemer were so rich, knew there
were realms of love yet unexplored by them, depths of
love yet unsounded, possibilities of love yet unrealized,
and his desire was that the members of this Philippian
communion should advance into the fullness of the joy
and energizing force of this love. He desired this be
cause love is the atmosphere in which everything else
that is good will best breathe and thrive. Love is the
guide whose hand takes us on into the perfection of
Christian character. God is love; and to love is to be
Godlike. But let us go back once more to those modifying
words — "knowledge and discernment." "And this I
pray, that your love may abound more and more in
knowledge and all discernment." What is the apostle's

LOVING INTEREST IN THE PHILIPPIANS 33
thought? How is love to abound in knowledge and
discernment? It is quite evident that Paul had in mind a love which
is not mere gush or frothy sentimentalism. The love
which he sought to have these disciples come into was
not a wild, unregulated and baseless emotion, but a love
whose tap=root is intelligence. It was love of the high
and sacred quality which brought the Son of God into
the world and led Him to go about doing good and to
die on the cross.
Hence first of all this specification of knowledge.
There can be no love of the sort indicated without
knowledge. It is not worth while to try to have love
abound unless it be in knowledge. There are two ele
ments in this knowledge which deserve attention.
One is the element of thoroughness. For this knowl
edge of which the apostle is speaking is not a knowl
edge by which we just barely know a thing; it is rather
a knowledge by which we know right into a thing, and
so know the thing perfectly. It is not gnosis merely, it
is epignosis.
The other element is that it is to be spiritual knowl
edge, or knowledge of God. No doubt this knowledge
may include any facts and truths which help to give an
intelligent and enduring basis to love, and minister to
the soul's growth in grace. But the ultimate object
contemplated in this knowledge is not reached till God
is reached, and we have a better conception and a better
comprehension of Him. We are to know Him in the
holy secrets whispered to our souls by the voice of the
Spirit, and in the sweet sanctuary of His thought and
life. Love leads on into this knowledge of God, and
the knowledge of God redacts to produce love. When

34 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
love abounds more and more in knowledge — in the
knowledge of God — it is always wise and helpful.
But to this specification of knowledge there is added
the specification of all discernment. The Greek word
which is here translated "discernment," appears no
where else in the New Testament; but the meaning of
it is sufficiently obvious. It means a well developed
moral sensitiveness; moral acuteness; an eye quick to
perceive and a heart quick to feel moral distinctions.
One writer calls it " moral tact." It is the perception
which takes place with the ethical sense whereby, as in
the flash of an instant, some things are seen to be right
and others wrong. It is the direct opposite of those
dull and inactive feelings which are not aroused and
hurt by the presence of moral evil. The author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews seems to have had the exact
idea in mind when he wrote of " those who by reason of
use have their senses exercised to discern good and
evil." Now of a love like this it is easy to perceive there
cannot be too much. If it be rooted in the knowledge
of God, and if it be ethical in its temper and habit, so
as not to be blinded and misled by the mere seeming
of things, there is no higher blessing for which to pray.
Paul may pray for it for Philippians and Ephesians
and all the rest of them. We may pray for it, — pray for
it for ourselves, and pray for it for all who have named
the name of our Lord, with all the faith and earnest
ness at our command, and be sure that every answer
which comes will be equivalent to a rare benediction of
God. Love, if it be intelligent and ethical, is the ful
filling of the law. Love suffereth long and is kind.
Love is the bond of perf ectness. " Now abideth faith.

LOVING INTEREST IN THE PHILIPPIANS 35
hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is
love." With hurried glance look now at some of the more
detailed ends which Paul had in mind in his prayer,
and which he could have had no doubt would be gained,
if only the larger petition he offered could be realized.
Three specifications follow on in quick succession.
1. "So that ye may approve the things that are ex
cellent." Enough has already been said on the words " knowl
edge" and "discernment" to illustrate this clause of
the sentence. There is to be " knowledge " and " dis
cernment " for just this purpose — to enable one to make
quick and sure moral distinctions. Were we to gather
up and preserve each shade of meaning in the words
Paul uses, the statement would seem about like this: In
order that having proved by actual experiment or test,
ye may know what things are better. This is the high
service which love abounding more and more in knowl
edge and all discernment is to render — it is to enable
one to put things to the proof in his actual every=day
life, and in this practical way find out what things are
right and good and true. One whose love abounds in
knowledge and all discernment has the keen instinct by
which he feels his way, without any long process of cal
culation, to the right conclusions, and the moral energy
to incorporate these conclusions into his life, and live
them out day by day.
It is a great faculty this, and it is a great achieve
ment — to be able to distinguish in such way as never to
miss the excellent. Hardly any aim could be better
than this of bringing the mind and the heart into such a
state that excellent things are always approved. Hardly

36 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
any habit would be more rewarding and healthy than
the habit of giving instant and unstinted approbation
to excellent things.
2. " That ye may be sincere and void of offense unto
the day of Christ."
What is this sincerity? Our dictionaries tell us that
sincerity is " honesty of mind," " freedom from simula
tion," and the like. A sincere man is a man in whom
the reality corresponds to the appearance. All this is
true. But the conception which Paul had in mind, most
likely, when he wrote the word here rendered " sincere "
was that of a man who can stand the test of sunlight,
and in whose life there is nothing to make him wish for
the darkness to cover him, and conceal his inconsisten
cies and defects. He is a man whose moral nature, so
far as honesty and purpose are concerned, might be sub
jected to the fierce exposure of the " X rays " without
humiliation. In such a man there is no indirection, no
pretenses; he is open, straightforward and honest.
Is not this precisely what we all ought to be? Have
we not been called into a marvelous light? Are not so
many of us as have heeded this call the children of
light? Ought we not to walk as the children of light?
It is a great and very valuable thing to be sincere.
With all the facilities we have of being jn=sincere; and
with all the temptations we are forced to encounter to
be W'sincere; and with so many of the customs and
methods of men justifying us in being tn=sincere, it is
nothing less than a sublime achievement to stand out
frank and open and straightforward — just what one
seems to be — that really to be.
Not all will master this high sincerity in the same

LOVING INTEREST IN THE PHILIPPIANS 37
easy way. There are constitutional differences in men
in this regard.
Some men are so made up that they have a natural
itching for crooked ways and sharp underhand
schemes, or appear to have. They cannot let the best
and clearest cause stand upon its merits; they must bol
ster it up with some sort of a sham argument or trick.
They cannot approach another for a favor, which it is
quite evident will be granted, without going through
certain sorts of strategic movements. They seem con
strained to be diplomatic. One sees through the whole
maneuver at once, and smiles that anyone should think
him so lacking in perception as not to be able to see it.
Something which it is not quite honest to withhold is
kept back. Something which is known to be specious
is brought forward. Light is reflected obliquely from
their minds. Things must be put in some shape other
than they really are before they are thought to be pre
sentable. Others again, through their mental and moral make=
up, are just as much averse to equivocations and pre
tenses. They can neither utter lies nor act lies. There
is nothing like intrigue and artifice in them. They are
frank men. These latter will find it comparatively easy
to be sincere — for the currents of their natures set this
way; while the former class find it hard.
But hard or easy, against the grain of our natural
constitutions, or with the grain, we must be sincere, if
we would be ideal Christians.
Further than this he says: "Void of offense." What
is it to be void of offense? Literally it is not striking
the foot against anything; and then it is not stumbling

38 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
in consequence of having struck the foot against some
thing; and then it is — faultless. A man "void of of
fense " is a man to whom no blame attaches, who is
never guilty of any such mis=conduct that blame may be
rightly attached to him. To be a man void of offense
is to be a man who does not stumble morally.
All of us, it may be safely assumed, stumble more or
less, and so are not quite " void of offense." How com
forting to those of us who are most deeply conscious of
this to find such words as these written: "A bruised
reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He
not quench."
But is there not much stumbling which is not only
wholly inconsistent with a Godly walk, but which has
also only small excuse? Is there not much stumbling
which is exceedingly offensive and mischievous? We
are avaricious and the lust of gain makes us stumble
and bring offense. We are hot tempered, and the
unrestrained impulse to speak out quick and sharp
makes us stumble, and in this way offense is occasioned.
We are proud, and the subterfuges prompted by pride
make us stumble, and offense follows. Every faculty,
every passion, every appetite, every path along which
we may walk has something in it over which it is possi
ble to stumble. If we are zealous, we are liable to
become over=zealous, and offend by this kind of excess.
If we are cautious and attempt to feel our way along,
then we are in danger of shrivelling into cowards, and
offending on that side. It is only by the utmost care
that we can succeed in walking our ways and doing our
work in the world " void of offense." The only way we
can hope to do it is by keeping our hearts and our lives
BO full of Christ that serving Him becomes both a prin-

LOVING INTEREST IN THE PHILIPPIANS 39
ciple and a passion with us. The apostle's standard
was a high one, but no man is justified in having a low
er one: " Herein do I exercise myself to have always a
conscience void of offense toward God and toward
man." The apostle did not fail to strengthen the sense of
obligation he was here urging by a great motive drawn
from the future. " That ye may be sincere and void of
offense unto the day of Christ." Twice in this passage
we are now considering is the thought of " the day of
Christ " introduced. A little back it was^" until the
day of Jesus Christ." Here is it "unto the day of
Christ." The meaning is not exactly the same in both
instances; but both foreshadow an hour when the soul
shall pass in final review before the Lord, and an
account shall be given of the deeds done in the body.
For any individual soul that hour may be near, or it
may be far; but sooner or later it is sure. For one who
is trying to do his best the fact is full of sweet encour
agement; but for one who is indifferent to God and
careless and sinful in his living there is wholesome
warning in this " day of Christ."
3. " Being filled with the fruits of righteousness
which are through Jesus Christ, and unto the glory and
praise of God."
This " fruit of righteousness " may mean two things.
It may mean the good works which are wrought by a
righteous man in the spirit and power of Christ. It
may mean the righteous character which is developed
in a man when he accepts Christ in faith and does his
best to shape his life after the pattern of the life of our
Lord. In the first instance the eye is fixed on what a
man does; in the other instance it is fixed on what a

40 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
man becomes. In the one instance the thought in
mind is Christian usefulness; in the other instance it is
Christian character. Beyond any reasonable doubt it is
this latter idea — or the idea of the righteous character
which comes to one through the living of a life of faith
on the Son of God — which was present to the apostle
when he gave expression to these words. He was think
ing of the righteousness of Christ which is ours by the
appropriation of faith, as against our own righteousness
which is of the Law. He was thinking of the right
eousness which was of God, and which will give us
secure standing with God now and forevermore.
This he was sure would be " unto the glory and
praise of God." Paul believed with the Master that
God is glorified by our bringing forth much fruit.
He does not appear to have had any very enthusiastic
opinion of a righteousness which fails to announce
itself in righteous deeds. But righteous character was
in his estimate one of the rarest products ever grown in
the soil of our humanity. A sinner cleansed from his
sin by the blood of Christ, and then carried up under
the influence and instruction of the Spirit of Christ, till
the love and purity and integrity and nobility of Christ
reproduce themselves in some appreciable degree in his
character, and it is evident that he is advancing from
stage to stage toward a closer likeness to the Perfect
One, and is clearly of those who by and by shall be
permitted to see Him face to face, is the crowning trib
ute to the glory and praise of God. How magnificent
and lofty is the strain in which the apostle sets this
forth in his Epistle to the Ephesians, and how fit to be
our closing word: " Blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who . . . chose us in Him

LOVING INTEREST IN THE PHILIPPIANS 41
before the foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and without blemish before Him in love; having
foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus
Christ unto Himself ... to the praise of the
glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in
the Beloved."

1belpe^ b^ /©isfortune anb ©pposition.

" Now I would have you know, brethren, that the things which
happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the
gospel; BO that my bonds became manifest in Christ throughout
the whole praetorian guard, and to all the rest; and that most of the
brethren in the Lord, being confident through my bonds, are more
abundantly bold to speak the word of God without fear. Some in
deed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good
will: the one do it of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of
the gospel: but the other proclaim Christ of faction, not sincerely,
thinking to raise np affliction for me in my bonds. What then?
only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is
proclaimed; and therein I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." — Phil. 1:
12-18.

III.
HELPED BY MISFORTUNE AND OPPOSITION.
The general theme of our present discourse is:
Helped by Misfortune and Opposition.
In the seventy=sixth Psalm, through which there
breathes such a spirit of enthusiastic courage and con
fidence, and which is devoted to the exaltation of the
Divine Sovereign, and the magnifying of His irresist
ible power and glory, we are assured that even the
wrath of man is turned to the praise of God. The
wicked may plot against God, and do their worst to
stay the progress of His Kingdom, and to defeat and
injure His people; and up to certain limits they may
succeed in their bad designs; but in the end they will
be beaten. Their devices will be made to further the
truth, and to promote the interests they fondly hoped to
subvert. This is the fine mastery which God has of the
situation. A striking illustration of this divine method of over
ruling evil intentions to good ends is found in the way
in which the advancement of the Gospel of Christ was
aided by the misfortunes which befell the Apostle
Paul, and the opposition he was forced to encounter in
the prosecution of his great mission.
Paul had an earnest desire to visit Rome. He
longed and prayed that he might meet the disciples who
were there, with a view to comforting his own heart by
what they might say to him, and strengthening and
establishing their hearts by what he might say to them.
45

46 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
Besides he wanted to reach souls which had not yet
been reached. He was intent on fruit among these
Gentiles as he had been on fruit among other Gentiles.
He counted himself debtor to Greeks and Barbarians, to
wise and foolish alike, and he was "ready," so he says,
— but by "ready" he really meant eager, to publish the
glad tidings in the Eternal City.
Anybody can understand what an immense advantage
it would be to one who wished to spread abroad a
knowledge of Jesus and His loving grace to be set
down at the center of so much culture and influence and
power as were represented at the proud capital of the
Roman Empire. Within the walls of this mighty town,
which was at once a focal and a radiating point of civ
ilization and authority — this mighty town which at
tracted and dominated the world, it might be possible
to reach the ear of classes and orders and religions not
open to one less centrally located, and to put in motion
currents of thought and life to flow out as far as Roman
laws might be made known and Roman arms might
penetrate. The apostle recognized the strategic value
of cities in his missionary operations. He sought the
cities. No wonder he wanted to stand in Rome, the
city of cities, that he might preach there the unsearch
able riches of Christ.
But how did Paul get to Rome ? He had longed, he
had prayed, and very often he had formed the purpose
to go there ; but for some reason, up to the stage of his
career in which we are now studying him, he had been
hindered and thwarted in his plans. How has it been
brought to pass that he is there finally? Why, his
enemies came to the rescue and took him up and car
ried him there. What he had not been able to accom-

HELPED BY MISFORTUNE AND OPPOSITION 47
plish through his own wit and energy, the mad opposers
of the truth he uttered and the salvation he announced,
blinded by their own passionate willfulness, accom
plished for him. The wrath of men became the breath
of God which wafted him from the capital of David and
Solomon to the capital of the Caesars. He had prayed
that God would open the door for him into this city;
God had heard his prayer, and in His own divine way
had answered it.
When Paul arrived at Jerusalem, on his fifth journey
to the city after his conversion, he was met with open
and bitter hostility. Efforts at conciliation were
vain. The mob spirit was invoked, and he would have
been killed outright had it not been for the protection
afforded him by Claudius Lysias. To circumvent and
escape a Jewish conspiracy of which he had been ap
prised, the chief captain, under cover of night and ac
companied by a strong guard, had Paul conveyed to
Caesarea. But the apostle left Jerusalem well assured
of what his ultimate destination would be. For on the
night following his forceful but friendly deliverance
from the fierce Sanhedrim, and his incarceration in the
castle, the Lord had stood by him and said: "As thou
hast testified concerning me at Jerusalem, so must thou
bear witness also at Rome."
At Caesarea Paul fell under the jurisdiction of Felix.
His imprisonment here continued for two years. At
the end of this period Felix was succeeded by Festus.
Then in due time another hearing was granted to the
apostle. The result of this new hearing was the
famous appeal to Caesar. On the first opportunity this
Christian missionary, who had made such magnificent
use of his confinement to utter wholesome and saving

48 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
truths to Felix and Drusilla and Festus and Agrippa
and Bernice, and we kn ow not how many others of
mark, and who knew also how to stand on his right as a
Roman citizen, was placed in charge of a centurion and
put on board a ship, and through storm and wreck and
every sort of peril was conducted on his forward way
till his Lord's assurance was realized, and he was at
Rome. It was a strange way in which to get the business
done. But it was done effectually. It was done in a
way to make the record of it eminent and instructive
for all the ages. The scheming hatred of the Jews and
the power of the mightiest pagan nation on the globe
were the agencies employed of God to secure this end.
He was there, with two whole years at least before him,
and with what in some respects must be considered rare
chances for doing work for the Master, and bearing his
testimony to the redeeming love of God m Christ; and
his enemies had put him there. His enemies had fur
nished him transportation and a splendid escort. "The
kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take
counsel together — He that sitteth in the heavens shall
laugh ; the Lord shall have them in derision."
But the same method of dealing wherein the wrath of
man is made to praise the Lord, and misfortunes and
oppositions are turned into aids to the advancement of
the truth, which was illustrated in Paul's reaching Rome,
had further illustration in the experiences he was called
to pass through after he had reached Rome. " Now I
would have you know brethren, that the things which
have happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the
progress of the Gospel."
Here is a general statement to the effect that what at

HELPED BY MISFORTUNE AND OPPOSITION 49
the outset seemed unpropitious and unpromising
proved in the event to be favorable. Under this general
statement three facts are specified and brought forward
in evidence of what the general statement discloses,
1. The first fact is that in virtue of his bonds he was
able to make his own fidelity to Christ manifest, and to
make Christ known to the soldiers who had him in keep
ing, and to others as well, whether of the military force
or citizens. "So that my bonds became manifest in
Christ throughout the whole praetorian guard, and to
all the rest."
Paul was a strange prisoner. No matter what his
bodily presence, he could not have failed to make instant
impression on those with whom he came in contact, of
his wide intelligence and earnest convictions and won
derful personality. Any average soldier having charge
of him would naturally want to know of his career and
character, and what the indictment lodged against him.
When the discovery was made that he was guilty of no
vice, that he had committed no crime, that he had advo
cated no sedition and had stirred up no rebellion, but
had simply been telling the story of salvation from sin
through faith in the crucified Christ, curiosity, not to
say interest and sympathy, would be sure to be aroused
among all the members of the guard, and the narrative
would be repeated from one to another, and serious
questions would be asked about this crucified Christ
who was able to awaken such love and loyalty as were
exhibited by the apostle. For this is what his bonds
meant, and this is what became manifest. It became
manifest to the soldiers who guarded him, the whole
body of them at length, and to many who were not sol-
dipr^ SS well, that Paul was in bond? simply and solely

50 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
because he believed in Christ as the Son of God and the
Redeemer of mankind, and desired to win others to the
same belief.
Just this fact of his bonds was a marvelous oppor
tunity for access to the hearts of these military men.
Indeed, when we come to think of it, what better chance
for effective preaching can we imagine than Paul there
in bonds for Christ's sake, and lovingly and enthusias
tically telling the story of Christ. He saw and used the
chance which his enemies, under the overruling of the
providence of God, had made for him, and his bonds
were turned to the saving of souls and the progress of
the Kingdom. He was in chains ; but he made his chains
emphasize the truth he uttered. He was under the con
stant watch of soldiers, but he made this enforced close
ness of personal relation an occasion for whispering
words of light and salvation in the ears of men who in
the next ordering of affairs might be sent to the remotest
boundaries of the Roman Empire, there to rehearse for
their own comfort, or for the edification of others, the
teachings of the apostle. How true the old familiar
words, and in how many forms and circumstances they
have illustration. " God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm."
2. The second fact brought forward by Paul in proof
that the things which happened unto him fell out rather
to the helping than the hindering of the progress of the
Gospel is the way in which the disciples at Rome
were emboldened, by seeing what he did in his bonds, to
speak out for Christ and bear witness to the faith that

HELPED BY MISFORTUNE AND OPPOSITION 51
was in their hearts. " And that most of the brethren in
the Lord, being confident through my bonds, are more
abundantly bold to speak the Word of God without
fear." Courage was put into them by this striking example
of fidelity to principle unawed by power and unsub
dued by difficulties. Their zeal was quickened. If they,
or any of them, had been disposed to compromise with
their own convictions and consciences, and to utter
their avowals of the faith in whispers, they were shamed
out of their half=heartedness. If this man did not find
his bonds an impediment to aggressive movements for
Christ, but made them an occasion for successful witness
ing and working, much more should they who were per
fectly free to come and go, do what they might through
plain speaking and personal effort to make Christ known
to their fellow=men. Paul's bonds stirred these disciples
to new confidence and activity.
It is always so. A man who works in circumstances
of inconvenience or pain or peril which to many minds
might be expected to justify him in doing nothing, never
fails to excite the spirit of work in other men. A man
who is true to the truth, and unfaltering in his devotion
to some high duty, with ostracism or a dungeon or the
gallows confronting him, not unfrequently puts moral
might into a whole generation. This is the high service
of the Martyrs — they help to make men true and
courageous. 3. The third fact cited by the apostle to make good
his claim that the Gospel had been helped forward
by his own personal misfortunes was the new and pecu
liar interest which had been awakened in the preaching
of Christ. " Some indeed preach Christ even of envy

52 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
and strife, and some also of good will; the one do it of
love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the Gospel;
but the other proclaim Christ of faction, not sincerely,
thinking to raise up affliction for me in my bonds."
The simple explanation of this is that there were two
parties in the Church at Rome.
There were those who were out=and=out followers of
Paul. They accepted the truth as he held it, and formu
lated it and preached it. They fell in with his methods.
They caught his spirit and aims, and they readily lent
themselves to the power of his hot and unquenchable en
thusiasm. There were others who clung with great tenacity to
old forms and were reluctant to accept the faith of Christ
in its simplicity. They were the Judaizing party, or the
party whose members gave in their adhesion to Christian
ity with their eyes turned back over their shoulders to
wards the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish ritual, and
who cherished a tender fondness for worship in the tem
ple. These were the antagonists of Paul, and took pains to
oppose him wherever they could. The Epistle to the
Romans shows in many ways how strong this Judaizing
element was in the Church at Rome.
These two opposing parties came into sharp array on
the arrival of Paul in the city. His presence and his
activity stirred th em both up, They both began to preach
Christ. In this there was substantially no difference be
tween them. The difference lay in the spirit and motive
with which they preached. One party held forth Christ
in a temper of good will and love, and in heartiest co=
operation with the imprisoned Paul, The other party
held forth Christ in a temper of envy and strife and fac
tion, This party had a kind of regard for Christ and a

HELPED BY MISFORTUNE AND OPPOSITION 53
kind of wish to have Him magnified; but its members
wanted Paul thrust into the background, and his follow
ers, as opposed to themselves, humiliated.
The whole case has been set forth in a single para
graph by one of our exegetical writers. " Though the
apostle's enemies preach Christ as do the others, they
do not, like them, seek to edify the Church, and to assist
the apostle, but stir up strife and hatred against him.
They preach Jesus as the promised One, that those who
hear may say : ' This is indeed also Christian preaching,
we need not run after Paul.' They thus draw the Church
to themselves, and withdraw it from Paul. They preach
concerning Christ essentially as he does, only either
more strictly to please those who are zealous for the law,
or more loosely for the sake of those who are still weak,
or in a more rhetorical way not to offend the cultivated
as does the apostle. Thus they not merely weaken the
attachment of others to him, and draw away his followers,
but excite enmity against him, and thereby make his
chains still more galling." If we recall the words we
shall see how exactly and fully this explains them. " Some
indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife, and some
also of good will; the one do it of love, knowing that I
am set for the defense of the Gospel, but the other pro
claim Christ of faction, not sincerely, thinking to raise
up affliction for me in my bonds."
But what is Paul's thought of it ? What is the spirit
he exhibits in view of this partisan preaching of Christ ?
Hear him. "What then? Only that in every way,
whether in pretense or in truth Christ is preached ; and
therein I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice."
Paul was keen enough to see what was going on, and
to catch the drift of things. But he was too large a man

54 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
to let any personal feeling come in to sway his judgment
and chill his enthusiasm over the preaching of Christ.
Men might be wrong in their motives, and narrow and
bigoted in their prejudices; but if they preached Christ, —
if they pointed to Him as the One who was to come, and
tried to turn the thoughts and hearts of men to trust in
Him, he would make it the ground of sincere and earnest
rejoicing. So broad was the man. So complete was his
consecration to Christ.
It may fitly be said in conclusion that this instance
of God's overruling the evil schemes of bad men to the
glory of His own name, and the success of His ser
vants, and the triumph of His truth, is only one out
of a multitude of instances which illuminate human
history. The tyranny and oppression of Egyptian
kings was made the occasion for divine interposition
and a glorious deliverance of the chosen of the Lord
from their long bondage. The captivity of Israel and
the machinations of enemies made Daniel an immortal
figure in the annals of the world. When the Pope is
sued his famous bull against Martin Luther he set the
seal to the Reformation. The Stuarts harried the Non=
conformists out of the kingdom; but they set the Pil
grims down on Plymouth Rock, and laid the foundation
of this magnificent Republic with its free schools, and
free churches, and equal laws. What abolitionists
could not do to rid the land of the crime and curse of
slavery, and what liberty=loving statesmen could not do,
and what an enlightened and indignant public opinion
could not do, the enemies of freedom in their blinding
madness put it into the power of Abraham Lincoln to
do. Men who work against truth and liberty and
righteousness will be held to account, for they are

HELPED BY MISFORTUNE AND OPPOSITION 55
treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath; but their
bad endeavors will often be made the occasion for ad
vancing good causes to higher grounds. We are not to
say or feel there is no difference between good and evil;
for there is, and the two can never be made one; but
we are to rejoice that God has the skill through His
Providence so often to turn bad intentions and bad ac
tions to virtuous account. It is as Lowell sings:
" Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death=grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the
World;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, —
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim un
known,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His
own."

Xfving to Serve.

" For I know that this shall turn to my salvation, through your
supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, accord
ing to my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing shall I be
put to shame, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also
Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the
flesh, — i/this is the fruit of my work, then what I shall choose I
wot not. But I am in a strait betwixt the two, having the desire
to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better: yet to abide
in the flesh is more needful for your sake. And having this confi
dence, I know that I shall abide, yea, and abide with you all, for
your progress and joy in the faith; that your glorying may
abound in Christ Jesus in me through my presence with yon
again."— Pftii. 1:19-26.

IV.
LIVING TO SERVE.
The thought in this passage which it seems to me de
sirable to emphasize is: Living to Serve,
But this thought will be clearer to us, and we shall
be better prepared to appreciate it, if we reach it by the
same steps the apostle took to reach it.
Back at the beginning of the paragraph of which the
section now under consideration is a part, Paul says:
" Now I would have you know brethren, that the things
which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto
the progress of the Gospel." The truth was not hin
dered, but aided, by the attempts of its enemies to sup
press the proclamation of it, and the story of salvation
through faith in the Son of God became known to per
sons and in quarters altogether inaccessible without the
assistance of a mad and persecuting opposition which
knew not what it did. There was a general overruling
for good of the mischievous devices and intents of the
men who hated Christ. This he wanted the brethren to
" know." He knew it, and he wanted them to know it.
Here, too, he starts in with a statement whose con
tent is something known. " For I know that this shall
turn to my salvation." In the former instance he says
that the things which happened to him residted in the
progress of the Gospel. In this instance he declares
that the preaching of Christ, even though it be done in
a factious spirit, and from motives of envy and jealousy
toward himself, is to turn to his own good. This is his
59

eo DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
serene confidence: "For I know that this shall turn to
my salvation."
What is this salvation? Ordinarily the word means
the deliverance from sin which is wrought by Christ
when He is accepted in faith. But Paul was a " saved "
man already. He had long been a glad disciple of
Jesus, and a mighty and successful worker in His serv
ice. The word, therefore, cannot stand for salvation
in the sense which is commonly attached to it by read
ers of the New Testament. A study of the passage
makes it evident, also, that the word cannot be alto
gether emptied of its spiritual significance, and lowered
till it has some mere outward meaning only. Some
have thought it must be interpreted as the preservation
of his life; others as release from captivity; others as
victory over his enemies; still others as the reaching
of people not yet brought under the power of the Gos
pel; but no one of these suggestions quite meets the
case. For the two of them, namely, preservation of life
and release from captivity, which seem to come the
nearer to a satisfactory explanation, leave out an ele
ment which was evidently present to the thought of the
apostle when he wrote.
Beyond any question, as it appears to me, Paul had
two ideas in mind when he gave expression to this
word "salvation."
First he had in mind the idea of his own personal
safety which included the preservation of his life and
his release from captivity. He had no consuming anx
iety about this, as we shall see in a moment, but this
was the way his expectations set. This is put beyond
gainsaying by a single sentence in the Epistle to Phile
mon, which was also written from Rome, not far from

LIVING TO SERVE 61
the time the Epistle to the Philippians was written.
The sentence is as follows: "But withal prepare me
also a lodging: for I hope that through your prayers
I shall be granted unto you." Here was an evident
looking forward to release from imprisonment, and a
counting on the prayers of his "beloved and fellow=
worker" Philemon to help in securing this release.
Further on in the selection now before us for review,
the apostle says: "And having this confidence, I know "
— am certain — " that I shall abide, yea, and abide with
you all, for your progress and joy in the faith; that
your glorying may abound in Christ Jesus in me,
through my presence with you again." Whether the
expected release actually came, and Paul visited this
devoted and affectionate company of Philippian disci
ples once more or not, is a question left largely to infer
ence; but that he had in mind such a deliverance when
he spoke of certain things turning to his salvation,
there can be no reasonable doubt.
In the second place it is pretty clear that Paul could
not have used this great word " salvation " — a word
which meant so much on his lips and when falling from
his pen — without implying at least, much more than
mere bodily safety and liberty. Paul had in thought
the additional idea of the carrying on, in his own soul, of
the renewing and enlarging and sanctifying work of
grace which was begun when he accepted Christ, and
which had been continued and helped forward ever since
by all sorts of experiences. The Gospel was advanced
by the plots and oppositions of foes. So, too, his own
spiritual life had been advanced, and would be advanced
by these severe trials. His salvation would be a com
plete salvation for the reason that what he had passed

62 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
through, and was still to pass through, would bring him,
in all his views and plans and feelings and hopes, into a
closer identification with the Son of God. It was not
alone others who were to be helped through him by
these intrigues and assaults, but his own spiritual good
was to be promoted.
But how was this to turn to his salvation? Two ways
are indicated in the passage given. " For I know that
this shall turn to my salvation through your supplica
tions and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ."
First, these Philippian brethren were to pray for him,
and through their prayers he was to be helped. If free
dom to go and come in the Master's service, and a new
and closer identification of his life with the life of the
Lord, were to be secured to him, these blessings must
come largely through the united and earnest supplica
tion of his fellow'disciples. Whatever others might
think of it the apostle believed in the efficacy of prayer.
He prayed for those for whom his heart was burdened,
and he wished those who were friendly to him, and in
terested in the success of his endeavors for Christ, to
pray for him. " Brethren pray for us," is one of his
familiar and touching entreaties. There is no need of
any further citations either in proof or illustration of
the faith Paul had in prayer and of the eager desire he
cherished to be remembered in prayer; but let me quote
the request he makes to these same Roman disciples in
the midst of whom he was at the time of writing his
letter to the Philippians, for the reason that it shows at
once how highly he esteemed prayer offered in his
behalf, and his belief that prayer might help him out of
difficulties similar to those in which he was here in
volved. "Now I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord

LIVING TO SERVE 63
Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that ye strive
together with me in your prayers to God for me; that I
may be delivered from them that are disobedient in
Judea, and that my ministrations which I have for Je
rusalem may be acceptable to the saints; that I may
come unto you in joy through the will of God."
Second, the assistance of the Divine Spirit was to be
ministered unto the apostle. This assistance, or " supply,"
might come in answer to their supplications for him, or
it might come partly in answer to their supplications,
and partly in independence of them. At any rate Paul
conceives the help to be of two kinds, — the help of their
prayers and the help of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit
might be given to him in response to their asking; but
it was the Spirit Himself who was to supply him with
the needed light and courage and comfort and strength
and all fulness of grace.
It is to be observed that the Spirit here is called, not the
" Spirit" simply nor the " Holy Spirit," nor the " Spirit
of God," nor the " Divine Spirit," but the " Spirit of
Jesus Christ." Instances of this same usage are found in
Romans where it is said: "But if any man hath not
the Spirit of Christ he is none of His "; and in Second
Corinthians where the language is: " Now the Lord is the
Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is lib
erty"; and in Galatians where it is written: " Because ye
are Sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our
hearts, crying, Abba, Father"; and in First Peter where
we find: " Searching what time or what manner of time
the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto,
when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ,
and the glories that should follow them."
This form of statement is not without its peculiar

64 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
significance, and needs an emphasis of its own. When
used, especially by Paul, it is well=nigh impossible to
escape the impression that, consciously or unconsciously,
the writer has two distinct conceptions in his mind.
One is the large and general office of the Spirit, by
whatever name called, such as working conviction of sin,
or guiding into the truth, or purifying and comforting
and strengthening one; the other is the specific office of
the Spirit whereby the mind or temper of Christ is re
produced in the heart of a believer. The Spirit is the
Spirit of Christ as well as the Spirit of God, because
He is sent by the Father in the name of the Son; but
beyond this He is the Spirit of Christ, because His aim
is to transform every life He influences into the likeness
of Christ. How much it meant, therefore, when Paul
spoke of the " supply " of the Spirit of Christ, and how
surely this supply would work toward his salvation.
With a sudden and safe leap the apostle's thought
bounded on from this salvation which concerned him
personally and which he was sure would be helped
through the occasion of his trials, to what, in virtue of
his identification with Him, concerned his Divine Lord.
Passing on from the clauses just considered he adds:
" according to my earnest expectation and hope," words
looking back to the salutary influence which his bad
treatment and misfortunes are to have upon him, and
forward to the moral and spiritual attitude in which he
is to stand if he is helped as he wishes to be, by the
prayers of his Philippian brethren and the Spirit of
Christ, — " that in nothing shall I be put to shame, but
that with all boldness as always, so now also Christ shall
be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death,"

LIVING TO SERVE 66
The thought here is not of himself chiefly, but of the
glory of Christ.
Paul saw that a crisis was approaching in his affairs.
He felt it drawing rapidly on. His soul was stirred
with deep emotions in view of it. The fear, or if not
the fear, the possibility flashed into his mind, that he
might be unequal to the strain of his trial. He seems
to have said to himself, as we all of us do now and then
in the face of difficulties: " What if I should fail. " It
was a humilating thought. It was also a stimulating
thought. For immediately the man appears to fall to
talking with himself, and we can almost hear him say:
" Pail! But I must not fail. I must not be put to shame.
I must not falter and fall from lack of courage. Be it
life or be it death to me, I must remember that the
name of Christ, through my connection with Him, is at
stake in my conduct, and that at all hazards and costs
Christ must be magnified." This was his intense solici
tude — that Christ should be magnified. This, in fact,
whether the apostle ever gave it this shaping in his own
mind or not, was one of the methods and proofs by which
things designed to be injurious, and naturally reckoned
injurious, were turning to his salyation, — Christ could
have an ampler magnifying in and through him, in and
through his fearlessness, in and through his unimpeach
able character, in and through his superb fidelity, and
in and through his lofty superiority to the dread of
death. It was an elevated aim. It was a splendid loyalty.
Disinterested devotion could go no further. He took
the banner across whose face was written the name of
Christ, and he held it aloft and said: " Come what may.

66 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
— what may of humiliation, what may of personal hard
ship and pain, — come death even, this name of Jesus
must be exalted and magnified."
This brings us to the perplexing alternations with
which the apostle, because of hie love for Christ, and
the intimacy of his life with the life of Christ, found
himself confronted. " For to me to live is Christ, and to
die is gain. But if to live in the flesh, — if this be the
fruit of my work, what I shall choose I wot not. But I
am in a strait betwixt the two, having the desire to de
part and be with Christ; for it is very far better; yet to
abide in the flesh is more needful for your sake."
So far as his own personal views and feelings and in
terests were concerned this was the way Paul balanced
the question of going or remaining.
In any event it was Christ. It was Christ for him to
live, because Christ had been, and if his life should be
prolonged He still would be, the spring of all his actions
and joy, and the One to whom all his energy and time
and influence and possessions would be devoted. It
was Christ for him to live, because he opened his heart
so wide to the Spirit of Christ, and permitted his mind
to become so penetrated with the mind of Christ, and
put on Christ so effectually in the development of his
character, and brought all his powers and faculties so
completely under the control of Chi^st.
So to die was Christ. For death, according to his
conception of it would advance him into a presence more
immediate, and a fellowship closer with Christ. It
would be no longer a dim imperfect seeing, but a clear
face=to=face seeing. This he counted better — what, in
deed, in his eager enthusiasm he ventured to call " very
far better." A similar opinion and a similar desire are

LIVING TO SERVE 67
expressed in the apostle's second letter to the Corin
thians. " For we know that if the earthly house of our
tabernacle " — or bodily frame — " be dissolved, we have
a building from God, a house not made with hands,
eternal, in the heavens. For verily in this we groan,
longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is
from heaven; if so be that being clothed we shall not be
found naked. For indeed we that are in this tabernacle
do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be un
clothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what
is mortal may be swallowed up of life." Paul knew that
while he was at home in the body, he was absent, in
this free open way, from the Lord; but he preferred, so
far as he might have a preference, to be absent from
the body, and to be at home with the Lord. In this
sense to die would be gain.
In Paul's estimation, therefore, death is not an event
to be dreaded by a Christian. It cuts short the earthly
existence, but it opens the way to an endless and joyous
existence out in the unseen world. Death is the launch
ing of the ship and sending it forth to its destined haven
across the sea.
One of the writers on this passage calls attention to
an inference this desire of Paul to depart and be with
Christ yields which is of a great deal of significance. It
is this fact of being at once with Christ. " Unless," he
says, " Paul believed that the death which released him
from the trials of this life were to introduce him at once
to the presence of Christ, and a state of blessedness, we
see no adequate reason for the struggle between his de
sire to depart and be with Christ and his anxiety to
labor still for the advancement of the Redeemer's King
dom on earth. If he believed that he was to remain for

68 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
an indefinite time without consciousness in the grave,
his zeal for men's salvation and his contempt of personal
dangers and trials in the pursuit of that object, would
lead him to desire to live as long as possible, on account
of the importance of his ministry to mankind. On the
other hand, if we suppose him to have regarded his at
tainment of the joys and rewards of heaven as simul
taneous with his departure from this world, we have
then an adequate explanation of his perplexity." What
ever views men may have of an intermediate state, and
the resurrection and judgment, Paul evidently had no
thought that he was to be kept waiting an indefinite
period in some anteroom of eternity before seeing
Christ. But notwithstanding this eagerness to be gone, and
this confidence that this going would usher his soul into
the open presence and measureless joy of Christ, Paul
said: "No, if it is better for me to remain; if anybody
can be helped by my remaining; if effectual service can
be rendered by my remaining; if hearts can be won to
the Lord, and disciples encouraged, and the Kingdom
built up, by further efforts of mine, and if this be the
pleasure of God, and the disposition of Providence con
cerning me, then my own personal preference shall yield
to duty, and I will try and serve. "
Paul was not a coward. The plots of enemies, opposi
tions, trials, hardships, pains, disabilities, did not daunt
his courageous soul. He would meet them just as long
as God called him to do it.
Paul was not selfish. He shirked no obligations. Bur
dens which belonged on his own shoulders he threw on
no other shoulders. His own plans he could give up

LIVING TO SERVE 69
freely. His own advantages he could forego. He could
stand on the very threshold of heaven, and look over upon
its delights, and hear its music, and witness its glad
and exalted fellowships, and then turn back to render
service to souls in need of light and strength and guid
ance. He did not want to live for the mere satisfaction
of living; all the satisfaction was over there. He did not
want to live for any gain life might bring him ; the gain
would be in dying. But in a love which was kindled at
the fiame of the love of Christ, he was willing to toil on
still, to spend and be spent, and to endure all sorts of
hardship, for the sake of being serviceable.
After all is not this the open secret of the highest kind
of living, and of the sweetest and most enduring joy —
living to serve? Does any other man get so much out
of life as he, who, in a spirit of dutifulness and devotion,
puts just as much of himself, and just as much of truth
and light and love into his fellow=men as he can? Why
do we think more of Paul than of Nero? Why do we
esteem George Washington above Napoleon Bonaparte?
Why do we place Lincoln on a higher pedestal than any
other ruler of his time? Why do we reckon Dwight L.
Moody a nobler specimen of a man than some of our
shrewd millionaires? Why do we keep the memory of
Mary Lyon fresh and fragrant, while we forget with
such facility the names of hundreds of women who
were the belles and butterflies of their generation? Why
do we build monuments to perpetuate the fame of souls
who were large enough and brave enough to suffer mar
tyrdom for truth?
The answer to these questions is on every lip. It
is because of the regard which is entertained for the spirit

70 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
of service, and the sense of the value of the service which
men and women actuated by the spirit of service have
rendered to mankind.
Would it not be a beautiful act, and one prophetic of
good to our own souls, and of good to other souls, were
we to catch the spirit of the apostle, and erect his thought
into a motto, and go forth in the spirit of consecration
to service! " Hands that ope to receive
Empty close; they only live
Richly who can richly give."

Malfting TKIlortbs of tbe (Bospel.

"Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ:
that, whether I come and see you or be absent, I may hear of your
state, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one soul striving
for the faith of the gospel ; and in nothing affrighted by the adver
saries: which is for them an evident token of perdition, but of your
salvation, and that from God; because to you it hath been granted
in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer
in his behalf: having the same conflict whioh ye saw in me, and now
hear to be in me." — Phil. 1: 27-30.

WALKING WORTHY OF THE GOSPEL.
The central thought of this passage lies in the opening
words, and from these words we are to derive our gen
eral theme, which is : Walking Worthy of the Gospel.
The apostle has been stating his feelings in view of a
probable release from imprisonment, and the opportunity
this would afford him of revisiting the disciples at
Philippi. As between life and death he preferred death,
because death would usher him into the immediate pres
ence of Christ. As between departing and in this way
increasing his own personal satisfaction, and remaining
and doing what he might to help others, he preferred to
remain and be of use. But whatever the issue, — whether
freedom were granted to him, and with freedom the
privilege of coming and seeing once more these beloved
f ellow=believers, or he was still to be held in custody, he
wanted to be assured they were living in a way to accredit
their faith to the world, and to illustrate the love and
purity and power of Him who had saved them from
their sins. " Only let your manner of life be worthy of
the Gospel of Christ."
It will reward us to linger here a moment. This
phrase, — " let your manner of life be " — is exceedingly
significant. In the original it is expressed in one word —
¦KoXnsbsade. The root of this word is Td,i(? — the Greek
word for city. From this word we get our familiar
English words, "police," "politics," "politicians," and
the like. They are all words which have primary refer-
73

74 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ence to cities and the control of cities. To modern
thought these words have become more or less degraded
by what has been permitted to be done under shelter of
them ; but at the outset they stood for lofty ideas and
lofty views and actions.
Paul conceived of these Philippian Christians as citi
zens. They were Roman citizens, and were proud, no
doubt, of the distinction and privileges their Roman
citizenship conferred on them. But they were citizens
of a great earthly empire not only, but of a heavenly
commonwealth. In the twentieth verse of the third
chapter of this epistle the same idea is repro
duced, "For our citizenship is in heaven." They were
citizens of an earthly kingdom; but they were also citi
zens of a spiritual kingdom — the Kingdom of God.
Through Christ whom they had accepted in faith these
persons were no longer strangers and sojourners; they
were fellow=citizens with the saints, — with the saints on
earth and the saints in heaven. They were in a divine
realm; they were under divine laws; they owed obedi
ence to a divine Sovereign; they were the subjects of a
kingdom not of this world.
Looking upon the disciples to whom he wrote in this
light, and doing his best to get the disciples to look
upon themselves in this light, . the apostle, expressing
his wish in terms of tenderest solicitude, but with a
straightforward earnestness, said: " Now be true citi
zens of the commonwealth of God; meet the responsi
bilities and discharge the duties of your citizenship in
the large, loyal fashion which might be expected of
those who, through the infinite riches of divine grace,
have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness
into the kingdom of light." For substance this is what

WALKING WORTHY OF THE GOSPEL 75
would have been suggested to the minds of these Phil
ippian believers by the peculiar word the apostle was
led to use. They would have thought of good citizen
ship in the state elevated into good citizenship in the
kingdom of righteousness.
One writer intimates that the word may have passed
beyond the special meaning attaching to it from its der
ivation, and have had only the general significance of
conducting the life properly; but the word is so singu
lar, and the circumstances of its utterance were so ex
ceptional, that this could hardly have been possible.
Paul meant to stir, and doubtless did stir, those senti
ments which we call patriotic, and which are highest
and holiest when kindled in devotion to the interests
that center in the Kingdom of God.
Practically this would mean just what our translation
of the word yields us. It would mean living after a
manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ. It would
mean personal purity, and loyalty to truth, and fidelity
to every obligation, and the highest kind of integrity,
and an interest in everything which looks toward the
glory of God and the welfare of humanity.
But what are the measures and methods indicated by
the apostle through which the manner of life may be
shown to be worthy of the Gospel of Christ? He
names four.
1. The first is steadfastness.
" That ye may stand fast." We shall see in a mo
ment in what sphere and to what end this steadfastness
is to be exemplified. But it is a thought of immense im
port by itself. Had the apostle just said — " stand fast,"
and stopped right there, he would have given an invalu
able counsel. The idea is of holding one's ground in

76 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
battle. It is not giving way, but of sustaining one's
position under assault. How fit the imagery. Job's
question long ago was: " Is there not a warfare to man
upon the earth?" Especially is there not a warfare to
man upon the earth when he undertakes to follow in
the steps of the Master and to do the will of God? In
this warfare many things are essential to success; but
steadfastness is indispensable. There never will be
any magnificent victories without it. " Stand fast,"
" stand fast in the faith," " stand fast ... in lib
erty," " stand fast in the Lord," are among the familiar
phrases and ringing injunctions of Paul which have the
same underlying notion of holding one's ground in a
contest, and yielding nothing to the enemy. Steadfast
ness. It is good to begin; but it is better to hold steady to
the end. It is encouraging to see anybody set out with
God; but setting out in the sunshine and amid smiles,
it may be, will the man continue when storms gather
and the night falls? It is not the surprise and glow of
the comet which tells; but the enduring light of the
fixed stars. Dryden sings of one who " was everything
by starts and nothing long." Of course he was " noth
ing long." Being " nothing long " it needed no eye of
seer or imagination of poet to forcast the outcome. No
spurting can take the place of trained and systematic
pulling at the oars. The time to boast is not when the
armor is put on, but when, at the end of an honorable
and successful campaign, it is put off. The sudden
blaze and crackle of thorns is of much less account than
the abiding warmth and glow of the solid hickory.
Noah was steadfast. No trials, no discouragements,
were suffered to cool the ardor of his obedience.

WALKING WORTHY OF THE GOSPEL 77
Having begun to build the ark he kept right on with
his task till it was done. Steadfastness.
Some people unite with the Church, and then never
so much as attempt to do anything. But of those who
unite with the Church and do undertake some sort of
work, how few there are who never weary in their
well=doing. Both for the inward and the outward life,
the watchword must be — steadfastness.
2. The second way in which both to aid and illustrate
this walking worthy of the Gospel is by exhibiting the
spirit of unity.
" That ye may stand fast in one spirit." This is the
particular in which in this case the steadfastness just
spoken of is to be shown.
As would be gathered from the form in which the
thought has already been stated, the "one spirit" here
indicated js not the Holy Spirit, though of course the
influence of the Holy Spirit in bringing about this
unity is implied; but it is the accord of mind with
mind and heart with heart within this body of believers.
They are to have a common will and 'purpose; common
feelings and sympathies and aims; and in this commu
nity of will and purpose and feeling and sympathy and
aim they are to " stand fast." They are to permit no
alienations, but are to be fused and blended into a per
fect oneness. They are to be of one spirit and one soul,
one in the higher elements of their nature in which
they have fellowship with God and receive communica
tions from God, and one in the lower elements of their
nature through which outward worldly impressions are
made on them, and through which, too, they can exert
moral energy and make clear what manner of men
they are.

78 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
On this subject of unity too much stress cannot be
laid. Unity conditions efficiency and growth and
comfort. It is so in the home. It is so in the institution of
learning. It is so in the store and mill and mine and
on board the ship. It is so in the army. It is so in the
party. It is so in the State and in the administration
of the affairs of the State. Organizations in which
there are mutual suspicions and envies and jealousies,
and which are broken up into factions that are all the
time intriguing and warring against one another, can
neither command the respect of the community nor
make progress in their work.
Pre=eminently is this true of a body of believers in
Jesus Christ. A badly divided, discordant, wrangling
church is about the most offensive, as well as the most
inefficient, thing the eye can look upon on the face of
the earth. A church in which the sentiment of unity
has been displaced by the bitterness of mutual ill will
might as well go at once into the hands of a receiver.
The days of its usefulness and prosperity are at an end,
— at an end, at any rate, until the people change front
and come into a better mood. How much harm has
been done to individuals, how the advance of our Lord's
Kingdom has been hindered, by the unseemly spectacle
of disciples arrayed in antagonism.
It is not to be inferred from this that men are to sink
their individuality in the common body, and cease to
have opinions and aims and feelings of their own.
This is neither desirable nor possible. As Robertson
has well pointed out, unity consists in the subsistence
of things not similar and alike, but things dissimilar
and unlike. There is no unity in the separate atoms of

WALKING WORTHY OF THE GOSPEL 79
a sand=pit, — only an aggregation or collection of these
atoms. Hence he says: " If the different members of
each church were similar, one in this, that they all held
the same views, all spoke the same words, all viewed
truth from the same side, they would have no unity, but
would be simply an aggregate of atoms — the sand=pit
over again." Unity is not necessarily uniformity. Va
riety is not necessarily variance. One star differeth
from another star in glory; but there is harmony in the
movements of these celestial bodies, and each smallest
orb lends a splendor to the heavens, and contributes its
share to maintain the stability and order of the whole
stellar system. Hope lies, not in the suppressing, but
in cultivating and using the individualities of men and
women. The best music comes, not from using one
string, but all the strings of a violin.
But whatever divergence there may be in the opinions
of the members of any given church on matters non=
essential, and however different these members may be
in their natural capacities and training, and in their
adaptation to various branches of work, and in their
tastes and experiences and estimates of proposed poli
cies of action, nothing is to be thought or said or done
in a willful or obstinate temper. Utmost freedom of
thought and action and the widest liberty of working
according to one's best judgment ought to be granted in
a church; but when questions have been discussed and
decisions have been reached, and lines of activity en
tered upon, that should mark the end of all controversy.
Resentments, whims, whisperings, grudges, oppositions,
alienations, are all out of place in a company of true be
lievers in the Lord Jesus Christ. "For as the body is one,
and hath many members, and all members of the body.

80 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For in one
Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews
or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to
drink of one Spirit." As there is unity in Christ and
unity in the divine Spirit, so there is to be unity in the
fellowship of disciples. They are to be of one heart
and one mind in the Lord.
This is what the apostle wished to see set forth in the
conduct of these Philippian Christians. He wanted
them to stand fast in one spirit and to strive with one
soul for the faith of the Gospel. It must be heart to heart
and hand to hand and shoulder to shoulder, not only in
holding what they already had, as valiant soldiers hold
a captured fort or a conquered territory, but also in ag
gressive work in behalf of the Gospel. They could
make no headway in commending the Gospel to others,
or in magnifying it as the saving truth of God, if they
themselves were split up into factions, and were biting
and devouring each other instead of exemplifying a
temper of love and unity. Unity would assure them
power. In the spirit of unity they could move forward
to conquest. " Behold how good and how pleasant it is,
for brethren to dwell together in unity."
8. A third element to enter into this walking to make
it worthy of the Gospel is the courage which remains
undaunted in the presence of enemies.
"And in nothing affrighted by the adversaries; which
is for them an evident token of perdition; but of your
salvation, and that from God." The original of this
word " affrighted " has in it the suggestion of the action
of a horse in a race, which becomes scared and springs
aside and runs off wildly. It is the consternation and
dismay of panic. It is getting alarmed and disheart-

WALKING WORTHY OF THE GOSPEL 81
ened in the face of some opposing demonstration, or
under some fierce assault. It is the timidity and mis
giving which says at the outset of the struggle: "It is
no use; the enemy is too strong or too cunning; and
the surrender might just as well be made now as
later on."
Just the opposite of this spirit was what the apostle
sought to infuse into the hearts of these beloved disci
ples at Philippi. They were to be calmly courageous,
intrepid, resolute, heroic, true to their convictions, faith
ful to their Lord, whatever might happen. "In nothing"
were they to be "affrighted by the adversaries." The
enemy might put on a threatening front and storm down
upon them with the fury of satanic hosts; but they were
to feel no fear and yield nothing under the shock of
even the most determined assault.
These " adversaries " were of two kinds. They were
the Jews who turned their backs on Christ, and bitterly
opposed the spread of His truth; and the Gentiles who
had their own selfish schemes and interests to look after,
and who saw that as men were turned from their old
ways into these new ways of life they could not be used
to gratify avarice, and foster corruption. Masters could
not make gains of their soothsaying maids, and silver
smiths could not accumulate wealth by manufacturing
shrines of Diana.
As there were two classes of adversaries, so Paul
named two motives for meeting these adversaries with an
heroic and unflinching spirit of resistance. Fearlessness
— the courage which dies rather than give up — would
make it evident, on the one hand, — evident to them
selves if they chose to see it — that God was against these
adversaries; and evident, on the other hand, that He was

82 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
with these disciples, and shaping events for their salva
tion. For courage, such as the occasion demanded,
would never spring up in the human breast unless it
was inspired of God and nourished by the presence of
the Holy Spirit. Fearlessness would be the double op
portunity of making these enemies see that in fighting
against them they were fighting against God, and in
fighting against God they were setting their faces
toward perdition; and at the same time of re=assuring
their own hearts in the faith and love and saving grace
of Christ.
But independent of special circumstances courage is a
great quality always and everywhere. There are few
Christian men and women to whom the exhortation to
stand unterrified in the presence of all foes is not per
tinent. The high courage which Paul commended
to these fellow=disciples over in Macedonia ought
to be illustrated by all disciples in all lands. In the so
cial world, in the business world, in the political world,
how much it would be worth to the truth, and to all
good causes, if every person who has named the name
of Christ only had the pluck to be faithful to the prin
ciples of the Gospel.
4. A fourth characteristic of this walking which
is to be worthy of the Gospel is willingness to suffer in
behalf of Christ.
" Because to you it hath been granted in the behalf of
Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in
His behalf, having the same conflict which ye saw in
me and now hear to be in me."
The old battle was still on. The same old foe was
still to be met. Victory could be won only at the same

WALKING WORTHY OF THB GOSPEL 83
cost of pain and tears, and possibly of blood. These
last words of the clause just quoted—" having the same
conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me,"
were designed to remind the Philippian Christians
of Paul's own experience in their city when he was vis
ited with scourging and imprisonment, and also of what
should be told them by Epaphroditus of his present
straitness in Rome.
It was his wish that they might catch this spirit, and
be ready, not only to believe on Christ but also to sub
mit to humiliation, and bear burdens, and endure afflic
tions and losses and pass through any bitter experiences
which God might appoint, that Christ might be exalted
and the knowledge of Him spread among men.
It is not to be overlooked here that Paul speaks of
this suffering as a privilege — as a favor granted of God.
This is what the apostles, who had been apprehended by
the Council, and finally allowed to go, felt. "They
therefore departed from the presence of the Council, re
joicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor
for the name." Men and women often shrink from such
experiences of burden ^bearing and toil, and wonder why
God appoints such hardness to their lot, when God
Himself means it to be a privilege.
Nothing gets on without suffering by somebody.
Every life holds in it a history of agony and watchful
ness and care. The record of every civilized people on
the globe is a record inwrought with the stains of blood.
The Church of Jesus Christ has come to its present es
tate of power and influence in virtue of countless labors
and sacrifices. When men are no longer willing to suffer
for the progress of the truth and the growth of human-

84 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ity, they are out of line with Christ, and out of line with
the multitude of consecrated souls who have lived and
died for Christ through the generations.
But the sufferers, while helping the truth by their
sufferings, do not suffer without compensation. They
have their reward. Mr. Beecher, in one of his incom
parable illustrations, says: "I know enough of gardening
to understand that, if I would have a tree grow upon its
south side, I must cut off the branches there. Then all
its forces go to repairing the injury, and twenty buds
shoot out, where otherwise, there would have been but
one. When we reach the garden above we shall find
that, out of those very wounds over which we sighed
and groaned on earth, have sprung verdant branches,
bearing precious fruit a thousandfold." It is through
sacrifice that liberty and righteousness and all highest
interests are set forward; and it is through sacrifice that
souls grow. " The highest benedictions hide
Where sacrifice is pure and true
And our poor selfsdenials, too,
If done for Christ, in Him abide."

Xllnitp tCbrougb Xovc.

"If there is therefore any comfort in Christ, if any consolation oi
love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and com
passions, fulfil ye my joy, and be ye of the same mind, having the
same love, being of one accord, of one mind; doing nothing through
faction or through vainglory, but in lowliness of mind each count.
ing other better than himself ; not looking each of you to his own
things, but each of you also to the things of others." — Phil. 2 : 1-4.

VI.
UNITY THROUGH LOVE.
The working idea of this tender passage is: Unity
Through Love.
But a little examination shows us that the words fall
into three distinct divisions, and have to be considered
from three distinct points of view.
1. First we have an appeal.
"Fulfill ye my joy." This is in the second verse, and
is the pivot over which the section plays. Paul intro
duced the personal element into his request in order that
he might lend an additional persuasiveness to the motives
he was to bring forward for the doing of certain things
about to be specified. It is very much as if he had
said : " My delight in you in the past has been keen ;
your course has given me intense satisfaction ; I am ex
ceedingly glad in you now ; but let me entreat you to
take a step forward in this same path, put me under the
bonds of a still deeper gratitude, and fill my cup of joy
to the brim by doing what is here pointed out to you."
But while the appeal is thus personal in form, it must
not be supposed for a moment that Paul had no higher
end in view in the request he was making than his own
gratification ; or that he regarded his own wishes as a suf
ficient and final reason for what he urged. He was like
a parent who, in speaking to his children, or a minister
in laying some interest on his congregation, says : " For
my sake, do this, please." 87

88 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
It is never meant in such instances that the personal
factor which is introduced into the appeal is the only
and chief ground for granting what is asked. It is simply
a way of increasing the force of words by putting into
them the affectionate warmth of an individual heart.
There was this delicate reference to what they knew was
his tender and profound regard for them, and to what he
knew was their tender and profound regard for him, that
his suggestions might not be wanting in full effective
ness. Nevertheless the force of the passage turns on this
personal appeal, and in studying it this is the point at
which, if we are to reach intelligent conculusions, it is
necessary for us to begin.
2. Second, we have the motives for heeding this ap
peal which the apostle makes.
This takes us back to the first verse of the passage,
which reads: " If there is therefore any comfort in Christ,
if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit,
if any tender mercies and compassions." Or to throw
the statement into a style of expression which it would
be more natural for us to use, and which would be more
readily understood: "By whatever comfort there is in
Christ, and by whatever consolation there is in love, and
by whatever fellowship there is in the Spirit, and by
whatever tender mercies and compassions Christian
hearts are wont to feel," "fulfill ye my joy." By these,
in virtue of these, constrained by these, — this comfort,
this consolation, this fellowship, these tender mercies
and compassions, go out and illustrate the high Christian
qualities which are about to be named.
Here, it will be perceived, are four distinct motives.
(1) The first is the motive which is drawn from

UNITY THROUGH LOVE 69
whatever comfort there is in Christ. It ought to be said,
however, that this word " comfort," thoughit is the word
used in the New Version, hardly expresses the apostle's
precise thought. Neither does the word " consolation,"
which we have in the Old Version. The idea rather is
" exhortation " or " persuasiveness." "If there is there
fore any ' exhortion,' or 'persuasiveness,' or 'constrain
ing force,' in Christ." Or to put it in still another fashion:
" If there is anything in your experience in Christ which
takes hold of you and to which an appeal can be made,
then I beg you let me remind you of this, and by all
the sweet energy and motive power of it, beseech you
to go on and do what is here sought at your hand."
Paul went on the basis that in appealing to the experience
of disciples in Christ, he was touching the spring of a
high motive to action.
(2) The second is the motive which is found in
whatever consolation there is in love. But it needs to
be understood that the word "consolation," as here used,
leans toward the special kind of consolation which is ex
perienced in encouragement. It is as though the apostle
had said : " Inasmuch as it belongs to genuine love to
encourage and strengthen those for whom it is cherished,
let it be the office of this affection you feel for me to lead
you to the fulfilling of my wish." The appeal is a ten
der but powerful one. It is of the same nature and lies
in the same plane as the test applied by our Lord : " If
ye love me, keep my commandments." The love which
is known to be felt for one ought never to be ground of
a plea for doing that which is not right; but it may well
be called in and made the motive of appeal for doing
right and worthy things.
(8) The third is the motive which has its fouuda-

90 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
tion in the " fellowship of the Spirit." To one who has
any fit appreciation of the services of the Spirit in con
victing of sin, and guiding into the truth of Jesus
Christ, and renewing the life by His divine breath, and
sustaining spirituality in the soul by His indwelling
power, the fellowship of the Spirit will seem to be some
thing very sacred. To call this fellowship to mind, and
to intimate that redeemed men have their fellowship
one with another in virtue of this fellowship of the
Spirit, is to invoke a consideration of vast weight.
These brethren to whom Paul wrote must have under
stood him as saying: " If your fellowship of the Spirit
is a reality, and it is worth anything to you, then you
will show your sense of its value by making it an incen
tive to an unbroken and lively fellowship with me in
what I am seeking."
(4) The fourth is the motive which has its location
in their own tender mercies and compassions. The use
of these two words, " mercies " and " compassions "
serves to emphasize the thought. The appeal is to the
hearts of these fellow=disciples. The apostle seeks
their sympathy in his present condition and in his aims.
Very naturally he feels that he has a right to their sym
pathy. To withhold it in the circumstances would be
unkind and cruel. But if they are in accord with him
their sympathies will be touched; or if they have such
feelings as are wont to spring up in the soul through
the love of Christ and the presence of the Divine
Spirit, then they will move forward in the way he
points out, and count it their joy to fulfil his joy in il
lustrating the Christian traits and* discharging the
Christian duties which he conceives to be so important
to the Philippian Church.

UNITY THROUGH LOVE 91
As others have said it will be seen that these four
motives fall into two pairs or classes of motives. The
first pair includes the first and the third motive just
specified, namely, " comfort in Christ," and " fellow
ship of the Spirit," or the motives which lie outside of
us, and are divine. The second pair includes the sec
ond and fourth motives just specified, namely, the
" consolation of love," and "tender mercies and com
passions," or the motives which are inside of us, and
which derive their force from the feelings which are
awakened and the new and higher laws of action which
are set up by the work of the Holy Spirit and the con
straining and elevating presence of Christ in the soul.
In virture of what is wrought for us by divine influence
on the one hand, and in virtue of what we ourselves
come to think and feel and be, under this influence on
the other hand, we are to act.
8. We have the object for which this appeal is made
and these motives are brought forward by the apostle.
" That ye be of the same mind, having the same love,
being of one accord, of one mind; doing nothing
through faction or through vainglory but in lowliness
of mind, each counting other better than himself; not
looking each of you on his own things, but each of you
also to the things of the others."
Technically, or so far as form goes, we have seen that
the object of the appeal made is the filling up of the
apostle's joy. " Fulfil ye my joy." But this joy was to
have its realization in the ends just indicated. The
consideration, therefore, of what is merely personal to
the apostle need not keep us any longer.
What Paul was after was good feeling among these
Philippian believers. " The same mind"; " the same

92 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
love"; "one accord"; — this is what he wanted. We
get at it with our own significant word — unity. The
unity of the Church, and especially of this beloved
church, was a thought always present in his mind, and
a desire always near his heart. In the preceding chap
ter we have seen how he thanked God for the fellowship
of these brethren with him in his efforts to extend the
Gospel, and how he longed to hear they were standing
fast in one spirit, and were striving with one soul for
the faith. Here he returns to this burden of his heart,
and by all the regard they have for him, and by all that
is tender and sacred or constraining in their experience
of Christ and the Divine Spirit, and in the love and
compassion into which they have been brought, he
begs them to cultivate and maintain a true Christian
unity. " That ye be of the same mind, having the
same love, being of one accord, of one mind; doing
nothing through faction or through vainglory." It is
to be unity in thought and unity in sentiment and
unity in method and unity in aim.
Not a few people are staggered by this suggestion of
unity in thought. A year or two since, at a very impor-
tant gathering, a minister of considerable standing and
influence took it lipon himself to say that the Word of
God nowhere requires men to think alike. One of the
writers on this passage now before us says: "The apos
tle appeals to various motives for the maintenance of
unanimity in the Church. But the unanimity which he
seeks is moral rather than intellectual. It is not uni
formity, but only the possession of a common center,
around which each one moves in a common love, which,
however, may exhibit different degrees of strength and
purity in different individuals, just as centripetal force

UNITY THROUGH LOVE 93
is capable of manifold gradations." But it is worth
while to notice that the apostle says distinctly: " that ye
be of the same mind." Not content with saying it once,
in the very next clause but one, he says it over again:
" of one mind."
Unquestionably the object of this " sameness of mind"
and this " oneness of mind " is ethical, and the temper of
it is to be spiritual and sympathetic. But it is just as
unquestionable that the apostle wishes for agreement or
harmony in intellectual views and conclusions. Mere
toleration of opinion, mere sympathy, does not satisfy
him. He seeks the union of soul which is contemplated
by these expressions, — "be of the same mind," " having
the same love," " being of one accord," " of one mind," —
the union of soul in which men become like=minded, or
rather one=minded, and in a certain sense think each
other's thoughts, and live each other's lives, and rise in
to the enthusiasm of common ends and common aspi
rations. Now this is very far from saying that one man must
sink his own thinking into another man's thinking, or
permit his individuality of mind to be swallowed up in
the multitude of other minds. My views, whatever
they may be, are to be forced on nobody else; and nobody
else is to force his views, whatever they may be, on me.
No institution, no council, no assembly, no pope, may
override my own honest opinions and convictions, and
with what are assumed to be authoratative edicts come
between me and God. Each man is bound to do his
best to find the truth, and then he is bound, to speak
after the manner of Mr. Lincoln, to follow truth as God
gives him to see the truth. This between men and men.
Still there is a possible unity of view which it is ex-

94 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ceedingly desirable to reach, and which would be, were
it reached, not to the discredit, but to the real exaltation
of the individual mind. It is the unity which results
from having, not your views as against mine, nor mine
as against yours, but right views.
When two men have exactly right views about a prob
lem in Euclid or the multiplication table, they will
think alike about the problem in Euclid or the multipli
cation table. When two have exactly right views about
God they will think alike about God. When two men
have exactly right views about Christ, and about the
nature and mission of the Holy Spirit, and about the
inspiration and authority of the Bible, amd about the
new birth, and about the kind of life a redeemed soul
ought to live here on the earth, and about the hope faith
in Christ justifies us in cherishing, they will think
alike on all these vital questions. This is the basis of a
substantial and abiding unity in thought. There can
be no unity on wrong views of truth, and only approx
imate unity on partial views of truth. But when things
are seen in the clear light of the heavenly atmosphere,
and from the standpoint of eternal verity, then the
thoughts of men will flow together, and there will be
oneness of mind.
But what are the methods by which at one and the
same time this unity of thought and sentiment is to be
secured and illustrated? The apostle names four, — four
ways in which this unity may be both helped and.
shown. (1) First by doing nothing through faction. The
party spirit, particularly in a Church, is always a mis
chievous spirit. It destroys peace and harmony. The
moment a man falls into a factious temper, and thinks

UNITY THROUGH LOVE 95
not SO much of getting on himself, as hindering some
body else from getting on, and not so much of promoting
good ends as opposing them in a spirit of sheer wilful
ness, and makes it his chief business to object and find
fault, he becomes an element of discord to everybody
with whom he may be identified. If there is to be any
real unity — unity of mind and heart, then the disposi
tion to be self-assertive and to strive on all occasions,
must be crucified.
(2) Second by doing nothing through vainglory. Or
in other words by doing nothing from motives of per
sonal vanity and show. Paul had a deep rooted and
settled aversion — as everybody ought to have, — to any
thing like an empty=headed and strutting actor on the
religious stage. In his epistle to the Galatians, there is
a little paragraph which reads: " If we live by the Spirit,
by the Spirit let us also walk. Let us not be vainglorious,
provoking one another, envying one another." Jesus,
it will be remembered, has a very striking warning
against doing righteousness to be seen of men. One
can have some respect for pride; but vanity is the
emptiest and most contemptible motive from which a
man can well act. When one undertakes to be a disciple
of Jesus Christ, and to live out his Christian life, in a
temper of vaingloriousness, he is running dead against
the whole current of the teaching and spirit of the
Gospel of Christ.
Putting the two together, party spirit and vainglory,
and showing the harm they do in common, and at the
same time contrasting them, it may be said that party
spirit misuses and wrongs men in order to carry out its
own aims, while vainglory misuses its own possessions
and those of the world to glorify its lust for attention;

96 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
that party spirit presses others down in order to raise
itself up, while vainglory becomes hollow and empty
and worthless in efforts to please others and draw out
from them tributes of praise; that party spirit, sooner or
later, is sure to work destruction to whatever it touches,
while vainglory is a butterfly which flits back and forth
so long as the sunshine of popular favor lasts, and then
folds its wings and dies.
Vainglory, like party spirit, must give way to worthy
motives and aims, if one's actions are either to help or
to exhibit the exalted principles of Christian unity.
(3) By manifesting humility of mind. " But in low
liness of mind each counting other better than himself."
This is the direct opposition of the factious spirit, and
the vainglorious spirit, against which we are so earnestly
warned. Self=conceit, self»assertion, self=seeking, are all
deadly foes, not only to unity of thought and feeling,
but also to high efficiency in the service of the Master,
and it is only by displacing them with the humility of
mind which recognizes ability and merit in others, that
there can be harmony and progress. We do not become
great through the exhibition of party spirit and personal
vanity but through submission and reverence and obedi
ence. We do not advance to high planes in the moral
world by clamoring and intriguing for them, but by
taking our places at the bottom and waiting and working
there till the call comes to go up higher. If we are
humble, God can use us; but if we are opinionated and
airy and inclined to think we are made of a little better
clay than the ordinary mortal, though He can still use
us, it is very hard for Him to do it effectually, except as
examples of arrogance and folly. Humility conditions
more excellencies than we think. Indeed is not this a

UNITY THROUGH LOVE 97
characteristic of the Christian — that he does not think
highly of himself, but is disposed always to put a high
estimate on the ability and qualities of others, and to
esteem them for their virtues? Does not the true Chris
tian, in the catholicity of a true Christian spirit, rejoice
to see and acknowledge excellencies in those who are
about him? If we only looked at ourselves with the
keen eyes and searching judgments with which we look
at others, and weighed our own demerits in the scales
in which we weigh the demerits of those who are asso
ciated with us in Christian work it would be less
difficult to be humble.
(4) By consenting to give the interests of others a
fair share of recognition in our thoughts and aims. " Not
looking each of you to his own things, but each of you
also to the things of others."
There is a Christian Socialism. There is a Christian
Communism. There is a Christian Brotherhood. It is
not the Socialism of the Anarchist which aims to secure
equality of rights and possessions by overturning and
burning and destroying promiscuously. It is not the
Communism of an Oneida Community which aims
to put all on a level in the ownership of property by
blotting out the primary distinctions and obligations of
social morality. It is not the Brotherhood of the In
dustrial Organization which aims to show the fraternal
spirit by breaking the heads of hungry men for no other
reason than that they wish by honest industry to earn
support for themselves and wives and little ones.
It is the Socialism and Communism and Brotherhood
of Christ ; or the Socialism and Communism and Broth
erhood which have love for their germ centers, and " Do
unto others as ye would that others should do unto you,"

98 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
for their governing principles. The plague of souls and
the plague of communities, and the plague of churches,
is selfishness. To displace selfishness with love ; to get
men to be willing to take into consideration the welfare
of others as well as their own interests would be to in
sure the personal prosperity of every institution and
every organization, which has been set up for the good
of mankind. Men are to look after their own interests ;
but if they are Christian men, and are acting on a
Christian basis, they will look beyond their own interests,
and consider carefully and tenderly the bearing of their
actions on the interests of their fellows.
The key=note, therefore, of this unity is love. If there
is love enough to keep down the factious spirit, and to
shame vainglory into the background, and to inspire a
proper humility, and to make one considerate of the in
terests of others, there will be little difficulty in securing
a working unity of thought and sentiment and aim and
aspiration. These great motives of the comfort in Christ
and the consolation of love, and the fellowship of the
Spirit, and the tender mercies and compassions which
swell hearts in all true Christians, will have their way,
and there will be a splendid exhibition of thorough union
and oneness of soul.
How essential is this unity to the success of any
church. How much even the smallest church can do if
only it is provided with this thought and sentiment of
unity. How little it is possible for even the largest
church to do if there be no harmony and sense of fellow
ship in the members. Ambitions, jealousies, envyings,
selfish plottings, whisperings, oppositions, — they are bad
enough anywhere, and they are destructive everywhere ;
but it is a shame even to think of them in connection

UNITY THROUGH LOVE 99
with a church of Jesus Christ. Love is the life of any
church. Love is the bond of union of any church.
Love conditions the prosperity of any church. The ex
hortation is always appropriate, and there is no exhorta
tion more appropriate than that — we love one another.
" liove is the incense which doth sweeten earth."

Cbrist in ftis Conbescension anb Exaltation.

" Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus : who,
being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality
with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being
made in the likeness of men ; and being found in fashion as a man,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the
death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and
gave unto him the name which is above every name ; that in the
name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in Heaven and things
on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." —
Phil. 2:5-11.

VII.
CHRIST IN HIS CONDESCENSION AND EXALTATION.
We are now to consider one of the most sublime and
impressive themes ever contemplated by man : Christ
in His Condescension and Exaltation.
This very remarkable statement was brought forward
by the apostle to enforce and illustrate the unselfishness
he was urging upon the members of the beloved Church
at Philippi. Never was an object so worthy supported
by an argument so august. Never can indifference to the
welfare of others, and self=seeking and personal ambition
and greed and envy and jealousy and scheming for undue
advantage, seem so out of place and contemptible, as in
presence of the example of Him who descended from the
highest heights of glory to the lowest depths of humilia
tion and suffering, that He might lift men out of the de
filement and guilt and bondage of sin.
In tenderly and reverently contemplating our Lord in
the light in which this great passage portrays Him, it
will be necessary to look at Him from three different
points of view.
1. First of all Christ is here presented to us in the
majesty of an eternal prcexistence.
This is the conception of Christ with which the para
graph now under review sets out. " Who being in the
form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality
with God, but emptied himself."
Take the first clause, — " being in the form of God." To
103

104 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
begin with, this word " being" — " being in the form of
God " — is so placed in the original sentence as fo lay
stress on the reality of existence. But it is in this word
" form"— "the form of God "—that the idea of divinity is
most securely imbedded. Those who have studied the
history of the word here translated "form" and have
traced its use through the New Testament, tell us that
it means more than mere shape or fashion or the outline
which strikes the eye, and has to do with the essence or
inner quality. To be in the " form " of God is to have
an inward and substantial likeness to God. Hence to
speak of Christ after this manner is to assert His partici
pation in the Godhead.
Take the second clause, " Counted it not a prize to be
on an equality with God." This clause in the Old Ver
sion reads, "Thought it not robbery to be equal with
God." As all the scholars know great difficulty has
been experienced in arriving at a satisfactory interpreta
tion of these words. At bottom the question has been
whether the underlying thought of the Old Version or
the New is a correct one. In other words the question
has been whether the apostle meant to represent our
Lord as maintaining a claim to divine privileges and
dignity, or as gladly giving up divine privileges and
dignity, to which He might, in virtue of His exalted
nature, justly hold fast. The whole drift of the apos
tle's argument, as well as the conclusions of highest
scholarship, requires that we take the latter view, and
think of our Lord, not as asserting, but as surrendering
the glory which was His because of His identification
with God in His pre=existent and divine form.
But practically the result is the same. While accord
ing to one view the divinity of Christ is directly as-

CHRIST S CONDESCENSION AND EXALTATION 105
serted, yet it is just as clearly implied in the other view.
For surely it would have been no sign of humility in
our Lord, not to avow His equality with God, if He had
no equality with God. It would have been arrogance
and blasphemous presumption, but not humility. The
language employed carries with it the idea of divinity,
and it can be made to yield nothing less than divinity,
without doing violence to established laws of interpre
tation. The exact thought seems to be : Though before the
incarnation our Lord existed, and existed in the form of
God, yet He did not consider His equality with God as
something to which He must cling at all hazards, but
rather as a glory to be relinquished in order that through
this relinquishment He might come into the new and
higher joy of giving salvation to men in the darkness
and degradation and guilt of sin.
Take the third clause, "but emptied Himself." This
is the New Version. The Old Version reads: "but made
Himself of no reputation." But the New Version seems
the better of the two. For this conveys to us . what is
undoubtedly the precise notion that was in the apostle's
mind, namely, that Christ emptied Himself of His
glory — the glory which He had with the Father before
the world was. He gave up His true form — "the form
of God" — that He might for a season and for high re
demptive purposes, take on "the form of a servant."
Voluntarily, by a self=imp6sed act, He let go, not His
divine nature; for He was always and everywhere
divine; but the glories and prerogatives of His divine
nature, as He enjoyed them in His pre=existent state,
and for a little while tabernacled in the flesh. But this
emptying of Himself implies an original divine nature —
a divine glory which He could surrender. Otherwise,

106 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
the self=emptying can have no meaning pertinent to the
case in hand. The passage clearly teaches the pre=ex-
istent and divine dignity.
But this explanation of the significance of the several
clauses of the passage is abundantly vindicated and for
tified by the teachings of other Scriptures. On this
great doctrine of the pre= existence and divine nature of
Christ there is a majestic harmony in the New Testa
ment writings.
How sublime is the tribute to our Lord which the
apostle pays in his words to the Colossians. Canno
Liddon says of this passage that it is "perhaps the
most exhaustive assertion of our Lord's Godhead to be
found in the writings of Paul." Here is the statement:
"Who is the image of the invisible God, the first=born
of all creation; for in Him were all things created, in
the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and
things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or prin
cipalities or powers; all things have been created
through Him and unto Him; and he is before all
things, and in Him all things consist." There is no
question in this language of the pre=existence and
essential divinity and eternal majesty and measureless
power of Christ.
In the same line are those great words in the Epistle
to the Hebrews: " His Son, whom He hath appointed
heir to all things, through whom also He made the
world; who being the effulgence of His glory, and the
very image of His substance, and upholding all things
by the word of His power." To crown all is that mar
velous ascription of Godhead in the Gospel of John:
" In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God." Christ was and is

CHRISrS CONDESCENSION AND EXALTATION 107
the Eternal Word. Before He appeared in the ranks of
our humanity, before there was any humanity. He ex
isted within the being of God, not as a thought merely,
but as a person. He was God manifest in the flesh.
He could say of Himself: "Before Abraham was, I am."
All fulness of divinity was in Him — the sufficiency, the
wisdom, the power, and the holiness of God.
Moreover there is no other adequate explanation of
Christ than to think of Him as pre=existent and divine.
To regard Him as merely a man, even though it be ad
mitted that He is the highest specimen of a man the
race has ever produced, eminent above all others in
moral genius and purity and insight and love, is to be
without a key to unlock the mystery of His character
and might and limitless infiuence on the ages. His
teachings. His miracles, the regenerating energy with
which He has entered into the lives of individuals and
communities; His tremendous transforming force, and
the way unprecedented in which He has swept thought
and literature and art and discovery and all the highest
activities of the Christian centuries into subordination
to His aims, are wholly unaccountable save on the
theory of His divinity.
A Christ simply human could not have created Chris
tendom. To explain the setting up of Christianity in
the world, with what it demands, with what it has had
to encounter, and with the claim it has put forth from
the outset, on any other basis than that Jesus Christ is
God manifest in the flesh, is to fly in the face of all
reasonable probabilities. As was said in substance by
Jean Paul Richter, with His pierced hands He has
lifted empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of
centuries into new channels, and is still governing the

108 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ages. One who can do this may well inspire us as a
Being possessed of attributes and powers which take
Him quite out of the category of mere men. He had
His wisdom, and He did His mighty works, because He
was God manifest in the flesh.
2. Christ is here presented to us in the condescen
sion and self-sacrifice of a divine love.
He comes into human form, and takes His place be
side us in the circle of our human brotherhood — " tak
ing the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of
men; and being found in fashion as a man. He hum
bled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea,
the death of the cross."
Here we have the two sublime doctrines of Christian
ity — the Incarnation and the Crucifixion; Bethlehem
and Calvary; God coming down out of heaven in the
form of His Son to reveal His infinite love to us; and
this Son dying there on the uplifted tree that He might
at one and the same time express the divine sense of the
exceeding sinfulness of sin and open a way of escape
from sin.
This wonderful statement of the case by Paul is but
another way of telling the old, old story of redeeming
grace as it comes to us in the immortal words of John:
" For God so loved the world, that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should
not perish, but have eternal life." Only as Paul puts it
before us, it is not the devotement in an atoning sacri
fice of the Son by the Father; but it is the Son freely
offering Himself to humiliation and suffering and death.
" He emptied Himself." He was in " the form of God ";
but this " form " He voluntarily surrendered. He took
the form of a servant. He was made in the likeness of

CHRIST'S CONDESCENSION AND EXALTATION 109
men. But He did not stop even at this stage of self=
abnegation. He humbled Himself still further. He be
came obedient unto death; not an ordinary death either,
but the death of the cross. He loved us and gave Him
self for us. He had a glory with the Father before the
world was; but He laid this glory aside that He might
do the Father's will in seeking and saving the lost. He
was rich with an incalculable wealth of divine dignity
and power; but for our sakes He became poor that we
through His poverty might become rich. He was sin
less; yet in some mysterious but effective way He con
sented to bear our sins in His own body. Needing no
redemption Himself, nevertheless He consented to re
deem us from the curse of the law by becoming some
how a curse for us. It is a story to be told, not with
pens dipped in ink, but with pens dipped in tears and
blood. For what is there like it — this condescending
love of the Son of God which pauses not till it finds
expression in the agonies of the cross?
" He emptied Himself." He gave up His glory. He
laid aside His robes of divine dignity and put on our
earthly garments of flesh. He became bone of our bone,
and blood of our blood, and life of our life. A sov
ereign. He dropped down into a subject, and became a
servant to obey and do the will of God. In the form of
God, He yet entered into our likeness. It was not at
the top of humanity, either, that He took His place, but
at the bottom. His contacts and affiliations in society
were not with the rich, but the poor. He belonged to
the toiling, burden=bearing, self=denying peasant class.
He had not where to lay His head, after He entered on
His ministry, save as loving disciples opened their doors
and extended hospitality to Him. Nor was it, again, to

110 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
find such satisfaction as might be gathered out of an
earthly life that He was here amongst us; but to suffer,
to experience pain and shame, and to die. It was all
for sinners — the Worthy giving up His life for the un
worthy; the Pure and Guiltless making expiation for
the impure and guilty.
What a story it is when we fairly get hold of it, or
rather, when it fairly gets hold of us. Everything
elevated which is done in a vicarious spirit interests
and moves us. We are touched always and often
melted by the story of a mother's devotion to her
child. The birth=pangs, the weary night=watchings, the
anxieties and solicitudes, of the average mother are
enough to soften all hearts into tender reverence at the
mention of the name. He is no true patriot who can
consent to enjoy the privileges of liberty and law and
order, and to accept advantages for his own prosperity
and happiness, with never a grateful thought sent back
to the brave men who made their own breasts targets for
the enemies' bullets, or who secured an established sys
tem of free institutions, by awful pangs and sacrifices.
Doing and dying for others always stir our souls to ad
miration. He was One who had no sins of His own to confess or
to be delivered from — One who walked in secure and
eternal communion with the Father, who yet, out of
pure love, in a spirit purely vicarious, left all the glory
of heaven and the association and satisfaction of life
with God and in God, came down to us, and put Himself
on a level with us in our humanity, and submitted to
the limitations of an earthly life that He might help us
— might show us the Father's love, might show us how
offensive and hurtful sin is, might show us how to

CHRIST'S CONDESCENSION AND EXALTATION 111
get rid of sin and be at peace wit^ ourselves, and at
peace with God, and at peace with our environment. Is
it possible to think of all this without being touched and
moved? Is it possible for God to come out toward us
in this way, and we not go out toward Him?
3. Christ is here presented to us in His divine ex
altation. He was in the form of God, and on an equality with
God in the substance and glory of His being; but He
emptied Himself, and exchanged this form of God for
the form of a servant. He became incarnate and suffered
and died, — the Righteous for the unrighteous that He
might bring the unrighteous to God. But when He had
been offered once for all for sin, and had completed
His great atoning work on Calvary, then it was granted
to Him to ascend into the heavens, and resume His true
dignity and power. " Wherefore also God highly exalted
Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every
name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
of things in heaven and things on earth and things un
der the earth, and that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
As is well known the latter clauses of this passage, —
" that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
things in heaven and things on earth and things
under the earth, and that every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father," have been interpreted in a controversial spirit,
and made to do service, so far as they might, to the
claim of a final restoration of all souls, everywhere, to an
accredited standing in the righteousness and peace of
God. These words point, it is said, to a willing and
true worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. If this be the

112 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
fact of the case and the worship be true and willing,
then, of course, it necessarily follows that the worship
pers are in sympathy with Christ. They have laid aside
their opposition, and, in the spirit of a genuine loyalty,
have acknowledged Him, and come into a loving sub
jection to His will.
While it is not advisable to go into this at any length,
it is yet a matter of sufficient interest and importance to
justify the bringing forward of the opinion of a man
whom all will admit to be a competent authority in New
Testament exegesis. President Dwight of Yale Univer
sity, in the note with which he accompanies this passage
in Meyer's Commentary, says: "The main thought of
verses ten and eleven — ' every knee should bow . . .
and every tongue confess,' — for the expression of which
they were written, is evidently that of the exaltation of
Christ, and not that of the union of all intelligent beings
with Him as willing subjects. This fact must be borne
in mind in the consideration of any points in these
verses, which may appear to indicate such voluntary
subjection on the part of all. In view of this fact, also,
the inquirer as to Paul's doctrine of the future should
carefully examine all his statements on the subject, and
should discover in the present passage only what it clear
ly affirms. The Pauline view of Christ's exaltation can
be proved from these verses. What the Pauline view of
the eternal condition of man is to be, must be sought
for in other passages taken in connection with this one,
and not in this one alone." This is the utterance of a
thoroughly qualified and a thoroughly candid scholar.
To one in search of light on this statement of the apostle,
or to one disposed to place too much stress on a certain

CHRIST'S CONDESCENSION AND EXALTATION 113
interpretation of this statement, this comment of Dr.
Dwight will be valuable.
Now as bearing on the point of a willing and true ac
knowledgment of the sovereignty of Christ at some time
in the coming ages by all intelligent creatures in all the
universe, call in such a passage as the one found in the
first chapter of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
where Paul speaks of " the righteous judgment of God,"
and being "counted worthy of the Kingdom," and of
" the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ " when He shall
come "from heaven with the angels of His power in
flaming fire," to render " vengeance to them that know
not God, and to them that obey not the Gospel of our
Lord Jesus; who," as he goes on to say, " shall suffer
punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of
the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He
shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be mar
veled at in all them that believe in that day." We
must compare spiritual things with spiritual, and look
at questions on all sides before we venture to be too
positive in our conclusions. This applies to each and
all of us together.
The simple fact is that in this instance Paul was lay
ing all the stress at his command on the exaltation of
our Divine Lord. He saw the name Jesus lifted into
superiority to every other name. He saw all knees bend
in acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Jesus. He
heard all tongues breaking out in a mighty chorus of
confession that Jesus was and is and ever shall be Lord.
Willing or unwilling, constrained or unconstrained,
in gladness of heart or in fear and trembling, rational
creatures could not withhold their homage from Him

114 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
whose title is and .ever shall be " King of Kings and
Lord of Lords," In adoring wonder he looked up and
he saw Jesus, attracting to Himself the acknowledg
ment of the universe.
Thus in the representation here made of our Lord by
the apostle we have what the devout Neander has felici
tously called " The Whole Christ." We have Christ in
the glory of His pre= existence, when He was in the form
of God, and one in equality with God, We have Christ
in His humiliation, when He was on the earth, under the
self 'imposed limitations of a servant, bearing the sins of
a lost race in His own body, and dying for all mankind
on the cross. We have Christ in His divine exaltation,
by the resurrection and ascension restored to His place
of dignity at the right hand of God. We have Christ
coming down to us out of the heavens; and Christ here
in the world, walking back and forth with us in the
sweetness and power of an inexhaustible love, and Christ
going back in triumph to the Father.
But in every aspect in which He is presented to us He
takes hold of our hearts. If we think of Him in the majesty
and glory of His pre=existent state He awes us into pro
found reverence. If we think of Him in the flesh, going
about doing good, unstopping deaf ears, opening blind
eyes, healing the palsied, restoring the dead to life,
guiding and enlightening the ignorant, bending down in
the tenderness of a divine sympathy over the degraded
and outcast, and dying for sin. He wins our love. If we
think of Him as the risen Lord, seated at the right hand
of God, far above all rule and authority and power and
dominion, and every name that is named, not only in
this world, but also in that which is to come. He
draws us to Him in trust ; for we know He is the same

CHRIST'S CONDESCENSION AND EXALTATION 115
there He was here. He is the same yesterday, and to=
day, and forever.
He is a glorious Christ. It is glorious to be saved by
the precious blood of Christ. It is glorious to be His
disciple, and sit at His feet, and learn the great lessons
of Christ. It is glorious to be in the fellowship of Christ.
It is glorious to overcome evil in the name and power of
Christ. It is glorious to grow in the grace and knowl
edge of Christ. It is glorious to be a co-worker with
Christ in establishing His Kingdom of righteousness
and love in the world. It is glorious to look forward
to the open vision and unobstructed communion of
Christ in yonder heavens. It is glorious to feel that
one may have some intelligent and voluntary part by
and by in the voices of the multitudes who ascribe bless
ing and honor and glory and dominion unto Him who
sits upon the throne and unto the Lamb forever and
ever.

Developing anb Illustrating Spiritual Xife.

y

" So then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, not as in
my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is
God whioh worketh in you both to will and to work, for his
good pleasure. Do all things without murmurings and disputings ;
that ye may be blameless and harmless, children of God without
blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among
whom ye are seen as lights in the world, holding forth the word of
life ; that I may have whereof to glory in the day of Christ, that I
did not run in vain neither labor in vain. Yea, and if I am offered
upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with
you all: and in the same manner do ye also joy, and rejoice with
^&?'— Phil. 2:12-18.

VIII.
DEVELOPING AND ILLUSTRATING SPIRITUAL LIFE.
The "so then" or " wherefore," with which the pas
sage now to be considered begins, takes us back to the
preceding verses of the chapter. But the exhortation
here so tenderly and earnestly voiced, derives its peculiar
coloring, not from all that has gone before, but from the
words which refer to the suffering and exaltation of
Christ. With such a fact behind them as the Son of
God voluntarily emptying Himself of His divinity, and
taking the form of a servant, and dying on the cross, and
then rising again and ascending to His true place at the
right hand of God, to be the basis of hope and the
motive to action, these disciples at Philippi might well be
expected to do their utmost to reach and exemplify a high
type of Christian character. It was to the realization
of this that the apostle urged them. Falling into line
with what seems to be the central teaching of this sec
tion of Scripture, we have for our present theme :
Developing and Hlustrating Spiritual Life.
I. The first point looking to the development and
illustration of spiritual life named and pressed by the
apostle has to do with the working out of individual
salvation. After addressing these disciples in terms of endear
ment, — "my beloved" and then going on to declare in
words of hearty commendation that as they had always
been obedient — obedient to God, that is, — in his presence,
1X9

120 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
or when he was amongst them, he had no doubt they
would be much more intent on doing God's will in his
absence from them, — " even as ye have always obeyed,
not as in my presence only, but now much more in my
absence," he strikes right into the heart of the business
in hand by saying : " Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you
both to will and to work, for His good pleasure."
Here we have the recognition of two facts which have
been the occasion of endless controversy and much
bitterness in the theological world. These two facts are
the free agency of man and the sovereignty of God ;
the responsibility of man and his dependence on God.
The men to whom the apostle wrote were charged to
work out their own salvation ; but at the same time they
were reminded that it is God who works in them both to
will and to work. Men are at liberty to choose, and
they are under obligation to choose, — to choose God and
to follow Him ; but the initiative lies with God. When
men move out toward righteousness it will be found
always that it is God who has set the faculties in motion
and stirred spiritual impulses in the heart.
A thought exactly in line with this is found back
near the beginning of the epistle : "being confl-
dent of this very thing that He which began a good
work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ." " He
which began a good work in you." It was God who
" began" it. Not themselves, but God.
So it is here. " Work" it out. "Workout your own
salvation," It has been " begun" in you. God " began"
it. Carry it on, as you surely may with His help, unto
a triumphant completeness. Men will not choose God,
and they will not follow God, without His suggestion

DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL LIFE 121
and aid ; but it is just as true that God cannot work
effectually in men and have His glorious way with
them, unless men also will co=work with God. It
takes them both. " Work out your own salvation . .
for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to
work." The disposition is of God. The ability is of
God. But it belongs tons to act in concert with divinely
awakened inclinations, and to use the grace God bestows
to bring the life into conformity to His will.
Does not this statement of the case involve a para
dox? Certainly. But what of it? Is it not impos
sible, on the basis of any logic of which we are mas
ters, to reconcile the two claims of human free agency
and divine sovereignty? Certainly. But what of it?
Facts are facts even though we cannot adjust them to
each other in the inter=play of a perfect harmony. Our
stupid inability to understand how things can be, or
cannot be, does not alter existing orders and existing
relations either in the natural or moral world.
A bright teacher said to her class of bright boys a
Sunday or two since, with a view, no doubt, to pressing
home the thought of the divine omnipresence: "Is
there any place where God is not?" One young lad
quietly but confidently answered: "Yes." "Where is
it?" " In the devil." The lad was right, God is not in
the devil. But is not God everywhere? Yes. Then is
not God in the devil? No. God is not in the devil.
Very well, how explain an inconsistency so apparent
and striking? I do not explain it. I do not care to
explain it. There are some things in our own souls,
some things in the laws under which we live, some
things in this vast outer world in which we move, some
things in our relation to what is remote and invisible,

122 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
whose secrets elude us, and which finite beings here and
now cannot expect fully to comprehend; and I am
glad of it. I do not want a God whom I can take up
in my arms, and know all through and through in a lit
tle lifetime. I want a larger God. I do not want a
universe whose economics and methods I can take in
within the narrow period of three score years or three
score and ten. I want a larger universe; I want a uni
verse that will keep challenging me with mystery upon
mystery forever, and that will keep unfolding to me
glory upon glory — the glory of God and the glory of
God's Kingdom — through the endless ages.
Man's free agency is a fact. God's sovereignty,
working on the human soul, not after the manner of an
arbitrary decree, but in the way of a forerunning grace,
is a fact. Both are facts. Both are facts, too, which
are brought into requisition, as they need to be, in con
nection with the great interest of our salvation. Men
are to work out their own salvation. They are to work
it out with " fear and trembling," with a tender solici
tude, that is, and a conscientious fidelity to all duties
having any bearing on this working out of their salva
tion. But they are to do it in the consciousness that
God first set them in the way of salvation; and in the
assurance that He will help with His measureless re
sources to the end. This is what men are to find in the
sovereignty of God — at any rate what good men are to
find — encouragement. God uses His sovereignty to
help men. God's motive, we are here told, is His own
good pleasure. But God's good pleasure, be it always
remembered, is pleasure in good.
II. The second point looking to the development and
illustration of spiritual life named and pressed by the

DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL LIFE 123
apostle, has to do with habits and actions which will
mark the followers of Christ as true children of God.
" Do all things without murmurings and disputings;
that ye may be blameless and harmless, children of
God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and per
verse generation."
This is wholesome counsel. But as is implied in the
proposition just stated, it all culminates in being " chil
dren of God." This is the high=water mark of the
apostle's aspiration in behalf of these beloved fellow=
believers — that they may be " children of God." He
appears to be able to think of nothing higher for them,
nothing better, and of nothing more imperative and
promising in usefulness in the circumstances in which
they were then placed than to be " children of God."
Observe with a little more closeness some of the
qualities which were to characterize the conduct of the
Philippian disciples, if they were to meet the apostle's
wishes and be genuine children of God.
1. First they were to "do all things without mur
murings and disputings. " " Murmurings)" stand for all
sorts of ill=concealed, half=checked, and half=uttered
complaints. They are the low grumblings of a man
who is swayed inwardly by impatient thoughts and hard
feelings. "Disputings are murmurings come to the
surface and breaking out in captious and angry discus
sions. These words are susceptible of other renderings
and they have other shades of meaning in other circum
stances; but this is what they mean here: 'Do not fall
away into discontented moods, and do not indulge in
acrimonious debates over what you have to do, but be
sweet tempered and conciliatory and agreeable.' "
The particular words here employed were suggested

124 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
to the apostle no doubt by the familiar incident in Is-
raelitish history when the people broke out into a pas
sion of fault=finding, and Moses told them that the
Lord heard their murmurings against Him. Hence the
advice to " do all things without murmurings and dis
putings " has a bearing on the attitude to be sustained
toward God as well as toward men. They are not to
harbor bad feelings toward God, nor to criticize His
dealings with them, nor the requirements He imposes
upon them. But the chief reference is to the temper in
which they are to carry themselves in their contact with
men. Only in this way — by the suppression of mur
murings and disputings — could these cherished disci
ples hope to maintain the unity which was so desira
ble, and to show that they were children of God.
2. Second, they were to be "blameless and harm
less." " Blameless," as here used, means substantially
what we are accustomed to associate with the word.
To be " blameless " is to be without fault or stain. It
is to be correct in all the externals of life. It is said of
Zacharias and Elizabeth — a very great thing by the
way, to be said of any man and his wife — that " they
were both righteous before God, walking in all the
commandments and ordinances blameless." It was the
desire of the apostle that these brethren should meet
all their duties and discharge all their obligations and
carry themselves in all their intercourse with their
fellow'Christians and their fellow=men in an irreproach
able manner. "Harmless" has a more inward look
and refers to the internal purity and simplicity and sin
cerity which ought to characterize all followers of Christ.
To be " harmless " is to have the innocence of character
which has no admixture of evil thought or desire in it,

DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL LIFE 125
Thus these Philippian disciples were to be outwardly
and inwardly correct — outwardly correct that they might
bring no hindrance nor scandal to the name of Christ
and to His Church; and inwardly correct because
no mere outward correctness can long be maintained
without inward correctness. Blamelessness and harm-
lessness are distinguishing marks of the children of
God, and they are virtues to be cultivated and honored.
They are not the only qualities to be emphasized.
There are times when the stern elements of the fearless
prophet and the courageous reformer must be called
into requisition, and men must speak hot words and do
bold deeds and stride right on at the behest of right
eousness, let the timid ones think and say what they
will; but for the most part if the followers of our Lord
would only see to it that their lives are blameless and
harmless Christianity would make more progress.
8. Third they were to be " without blemish." This
phrase — " without blemish " — is one which has thorough
domestication in certain of the books of the Old Testa
ment. It re=appears in the New Testament. But a
very exalted and sacred idea always attaches to it. It
was the victim offered in sacrifice that was to be "with
out blemish," or perfect. One of the highest tributes
paid to our Lord in the Scriptures, and one of the es
sential conditions of -His fitness to be the great atoning
sacrifice for humanity everywhere insisted on, is this —
that He was without blemish — in all respects perfect.
" Knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible
things, with silver and gold, but with precious blood, as of
a lamb without blemish, and without spot, even the blood
of Christ." He was without blemish, and could save us.
This which qualified Jesus to be the Redeemer of

126 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
sinful men is what is sought in the redeemed — that they
be " without blemish." " Even as He chose us in Him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and without blemish before Him in love." " That
He might present the Church to Himself a glorious
Church, not having spot, or wrinkle or any such thing;
but that it should be holy and without blemish." "And
you, being in time past alienated and enemies in your
mind in your evil works, yet now hath He reconciled in
the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy
and without blemish and unreprovable before Him."
Children of God without blemish is the conception of
the Christian character which Paul held up before
these Philippian brethren. All the more were they to be
" without blemish " because their lives were cast " in the
midst of a crooked and perverse generation." They
were in the midst of a community of distorted moral vis
ion and of oblique ways. It is of very great importance
always and everywhere to be "without blemish"; but
when surrounded by people whose views of truth, whose
ideas of life, and whose general course of conduct are
always wrong, it is of importance beyond estimate to be
right=minded and straightforward and clean.
The caution is not without a present day application.
The world has made progress since Paul's time. But
his language still has a painful pertinency. The gener
ations have not yet overgrown the habit of being
" crooked and perverse." Sin rules with a cruel tyranny
in the hearts of the millions, and the out=croppings of
wickedness are appalling. With business methods and
maxims so largely organized on a basis of selfishness;
with tricks and frauds justified in so many quarters by
the universality of their practice; with politics so man-

DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL LIFE 127
aged, — or rather, in all our large cities at any rate, so
mismanaged, as to be a stench in the nostrils of decent
citizens; with liquor=saloons and gambling=dens and
widely advertised brothels lining our streets, and un
blushingly combining to send their representatives to
dictate our public policies and make our laws; with
able and influential newspapers entering into an unholy
conspiracy to break down and destroy our Sacred Rest
Day; with high officials and even courts in too many
instances apparently willing to lend themsels^es to
schemes to defeat both the clear intent and letter of
statutes and thwart justice; with much of our social life
so hollow and worldly, there is still a call, loud and
clear as though voiced through the trumpet of God, for
all believers to live unblemished lives. The crooked
ness and perversity of the generation demand it, and
the progress of the Kingdom is conditioned upon it.
III. The third point looking to the development and
illustration of spiritual life named and pressed by the
apostle has to do with a service of light' shedding or
illumination which the disciples of our Lord are to
render to the world.
"Among whom ye are seen as lights in the world."
The Old Version has it: "among whom ye shine as
lights in the world." But the New: "among whom ye
are seen," or, " among whom ye appear," rather than
the Old: " among whom ye shine," seems to express the
exact thought of the original. The image which shaped
itself to the apostle's mind as he wrote was that of a
new star coming out and taking its place in the constel
lations of the skies. Under this imagery he conceived of
each Christian, with his pure character and lofty exam
ple, as a new luminary in the heavens of mankind. As

128 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
God's children, true and faithful, they would become
visible to the eyes of all onlookers, and light would
emanate from them.
Doubt has sometimes been expressed as to whether
Paul intended to say: "among whom ye are seen" or
" among whom be ye seen," — whether in other words he
was stating to them a fact — " ye are seen," or was lay
ing on them an injunction: " be ye seen." But the
whole spirit and structure of the passage makes it clear
that the apostle was not exhorting but pressing home a
reality. He was saying that Christians are, as they
must be if they are Christians at all, luminaries in the
world. They can be larger luminaries than they are;
they can shine with a steadier flame and throw their
beams farther out into the darkness; but this is what
they are — they are luminaries. They are light=givers.
They are stars in the firmament of our humanity.
This is an invaluable service to render, — just to stand
and in virtue of what one is in his thought and life and
moral attitude, to send beams of light all abroad. The
needs of humanity are manifold and pressing. Men
need a profounder sense of the presence and goodness
of God. They need more purity. They need more
love. They need more consecration to ends worthy of
their own souls and of the high destiny which is within
their reach. But light is a primal and universal neces
sity. There is something in sin besides ignorance and
folly. Multitudes go wrong who know better. All the
same not so many would transgress if they understood
fully how unwise it is as well as wicked to break divine
laws and resist the divine Spirit. Any man who has
any true light in him is bound to let it out, that it may go
forth, to scatter darkness and carry health and healing.

DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL LIFE 129
Jesus said to the disciples in His sermon on the
Mount: " Ye are the light of the world." So the
apostle says here: "among whom ye are seen as
lights in the world." In both instances, of course, the
idea is of a derived or reflected light. In the highest
sense the words belong only to Christ. " I am the
light of the world." Christians are the lesser lights of
the spiritual galaxy, — always dim in comparison with
the shining of the Sun of Righteousness; but they are
still lights. Though they give out, and can give
out, only a borrowed radiance; they are yet the clearest
luminaries which not a few ever behold. More people
than we any of us suspect have no other conception of
Christianity than that which they get from what they
actually see in the lives and doings of Christ's disciples.
They do not go to the original and independent sources
of light; they do not go to Jesus Christ, and sit at His
feet, and look at truth as He speaks it out and lives it
out; they do not yield up their minds and hearts to the
influence of the Spirit, and come under His guidance,
and let Him take them forward into the knowledge
and fellowship of the Law of God; they do not open
the Bible and search the Scriptures with an eager
determination to know just what eternal life is, and
how to come into the possession and power of it;
but they watch Christians, and draw all their in
ferences and reach all their conclusions about Chris
tianity from the type of character which Christians
illustrate. Christians are the Bible the world reads.
Christians are the Christ the world studies. If
Christians illustrate a new creation, if they exemplify
a new life, if they bring forth the fruits of a new
ppirit, they are »ot only luminaries, bvt luminaries iu

180 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
whose light the benighted multitudes will sometime
come to rejoice.
IV. A fourth point looking to the development and
illustration of spiritual life named and pressed by the
apostle has to do with the positive and aggressive work
of making known the saving truth of the Gospel to those
who are ignorant of it, or who, if they are not ignorant
of ii, have yet failed to receive and appropriate it to
their own deep needs.
" Holding forth the word of life."
This means telling the story of salvation through an
incarnate and crucified and risen Lord. It means telling
it out in words, and telling it out in the life. These
disciples did not have the New Testament, as we now
have it, with its marvelous record of Jesus, — how He
came to us to express the love of God, and what He said,
and what He did, and in what manner He bore our sins
in His own body, and died on Calvary, the Righteous
for the unrighteous, that He might open the way and
restore us to the fellowship of the Father. But they
had Christ in their hearts. They knew in their own
experience how He delivers from the guilt and bondage
of sin. They knew what a Rest=Giver He is to troubled
souls. This blessed fact they were to make known. To
men and women far away in folly and transgression, or
low down in vice, or alienated through pride, or per
plexed and bewildered with the problems of life, they
were to carry the good news, and keep on carrying
them, till as many as possible had been persuaded to
believe on the Christ.
This is a high and sacred function. To hold forth
the word of life is one of the chief duties, as it is one of
the precious privileges, of the Christian Church.

DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL LIFE 131
The two words, which, for substance were always on
the lips of the Great Teacher are these — "Come "and
" Go." First it was to be "come." It was to be "come"
James, and "come" John, and "come" Andrew, and
" come " Peter, and the rest. It was " come " everybody.
" Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden."
" Whosoever will let him come." Men were to come to
Him in order to be at the right point from which to
start out. They must come to Him with their sins.
They must come to Him with their narrow and false
views of life and duty. They must come to Him with
their old natures, and through faith in Him, and the
regenerating power ,of the Holy Spirit, secure new
natures — be made new creations. This was and is the
necessity laid on every man who would be right with
God, and in a condition to render efficient service, for
the great cause of truth and virtue, to come to Jesus
Christ, and through Him to get right moral and spiritual
adjustment to law and obligation and destiny.
But the " coming" was to be immediately followed by
a "going." The "coming" was to be in order to " go
ing." " Go " ye. " Go " ye and work. " Go " ye and
witness. " Go " ye into all the world. " Go " ye and
preach the Gospel to every creature. So, they went out
everywhere — these early disciples — publishing the truth
as it is in Jesus. Philip heard the Master say — " Go,"
and he went. Paul heard the Master say — " Go," and
he went. This word which he had heard from the lips
of the Lord, and which had led him out on his great
missionary tours, he passed on to others. It was his
desire that these Philippian disciples should distinguish
themselves by holding forth the word of life.

132 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
But there is still another reason, doubtless, why the
apostle urged the duty of holding forth the word of life
on his fellow=believers at Philippi. There is a reacting
value in all services rendered in the name of the Lord,
and especially in all services which have for their chief
object the winning of souls to the faith. To help others
is to help ourselves. To try to diffuse light is to gather
light. To give is to receive. In sincerity and love to
speak the Name which is above every name is to in
crease its attractiveness to our own hearts. Aiding
others to grow, we grow in our own thought and char
acter. Phillips Brooks says: "It is the sincere and deep
conviction of my soul, that, if the Christian faith does
not culminate and complete itself in the effort to make
Christ known to all the world, that faith appears to me
to be a thoroughly unreal and insignificant thing, desti
tute of power for the single life, and incapable of being
convincingly proved to be true." He says again:
"Always the enlargement of the faith brings the en
dearment of the faith; and to give the Savior to others
makes Him more thoroughly our own."
This was all clear to the apostle. Paul knew that if
he could only get these disciples to work, and keep them
at work, at the blessed task of acquainting ignorant and
sinful men with the saving grace of Jesus Christ, their
own growth and joy would be assured. There is no so
lution for the difficulties one may have in believing:
there is no safeguard against temptation, either inward
or outward; there is no way of rising superior to the
crookednesses and perversities of an evil generation,
like downright earnest effort to bring souls to Christ.
This passage is concluded with a statement of the joy

DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL LIFE 133
it would be to the apostle to have the suggestions and
recommendations here made carried out and illustrated
in the life.
"That I may have whereof to glory in the day of
Christ, that I did not run in vain neither labor in vain.
Yea, and if I am offered upon the sacrifice and service
of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all; and in the
same manner do ye also joy, and rejoice with me."
As twice before, so here once more, Paul brings in
the thought and motive of " the day of Christ." To
that day he was always looking forward, and how it
should fare with him on that day was a consideration he
never dismissed from his mind. The better Christians
these Philippian brethren became, and the more efficient,
the more evident would it be at " the day of Christ "
that his labors in their behalf had not been in vain, and
the more reason would he have for glorying in what had
been accomplished.
But the apostle was not thinking merely of his own
interest and happiness. For the significant fact whioh
these closing words bring to the surface is the intimate,
or rather one might better say the vital way, in which
Paul identified his life with the lives of these disciples
whom he held in his heart and to whom he wrote in
such glowing terms of affection. He was in their work
and life, and they were in his work and life, as both — the
teacher and the taught, the leader and the followers —
were in Christ, He might be offered upon the sacrifice
and service of their faith in a near=approaching martyr
dom; but if so he would rejoice with them on their
behalf, — as he was sure they too would rojoice with him
on his behalf. They were one in the Lord.
The imagery, of course, in which this thought is ex-

134 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
pressed, is derived from the ancient custom of sacrifices.
The reference may be to pagan libations; but it is more
likely the apostle had in mind the Jewish drink-offer
ings, " The Levitical law required that the offering of
a certain quantity of wine should in most cases accom
pany the sacrifice of fire," Paul was ready to enrich
and complete the sacrifice of their faith and the fruits
of their faith which these Philippians had laid or were
laying on the altar of Christ, by pouring out his own
life=blood. Not Paul, but the Philippians themselves
were the priests, and their trust in Christ and their serv
ices for Christ, were the sacrifice; but it was the blood
of the apostle, fresh from his warm throbbing heart,
that was to be the precious libation. It was one serv
ice, one aim, one joy, one hope; the apostle was bound
up in these brethren, and these brethren were bound up
in the apostle, and all of them together were in Christ,
Few things in our earth are more beautiful than the
identification of minister and people. When the people
shall be ready to do their best to " adorn the doctrine of
God our Savior in all things," and the ministers shall
be ready to spend and be spent, even to the sacrifice of
the last drop of blood in their veins, in the common
service of our divine Lord, there will be not only an
exhibition of harmony to gladden all eyes, but a for
ward impulse, impossible to be successfully resisted by
the evil influence of the world, will be sure to be given
to the Kingdom; and faith will take hold on the hearts
of men, and truth will spread, and righteousness will
win victories prophetic of the speedy coming of the
final triumph.

yellowsbip anb S^mpatb)?.

" But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy shortly unto you,
that I also may be of good comfort, when I know your state. For I
have no man like»minded, who will care truly for your state. For
they all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ. But ye know
the proof of him, that, as a child serveth a father, so he served with .
me in furtherance of the gospel. Him therefore I hope to send forth
with, so soon as I shall see how it will go with me: but I trust in
the Lord that I myself also shall come shortly. But I counted it
necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow=
worker and fellow=soldier, and your messenger and minister
to my need; since he longed after you all, and was sore troubled,
because ye had heard that he was sick : for indeed he was sick nigh
unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but
on me also, that I might not have sorrow upon sorrow. I have
sent him therefore the more diligently, that, when ye see him again,
ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. Receive him
therefore in the Lord with all joy; and hold such in honor: because
for the work of Christ he came uigh unto death, hazarding his life
to supply that which was lacking in your service toward me."
—Phil. 2: 19-30.

IX.
FELLOWSHIP AND SYMPATHY.
In this passage we have a beautiful picture, drawn by
a master hand, of the tender fraternal relations subsist
ing between true Christian hearts, and of the sense of
obligation instinctively felt by disciples of our Lord to
be interested in each other's welfare. So far as it can
be done in words, the apostle here sets before us an ob
ject-lesson, attractive and impressive, of the comfort
and power and value in general of the fellowship in
which believers in Christ mutually walk and do their
work, and of the sympathy they mutually share when
overtaken by misfortunes and distresses.
It will be in order, therefore, to make this our theme,
and to dwell somewhat carefully during the moments at
our disposal on Fellowship and Sympathy as illustrated
by the various persons whose attitudes and actions are
made known to us in the paragraph of the epistle which
is now in hand for consideration.
There are four parties directly concerned in this fel
lowship and sympathy. They are Paul and Timothy
on the one hand, and on the other the Philippian
church and Epaphroditus.
It is to be kept continually in mind that Paul was a
prisoner at Rome. He had been in this great dominat
ing city of the world well on to what Luke in the Book
of Acts calls " two whole years," when the letter to the
Philippians was written. He was permitted to preach
137

138 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
and he did preach with special effectiveness; but his
preaching was in bonds. He was hand=cuffed to the
soldiers who had him in charge, and was never allowed
to be alone day or night. His treatment was not
severe, in some respects, indeed, it was remarkably
kind; but he was in chains; and his liberty was cur
tailed to the extent that he must remain in chains and
under military guard till his trial came off.
Timothy was a spiritual child of the apostle, and the
affection cherished by Paul for the young and beloved
disciple, as has been said in a previous discourse, was
that of a father for a son. The affection was recipro
cated; and the tender youth regarded the man who had
brought to him a knowledge of Jesus Christ as a true
and loving offspring regards a worthy parent. Deli
cately reared, with a constitution never robust, with a
sensitiveness which made him shrink from responsibility
and opposition, naturally inclined to an ascetic rigor
which he did not have the strength to bear, and pos
sessing a temperament which exposed him to some risks
on the social side of life, his Christian character had in
it, both in the earlier and later years, a large infusion of
what we should call the feminine element.
Timothy was a man of rare sweetness of disposition,
of sincere and earnest faith in the Son of God, and his
loyalty to his friends was of the kind that never
swerves. As soon as his personal merits and fitness for
the service became generally known to the brethren, he
was solemnly ordained to the work of an evangelist.
He became the associate of the apostle and the mes
senger of the churches.
It is not probable that Timothy was with the apostle
on his journey to Rome, But he must have joined him

FELLOWSHIP AND SYMPATHY 139
very soon after his arrival and remained with him dur
ing the entire period of his two year's imprisonment.
As has been said by another: "All the indications of
this period point to incessant missionary activity." He
was especially busy with the care of the Macedonian
churches. In the words before us Paul speaks of Timothy in
terms of warmest commendation. "But I hope in the
Lord Jesus Christ to send Timothy shortly unto you,
that I also may be of good comfort when I know your
state. For I have no man like=minded, who will care
truly for your state. Por they all seek their own, not
the things of Jesus Christ. But ye know the proof of
him, that, as a child serveth a father, so he served with
me in furtherance of the gospel."
The declaration here made of having " no man like=
minded" to care for them, is a somewhat surprising one,
— especially when there is coupled with it the further
statement that "all seek their own, not the things of
Jesus Christ," It is not to be supposed the apostle
meant this to be taken in the full literal sense. Under
some strong provocation, or in a momentary mood of
dejection, he put the case emphatically. Possibly, as
has been suggested, some of his most trustworthy disci
ples had been sent away on various missions, one in one
direction, and another in another.
This is Professor Ramsey's explanation of the lan
guage: "It seems impossible," he says, "to believe that
Paul could have written like this, if he had had with
him Tychicus, 'faithful minister and fellow= servant in
the Lord,' Aristarchus, Mark, and above all Luke. Yet,
if anything is sure about that period, it is that Aristar
chus and Luke had been with Paul from his arrival at

140 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
Rome till after Colossians, Philemon and Ephesians
were written, while Tychicus probably joined him with
Timothy in 60, On our supposition, Mark and Tychi
cus had already been sent on missions to Asia; Luke is
either the ' true yoke= fellow' addressed in Philippians
4: 8, or was actually the bearer of the letter to Philippi;
Aristarchus also had been sent on a mission during the
summer of 61 ; and Epaphras naturally had returned to
the Lycas valley. There remained some friends with
Paul, probably Demas among them; but he did not feel
sure of their thorough trustworthiness, and his doubt
about Demas was afterwards justified."
Possibly, too, there had been a temporary falling
away from him, as in the instance to which he refers
when he says that at his first defense no one took his
part, but all forsook him and fled.
At the same time there is always too much ground
for charges of this sort. For it is true, pitifully true,
that the proportion of Christians, who are willing to
forego their own ends, — their own comfort and advan
tage — for the sake of the things of Jesus Christ always
has been and still is, quite too small.
But there was no spirit of self=seeking in Timothy,
and no shrinking from hardships and trials and sacri
fices. He was wholly devoted to Christ, in every exi
gency thoroughly loyal to Christ, and like the apostle
was ready, or rather was glad, to spend and be spent in
the service of Christ.
As to the Philippian church it is worth remembering
that up to the time of the imprisonment at Rome the
apostle had received no material aid from its members
for the last ten years. It was not because his love for
them, or their love for him had cooled; but there had

FELLOWSHIP AND SYMPATHY 141
been no opportunity for testimonies of this sort. Pre
viously this church had assisted him, as it had gone to
the extent of its power, and, as he tells us, even beyond
its power, to aid, in response to his appeals, their poorer
brethren in Judea. Indeed it was from this Philippian
church alone that Paul would consent to take aid for
the relief of his personal wants. But, as has just been
said, there had been nothing of this giving to the apos
tle for his own individual use for a decade. When,
however, the time came for fresh demonstrations of this
sort, and there was need on Paul's part of practical sym
pathy, then these brethren were forward to show their
attachment for him. In his extremity of sore destitu
tion — a fact to which it seems necessary to adhere in
spite of recent arguments to the contrary — their love
for him revived and flamed out into the old enthusiasm,
and they hastened to assure him that in his sufferings
they also suffered.
It was as the organ of their love, and the bearer of
their gracious bounty, that Epaphroditus found his way
from the church at Philippi into the presence of Paul
in his bonds at Rome. He was the voice through
which heart spoke to heart.
Epaphroditus was a remarkable man. He presents
to us a character which is worthy both of careful study
and hearty emulation. Recall the apostle's tribute to
his devotion. He has been speaking of his hope to send
Timothy to the brethren at Philippi, and of his own
expectation of coming to them soon. "But "he adds,
"but I counted it necessary to send to you Epaphrodi
tus, my brother and fellow=worker, and your messenger
and minister to my need; since he longed after you all,
and was sore troubled because ye heard thfit he was

142 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
sick; for indeed he was sick nigh unto death; but God
had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me
also, that I might not have sorrow upon sorrow. I have
sent him, therefore, the more diligently, that, when ye
see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the
less sorrowful. Receive him, therefore, in the Lord
with all joy, and hold such in honor; because for the
work of Christ he came nigh unto death, hazarding his
life to supply that which was lacking in your supply
toward me."
Or to state the last clause a little differently, so that
there shall be no hint or tone of reproach in the lan
guage, as it is certain none was intended by the apos
tle, "hazarding," or putting at stake, "his life to do for
me and for the cause of Christ that which you, in your
absence and distance, found it impossible to do."
Paul here calls Epaphroditus an "apostle and minis
ter." All that is meant, however, by the words in this
instance is that he was the delegate or messenger of the
Philippian church to the apostle. He was the one
whom the Philippian church had " sent " to the apostle,
and he was charged to minister to the apostle's need.
But this earnest and faithful messenger went far
beyond anything implied in his instructions. There
are three choice and magnificent titles which the apos
tle confers upon Epaphroditus. "My brother and fel-
low=worker and f ellow=soldier." He is a " brother " sin
cere and true, in the common faith of Christianity. He
is a "fellows worker" and joins in heartily with the
apostle in his efforts to win men to Christ and to build
them up in lives of love and righteousness. He is a
" fellow=soldier," and is ready to share whatever hard
ships and dangers there may be in the holy warfare in

FELLOWSHIP AND SYMPATHY 143
which all earnest followers of the Captain of our salva
tion are engaged. He came to express sympathy; but
he remained to exemplify brotherhood, and to be a co=
laborer in Christian toils, and to be a brave and zealous
fighter for the truth.
This, however, is not the full statement of the facts.
Epaphroditus pushed his activity to the extreme point
of peril to his life. " For the work of Christ he came
nigh unto death." This " work of Christ " was not only
what he had done in undergoing the hardships and en
during the fatigue of a journey from Philippi to Rome
in order to bring the apostle expressions of sympathy
and needed supplies; but also what he had done as the
" brother and f ellowworker and fellowsoldier " of Paul
after he had reached the city. He made himself ill by
his zealous efforts for Christ. He put his life in jeop
ardy. He treated his life with the reckless prodigality
with which a gambler treats gold. He ran the chance
of losing it for the sake of bearing some effective testi
mony and doing some effective work for Christ.
This was carrying interest and activity too far. Hav
ing come to Rome on a mission of relief he was in dan
ger of increasing the sorrows of the apostle, and cutting
short his own career of usefulness. But it is refreshing
to come across the story of a man who is ready to carry
the same glowing and even perilous enthusiasm into the
service of Jesus Christ and of souls, which multitudes on
multitudes carry into the pursuits of pleasure and social
life or politics or commerce and trade. Here is a man
who threw, not his bodily comfort merely, nor his time
merely, nor his possessions merely, nor his chances for
promotion merely, into the risk he was venturing, but
his life as well. Like the apostle himself, he did not

144 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
hold his life dear unto himself, if only he might com
plete his course, and fulfil the ministry he received from
Christ. With this statement of the situation, and these refer
ences to the apostle and those who were grouped about
him and engaged in the fellowship and sympathy of
Christ, the way is open for some practical inferences
and suggestions of a more general nature concerning
the intimacy of relation in which disciples of our Lord
stand to each other and which they ought to exemplify
in their mutual intercourse.
1. Christ becomes to His true followers one of the
strongest and most sacred bonds of fellowship and sym
pathy of which men have knowledge.
Timothy was with Paul, and Epaphroditus was with
Paul, and the thoughts and tender interests of the
church away there at Philippi were with Paul, and the
solicitudes of genuine believers wherever hearts had
been won to Christ, and organizations established, were
with Paul, because they all had a common center of
faith and hope and love in the Son of God. In drawing
them into fellowship and sympathy with Himself Jesus
drew them into fellowship and sympathy with each
other. In Jesus they had a common attraction and a
common interpreter and a common obligation. They
were one in Him. In the transcendent matter of the
soul they thought alike and felt alike.
Men have bonds of fellowship and sympathy in the
common race to which they belong, and in the common
language they speak, and in their common nationality,
and in the common traditions they inherit, and in their
common trades and callings, and in their common
party couvictiojis and associations, and in the memory

FELLOWSHIP AND SYMPATHY 145
of studies and toils and trials endured together; but
these bonds have little strength in comparison with the
bond of Jesus Christ.
In how many instances race prejudices are broken
down, and the boundaries of nationality are over=leaped,
and the obstacles of an unfamiliar tongue are sur
mounted, in the interest of a common fellowship and
sympathy in Christ. In the Indian massacre in Minne
sota in the early sixties when Mankato and St. Peter
and other towns up and down the Minnesota river were
swept clean by the awful assault, the lives of the Riggses
and the Williamsons and the Ponds, and those who were
associated with them in missionary service to these wild
tribes, were saved because the Christian Indians thought
more of these who had led them to Christ than they did
of their own chiefs, and more of the bond which had
been created by faith and love than they did of those
which grew out of their tribal relations and habits and
interests. The bonds by which men are held together in Christ,
are strong because they are bonds in truth, and bonds
in righteousness, and bonds in aspirations and aims
which take souls forward into the light and life and
glory of God. When men are held to each other by the
ties of selfishness, or some fierce hate which is cherished
in common, or by vices and crimes in which they have
a common stake, they are liable to fly asunder at any
moment, and sooner or later they will fly asunder. Self
ishness and hate and vice and crime are not naturally
cohesive forces. Cliques, syndicates, parties, who have
no other uniting influence than their common interest in
public plunder, are destined to sudden and surprising
explosions. Faith and love and purity are cementing

146 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
energies. Faces set alike toward heaven, and hearts set
alike in the things, of Christ, always insure an increasing
fellowship and sympathy. If Christian men ever fall
asunder, as they do, and become alienated from each
other, it is not because there is any natural tendency in
Christianity to work separation of heart from heart and
life from life, but for the reason, that, in these instances,
selfishness or prejudice or passion or inability to see
clearly has been too much for the measure of Christian
character that has been attained. It is not because they
are Christian; it is because they are so imperfect in
their Christian character — so feebly developed, and so
far from what they ought to be, that the disciples of
Jesus are ever led to entertain ill feelings toward each
other, and mutually to say hard and bitter things.
Christ is love, and love is a bond of union. Paul and
Timothy and Epaphroditus, and the faithful hearts
which are behind them have their oneness of fellowship
and sympathy in Christ.
2. The time above all others in which to manifest
fellowship and sympathy is when men are in extremi
ties of need.
Timothy was with Paul when his presence was of un
told value to the apostle. A prisoner, in chains, in a
strange cit y, charged with an offense for which he might
be condemned and executed at any moment, and yet
burdened with a care for all the churches, and intent on
winning just as many into the faith of Christ as he
might, who can estimate the worth to him in comfort
and encouragement of this alert and faithful spiritual
son of his ?
The Philippian church, through the presence of their
messenger, the devout and earnest Epaphroditus, who

FELLOWSHIP AND SYMPATHY 147
bore the gift of the apostle, and assurance of love, was
with Paul just when the evidences of regard would count
for most. In an exigency when he was unable to help
himself, these brethren came to his help. In circum
stances in which there would be few expressions of in
terest in his comfort and welfare, these brethren con
veyed to him in the most delicate way possible, tokens
of their unabated affection.
It was the timeliness of the fellowship and sympathy
which gave to their acts their superlative value. Paul
was a man capable of intense and prolonged friendship.
With a peculiar fondness he cherished all kindred
spirits. More than one name has been made immortal
in virtue of the apostle's appreciation of the obligations
and blessings of friendship. Still he was quite able to
go his own way and bear his own burdens. Free to move
here and there, and to do his full work, he would have
gone his own way bravely. But under restraint, in
bonds, expressions of regard were unutterably precious,
because so needed.
It is always so. The time to feed a man in the ex
pectation that he will appreciate the kindness, is to feed
him when he is hungry. The time to quench the thirst
of a thirsty man is when he is thirsty. The time to
clothe a man is when he is naked, and cannot clothe
himself. The time to shelter a man is when he has no
roof over his head. The time to show sympathy for a
man is not when all his affairs are flourishing and the
financial skies are bright, but when his troubles are
pouring down upon him in terrific storms. The time to
weep with men is not when they are smiling, and their
hearts are full of song, and their faces are radiant with
joy, but when they are in tears, and their hopes have set

148 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
in the blackness of night. The time to throw arms of
strength about the weak and tempted is when they are
assailed by the power of passion and appetite, and it
looks as though they must go under.
How many households there are always sure to be in
a great city like our own, — how many widows with little
children depending on them for support, — how many
sons and daughters with invalid parents to be taken
care of, — how many husbands, worn and weary and dis
couraged in their vain efforts to find work, who have
families to feed and clothe and house,  to whom
messengers bearing timely aid are as the angels of God.
It is the timeliness of this assistance which stamps it
with worth so extraordinary. In the summer, it may be,
they do not need assistance. In health and under
favorable circumstances, they do not need assistance.
But in the sore straitness of some especially trying
winter, it is assistance or the poor=house. Or possibly
it is assistance or sickness and desolation and death.
It is the same in the department of Christian activity
and life. The time to lend a hand to workers for Christ, —
to ministers, to missionaries, to Sunday-school teachers,
and to all the various orders of our Lord's servants, is
when they are wearied with their toils, and the wheels
drag and their hearts are heavy with discouragement,
and it seems to them the contest is unequal, and they
must give it up. There are experiences into which men
are forced in their efforts to advance the Kingdom of God
when just the clasp of a friendly palm, or an expression
of confidence and love, or a lift from a fresh shoulder at
the burden which oppresses and staggers, would have in
it all the inspiration and force of a providential inter
vention.

FELLOWSHIP AND SYMPATHY 149
When Paul is in chains it is a time for Timothy and
Epaphroditus to be at his side, and for all true Christians
to be giving assurance of fellowship and sympathy
" The heart — the heart. Oh ; let it spare
A sigh for other's pain;;
The breath that soothes a brother's care
Is never spent in vain.
And though it throbs at gentlest touch.
Or sorrows faintest call,
' Twere better it should ache too much.
Then never ache at all.
No ray of glory lights the breast
That beats for self alone."

Some TKHbolesome Marnings.

"Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same
things to you' to me indeed is not irksome, but for you it is safe.
Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the con
cision."— Pftti. 3:1-2.

X.
SOME WHOLESOME WARNINGS.
These words will lead us to speak of what may be
called Some Wholesome Warnings.
There is a difference of opinion amongst exegetical
scholars touching the precise thought which was in the
mind of the apostle when he wrote this word — " finally."
Some suppose he had already said what it was his
original intention to say, and that he was bringing his
letter to a close ; but that some fresh news was brought
to him, or some sudden impulse seized upon him, so that
he resumed and still went on. Accepting this view, the
latter part of the sentence would read, not as it is here
translated : "rejoice in the Lord" ; but rather, while not
losing out of itself the element of joy, but taking this
element along with it : " farewell in the Lord." This is
Lightfoot's interpretation ; and his paraphrase of the
passage is : "And now, my brethren, I must wish you
farewell. Rejoice in the Lord."
Others take the ground that " finally " marks an ap
proach to the end of the epistle, but not necessarily a
very near approach. Notable instances of a similar use
of the word are found in First Thessalonians 4 : 1, where
" finally " comes in not far from the middle of the letter;
and in Second Thessalonians, 8 : 1, where " finally " is
employed while a third of what is to be communicated is
still unwritten. Hence it is not to be inferred that Paul
meant, when introducing this word " finally," to end his
153

154 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
letter at once, but for some reason, not apparent, was
led to change his plan, but rather to make it the turning
point to other matters. This is Vaughan's conclusion ;
and his rendering of the passage runs : " My letter
draws to its close. Its keynote has been the duty of joy,
and it shall be so to the end."
The subject of Christian Joy, which is here brought
to our attention, has already been before us, and will
be again in the course of this study. It may be dis
missed from present consideration, therefore, with the
single remark that joy, — joy in Christ, is something
never long absent from the apostle's thinking and living
and exhorting. It is the ground=tone of all the music
he makes. No hardships, no sorrows, no persecutions,
are ever severe enough to destroy or over=master his joy
in Christ. Paul's joy in Christ was of the substance of
his life in Christ.
The words which follow the opening sentence of the
paragraph now under review afford a fresh illustration
of the apostle's willingness to spend and be spent in the
service of the Master and for the good of souls. " To
write the same things to you, to me indeed is not irk
some, but for you it is safe."
It is a question just what Paul means in the words:
" To write the same things," or to cast it into an equiv
alent phrase: "To repeat again and again the same
things." Possibly he may be referring to counsel he
has given these Philippian brethren in his various visits
to them, or in some letter previously written and sent,
but now lost. But the significance of the expression
seems to lie nearer the surface; and most likely we get
at the heart of the matter by construing what he says in
this way: "I am uttering words which are familiar to

SOME WHOLESOME WARNINGS 155
you; I am giving you advice which you have often had
occasion to receive from me ; joy is a theme which has
been often dwelt upon in my interviews with you and in
my communications to you, and I am still laying stress
upon it; dangers which have threatened in the past con
tinue to threaten, and I lift up once more the voice of
earnest caution; but this iteration is not wearisome to
me; it is not a service from which I shrink and hold
back; it is enough for me to know it is good for you and
conducive to your spiritual welfare."
Repetition is a great aid to progress. Facts need to
be affirmed over and over again, if they are to be made
to lodge in the mind. Truth must be presented times
without number, it may be, in order to be thoroughly
apprehended. The parent, the teacher, the minister,
who has the patience and love to repeat the things fun
damental and essential, though in varied forms, will
win. It is a glorious advantage that Gospel truth, while
so simple, admits of such varied presentations.
We now come to the warnings which it is the special
business in hand to consider. Of these there are three.
It will be as well perhaps to take them in the order in
which the apostle has given them to us.
1. The first warning is to beware of the dogs.
This is a style of characterization so foreign to what
we are accustomed, particulary when speaking or writ
ing on grave subjects, that the injunction is quite like
ly, either to startle us by what seems its coarseness, or
to excite to laughter by its apparent incongruity with
the dignity of the interest involved.
But it is to be remembered that among the ancients,
" dogs," like other animals, stood as the representatives
or symbols of certain moral qualities in men. They

156 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
were not high qualities, however, but low and repulsive
qualities. It was an honor to be called lion=like, but it
was a bitter reproach to be called dog=like.
In the view of the old Greeks, " dogs " typified feroci
ty, greediness, impudence. In the view of the Jews
"dogs" typified degradation and uncleanness. This is the
Biblical idea of " dogs," — they are profane and impure
and shameless creatures. When Hazael intimated to
Elisha that only a " dog " could be guilty of the brutal
treachery the prophet had foreshadowed, it was fancied
nothing more would be needed to allay apprehension.
In the Book of Revelation the term is applied to those
who are wanting in spiritual fitness to enter the New
Jerusalem. "Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers,
and the fornicators, and the idolaters, and everyone
that loveth and maketh a lie." It is a bad fellowship,
and a sad fate to realize. At the time our Lord was here
on the earth " dogs " was an epithet the Jews had come
to apply indiscriminately to all Gentiles. It was an im
mensely significant and humiliating designation. To
make use in part of the language of another: "The
herds of dogs which prowl about eastern cities, without
a home or an owner, feeding on the refuse of the
streets, quarrelling among themselves, and attacking
the passer=by," give a wonderful vividness to the
imagery. But who are these '' dogs " against whom the apostle
so urgently warns the Philippians? They are the false
Judaizing teachers who would feed the people on the
mouldy bread of a supplanted system of ceremonies and
rituals instead of the fresh bread of the living truth as
it is in Jesus Christ. The term of reproach which the
Jews applied to the Gentiles even after they became

SOME WHOLESOME WARNINGS 157
Christians — the apostle here turned back upon them
selves. He did it on the ground that having refused to
accept the Son of God they had become aliens from the
true Israel,
2. The second warning is to beware of evil ivorkers.
" Evil workers " is not quite so strong an expression,
and does not mean quite the same, as "evil doers."
For the thought in mind is not of men who go forth
with a wholly malevolent intent and fully determined
to do all the harm they can; but rather of men who
bring disaster because they are incompetent, or have
mistaken notions, or are fanatical and bigoted in spirit,
and so insist on the acceptance of their own ideas at
whatever cost to the cause. These " evil workers " were
inside the Church, and not outside of it. The ruin they
were in danger of effecting was not the ruin which is
accomplished when pronounced enemies make open
deadly assaults; but the ruin which follows betrayal or
misdirected energies on the part of pretended friends.
It is the ruin wrought by men who are not over scrupu
lous in their methods, and who substitute their own
conceits for the truth.
All the same they are "evil workers." These men in
particular were evil workers. They were evil workers
because they maintained that something in addition to
a sincere and earnest faith in Jesus Christ is necessary
to salvation, and that the works which ought to follow
and attest the genuineness of the salvation should pre
cede or accompany salvation as the condition. They
could never quite come to the point of trusting all for
time and eternity to Him who bore our sins in His own
body and died for us on the cross. They could never
fully consent to see the old actually swallowed up in the

158 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
new, — and the new meeting the needs of sinful hu
man souls on terms so simple and easy. They had a
zeal, but it was wrongly directed; and just so far as
they succeeded in their aims they were unprofitable, not
only, but mischievous servants.
Who again, are the "evil workers"? They are pre
cisely the same persons Paul had in mind when he was
warning the Philippians to beware of " the dogs." The
characterizations are different; but the application is to
the same individuals. " The dogs " against whom they
are to be on their guard are the " evil workers " against
whom they are to be on their guard. They are the
false Judaizing teachers who cannot let the people rest
on a simple faith in Jesus Christ, but keep disturbing
them with their suggestions of the necessity of rites
and ceremonies, such as used to belong to the old sys
tems. Had these Judaizing teachers contended for an
observance — never so strict — of the moral law, they
would not have been "evil workers," but workers of
good; but it was not the moral law, but the law of forms
on which they placed the emphasis. In this way they
disparaged the sufficiency of Christ's righteousness to
salvation. 3. The third warning is to beware of the concision.
This warning takes us forward at once to what was
the exact difficulty and peril. The danger was that
worn out traditions would be brought in and imposed
on the disciples of Christ to their serious confusion and
embarrassment. With "the concision" it was not the
Gospel simply and in its simplicity; but it was the Gos
pel with the law added. It was not Christ simply and
in His simplicity; but it was Christ helped out by
Moses. It was not baptism alone; but it was baptism

SOME WHOLESOME WARNINGS 159
supplemented by circumcision. These men of "the
concision" were not opposed to the Gospel and to trust
ing in Christ, and to the rite of baptism ; but they were
under bondage to the past to such an extent that they
were not quite sure these were enough to secure the
salvation of the soul. In a certain way they had come
out from Judaism; but they had brought many of the
forms and much of the spirit of Judaism along with
them; and they were doing their best to engraft these
forms upon Christianity and to inject this spirit into
Christianity. These men laid stress on circumcision;
but in Paul's conception circumcision after the old fash
ion, for those who had come to know the circumcision
of the heart through faith in Jesus Christ, was a mere
mutilation of the flesh and a wicked caricature of the
rite as it had once been enjoined and practised.
As has already been inferred the men of " the conci
sion" were the same men — the Judaizing teachers —
whom the apostle had just called " the dogs," and " the
evil workers." Under all these aspects they were dis
turbers of the peace and prosperity of the Church.
These Philippian disciples were happy in their faith;
but they were in danger of being turned aside from the
pure truth, and torn into factions. The faithful and
loving apostle who had led them to the Lord, and who
had prayed for them so earnestly and watched over
them with such tender solicitude, felt constrained to
put them on their guard by uttering this startling word
— "beware," and then following it up with designations
which, as they rolled off, one after another, must have
had somewhat of the effect of a succession of sharp
electric shocks, " Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil
workers, beware of the concision." Even the dullest

160 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
amongst them, must have had his attention aroused by
one or another of these characterizations. If there
were men amongst them whom Paul did not hesitate to
call "dogs" and "evil workers" and "the concision,"
and who were trying to influence them, they might well
take the alarm and put themselves on their guard. It
is presumed they did.
But have these warnings which were addressed by
Paul to the Philippian brethren any application in
these modern times? Have they any pertinency to us
in our circumstances? Most emphatically — yes. Indeed
unless my eyes are utterly blinded to the facts of the
situation, we need substantially the same counsel, and
for substantially the same reasons.
1. We need to beware of fads and hobbies, in our
churches, and of tendencies to divert the churches from
the great and sacred objects for which they were estab
lished by our Lord and have been kept alive and effi
cient from age to age by the Holy Spirit.
Nothing is more common than for men who have
whims and conceits, no matter how absurd, to try to
make the Church of Jesus Christ the exponent of these
whims and conceits. Be the theory as wild as it may,
and as widely out of gear with common sense, it must
be adopted by the Churches of Jesus Christ, so we are
told, or they are no longer true churches, and are fail
ing utterly in their mission. All of us can call to mind
instances in which churches have been wounded at
heart, and greatly crippled, by men and women gone
crazy over faith=cure\ notions. In one of our own sub
urbs there is an organization made up of men and wo
men who have withdrawn from the several churches

SOME WHOLESOME WARNINGS 161
with which they were once identified because these
churches would not follow them in their extravagant
notions, and make what is at most an incident of the
faith the main article of Christianity. All of us can
call to mind — and in many instances we do it with sharp
pain — the names of individuals who have done what
they could do to commit the Church to which they be
longed to what calls itself by the sacred designation of
Christian Science, but what is in fact only a mischievous
caricature and profanation of both these words. For, as
has been said so many times, this Christian Science.
which has thrown its temporary spell over so many
minds, and is just now having its day, is in no sense
Christian, and it is in no sense science. Por the faith=
cure contention there is some ground; but for Christian
Science as it is set forth in its books and tracts and on
its platforms, there is basis neither in philosophy, nor
in revelation, nor in the laws of nature, nor in the sober
second thought of any ordinary intelligence. Within
certain limits it has always been recognized that mind
has influence over matter; but a religion that sets out
with the assumption that there is no matter and no sick
ness and no sin — except as we fancy them — is only non
sense, and it requires no gift of prophecy to foretell its
end. It will have its day and cease to be.
For everything good and true the Church of Jesus
Christ must have a voice of approval. For everything
mean and false it must have a voice of condemnation.
It cannot permit itself to look on, as an idle spectator,
while injustice is being enacted, and all sorts of wrong
are perpetrated. It must stand for justice between man
and man, especially if one man be a capitalist and an-

162 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
other man a laborer. It must stand for temperance. It
must stand for personal and social purity. It must
stand for good and equitable and wholesome laws. It
must stand for sweet homes. It must stand for order
and righteousness in the State. It must stand for the
elevation of humanity. But the Church of Jesus Christ
is not a bicycle for every crank to mount and ride where
he will.
The Church of Jesus Christ may become remiss in
its duty. It may fail to speak when it ought to speak
in thunder tones. It may get tangled up and compro
mised in the customs and methods of the world. It may
become conventional and fashionable, and empty of all
moral force. It may fall into the habit of paying tithes
of mint and anise and cummin, and leaving undone the
weightier matters of the law — judgment and mercy and
faith. It may lose out of its life the sense of straitness
which was felt by the Divine Founder of the Church
till His rnission was accomplished. But the remedy for
this weakness and barrenness is the Holy Spirit in the
fulness of His light and power, and not fads and whims
and hobbies and all sorts of side schemes and issues.
The Church of Jesus Christ is not, and cannot be made,
a mere secular institution.
2. We are to beware of the introduction into our
Churches of views and measures whose inevitable ten
dency will be to alienate brethren and work discord
and division.
It is an easy thing to sow seed of strife — gathering
the harvest is not so pleasant. It is a simple matter to
insinuate opinions which look harmless; but when the
opinions have spread from a few minds to many minds.

SOME WHOLESOME WARNINGS 163
and have become convictions ruling thought and life,
the management of them is often a very serious busi
ness. It is often said of men: "O, let them talk; let them
say their say. Truth has nothing to fear from error.
Give truth a fair field, and truth will be sure to win.
Why get excited over every little wrong notion that
some enthusiast sees fit to set in motion?"
All this is plausible; and all this, in a free country,
is to be tolerated, or it ought to be. Men who have
reached what seem to them important conclusions from
refiection and study; men who have convictions on the
burning questions of the hour, and who think, if they
can only be allowed to speak out their thought, they are
able to shed light on pressing problems, are en
titled to utter their opinions and to be heard. It
is by this process that progress is made in the Church
and in the State and in Society. Civilization has come
to be what it is through the influence of facts developed
by one and another, and ideas thrown out to be ex
amined and taken finally at their worth.
But it does not follow from this that all views and all
suggestions are to be heartily welcomed, and especially
that they are to be permitted the freedom of the
churches of Jesus Christ. Paul at any rate did not
deem it a matter of no consequence what kind of teaching
was given to these beloved fellow=disciples at Philippi.
He saw clearly that if these false teachers were not
checked at the outset, and their instruction robbed of
its power, parties would spring up, and there would be
alienation and division, and the old unity would be
destroyed.

164 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
How beautiful is unity in the Church. How neces
sary to the prosperity and efficacy of any given church
is unity. Just now the minds of many earnest and de
vout Christians are occupied in discussing a basis for
a closer and more all-embracing unity in the churches
of our Lord. Organic unity does not seem to me to be
of much concern; but the unity which is in Christ.
the unity which is brought about by the indwelling
of the Spirit in individual hearts, seems to me to be of
all consequence. Only in defense of essential principles
may men ever imperil unity.
8, We are to beware of adopting any policies
and cherishing any opinions and falling into any
methods of preaching and teaching in our Churches
which will tend to divert the minds of men from Jesus
Christ, and from the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, and
from the great central aim which dominated the divine
will and brought Jesus Christ into the world.
Here are the two great facts set over against each
other. Men lost in sin, and Christ here to save them ;
men under condemnation, and Christ here to redeem
them at the cost of His own blood; men without hope,
and Christ here to breathe hope into them; men help
less, and Christ here to help them, — to help them into
knowledge, to help them into purity, to help them into
peace, to help them to the realization of a glorious
destiny hereafter. Anything thrust between Christ
and men, — Christ and the men whom He would reach,
and whom He ought to be helped to reach, with His
saving grace and renewing power, is an impertinence,
and may well justify a repetition of the apostle's sharp
warning.

SOME WHOLESOME WARNINGS 166
It was right here that the Judaizing teachers whom
Paul had in mind were committing their chief offense.
They were obscuring and belittling the Gospel. They
were diverting the thoughts of men from Him who is the
sole way to the Father. As Dr. Robert Rainy has well
said: "Judaizing made the highest pretensions to relig
ious security and success; it proposed to expound the
only worthy and genuine view of men's relation to
God. But in reality the Judaizers wholly misrepre
sented Christianity, for they had missed the main mean
ing of it. Judaizing turned men's minds away from
what was highest to what was lowest, — from love to law,
from God's gifts to men's merits, from inward life and
power to outward ceremonial performance, from the
spiritual and eternal to the material and temporary. It
was a huge melancholy mistake; and yet it was pressed
upon Christians as the true religion, which availed with
God, and could alone bring blessing to men. Hence as
our Lord denounced the Pharisees with special energy,
— sometimes with withering sarcasm — so, and for the
same reason, did Paul attack the Judaizers. The Phar
isees applied themselves to turn the religion of Israel in
to a soul withering business of formalism and pride; and
Paul's opponents strive to pervert to like effect even the
gracious and life= giving Gospel of Christ, To such he
would give place, no, not for an hour,"
This is what we are to hold in mind. It is Jesus
Christ who is to be kept all the time at the front. It is
Jesus Christ in His manifestation of the love of God.
It is Jesus Christ in His atoning sacrifice of Himself
for sin. It is Jesus Christ in His saving grace. It is
Jesus Christ in the exalted example He places before

166 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
US. It is Jesus Christ in the demand He makes upon
us to walk in His fellowship and to illustrate His spirit.
It is Jesus Christ in the fulness of His illuminating and
renewing energy. It is Jesus Christ as the Regenerator
of souls, and through souls as the Regenerator of
homes and lives and literature and customs and all
that tells on the welfare of society. It is Jesus Christ
the source of the new eternal life, and the hope of glory.

au Ubings Xoss ifot Cbrist,

For we are the oiromnoision, who worship by the Spirit of God,
and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh :
though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh : if any
other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more : cir
cumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Ben
jamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; as
touching zeal, persecuting the church; as touching the righteous
ness which is in the law, found blameless. Howbeit what things
were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea verily,
and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge
of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things,
and do count them dung, that I may gain Christ, and be found in
Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of
the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness
whioh is of God by faith."— Phil. 3:3-9.

XI.
ALL THINGS LOSS FOR CHRIST.
In our consideration of the two verses of the chapter
which immediately precede these now before us, we had
in hand some severe but wholesome warnings the apostle
felt called upon to address to the Philippian disciples
against certain persons whose attitude and influence
meant mischief. A Judaizing party had arisen which
threatened to destroy the peace and unity of this be
loved church, by drawing away just as many as possible
from the simplicity of the Gospel, and filling their minds
with the notion that they must turn back to outgrown
and superceded ceremonies in order to be saved. In
particular it was insisted that the right of circumcision
must still be observed.
In opposition to those who held these views, and
whom he characterized as the " concision " — the mere
mutilators of the body instead of the reverent and intel
ligent and acceptable worshippers of God, — Paul claimed
that he, and those of like faith and life, who had put off
the impurity of the heart by accepting Christ and com
ing into conformity to His will, were the true circum
cision. Starting on this assumption, and drawing on
his own experience to make it good, the apostle, in one
of the most remarkable passages to be found in his
epistles, passes on to show how he let everything go for
Christ, and consented to count all his advantages of
whatever sort, real and seeming, only as so much loss in
169

170 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
comparison with the full and complete salvation which
is secured to men through faith in Christ, The conclu
sion reached by the apostle, and in which he rested so
triumphantly, is to be our present theme: All Things
Loss For Christ.
Turning to the passage now selected for study we
have, in the opening sentence of it, full warrant for what
has just been said. " For we are the circumcision."
Not these " dogs," not these " evil workers," not the
" concision," of whom the Philippian believers are to
"beware"; but "we" — "we," who have turned from
the old to the new, and trust in the merits of the Divine
Redeemer for salvation: " For we are the circumcision,
who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ
Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh," This is
simply an anticipation, only the statement of it is put in
a little different form, of what is said later in the decla
ration that all things are counted loss for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. There is no confi
dence in what one can do, or come to be, in himself; all
the confidence is in Christ, and this confidence is so
strong as to mount into " glorying " in Him.
But Paul did not stop with the assertion that he and
those who were associated with him in the faith of
Christ had no confidence in the flesh; he followed up
the assertion with the claim that no man ever had better
ground for committing all his hopes for a suitable right
eousness to outward privileges and conformities and
attainments than he had. "Though I myself might
have confidence even in the flesh; if any other man
thinketh," or seemeth, " to have confidence in the flesh, I
yet more." In passing it may be well to say with
Vaughan: "Flesh is the anH^esis ot spirit in allsensesl

ALL THINGS LOSS FOR CHRIST 171
The contrast runs through all St. Paul's epistles, though
it is most fully drawn out in those to the Romans and
the Galatians. The present passage shows how compre
hensive is the term flesh, in St. Paul's thought; includ
ing not only all external privileges, of birth, nationality,
and class=religion, but also all that self=effort and self=
attainment which is independent of divine grace."
See, now, how the apostle makes good his claim of " I
— yet — more." First: "circumcised the eighth day."
"His parents were neither heathen nor sons of Ish-
mael." He was not a proselyte, but a born Jew. Sec
ond: "Of the stock of Israel." He was regularly de
scended from the founder of the race, "Are they Is
raelites? so am I." Third: " Of the tribe of Benjamin."
This was one of the most distinguished of the tribes.
It was the tribe of the first king. It was the tribe
which was alone faithful to Judah in the great division.
Fourth: "A Hebrew of Hebrews." Lightfoot says:
" Many of those, whose descent was unimpeachable and
who inherited the faith of the Mosaic law, yet as living
among heathens adopted the language and conformed to
the customs of the people around them. Not so were
the forefathers of Saul of Tarsus. There had been no
Hellenist among them. They were all strict Hebrews
from first to last." For Paul, therefore, to say that he
was a strict Hebrew, or a Hebrew of Hebrews, was
more than for him to say that he was an Israelite. The
Hebrew was of the inner circle of the Israelites. These
were the inherited privileges of the apostle.
He proceeds to enumerate certain other privileges
which depended on his own personal choice and activ
ity. JF'irs/; " as touching the law a Pharisee," This
was as much as to say that he attached himself to the

172 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
party which was most scrupulous in its ritualistic ob
servances. Possibly he meant to say more than this;
but this much it is quite certain he intended to affirm.
Second: "as touching zeal persecuting the Church"
No man of the Jewish faith had been more determined
and energetic in his opposition to the new way. Third:
" as touching the righteousness which is in the law,
found blameless." There was nothing more for him to
do than he had done to make his righteousness as pre-
cribed by the law complete. But he was careful to in
sert the words — " which is in the law," — for he had
come to have a new view of righteousness, — a view
reaching down far deeper and rising far higher than
any he had ever known till he found it in Christ.
But according to his former standard and method of
righteousness he was " blameless."
All this, however, he sets aside at one stroke. " How
beit what things were gain to me, these have I counted
loss for Christ. Yea, verily, and I count all things to be
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord; for whom I suffered the loss of all things,
and do count them but dung, that I may gain Christ,
and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of
mine own, even that which is of the law, but that
which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness
which is of God by faith."
This is the sweeping renunciation Paul makes, "All
things " were surrendered for the gain he was to find in
accepting Jesus Christ. Personal pride and will, the
joy and hope of possession, the ties of closest kinship,
were all esteemed as nothing, and tossed away as " loss "
in comparison with the peace and approval of God in
Christ Jesus. He came round to this broad rule: "If

ALL THINGS LOSS FOR CHRIST 173
necessary, everything shall go for Christ." Looking
down into his own heart and understanding the signifi
cance of its wants and aspirations; looking out upon
the world and knowing how attractive are its invita
tions, and how strong its appeals and infiuences, he
could yet say — "All things — let them be loss for
Christ." He made the statement just as broad and inclusive as
possible. Not his ill^grounded hopes merely; not the
advantages merely which came to him from his con
formity to the law, for what was " gain " to him in these
respects he "counted loss"; but "all things," personal
comfort, personal ends, personal prospects, personal am
bitions, the affection of friends, the joys of social life,
the triumphs of competition, his own self=development,
will, earthly hopes, each and all were to be held second
and subordinate by him to obedience to Jesus,
Observe how he carried all this out. To do this take
the single fact of the way in which he treated his own
comfort and ease in presence of opportunities to be of
service to the Divine Master. This is selected because
after all it is one of the closest and severest tests with
which to try men. There are ten men who can be in
duced to give up wealth, stingy as large numbers of
men are; or schemes of promotion, or certain social en
joyments and indulgences, for Christ's sake, to one who
can be persuaded to forego ease and comfort; that is, to
the extent of pain to body and mind, or both, for the
end of pleasing Christ.
Men shrink from suffering. They draw back from
weariness. They hesitate at any self=denial which in
volves physical discomfort. To undergo actual hard
ships and personal deprivations; to submit to ridicule

174 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
and reproach and misrepresentation, seem always to be
hard prices to pay in order to get men to be more lov
ing to one another, and more elevated in their senti
ments, and more just in their lives.
Especially do men become impatient at performing
unappreciated tasks, at bearing unappreciated burdens,
for the good of others. There is no command of our
Savior which we take up quite so readily and eagerly as
indignantly shaking the dust from off our feet in the
presence of those who are not willing to receive us, or
hear us, or do as we want them to do. Efforts for our
fellows which seem to be fruitless or which recoil upon
us in inconvenience and sorrow, we are always in haste
to characterize as casting pearls before swine. With
an insight which never fails, Christ makes the reluc
tance of the friend who is asked for three loaves at
midnight in granting the request to turn on the point
of personal comfort. " Trouble me not," He did not
care about the three loaves; but he shrank from being
disturbed. It was not till he was worried by " impor
tunity " that he would consent to grant the request.
Paul flung all such considerations to the wind, He
let his own ease and comfort go as if they were trifles
light as air "In labors more abundant"; "in stripes
above measure"; "in prisons more frequent"; "in
deaths oft," — but we all know the story. These are
hardships which were voluntarily borne; deprivations
and discomforts voluntarily submitted to, for the sake
of showing his love to his Lord, and doing his Lord's
work in the world.
It is impossible to read such statements, and to trace
such a career without feeling that the apostle stated
the case with literal accuracy when he declared that he

ALL THINGS LOSS FOR CHRIST 175
counted all things to be loss in this quest and service of
Christ. Men called him a " fool." No matter. He
was willing to be called a fool and to take the attitude in
the world which would expose him to this charge " for
Christ's sake." Men " despised " him. No matter. He
was willing to be despised if only he could be secure in
the love and favor of his Divine Lord. Men counted
him " as the filth of the world" — "as the offscouring of
all things." No matter. They might, if only he could
succeed in winning Christ, and being found in Him,
not having his own legal righteousness, but that which
is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith.
With this much of examination given to the details
of the passage under review, the way is open for pass
ing on to some significent practical lessons.
1. The first is that no man need ever expect to find
his way into the life of God in Christ without giving up
something. Self=denial is not now, and it never will be, an obso
lete condition of discipleship.
In saying this the reference is not to the surrender of
the will, the relinquishment of pride and unbelief.
These things are matters of course.
But there will be some object of ambition, some end
in life, some scheme, some desire of the heart, some
darling worldly hope which in all probability will have
to be yielded before there can be accepta^e with
Christ. The thing will be different with different men,
but there will be something to surrender.
It was so with the young man who was required to go
and sell all he had and give to the poor, It was so
with those who first wanted to bury their dead. It was

176 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
SO with those who left their nets that they might follow
Jesus and become fishers of men. It was so with Mat
thew who sat at the receipt of customs.
In Christian communities where the methods and
habits of life are more or less organized around faith in
God, and public opinion has been so deeply leavened
with the truth of the Gospel, the sacrifices to be made
will not be so many as in other lands and generations.
As a general rule one may become a confessed disciple
of our Lord without in the least alienating or endan
gering friendship, or sealing the sources of any rational
or helpful enjoyments. On the contrary one is more
likely to be bettered in both these respects. Genuine
friends draw closer, and all wholesome delights have
a new charm added to them.
Nevertheless there will be sure to be something to
be relinquished. It may be but a trivial thing, — it may
be an important thing; but something most certainly.
There will be some cherished interest, or end, or hope,
or pleasure, across which this word " loss " will have to
be written before there can be any conscious peace.
In the instance of a young man whom I knew some
what intimately, this is what he had to give up. He
wanted to be a lawyer. The brilliant men about him,
when a boy; the men who seemed to have the most in
fluence and the best positions in the circles to which he
was attracted; the conspicuous and commanding men,
were lawyers. Then, too, the facilities afforded mem
bers of the legal profession for a certain sort of very at
tractive study; their opportunities for wrestling before
judges and juries; the highways freely opened to them
to all that is best suited to satisfy ambition in the po-

ALL THINGS LOSS FOR CHRIST 177
litical world, threw around the law a peculiar fascina
tion. But when this higher question of life in God
through faith in Jesus Christ came to him, and he
found his hands groping out after the Divine Hand, -he
saw " Peace " written as in golden letters — luminous
and beautiful; but a little higher than he could reach,
and right under the word in golden letters these other
words: "Yours, but yours only on condition that you
give up thought of the law and consent to be a messen
ger of the Everlasting Gospel." He waited. It was in
vain. He saw others whom he knew to be good con
scientious Christian men following the profession to
which he aspired. It made no difference. Had he
seen hundreds where he saw only one, just this path and
no other would have been open to him. The still small
voice kept saying it over in his soul. His own con
science joined in the enforcement of it. When he
opened the Bible to search for light every page seemed
to flash it back on him. Providence was in league
against him. Not until he was ready to say, nay, to
sing: " The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne.
And worship only thee," —
could he feel that Christ was his, and that he was se
cure in Christ.
Some such test, larger or smaller, is imposed al
most always. Through some such gateway — too nar
row to carry such large bundles of the world's stuff as
we are very likely to wish to carry — Christ will require
us to pass. This necessity was upon Paul, It was

178 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
upon Augustine. It was upon Madam Guyon. It was
upon Dr. Payson. It was upon Lady Somerset. In
one way or another it is upon us all.
2. The second lesson is that Christ will be likely to
be attractive and precious to us just in the ratio of
our sacrifice for Him.
In general this may be laid down as a law of Chris
tian experience. It is through their sufferings and
losses that Christ best interprets Himself to human
souls. How much, as has already been seen, was Christ to
Paul! To him the "riches" of Christ were "un
searchable." To him the " love " of Christ was some
thing passing " understanding." It was with the
" blood " of Christ that he was brought " nigh to God."
It was in the " strength " of Christ that he could " do
all things." It was in the " Cross " of Christ that he
"gloried." Christ was his "life." Christ was his
" glorious liberty." In Christ he found his " inherit
ance." Through Christ he was " more than a con
queror." What things were " gain " to him he counted
" loss " for Christ. By the grace of God he was insep
arably bound up in Christ. Nothing could separate him
from the love of God in Christ, It was largely because
he had given up everything else and made Christ not
only his trust for salvation, but his all in all. Through
sacrifice and self=denial and fidelity he came into the spir
itual attitude in which he could understand Christ and
enter into the sublime meaning of His sublime life,
Well=nigh universally it is the same. When one
gives up all his own earthly hopes he begins to appreci
ate what it was for Christ to lay aside the glory He had
with the Father before the world was. When one

ALL THINGS LOSS FOR CHRIST 179
receives lashings and scourgings in his own body, he
begins to understand the bitterness of the stripes with
which we have been healed. When one is forced to
wander homeless through the earth, " having no certain
abiding place," he can somewhat better sympathize
with Him who had not where to lay His head. When
friends grow cold because of one's fidelity to duty, and
berate him with sharp criticism and scorn, he is in the
best of all conditions to realize the pang Christ must
have felt when He came to His own and His own re
ceived Him not. When one has gone out after men
and has tried to win them to purity and nobleness, but
all in vain, the deep sorrow of the Jerusalem=lament of
our Lord will seem no longer strange to him. When
one has been forced to wear some crown of undeserved
obloquy in the service of the Master, he can draw very
much closer to Him who wore the crown of thorns.
There is no schoolmaster like this of giving up for
Christ, and passing through experiences analogous to
those of Christ, to teach us of His lowliness and pain.
Profounder meanings than it has yet occurred to many
of us to think, are in the words: "If any man will be my
disciple, let him deny himself, and take up his cross
and follow me." When, in an appreciative sympathy
and love, we go with Jesus down into all His ways of
self=denial and burden=bearing, we not only come into a
fresher and deeper knowledge of Him, but He comes
near to us, and breathes upon us, and forms Himself
within us the hope of glory The reason why devout
and advanced Christians sometimes seem extravagant to
us, as they give utterance to their love of Christ and
their holy longing after Christ, is that we have not
come more fully into the secret of Christ through sur-

180 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
render and cost. It is men and women who have really
given up all for Christ who can chime in with Whittier
when he sings: " No pride of self Thy service hath.
No place for ' me ' and ' mine ';
Our human strength is weakness, death
Our life, apart from thine.
Apart from Thee, all gain is loss,
All labor vainly done;
The solemn shadow of Thy cross
Is better than the sun.
Alone, O Love ineffable;
Thy saving name is given;
To turn aside from Thee is hell.
To walk with Thee is heaven.
Deep strike Thy roots, O heavenly Vine!
Within our earthly sod,
Most human and yet most divine,
The flower of man and God."
3. A third lesson is that testimony for Christ will
have a value and influence, other things being equal,
correspondent to what is known to have been the cost of
the utterance of the testimony.
Daniel is conspicuous among the names which are
moral forces in the world because he put his life in
jeopardy for God. His testimony was rendered in the
face of the supreme risk a man can run. The early
Christian Church saw in Jeremiah one of the clearest
and closest personal types of Christ. It was because of
his sufferings and his fidelity in spite of his sufferings,
Dr, Horton in his Yale Lectures calls him the greatest
of the prophets. No matter what abuse was heaped
upon him, what deprivations he might be called on to

ALL THINGS LOSS FOR CHRIST 181
endure, he would not yield his loyalty to God, nor cease
being the clear stern voice of God to a sinning people.
He was persecuted; he was loaded with contempt; he
was thrust into prison, and into narrow sickening con
finement; but he never failed in his faith, nor in his
duty to truth. Who that reads the story of Savonarola
is not thrilled through and through. They hung him
and burned his dead body, and fiung his ashes into the
Arno, there in his beautiful city of Florence. He
might have avoided it all,— the intrigues and assaults of
the papal power, the mad opposition of the fickle mob,
and the cruel tortures of blood=thirsty officials, the im
prisonment, the ignominious death, — by softening his
tone and putting a little bit more of the spirit of com
promise into his treatment of current iniquities. But
he said: "No. Truth is truth, and duty is duty; and I
will stand by the truth, and I will follow duty at what
ever sacrifice." He was not a Protestant, but a devout
Catholic; nevertheless Martin Luther thought he ought
to be crowned and evermore hailed as one of the illus
trious martyrs of the Reformation. His admirers have
built a very beautiful fountain on the spot where his
body was burned, and the waters flow through it, pure
and sweet, as an emblem of the fulness of his life and
of the wholesome influence he has had on the hearts of
men. The value of his life is immensely heightened in
the estimation of thoughtful men because it stood for
conscience and was sealed in blood. Dr. Moffat came
to be the power he was in the missionary world and
among the churches for the reason that his career sig
nified so much in the way of cost. When he crossed
the Orange river, not far now from eighty years ago,
and began his work among the Bechuaua Tribes, he

182 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
did not know their language, and there was no one to
teach him. The people were both filthy and ferocious.
But he made his home amongst them, and went in and
out before them, toiling on, bearing and forbearing, till
he had mastered their language and won their hearts.
Testimony from such a man to the truth of Christ, and
to the constraining and renewing energy of Christ, has
a worth not to be discredited both to those to whom he
goes and to those whom he leaves behind.
The moment any man is willing to give up anything,
or to suffer for a cause, more especially for the cause of
Christ,j he is accorded sincerity, and his words have
weight. The words of Paul would not have a hundredth
part the influence over us which they do have, were
they not backed up and indorsed over to us by depriva
tions and surrenders and sufferings which attest their
genuineness beyond all gainsaying.
Hence just as there is a call for sacrifice, and a will
ingness to make sacrifice, and just as it is seen that
sacrifices have been made, do the words and lives of men
to=day become morally efficient. If a man is fond of
drink, but consents to give up drink for Christ's sake ;
if a man is fond of gambling, but gladly consents to let
gambling go for Christ's sake; if a man is fond of
worldly amusements, such amusements as are con
stantly working ruin to the young, and also to
some who are no longer young, but will cheerfully
forego them for Christ's sake; if a man is hard
and selfish, and is known to be by all with whom
he has any association or dealing, but lets it all
go, and becomes tender and consecrated and helpful for
Christ's sake; if a man is specially determined and
bitter in his denunciation of Christianity, as an atheist

ALL THINGS LOSS FOR CHRIST 183
or an infidel might be, but under the infiuence of the
Spirit yields to a better mind, and gives his oppositions
all up for Christ's sake, straightway the witnessing of
such a man becomes commanding, and is potential to a
high degree along the lines in which his own short
comings or resistencies have been most conspicuous.
If there be anyone anywhere whose privilege it is to be
able to show to the world that his love for Christ, his
trust in Christ, his devotion to Christ, is so great
that he has been willing to pay something for it, — to
pay something for it in the way of the surrender
of worldly profits, or associations or amusement and
pleasure, or self=confidence, or popularity, — he may
be assured he has a privilege an angel might
covet. For a man to be able to stand up and de
monstrate to his fellow=men that Christ is more to him
than all the world beside, — more than its gains, more
than its indulgences, more than its honors, is a sublime
opportunity. 4. A fourth lesson is that after all the gains are
immeasurably more than the losses which come from
taking a pronounced stand, and making even the largest
surrenders infidelity to Jesus Christ.
Paul had his humiliation of pride and will ; but he
had his exaltation in Christ, and his moods of spiritual
vision in which he saw things it was not possible for him
to utter. Paul had his stripes ; but he also had his joys.
His stripes were for an hour; his joys were forever.
Paul had his deprivations, but in place of the things
taken from him or given up he had his heirship to an
inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled and
that fadeth not away. Paul had his enemies, — enemies
who would gladly have put him to death ; but he

184 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
had the fellowship of Him who loved him and
gave Himself for him, and was always with him
Paul met death at last in consequence of his devotion to
the faith of the Son of God ; but who will believe that
he would have come back again out of the fellowship
and glories of heaven for the sake of any satisfaction to
be found here on earth ?
But the thought now pressed is that the pains we
suffer in virtue of our coming into obedience to Christ,
and the difficulties we encounter in our giving up of
some things, and taking up other things, are not half so
great as we fancy they may be. There are helps by the
way, and compensations, which are not thought of till
one is in the struggle. Abraham had a hard command
laid upon him. He was to go out from his country and
his kindred, to a land of which he had not yet been told.
It was a painful position in which to be placed. But
going straight forward, and doing what God told him to
do, he found that God would take care of him. It was
the same when he was put to the hard task of offering
Isaac in sacrifice. If we are obedient and faithful, we,
too, shall have our "Jehovahfjirehs," and " in the mount
of the Lord it shall be seen."
Besides when one has consented to count all things
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ,
all legitimate earthly satisfactions are elevated and
sanctified. In one of his poems the quaint Francis
Quarles tells us how he loves the " earth," and the " air,"
and the " sea," and the " heavens," which he calls the
spangled suburbs of the Celestial City ; but to find a
satisfaction in which he can rest, he has to strike through
all these outward facts and forms to God and see them
in Him. It is only in seeing them in His light, and enjoy-

ALL THINGS LOSS FOR CHRIST 185
ing them in the consciousness of His presence, that they
yield their richest harvests of joy.
"If not possessed, if not enjoyed in Thee
What's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven, to me f
Without Thy presence, wealth is bags of cares ;
Wisdom but folly ; joy, disquiet, sadness ;
Friendship is treason, and delights are snares ;
Pleasures but pain, and mirth but pleasing madness.
Without Thee, Lord, things be not what they be,
Nor have their being, when compared with Thee.
In having all things, and not Thee, what have I f
Not having Thee, what have my labors got ?
Let me enjoy but Thee, what further crave I f
And having Thee alone what have I not ?
I wish nor sea, nor land, nor would I be
Possessed of heaven, heaven unpossessed of Thee."
This being the fact it follows naturally that less
stress is to be laid on the "losses," and more on the
" gains " in turning from the world and its trusts and
hopes and joys, to the Lord Jesus Christ. To me it seems
well=nigh unthinkable how any man who has an apprecia
tion of the sacredness and grandeur of the truth, and of
his own being, and of the surpassing dignity of a life
consecrated to ends which have on them the bene
diction of God, can hesitate for a moment to identify
himself and all his interests and all his aims with Jesus
Christ. The marvel is that everybody does not break
out at once with the exclamation : "All things loss for
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ." Por this is
the way not only to cleanse the life, and make it a moral
and spiritual force, but to fill it with peace and joy.

jfellowsbip witb tbe Suftecings of Cbrist.

" That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and
the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death;
if by any means I may attain unto the lesurreotion from the dead.''
—Phil. 3:10-11.

XII.
FELLOWSHIP WITH THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST.
These words uncover one of the profoundest and most
sacred experiences into which a human soul can enter.
It is this experience which is now to be considered.
Following the apostle in one of the clauses of the pas
sage we may fitly call it: Fellowship With The Suffer
ings Of Christ.
The specific aim here announced is the knowledge of
Christ — " that I may know him." The ultimate object
of it all is the resurrection of the soul to an immortal
blessedness — "if by any means I may attain unto the
resurrection from the dead." It was through knowing
Christ in the vital way in which He is known to men
while they are yet here on earth, when faith accepts
Him, and love takes Him into the heart, and the life is
one of obedience to His will, that Paul expected to have
share in the joy and glory of those who are permitted
to be with Christ, where He is, in heaven.
But lying between this specific aim — the knowledge
of Christ, and the ultimate object of his aspiration — a
resurrection to glory, there is the expression of two de
sires, both of which, so far as the form of statement is
concerned, may be considered incidental or tributary, to
what goes before and follows after. They disclose
methods by which the knowledge is secured in ampler
degree, and the resurrection to endless life becomes
more assured. 189

190 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
The first of these desires is the desire to know Christ
in the power of His resurrection — " that I may know
Him, and the power of His resurrection." He wants to
know Christ just as He is: Christ in His divine person
ality; Christ as the Son of God and the manifestation
of God in the flesh. But he wants to know Christ in
this particular feature of Him— Christ in His resurrec
tion power; " and the power of His resurrection."
This " power of His resurrection " may mean two
things. 1. It may mean the power exerted in raising Christ
from the dead. There is a passage in the Epistle to
the Ephesians, 1:18-20, which seems to support this
view: "having the eyes of your heart enlightened that
ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the
riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and
what the exceeding greatness of His power to us=ward
who believe, according to that working of the strength
of His might which He wrought in Christ, when He
raised Him from the dead."
2. It may mean the power with which the resurrec
tion from the dead invested Him. This is more likely
the meaning here. It is to know the power of the res
urrection of Christ through a daily experience of this
power. The resurrection of Christ is the pledge of the
forgiveness of the believer, and the blotting out of his
sins, and the bestowing upon him of the Holy Spirit.
It was this line of thought which Peter followed in his
sermon on the Day of Pentecost. This is what Paul
demonstrated to the Corinthian disciples, that unless it
be a fact that Christ rose from the dead they were still
in their sins; but his resurrection became a guarantee
of their forgiveness.

FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS 191
Hence, to know Christ in the power of His resurrec
tion is to know Him in His saving grace, in the regene
rating energy of His life, in the guidance and comfort
and might of the Spirit with which He endows us, in
the insight and growth which He fosters, and in the glad
hope which His presence in the soul awakens. It is to
know Him as One with whom we died unto sin and
with whom we were made alive and rose again unto
justiflcation and the assurance of a blessed immortality.
It is to feel a quickening and stimulating influence at
work on our whole spiritual nature. " We were buried
therefore with Him through baptism unto death; that
like as Christ was raised from the dead through the
glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness
of life."
The second of these desires is the desire to know
Christ in the fellowship of His sufferings. This knowl
edge — knowing Christ in the fellowship of His suffer
ings — is key to all the other knowledge. We can never
realize to the full what is the power of the resurrection
of Christ till we have entered into some measure of part
nership with Him in His agonies.
To try to understand a little better what this requires,
and to appreciate in a higher degree what will come to
each of us from a completer fellowship with Christ in
His sufferings is the business, as has already been an
nounced, which is now in hand.
Too many of us, it is to be feared, stop short in our
Christian experience at just this point of fellowship
with the sufferings of Christ.
We exercise trust in Christ; place all our dependence
on Him for salvation, and look to Him and Him only
for a sufficient righteousness; but we have very little

192 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
idea of what it is to struggle for participation in the
agony of redeeming love. We think of ourselves simply
as having been suffered for. We say: He bore our
griefs and carried our sorrows; He was bruised for our
iniquities; and there the matter ends. The peace and
the rest are accepted, the crown and the righteousness
of Christ; but we come too near forgetting with what
bloody sweat and awful pang this precious redemption
was brought to us.
But the conditions of the largest and highest Christian
life take us back into the closest companionship with
Christ of which we are capable, in the humiliation He
knew, in the burdens He bore, and in the unutterable
distresses of Gethsemane and Cavalry. Striving to be
like Christ here, and hoping to be with Him hereafter, the
disciple needs to go back frequently and walk hand in
hand with Him through the windings and sorrowings of
His human life. This was Paul's feeling. He wanted
to be admitted into a kind of co=partnership in the very
sufferings and shame of the cross. He desired fellow
ship with His sufferings, and conformity unto His
death. This, in large measure, he secured. He had
thought so much about the Redeemer's sufferings, and
in his sympathy had entered so fully into them, and
withal had mastered to such a degree the evil passions
of his own nature, that at last he did not hesitate to say
he had " been crucified with Christ." So deep, so sin
cere, so habitual, was the fellowship of the great apos
tle with the sufferings of the Savior, that the loneliness
of Jesus, and the contradictions He encountered, and
the buffetings and scorn He was forced to meet, and the
bitterness of the moment when even God seemed to for
sake Him, were made his own. The turning away

FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS 193
from Him of those who should have received Him, the
taunts of the crowd, the nails driven into the hands and
the feet, the spear thrust into the side, the sense of the
exceeding sinfulness of sin under which He bowed when
He bore in His own body the sins of the whole world,
were made to pass through the alembic of his own soul,
and become a part of his own experience.
The question now arises how may we come, each of us
and all of us together, into this fellowship with the suf
ferings of Christ? The terms of it as it lies in my
mind, are four, neither one of which can be left out.
I. There must be a clear and intelligent apprehen
sion of the facts, viewed as facts, of Chris fs sufferings.
With what else there is to be said, in the time allotted,
this thought cannot be elaborated. But it lies at the
basis of any real fellowship with our Divine Lord in the
humiliation and agony He endured in His earthly ca
reer. Pains must be taken to master the story of His
life in all its ins and outs. There are multitudes of
Christians who know the biography of Jesus of Naza
reth, not in the details of it, but only in the same gen
eral way in which they know the biography of Caesar or
Charlemagne, or Luther, or Washington. Particularly
is this true of the succession of events of the strange
and awful week which culminated in the crucifixion.
It was not all suffering. There were sunshine and
joy even in Christ's life. There was a joy set before
Him for which He gladly endured the cross and des
pised all shame. Save for one dreadful hour, an hour
which, if we only understood it, would be sure to mean
to us more than any other hour within the limits of re
corded time, He was in the open communion of the
Father, and received from Him the honor the world de-

194 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
nied Him. But for all this He was pre=eminently the
Man of Sorrows — frcm Manger to Tomb, the Man of
Sorrows. We make no headway in our efforts at sym
pathizing with the sufferings of Christ, till we master
the facts of His sufferings. We must be able to take
the web of His life to pieces, and see what strands in it
give the hue and stamp of pain.
It may seem a mere commonplace utterance to some,
and to other some it may seem a very strange assertion
to make in view of all the instruction received in Sun
day-schools, and in homes, and from private reading,
and from pulpit discourses, that, with large numbers,
the fundamental lack is a lack of knowledge. The con
ditions of sympathy are not met in that the particulars
in which Christ suffered are not marshalled with suffi
cient clearness and order in the mind. We know the
facts in general, but we do not know them in the mi
nuteness which gives them firm lodgement in the un
derstanding, and power over the imagination and a ten
der quickening influence upon the heart.
II. There must be a clear and intelligent apprehen
sion of the necessity of the sufferings of Christ, in or
der to any true fellowship with Him in these suffer
ings. Was there need of this suffering? Gather up the
facts, admit their force and pertinency, acknowledge the
infinite sorrow which they indicate; but after all the
question recurs: Was there need of this suffering? Was
there some exigency lying back and calling for it?
This is largely what determines sympathy. Suffering
is sanctified, and clothed with an irresistible power over
the heart when there is an end so high and holy and im
perative that it is easily seen to be a fit thing to endure

FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS 195
pain for it. If a man provokes a duel, and in vindica
tion of mere personal pique, or wounded vanity, or brag
gart prowess, takes the field and receives a painful and
fatal shot, it is impossible to sympathize with him as
with the gallant and heroic soldier who, from a simple
sense of duty, nobly falls in defense of the imperilled
liberties of his country. Any man in distress awakens
pity; but in how many instances is the pity modified and
turned aside by the thought that it was the indolence,
or extravagance, or perversity, or self=indulgence, or
crime of the victim himself which brought him into the
wretched and deplorable condition in which he has been
discovered. Is not this the world's judgment in multi
tudes of instances — a cold, harsh judgment, it is true,
but still the judgment — " Good enough for him." If
men will run into reckless, vicious, and licentious cours
es, with their eyes wide open they must expect to find
the compassion of their fellow=men a great deal modi
fied and lessened toward them.
Now ought Christ to have suffered? Was there any
commanding necessity laid upon Him to go through what
He experienced? Was there any interest at stake of
enough importance to justify the humiliation of the
cradle and the pang and shame of the cross? Or if
there were vast concerns in issue, was there no other
way to gain the end?
The answer is brief, but it is all=sufficient: Men were
sinners, — under the condemnation of the law, helpless
and hopeless, save as aid should come to them from
some source outside of themselves. All the discoveries
and advances of science, all the moral progress the
world has made or shall make, because of its art and its
literature and its political economies, all the new devices

196 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
and pretenses sought out by infidelity and agnosticism,
will not alter by so much as a hair's breadth this one
fact, — men were, and men are, until rescued by the
interposition and grace of God, helplessly and hopelessly
in the grip of the law they have broken.
Were we to enter into a full discussion of this ques
tion of the necessity of the sufferings of Christ, we
should have these factors along with others in the prob
lem, — the character of God, the penalty of the law, the
preciousness of the soul, the deep sinfulness of trans
gression, the inadequacy of simple repentance for wrong
doing, and the far=off issues of guilt. But we condense
it all into a single word when we say — sin. Sin is the
fact which undertones the whole sad story of the cross,
and the hinge on which turns the necessity of an atoning
sacrifice. Sin is what brought the Son of God down
out of the heavens to tabernacle here in the flesh. Sin
is what led Him to walk through all the sorrowing ways
of our human life. No other way was there — or, at any
rate, no other way which seemed so suitable in the esti
mation of inflnite wisdom and infinite love, — than this
of vicarious suffering. If a man has no sense of sin;
does not believe in sin, but thinks that what the Scrip
tures call sin is only a mistake, or a sort of amiable folly,
then he will not be likely to perceive that there was any
deep stress of need for the dying of Christ to atone for
sin. But if he has some fit sense of it, and of the
michievous way in which it relates itself to the high
welfare of the soul, and the character of God, and the
order and interest of the moral universe, the necessity
of the sufferings of Christ will become clear to his
mind. He will be ready to say " yes " to Christ's own

FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIsrs SUFFERINGS 197
statement that it behooved Him to suffer, and by suffer
ing to open a way of joy to all.
III. There must be a personal acceptance of the
results made possible to men by these sufferings of
Christ. This suggestion brings the question close home.
Christ came into the world, and He sufferred and died
to save sinners. What He especially requires in the
way of regard and sympathy is co=operation with Him
in this high redemptive aim to the extent of each indi
vidual's giving himself up to a life of faith in His
Name. Here then we have a test, Christ is a Divine Redeemer
— or — He is not. If He be the Redeemer of men, then
a mere poetic sentimental regard is not enough. A high
reverence such as is felt for the great and good of all
ages, is not enough. Nor is it enough to take the in
cidental truths which He developed and weave them
into social and moral compacts for the regulation of
communities. It is simply impossible for me to think
that men are placing an acceptable offering upon the
altar when they patronizingly call Jesus " a beautiful
character," but deny to Him the energy and mission
of a Divine Redeemer. This is not the sympathy with
the sufferings of Christ into which Paul came. We
must lay our lives at His feet, and accept the salvation
He brings, and on the terms on which He brings it.
There must be personal recognition of His claim, and
personal surrender to His will. One may master all the
facts of the life of Christ, — realize why He suffered,
admire His character, regret His pain and sorrow; but
unless one believes in Him and embraces the opportu-

198 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
nity to secure the salvation He brings, so that he can
say, " I am His and He is mine," there is and there can
be no real genuine sympathy with Him.
IV. There must be willingness to endure all the
pains and losses and crosses which the legitimate
service of Christ calls for.
Legitimate service, bear in mind. Christ did not run
into needless straits of anguish, though He never turned
aside from any which duty required Him to meet. A
man is not to make a martyr of himself for the sake of
the sufferings incident to martyrdom. A man is not to
make himself needlessly obnoxious for the sake of hav
ing an opportunity, like his Divine Master before him,
to receive buffets and reproaches and scorn. A man is
not to court pains which no need to be borne, and to
undertake ser^'ices which are of no consequence when
rendered, in order to acquire discipline through the
hardness and severity of them. Simon Stylites, stand
ing there on the top of his broken pillar, starving,
thirsting, freezing, aching to death, shows indeed
wonderful firmness of will, much power of patient
endurance, admirable devotion, sincerity and earnestness
of purpose; but then — Simon Stylites had no business
to be standing there on the top of his broken pillar. It
was his rather to be down on the solid earth, preaching
the Gospel, caring for the poor and wronged, going
about doing good, and living a sweet, wholesome life.
One is not to invent forms of self-denial which the
Master has never appointed. The duty is to go straight
on — doing the work and discharging the trusts imposed
by Christ, and manfully and patiently meeting whatever
of inconvenience or loss or sorrow or suffering, may fall
in the way in consequence. It is not the hardships

FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS 199
which are out of the way, but in the way, which one is
to endure.
At the same time it is not to be forgotten that now
and evermore the Christian life here on earth is one of
self=denial. " There is no other way unto life," says
one who, though he withdrew from the active affairs of
the world, yet in large measure justified his withdrawal
by the production of thoughts and meditations which
have been the choice spiritual nourishment of many
souls in the subsequent generations, — " there is no other
way unto life, and unto true inward peace than the way
of the Holy Cross, and of daily self=denial. Go where
thou wilt, seek whatever thou wilt, thou shalt not find a
higher way above, nor a safer way below, than the way
of the Holy Cross. Prepare thyself to bear many adver
sities and troubles in this sorrowing life; for so it will
be with thee. Christ's life was a cross and a martyrdom.
The cross, therefore, is always ready and everywhere
waits for thee."
Some things in the way of peril and hardship are well
behind us. It is not likely we shall any of us be called
upon to testify our zeal for the truth and our fidelity to
Christian principles by giving our bodies to be burned.
There may be conflicts we cannot foresee, and can only
dimly conjecture; but it looks now, as if we, at least,
should be permitted to worship God unto the end, under
our own vine and figtree, and according to the dictates
of our own conscience, with none to molest us, or make
us afraid.
Nevertheless, as has already been said, this Christian
life is, always has been, and always will be, a life of
self=denial. A man cannot be a Christian and live up
on the high levels of faith and love and consecration.

200 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
and do just as one pleases to do who is not a Christian,
and lives on the lower level of worldliness.
The Christian life is a life against the grain of our
perverted natures. It is a life at warfare with the lusts
of the flesh and the lusts of the eyes and the vainglory
which rules in the human heart. While the soul must
live in the world it is yet a struggle to live above the
world. Only by subduing every passion and appetite
and desire to such an extent that the whole being is
subordinated to the will of God, and all the faculties are
con= joined in loyalty, and it is the highest pleasure to
be pleasing to the Father, as the Son of God was pleas
ing to Him, can anyone altogether outgrow the need
of self=denial and sacrifice for Christ's , sake. A gen
uine earnest Christian life is a life in which a man must
say "No," not only to many an evil solicitation, but to
many a beckoning pleasure also. It is a life of burden=
bearing; and it is a life in which the highest fidelities
possible to the soul are to be brought into exhibition.
This is the condition of discipleship, imposed not by
councils and assemblies and synods and creeds, but by
our Divine Lord Himself, — self=denial, cross=bearing,
and faithfulness. Some Christians seem to make it a
practise to do for Christ just what they like to do, just
what it is agreeable to them to do, just what it costs them
nothing to do, no preparation, no shrinking, no embarrass
ment, no humiliation, no sacrifice, no discomfort of any
sort. But when they are approached with requests which
involve the taking of higher ground, and doing some
thing which has pain in it, or limitation of material
possessions or ease, or the crucifixion of taste, there is
always some excuse or evasion. Men complain of cas-

FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST S SUFFERINGS 201
nistry. What casuists men are in dealing with their
own souls.
Dear old Richard Baxter has said: "A cheap religion
is not usually accompanied with any notable degree of
comfort. Although the person be a sincere=hearted
Christian, he cannot have much peace or joy. A con
firmed Christian is one who taketh self=denial for one
half of his religion." With a somewhat ruggeder Saxon
John Bunyan has said: "If thou wouldst be faithful
to do the work that God hath appointed thee to do in
the world for His name, then beware that thou do not
stop and stick where hard work comes before thee. The
word and Spirit of God come sometimes like chain=shots
to us, as if they .would cut down all, as when Abraham
was to offer up Isaac. Oh, how willingly would our
fiesh and blood escape the cross of Christ." This is all
true — ^true to=day, to=morrow, and every day.
It is a matter which admits of no debate that there is
too much daintiness in our religion, There is too much
picking and choosing of service, or turning the thing
over to somebody else to do, or turning from it altogether,
without much care whether the thing is done or not.
But it is evident we can never get into any fellowship
or symypathy with Christ in His sufferings, if we are
not ready for pain and toils and real sacrifices in His
behalf. If we do not know Christ in his suffer
ings, — Christ in His humiliation, — Christ in the sen
sitive quivering He must have experienced under re
proaches, — Christ in the inexpressible and pathetic
tenderness of His grief at seeing those He came to save
refuse to be saved by Him, — Christ in the mysterious
agony of the garden and in the further and still more
awful agony of the cross, which moved the heavens and

202 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
the earth to a sympathetic compassion — do we really
know Him at all? The Man of Sorrows — the suffering
Savior — the crucified Son of God — can there be any
deep fellowship with Him without some sort of practical
entering into this sorrow and this suffering and this
crucifixion? This is the cry of one who wants to be
like Christ, and know him fully:
" Humbly while my soul doth prove
Sweetest joys of pardoning love.
Still, my Savior doth it yearn.
Love's deep mystery to learn.
In the shadow of Thy cross.
Counting earthly gain but loss.
Breathing still its fervent plea.
For a closer life with Thee,
By that high and holy thing.
Fellowship in suffering."
There will be power and comfort and victory in our
Christian lives when there is more in them to justify us
in saying we have been crucified with Christ, and are
seeking to be conformed to His death. This was the
secret of the tremendous aggressiveness of Paul in
preaching the Gospel, and of his joy in God, and of his
superiority to all that malignant and designing men
could do to him — his sympathetic identity with Christ
all up and down the range of His experience when here
upon earth. If he had been asked what moved him to
his prodigious and perilous efforts to spread abroad the
knowledge of salvation through the crucified Redeemer
he would have answered: " The love of Christ constrain-
eth me." If he had been remonstrated with against mak
ing such sacrifices of reputation and fortune in this effort
to acquaint all men with the way of life, his ready reply
would have been: " I count all things but loss for the ex
cellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." If

FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRISrS SUFFERINGS 203
it had been intimated to him that his career, if persisted
in, would surely lead to martyrdom, with something like
a smile of triumph on his face, he would have pointed
away to Him who laid down a life of infinite value on
the cross and said: "Who loved me and gave Himself
for me." If friends, near and dear, had turned from
him, and declared that he was bringing reproach on his
name and character by this identification so close with
the despised Nazarene, they would have heard him
exclaim in tones of exultation: "God forbid that I
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I
imto the world."

Cbristian aspiration.

"Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect:
but I press on, if so be that I may apprehend that for which also I
was apprehended by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet
to have apprehended : bub one thing I do, forgetting the things whioh
are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of
God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be
thus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, even this
shall God reveal unto you: only, whereunto we have already
attained, by that same rule let as walk." — Phil. 3: 12-16,

XIII.
CHRISTIAN ASPIRATION.
With these words before us it hardly needs formal
announcement that the theme of our present meditation
is to be: Christian Aspiration.
Christian Aspiration, like all aspiration which is
worthy of the name, has in it three distinct elements.
These three distinct elements are outlined in one clause
and another of the passage now under consideraton, and
will be made to appear as we proceed with our study.
I, The first element is a well defined feeling of
dissatisfaction with one^s present condition and at
tainments. This dissatisfaction with his present condition and
attainments the apostle declares and repeats. His first
statement is : " Not that I have already obtained, or am
already made perfect." His second statement is:
"Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended."
The apostle had had a peculiar and impressive conver
sion ; but this initial experience of the grace of God had
not brought to him all God had in store for him,
nor rounded out his Christian character into complete
ness. The earnest avowal he had just made of his
abandonment of every trust for salvation except his
trust in Christ, and of his entire surrender to Him, and
his determination to know Him, and the power of His
resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, and
to become conformed unto His death, might lead some
to suppose that in his own estimation he had reached
207

208 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
the heights of perfection; but he hastened to repudiate
this possible inference, and said: "No, I did not reach
all there is in the Christian life at once; nor have I yet
arrived at the point of spiritual development where
there is nothing beyond," He had not " already
obtained." He was not " already made perfect." Nor
had he apprehended ,or laid hold upon, that for which he
had been apprehended, or laid hold upon, by Jesus Christ.
When in a mad, persecuting spirit, this future apostle
was on his way to Damascus, our Lord had arrested
him, and He had done it with a definite object, both as
respects his character and his work, in view; and Paul
very soon came to have some notion of what this object
was; but with all his sincere and determined effort, all
his self=conflicts and masteries, all his openness to the
tuition of the Spirit, all his varied and successful labors
in the Kingdom, all his years of growth in likeness to
Jesus, he was constrained to say he was still lacking in
the full apprehension of that for which he had been
apprehended by Christ. "I count not myself yet to
have apprehended."
This was Paul's attitude. He saw and felt and
frankly acknowledged his incompleteness. As we shall
have occasion to note before we are through, he meant
to get up out of this state in which he found himself
into something better; he meant to apprehend more
fully that for which he had been apprehended; he
meant to win the prize; but as yet the final triumphs of
the high calling were out before him, — an aim to kindle
enthusiasm and stir endeavor. At the moment when he
was writing he knew he was far from perfection; he
knew he had not obtained all that was obtainable in a
life of communion with God and of service in the King-

CHRISTIAN ASPIRATION 209
dom; he knew the crowning victory was something still
to be won, and that he had not climbed to the heights
where he might rest.
This a wholesome and promising view for a Christian
man to take of the situation as respects his own spiritual
attainments. There will be no struggle to better one's
condition until there is first a profound conviction that
one's condition admits of being bettered and ought to
be bettered. Without a lively sense of deficiency, of in
completeness, of imperfection, there will be no impulse
and longing for a higher knowledge of God, and for a
closer walk with God. There will be no eager and com
pelling desire for a character moulded more nearly on
the purity and helpfulness of the faultless Nazarene.
Unless there is unrest in one's own heart, and impa
tience because so little progress has been made in real
izing the graces of a Christian discipleship there will be
little likelihood of any real spiritual progress.
When a man says, not in so many words, it may be,
but practically: "I know all I care to know, — I am as
familiar with the Bible as I wish to be, — I have as inti
mate a fellowship with God, and as full and clear an un
derstanding of His secrets, and as large a measure of
His comfort and grace as it seems to me worth while to
try to secure, — I have as much dread of sin, and as much
mastery over easily besetting sins, as appears to be de
sirable, — the truth is just as precious to me, and the
thought of righteousness is just as quickening, and the
contemplation of heaven and the heavenly home lifts
my soul into just as much rapture, as I care to experi
ence, — and I am not alarmed by the extent of the do
minion the world has over me, nor inwardly rebuked be
cause of any lack of zeal in work for the Kingdom," it is

210 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
clear he can neither get on, nor even hold his own.
Whether it be religious conceit, or indifference to re
ligious interests and aims, which rules in the heart,
aspiration dies. It is only when a man feels with all
the sincerity and force of an honest nature that he is
not what he ought to be in his Christian faith and love
and purity and hope and joy, that his experiences of the
indwelling of the Spirit and communion with Christ are
not what they might be in depth and richness, that di
vine motives will have any appreciable influence over
him to take him forward. There is a discontent
which is weakening and sinful. It is the discon
tent of one who is always finding fault with God and
the allotments of God's providence, and belittling God's
mercies. But there is also a discontent which is whole
some, stimulating; it is the discontent of moral and
spiritual imperfection. This is the discontent which
foreruns and conditions upward movements of soul.
With what fitness might the members of our churches
everywhere take this position of the apostle in regard to
their attainments. How we might all of us blush with
a sense of reproof at seeing the apostle fall into this at
titude which it hardly ever occurs to us to acknowledge
to our own hearts, much less publish abroad, when we
realize to what an alarming extent we come short in this
achievement of Christian maturity and completeness.
For recall who Paul was. Think of his faith, of his
experience, of his consecration, of the marvelous work
he had done up to the time this epistle was written, of
the full tides of light and love which had flowed in upon
his mind and heart from the mind and heart of God,
and what competency he had to instruct the ages in the
mystery and saving power of the cross, and of the amaz-

CHRISTIAN ASPIRATION 211
ing, if not matchless, stature of manhood in Christ Jesus
into which he had grown. He was a man of the cen
turies; and his natural abilities, his acquisitions in the
realms of things divine, his achievements for Christ and
humanity, his uncalculating devotion of every faculty
and all the energy he possessed to ends which have on
them the benediction of God, and his superb character,
combine to awaken in us a well=nigh boundless admira
tion. Yet he was not able to escape a feeling of his own
imperfection. He thought he ought to be better ; further
on in his knowledge of God; more like Jesus Christ in
the whole temper of his mind.
Self-satisfaction is the ruin of many a Christian man
and woman. Not till they realize how narrow and mea
ger and unfruitful their lives are will Christian men and
women aspire to better things.
II. A second element in Christian aspiration as
illustrated in the words of the apostle is an exalted
conception of the attainments and character befitting
one who has named the name of Christ.
Paul had lofty views and lofty standards of the Chris
tian life. It was because he saw so much out before
hipi still to be gained that what he had already gained
seemed so poor and unsatisfactory. We find his thought
condensed into the one sublime phrase: "the high call
ing of God in Christ Jesus." His idea of the object for
which he had been apprehended by Christ took shape in
this expression: " the high calling of God in Christ
Jesus." He felt himself to be imperfect, and he wanted
to be perfect: "Let us therefore, as many as be perfect";
but perfection to him would be realized in realizing
"the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
Literally " the high calling" means "the above call-

212 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ing," or the calling from '¦" above." It is substantially
'the same as the phrase "heavenly calling " found in the
Epistle to the Hebrews. It does not signify the calling
of ourselves upward to heaven, though this, of course, is
involved in it; but the calling we receive from Him who
is "above," or in heaven. "The high calling of God in
Christ Jesus," is God's call to our souls. In Christ
Jesus, and through Christ Jesus, He calls us to be His
children, and He calls us to be His co=workers, and He
calls us to share in the blessings and joys He has pre
pared for those who are loyal to His will. "The high
calling of God in Christ Jesus," is a call to obedience, is
a call to purity, is a call to high and ennobling service, is
a call to divine fellowship. It is the highest call which
ever falls on mortal ears.
This was Paul's aspiration — an aspiration to answer
perfectly through thought and will and life to the call
which God addressed to him. It was by cherishing this
aspiration and yielding his whole nature to it that he
utilized to best advantage his discontent.
Every man who would register progress in knowledge
and grace must pursue a similar policy. He must have
exalted conceptions of Christian privilege and duty and
character. Mere discontent is not enough. It is as
essential that one have lofty views and lofty standards
of discipleship to Jesus Christ, if sympathy with Chris
tian aims and activities is to be stirred, and the blood
set in healthy motion, as it is that one have a suitable
notion of the unsatisfactoriness of his present condi
tions. Experience in all spheres supports this. The
lawyer, the teacher, the physician, the merchant, the
artist, the writer, the scholar, who is simply out of sorts
with himself as he is, and with such achievements as he

CHRISTIAN ASPIRATIAN 213
has hitherto made; but who has no clear-cut views of
better things possible to him, and who hears no voices
calling him to rise to higher heights and to win worthier
victories, will make no headway. Not by chance, and
not altogether for the reason that they have genius, do
our men of letters and art score their magnificent suc
cesses; but because they have conceptions of what their
work calls for, and standards of measurement with which
to judge their work which tax skill and energy to the
utmost. Some of the most pathetic passages in literature are
the stories of the struggles of poets and painters and
sculptors to come up to their own conceptions and give
some sort of fit expression to the thought which was
burning in the soul and seeking utterance.
Tennyson was seventeen years in writing " In Memo-
riam." It was because he had a conception which dom
inated all his thinking and feeling, and held him to his
task through this long period, that we have " In Memo-
riam." The little garden song in " Maud " he wrote and
re=wrote fifty times before he ventured to give it to the
public. His own imagination had come under the spell
of it, and he would not sing it in the ear of the world
until, like the lark soaring up into the sky, he could
sing it in clear and unfaltering notes,
Mrs, Opie the wife of John Opie, the distinguished
portrait painter, who was sometimes called the " Cornish
Wonder," has said: " During the nine years that I was
his wife I never saw him satisfied with one of his pro
ductions; and often, very often, have I seen him enter my
sitting=room, and throwing himself in an agony of des
pondency on the sofa, exclaim: ' I never, never shall be
a painter as long as I live. ' " The man had conceptions

214 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
of his art which seemed to mock him, — standards of
excellence which seemed to baffle him; but it was be
cause of these conceptions and standards, and his loy
alty to them, that he became one of the great artists of
his nation, and left pictures of enduring fame.
Thorwaldsen, so we are told, saw in the measure of
satisfaction he took in one of his completed statues an
evidence of waning power. His method of reasoning
was that if his mind were alert, and full of enthusiasm,
and up to the old creative line of energy, he would be
sure to see many things to criticise. Cunning as his
hand might be, his brain, so long as it was in the best
condition, would be still more cunning, and he could
formulate images in his mind which he could not fash
ion to perfection in marble.
To us who are not dowered with poetic or artistic
gifts it seems hardly possible that Homer and Virgil and
Dante and the immortal Shakespeare, or that Phidias
and Raphael and Angelo and Thorwaldsen, ever had any
difficulty in giving expression to their ideas, or that
they could have gone much further in winning triumphs
in their several departments; but we may be sure they
were, each and all of them, tormented with unrealized
conceptions. We may be sure, too, it was because they
were tormented — possessed, haunted, led on by visions
which were never on land or sea, that they won their
splendid triumphs, and laid the foundations of their im
perishable renown. They had high conceptions, and
they were true to them.
This is the principle to which the apostle conformed,
and the rule under which he worked, in making his
Christian attainments and doing his Christian duties,
and building up his Christian character. Neither poet,

CHRISTIAN ASPIRATION 215
nor painter, nor sculptor ever toiled in the realm of his
chosen art with a more burning enthusiasm, or a more
patient fidelity to make his thought emerge in a more
perfect form, than did Paul to lift his whole being
— every power and faculty, every capability and every
possibility, up into the light of the face of God and into
harmony with the will of God. He saw what he might
be, and the vision of it throbbed and thrilled along
every fiber of his eager soul. From the first moment
when he comes into view before us as a Christian till
the last he was always working under the influence of
an exalted and exalting conception of the Christian life
It was the only safe course. Artists who are jealous of
their skill and fame, never permit themselves, if they
can help it, to look upon a bad picture. It would seem
as if Paul never allowed his thought to wander off into
contemplation of any low and unworthy standard of
Christian attainment and character. For a working aim
he would tolerate nothing short of " the high calling of
God in Christ Jesus," — nothing short of a type of man
hood whose measure is " perfection in Christ." What
he sought for these Philippian brethren was first of all
what he sought for himself: "This I pray that your
love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and
all discernment; so that ye may approve the things that
are excellent; that ye may be sincere and void of offense
unto the day of Christ; being filled with the fruits of
righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ, unto the
glory and praise of God,"
A moment ago the question was: " Is not the sense of
imperfection too feeble in us? Is not the disposition
quite too general to be content with low apprehensions
and attainments in Christian experience ? " The question

216 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
now is: "Are there not too many of us who refuse to
be controlled by anything like a large and inspiring
thought of what is becoming in us and possible to us as
partakers by faith in the life of the Son of God? " Or
to put the question in another phrase: "Are there not
too many of us who have no clear and well=defined view
of what the Christian life is, and what it must be if it be
a Christian life at all? " In short is it not true that in
a large number of instances we have failed wholly to
come under the power and guidance of these conceptions
of the Christian life which fill us with enthusiasm for
the Master and lift us above the world?
Suppose each one of us were to sit down and write
out his idea of the Christian character, just as we shape
it to our own minds, with nothing of good toward which
we struggle omitted, and with nothing of evil toward
which we are tolerant left out; and then were to place
this side by side of the notion of the Christian charac
ter which the Scriptures furnish us, would there not be
startling misfits and incongruities? It is a matter of
humiliation and tears that the conceptions and stand
ards of the Christian life are so low with such large
numbers of men and women who claim to be followers
of our Divine Lord! The actions of these people are
regulated, not by the will of God, but by their own
whims, or tastes, or the public opinion of the hour.
There is and there can be no Christian aspiration until
there are Christian conceptions and aims and standards
to challenge realization in the life.
III. A third element in Christian Aspiration, as set
forth and exemplified by the apostle, is the resolute de
termination to translate the highest conceptions one

CHRISTIAN ASPIRATION 217
may have of Christian attainment and Christian char
acter into terms of life.
This is what we have in the passage under review, — a
resolute determination on the part of Paul to illustrate
his theories in his practice, and to embody his lofty
ideas in a real nobility of soul. His words are fairly hot
with this purpose; and it is not easy to read them with
out yielding to the on=sweep of their rushing eagerness.
" But I press on." As we have seen he did not feel that
he had obtained everything at once. He was not yet
perfect. But he was pressing on, — exerting himself
with all his might, and using his utmost skill, to realize
the vision of perfection which flamed in splendor before
his eyes. " But one thing I do," — many things on the
surface and to outward appearance, but one central and
controlling thing, " forgetting the things which are be
hind," — whether they be achievements won and advan
tages gained in which one might be tempted to rest sat
isfied, or whether they be defeats and discouragements
and high aims brought to naught, under which one
might be tempted to feel that further efforts are useless,
"and stretching forward to the things which are before,"
— a profounder knowledge of God, a completer conform
ity to the will of God, more intimacy with God in Christ,
and more consciousness of the indwelling of the Spirit,
and more joy, and more assurance, " I press on toward
the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus." What energy of endeavor! How the
eyes flash! How every muscle is strained! How the
body leans forward! He is going to have that prize — or
die! Precisely this is the kind of determination which

I
218 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
every man must exemplify if he would realize in his own
life worthy conceptions of Christian attainment and
Christian character. He must put plan into the high
business, and foresight and time into it, and will into it;
and then he must concentrate all the forces of which he
is master, and hold them concentrated, on the accom
plishment of his end. Having once started in the race,
a person is not to stop and dally and fritter away re
sources of action in long drawn discussions over the
question whether "the high calling of God in Christ
Jesus " be a prize worth winning, but he is to keep
right on and win it. There is no other way to win. To
fall under the lead of exalted aspirations; to yield to the
influence of beckoning visions; to try to become purer
and larger and better, means struggle; and no man gets
on without struggle.
This determination is essential to success. No man
advances in knowledge and holiness who does not first
of all wish to advance, and who does not then follow up
the wish with the right measure of vigorous, effort. In
most of the exhortations to activity to be found in the
New Testament the figures employed carry along with
them the notion of difficulties and conflicts. " Strive to
enter in"; "Fight the good fight"; "Labor"; "Give
all diligence to make your calling and election sure";
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling";
"We wrestle"; "See that no man take your crown."
Here is a varied language but there is one idea running
through it all; — we hold our own; we make progress; we
enter into the secrets of the Lord; we become better as
sured in our hope, and stronger fibered in all our moral
and spiritual qualities, only as we wage perpetual con
tests with evil influences, and hew our way to victory.

CHRISTIAN ASPIRATION 219
Not a few, it is evident, have made marked progress
in realizing the best conceptions of the Christian life
and character. They have felt their weakness and their
unlikeness to Christ. They have had visions of the
beauty and felt the power of a fellowship with God in
which the human should be taken up and glorified in
the divine. They have put forth their best efforts
through means of study and self=examination and prayer
and helpful services and sweet and patient endurance of
suffering and gradual dying unto the world to apprehend
that for which they were apprehended by the Son of
God. They have succeeded to a gratifying degree. It
is in the warmth of their hands. It is in the glow of
their faces. It is in the quick sympathy of their hearts.
It is in their unworldliness. It is in the spirit of help
fulness which they exhibit. It is in the increasing close
ness of their walk with God. It is in their growing fit
ness for an abundant entrance into the everlasting
Kingdom. Precious souls are these. They are the
salt of the earth, and if we saw and estimated as the
angels see and estimate, we should add, — the glory of the
earth, too.
Those who have reached this measure of perfectness,
or maturity in their Christian development, are to keep
right on, walking in the light which has already been
shed on their paths, using the same means of growth in
grace and knowledge which they have found profitable
in the past, and resting in the assurance that if in any
respect their judgment should be at fault and their cal
culations wrong, the Divine Teacher will come to their
help, and furnish them needed guidance.
It is the privilege of us all to cherish these lofty con
ceptions of the Christian life, and to struggle day by

220 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
day toward their realization. Nothing else is there so
worthy of the most exhausting and persistent endeavor.
If we can only win this prize — the prize of " the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus," — it matters little in
what we may be defeated. In all the universe there is
nothing like it. Men are struggling — crowding each
other in their rivalries and competitions — with no other
end in view than just to gain substances which perish
with the using, and honors which vanish like the dew.
But the men and women who succeed in putting into
character all which is implied in " the high calling of
God in Christ Jesus," come into a share in the resource
of wealth and glory and joy which is at once measure
less and imperishable.

©ur ibeavenlB Citisensbip.

"Brethren, be ye imitators together of me, and mark them which
BO walk even as ye have us for an ensample. For many walk, of
whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they
are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is perdition,
whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind
earthly things. Por our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also
we wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew
the body of our humiliation, that it may he conformed to the body
of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to
subject aU things unto himself." — Phil. 3:17-21.

XIV.
OUR HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP.
The high point from which to examine this passage,
and the point on which, better than any other perhaps,
all the varied counsels and warnings and instructions
and disclosures here laid before us can be concentrated
and unified, is found in the clause: "For our citizenship
is in heaven." Hence the theme for the morning is to
be: — Our Heavenly Citizenship.
In tracing and developing this thought it is to be ob
served :
I. In the first place that, according to the apostle's
conception, and so presumably according to any right
conception of the Christian life, our citizenship is al
ready in heaven.
This was a favorite view with Paul. He was fond of
thinking of disciples in established relations with God,
and here and now naturalized to privileges and rights
which they are to enjoy only a little more fully by and by.
The world we now occupy is not heaven; but to a
heavenly minded man it is heaven begun; and one may
live in a manner to anticipate heavenly experiences.
Along these hard and dusty thoroughfares of earth we
cannot walk with God in the same open way in which
saints in light walk with Him; but we can yet walk
with God. Only in thought can we traverse the streets
of what the apostle has called " the Jerusalem that is
above," and enter into its delights, and dazzle our eyes
223

224 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
with its fiaming splendors; but if we are in Christ our
names are in the directory, and we are fellowoitizens
not only with the saints who are here in the flesh but
with the saints who are there. A thousand years of
residence in the city which hath the foundations, and
whose architect and maker is God, will not give us
a more secure title to citizenship than we have to=day.
The true disciple is a member of the household of God
now, and he is a citizen of the city of God now. The
renewing breath of the Divine Spirit which made him a
new creature in Christ Jesus gave him a standing no
man may question in the heavenly commonwealth. It
matters not that we are still on this side the dividing
line which separates the here from the hereafter, the
visible from the invisible, we are nevertheless citizens
of the city which is to be the everlasting habitation of
the children of the Father. The heir is an heir even
though he has not yet come into the inheritance of his
property. The youth is a factor in the state, entitled to
the immunities and subject to the obligations the state
grants and imposes long before he can vote. A man
does not have to die to obtain citizenship in the Celes
tial City. Renewal in Christ makes his citizenship an
assured and present fact.
II. nightly estimated our heavenly citizenship
may well become to us the occasion and ground qf a
peculiar joy.
Perhaps it would be allowable to go further and say
that our heavenly citizenship may well become to us
the occasion and ground of a sanctified pride.
It is a poor specimen of a man who does not take
any interest in the town or commonwealth of which he
is a member. It is a poor specimen of a town or com-

OUR HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 225
monwealth which does not have excellency enough in it
of some kind to awaken the enthusiasm of the intelli
gent and virtuous classes who may chance to be born
within its boundaries. The two together — a good city
and a good citizen — ought to go far to realize the ideal
of life in social relations, and to fill all honest hearts
with triumphant satisfaction.
The renowned cities of the ancient world were the
boast of their people. Paul affirmed with evident ela
tion that the Tarsus of which he was a citizen was no
mean city. Athens was the glory of the land to which
she has given an undying fame; and though there were
rivalries and jealousies and conflicts between the towns
of Greece, no intelligent and patriotic Greek ever failed
to find food with which to feed his national pride in the
culture and refinement and scholarly achievements of
this celebrated city. In whatever part of the known
earth he might be the Roman felt not only safer, but
larger, in virtue of his ability to declare himself a citi
zen of the mighty metropolis which sat on seven hills
and ruled the world. How passionate was the old Jew
in his devotion to his beloved Jerusalem. It is the same
in these modern times. Men announce in accents of
peculiar gratification, and with an air which shows plain
ly their sense of the distinction derived from the fact,
that they belong to Berlin or Paris or London or New
York or Chicago or Philadelphia or Edinburgh or Bos
ton. It sometimes seems to us to require a pretty severe
attack of mental blindness, or an abnormal infiation of
local pride, to enable the citizens of some cities, or at
any rate the citizens of some cities in some stages of
their careers, to become very enthusiastic in their admi
ration of their own towns. There are periods in the de-

226 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
velopment of all our cities, especially our American
cities, when it would look as though a worthy and self=
respecting man would just as soon hail from some other
place as his own.
But there are no drawbacks to this city of which the
apostle speaks, and in which all true followers of Jesus
Christ are said to have their citizenship. One does not
have to abate his enthusiasm, or modify his words of
praise, on account of any mismanagement or corruption
which prevails in the administration of its affairs. It
is a perfect city, with perfect laws, and a perfect govern
ment. This is what the Psalmist thought of the city of
his delight: " Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the
whole earth, is Mount Zion, on the side of the North,
the city of the great King." But this was an earthly city,
and in its beauty of situation, and in its appointments
and joy, and in its opportunities and glories, was only
faintly typical of the city which is across the river, and
which the apostle saw with illuminated vision.
Poets and orators with a pardonable rhetorical license
speak of the Rome which is yonder by the Tiber as the
" Eternal City." There is but one Eternal City. That
city is eternal because it is built on foundations over
which neither time nor chance nor change can have any
effect, — the foundation of the love of God in Christ. It
is eternal because its walls have been quarried out of
God's truth and laid up and cemented in the divine
righteousness. It is eternal because all the movements
of its life are under the orderings and impulses of holi
ness. " There shall in no wise enter into it anything
unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie."
It is eternal because it perfectly fulfills the conditions
of a perfect rational and moral existence. " God himself

OUR HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 227
shall be with them, and be their God; and He shall wipe
away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no
more." Literally and in the highest sense which can attach to
the word, this city in which the apostle says we have our
citizenship is the City of God. In a way to distinguish
His presence from His presence elsewhere God dwells in
this Heavenly City. The angels who serve Him in mul
titudinous forms of glad service make their circuits from
this vast metropolis of the spiritual universe. The spir
its of men who have been justified by faith in the cru
cified Christ, and purified by the regenerating energy of
the Divine Spirit gather here, and go in and out on their
great and joyful errands, and realize to the full the
blessedness of an unobstructed fellowship with their
Lord, and with those who have been redeemed by His
blood. Men die out of our earthly cities; and our earthly
cities fall and fade from memory, but in this Heavenly
City there is life forever.
In the form of a question our thought returns upon
us, and with all confidence we ask: " May not our citi
zenship in this Heavenly City fitly become to us the
occasion and ground of a peculiar joy — even a sanctified
pride ? " If a patriotic enthusiasm is commendable when
a man is thinking of some Roman Empire to be defend
ed and enlarged, or of some English commonwealth to
be carved out of a Stuart tyranny, or of a magnificent
republic to be erected on the foundation of a dozen op
pressed colonies, why may not a man become exultant
in the contemplation of a society in which his member
ship is already assured, and in whose light and liberty
and purity and joy and boundless love he is one day to
share up to the full measure of his capacity? How im-

228 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
perfect and how poor the privileges of all other cities m
comparison to the city to which faith gives us citizen
ship. III. If we have anything like a suitable apprecia
tion of our heavenly citizenship, we shall be careful to
walk worthy of it, and to do our best to train our minds
and hearts into the highest preparation for the exer
cise and enjoyment of its privileges.
After what our eyes have seen, and our ears have
heard, and the painful experiences through which we
have passed here in our own land and under our own
flag, in consequence of the ignorance and moral degrada
tion of large numbers of those who have been invested
with the lofty and sacred rights of citizenship, it should
not be difficult to persuade an American audience, and
particularly an American audience in one of our great
cities, that there ought to be some feeling of its dignity
and worth, and some proper education in its responsibil
ities and duties, before people anywhere are permitted
to share in the privileges and functions of citizenship.
This is the thought the apostle carried along with him
in his approach to the statement of the fact of our
heavenly citizenship; and this heavenly citizenship,
so exalted and sacred, he made a motive to careful and
self=denying and pure living.
Paul begins this approach by an appeal to his own
example, and a plea that these Philippian brethren
would adjust their actions to the standard furnished in
his own conduct. " Brethren, be ye imitators together
of me, and mark them which so walk even as ye have us
for an ensample."
Here by implication, as elsewhere by formal state
ment, the apostle means that this imitation of him shall

OUR HEA VENLY CITIZENSHIP 229
be according to the measure and spirit of his own imita
tion of Christ. " Be ye imitators of me, even as I also
am of Christ." Paul would have copied nobody else
beyond this limit, and he would ask nobody else to copy
him beyond this limit. Christ was his ideal of a perfect
behavior and a perfect manhood. Conscious that he
himself had come into complete surrender to Christ, and
that he was sincere in his devotion to the end for which
Christ died, and that in his words and deeds and entire
life he was doing his best to exhibit the mind of Christ,
and that he was walking in the utmost circumspection,
he did not hesitate to say to men, who were inclined
to break away from Christ on the side of self-indulgence,
to look to him and do as he was doing. Not in a spirit
of self=complacency and over=weening confidence, — for
Paul was incapable of this, — but in a spirit which was
at once profoundly honest and profoundly humble, the
great apostle said: "Follow my methods, make them
the ensample, or type, or pattern, of your Christian life."
It was wise counsel. We often come into the closest
sympathy with the aims of Christ, and learn most effect
ually the lessons He has to teach, by studying Him in
the conduct and character of some devoted and earnest
follower. In the present instance the example of Paul
would be especially pertinent and valuable. There were
liabilities to serious divisions amongst these disciples.
They were in danger of misconceiving Christ, and mis
interpreting the law, and abusing liberty. Paul was
accustomed to settle all questions of right and duty by
referring them directly to Christ. It would save them
many an annoyance, and hold them back from many a
peril, to adopt this same course, and bring everything
to the test of the mind of Christ. Paul and those asso-

230 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ciated with him might well be studied and imitated by
all who would keep close to Christ,
Paul pursues the discussion by adding: "For many
walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you
even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross
of Christ."
There are some who walk in such way that they can
be followed and imitated with profit. Those who walk
after this manner are to be marked, not that they may
be shunned, but that they may be approved; for they
walk after Christ and in fellowship with Christ. There
are others, not some merely, but " many " — "for many
walk," in a way to excite compassion and alarm; and the
example of these must be studiously shunned. Paul
has often lifted up his voice of warning against them,
and he does it again, but it is with such pain and pity
that the sad business brings tears to his eyes, "Of
whom I have told you often, and now tell you even
weeping," Why is it? What is the occasion for this distress?
It all lies in a single sentence: "They are the enemies
of the cross of Christ." This is their "walk," — they
walk in opposition to the cross of Christ. The cross of
Christ stands for an estimate of sin which makes it ex
ceeding sinful. It stands for an energy of love and
grace which makes it equal to the redemption of all
mankind. It stands for unselfishness, for unworldliness,
for the regeneration of the principles and motives by
which men are controlled. In all these particulars the
cross is an offense to them. They hate it. They are
its enemies. They refuse to come under its sway. It
may be that they accept the doctrine of the cross. It

OUR HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 231
may be they profess to follow the cross. But judged by
their lives they must be accounted enemies of the cross.
What are their lives? How does it appear that they
are out of harmony with any true conception of what
the cross of Christ requires? Listen to Paul's startling
arraignment. " Whose end is perdition, whose god is
the belly, and whose glory is their shame, who mind
earthly things."
This is the way "many walk"; and this is the evi
dence that " they are enemies of the cross of Christ."
Their minds are absorded in the interests and pleasures
of the present life. They do things in view of which
they ought to feel humiliated, but instead they count
these very acts or procedures their glory. They exalt
their appetites into divinities, and make sensual enjoy
ment the object of their existence. The end of it all is
perdition. They crawl and eat dust and daily partake
of the serpent's curse. To be carnally minded is death.
But all this, so the apostle hastens to intimate, is out
of keeping with any right conception of our heavenly
citizenship. A man who realizes that he is only a pil
grim and stranger on the earth, and has here no abiding
city, but that all his permanent interests and relation
ships are yonder in the skies, will not permit himself to
come under bondage to the earth, and wander off into
every sort of gross self 'indulgence. He will remember
what is expected of him as a citizen whose citizenship
in heaven is already fixed. He will not fall into the
materialism which reduces God to the sum total of the
working forces of nature, and makes the soul a mere
matter of delicate physical organization, but he will keep
the personality of the Father and the spirituality of our

232 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
natures realities ever fresh and living to the mind. He
will keep earthly things under and divine things upper
most in his thought.
In his immortal dream Bunyan tells us of one who
would look no way but downward, and who stood with
a muck=rake in his hand, while over him and looking
benignantly upon him there was one who held a celes
tial crown that he was ready to exchange for the muck=
rake; but the poor deluded victim of the over=absorbing
earthliness refused to lift his eye, or regard the crown.
Instead he kept on raking to himself the straws and
small sticks and dust of the floor. One who walks in
the realization of a heavenly citizenship will look up
rather than down, and he will think more of the crown
than of the muck=rake, and he will be loyal to the
noblest ideals of a Christian life.
He will not convert his belly into a god, and expose
himself to classification with those whom Ruskin says
God made to be kings over creation, but who choose
rather to drop down and live as swine.
The story is told of a gentleman in England who had
a chapel attached to his home. One day he was visited
by an acquaintance from London. He showed him
over the premises and finally took him into the chapel.
The first exclamation of the visitor was: "What a
glorious kitchen this would make." His thoughts were
on roast beef and mutton and ale. But the answer to
the visitor was prompt and worthy: "When I make a
god of my belly, then I will make a kitchen of my chap
el." He was not prepared then and there to ignore the
divine image in which he had been created and plunge
over into animalism. The Sicilians erected an altar to
the goddess of gluttony. Men with heavenly citizen-

OUR HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 233
ships keep the body under. They do not glory in their
shame, nor make the things of which they ought to be
ashamed an occasion of glory. They live up in the
realms of their higher natures, where they can inter
change thought with God, and realize somewhat of the
fellowship which is to be realized in full where the see
ing is no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face.
IV. This heavenly citizenship justifies us in in
dulging extraordinary expectations for the future of
our existence.
Availing ourselves of all the aid there is in the Holy
Spirit we are to do our best by a godly walk, by self=
denials, by consecrated services, by meditation, by
prayer, by struggling after holiness, and by continual
advances in likeness to Christ, to fit our souls for the
exalted state of the life to come. But there is a prepa
ration beyond our skill and power, and in which there
can be little co=operation on our part. It is the prepa
ration of the body for the activities and joys of a condi
tion which is purely spiritual. This preparation, how
ever, toward which we can do little or nothing in our
own skill and power, is to be wrought for us by the di
vine might of the risen and ascended Lord. Christ is
to do it.
"From whence also we wait for a Savior, the Lord
Jesus Christ; who shall fashion anew the body of our
humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of
His glory, according to the working whereby He is
able to subject all things unto Himself."
A change — a transformation — is to be accomplished
by which the soul is to have an organ through which to
work, as well as a sphere in which to work, perfectly
suited to its highest capacities and ends. We are to

234 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
have bodies like our Savior's glorified body. They are
to be spiritual like His. They are to be holy like His.
They are to be immortal like His. When the Savior
comes for whom we wait He will transfigure the body of
our humiliation into the form of His own body of glory.
" It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it
is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory; it is sown in
weakness; it is raised in power; it is sown a natural
body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural
body there is also a spiritual body." These spiritual
bodies are what our souls are to occupy and use. They
will be the organs through which the personality and in
dividuality of souls will be expressed.
All this seems well=nigh impossible to us. But it is
not impossible. It is not impossible to Him who was
Master over the grave, and who while yet on earth could
cloth Himself with a body of glory, and who has the
measureless ability to subdue all things unto Himself.
All resources of skill and energy are His; and He will
use them to make good to His disciples their hopes.
What a prospect does this hold out to believers.
What expectations they are justified in cherishing.
With what fitness may the heart of a disciple of Jesus
Christ leap and glow in anticipation of what awaits him
in the Celestial City in which He already has his cit
izenship. Whatever else we may gain, or not gain,
whatever may be our experience here in this world, if
we are in Christ this is assured to us. Our citizenship
in heaven is a possession and a hope of which nobody
can deprive us.
Not with mortal eyes shall we ever behold the city in
which we have our heavenly citizenship. But day by
day we are drawing nearer to it. Every puls3=beat

OUR HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP 235
brings us so much closer to its open gates and its jaspar
walls and its golden streets and its fiaming towers and
minarets and its atmosphere of ineffable glory and its
fulness of radiant life. In due time and at the right
time, and without fail, it will all break upon us; and as
the vision becomes dim to scenes on this side the Valley
of the Shadow, the clarified soul will have open and
anointed vision of the inconceivable splendors which lie
beyond. In the glad surprises and revelations of the
first quick glance of the first moment of experience in
the city toward which our faces are set there will be in
finite compensation for all the disappointments and
trials and sharp bitter pains we may have known on
earth. To not a few, worn and weary with the burdens of
life, the day will be a joyous one which realeases them
from the confinement and bondage of this present
sphere, and gives them the full range and assured hap
piness of the Jerusalem that is above.
Parkman tells us that more than sixty years before
the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock the French
Huguenots, under the direction and infiuence of Coligny,
attempted to establish a colony on the coast of Brazil.
Several ship=loads of emigrants were sent out, and the
work went on bravely for a while, and the project was
full of promise. But the men in charge of the enter
prise betrayed it; and the poor colonists, — or such of
them as were spared to live, — had to get back to their
native land as best they could. Amongst them were
several ministers who had gone out from Geneva.
These were treated by their heartless and time=serving
betrayers with special severity. The only way in which
they could effect their return was to wait on an island.

236 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
exposed to starvation, and butchery by the savages,
until a vessel loading in the harbor should be ready to
take them aboard. At length they embarked. , Their
vessel was a crazy hulk, and drifted only slowly on her
way. " Storms fell upon them, their provisions failed,
their water casks were empty, and, tossing in the wilder
ness of waves, or rocking on the long swells of subsid
ing gales, they sank almost to despair. In their famine
they chewed the Brazil wood with which the vessel was
laden, devoured every scrap of leather, singed and ate
the horn of lanterns," and hunted and fed on every
loathsome form of life the ship contained. "At length,
stretched on the deck, sick, listless, attenuated, and
scarcely able to move a limb, they descried across the
waste of sea the faint, cloudlike line that marked the
coast of Brittany." It was the solid earth. It was the
home=land. It was their beloved France. It is not
difficult to conceive how the light of a new hope fiashed
into the dim and weary eyes of the returning colonists,
and how the throbbings of a fresh life went bounding
through all the veins and arteries of their bodies, and
how strength, as to a young giant just awakening from
refreshing sleep, came to their nerveless limbs.
In some such way as this shall we be thrilled and
exalted in all the pulses of the soul when we behold the
first faint outlines of the shining shore, and the quench
less light of the Celestial City greets our eager gaze.
For that is our home=land. That is where our inherit
ance lies, and our destiny. That is the city where we
have our citizenship, and within whose walls we are to
move back and forth in the presence of the Lord
forever.

StanOing 3fast in tbe !lLor&.

"Wherefore, my brethren beloved and longed for, my joy and
crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my beloved.— PW. 4; i.

XV.
STANDING FAST IN THE LORD.
In this paragraph of the delightful epistle whosa
instructions we are tracing together, and whose spirit
we are trying to catch, it falls in our way to consider:
Standing Fast in the Lord.
One of the first things to strike us in taking up the
subject in the connection in which it is here found, is
the affectionate earnestness with which the apostle
presses it on the attention of those to whom he writes.
In all Paul's letters the tender fervor of this appeal has
no exact parallel. He is like a mother who softens her
counsel to a cherished boy by a storm of kisses. Warm
like a mother, like a mother also he is sincere; and he
puts a wealth of deepest love into every word he utters.
There are not less than six terms of endearment
associated with the injunction here voiced to "stand
fast in the Lord."
1. "Brethren." " My brethren." Not his "brethren"
according to the flesh; but his "brethren" in Christ.
His " brethren " in that they all have their membership
in one body, and are under the direction of one Spirit,
and are called in one hope, and rejoice in a common
acknowledgment of one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
and one Father. They are his "brethren" in the
sacred bond of a love which springs fresh and full from
the heart of Jesus.
2. " Beloved." " My brethren beloved." This lends
239

240 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
emphasis to the intensity of affection naturally in
volved in the idea of brotherhood.
3, "Longed for." " My brethren beloved and longed
for." Only here in all the New Testament does this
adjective occur. But the word in its verb=form has
already been used twice in this letter,— once back in
the first chapter: " For God is my witness, how I long
after you all in the tendei mercies of Christ Jesus";
and once in the second chapter where it is said of
Epaphroditus that he "longed after" them all. These
Philippian brethren, while brethren, were yet Paul's
own spiritual children. His heart went out to them;
and he yearned with an eager and well=nigh consuming
desire to take them by the hand, and look into their
faces, and commune with them in the sweetness and
sacredness of their mutual fellowship in Christ. In the
limitation and loneliness of his imprisonment, Paul, no
doubt, felt this longing more keenly than he might in
other circumstances.
4. "My joy." "My brethren, beloved and longed
for, my joy." Paul employed the same expression years
before in writing to the Thessalonians. " Por what is
our hope, or joy, or crown of glorying? Are not even ye
before our Lord Jesus at His coming? For ye are our
glory and our joy." Believers who were faithful to the
faith; disciples who were true to their discipleship;
followers of our Lord who really followed, were always
precious in the estimation of the apostle, and his satisfac
tion in them was boundless. His soul leaped within him,
and his pen caught a trick of enthusiasm whenever he
thought of those dear ones in yonder Macedonian city.
He was glad for Christ's sake; for they had been won to
Christ, He was glad for their sakes; for they were now

STANDING FAST IN THE LORD 241
safe, and on their way to an everlasting blessedness.
He was glad for his own sake; for these redeemed ones
would be a joy to him forever.
5. " Crown." " My joy and crown." This word
" crown " may carry with it either of two ideas. It may
mean sovereignty, or it may mean triumph. We can
think of it as a diadem worn by a king, or as a wreath
which has been placed on the brow of a victor. It is in
the latter significance that " crown " is used here.
Those who had found life in Christ through his teaching
or infiuence were to be the wreath of victory Paul was
to put on and wear. Every soul won from darkness to
light, from sin to holiness, from death to life, is a radi
ant ornament and an imperishable honor to the person
who does it; These Christians at Philippi were to be an
endless ornament and honor to the apostle.
6. " My Beloved." These are the closing words of
the sentence. Paul catches up the thought of what
these brethren were to him, and lingers on it, as if it
were much easier for him to tell them of his love than to
exhort them to duty. " My beloved."
Having thus, with a little special care examined the
setting which the apostle has given to his precept, the
way is open for turning more directly to the subject in
hand, and asking after some of the considerations which
may be expected to have weight in constraining us to
stand fast in the Lord.
I. First, then, in the way of motive to this standing
fast in the Lord, there may he mentioned the high
thoughts of heavenly citizenship with all that is involved
in it, on which the apostle has just been dwelling.
Herein lies the significance of the " wherefore."

242 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
" Wherefore, my brethren beloved and longed for, my
joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord," Here is the
thing to be done, but the ground of it lies back in some
thing else.
It was a characteristic of Paul to make the largest and
most sacred truths he ever treated yield immediate
practical inferences. When he had paid the matchless
tribute we find in the closing paragraph of the eleventh
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans to the depth of the
riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, and to the
unsearchableness of His ways, and to the presence in all
things of His creative and sustaining energy, he leaped
at once to the conclusion that what this, along with
what had gone before it, signified was complete conse
cration, " I beseech you, therefore, , . , to present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service," When he had fin
ished his glorious discussion of immortality and the
resurrection which is preserved for us, in the fifteenth
chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, he hur
ried to say the lesson of it all is work, — or rather, first of
all the lesson of it is steadfastness, just as in the present
instance, and then it is one of work. " Wherefore my
beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord." No matter how
lofty the theme considered, nor how apparently remote
from daily struggles and interests, Paul is very sure to
get from it some pratical inference touching submission,
or patience, or courage, or fidelity to duty, or aggres
siveness in Christian activity. He is very sure to make
it mean more love, more trust, more faith, more joy,
more sacrifice, more of the mind of Christ.
So here the apostle makes the vision and the hope of

STANDING FAST IN THE LORD 243
future glory, when these bodies of our humiliation shall
have been fashioned anew, and conformed to the body
of the glory of our risen Lord, and when the privileges
of our heavenly citizenship shall have been fully realized
in heaven, a moral and uplifting force to hold the be
liever to his duty. This was the sublime expectation
into which their faith in Christ had brought them ; and
they must abide in it, This was the priceless inherit
ance into whose heirship they had come when they
yielded and accepted salvation through the sacrifice of
the Son of God on the cross; and they must not forfeit
their heirship by any instability of purpose or action.
It was as if Paul had said to these brethren: "By all
the promises which have been made to you concerning
the life to come; by all the thoughts you cherish of un
utterable experiences in the light and purity and peace
and joy of the world invisable; by all the wealth of dis
closure which you anticipate when you have put off the
mortal and have put on the immortal, and are permitted
to go in and out forevermore in the presence of God, do
not waver, but stand fast, — stand fast in the Lord."
This is a motive for standing fast in the Lord which,
in my apprehension, is too little appreciated and pressed.
Under the exceptional stress which is just now being
laid on the present life and its interests, we are under
no small danger of underestimating the value of the life
to come and the influence it ought to have on our con
duct. One of the special perils associated with the pas
sionate thinking which is now going on with respect to
certain phases of truth and its applications in the relig
ious world, and the snap=shot conclusions men are
reaching on these subjects, lies in belittling heaven and
the hope of heaven in the popular estimation. In the

244 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
application of Christianity to society, under which its
exponents are pleased to call the new or sociological
views of the Kingdom, remarks are made and attitudes
are assumed, which even though not so intended, seem
to imply very small respect — not to say contempt — for
those incentives to righteousness which have their source
in the world to come. As if it .were not possible for
these men to carry two ideas in their heads at once, they
practically insist on placing all emphasis on this life
and leaving the life which is to be lived beyond these
earthly horizons to shift for itself.
But this is to ignore an open and persistent teaching
of the New Testament. In the gospels and in the epis
tles alike both worlds are kept in view. In any true
conception of facts, the man who is best fitted to meet
the duties and responsibilities of life here and now is
best fitted to meet the Lord face to face in the great
hereafter. So the man who is best fitted for translation
into the joy and glory of the invisible realm is best fitted
for witnessing for Christ and helping our humanity
while yet under these earthly limitations. The two
ideas go together. The Scriptures never commit the
folly of attempting to separate them, or to lay stress
on one at the expense of the other.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told men in what
temper they must walk if they would fulfil the law and
be the true children of the Father. But in telling them
this He did not hesitate to direct their attention to the
heavenly recompense they would be sure to receive if
they were faithful. It did not seem to Jesus to be lower
ing the standard of action to present and press such a
consideration; nor did it seem to Him to be beneath the

STANDING FAST IN THE LORD 245
dignity of men to be influenced by such a consideration.
" For great is your reward in heaven."
Paul was filled with gratitude to God in behalf of the
Colossian disciples because of the hope which was laid
up for them in the heavens. They had a motive in their
Christian life which he did not hesitate to locate beyond
the grave.
This same apostle had an intense longing to depart
and be with Christ, — to be with Christ, that is, in some
closer and more intimate sense than is possible to one
who is still in the flesh, which he thought was far bet
ter; and his soul seemed to be always in a glow of en
thusiastic anticipation in view of the disclosures to be
made to him, and the happiness to be realized when he
should see no longer in a mirror darkly, but face to face,
and know no longer in part, but even as also he had
been known.
Peter speaks of an inheritance, to which men have a
living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead, which is incorruptible, and undeflled,
and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for those
who by the power of God are guarded through faith
unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last times.
It is not difficult to conceive the greeting one would
have met had he ventured to suggest to the Great
Teacher and the inspired apostles that they make no
reference to the life beyond the grave in their efforts to
get human souls, blind and sinful and earth=bound, into
right relations with God. A man who has faith in the
Son of God may be never so earnest and whple=souled
and glad in his Christian services here in this world, yet
it will be well=nigh out of the question for him and

246 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ought to be out of the question altogether, not to
think, and to think at times with intense longing, of the
crown of righteousness which is laid up for him, and
which he is to receive when the good fight has been
fought out and his earthly course has been fin
ished. As a matter of fact this uplift of the eyes to
heaven, and the feeling that heaven could not be far
away, has been one of the supports of toilers in the
midst of their unappreciated toils, and of martyrs in
prison and at the stake. It is not well to try to be finer
and loftier than the Scriptures. Motives which holy
souls in all the ages have felt and employed we may
not disdain.
Besides man was created for an endless destiny.
Within him there throbs the pulse of an immortal
being. Heaven is man's true home. Dying to the
Christian is only a home^going. We are on this side of
the Valley of the Shadow only for a moment. We are
on the other side for the measureless periods of all the
future. It is as natural and fit for the children of the
Heavenly Father and the heirs of heaven to think about
heaven and talk about it, as for sojourners in a foreign
land to think and talk about their own country. Men
abroad are often homesick, and in their loneliness they
have resort to the thought of what awaits them at the
hearthstone when their sight=seeing is over, or the duties
which have detained them are discharged. It is only
by overcoming a sense of one's heavenly destiny that
one can escape thoughts of heaven.
It is, therefore, a right thing to direct the worn and
weary to find comfort in the assurance that a rest re-
maineth unto the people of God. It is a right thing to
urge the bitterly afflicted to remember that in a certain

STANDING FAST IN THE LORD 247
sense even the severest affliction is light, and is only for
a moment; and that it works for them more and more
exceedingly an eternal weight and glory. It is a right
thing to press and persuade souls, if possible, to seek the
things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the
right hand of God; and to set their minds on the things
that are above, in preference to setting them on things
that are upon the earth.
As it is a right thing to direct and urge and press
men and women to do these things; so it is aright thing
for men and women to make much of heaven in their
thoughts and longings and aspirations; and to find
strength and satisfaction in the hope which is as an
anchor of the soul. Like Jesus the disciples of Jesus
may endure their crosses in the thought of the joy that
is set before them.
II. In the second place it is only by standing fast in
the Lord, that a believer can show proper gratitude for
his salvation and meet his responsibilities and do his
work and realize in character and destiny the high end
for which he has been led to believe.
1. The man who sincerely accepts Christ for his
Savior, whether he does it in the silence and privacy of
his own soul, or in an open and bold confession before
the world, owes it to Christ to hold to Him unto the end.
No service was ever rendered to a human soul like that
which was rendered by the Incarnate Son of God on the
cross of Calvary. One who has ever had any sense or
appreciation of this service in his own heart is bound by
obligations the strongest conceivable to make this
sense of appreciation evident by a life steady and
straightforward in its fidelity. Christ is not an unstable
Savior, here to==day and there to=morrow. Christ is not a

248 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
Savior of moods, approachable and tender at one time,
and inaccessible and stern at another time. He is a
steadfast Savior. He is a Savior who is the same
yesterday, to=day and forever. One who loves Him and
trusts Him always knows where to find Him. The dis
ciple ought to be like his Master,— steadfast, true and
loyal in his discipleship. It is a harm to his own soul,
and it works wide=spread mischief, for a man who has
ever known anything of the pardoning grace of Jesus,
and more especially if he has ever had recognition
among the followers of Jesus, to be up and down in his
religion, and capricious in his services. Such conduct is
a pronounced and flagrant dishonor to our ascended
Lord. How it must pain the heart of Jesus to see one
of His disciples, fickle, wavering, inconstant, in his
Christian life.
2. Besides unless one stands fast in the Lord, firm,
faithful and resolute in his devotion, he will do nothing,
or next to nothing, to spread abroad a knowledge of the
Lord, and to build up His Kingdom in the world.
This is true in all spheres, that there must be an aim and
steadiness to an aim in order to any worthy achieve
ment. In business, in politics, in literature, in science,
in art, in working out reforms, the man who does not
know his own mind, or who, knowing what he wants,
does not hold to it with a fixed and determined purpose,
will bring nothing to pass. " Unstable as water, thou
shalt not have the excellency."
True everywhere else, it is eminently true in the realm
of work for the salvation of men and the promotion of
righteousness, that it is only by choosing objects and
making plans and holding steadily on, that good is ac
complished. If these brethren at Philippi were to en-

STANDING FAST IN THE LORD 249
large their fellowship; if they were to carry the love of
Christ into hearts and homes and circles where this love
had never been known before; if they were to reach out
into the surrounding regions of Macedonia, and make
other cities and communities glad with the same glad
ness with which their own souls had been filled, they
must be as fixed in their faith as stars in their courses,
and hold to their intent of loyalty to Christ and fidelity
in His service, with the uniformity and grip of the law
of gravitation. The Christian man who is "hurrah=
boys" in the morning, and is down in the dumps in the
evening; who is in his place in the church on Sunday,
or with his class at the Sunday=school, or at the prayer=
meeting, or at his mission work, when he feels like it,
and is not there when he does not feel like it; or who is
loud=mouthed and resolute for high standards of living
till principle costs something, and then is ready to abate
his pretensions and drop down into compromise with the
world, is just simply no good, He is an impediment to
the progress of the Kingdom, He is a reproach to
faith. He is a burden for the Church to carry. To all
such persons the Church owes a duty. It owes the duty
of forbearance, of patient and helpful dealing, and of
sympathy. But so far as strength is concerned, and
moral force in a community, and anything like effective
ness in aggressive enterprises for Christ, the Church
would be mightier by far than it now is, or can be, were
all these vacilating ones swept from the rolls at once.
It is the men who stand fast in the Lord, — who stand
fast from year to year, who stand fast in storms as well
as sunshine, who stand fast when others waver and
yield and give up, who count and set Christianity for
ward.

250 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
3. Standing fast, moreover, — standing fast in the
Lord, is the condition which must be observed if one
would come to anything in the way of Christian attain
ment and character and be secure in his expectation of
a life of blessedness in the presence of Christ and in the
fellowship of redeemed and sanctified souls beyond the
grave. This, doubtless, was the main thought in the mind of
the apostle when he penned this counsel to his "brethren
beloved," — their own good. He wanted to be certain
they were not losing out of their own souls the peace
and joy and hope they had found in believing in Christ,
and that they were not taking any attitudes or courses
which would operate against their spiritual development,
or put their future in jeopardy. Their souls were pre
cious to him, and he wished to hear of their growth, and
to be sure of meeting them in heaven.
It is impressive to note how frequent in the New Tes
tament is the exhortation to firmness in one's Christian
position. In Paul's letters alone the phrase "stand fast" is
found six times. He urges the Corinthians to " stand
fast" in the faith. He urges the Galatians to "stand
fast " in liberty. In his second Epistle to the Thessa
lonians he urges these brethren to "stand fast" in the
great traditions, or truths, in which they had been
taught. In the first chapter of this Epistle to the Phil
ippians he pleads that those to whom he writes may
"standfast" in the unity of the Spirit and of the faith
of the Gospel. In the first Epistle to the Thessalonians,
as here again in this Epistle to the Philippians, his
strenuous word is " stand fast " in the Lord. " Stand
fast" in the faith; "stand fast "in liberty; " stand fast"

STANDING FAST IN THE LORD 251
in fellowship and in activity; "standfast" in the light
and joy and power of the truth; "stand fast" in the
Lord, — these are the ringing watchwords which the
apostle sounds in the ears of believers. Por their own
spiritual comfort and growth, as well as for the glory of
their Lord and efficiency in His service, they are not to
be miserable deserters from the ranks of the army which
is lead by the Captain of our salvation; nor indifferent
spectators to the terrific struggle which is going on in the
world between light and darkness and good and evil;
nor trifiers in the midst of these awful tragedies of life
in which souls are swept out by the undertow of world
liness and vice and lost in the fathomless depths; but
firm=footed, unyielding, aggressive, — never changing po
sition except to move forward into new and higher
knowledge, into new and firmer faith, and into a new
and closer identification with Jesus Christ.
To the same effect are many other teachings and in
junctions in the New Testament. Above all it is not to
be forgotten that it was Jesus who said: "He that en-
dureth to the end, the same shall be saved." If a man
will not stand fast; if he will not hold on and hold out;
if he will not continue patiently in his well=doing; if he
will not inform his soul with a resolute determination to
be steadfast, and to go straight ahead without turning to
the right or left till these earthly pulses cease their beat
ing, he can have no assurance of an entrance, and least
of all assurance of an abundant entrance into the ever
lasting Kingdom. To begin is much; but it is vastly
more to keep on. To begin is much; but it amounts to
nothing unless the beginning is followed up. " He that
endureth to the end, the same shall be saved."
The temptations to instability in these times of ours

252 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
are varied and subtle. There has never been an age
in which there were not skeptical tendencies. The con
fiict between the material and the spiritual is not a new
one, but an old one — as old as man. But the form of
the conflict, and so the form of the danger, changes
from period to period, and from land to land.
We are confronted just now with two perils.
We are confronted with the perpetual and universal
peril which grows out of the ambitions and rivalries of
life, whereby personal religion is neglected, and the
ideals of character are lowered. All feel this.
We are confronted, too, under current investigations
into the Scriptures, and the impulse given in the last
quarter of a century to the study of comparative relig
ions with the peril of thinking that after all one form
of faith and worship may be about as good as another.
But against all these undermining and disintegrat
ing influences, and face to face with every assault
which is made on the reasonableness of our trust in
God, we are to stand fast and endure unto the end.
Paul knew whom he believed; and he knew with an
increasing confidence, that in accepting Christ, and
building all his hopes of forgiveness and of everlasting
blessedness on Christ, he was linking his interests to a
life which is eternal. Men through all the centuries
since He was here, have been making their attacks on
Jesus. They have written Him down; they have cour
teously bowed Him out; they have smitten Him with
an overwhelming ridicule — so they have fancied; but
there He stands in spite of it all, patient, compassionate,
serene, abiding, the light of the world, and the life of
the world, and the hope of glory.

STANDING FAST IN THE LORD 253
How, now, may men "stand fast" in the large and
secure way the apostle contemplates?
Precisely in the way the apostle suggests. It is to
be " in the Lord." " Stand fast in the Lord." There
is no assured standing for anybody out of the Lord.
There is no overcoming and defeating anybody who is
in the Lord. His hand holds and upholds. His arms
were once outstretched on the cross; but they have in
them the sinews of the Almighty, and when they em
brace us it is with a strength which no satanic agency can
break. Just as long as we are " in the Lord," — in Him
without any reluctance or wavering, we shall have the
quick insight to distinguish between the right and the
wrong, the moral force to repel evil and hew our way
through all entanglements, and the faith and courage
to press right forward till our hands lay hold on the
prize and our heads are garlanded with victory.
It is these stand=fast characters who come to be very
beautiful to look upon, and very useful in society. The
men who are up and down, off the hooks and out of
sorts, under every little provocation, may have special
gifts; genius even, and many good qualities; but they
are uncomfortable associates in any sort of business
or undertaking, and they are not likely to make any
very marked or abiding impression by their lives. But
men who are steadfast in their faith and in their fidel
ity to truth and duty, and whose opinions and princi
ples and motives of action and purposes to=day are very
sure to be their opinions and principles and motives of
action and purposes to=morrow, even though their pasts
are not brilliant, and their lives are not lived in the pub
lic eye, will score a record of general respect and of

254 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
usefulness which any honest person might covet, and
best of all, will be sure to win the " Well done " of
our Lord at last.

Cbristianits an5 Moman.

"I exhort Suodia, and I exhort Syntyche, to be of the same mind
in the Lord. Yea, I beseech thee also, true yokefellow, help these
women, for they labored with me in the gospel, witb. Clement also,
and the rest of my fellow=workers, whose names are in the book of
life.— PftiJ. i: 2-3.

XVI.
CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN.
The subject matter of this passage is such that it
may very naturally be made the basis for discussing the
question of Christianity and Woman, — or the services
which have been rendered by Christianity to woman
and by woman to Christianity,
It is perhaps not quite fortunate nor fair, that the
benefits woman has received from Christianity and the
services she has rendered to Christianity in return, and
which have been so conspicuous on both sides, should
be introduced for consideration over against the back
ground of a woman's quarrel. For this is what we have
here — a serious misunderstanding and disagreement be
tween two women who have been forward in their Chris
tian activity. It would not seem to be a promising out
look. But the fact loses much of its untoward significance
when it is remembered that men as well as women, and,
on a general average through the apostolic period and
after centuries, men much oftener than women, have
needed to be exhorted to put away strife, and become
mutually reconciled, and show toward each other the
spirit of forbearance and brotherly love. It is not be
cause men are men, nor because women are women, that
such fatal facility is exhibited for falling into moods of
alienation and difference; but for the reason that there
is such a vast amount of explosive material lodged in
257

258 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
our human nature. This, and this alone, explains why
good people, — people otherwise intelligent and conse
crated, so frequently fly asunder.
Be this as it may, however, Euodia and Syntyche
were at odds. They had been friends, and had attached
themselves to the apostle, and awakened his grateful re
gard, by their labors with him in the Gospel, and he
wanted them to be friends again. Not the slightest in
timation is given touching the ground of the trouble;
nor is it possible from the language to infer which one
Paul thought the more to blame, He was too wise for
this. He put them both together, and toward both he
used exactly the same form of entreaty, "I exhort
Euodia and I exhort Syntyche," The end to which he
exhorted them was that they might "be of the same
mind in the Lord." Only in the Lord could they hope
to be at one; for quite likely their temperaments dif
fered, and their views of the work to be done, and the
best way of doing it; but when they thought of the
Lord, and what He wanted them to be, it would be diffi
cult for them not to be at one.
Paul was the more earnest in this, because he knew
how much harm would come to the common cause were
two of the leading women workers of the Church to fall in
to antagonism and refuse to co=operate. It would be only
a little while before there would be rival parties, and
mutually jealous factions, and criminating and re=crimi-
nating whisperings, and open, and possibly irreconcila
ble, enmities. There would be Euodia and her follow
ers, and Syntyche and her followers; and the strength
and enthusiasm of the Church would go into miserable
bickerings, instead of united and vigorous work for
Christ, The end, probably, would be a divided fellow-

CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN 259
ship, and much scandal, and mischief without measure.
Nor did the apostle think it enough to express his own
earnest and loving solicitude for a thorough making=up
between these two noteworthy women; but he sought
to have others join him in the same commendable en
deavor. "Yea, I beseech thee also, true yokefellow,
help these women." Who this "true" or "genuine
yokefellow " was is only a matter of conjecture. Ram
sey, as we know, thinks it was Luke. Dr. Light
foot, in his admirable commentary on Philippians,
thinks it likely Epaphroditus, who was to bear this let
ter into Macedonia, is the person intended. With all
deference to a scholar so able and eminent it seems to
me this cannot be the right guess. Paul knew how to
express a thing like this with clearness and accuracy.
If he had meant to designate the bearer of the letter in
the words: "Yea, I beseech thee also, true yokefellow,"
as if the expression were an aside whisper injected
into the epistle, he would not have put it in this way;
but he would have said: " I have asked him or I shall
ask him, who is to carry this message from me to you,
to do the best he can in the same direction." Meyer's
contention looks more reasonable when he insists that
the word here translated — "yokefellow" is a proper
name — Syzygus, — and that this name was borne by one
who had been in close association with Paul in his
work, that he was at Philippi when the letter was writ
ten, and was well known in the city as deserving the
high praise bestowed upon him as "genuine." Beyond
suppositions of this sort we cannot go.
We simply do not know who the man was. We know
only, as has already been said, that it was somebody to
whom the apostle was very much attached, and in whose

260 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
tact and grace he had large confidence, and with whom
he had gone in and out in his labors in the Lord in a
delightfully intimate companionship.
He wanted this man, and he wanted Clement, — for
this appears to be the more probable connection of the
words — "with Clement also" — and others of the cher
ished group whose names, though he does not mention
them, are recorded on high, — " and the rest of my fel-
low=workers whose names are in the book of life," to co^
operate in securing the same blessed result. He wanted
peace and harmony in the Church; for he knew that
only through peace and harmony could the Church be
efficient, and exercise an influence in the community
which would be for the saving and edifying of souls,
and the renovating of life in all its forms and relations.
To be successful in his object Paul aimed to enlist the
sympathies and efforts of those identified with the
Church, and who were personally concerned with its
good name and usefulness. Only as they helped could
he hope for the re=establishment of love and unity.
But the point of special significance in this section of
Scripture is the recognition given to women, and the
warm commendation their services receive. "Help
these women, for they labored with me in the Gospel. "
They were workers in the Church. They aided in
communicating the truth. They were active agents in
the establishment of Christianity in the city. Two of
the leaders in this band of women had fallen into a mis
understanding, and needed a word of timely counsel,
and the wise and tender intervention of friends; but
they had made a record for themselves of activity and
efficiency. They had entered into sympathy with the
mission on which the apostle had come among them, and

CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN 261
they had lent their energies of heart and hand to the
blessed business of acquainting souls with Christ, and
winning them into His faith and life.
The priceless service Christianity has rendered to
woman has come to be one of the familiar thoughts of
the time. Whatever honor and infiuence woman had
under the old dispensation, or whatever place and power
were assigned her in any of the civilizations which lay
outside the Old and New Testament economies, or what
ever distinction and eminence individual women may
have achieved in any of the nations whose history has
come down to us, it is certain the system of truth and
duty given to the world by Jesus of Nazareth laid the
foundations broad and deep on which woman was to
build the superstructure of a free, large, wholesome life.
Christianity emancipated woman, and set her on the
way to realizing her highest possibilities. All the proof
of this which is necessary is to institute parallels be
tween the condition of women in Christian lands and in
other lands.
It was here at Philippi, amongst the people who were
drawn to the faith of Christ by the ministry of Paul,
that the transition for women from the new to the old
order of things received its first and most signal illus
tration. It has been conjectured by some of the
writers that the women of Macedonia held a higher po
sition and exercised a more potent influence, if not in
all spheres, yet in the sphere of religion, than was usual
in the Greek world. The remains of ancient inscriptions
are cited in support of this view. If this is true it goes
to show what an advantage the apostle had in the
customs and public opinion of the country in carrying
to them a Gospel whose fundamental principle is that

262 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
under it there can be neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor
free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.
Race prejudice, sex prejudice, and the prejudice of
nationality and social condition and power were all over
ridden in the outcome of the apostle's preaching in
this Macedonian city.
Of the three typical conversions at Philippi, one,
Lydia, was an Asiatic; another, the soothsaying maid,
was a Greek; and the third, the jailor, was a Roman.
It was a cosmopolitan representation. The universality
of the truth as it is in Jesus, and its suitableness to all
classes and conditions and tribes of people found a
striking exemplification in the variety of individuals
who were led into the one common faith of the Son of
God, by these opening missionary labors in Europe.
It was prophetic of what was to take place on a larger
scale in the coming centuries. Asiatic conservatism,
Greek culture, Roman power, were to yield to the
attractions of the cross.
But the first one to accept Christ, and to yield her
life up to the constraining love of Christ was a woman.
It is a brief but wonderfully beautiful story, "And on
the Sabbath we went forth without the gate by the river
side, where we supposed there was a place of prayer;
and we sat down and spoke unto the women which were
come together. And a certain woman named Lydia, a
seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one that wor
shipped God, heard us, whose heart the Lord opened, to
give heed unto the things that were spoken by Paul.
And when she was baptized, and her household, she
besought us, saying: If ye have judged me to be faith
ful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there.
And she constrained us," That was the beginning of a

CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN 263
movement for the amelioration of woman whose force is
not yet spent.
The second one, of the typical class, to accept Christ
and find the renewal of life and outlook in Him, was a
slave. This story, too, is a brief one, but it is strangely
pathetic, and brimming with hope for all who are in
distress, either inward or outward or both. "As we
were going to the house of prayer, a certain maid, hav
ing a spirit of divination met us, which brought her
masters much gain by soothsaying. The same follow
ing after Paul and us cried out, saying: These men are
servants of the Most High God, which proclaim unto
you the way of salvation. And this she did for many
days. But Paul, being sore troubled, turned and said
to the spirit: I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ
to come out of her. And it came out that very hour, "
She was freed from her inward bondage, and this
opened the way for freedom from outward bondage.
From that day to this Christianity has worked for the
liberation of all slaves, and the endowing of all human
beings everywhere with the sacred right of self=owner-
ship. It is to be observed, however, that the slave who was
delivered from the evil possession which made her a
piece of valuable property to her evil masters, was also
a woman. Slavery was never so hard on man as it was
on woman. Slavery was never so degrading to man as
it was to woman. Here, combined in a single instance,
was the woman who was to be set forward and made the
bright particular ornament of the home and the fairest
product of a ripened Christian civilization, and the slave
whose shackles were to be struck from her limbs, and
whose rights and privileges were to be enlarged until

264 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
kings and aristocracies must bow in acknowledgment
of them.
Had one possessed of the prescient ability to discover
effects in causes, and to see the end from the beginning,
been standing there and looking on, when Lydia and the
soothsaying maid came under the power of Christ, he
might have said: "This means the instruction and ele
vation of woman, till, as in the picture of Paradise, she
stands once more side by side with him, and on the
basis of a perfect equality with man; and it means the
instruction and elevation of the over=weighted and op
pressed, till, in the sight of the law as in the sight of
God, one man is as good as another man, with a preroga
tive just as unquestioned to make the most of his facul
ties and opportunities," For this is what was to follow
in due time. It is a question with me whether there
was ever another conversion in the history of our Chris
tianity, which was at once so typical and prophetic as
this of the woman=slave of Philippi.
There were women of high grade in the Oriental na
tions; and their names flash out now and then on pages
of history which are otherwise dark with records of
cruelty and degradation and disdain. The self=respect
and dignity and true womanliness of Queen Vashti,
which she wore like a necklace of radiant jewels, would
be an ornament to female character in any age or among
any people. But while particular women were so much,
woman was nothing in the Oriental nations.
There were women in Greece, — specimens the most
splendid in intellectual abilities and training, and the
names of some of these women will never perish from
literature. It is a peculiar fact, however, and one to
which Lecky, in his " History of European Morals,"

CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN 265
calls special attention, that in the legendary or poetical
period which Homer represented, and whose spirit was
carried over into the writings of the later tragedians,
woman occupied a much higher position than in the
later historical period. In proof of the high ideals of
womanhood which were cherished, and of the esteem in
which women were held in the dim ages before history be
gan, Lecky cites, along with other examples: " The con
jugal tenderness of Hector and Andromache; the unwear
ied fidelity of Penelope, awaiting through the long revolv
ing years the return of her storm=tossed husband, who
looked forward to her as the crown of all his labors; the
heroic love of Alcestis, voluntarily dying that her husband
might live; , . . the joyous, modest, and loving Nau-
sicaa, whose figure shines like a perfect idyll among the
tragedies of the Odyssey," In proof of what woman
actually was, when she had emerged from the dimness
of the unhistoric ages, and had come up where the
search=light of a trustworthy investigation could be
turned upon her, and of the place she held in the com
mon regard of society, he turns to the records which
have come down to us from that wonderful center and
source of culture, the old Greek world. Notwithstand
ing the remarkable instances of sweetness and fidelity
and moral excellence in woman to be found in the Greek
poetry, yet in their traditions, in their laws, in their cus
toms, and in the whole economy of their life, woman
was accorded an inferior standing. If she was, a virtu
ous wife she was kept in seclusion, and had little com
panionship except with her slaves. Only by living a
life of license could she enjoy the benefits of freedom and
education. Women were much, but woman was little;
and her place was a low one in the social scale. Nothing

266 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
would have astonished Socrates and Plato more than to
see women sustaining such relations to their husbands,
and in association with their husbands, to the world, as
Mrs. Browning, or Mrs. Gladstone, or Mrs. Gulick in
Spain, or Mrs. Riggs among the Indians, or Mrs, Good-
ell in the discharge of pastoral duties, or the wife of
the Earl of Aberdeen.
The reader of Roman history comes upon some illus
trious names of women. In some respects the condition
of woman in the City of the Seven Hills [was in ad
vance of her condition at Athens. The law treated her
better. The doors of social life were wider open to her
entrance. She had more liberty. At the same time the
women of Rome were exceedingly corrupt; and their
corruption was due largely to the contempt in which
they were held by men. The corruption increased till
the empire fell. There were women who were in the
highest degree reputable and distinguished, but woman
counted for little in the common estimate of public
opinion. In his "Gesta Christi," Charles Loring Brace well
says: "The current opinion in the cultivated classes of
the Roman Empire, if we may judge from poets, satir
ists, and fragments of speeches handed down, was of
profound contempt for woman in the moral and intel
lectual aspect. There were of course happy marriages,
and many instances of affection for sisters and female
relations or friends, and the annals of Rome presented
not a few examples of very heroic and superior women;
but in general women merited in their conduct and their
lack of intelligence in the imperial era, the contempt
and censure so freely showered on them by men." Yes,
But it is still true the women were only what the men

CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN 267
made them. They were all of them, men and women
alike, living under a civilization which had no re
generative, nor even self=sustaining, energy in it.
It was Christianity — the Christianity which Paul
preached at Philippi, and which Lydia and the sooth
saying slave maid embraced, that exalted woman to the
honor and influence now accorded her in Christian
countries. Laws and governments and forms of society
have changed with the progress of the centuries; but
woman has not ceased to wear the halo with which
Christianity invested her, and her movement has been
upward. Maine in his " Early History of Institutions,"
" admits," so says Brace, "that among all the influences
which have made the two great branches of the Aryan
race so different, the Hindoos on the one side and the
Europeans on the other, the one most powerful in form
ing the civilization of each is, that the one branch stead
ily carried forward the series of reforms which elevated
woman, and the other, though going a little way, recoiled
from them." One was Christian, and the other was
not. The movement of woman is still onward. Her posi
tion in the world was never so assured and commanding
as at this moment. Never before were so many avenues
of work open to her; never so many opportunities for
culture; and never was she exercising her tact and
strength in so many helpful directions and putting forth
her energy in so many spheres of beneficent activity.
A great French writer has said that the nineteenth
century is woman's century. It is. But the nineteenth
century is not so much woman's century as the twentieth
will be. The advance which had been registered will
never stop until man's rights and woman's rights are

268 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
measured by the same everlasting standard of equal and
exact justice, and the sacred privilege is accorded her
to make the most of herself, and to employ her talents in
forms of industry to which they are best suited.
Our modern phrase — the "new woman" — is not yet
altogether clear of a certain tone of reproach. It is still
the fashion in some quarters to speak of her in accents
which indicate serious apprehension or ill=disguised
contempt. But such language has an antique flavor;
and one always feels he has heard it before. If in the
use of her larger freedom the "new woman" occasion
ally makes herself ridiculous, and gets brought up with
round turns of caricature, it is no more than has been
happening to men ever since the days of Adam. Wid
ening intelligence, good sense, an increasing feeling of
responsibility, and a cultivated taste, may be confldently
counted on to correct any little idiosyncrasies in con
duct. At all events woman is here in a new aspect and rela
tion to society. Whether she be what we technically call
the " new woman " or not, woman has come to have a new
place and a new right and a new power under our Chris
tian civilization. One of the writers already quoted, in
speaking of the position actually held by women under
the Roman system, and the position to which she was
assigned under the faith of Jesus, uses this language:
" It was the continual reproach of the early enemies of
the Christians that they put women in so high a posi
tion. Women had from the first a strong influence in
the Church; the earliest converts from all ranks of
society were women; and the example of Christ and the
apostles has given the keynote to all modern civiliza-

CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN 269
tion in the tender respect and dignity thrown around "
woman. Mrs. Potter Palmer did no better single service in her
brilliant career in connection with the Columbian Ex
position than when at a little conference she put in
substance this searching question to Vivekenanda:
"Why does not your religion do something for women ?"
In its bearing on a fundamental difference between
Hindooism and Christianity nothing could be more sig
nificant than the answer: "We do not wish to do what
you call 'something for women'; woman is as we want
her to be." By the " we " he meant, of course, himself
and other men. Woman in India is as the men of
India who are under sway of the prevailing type of re
ligion in that country wish to have her. Everybody
knows just what this means. It means a woman ignor
ant, degraded, cruelly oppressed, and excluded from the
free intercourse with society which stands for so much
in the way of best development for all intelligent and
refined natures. It means a woman so cramped and
despised and ill-treated that, without radical changes,
she can never be the center and ornament of a sweet,
beautiful home.
It takes Christianity to develop woman into her
highest and finest type. This Christianity has been do
ing, not steadily, not always consistently, but doing
from the outset. Wherever Christian ideas and princi
ples have failed to reach or to dominate, woman remains
in substantially the same estate, and under substantially
the same disabilities, to which she was assigned by the
pagan civilization. Wherever Christ has admission into
the domestic and social life of a people, woman has
been promoted; and her present and her prospective

270 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
exaltation among the most progressive and cultivated
nations of the world is the outcome of the transforming
energy of Jesus Christ.
While Christianity, as embodied and expressed in the
main through the activity of the churches, has been do
ing this work for women, what now, have women been
doing in behalf of the churches, and through the
Church, to advance the great ends for which we have
Christianity ?
1. Women have added largely to the numbers of the
Church. Had women been as backward to accept and confess
Christ as men have been, whatever influence the Chris
tian churches have been able to exert, through impres
sions derived from the bulking of numbers, would have
been much lessened. Too great stress is not to be laid
on this. But if we are to have churches we must have
somebody to constitute them; and if it is a merit to take
an open stand for Christ, and to exert a positive in
fluence for Christ, so far as can be done by taking an
open stand, then this merit must be accorded to woman
in an eminent degree. For women are largely in ex
cess of men in all our lists of members. There are
many churches which never would have been organized,
or having been organized would have been forced to
disband, had it not been for the number of faithful
women who were ready to identify their names and lives
with them. "Why is it ?" does someone ask. "Why is
it that the women are readier than the men to confess
Christ, and unite themselves to His people?" In my
judgment there are two answers to the question, either
one of which would be enough.
The first answer is that women are more open, in gen-

CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN 271
eral, both in mind and heart, to divine influence.
"Whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto
the things which were spoken of Paul." The second
answer is that women have more moral courage — not
physical, but moral courage — than men; and they are
more likely to follow their convictions.
2. Women have very greatly increased ihe devo
tional spirit of the churches.
They have helped to keep spirituality alive, and to
swell the currents of it. It was a significant fact — sig
nificant in its retrospect and significant in its prospect,
that Paul found these women at Philippi gathered by
the riverside for prayer. Think of the volume of prayer
which has ascended, like incense from a sacred altar, dur
ing these Christian centuries, from individual women and
from small circles of women, into the ear of God in
thanksgiving and in supplication for the divine blessing.
It is hard work to keep the Church from swinging over
to the world and coming under its power altogether; but
it would be a great deal harder were it not for the sys
tematic and earnest cryings from devout women for the
presence and influence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts
of believers. There is more faith; there is more trust;
there is more resignation to the divine will; there is
more of soft walking before God; there are more open
Bibles; there are more family altars; there are more
religious interviews and conversations; there are more
who hold fast in the midst of temptation to the strong
hand of Christ; there are more to whom heaven seems
near and precious; there are more to stand on the right
side in all great moral struggles; there are more to put
doubts and questions behind them and go straight on in
the paths of everlasting life, because of what devout

272 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
women have done, and are all the time doing, to create
a spiritual atmosphere about them, and inform the
Church with the light and love and hope of Jesus Christ.
8. Women have rendered an invaluable service to
the Christian Church in the minds they have molded
and the characters they have shaped for the highest
forms of usefulness in spreading abroad a knowledge
of the truth and advancing the Divine Kingdom.
Here is a narrative of what a believing and faithful
woman did centuries ago to set the interests of the
Christian religion forward. By her efforts and influence
she put a man into the sacred ministry whose power in
his own day was marvelous, and whose name and work
are still forces for good in the circles of earnest and
aspiring souls. It is the story of Anthusa and her boy,
John Chrysostom — the " golden=mouthe(i," who preached
with such effectiveness there at Constantinople fifteen
hundred years ago. His mother, at the early age of
twenty, lost her husband. From that time on till he was
ready for his active duties in life, she devoted herself to
the education of her son. Offers of marriage came to
her, but she refused them, that all her time and strength
and experience and culture might go to the faithful
training of this cherished son. Her intelligence and
piety gave direction to the boy's thoughts and charac
ter, and determined his destiny as a man. He appre
ciated the loving service; and he never permitted him
self to forget what he owed to maternal influence.
May it not be said, therefore, that a large share of the
credit for this wonderful man's service to the Church
ought to be given to his mother? But think for a mo
ment what it was to have had even the smallest measure
of influence in guiding a mind such as Chrysostom's

CHRISTIANITY AND ' WOMAN 273
into the ministry. Think for a moment what that meas
ure of influence has meant to the Church at large ever
since. But this is only one out of multitudes of similar
stories. The faces of nobody knows how many millions
of souls in these nineteen hundred years since the angels
sang their songs over Bethlehem have been turned
toward the light and toward loving service by the mold
ing influence of sincere and consecrated women.
This influence which mothers exert in their homes,
and over their own children is, however, only a small
share of the molding energy which has been exerted by
holy women in aid of the ends and objects for which
the Church has been established and equipped for work.
For consider what women have done to instruct minds
and turn thoughts toward Jesus Christ, as teachers, as
writers of essays and hymns and books — many of which
have been so helpful to others, Mrs, Stowe did a mag
nificent service for the Church of Christ throughout the
world when she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin." When
Mrs, Sarah Flower Adams penned " Nearer My God to
Thee," and gave it to the religious public, she furnished
wings to many a soul on which to rise into the high
places where God is seen and felt, Charlotte Elliott
condensed the duty and the privilege of every sinner
into a single stanza of a single hymn when she gave
shape to " Just as I am, without one plea," Two con
tributions, like these to the service of song in worship
are precious and abiding testimonies to the help which
has been rendered by women to devout feeling and utter
ance. Were we to take in all the contributions made
by women to religious literature, and to include in our
survey the wide influence women have exerted by their

274 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
character and example, the evidences of the value of
woman's service to Christianity would be overwhelming.
4. Women have multiplied the aggressive forces of
the Church, and made it possible for the Church to do
vastly more in winning souls into the light, and build
ing them up in righteousness, than could ever have
been done without their aid.
In evidence recall what women are doing in our Sun
day-schools, in benevolent organizations, in reform
movements, in missionary societies, to instruct the ig
norant, to regain the wandering and vicious, to stay the
tides of evil, and to fill the earth with the knowledge of
the glory of God.
Never was there such a service rendered to woman as
was rendered when Christianity was carried to her and
she accepted it. Never was a service better repaid than
Christianity has been by the magnificent work which
has been done for God and humanity by redeemed and
consecrated women.

Cbristian 5os.

"Rejoice in the Lord alway: again I will say. Rejoice." — Phil.
4:4.

XVII.
CHRISTIAN JOY.
With each face shining with gladness at thought of
the wonderful child who was born at Bethlehem so
near now to nineteen hundred years ago, and with many
carols and jubilant songs and the high strains of tri
umphant oratorios rolling from our lips, the occasion
would seem to be a suitable one for dealing with a
theme which is at once so pertinent and so full of per
manent interest, — the theme of — Christian Joy.
No birth into our race ever brought so much joy as
the birth of Jesus. No religion of which we have.
knowledge is so characterized by joy as the Christian
religion. The story of the life of the Son of Man on earth be
gins with the adoration and praise of shepherds, with
reverent and grateful offerings of gold and frankin
cense and myrrh by wise men of the East, and with mu
sic by the multitude of the heavenly host so lofty and
enchanting that the great refrain: "Glory to God in
the highest and on earth peace," still lingers in the
hearts and on the lips of men, and from age to age fills
the lives of increasing numbers with cheer and hope.
As we catch glimpses in apocalyptic vision of this same
Son of Man exalted to His high estate at the right
hand of the Majesty on high, it is still emotions of ex
ultant joy He is exciting in the breasts of those who are
277

278 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
round about Him; and the ten thousand times ten thou
sands and thousands of thousands sing their new song,
and with great and melodious voice declare: "Worthy is
the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power and
riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory
and blessing."
In assuming a bodily form Jesus knew humiliation.
Jesus bore burdens, — such burdens as none other ever
bore; for He bore the sin of an alienated and con
demned race. Jesus suffered. He became a suffering
Savior; and it is impossible to dissociate His name
from the agony and shame of the cross.
But Jesus when He came down to us from the Father
brought light and gladness into the world. As He
walked about amongst men, guiding the erring, healing
the sick, restoring the fallen, and forgiving the sins of
the lost and guilty. He diffused light and gladness.
The whole influence of His teaching and life and death
has been to cheer sad hearts with bright outlook, and to
substitute smiles for tears.
The counsel of the apostle, therefore, is in exact line
with the spirit of the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus
Christ is a Gospel of joy. It is impossible to enter
into any right conception of the incarnation of the Son
of God, and realize at all what it signifies, without ex
periencing sensations of joy.
Two points in the passage now before us call for em
phasis. 1. The rejoicing is to be constant.
" Rejoice in the Lord alway." It is to be joy every
where and all the time. Joy is the normal state of a
true disciple. Serious=mindedness and downright ear
nestness are not inconsistent with joy, any more than

CHRISTIAN JOY 279
giggling and cackling are necessarily expressions of joy.
Joy is deep. More often than otherwise joy is quiet.
But when it is present in the soul it lights up the whole
being, and makes one superior to morbid feelings and
melancholy forebodings and the whole over=clouding
brood of fears and misgivings with which even good
people sometimes darken the skies of life.
Temperaments differ. Some men are born with their
faces away from the sun, and the paths they walk are
always darkened by their own shadows. Other men are
naturally radiant in their disposition, and they catch
brightness from a thousand sources and they shed it all
about them. Some men have to be taken up bodily,
and carried across the ocean and set down in the pres
ence of a superb Italian sunset, before they can see
anything in the hue of the heavens to awaken admira
tion and stir enthusiasm. Other men are kindled into
raptures of delight as often as they behold the tiniest
cloud gilded with a sunbeam, or the day sinking to
rest amid the ordinary glories of evening. Some men
can never be induced to take an interest in plants and
flowers, much less to go into ecstasies over them, unless
in a botanic garden, or a greenhouse where tender spec
imens of home=growth and rare exotics are cultivated
and watched. Other men cannot look upon a leaf flut
tering in the breeze, or a lily resting on the bosom of
the still waters, or a daisy smiling up into their faces
through the grass, or a modest violet leaning over the
edge of some wandering brook, without well-nigh unut
terable thought of the wealth of beauty with which
God has adorned our world. Some men move about
amongst their fellows, receiving admiration and absorb
ing favors as if these were their natural right, and

280 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
without showing the slightest indication that their
hearts are filled with grateful joy at these tokens of re
gard. Other men respond, and their natures open out
in gladness, as blossoms open out and expose their
beauty and breathe abroad their fragrance at the soft
touch of the rays of the morning sun, at every move
ment of love and every expression of sympathy and
every smallest courtesy. There is a constitutional dif
ference among men in the terms on which they can be
made glad. As some men can be made benevolent
much more easily than other men, so some men can be
led into joy much more easily than other men.
Experiences differ. Some have much less disappoint
ment and sickness and pain and grief than others appear
to have. There are households which run along for
years, and even for decades of years, without a break.
The father and mother are there; and the children
are there; and no chair is vacant. There are other house
holds where the crape is often on the door; and be
reavement follows bereavement until they who are
on the other side of the river are more than they
who remain on this side. He has little knowledge of
life, and the awful struggle through which men and
women are sometimes called to pass, who fancies
that even the most devout and trusting souls have
no difficulty in keeping the heart in a mood of joy
while the face is wet with tears. When the festival
days come round, and all are at the family board, and
the hearthstone echos to the ring of the old familiar
laughter, and chambers and hall are full of merriment,
it is not a trying task, or at any rate it ought not to be
a trying task, for the whole circle to be smiling
and glad. But when in place of fair forms there are

CHRISTIAN JOY 281
only memories, and voices of greeting and song have
sunk away into unbroken silence, and hands out
stretching and hungry for the touch of vanished hands
must close on emptiness, it is only as the heart is
buoyed up and consoled by something beyond the
power of earth to yield, that there can be joy.
When account of stock has been taken, and the books
of the establishment, manufacturing or commercial or
mining or what not, show a handsome balance on the
right side of the ledger, smiles to wreath the face are to
be expected. It would be a strange sort of person who
would not be happy in such circumstances. If, however,
the year has been one of disappointment and loss, and
plans have miscarried, and efforts the most earnest have
come to nought, and all ventures have failed, and the
story is one of disaster, it is only natural that one should
be downhearted, and find it hard to sing. The week is
an exceptional one which does not record the name of
some man who has been led to commit suicide on ac
count of sharp financial reverses and misfortunes. Un
less there be some strong staff of divinely inspired hope
on which they may lean, some inner girding of the soul
by the Spirit of God, some estimate of life which exalts
the invisible over the visible, and makes that which can
be taken from us by the chances of trade and traffic
infinitely small in comparison with that which cannot
be taken away if we are in vital fellowship with the
Father through faith in the Son, the inevitable influence
of earthly defeats and overturnings will be to burden
the heart, and cloud the face, and choke the spirit of joy.
" How shall we sing the Lord's songs in a strange land?"
Under want and disaster it is not easy to laugh and
sing.

282 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
Paul knew all this. He knew that the temperaments
of men differ, and that it is much easier for some men than
for others to resist tendencies to sadness, and to throw
off morbid feelings, and to move up and down the world
with smiling faces and cheery tones and fountains of
gladness all the time welling up in the heart. He knew
that the experiences of men differ, and that while some,
for a time at least, are exempt from the ills of life, others
have sorrow upon sorrow. The apostle himself was in
bonds when he wrote these words, and exposed to death
at any moment.
But for all this his word was — " Rejoice." " Rejoice
alway." Lest those to whom he wrote might not under
stand how earnest he was in this counsel, and how much
he meant by it, he repeated the charge: "Again I will
say — Rejoice." Joy — constant joy — was Paul's thought
and wish for all disciples.
II. The rejoicing is to be in the Lord.
"Rejoice in the Lord." " Rejoice in the Lord alway.'"
Here we come upon the philosophy and uncover the se
cret of a constant joy.
Quite likely as we have been revolving in our minds
this matter of a constant joy — keeping the soul all the
while, no matter what the outward circumstances may
be, in a frame and temper of joy, the question has more
than once leaped to the lips: "How do this?" "By
what method or process is it possible for one who is in
pain, or who is smitten and overturned by the mishaps
of life, or who has been plunged into the depths of bit
ter affiiction, to rise up into a consciousness of joy?"
The answer lies right here. It is in the Lord. Only
by making the Lord the ground of the rejoicing can one
be in mood to rejoice always. No other object is large

CHRISTIAN JOY 283
enough, nor inspiring enough, nor enduring enough, to
keep the soul warm and bright with a perpetual glad
ness. To no other source than the Lord can we look for
this help which will enable us to triumph over our own
feelings of grief and despondency when the waves have
gone over us and we are naturally sensible only of our
great losses.
Dr. Bacon of New Haven stood beside the open grave
of a son who was the pride and comfort of his heart, and
with clear voice joined with others in singing the doxol-
ogy. It was both touching and wonderful. But it was
not because his burden of grief was small, and his sense
of love light and transient; it was rather because Christ
was so much to him, and His promises so real, and the
life to come so sure and glorious to his anticipation,
that joy overmastered his sorrow, and made him sub
missive and strong and hopeful.
There is such a thing as sorrow conquering joy; and
there is such a thing as joy conquering sorrow. But
joy never conquers sorrow, and makes it serviceable to
the purifying and enlarging of spiritual life, — never re
ally triumphs in sorrow and over sorrow — until there is
a falling back on the living and ever=present and vic
torious Christ. "Joy is a fruit that will not grow
In nature's barren soil;
All we can boast till Christ we know.
Is vanity and toil.
But when the Lord has planted grace,
And made his glories known, —
There fruits of heavenly joy and peace
Are found, and there alone."
Through Him men may be conquerors and more than
conquerors, in all sorts of conflicts, and over all sorts of

284 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
foes, and under all sorts of disheartening conditions;
and while retreating outwardly they may advance in
wardly, and while they weep and moan they may yet be
joyful in the Lord. This was the prophet's high faith:
"For though the fig tree shall not blossom; neither
shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall
fail, and the field shall yield no meat; the flock shall be
cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the
stall; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the
Lord of my salvation."
It is not to be forgotten, however, that what the apos
tle enjoins, as it is what the prophet in the words just
quoted asserts, is joy in the Lord, It is not in the
things of the Lord; it is in the Lord. It is not in the
favors and gifts of the Lord; it is in what the Lord
Himself is in His being and attributes and character.
" Rejoice in ihe Lord."
People are ready enough to rojoice in the fruits of
the goodness of the Lord, — sometimes in association
with His name, and sometimes in utter forgetfulness of
His connection with these tokens of His loving^kind-
ness. They rejoice in fields waving with the wealth of
abundant harvests. They rejoice in orchards with laden
boughs and vineyards with large and luscious clusters.
They rejoice in prolific flocks and herds, and in mines
which yield them riches. They rejoice in a due propor
tion of rain and sunshine for their meadows, in the suc
cess of their looms, in prosperous breezes for their ships,
in markets for their merchandise, and in the good for
tune which comes to their undertakings. They rejoice in
their health, in their unbroken homes, in the friend
ships with which their lives are blessed, in the beauty,
it may be, which they observe in sky and forest and

CHRISTIAN JOY 285
mountain and valley and placid lake and singing brook
and in all the varied forms of wisdom and grace about
them. They rejoice in the works of literature and art
which men of genius have contributed to the stimula
tion and happiness of the race. They rejoice in the ad
vantages which a progressive civilization has put within
their reach. They rejoice in life, and in the abounding
opportunities of life, and in the multitudinous ways in
which God through nature ministers to their gratifica
tion. But how many strike through and go behind all these
manifestations of goodness, and fix their thought on the
Lord, and make Him the source and spring of their re
joicing? Were the Lord only a blind force, and not a
personal intelligence; only a blind force, and not a lov
ing sympathetic heart; only a blind force, and not an
over=brooding Presence, it would be different. We
might then appropriate whatever comes to us along the
lines of nature and providence, and neither offend any
divine power, nor degrade our own characters, by exhi
bitions of ingratitude. As it is we do our own souls
wrong, and we wrong Him in whom we live and move
and have our being, if we do not make the gift an occa
sion for going back to the Giver, and find in Him the
supreme and final reason for all our gladness. It is in
the Lord that we are to rest and exult.
If we think for a moment we shall see that the Lord
is an all=sufficient ground of rejoicing. There is noth
ing in Him which may not well excite admiration and
delight. " There is nothing," as has been fitly said by
another, " which our souls can want, our hope desire,
our happiness need, our immortality grasp, that is not
laid up in Him." In Him is perfect purity; in Him is

286 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
light; in Him is life; in Him is righteousness; in Him
is an unmeasured wealth of grace; in Him is a love
which overflows upon all mankind, and makes Him, in
virtue of His voluntary sufferings on the cross, the
Savior of a lost race.
It would be foolish to say there are no other sources
of joy than those found in the Lord. There are. There
is the joy which children know when life is just bloom
ing out, and there are no bitter memories to torment,
and the future is full of beckoning hopes. There is the
joy which strong men know when they have reached
maturity, and no infirmity plagues and hinders, and or
dinary burdens are tossed lightly off, and it is an exhil
aration to work and do "business. There is the joy
which grows out of success in life, — financial success,
political success, social success, literary success, profes
sional success, and some of these successes are such, —
so entirely the outcome of ability and foresight and in
dustry and conscience — that they may appropriately be
made the occasion of hearty congratulation. There is
the joy of friendship, such as is experienced where con
fidence is mutual, and love moves freely from heart to
heart, and thought quickens thought in mutual inter
play, and aspiration kindles aspiration, and this is often
a high and sacred joy.
But it needs no words to show that all joy of this
order, from the nature of the case, can be only tran
sient. Youth is very soon left behind. Maturity of
manhood gives place to age before one knows it. The
successes of yesterday become pleasant recollections,
but they can never be repeated. The brain becomes
dull and the heart sluggish, and the whole career passes
over into history, — if it has been a brilliant one to be

CHRISTIAN JOY 287
recounted for a little while, and then, with all the
others, to be remanded to oblivion.
When one rejoices in the Lord, he rejoices in that
which adds a keener zest to every true earthly joy, and
sanctifies it, and he also rejoices in that which abides
forever. For he who is identified by faith and love
with the Lord, and whose life is bound up with the life
of the Lord, has share in the Eternal.
The watchword of the Christmas season is joy, and
the spirit of it is joy. It is joy in the love of God. It
is joy in the gift of God. It is joy in the birth of the
Babe at Bethlehem. It is joy in what the wonderful
child grew to be. It is joy in a Savior who is willing
and able to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. It is joy in the new spirit which has
been shed abroad in humanity by the teaching and life
and death of the loving and faultless Jesus. It is joy in
the higher motives He has brought to bear on men, to
be pure and large and true, and the clearer evidence He
has furnished of the immortality of human souls. It is
joy in the fellowship of which our Lord assures us, and
the heavenly help He promises to lend us. Is not the
hour a suitable one for retuning our harps, and pitching
the music of our lives anew to the key=note of joy in
the Lord?

Cbristian jforbearance.

" Let your forbearance be known unto all men. The Lord is at
hand."— PAii. i: 5.

XVIII.
CHRISTIAN FORBEARANCE.
In building up character on the model furnished us
by the Perfect Man there is need of the passive as well
as the positive and aggressive virtues. Along with
strength there should be gentleness; along with deter
mination there should be considerateness; along with
the faculty of quick comprehension there should be
patience with those who are not so alert of mind; and
along with the sharpest kind of self»arraignment for
shortcomings there should be the tenderest charity for
those who seem to fail in the struggle with their own
easily besetting sins.
This is what the passage now in hand for considera
tion forces upon our attention; and the subject which
naturally grows out of it is: Christian Forbearance.
The primary meaning of the word here rendered
"forbearance" is most likely " yieldingness," — or the
disposition not to assert one's rights and push one's
claims to the uttermost. Our modern phrase — "sweet
reasonableness" — would come pretty near being an
exact interpretation of it. It is equity leaning to the
other side where one's own interests are involved. It is
fairness blossoming out into generosity when it comes
to be a question of giving up or insisting on our own
way in instances in which other ways are open. It is
the opposite of self ^assertion and contention, — the mood
of mind in which one is ready to make allowances and
surrender much for the sake of peace and harmony,
291

292 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
We get a further clew to what " forbearance " practi
cally signifies by looking a little into the associations
which the apostle has given to the word. Words, like
men, are often known by the company they keep. In
2 Cor. 10: 1, Paul says: "Now I Paul myself entreat
you by the meekness and gentleness," or "forbearance,"
"of Christ." " Meekness " and " forbearance " are here
made close of kin. In 1 Tim. 3: 3, Paul says: "but
gentle," or "forbearing," "not contentious." Here
" forbearance " and non=self=assertiveness or peaceable-
ness are brought together and made mutually interpre
tative. It is substantially the same in other passages.
This is the way James characterizes the wisdom which
is from above: it is "pure," "peaceable," "gentle," or
" forbearing," and " easy to be entreated." Peter com
bines the word with "good" — "good and gentle," or
"forbearing," and then puts them both in contrast with
" froward." It will be seen therefore, that the leading or underly
ing thought in " forbearance " is yielding, or as it has
been called after Luther in his Bible, "yieldingness."
The apostle was aiming to advance the " saints " to
whom his letter was addressed, both in the knowledge
and likeness of Christ. It was his passionate desire to
aid these brethren to a constant progress in reflecting
the mind and following the example of Christ. To do
this they must be much in prayer; they must stand fast
in the Lord; they must be full of faith; they must enter
more and more into the deep meaning of the incarna
tion and crucifixion; and they must rejoice in their
salvation and in their fellowship with the Lord. But
along with all this, if there was to be conformity to the
will and spirit of Jesus, and unity and efficiency and

CHRISTIAN FORBEARANCE 293
mutual helpfulness in the Church, there must be the
habit of forbearance. Forbearance must be set forth
and lived out in their lives.
Thus we see what it is. The man who is forbearing
in the sense in which forbearance is here urged will be
gentle, kind, considerate. He will not magnify trifles,
and make a stand on insignificant points, and lay down
the hard and fast rule that anybody who wants his aid,
or who is to work with him, must come to his terms and
fall in with his ideas; but many things which seem to
him to be wise both in aim and method, or which are
really his due, he will readily forego. He will not be
one to rule or ruin. He will illustrate, in some degree
at least, the lofty measure of self = abnegation and sweet
ness which is brought out when love sways the soul and
controls action, " Love suffereth long, and is kind;
. . . seeketh not her own, is not provoked, taketh not
account of evil, . . . beareth all things, believeth all
things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love
never faileth." This is forbearance, and forbearance in
its perfect manifestation.
Having seen what forbearance is and deflned it to our
thought, what, now, are some of the more pressing
reasons for the exercise of forbearance in our inter
course with those who are closely associated with us in
various forms of activity and with the world at large?
1. An obvious reason, and one which would seem io
be sufficiently commanding even were it left io stand
alone, is found in our own imperfections, and the
necessity we are under in virtue of our imperfections of
taxing more frequently, perhaps, than we suspect, the
forbearance of other people.

294 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
Were we absolutely faultless; were we never wrong in
our judgments; were we never anything but super
latively wise in our aims and methods; were we never to
act on impulse, but always in the clear white light of
high principle; were we never to yield so much as the
momentary control of our natures to some over=heated
and clamorous passion, but to keep all our faculties and
inclinations and energies well in hand, and our charac
ters without spot or blemish or any such thing; were we
never in word or deed to give occasion to associates and
on-lookers to put a charitable construction on what we
say and do, and not infrequently to exemplify a large
patience toward us, but were always so true and trans
parent and lofty in utterance and act that it would be
impossible for anybody seriously to question our motives
or our conduct, still we could not afford to be wanting
in the grace of forbearance. There is no likeness to
Christ without a large measure of forbearance. There
is no likeness to any worthy follower of Christ without
a large measure of forbearance.
But we are not faultless. There is not one of us who
does not have some crook in his mental and moral con
stitution; some deficiency or some over=plus to mar
symmetry and diminish comfort and test the courtesy
of the world. There is not one of us who can stand
plumb to anything like a divine ideal. In our natures
and characters we are like a coast line of the ocean.
There are spaces where the shores are bordered with
verdure, and skies and waters meet and blend in a wealth
of beauty. Rivers pouring in here and there bring to
the embrace of the tides the freshness and purity of the
far=away mountains. All along quiet sheltered bays
offer safe harborage to storm=driven ships. But there

CHRISTIAN FORBEARANCE 295
are jutting headlands, there are concealed rocks and
ledges, there are treacherous shallows, of which one
must beware.
We are rash, and people must look with indulgent
eyes on some of our ill=considered movements. Or we
are quick tempered and on the slighest provocation fly
into a rage and fling our fiery speech right and left, and
people must take our infirmity into account in their
estimates of our worth. Or we are selfish and when it
comes to submitting to inconvenience of any kind, or of
helping good causes, or of bearing our share of common
burdens, are quite likely to be found wanting, and peo
ple must cover up the weakness as best they may. Or
we are over=forward and people have to find excuses for
us on the ground of a little too generous natural supply
of self-confidence. Or we are too backward, and people
have to say of us that our failures are due to our modesty.
Or we trip and fall under some burden which has been
laid upon us, or in wrestling with some temptation which
confronts us, and people have to draw on their stores of
tender considerateness, and say that if all the circum
stances were known criticism might not be quite so
harsh. At any rate, if people were not to do this it
would fare ill with us. For we are constantly making
mistakes, and falling out of the way on the one side or
the other of the straight line of wise and righteous
action. We go too far, or we do not go far enough.
We speak too quick, or we do not speak quick enough.
If we are positive in our opinions we are quite likely to
lack tenderness. If we are tender, we are in danger of
becoming sentimental and maudlin. The balance of a
faultless life is hard to reach and maintain.
If a Christian forbearance were not exercised in our

296 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
behalf every day, we should all of us have to go under.
2. Another reason just as obvious as the first one,
lies in the fact that as we individually need to have
forbearance brought into play in our behalf, so it is
only doing toward others what others have to do toward
us over and over again, not to hold t hose with whom
we are associated io too rigid an interpretation of their
obligations and duties to us, and not to judge them with
too much severity for any seeming delinquency in
their conduct.
This reason is twin to the one just given, and they
both grow out of the limitation of our nature. We
have high endowments and possibilities which are
immense; but under a close cross=examination we should
all have to admit that at times at least we are little
other than bundles of nerves and prejudices with an
inordinate sensitiveness to anything like rudeness of
touch. There are people in the world who are naturally
so even=tempered, and so well trained, and so uniformly
considerate and courteous in their conversation and
dealing with others, that they never appear to be irrita
ted by disagreeable things said and done, nor thrown
from their balance by shocks the most sudden and
groundless of bitter complaints. But these are the few.
The majority have sharpness. They are not spheres,
uniform and smooth of surface all around; but blocks
with angles, and when they move it is liable to be with
jolts and jars
Hence it is both wise and kind not to be over=exact-
ing, but to cultivate the disposition which surrenders,
and surrenders much, if need be, for the sake of good=
fellowship and success in work. If we try to get every
body to walk by our individual chalk^mark, and think

CHRISTIAN FORBEARANCE 297
just as we do, and speak just as we do, and act in all
circumstances just as we do, we shall have any amount
of trouble; but if now and then we go to other people's
chalk=marks, and walk by them, although it may not
seem to us that they have any right to demand it, it will
only be squaring things up a little and making everybody
feel better.
There are principles, there are attitudes, there are
duties, concerning which the word "yielding" or "com
promise " must not be so much as named. There are
wrongs and injustices which it is the obligation of every
honest man to denounce. There are inhumanities and
impositions in society which all decent and well=meaning
citizens are bound to smite with their sternest condem
nation. There are truths which must be maintained at
all hazards. Persons who are trying to undermine the
foundations of Christianity, or to substitute mob=rule
and anarchy for order in the State, or to turn homes into
harems, or to get rich by fraud and lying, or to exalt
vice in any of its forms at the expense of virtue, are not
fit subjects for any extraordinary degree of forbearance.
There is a sense in which the utmost kindness is to be
shown to the unwise and wayward and criminal. But
wrong doing calls for exposure and protest. Schemes
which are hatched by sharp=witted rascals that they may
prey upon the industrious and innocent have no claim
to toleration. Fortunately he who has charged us to
exercise forbearance one toward another has himself
shown us how with pronounced vigor to oppose all
iniquity. But when the matter is brought over into the sphere
— not of right and wrong, of justice and injustice, of
morality and immorality, of loyalty and disloyalty to

298 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
truth and duty, — but of the expedient and inexpedient,
of considerateness and severity, then we are to go just
as far as we can to accommodate our conduct to the
notions and habits, — or perhaps it would be better to go
further and say — to the idiosyncrasies and whims of
other people.
This applies, as the apostle applied it, to circles of
disciples. It might not seem at first flush that those
who had come into the fellowship of Christ, and had put
their minds and hearts under the training of His
precepts, and had made His life their model, would ever
stand in need of such an exhortation; but experience
and observation teach us quite otherwise. Even the
genuinely converted are sometimes converted only in
spots. They are converted; but their pride is only
slightly modified. They are converted; but their tem
per is still of the inflammable kind, and is quite likely
to explode under the friction of a very small provoca
tion. They are converted; but their avarice clings to
them with a good deal of the old grip. They are con
verted; but they are very far from being weaned from
the ambitions and pleasures of the world, and when the
two present irreconcilable appeals the chances are that
opiates of some sort will be administered to the con
science, and the obligations of discipleship will be over
borne by the inclinations of the outward man. They
are converted; but their personal peculiarities often
remain about as they were, and they are conceited; or
they are touchy; or they are jealous; or they are obsti-
'nate; or they are mercurial, up and down, one day hot
with enthusiasm enough to storm a city, and the next
day cold as an iceberg; or they are fiercely exacting and

CHRISTIAN FORBEARANCE 299
they have to be handled like a basket of eggs or a group
of impetuous children.
This is where forbearance is to come into play. Men
and women who love Christ, and who wish above all
things else to be like Christ, and to manifest His mind
in their lives, are to suit their actions, — up to the point
when to go further would be to do violence to some
principle or some standard of duty — are to suit their
actions to the individualities of the people they are
associated with. They are to be like boats on our
western rivers which have not infrequently to make
sharp and adroit turns to avoid running into the banks,
when to go plowing straight on and run into them would
neither help the banks nor the boats.
3. An additional reason for the exercise of forebear-
ance grows out of the consideration that to be forbear
ing, or gentle and yielding, not demanding that other
people shall adjust their words and actions to our
peculiarities, but doing our best to adjust our words
and actions to their peculiarities, is at once to magnify
the grace of God in Christ, and to clothe our example
with power.
People who make light of the slips and shortcomings
of those who have confessed the Son of God, and claim
to be His followers, or rather, perhaps, desire to have it
known that they are trying to be His followers, have
only small appreciation of what they are talking. The
slips and shortcomings are not necessarily to be attrib
uted to insincerity, nor to indifference, nor in very many
instances to a lack of earnest endeavor to put on Christ'
and be like Him; but to the inherent difficulty of bring
ing our whole nature, — mind, will, affections, appetites.

300 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
passions, desires, aspirations, and all our methods and
habits and outlooks on life — into complete conformity to
the standard set up for us by our Lord in His teachings,
and in the teachings of His inspired apostles. A man
is converted when he is turned about, and his face is set
toward God instead of away from God. A man is con
verted when his controlling choices are for righteousness,
and the things which make for righteousness; but
ordinarily, not always but ordinarily, it takes a long
time and much severe discipline to bring all the minor
elements and dispositions of our nature into accord with
God and under the power of an endless life.
This result, whenever it is accomplished, and in
whatever person, is to be set down to the credit of the
grace of God in Christ. It is the work of the Spirit of
Christ in the soul. Not otherwise are wild passions
subdued, and clamorus appetites held in check, and hot
tempers forced into subjection, and the obstinacy and
determination of firm wills conquered, and the evidences
of a new creation in principle and feeling and aim and
outlook brought out into view. Men who have any
adequate sense of the hardness of the task in effecting
these moral and spiritual changes never fail to ascribe
them to divine influence brought to bear on the heart
and in the life.
If men are forbearing, therefore, in the degree and
temper of a true Christian f orbearence, it will be because
they have Christ in their souls, regulating, guiding,
inspiring. If they have Christ in their souls, to aid
them in mastering the factors of evil which are more in
number and mightier in our nature than it often occurs
to us to realize, and to direct in the use of capabilities
and energy, they will be forbearing. Other men will

CHRISTIAN FORBEARANCE 301
take notice of their forbearance because they cannot
help it. It will be forced upon their attention. The
injunction: " Let your forbearance be known to all men,"
will fulfil itself.
But study for a closing thought the motive which
the apostle brings forward for exemplifying this for
bearance. "The Lord is at hand."
This statement admits of two interpretations. It
may mean that the Lord is near in His approach or
advent. Or it may mean that He is near of access, and
that one does not have to go far for His help.
The latter would seem to me to be the preferable
interpretation; for that He is at hand to aid with His
divine grace; that He is near to breathe light into our
minds, and to succor our weak wills, and to lend needed
strength to meet and resist temptation, is not open to
question. This was the view which the psalmist took
of the nearness of the Lord. "Thou art near, O Lord."
"The Lord is nigh unto all that call upon Him." He
is not afar with His strength and wisdom and love, but
within easy reach, — always accessible to those who
need Him, and desire to lay hold on His assistance. He
is standing by us, and when the evil and the good are
wrestling within us; or when unexpected assaults are
made upon us, and our patience is tried, and our whole
souls are vexed and irritated, we may put our hand in
His, if we will, and gather self-control and calm from
His sweet and over=brooding presence. He is standing
by us, nearer to us than any earthly friend ever can be;
and if we only enter into this fact and what it means, it
can never be so hard to put away resentment, and stifle
bitter feelings, and cool down the anger which would
find expression in rasping speech, and hold the whole

302 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
man in loyal subjection to a warm brotherly love.
The Lord may be at hand in other senses. He may
be at hand with misfortunes and troubles. He may be
at hand with His messenger of death. He may be at
hand with the disclosure to one and another of us of the
judgment. But he is surely at hand to help; and who
ever is tried by the rebellious elements in his own
nature, or by the frictions and irritating surprises
which come from the world without, may turn to Him
in the assurance that He does not have to be sought
afar. He is a very present help in trouble. He will
aid us if we will but let Him, in the development of a
forbearance which shall be in the highest sense Chris
tian, and which shall also be both a comfort to our
selves, and a refining and elevating influence in the
world.

jfrom Hniieti? tCbrougb prater to peace.

"In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and suppli
cation with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto
God. And the peace ot God, whioh passeth all understanding, shall
guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus." — Phil. 4: 6-7.

XIX.
FROM ANXIETY THROUGH PRAYER TO PEACE.
This passage is intensely practical. It deals with
pressing personal needs and problems. It lays bare a
trouble which is common to almost all Christian expe
rience; it points out the means and method of relief
from this trouble, and it shows what is at once the
ground of safety and the exceeding great reward of
those who follow out these directions. The starting
and returning point, or the underlying and unifying
thought of the passage, is — a right attitude of soul
toward God. But falling in with the course of sugges
tion as it lies on the surface, and tracing the import of
the apostle's instructions, clause by clause, it will be
more natural and simpler to turn our general theme into
this form : From Anxiety Through Prayer to Peace.
The section of Scripture yielding this theme affords
another one of the many beautiful and impressive in
stances in which the apostle seeks to come close to the
hearts of his fellow=disciples, and ease them of their
pains, and lift their whole lives higher. To get people
forward; to get them up into more light, more purity,
more courage and hope and joy, more efficiency in serv
ice — this was always the aim of Paul. To break away
from the fellowship of the world and enter into a deeper
fellowship with God was his aspiration for himself and
others. 306

306 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
I. The first injunction, or better, perhaps, the first
entreaty, here laid down has to do with anxiety.
"In nothing be anxious."
Why not? Why not fret and worry? Why not fill
the sky of life with clouds of misgiving, and darken
down existence by keeping the sun of hope in perpetual
eclipse? Why not pitch tent and dwell under the
brooding fear that though things are right to day —
health, business, friendships — they will be sure to be
wrong to=morrow? Why not intensify all the pains
and perplexities and vexations and burdens of the
present moment — severe and trying enough at best — by
looking at them through morbid eyes, and then setting
the imagination to work to people the future with
sorrows and losses and all sorts of direst calamities?
Why not add care to care and so be just as miserable as
possible? The root idea of the Greek word which is here tran
slated, "anxious," is a divided mind. The mind is
looking two ways: is vibrating between two attractions;
and it has found no place as yet where it can settle
down and be at rest. Hence the sense of weariness
caused by anxiety. The root idea of the English word
" anxious," like that of " anger," is choking. It is ob
struction, distress, pain, carried over from the bodily
conception of it into the sphere of the mind. Under
the pressure of this anxiety one becomes apprehensive,
solicitous, confused; and every cloud becomes a darker
cloud, and every weight becomes a heavier weight, and
every outlook more ominous and dreadful. To yield to
anxiety is to turn evil conjurer and play all kinds of
alarming tricks on one's own heart. It is to be a prophet
of night rather than sunshine, of tears rather than songs.

FROM ANXIETY THRO UGH PRA YER TO PEA GE 307
There would be some justification for anxiety were
there any good in it, but there is not.
Nothing is accomplished by it. The train does not
arrive a single minute earlier because one goes to the
station a couple of hours before schedule time, and
makes the long waiting seem tenfold longer and more
dreary by fancying that the expected friend is surely
sick or that the cars are off the track. If there is some
encouraging word to be spoken, or some helpful deed to
be done, matters can be set forward; but to sit still, and
paint pictures of disaster, and forecast ruin to friends
and enterprises, does not mend anything. The business
is not put on a safe foundation by it. The sick person
is not healed by it. The reform is not advanced by it.
The soul is not brought to Christ and saved by it.
Nothing is so inefficient for good as anxiety.
But this is not the whole of the story. Anxiety
weakens and wears one out, Charles Kingsley well
says: " Do to=day's duty, fight to»day's temptation, and do
not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to
things which you cannot see, and could not understand
if you saw them." Under a habit of anxiety the body
loses its vigor, the mind loses its tone, the will loses its
force, and the heart loses its resiliency and sweetness.
The innocent old farmer who wound up his alarm clock
and fixed it to go off at six in the morning, and then sat
up all night so as to be sure to hear it when it struck,
but who was so exhausted by his tedious vigil that when
the morning came he could not start on his projected
journey, is a fair illustration of the mischief done to one
by extreme anxiousness. Generals fight better; business
men handle their business more successfully; teachers
get more into and more out of their pupils; mothers

308 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
conduct their households with greater ease and satisfac
tion, if they do not let any of their energies run to
waste in anxiety.
The chief indictment, however, against anxiety is the
distrust of God which it implies. Faith in God and a
soul overwhelmed with misgivings come pretty near
being mutually exclusive. At any rate a heart filled with
the worry which narrows our spiritual horizons, and
turns the sweet light of the stars into horrible darkness,
has small place in it for any living and sustaining con
fidence in Him who notes the fall of a sparrow, and who
has assured us He is ready to take upon His own heart
all our burdens of care. God has not promised to do
everything for us ; there are some things we must do for
ourselves. But He has promised never to leave nor
forsake His own. He has promised to save unto the
uttermost all who come to Him through Jesus Christ.
He has promised that all things shall work together for
good to them that love Him. Anxiety is distrust.
On this ground especially did our Lord in His Ser
mon on the Mount make His appeal to those who heard
Him, not to worry in an over=thoughtfulness about the
things of the morrow. God had them in His keeping.
He knew their needs. He was not watching over the
interests of birds, and the beauty of lilies, and the
clothing of grasses, and forgetting all about the neces
sities of those higher and immortal creatures whom He
had made in His own image and into whom He had
breathed the breath of life. Not at all. The things
essential to their existence and comfort, which the
Gentiles of our Lord's day were seeking so eagerly, and
which men in our day also seek so eagerly, are things
our Heavenly Father knows we need. Our necessities,

FROM ANXIETY THRO UGH PRA YER TO PEA CE 309
our straitnesses, our wants, our natural burdens, are not
surprises to God. He understands them all — feels them
all. But in the midst of them all, and with reference
to them all. He wishes us to trust Him.
In exact line with this the apostle comes in with his
word of counsel, and says: "In nothing be anxious."
It will be observed that he does not limit his advice to
matters of food and clothing and shelter; but he makes
it cover all objects over which men may be too solicitous.
"In nothing be anxious." Harassing care with refer
ence to any and every object is excluded. It takes in
our disappointments, our adversities, our apparently
fruitless labors, the hopes we fondly cherished, but
which have not been, and possibly are never to be
realized, and all the concerns in which we may be in
terested, or in which health and happiness and prosperity
and the advance of causes we have laid on our hearts,
may be involved.
This does not mean that we are not to be industrious
and economical and prudent and forethoughtful. Ra
tional exertion to gain suitable ends is not denied to
one, but urged and encouraged. " It is written." Yes;
but it is also '.' written." The man who quotes, " In
nothing be anxious," in justification of laziness, or a
supine folding of the hands in presence of services to
be rendered and duties to be done, must not forget that
the author of these words is likewise author of the words
" diligent in business." Neither the indifference of the
fatalist nor of the sensualist has any warrant in the
Word of God. " If any will not work neither let him
eat." But the thing which is condemned, and which ought
to be condemned, and from which the great apostle and

310 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
our Lord before him sought to deliver them, is the over=
solicitude which burdens and benumbs the heart, and
saps energy from brain and hand, and makes men forget
that God is over them, and will provide for all the ex
igencies of their lives.
II. This leads to the second division of ihe passage,
and to the consideration of prayer as the way in which
to get rid of anxiety.
" But in everything, by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving, let your requests to be made known unto
God." Here the "everything" looks back to the " nothing "
in the preceding clause, and helps to justify the broad
interpretation just put upon it. " In nothing be anxious;
but in everything, by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto
God." There is nothing so large, there is nothing so
small, there is nothing so irritating or troublesome;
there is nothing which to some minds might seem so
unsuitable to be made the subject of prayer, that one
may not take straight to God, and talk with Him about
it, with a view to finding light and strength and comfort.
For the purposes of exact knowledge a distinction is to
be made between the two words " prayer " and " suppli
cation." Prayer is the more general term. It is the
offering up of desire to God without going into par
ticulars, as when we say, "God help us," or "God
forgive us," or " God bless us." But " supplication," or
the Greek word which is rendered supplication, looks to
specific petitions. It is an earnest asking for the supply
of some definite and deeply=felt want, as when a man
falls down before God and cries out: "My soul is
hungry for the bread of life, — feed me"; or, "I have

FROM ANXIETY THROUGH PRA YER TO PEA CE 311
broken thy law by falsehood or deceit or injustice, —
pardon and restore me" ; or, " A great burden or sorrow
is on my heart, — stretch forth Thy hand and aid me in
bearing it"; or, " My sinfulness looms black and awful
before me, — take it and cast it forever behind Thee."
We pray in general; we supplicate in particular.
But the instruction of importance is that all our
troubles and trials and perplexities and burdens are to
be taken right to God, We are not to meet all these
difficulties in our own wisdom and might. We are not
to meet them by seeking the assistance and sympathy of
friends alone. We are to go to God with them in prayer
and supplication. We are to open our hearts to Him,
We are to tell Him our story. Omniscient though He
be, and One from whom not the slightest secret of man
or angel in the remotest corner of the universe can be
kept, we are to make our requests known to Him, The
little misunderstanding with a friend; the perplexity
over the wise training of a child; the various misven-
tures in business; the distress over some backset in
cherished moral enterprises; the seemingly unsuccessful
struggle over some easily=besetting sin; the bitter
bereavement — each is to be made an occasion for going
to God and laying it all out before Him.
The condition, however, which accompanies this
direction of the apostle to take everthing to God in
prayer and supplication must not be overlooked. It is
thanksgiving. " In everything by prayer and supplica
tion with thanksgiving let your requests be made known
unto God."
Searching the Bible through, it is found that a good
many conditions attach to acceptable prayer. Of course,
the essential and unvarying condition is faith. To come

S12 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
to God one must believe that He is. One must believe,
too, that He is capable of moving out in the tenderness
and helpfulness of a divine compassion towards those
who diligently seek Him. There must likewise be the
accent of sincerity and humility in any voice which
would reach the ear of the Most High. It is not the
man who boasts of what he is and what he has done, but
the man who openly confesses all and smites on his
breast in self=abasement, who goes down to his house
justified. Success in prayer turns often on the earnest
ness and importunity of the petitioner. A cry which is
repeated and continued until at length it becomes
pathetic in its expression of an overmastering sense of
need, if it be for some spiritual insight or aid, can
hardly fail of a gracious answer; but if one only goes
through the form of mouthing some old and familiar
prayersphrases, and there is no ardent longing and no
serious interest in the business, nothing will ever come
of it. Jacob got what he wanted because he held on
and would not let the angel go until he had blessed him.
The Syrophoenician woman gained her point because
she was determined to stay and argue it out with the
Lord. Elijah was a man of like passions with us, but
he was a righteous man, and his righteousness gave an
availing energy to his supplications.
To these and others which might be named, there is
to be added the condition of gratitude. We are to go
to God, — are to go to Him without hesitation and
freely, — are to go to Him with all our embarrassments
and questions and sorest hindrances and temptations, —
are to go to Him day by day and moment by moment,
if we will; but it is always to be with sincere thoughts
of thanksgiving in our hearts and sincere words of

FROM ANXIETY THROUGH PRAYER TO PEACE 313
thanksgiving on our lips. "In everything by prayer
and supplication with thanksgiving."
This instance of the association of thanksgiving with
requests for further favors from God is not singular.
It was the habit of Paul to be grateful himself and to
urge the duty of gratefulness upon others. "In every
thing give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ
Jesus to youward." " Giving thanks always for all
things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God,
even the Father." "Abounding in thanksgiving."
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to the
which also ye were called in one body; and be ye
thankful." " Continue steadfastly in prayer, watching
therein with thanksgiving." The apostle found it easy
to combine expressions of supplication and thanks be
cause the two thoughts were so identified in his mind.
He had a deep sense of what he wanted; but he had as
well a deep sense of the multiplied mercies and meas
ureless grace he had received. As Dean Howson has
well said: "Evidently with St. Paul the law of prayer
is the law of praise. Supplication and gratitude are
almost always inter=linked together; or at least when
one is present, the other is seldom far absent." Hence
when contemplating some great truth, or some glorious
future, we find the apostle breaking out into a grand
doxology like: "O the depth of the riches!"
How fit this thankfulness is. For who can recount
in detail what God has done for us? Who would ven
ture upon an exhaustive enumeration of the benefits we
have each of us received from His hands? Were one
to write a book in which there should be drawn out, in
classified form, and chapter by chapter, all the items
which ought to be set down to the credit of God's good-

314 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ness to His earthly children, how large the book would
have to be! God has made every star in the firmament
pay tribute to us. He has made every law in the uni
verse serve us. He has bent do wn over us in the infi
nite compassion of His divine heart, and given us His
Son to die for us on the cross. He has given us life
and salvation; He has upheld us; He has strengthened
us; He has guided us; and the tokens of His love to us,
if we only had the wit to discern them, are more than
the sands of the seashore.
We are all of us familiar, no doubt, with the way in
which the late Dr. William Arnot, of Edinburgh,
summed up the teaching of this p assage, or rather en
dorsed a summing up which he found readymade for
him. "Be careful for mothing. Be prayerful for
everything. Be thankful for ant/thing." This is clear,
concise, and wholesome teaching. But the thankful
ness for "anything" is a direction which we must ^ee
that we do not miss. Gratitude, like the scent of flow
ers, makes prayer fragrant. Prayer has been called
myrrh and praise frankincense. Gratitude is the song
the lark carries away into the skies to attract the
thoughts of faith upward and the thoughts of heaven
downward. We pierce the heart of our Lord when we
are not thankful. "Were there not ten cleansed? but
where are the nine? " Only one turned back to give God
the glory for His healing. Only one gladdened Christ.
III. Here we arrive at the blessed result of it all in
the opening out io us of the thought of peace.
"And the peace of God, which passeth all under
standing, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in
Christ Jesus."
This is what is to come from taking our anxieties to

FROM ANXIETY THROUGH PRA YER TO PEACE 315
God, and in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving, making our requests known unto
Him. We are to enter into the peace of God which
passeth all understanding, and in this peace find guard
ianship for our hearts and thoughts. The peace of God
is to be at once our achievement and our defense.
But what is this peace of God? The peace of God is
the peace which comes from God. It is the peace of
which God is the Author. One who has gained posses
sion of this peace will be in harmony with God, and
with his own soul, and, so far as in him lies, with his
fellow=men. Observe, however, with what terms of high emphasis
this peace is further characterized. The apostle was
not content to call it the peace of God merely; but that
it is the peace of God he made still more evident by
designating it as a peace, " which passeth all under
standing," This phrase is open to several different interpreta
tions. These are two of them. It may mean the fac
ulty of understanding; or it may mean the act of under
standing. If it means the faculty of understand
ing, then it is the same as if the apostle had said:
"The peace of God which lies in a higher sphere than
the intellect of man." If it means the act of under
standing, we should have its equivalent in the words —
in substance taken from EUicott — which transcends
every effort and attempt on the part of the understand
ing to grasp and realize it.
This latter interpretation would seem to be borne out
and fully justified by language used elsewhere, as when,
for instance, the apostle says in his letter to the Ephe
sians: "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding

316 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
abundantly above all that we ask or think." We
cannot articulate it in speech: we cannot compass it in
thought — what God is able to do for us, and what He
has in His heart to do for us, if we will only let Him.
So this peace of God, in its sweet serenity, in its wealth
of blessing, in the fountains of holy delight which it
opens and feeds, catches a trick of infinity from the
divine source of it, .and stretches out beyond all the little
yardsticks of our human speech. It is something
— this peace of God — which the alien from God cannot
measure, because he does not know it. It is something
the child of God cannot measure, because he does
know it. "Which passeth all understanding."
But this peace of God is not only an achievement —
a precious possession into which through the riches of
divine grace we are permitted to find our way, — it has
in it a service of defense to render. "And the peace of
God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your
hearts and your thoughts." The peace of God is to
fortress the soul. It is to perform the functions of a
stronghold, and afford one who has entered into it
protection. It is as though a person were to be guarded
by a watchful and invincible band of soldiers. " The
peace of God shall guard your hearts and your
thoughts." How is this? In what way is it to be done?
What efficacy is there in the peace of the God to hold
inward foes in check and to restrain the assaults of out
ward foes? What is the secret and the value of this
kind of protection?
Well, imagine a man so filled with the peace of God,
and all his desires and thoughts and plans and hopes so
penetrated with the atmosphere of this peace, that he

FROM ANXIETY THROUGH PRA YER TO PEACE 317
should have no longer any fear in his soul, nor any dis
turbing and benumbing doubt, nor any spirit of conten
tion and strife, nor any of the eager grasping and dis
comfort of worldly ambitions, and will it not be our first
impulse to say of him: " He, at least, is secure "? Such
a man is garrisoned as no military genius can garri
son him. He has a sentinel more vigilant than ever
watched at the gateway of an imperilled prince or prin
cess. He is safe in the desires of his heart, and he is
safe in the thoughts of his mind. He is safe from in
ward treachery, and he is safe from outward attack.
God, through the voice of the prophet, has assured us
that if our minds are stayed on Him, He will keep us
in perfect peace. But this is just as true when turned
about and it is the truth in this form which the apostle
asserts when he declares that with the divine help the
peace of God realized in the heart will make it certain
that the mind will be stayed on Him, The memory of
past experiences of this peace, and the joy of present ex
periences, and the hope of future experiences, will all co=
work with Gi«od in holding heart and thought in a sacred
security. When a man has been accustomed to drink
from pure mountain springs, cool, bubbling, and full to
overflowing, he does not like to bend over and drink
from puddles. When a man has had free range in
vineyards and orchards, where fruits the most luscious
can be had for the taking, he is hardly willing to go
back and grub for what he can get down among the
roots of sage brush and thistles. When a man has fed
at his father's table where there was enough and to
spare, though he can eat them on a pinch, he has but
little relish for husks. When a man has known God's
peace, and it has been atmosphere to his soul, and sky

318 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
over him and earth under him, and the holy calm of it
has penetrated and softened and elevated all his think
ing, there is but small temptation for him to return to
the excitements and tumults and passionate strivings of
the world. So not in one way alone, but in many ways,
does the peace of God operate to guard our hearts and
thoughts. But the largest and most important word in all this
instruction remains to be spoken. It is Christ. " In
Christ Jesus," "And the peace of God, which passeth
all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your
thoughts in Christ Jesus," We can have this peace
because Christ, the Son of God, came into the world to
tell us of our Father, and to bear our sins in His body,
and to suffer and die for us on the cross. We can have
this peace because all the springs and sources of peace
are in Christ, and He is able and willing, yea more than
willing, to communicate it to those who are identified
with Him in the new divine life. It is His precious
gift to those who love Him and are trying to follow Him.
" Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you."
"The fruit of the Spirit is — peace."
"Peace upon peace, like wave on wave.
This is the portion that I crave;
The peace of God whioh passeth thought;
The peace of Christ which changeth not.
Peace through the night and through the day.
Peace through all the windings of our way.
In pain and toil and weariness,
A deep and everlasting peace.
O King of peace, this peace bestow
Upon a stranger here below;
O Lord of peace, Thy peace impart
To every troubled, trembling heart."

•fcigb l&eals.

" Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things
are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
report; if there be any viitue, anS if there be any praise, think on
these things. The things which ye both learned and received and
heard and saw in me, these things do: and the God of peace shall
be with you."— Phil. 4: 8-9.

XX.
HIGH IDEALS:
THEIR PLACE AND VALUE IN THE DEVELOPMENT
OF CHARACTER.
These are remarkable words, — classic in their beauty
and of transcendent significance. The large organizing
thought to which they conduct us is: High Ideals —
Their Place and Value in the Development of Char
acter. Here is the specification of six motives which every
man who aims at Christian perfection ought to keep
constantly in mind; and of six elements which must be
realized and illustrated in the life before one can be
said to have made much headway toward Christian per
fection. It may be in order for us, and also necessary,
if we are to get the highest good from a study of this
passage, to trace out these specifications one by one.
1. " Whatsoever things are true."
This is where the apostle begins — with truth. He
starts where all men must start, or be false to the core.
Put whatever else one may into character, but leave
truth out, and there remains at best only an empty,
shining sham. Nothing ever stood securely without
truth for a basis; nothing ever will stand securely, un
less it rests on the bed=rock of truth. Homes, customs,
philosophies, religions, empires, topple into ruin, if
there be not truth at the heart of them. God and God's
laws cry out " woe" to anybody and to anything not cen
tered in truth, All blessings of heavenly benediction wait
321

322 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
upon the soul that says to the truth: " Be thou my good
genius, and whatever thou dost command I will do." Let
men and women aspire as they will, but if their aspi
rations do not start from and embrace truth, their most
glowing anticipations will recoil upon them in mockery
and defeat.
It is not any form of technical truth merely which
Paul would have men think about and incarnate in their
lives. It is truth in its completeness, and in all its de
mands. It is not truth in speech merely; nor truth in
the discharge of special trusts merely; nor truth in busi
ness transactions merely; nor truth in the conduct of
political affairs merely; it is interior and radical moral
truth. It is truth in itself and for its own sake, rich
with all wealth and beautiful with all comeliness. It is
truth as an achievement of the mind, and truth as a
rule of conduct, covering all possible spheres and rela
tions in which one can stand.
Would that all eyes were open to see truth in this
celestial whiteness. Would that all lives were making
music to the divine key=note of truth in this breadth
of it.
2. " Whatsoever things are honorable."
Another statement of this might be: Whatsoever
things are dignified, reputable, held in esteem by all
who appreciate high standards of action, and who are
wont scrupulously to conform their lives to an exalted
rectitude. It means exactly what the old Roman word
for gravity meant — something worthy to compel re
spect. What a neat little tract this would make for the
times: " Whatsoever things are honorable." With what
fitness it might be printed and distributed in the halls

HIGH IDEALS 323
of Congress, and scattered amongst state legislatures,
and thrown into executive offices and put into the hands
of treasurers and pay=masters and tax=gatherers, and
taken into market places, and laid down on the
counters of banks and stores, and dropped into mills
and counting rooms, and hung up where the common
councils in all our great cities might read it, and
slipped into the secret chambers of our colossal corpo
rations and thieving rings, and made one of the stand
ing rules in all social circles: "Whatsoever things are
honorable." As it should be read how many cheeks
would blush, if they are not past all blushing. How
many, who have any conscience still left in them would
bow suddenly down and exclaim: " That indicts me and
my methods."
No man's ideal is lofty enough; no man's ideal is
safe to follow, until he lifts up the banner and marches
to the drum=beat of what is honorable. The estimable,
the morally correct must be struck deep and clear into
one's plan of life, or things will go awry.
It is not enough to be prudent and circumspect, and
to hesitate in the presence of temptation to be mean and
unworthy, lest standing may be lost in the estimation
of the community. One is to be loyal to the kind of
honorableness which has the ring of the integrity of
heaven in it, and is secure of the approbation of good
men not only but of God. It is to be whatsoever things
are honorable when brought up against tho plumb=line
which God drops down out of the skies.
3. " Whatsoever things are just."
Here again Paul goes to the bottom of things. It is
not seeming justice or righteousness; it is not current
justice; it is real justice.

324 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
One may easily test the question whether he loves
and reveres justice because it is justice; or looks upon
it simply as an instrumentality with which to further
the ends of selfishness. For when one accepts and fol
lows justice because it is justice, he will find himself
quite as prompt and eager, — if not even more so — to ren
der as to demand justice.
But how little of this, even though we do not look at
things through pessimistic eyes, do we really see. How
many the wars to avenge real or fancied wrongs. How
frequent and numerous the law=suits to get even with
men. How frequent assaults, one upon another, some
times with words, sometimes with sharp tricks, some
times with cruel blows, because some supposed insult
has been inflicted, or some advantage or right has been
wrested away. How indignation swells, how wrath
flashes, how the voice grows loud and harsh, as men re
count the ways in which they have been over=reached
and cheated. What threats are indulged, what subter
fuges are resorted to in order to gain redress. When
one tries to cool down this heat, and restore calmness,
how sharp and passionate is the cry: "We have been
wronged and we will not rest till our wrongs have been
righted." Where is the reverse of this ever witnessed ? Who
ever saw nations rushing forward in the spirit of a
divine rage to repair the breaches they themselves had
made in justice ? Who ever saw nations eager to re
store what they themselves had unjustly' taken from
neighboring nations ? Who ever saw men enthusiasti
cally intent on restitution — all aglow with determina
tion to mend the equity they had broken, and conscien
tiously counting out and paying over the gains they

HIGH IDEALS 325
had gotten from others by dishonest tricks and
schemes ?
When a man has God's justice in him he flnds he has
as much use for his arithmetic in estimating what be
longs to others as in what belongs to himself, and he
will be as careful in according as in exacting dues. It
is Emerson who calls attention to the fact that we teach
children to figure so that they may not be cheated,
whereas it would be a higher and better use of learning
to teach them figures that they may not cheat. The
sense of justice in individuals and communities and
states needs to be toned up till there is harmony be
tween it and the justice which is unchangeable and
eternal. What a challenge it is when a man can stand up and
say with the old prophet Samuel: "Here I am; witness
against me before the Lord, and before His anointed;
whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or
whom have I defrauded ? whom have I oppressed ? or
of whose hand have I taken a ransom to blind mine eyes
therewith ? and I will restore it you." What a tribute
when the response to such a challenge is: "Thou hast
not defrauded us, nor oppressed us, neither hast thou
taken ought of any man's hand." It is a great enconium
when at the side of an open grave we can say: "The
man we bury here to-day was a just man." There is
hope when a young man writes it out and hangs it up as
a motto where his own eyes and all eyes can rest on it
morning, noon and night: " Whatsoever things are just."
4, " Whatsoever things are pure."
Chastity merely ? More than that. Temperance
merely ? More than that. Hands kept clean from any
stain of corruption in daily dealing merely ? More than

326 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
that. Freedom from all coarseness of speech merely ?
More than that. Whiteness in thought merely, so that
the soul is never a chamber of foul imagery ? More
than that. Motives which have nothing sinister in them
merely ? More than that. A life of abstinence from in
dulgences which befoul and spread contagion all abroad
merely ? More than that. It is all these together. It is
chastity and temperance and unsullied hand and unsul
lied speech and unsullied thought and straightforward
ness of motive and elevated aim and a life, lifted as far as
possible out of all wordly defilement, — all in vital and
harmonious combination. It is this in men; it is this
in women — pureness.
It is pureness such as the apostle could point to when
writing to the Corinthians as one of the qualities by
which he had approved himself to be God's minister.
It is the pureness into which, as John says, every man
seeks to purify his life who has his hope set on Jesus
Christ. It is the pureness through which a man sees
God, and is enabled to walk with Him, It is the pure
ness into which the heart is cleansed by the touch of
the pierced hand of Him who was nailed to the cross.
It is purity in the finest quality of it and in its deepest
soundings and in its widest reaches.
What a precious possession is this purity ! What an
achievement it is to win purity ! What an inspiration !
What a defense ! What a reward ! What a height to
which to climb ! Blessed in all ways are the pure in
heart. Both the need and the duty of cultivating purity are
very great. With a heart fuU of evil and evil disposi
tions, and in a world of sin, and in the midst of so
many influences whose direct tendencies are to draw

HIGH IDEALS 327
away from the light, and to corrupt the conscience, and
to plunge the soul down into mire and filth, it is not pos
sible to exaggerate the stress of obligation there is on us
all to make the attainment of purity a constant endeavor.
The possession of purity would transform life, and beau
tify and gladden homes, and change society through
and through. Could there be purity where there is
now impurity it would make a new world for us all; and
the sweet light of the stars would no longer rebuke us,
and the spotless delicacy and the delicious fragrance of
the lily would no longer remind us of a disharmony
with God.
5. "Whatsoever things are lovely."
What things are lovely ? Those which emanate in
the spirit of love, like God's gift of His only begotten
Son to the world; those which move in a method of
love, like faith when it works by love ; and those things
which have for their object the expression of love, like
all unselfish efforts which are put forth to help and save
and bless lost men. Whatever is conceived in love,
whatever gives voice to love, whatever wins and repro
duces love, is a thing of love, and belongs to the cate
gory of the " lovely."
In his matchless tribute to love Paul shows us what
is his conception of things "lovely." They are the
things which are more than angel tongues, and prophe
cies, and understandings of mysteries, and mightiest
faiths, and goods bestowed, and martyrdoms. They are
the things by which one is made long=suffering and
kind, and kept from envying and boasting and vanity
and unseemliness of behavior and self=seeking and im
patience and evil= thinking, — the things by which one
becomes glad, not in iniquity, but in truth; and is all=

328 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
believing, and all=hoping, and all=enduring. The things
which are "lovely" are the things which, when love has
full sway, never fail.
Nothing but love conquers this wide mastery and rules
regnant in all these spheres. Whatever things are born
of this spirit are lovely. Fulfilling the law by loving
God with all the heart and mind and strength, and lov-
»ing one's neighbor as one's self, is the consummation of
things lovely.
But it is with more particular reference to those minis
tries to men to which love prompts, and by which the
affections of men are engaged in turn, and they, too, are
warmed into sympathy with what is good, that Paul uses
the phrase. It is those things which go out to human
ity bearing on them the stamp of a Christ=like devotion,
that he wishes them especially to think about.
What higher and better quality to cultivate is there
than love? "But now abideth faith, hope, love, these
three; and the greatest of these is love," Strength is
good; but love lends a grace to strength, and makes it
beautiful as well as useful. It is a large scope which
love has, and the demand for it is constant. It is both
a misfortune and a sin that we do not love more. In
his old age Dr, Bacon used to say that if he was to live
his life over again he should try to put more love into it.
He thought that lack of love, or rather of more love, was
one of the shortcomings in his ministry. It is as
^ Gerald Massey, in those days when he had not yet lost
love out of his heart as he seemed to at a later period
sings: "The world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;
If we but did our duty, it might be full of love."
6. " Whatsoever things are of good report."

HIGH IDEALS 329
This " good report," however, means something more
than mere personal popularity or a favorable reputation.
One may speak and act in a way to meet the acceptance
of men, and at the same time not fill the conditions of a
" good report " as the apostle employed the words. By
the skilful use of a few nice arts, and the adroit mani
pulation of the applauding and trumpeting machineries
of the time, almost anybody, man or woman, can blow
up an immense reputation with but a very small capital
of character behind to support it. Or, perhaps, still
better if, as in some instances, there be a ruined
character to help on the interest in the puffing.
The " good report " here had in mind is the report the
elders obtained through faith. It is the "good report"
which a man secures when he " walks in wisdom toward
them who are without." It is the "good report" which
the apostle made his own because he could say he had
wronged no man, and defrauded no man, though in
return for his dutifulness and devotion he had received
" stripes," and " imprisonment," and " tossings to and
fro," and "dishonors," and " chastenings," and "sorrows,"
manifold. It is the " good report " of the woman of
whom it is written: "She hath done what she could."
It is the " good report " which is prophetic of the final
and unutterably blessed: "Well done thou good and
faithful servant."
To this last the apostle adds, in order to be sure
of including anything desirable which may have been
left out in the enumeration: "If there be any virtue,
and if there be any praise." Or, as he might have said:
"Whatever things are virtuous, and whatever things
are praiseworthy." It is possible however, that Paul
did not so much intend these two words " virtue " and

330 Discourses on philippians
"praise" to be additions to the list of excellencies he
has named, as the summing up of these excellencies.
But whether one or the other be the right view, it is
clear the apostle meant that nothing good should be
left out of character. Not one virtue alone, though
never so attractive and commanding, but all virtues
must be realized if the character is to be Christlike.
These, then, the true, the honorable, the just, the
pure, the lovely, the commendable, are the elemental
qualities, in the apostle's estimation, of what consti
tutes good Christian character. They are the ideals of
moral worth for whose attainment one is to do his best.
They are high ideals; but in this lies their value. For
than exalted aims nothing is more important in the
working out of successful results. Nothing unless it
be resolute and unflagging endeavor to realize these
aims. In secular spheres this is acknowledged. Hence all
such proverbs are shooting at the stars in order to hit
higher than the tree=tops. It has been coined in the
mint of the ages, and has on it the stamp of universal
experience, that there will not be much getting on where
there is not much looking up. There must be some
thing like a passion for advancement, else progress will
be wanting in its leading condition. Of children, of
pupils, of apprentices, of clerks, of the young and sub
ordinate of any class, whose souls are never moved with
forward and upward impulses no hope can be cherished.
Men not unfrequently make themselves ridiculous by
the aims they avow. There is such wide incongruity
between the ambitions they entertain, and the capaci
ties they possess, that if one does not smile at their

HIGH IDEALS 331
strutting pretentions, it is because the sense of the lud
icrous is overborne by pity.
At the same time it is aspiration, as a rule, that wins,
and without aspiration one remains at the bottom.
It is true, too, that circumstances are now and then
tenderly propitious, and under the favorable influence
of time and powerful assistance, mediocrity occasionally
climbs to a wealth and place and power out of all pro
portion to any inward force or merit which can be dis
covered. Still, even in these instances there must be
an eye open to opportunities, and a spirit to kindle into
concert with proffered aid, or all help is vain. A man
lacking in these qualities may be helped, but he will not
stay helped. As soon as the hand that held him up is
withdrawn he drops. He has no vigor of purpose to
keep his energy of brain and body in action.
Were it otherwise these examples would be only ex
ceptions. The general law is as has been stated. Not
in one instance in a thousand may the special results
sought be secured; but in no instance will the gaining
be likely to outrun the seeking. The men who have
achieved greatness in legislation, in literature, in law,
in war, in art, in science, in reforms, in commerce, in
trade, and the women, who, like Florence Nightingale,
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and " George Elliott"
and Mrs. Banister and Mary Lyon and Lucy Larcom
and Anna P. Sill, who have felt a sense of somewhat in
them to be developed and used, are the men and women
who, with only rare exceptions, have set out with keen
appetites for doing things, and who have planned and
toiled under inspiration of lofty standards.
Not that these persons have always seen the end from

332 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
the beginning. Not that they have not been led. Not
that they have not often builded better than they knew.
Not that ambition has not fattened by what it fed iipon,
and success in any particular sphere led to a craving for
larger success in the same sphere. But individuals as
they ascend have found their guiding stars ascending
also, and the objects which beckoned at any given time
have always been far in advance of any ends actually
accomplished. When endeavor overtakes aim, and fact
done crowns idea of doing, the man or woman comes to a
dead halt, and the march is ended.
But wide sweeping and invariable, or well nigh inva
riable, as this principle is in the realm of things mate
rial, it is absolute in the realm of the moral and spiritual
life. It admits of no exceptions. Christlikeness of
character cannot be thrust upon any soul. No soul can
drift into it. Such excellence as the apostle contem
plates is an achieveinent, and each must master it for
himself with God's aid or never have it.
Some persons may be more amiable, more kindly,
more temperate, more correct in the whole round of
walk and conversation than others; they are. They
have better constitutions; more poise of makeup, more
native sagacity, and the entire sweep of their lives is in
a better atmosphere. For some persons it may be and
is much easier than for others to rise into the spirit of
true conformity to God.
But high moral excellence in man or woman is some
thing more than a nice, well=balanced temperament. It
is something more than keen foresight in avoiding
evil. It is something more than propitious circum
stances in which one is lifted above temptation to low
indulgences. It is a matter of the will, of the inmost

HIGH IDEALS 333
purpose of the soul. If men would be good they them
selves must determine to be good. If men would be
righteous they must elect to be righteous and build
their lives on the foundation of righteousness. If men
would be like God they must choose God and obey God.
Chance plays no part in this high business. Holiness
is never an inheritance. There is no possibility of blun
dering into the likeness of Christ. Every commendable
element which gets into character has to be wrought
into it. Every stone from base to top, that adds strength
and symmetry and beauty to the moral house we are
erecting, has to be hewed out and placed in position by
the definite co=working of our own wills with the will of
God. Outside of the divine influences under which we
come for redemptive ends, there is no aid of fellowship,
nor might of interceding energy, by which we can be
advanced one step toward the realization of the style of
character which meets God's approval. Election cannot
be made for us even by those who are nearest and dearest
to us. Nobody can pick us up and carry us over into
virtue. It is a conquest which each, under the divine
influence and help, must make by himself and for him
self alone.
It is easy to see, therefore, when we take into account
these simple laws of the soul what an important place
one's ideals must necessarily fill in the economy of moral
growth. To begin with, a man's ideals mark and limit the pos
sibilities of development in virtue. They do more than
this. They reveal a man to himself, and they indicate
his moral drift. But they also set bounds to his acqui
sitions in righteousness. Streams do not rise abovei
their fountains. If a man would attain "unto the meas-

334 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," it will not
do for him to keep in thought anything lower than this
fashion of manhood. We hear it said sometimes, that
views, theories, opinions, amount to nothing — the life
one lives is all; but people who say this have little con
ception of the laws of our human nature. Views, theo
ries, opinions are what sway men, and determine the
bounds of their endeavors. Columbus had an idea of
the structure of the globe, and it shaped his whole
career, and determined the destiny of uncounted mil
lions, George Washington had an idea of the rights of
man and the possibility of free institutions and self=
government, and that idea worked and changed the
course of human history, Benjamin Franklin had an
idea that there was something more in lightning than
science had yet conceived, and behold the revolution
which has followed his crude experiment with the kite,
Paul had an idea, and his idea translated itself into a
life whose influence is simply immeasurable. Views,
theories, opinions — they are of all consequence.
But the real worth of ideals, and especially of high
ideals, and the conspicuous advantage of having high
ideals, is that there is a reflex influence in them by
which a man is molded, — all unconsciously to himself,
it may be, — into the type of character they image to his
mind. This, if my apprehension of it is correct, is in exact
line with the apostle's notion when he wrote: "Think
on these things," Thinking on them, making them the
object of meditation, turning them over in the mind
and dwelling on them, looking at them on all sides of
them, and coming under the power of them, prepares
one to go on and carry out the other injunction to "do"

HIGH IDEALS 335
them. " The things which ye both learned and received
and heard and saw in me, these things do." These
things are all done with a heartiness and success not
possible otherwise when the doing has been forerun by
earnest and loving and habitual thinking on them.
Indeed the thinking on these things is more than the
forerunning and preparation for the realizing and do
ing of them. In the mysterious process of soul unfold
ing and growth, a man actually becomes like that which
he sincerely and constantly has in thought. Partly as
the result of direct endeavor, and partly, too, by a
method of absorption and assimilation of which the only
satisfactory philosophy is the fact itself, a man falls
into the currents of his own leading reflections, and
takes hue and form of character from what is upper
most in mind and heart. It is very subtle, but it is a
universal law. The soul becomes like that which it
habitually cherishes. Wordsworth has a passage in
point: "^We live by admiration, love, and hope.
And as these are well and wisely fixed
In dignity of being we ascend."
This law of the reflex influence of ideals works both
ways — down and up.
It works down. Low thoughts, low desires, low inter
ests, react and embody themselves in corresponding
types of character. This is what wrought the mischief
with the nations at large, and bore them down into such
depths of degradation as the apostle describes in his
Epistle to the Romans, God gave these people up to
uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts. In
virtue of the force of moral laws they gravitated — they
could not help gravitating — right down into all vileness.

336 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
It was not something put upon them in the way of pen
alty from the outside, — their degradation was the natu
ral and inevitable consequence of their own thinking
and doing. They sank as all men do, whether in Jeru
salem or Athens or Rome or Chicago, to the level of
what is most in mind and is most cherished.
As men drop down lower and lower, so they rise
higher and higher under the operation of the same prin
ciple. While evil passions, like anger and envy and
pride and malice and hate and revenge and lust, fre
quently indulged, tend to mold a man over until he is
the impersonation of moral deformity, the opposite feel
ings and desires, similarly indulged, tend to elevate and
refine a man until his life becomes their best embodi
ment. Loving, like a fine sculptor, chisels the whole
nature into a diviner likeness to love. Believing makes
one more and more a child of faith. Giving, beyond
anything else, fosters in the soul a spirit of generosity.
Contemplating God, as in moods and acts of sincere
worship, brings God closer and closer to the heart.
Prayer is infinitely more than this, — else it were noth
ing, — but no genuine prayer was ever yet offered which
did not have an answer of good in itself. Right
thoughts are wings on which we ascend and make ap
proach to the character of saints in light. High ideals
put us in the way of being helped by God, and by the
laws of our own souls, and by the laws of the uni
verse. If these views are right, then the directions given by
the apostle in the words before us have a force and per-
tinancy far beyond what we may have imagined. For
the qualities which he names become ideals after which
character is to be developed, and like all ideals, when

HIGH IDEALS 337
once chosen, as has just been shown, they help to secure
their own realization. Things true, things honorable,
things just, things pure, things lovely, things of good
report, taken into the mind, and brooded over and ad
mired, set in motion the infiuences which go to make
one true and honorable and just and pure and lovely
and of good reputation. Taken up and sincerely cher
ished, they open in the soul like fountains to water the
whole being. They shine out in the face in reflections
of supernal glory. They creep into the moral fiber and
make the whole life beautiful with their beauty, and
strong with their strength.
What worthier motives are there to which men and
women can yield; what loftier aims can they entertain
and pursue, than those which the apostle here sets be
fore us? To keep thinking about these things, and to
keep following out these ends, — to keep these high
ideals all the time before the mind as mariners keep
their eyes fixed on the stars, will not be without cost.
Purity, integrity, nobleness, a life in the world which is
yet above the world — they all have their price. Though
God works in us and with us, and worthy aspirations,
like seeds in the ground at spring-time, struggle to
take shape in living forms, yet not without wrestling,
not without some lonely hours, not without experiences
which give hint of the pangs of martyrs, will these high
ideals of moral excellence get transformed into charac
ter and actually lived out before the eyes of the world.
To quote once more from Wordsworth:
" Yet cease I not to struggle, and aspire
Heavenward; and chide the part of me that flags.
Through sinful choice; or dread necessity
On human nature from above imposed.
'Tis by comparison, an easy task

338 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
Earth to despise; but to converse with heaven, —
This is not easy, to relinquish all
We have, or hope, of happiness and joy
And stand in freedom loosened from this world,
I deem not arduous; but must needs confess
That 'tis a thing impossible to frame
Conceptions equal to the soul's desire
And the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the soul is competent to gain."
But though it be hard, nay, though it were a thousand
fold harder than it is, to hold the mind steady to high
ideals, and to work along the line of these ideals till they
reappear, like kernels of wheat in ripened harvests of
golden grain, in types of sweet and exalted character,
there is no lack of reward; for sweet and exalted charac
ter is the supreme achievement of man. High ideals
realized abide immortal; and they who have thought and
wrought on whatever things are true, and whatever
things are honorable, and whatever things are just, and
whatever things are pure, and whatever things are lovely,
and whatever things are of good report, until these things
have come to be a vital part of their being, may be sure
of the blessing and fellowship of the God of peace for
ever and ever.

Suiting Xif e to Circumstances.

"But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at length ye have
revived your thought for me; wherein ye did indeed take thought,
but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want :
for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.
I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound: in
everything and in aU things have I learned the secret both to be
filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want. I can
do all things in him that strengtheneth me. Howbeit ye did well,
that ye had fellowship with my affliction. And ye yourselves also
know, ye Philippians, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I
departed from Macedonia, no church had fellowship with me in the
matter of giving and receiving, but ye only; for even in Thessalo
nica ye sent once and again unto my nead. Not that I seek for the
gift; but I seek for the fruit that increaseth to your account. But I
have aU things, and abound: I am filled, having received from
Epaphroditus the things that came from you, an odor of a sweet
smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well=pleasing to God." — Phil. 4: 10-18.

XXI.
SUITING LIFE TO CIRCUMSTANCES.
In a preceding discourse, based on the closing para
graph — verses nineteen and thirty inclusive — of the
second chapter of this epistle, and entitled Fellowship
And Suffering, sufficient account has been taken, per
haps, of the mutual confidence and love with which Paul,
their guide into the truth, and the brethren of the
church at Philippi regarded each other, and of the great
joy with which their attitude of considerate thoughtful-
ness and unremitting attention filled his heart. Much
more might be said on this topic. It will be better,
however, to let what is incidental pass, though the words
contain so many statements which invite and almost
constrain comment, and go straight to the main thought
of the passage which is: Suiting Life to Circumstances,
"Not that I speak in respect of want; for I have
learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content,
I know how to be abased, and I know also how to
abound; in everything and in all things have I learned
the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to
abound and to be in want. I can do all things in Him
that strengtheneth me."
This is a high achievement — whatever the circum
stances, to suit life to them, and to be content.
A cherished English writer has said, that "Content
ment produces, in some measure, all those effects which
the alchemist usually ascribes to the philosopher's stone;
341

342 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
and, if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing
by banishing the desire for them,"
An American writer, in no sense less discriminating
has remarked: "By the art of navigation, with great
pains and industry, men fetch in the silks of Persia, the
spices of Egypt, the gold of Ophir, the treasures of In
dia. By the art of contentment a man may stay at home,
and fetch in the . comfort of every condition whatever.
That is, he may have the comfort by contentment which
he would have if he had the very things themselves."
Centuries before these writers were born, the apostle
Paul had caught the secret — so rare and precious — of the
satisfaction to be found in a contented spirit. It would
be only the simple truth to say his contentment was
ideal. He had learned the lesson of contentment so
completely, — he had come into such absolute sympathy
with the Hand which guided him, and into such confi
dence in the Wisdom which appointed his lot, that he
was content wherever he was. He fell into ready acqui
escence with his circumstances. He wasted no energy
in fretting and chafing because things did not go more to
his own liking. He was not all the time propounding rid
dles to his own heart, and filling his brain with dismal
wonderings why providence did not have a different
shaping. The ear of the world was neither vexed nor
moved to compassion by groans falling from his lips.
He was content. If he abounded he was content. If he
was straitened and pressed to the point of want he was
still content. Wherever he was, whatever his condition
and surroundings, he was content.
The explanation is simple.
He was content because his life was ensphered in the
life of God, He was content because all his old heavy

SUITING LIFE TO CIRCUMSTANCES 343
burden of guilt had been rolled off his soul. He was
content because as he stood front to front with eternity
he could feel that the opening of the gates of the world
to come would bring him only new light and peace and
joy. He was content because he knew that his life, and
all the interests of his life, were in the keeping of One
who loves and cares for His own with an infinite fulness
of affection. He was content because it was clear to him
that somehow the whole business fell into the plan of
God, and that though his feet were in shackles, and se
rious limitations were imposed on his movements, and he
could no longer range abroad at will, God could make
use of whatever energy and influence and experience he
might possess for the furtherance of the Kingdom. He
was content because his mind was stayed on the Lord.
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is
stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee,"
Take a man of Paul's prodigious energy, and resolute
temper, and aggressiveness of purpose, but who yet
lacks his Christian spirit, and his intelligent and unfal
tering trust in God, and shut him up in a prison, and
say to him that all his most cherished plans and aims
must be given up, and he will rage and storm like a
caged lion. With what fury our imprisoned anarchists
dashed their heads against the bars of the jail that held
them. There was nothing of this in Paul. Recall once more
that he was in captivity at Rome. When this letter
was written he had probably been in the custody of the
Roman authorities considerably more than a year. At
first held in a kind of mild restraint, his bonds gradually
became heavier, and his treatment increasingly severe.
It was not until he had passed over into the harder

344 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
phase of his imprisonment that he gave expression to the
sublime words of trust and resignation and joy we have
before us
Substantial tokens of regard, as we have seen, had
been laid at his feet, and he was assured anew of the
sympathy and prayers and practical fellowship of these
far-away disciples at Philippi, he was yet held in du
rance, watched and guarded by a military police, with a
lot made all the time more and more irksome, and with
the question still an unsettled one whether the issue of
his trouble would be liberation or death. The chains
were becoming closer and closer about his weary limbs.
Advanced in life, worn and feeble in body, his circum
stances seemed all to be pointed with affliction. There
were apparently a hundred things to vex him to one to
give him consolation. It is hard to think of a position
more likely to take all heart out of one, and make him
restless and possibly bitter.
But in the midst of it all this man was uncomplaining,
acquiescent, quiet. In the midst of it all he could sit
and sing his song of triumphant trust, even as he and
Silas had once lifted up their voices in confidence and
praise at midnight in the prison at Philippi. He was
burdened— over=burdened — as we should say, but he
was yet cheerful. He was pushed to what some men
would call the hardest extremities; but no murmurs
escaped his lips. He was contented and even joyous.
Writers on this subject have called attention to the
marked contrast between Paul and others — not disciples
of our Lord, but distinguished in statesmanship and
literature and philosophy — who have been placed in
circumstances similar to Paul's at Rome.
Cicero knew the experiences of exile. It was the

SUITING LIFE TO CIRCUMSTANCES 345
most comfortable sort of exile. He was not imprisoned.
He could choose his own home. He was surrounded
wherever he went with wealth, luxury, admiration,
and troops of friends. He knew that eminent men were
using their influence in his behalf. But, philosopher
though he was, and though he had written volumes of
lofty exhortation to courage and fortitude and manli
ness, his letters composed while he was in his enforced
retreat, were made up of puerile and miserable lamenta
tions. He was anything but heroic.
Seneca was a contemporary of Paul. It has been sug
gested that these two men might have seen each other.
He was immensely rich, high in rank, of great reput.i-
tion, and there would seem to have been nothing
wanting to his comfort. Some of his books are immortal.
He magnified Stoic endurance, and Stoic superiority to
passion and pain. But no sooner was he forced to press
to his lips the cup of exile than he broke out into abject
complaints. In spite of his Stoicism he was not
ashamed to grovel with extravagant flatteries at the feet
of a worthless freedman to induce him to procure his
return from Sardinia to Rome.
How above all this was Paul. He did not, like Cicero,
weary friends with unmanly murmurings and importu
nities. He did not, like Seneca, fawn upon the worth
less, and beg for help. Poor, imprisoned, with the
frown of a heartless tyrant bent on him, and with death
soon to claim all that was mortal of him for the grave,
his soul yet swelled with the notes, not merely of resig
nation, calm and sweet, but of a high and triumphant
joy. He was superior to untowardness of circumstance.
He was superior, because it was not circumstances
which brought him contentment; he was contented in

/ /

346 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
spite of circumstances. It was not abundance of mate
rial things; he knew how to be content though reduced
to the point where he had nothing.
It is a high art — this art of contentment. A great
many people know how to sow and to reap and to gather
into barns; but they do not know how to be contented
with their harvests. They know how to toil with their
might, how to plan, how to organize success, and work
up to wealth and place and power; but they do not know
how to walk in the serenity of well=poised and unbur
dened souls. They know how to build houses, and to
lay their floors ankle=deep in velvety softness, and to
tax upholsterers to the utmost that room may vie with
room in dainty or dazzling elegance, and to hang their
walls with the rarest pictures money can buy; but after
they have got their houses built and furnished they do
not know how to settle back into them and get any
satisfaction out of them. They have all that architects
and artists and decorators and weavers and cabinet
makers can do for them, but still they are without the
choice blessing of contentment.
With large numbers of people it is impatience and
murmur and fret and scowl all the time. Life flows on
with them like a stream which has been over=fed at its
sources, and has swollen beyond the capacity of its
banks, and with noise and fury and wild, restless force
is rushing on bearing everything before it, in destruc
tive flood; and not like a soft, gentle brooklet, that winds
on through the meadows, and seems to take delight in
its grassy margin, and to catch and hold the shadow of
every nodding flower, as if it was a thing of life as well
as beauty, and to linger in pools or ripple over pebbles
in play with the sunshine. It is almost like setting foot

SUITING LIFE TO CIRCUMSTANCES 347
in another and higher sphere to drop down into the
presence of one of these habitually contented souls.
They are the instruments which always have music in
them. They are the priests who pronounce benedic
tions without waiting to be ordained.
In attempting, however, to cultivate the spirit of con
tentment as illustrated in the example of Paul we must
be on our guard at two or three important points.
1. We must not confound contentment with satisfac
tion in our own spiritual condition and attainments.
To do this would be to expose ourselves to the charge
of insufferable pride or insufferable stupidity. Men
never reach the point where they cannot gain some new
knowledge of themselves, and enter into deeper experi
ences of the love of God, and take on more of likeness
to Christ. Men cannot be put into such straitness, can
not be so hampered and limited by adverse circumstan
ces, that it is no longer possible for them to advance in
the comprehension and mastery of truth, and to come
more completely under the power of the things invisible
and eternal. Worlds on worlds of light and purity are
yet before us.
The apostle said: "I have learned, in whatsoever state
I am, therein to be content." He also said: "Brethren, I
count not myself yet to have apprehended; but one thing
I do, — forgetting the things which are behind, and
stretching forward to the things which are before, I press
on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of
God in Christ Jesus." He was content, but it was not
the serenity of self=conceit. He was content, but his
content was not stagnation. He was content, but con
tentment as he estimated and experienced it was not in
consistent with endeavors to keep his body under, and

348 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
to overcome every easily besetting sin, and to grow into
the largest proportions of moral and spiritual manhood.
" Whether by life or by death," so he says, he wanted
Christ " magnified in his body." It would be a poor
miserable con tentment in which a man should see noth
ing in his own thought or life to be amended, and noth
ing new and higher to be achieved.
2. Hence contentment must not be confounded with
a lack of wholesome aspiration.
A man isn't a man in the best sense of the term who
has in his soul no kindling desires, no eager outreach-
ings, after something not yet attained. What realms
there are of knowledge and truth and virtue, which, so
far as we are concerned, are still unoccupied. Our feet
have never trodden them, or, if they have, they have
never trodden them to conquer, and bear away splendid
trophies. It is only a mockery of his own best instincts,
— it is an insult to his own rational faculties, for a man
to stand face to face with paths which open out from his
feet into the illimitable expanses of light and purity, —
to stand with eye catching the signals of hands beckon
ing from immortal heights, — to stand with ear saluted
by the stern and yet benignant voice of duty, calling him
for the sake of the Kingdom, and for the sake of human
ity, to move onward, and say in response he is content
with himself as he is.
There is an ignoble content as well as an ignoble dis
content. How sick it makes one to listen to some of the com
plaints foolish people are all the time pouring forth. It
is not with themselves in the best sense, nor with their
attitude toward God, nor with their achievements, and
the way in which they have used time and opportunity.

SUITING LIFE TO CIRCUMSTANCES 349
and all the higher gifts and privileges of life. It is some
matter of the outside of life. It is some physical infe
licity. It is some unfortunate environment of life. It
is the house, the furniture, the help, the limitations
birth has seemed to impose. It is the struggle and ex
pense involved in keeping up with somebody else in
fashion. There are men and women, by the hundreds,
all about us, who are full of discontent, and who, on
every occasion, whether suitable or unsuitable, are be
wailing their lot because there are other men and women
who can outshine them socially, and who get invitations
to places where their names are never mentioned. Can
not anybody see that this is an ignoble discontent? In
presence of such facts is it not sometimes hard to main
tain our respect for human nature?
Just so there is an ignoble content. It is when a man
rests satisfied in himself, and feels no throbbings of soul
for a purer and loftier life, and God's pleadings to come
nearer to Him, and to get into fuller fellowship with His
thought and aim, awaken no affirmative responses in his
nature. It is when a man falls back into the lap of self=
indulgence or ease or wealth, and ceases to struggle any
more to be inwardly clean and large and strong.
Why not strive for the nobler quests? Why not arouse
the soul to dissatisfaction with its own mental and moral
littleness? Why not make it a point of ambition to
shine in those higher spheres where darkness is to be
conquered, and vice is to be overcome, and wretchedness
is to be relieved, and laws and institutions are to be im
proved, and society is to be delivered from some threat
ening evil, and humanity is to be carried forward to
ward its final redemption?
For a man to fall under the sway and habit of these

350 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
little discontents is to vulgarize his nature, and throw
obstacles in the path of his own mental and moral prog
ress. For a man to feel this larger, worthier discontent
is to gladden angels.
Get at the kind of discontent a man feels, and you get
at the measure of the man. When a man or woman is
constantly fretting over some petty annoyance, is think
ing always of some petty comfort, or some petty success,
it tells the whole story of the inner life. It tells the
whole story because it tells not only what one is, but
what one wants to be.
Paul's kind of content admits of a great deal of dis
content, if only the discontent be of the high and worthy
sort. Looking at his scant possessions, looking at the
few friends who rallied about him at the hour when he
needed friends, looking at his watchful keeper, looking
at his chains, looking at his prison walls, looking at the
near prospect of death, he said: " I am content." Look
ing at Jesus, looking at the character Jesus helps men
to achieve, looking as with vision anointed at the glories
which sometimes break through the upper world and il
luminate our earthly horizon, he said: "No, I am not
content; I want more likeness to the Son of God, and
more fitness for the crown He is by and by to give me
to wear."
8. Contentment must not be confounded with fail
ure or indisposition to act up to the full measure of ca
pacity and opportunity for the bringing about of good
ends. Contentment is not laziness. It is not the man who
sits down in the sun and folds his hands, and says he is
going to let the world move on as it will, who shows us
what true Christian contentment is. It is not over

SUITING LIFE TO CIRCUMSTANCES 351
against industry, nor zeal, nor even the intensest activ
ity in spheres where light can be carried, and justice
can be set up, and love shown, that we put contentment.
Industry promotes contentment. If a good many of
these howling socialists who think they have a serious
grievance against society would only stop talking, or
whiskey=selling, and go to work at some remunerative
and reputable employment, bloated capitalists and
merchants and manufacturers would not seem half so
offensive in their sight. The kind of contentment
which takes no interest in anything, is the contentment
of the stalled ox, or the gorged Indian lying in his
tepee. If doing nothing were a proof of contentment, then
Paul never knew a contented hour. If passionate eager
ness to bring ends to pass, and the calling into activity of
all energies, mental, moral, social, spiritual, which one has
in command, that these ends may be secured, be incon
sistent with contentment, Paul was but dreaming when
he spoke of his inward peace, and of his serene acquies
cence in the circumstances of his lot.
In his imprisonment the apostle was still busy. The
Christian Church is indebted to these months when he
was chained by the wrist to a soldier, for four of his
most wonderful epistles, — this to the Philippians, the
one to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephe
sians. What a gap it would leave in our New Testa
ment to take these letters out of the Canon.
But in these letters observe what eager watchfulness
there is for thCiWelfare of the churches, what tender solici
tude for individuals, what arguments and appeals are pre
sented to stir Christian sensibilities and deepen Chris
tian convictions and promote Christian steadfastness.

352 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
What prayers for the comfort of the Spirit to be vouch
safed to the brethren to whom he writes, and for their
growth in grace and knowledge. " For God is my witness
how I long after you all in the tender mercies of Christ
Jesus." Not only did he long after them; but both
God and men were witnesses to the fidelity with which
he wrought for them, and to the sufferings which he
endured for them in Christ Jesus, his Lord and our
Lord. Paul was content; but it was not the content of indif
ference. Content, but he was warmly concerned in
his fellow=men. He was content; but he did not on that
account cease to take interest in the practical business
of securing faith and righteousness among men. In
deed it is this which so largely uncovers the secret of
the contentment of the apostle. For there is nothing
like absorption in a great interest to withdraw thought
from petty aims and anxieties, and to lift one to the
high plane where the atmosphere is tonic, and it is
possible to walk in the fellowship of God.
To gather up our ideas, then, into one bundle, is it
not clear that a man can be contented, and yet not be
satisfied with his own purity of heart and with his own
attainments? Contented, and yet not be satisfied un
less his soul is all the time on the stretch for loftier ends
than any hitherto gained? Contented, and yet not be
satisfied unless he is doing some sort of helpful thing
all the time, and the life is fiowing along in the chan
nels which have been divinely opened for it?
True contentment lies in a wholesome superiority to
the mere circumstances of, life. Outward conditions
independent of inward states, have but small influence
in imparting rest and joy. Outward conditions, too,

SUITING LIFE TO CIRCUMSTANCES 353
independent of inward states, have but small power to
disturb rest and joy. It was not the indifference of
Stoicism; it was not the high defiance of a wounded but
unconquerable pride; it was the sublime superiority to
whatever is material into which one is lifted when his
life has become identified with the life of the Son of
God, which enabled the apostle to say: "For I have
learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.
I know how to be abased; and I know also how to
abound; in everything and in all things have I learned
the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to
abound and to be in want." Observe he has "learned"
it. It was not something which was in him by nature.
It was not something which came to him without effort.
It was a mystery which had to be unfolded to him. It
was a secret into which he had to be initiated. He
"learned" it.
How did Paul learn this lesson? in what school? at
the feet of what master? Through what process and by
what aid did he achieve a triumph so remarkable over
himself and over the world? Hint of the answer has
just been given in the words concerning the identifica
tion of his life with the life of the Son of God.
But let him make his own reply, and give his own
explanation: " I can do all things in Him that strength
eneth me." The secret of his brave endurance on the
one hand, and of his superiority to temptation on the
other — was not in himself, it was in Christ. This is
why he was able to abound without over-elation or con
ceit; and it was why he was able to endure straitness
and want without any murmuring or bitterness, — it was
the enabling he received from Christ. In a previous
paragraph of this epistle Paul has said: " To me to live

354 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
is Christ." The present statement is a natural inference
from that; for, living Christ, he had the grace and wis
dom and energy of Christ to carry him through his
tasks and trials. It was not in any superior capability
or force of his own that he was master of the situation,
but through the indwelling Christ. Had he had the
rashness to suppose that he was equal to all demands
made upon him without any divine aid he would have
come to grief. Or had he been so distrustful as not to
believe the grace of God sufficient for him he would
have accomplished nothing. But in the Lord strength
ening him he could do all things. Were one to say: "I
can do all things," and stop there, we should call him
either a fool or a fanatic; but when he goes on and
says: "I can do all things in Him thai strengtheneth
me," — " all things " in Christ, we recognize the reasona
bleness of it. Christ has the strength to impart to men
to make them sufficient both for their duties and their
burdens; and He both knows how and is willing to im
part this strength. Whoever trusts Him, whoever loves
Him, whoever obeys Him, whoever is in a condition to
say that for him to live is Christ, is open to this
strength. Christ strengthens us by delivering our
souls from a sense of guilt which is the most weaken
ing element in our nature; by quickening and illumi
nating our mental faculties; by filling our minds with
the great hope of a blessed immortality; by the inner
girding of His Spirit; and by bringing us more and
more under the power and into the fellowship of spirit
ual realities.
Vital connection with Christ, however, conditions the
strengthening. Without this there is no heroic doing
and enduring. Theodore Cuyler says that when he was

SUITING LIFE TO CIRCUMSTANCES 355
in Princeton "Professor Henry had so constructed a
large bar of iron, bent into the form of a horseshoe, that
it used to hang suspended from another iron bar above
it. Not only did it hang there, but it upheld four thou
sand pounds weight attached to it. The horseshoe mag
net was not welded or glued to the metal above it, but
through the iron wire coiled round it there ran a subtle
current of electricity from a galvanic battery. Stop the
flow of the current for an instant and the huge horseshoe
dropped. So does all the lifting power of the Christian
come from the currents of spiritual influence which flow
into his heart from the living Christ. The strength of
the Almighty One enters into the believer. If his con
nection with Christ is cut off, in an instant he becomes
another man. He can no longer 'do all things.' "
What a pity it is that we cannot all of us come into
the sweet secret and habit of suiting our lives in this
way to circumstances. How much better it would be to
take just what God, in answer to our wisest plannings
and industry and prayers, sees good to send us, and rest
in it, than to be all the time worrying our own souls,
and making the world about us miserable with our dis
contents. How much better to submit uncomplainingly
to our misfortunes and chastisements in the sublime
confidence that God does make all things to work to
gether for good for those that love Him, than to be nurs
ing thoughts of how hard the way is made to us, and
burdening the air with our ungracious wailings.
"Neither too lofty nor too low;
This, this is all my choice, my cheer —
A mind content, a conscience clear,''

jf ulness of Supply in ©ob.

" And my God shall fulfil every need of yours according to his
riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Now unto our God and Father be
the glory for ever and ever. Amen." — Phil. 4: 19-20.

XXII.
FULNESS OF SUPPLY IN GOD.
There are many precious passages in the Epistle of
Paul to the Philippians. Few can be more assuring and
comforting to a disciple of our Lord, and especially to a
disciple whose temperament is not of the over=sanguine
sort, and whose outlook on life is anything but cheery,
than the one now in hand for consideration. The thought
which it presses home upon us, and which it may well
be a delight for us to dwell upon is: Fulness of Supply
in God.
The steps by which Paul was led up to this thought
were simple and natural.
As we have seen he had been in the straits of deep
need. Imprisoned, deprived of the opportunity of earn
ing anything to meet his necessities by the labor of his
own hands, at a distance from the friends who knew him
most intimately and loved him most warmly, and without
earthly resources to draw upon, he had been forced to
suffer want. Not that he was not content, and not that
he would not have been content even in the most dis
tressing poverty he might have experienced; for he had
learned in whatsoever state he might be, and without a
murmur, to suit his life to the circumstances Providence
had arranged for him. All the same he had been in
want. He was empty. Through the thoughtf ulness and
generosity of his Philippian brethren his wants had
been bountifully met. He had been filled. "But I
369

360 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
have all things and abound; I am filled, having received
from Epaphroditus the things that came from you, an
odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well=pleas-
ing to God."
This thought of the fulness with which he had been
filled led him to think of the divine fulness and of the
means God has at His disposal for supplying all depths
of need and repaying all acts of kindness. In their
Christlike love these disciples had filled him till he
abounded. No way was open to him for making any
adequate return in kind. But God — his God and their
God — they might be sure would not overlook nor neglect
them. Through the tender love God had inspired in
their hearts for him, he had been taken care of. In any
exigency of need into which they might fall, God would
be sure to come to their relief.
"And my God shall fulfil every need of yours accord
ing to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus."
In proceeding now to a somewhat sharper and more
orderly study of the fulness of supply which true disci
ples of our Lord find in God, occasion will be discovered
for looking at the subject from two different points of
view. 1. The first is the point of view of need.
"And my God shall fulfil every need of yours."
In looking at men in the mass the leading fact to make
impression on the mind is that of need. It would be
difficult to come upon a person who is not in some kind
of need. The infant of days has his needs. The patri
arch of years has his needs. All through from cradle to
grave, — through the period of childhood and youth,
through the period of highest activity and power, it is a
story of need. We have our common needs, — our needs

FULNESS OF SUPPLY IN GOD 361
in which we all share alike; and we have our individual
needs, — or needs which, in addition to those that are
common to all, are peculiar to each man and woman.
The amount of need under which humanity labors and
struggles is simply measureless; for it is need here and
need there and need everywhere.
The disciple of Jesus Christ, in that he is still a man
among men and is of the earth earthy, participates in
these needs. Some of his needs, — the greatest of his
needs, indeed, since by faith in the Son of God he has
been delivered from the defilement and guilt and bond
age of sin and restored to the approval of the Father —
have been met. But he is still subject to hunger and
cold and nakedness; is still exposed to temptations; still
requires fellowship and sympathy; still depends on the
Spirit for guidance and strength.
The apostle, it is to be observed, does not hesitate to
include the whole sweep of the disciple's need in his
statement. It is a large contract into which he enters;
but he accepts it and subscribes to it with his own hand.
The language is — "every need." It is not our physical
needs alone; nor our intellectual needs alone; nor our
social needs alone; nor our spiritual needs alone, — it is
all our needs. The particular needs which were pressing
upon Paul at the stage of his experience when the mes
senger from Philippi reached him with his evidences of
good=will were these two, — the need of something to
relieve his material distresses and ameliorate his bodily
condition, and the need of Christian sympathy. His
heart craved a token of brotherly love. For some reason
those about him did not meet the requirements of the
situation, and he longed for his old friends. But when
he lifted his eye to God and rounded out his thought

362 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
and gave it utterance he took in everything. " And my
God shall fulfil every need of yours." These fellow=
disciples to whom he wrote were not to pick out one
thing and say: "Now I may ask God for aid in this
particular, but not in others " ; or another thing and say,
" If is fit for me to make my desires known to God with
respect to this want, but not with respect to other
wants." He simply took them all in and said with an
emphasis not to be mistaken — " every need."
It is not to be inferred from this that the apostle falls
into the mistake of identifying our needs with our
wishes and desires — our needs with our conceits and our
earthly ambitions and aims — our needs and what we
often foolishly fancy it would be good for us to have.
Men often want things which they do not need. Men
often want things it is a thousand times better for them
not to have. So, too, men do not want things, and
shrink from receiving things, which as a matter of fact
they especially need. Paul prayed repeatedly and with
all earnestness to be delivered from the thorn in the fiesh.
He did not want it. He did not want the trouble of it,
nor the pain of it, nor, it may be, the humiliation of it.
But God saw he needed it, and so He did not grant the
relief for which supplications were made. Job needed
the experience through which he passed that he might
bear effective witness to the righteousness of God. . It
was not pleasant, but was needful. It was a sad and
painful preliminary training, but Joseph needed to be
sold into Egypt and pass through what he did in order
to become the stepping stone of his people to higher
things. Nor is it to be inferred from this that men are not to
do the best they can to meet their own needs. No man

FULNESS OF SUPPLY IN GOD 363
may say: "Here is an assurance that my Heavenly Fa
ther has me in His watchful care, and will see to it that
all the pressing necessities of my life are met: there is,
therefore, no call for exertion and foresight on my part;
and so I will just fold my hands and sit still and wait
for Him to do it all." This would be the rankest fanat
icism. Men must plan for their own welfare. They
must use their brains, and their muscles and their op
portunities. But after all is said and done there will
still be much pressing on men to which they are not
equal. After all is said and done there may still be
needs right in the line of their most strenuous endeavors
and their most careful forecasting of the future. What
the apostle affirms is that God holds all the needs of all
His children in mind, and that those who love Him and
trust Him have no reason for giving way to dark and
dreary forebodings about the future. "And my God
shall fufil every need of yours."
2. Pass now from the point of view of the need to ihe
point of view of the supply :
" And my God shall fulfil every need of yours accord
ing to His riches in glory in Jesus Christ."
It is not quite easy to settle exactly what the apostle
means by the phrase: "His riches in glory." When
the words are taken by themselves we know what " His
riches " mean. It is the vast wealth of the universe —
material, moral, spiritual — these mighty outlying and
incomprehensible possessions, which He holds in His
divine keeping. We know what "glory" when used in
association with the Word of God means. It is the
honor He receives through the manifestation of His
true nature in word and work, and the matchless ex-
exaltation in which he resides. But "His riches in

364 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
glory," " according to His riches in glory," does not
yield its thought quite so freely and clearly as might be
desired. In the hands of the masters of exegesis the
language seems to have sometimes one and sometimes
another shade of significance.
Not without having spent some time in a careful ex
amination of their conclusions, but without lingering to
reproduce the reasons set forth for their opinions by the
earnest scholars who have given attention to this epistle,
it is evident to me that the writers are wrong who deny
this meeting of need to the present, and project the ful
filment or satisfaction of the assurance out into the
future. This view is not in keeping with the context
and the demands of the situation.
Paul's need was a need of the here and now. He
needed relief for his physical straitness and distress.
He needed expressions of love and sympathy. He
needed divine grace to enable him to adjust himself
uncomplainingly to his hard condition. He needed the
constant presence and fellowship of Jesus Christ. All
these things he had. They came to him from God.
Human hearts and human hands were engaged in the
ministry; but behind the hearts and the hands was God,
The gifts and the love which prompted the gifts were of
God. They were an odor of a sweet smell; they were*
an acceptable sacrifice; they were well=pleasing to God.
These tokens of affection and care came to Paul be
cause Paul was God's servant, and God was looking out
for him, and through chosen agents contributing to his
necessities. Thinking of it with glowing interest, writing
of it with an enthusiastic pen the apostle turned about
and said — giving to his words a free rendering — and said:
" Now this God of mine — the God whom I love and serve,

FULNESS OF SUPPLY IN GOD 365
is your God. Through the considerate thoughtfulness
which He has stirred in your souls He has taken care
of me; but He will be just as forward to take care of
you. You have needs, just as I have needs — partly the
same as mine, but partly different from mine and pe
culiar to yourselves, but there is not one of them which
will not fall under the watchful eye of the Father in
heaven, and not one of them for which He will not
make some sort of suitable provision. According to the
same infinitude of resource, and the same glorious
measure of love, which He exhibited in the gift of
Jesus Christ, will God make His interest in you man
ifest. He will fulfil every need of yours,"
This assurance of Paul reaches out into the future.
It will find its highest consummation in the future.
But to limit it to the future; to admit that the "needs"
are all the needs which men can feel and know " every
need " — physical, mental, moral, social, spiritual alike,
and then to affirm that the aid promised has reference
only to some future reward, that the hardships and pains
and sufferings of true disciples are to find their recom
pense only in the glory of the unseen world, is to shut
one's eyes to the circumstances of the case and stultify
the whole sublime story. Paul meant to say, that out of
His inexhaustible riches, after the large and glorious
manner which characterized all His doings, and with
the wealth of saving energy with which He comes into
the world in Christ, God would regard these brethren,
and see to it that no real need of theirs was even over
looked or disregarded.
Now it belongs to the highest and most precious of all
our privileges to fall back on this assurance the apostle
has given us, and to live in the reality and sacredness of

366 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
it. In a world where there are foes within and foes
without to be encountered; where there are turnings and
; overturnings of conditions, and it is prosperity one day
and adversity the next; where opposition from unex
pected quarters, or sickness and death may change the
whole outlook of one's affairs in a day, this assurance
is an important part of every Christian's working capi
tal. Not often, it may be, do God's children reach the
point where they need bread and clothing and shelter;
but they always need more light, more faith, more pa
tience, more love, more dutifulness; and in God there is
fulness of supply. Why is it that there is not a readier
turning to Him for grace?
The late Dr. Richard Newton who had such marvelous
skill in gathering up striking incidents and anecdotes
to illustrate Christian truth has left on record a story in
point. It concerns an old and poverty smitten Indian
who many years ago found his way into one of our west
ern settlements in search of food to keep him from
starving. " A bright colored ribbon was seen round his
neck, from which there hung a small dirty pouch. On
being asked what it was, he said it was a charm given
him in his younger days. He opened it and took out a
worn and crumpled paper, which he handed the person
speaking to him for inspection. It proved, on exami
nation, to be a regular discharge from the Federal army,
entitling him to a pension for life, and signed by Gen
eral Washington himself. Here was a man with a
promise duly signed, which, if presented in the right
place, would have secured to him ample provision for the
way; and yet he was wandering about hungry, helpless
and forlorn, and begging for bread to keep him from
starving. What a picture we have here of many Chris-

FULNESS OF S UPPLY IN GOD 367
tians, who, with all the promises of Jesus in their hands,
with the charter of their inheritance in full possession,
are yet gloomy and sad, and starving in the wilderness."
When will the fact of the infinite fulness of supply
there is in God be permitted to take possession of us
and become the basis of our activity and hope and life?
Can God tell us any more plainly than He has told us
that His resources are open to our use? Can He make
it more evident than He has made it that He is ready to
put His vast stores of grace — His wisdom and strength
— and what is far better than all this — is ready to put
Himself at our free service?
How the Psalms brim with this assurance of God's
nearness to His people, and of the minute way in which
He watches over their interests, and of His disposition
to guard them from harm, and to come to their rescue
in the sharp and bitter experiences of life. " They that
seek the Lord shall not want any good thing." " For
the Lord God is a sun and a shield; the Lord will give
grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from
them that walk uprightly." The thought of Jesus
moves in the same comforting groove. " Are not two
sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall
fall on the ground without your Father; but the very
hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not there
fore; ye are of more value than many sparrows." The
expectations the apostle created in the minds of the
Phil¬ippians by certifying to them God's readiness to
supply their needs is in line with the whole trend of
Scripture. The difficulty, or one of the difficulties, is that men
are not satisfied to have their present needs met, nor
even to have the assurance made to them that their

368 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
future needs will be met; but they want some tangible
evidence, some weighable, material proof, like a welt
established and prosperous business, or an abundantly
secured investment, or a good solid bank account, that
what is promised will be done. Paul might have writ
ten to these Philippian brethren: "Oh, yes; God
through you has brought me supplies for my present
necessities; through you He has cheered my heart with
expressions of love and sympathy for the immediate
occasion; and through you He has made these passing
hours comfortable — or if not comfortable, endurable;
but how will it be to=morrow and to=morrow?" But he
did not write any such thing. The word he wrote for
substance was that what God had done was just like
Him, and that He could be depended upon to act in this
way every time. " My God, the God whom I trust, the
God who has called me into His service, the God who
has come to me with relief in this present exigency, is
a God who will never fail to send His love and His
ministries of grace and His providencies to the needs
of those who confide in Him and try to follow Him."
This was the strain in which the apostle wrote.
But if men expect that God is going to anticipate
their needs before they themselves come to them and
feel them; if they are going to refuse to trust Him un
less they can see great piles of bread heaped up before
they are hungry, and stacks of clothing before they are
naked, and houses to dwell in before they are under the
necessity of occupying them, and sympathy for them in
their imprisonment before they are imprisoned, they
will be disappointed. God has not promised to run on
before us and see to it that we do not have any needs, —
He is too wise to adopt such a method; but simply to

FULNESS OF SUPPLY IN GOD 369
meet our needs when they arise and the pressure of them
is experienced. God is a skilful engineer; He knows how
to build bridges, and He can build them with a miracu
lous facility; but ordinarily He does not construct them
till His people reach the stream and it is a necessity for
them to cross. He parts the waters of the Red Sea
when the children of Israel get there and stand on the
shore, and the depths are in front of them and the
Egyptians are behind them. It was when Peter found
himself sinking and in his fear he cried unto the Lord
to save him, that Jesus stretched forth His hand and
rescued him from the peril of winds and waves, and from
the peril of too little faith as well. It is ours to get out
of the promises all that God has put into them; but we
are to be careful not to revise them and inject into them
features and elements quite foreign to the divine thought.
In His own wise time, and in His own loving way God
will supply every need of those who seek to know and do
His will; but that He will keep them from feeling any
sense of need, will withhold from them the benefits of
the wholesome discipline of need, is more than the occa
sion contemplates. The needs, however, as they arise
one by one will be met and they will be met after the
large pattern, or according to the riches of God in glory
in Jesus Christ.
Well might the apostle round out this great assur
ance with the glowing and jubilant words of doxology and
say: "Now unto our God and Father be the glory for
ever and ever. Amen."

Ube Saints ot Csesar's Dousebolb.

" Salute every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren which are with
me salute you. All the saints salute you, especially they that are of
CsBsar's household.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." — Phil
4: 21-23.

XXIII.
THE SAINTS OF C/ESAR'S HOUSEHOLD.
It is with a sense of satisfaction, such as any person is
likely to feel when about to finish a task long in hand,
and yet not without the regret experienced when a serv
ice has been found to be agreeable and rewarding, and
one has become accustomed to it, that we reach the clos
ing words of this epistle to the Philippians. The pres
ent discourse concludes our series. But even this long
continued and consecutive study of the letter has not
exhausted — in the estimation of men of extraordinary
gifts and profound spiritual insight would be thought,
no doubt, only to have hinted at — the vast wealth of
light and love and motive force which Paul put into it.
The longer, indeed, one lingers over these words, the more
patiently and earnestly one tries to master the signifi
cance they contain, the more wonderful will they seem,
the more evident will it be that they are penetrated to a
degree which only a high measure of inspiration can
explain with the truth and life of our Lord, and the firm
er will be the hold they will take on the heart and con
science, and the more intense and enthusiastic will be
the desire to have in one the mind of Christ.
The theme for this last sermon is: The Saints of Cce-
sar^s Household.
As the apostle begins his letter with the words ad
dressed directly " to the saints in Christ Jesus which are
at Philippi," and with wishing them "grace" and
373

374 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
"peace" from God the Father and from our Lord; so he
ends it with words of salutation and benediction. The
warm personal interest and tender fellowship and ear
nest desire for the spiritual welfare of these Philippian
brethren manifested at the outset of the epistle reappear
in the kindly farewell greetings and the prayer for divine
blessings on them at the close, " Salute every saint in
Christ Jesus." Or, what comes to the same thing: " Ex
press the heartiest good will to every member — not to
one or two or a half dozen — but to each and every mem
ber of your body of believers."
" The brethren which are with me salute you." The
"brethren" were disciples, doubtless, who for some
reason stood in closer personal relation to Paul than
the majority of the fellowship at Rome; and yet they
are not to be too sharply distinguished from the other
"saints." The reference may be to " official col
leagues," if there were any such colleagues, like Timo
thy and Mark; or to "traveling companions," like Luke
and Silas; or to " prominent believers " who resided in
the city, like Clement and Linus, Whoever they were
these individuals wished to have their sentiments of
regard specially expressed.
" All the saints salute you," Not Paul alone; nor
Paul and these brethren alone; but "all the saints" —
the whole communion — join in the communication of
good will and assurance of a true brotherly interest and
sympathy. But here falls in a clause whose presence is peculiar
and also profoundly significant. "All the saints salute
you, especially they that are of Ccesar''s household."
Who are these "saints" of "Caesar's household?"
How has it come to pass that there are " saints " in

THE SAINTS OF CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD 375
" Caesar's household? " Through what agency, by what
process has the saving knowledge of the truth of Jesus
Christ found its way into the imperial circle?
The answer is twofold. There was a church at
Rome for a considerable period before the great apostle
to the Gentiles had passed through the gates of the
Eternal City and wore the humiliating badges of her
sovereignty on his fettered wrists. Three years at least
before walking along the Appian Way, and meeting the
brethren at " The Market," he had written his great
letter to these disciples in Rome.
Beyond any question some of the persons who were
members of the church at Rome belonged to the house
hold of the Emperor. Bishop Lightfoot in an essay on
this passage which must have cost him much careful in
vestigation and study, and which is exceedingly inter
esting and instructive, has pointed out the fact that
many of the names mentioned by Paul in the last chap
ter of his letter to the Romans are identical with the
names found in sepulchral inscriptions and^ known to
have had a place in the imperial household. Of these
he specifies Ampliatus, Urbanus, Apelles, Stachys, the
two women Tryphaena and Tryphosa, Rufus and Her
mes, with a number of others. These were early con
verts to the faith; and though there may be mistakes in
particular instances of identification, some at least of
the individuals here indicated must have had a position
in Csesar's household as well as in Christ's Church.
But the preaching of Paul was also effective in win
ning inmates of the household of Csesar to the faith.
The soldiers who in turn were charged with the duty of
guarding a prisoner who, to say the least, must have
seemed to them so remarkable in his views and charac-

376 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
ter, were gently constrained to hear the story of salva
tion through a crucified and risen Christ whioh he had
to tell. " The things which happened " to him aided in
"the progress of the Gospel"; and he had not been in
Rome very long before his " bonds became manifest in
Christ through the whole praetorian guard," — or rather
perhaps, " in the whole praetorium." His ministry was
fruitful in spiritual results. Through these soldiers
as well as through earlier disciples, the influence of
the apostle found ready way into the circles of the im
perial household.
This is why there came to be disciples of our Lord in
the household of Caesar.
Not with this simple explanation of the fact, however,
are we to stop. For some of the most instructive, some
of the most encouraging, and some of the profoundest
lessons, which the history of the triumphs of the Cross
has to unfold lie right here. In this little clause of a
single brief sentence, there are whole volumes of practi
cal inference.
I. The first lesson is thai it is possible to be a witness
for Christ and to do effective work for Christ in almost
any situation in which one may be placed.
Paul was in bonds. He was permitted considerable
liberty, especially in the earlier stages of his imprison
ment; but he was never allowed to go abroad without the
chain which held him to his guard. His circumstances
were such as in the estimation of many would have
justified him in keeping still. Possibly the charges
under which he had been arrested and through his own
appeal brought to Rome could be more easily set aside
were he to hold his peace and behave himself after a
self=contained and circumspect fashion. One has no

THE SAINTS OF CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD 377
difficulty in imagining such counsel may have fallen on
his ear. In the interest, not alone of his life, but of his
future usefulness, this sort of advice might have been
whispered to him more than once.
But instead of falling in with the suggestions of
worldly prudence, and waiting for what would appear to
some a safer hour, he began at once to tell his wonder
ful story. In his imprisonment, and in the new rela
tions into which his imprisonment brought him to cer
tain classes of men and to certain phases of society, he
saw one of the finest opportunities he had ever had for
preaching the glorious Gospel of the Son of God, and he
seized and used it. When Paul was set upon and arrested
and held for trial it looked as if his ministry had been
brought to a sudden termination. So far from this be
ing true God was opening to him a field for his special
activity, and he had both the mind and the heart, both
the courage and the desire, to do what providence indi
cated. With tongue and pen he proclaimed the message
of the love of God in Christ.
There are two ways in particular in which the apos
tle commended the religion of Christ to those who were
about him.
The first was the sweet patience with which he bore
his burdens and passed through whatever sufferings his
imprisonment forced him to endure. These people
from lowest to highest were quite familiar with Stoic
hardness and indifference; but to be joyful under limita
tions and pain was something new to them. Meeting
and bearing reverses, not in a spirit of despair on the
one hand, nor of wild bravado on the other, but in the
conviction that there is a divine ministry for the soul in
Borrow, was a fresh disclosure to the capabilities into

378 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
which men can be trained by the help of the Spirit and
by the hope of glory.
The other way was by the word of mouth, through
which, no doubt, as often as he had the ear of an attend
ant, or of any chance hearer, he enthusiastically un
folded the plan of redemption, and told of One who had
come down from God out of heaven that He might il
lustrate to us the fulness of the divine love, and bear our
sins in His own body, and die for us on the Cross of
Calvary. By the words he spoke Paul explained his
own character; and in his character he exemplified his
words; and through the joint effect of the two, — the
truth he uttered and the truth he lived — he made a deep
impression for Christ.
Thus what seems to be a hindrance to a person's ac
tivity and usefulness is often a help. Very frequently
we say the door is shut when God is saying the door is
open. The young man thrown by the demand of busi
ness into the midst of a tough and ungodly crowd; the
young woman who is called to move her round in a
thoughtless and giddy circle; the soldier, the sailor, the
clerk, the mechanic, the laborer, forced into association
with people who are without faith and the loyalty to
truth and virtue which are the fruits of faith, often feels
that nothing worth while can be done in the circum
stances for Christ. Not so felt Paul at Rome. A pris
oner, chained to his guard, limited in his coming and
going, confined in his intercourse to those who sought
him or who were thrown in his way, intrigued against
by his own race, regarded, sometimes, it may be, with a
sort of amiable amusement, but generally with contempt
by those who occupied the seats of learning and power,
Paul yet rendered a service for Christ while at Rome so

THE SAINTS OF CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD 379
signal and successful that the memory and influence of
it will never die.
II. A second lesson — a correlative of this first one
— is thai it is possible to win hearts io Christ and bring
them under the renewing energy of His grace in cir
cumstances which from a worldly stand-point would
seem io put success quite out of the question.
As the apostle witnessed for Christ and worked for
Christ under conditions which ordinarily might have
been expected to put the idea of witnessing and work
ing quite out of one's mind, so he secured results and
achieved marked victories for the Kingdom of righteous
ness in a sphere where noteworthy spiritual triumphs
could hardly have been anticipated.
For what was this household of Caesar? Who is
meant by it, and how long is the list of the persons who
must be included in this designation? Above all what
was the office and character of these persons?
Caesar's household was made up of a large number of
persons of all ages and ranks and occupations and con
ditions. This household was not merely the Emperor's
more immediate family group with its necessary retinue
of servants; but it included the highest functionaries as
well as the lowest menials; and the total enrollment of
this body went up into high flgures. The majority con
sisted of soldiers and slaves — though slaves in those days
and under the Roman dominion were often men of dis
tinction and learning,— but senators and knights—men
of wealth and men of intellectual parts and men skilled
in the base arts of sensuality — were likewise reckoned
among those who were in waiting upon the ruler. "The
affairs of government," so Dean Merivale has told us,
" were transacted chiefly by the Emperor's freedmen,

380 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
some of them notorious for their riches and influence,
court favorites who had been enfranchised by himself
or his predecessors." It was a vast concourse of peo
ple — this which constituted the household of Caesar,
and which discharged the functions severally assigned
to them.
But if the numbers of this household were great; if
among them were generals and secretaries and physi
cians and teachers of ability and renown, as well as a
vast throng of humbler servants, the most marked
characteristic of the body was the appalling corruption
which prevailed. Nero sat on the throne, and the tastes
of the sovereign were largely the tastes of his court, and
the conduct of the highest official of the nation was
imitated so far as it could be by the menials who
watched for his beck and nod. Murders, debaucheries,
licentious intrigues, bitter cruelties, and every sort of
crime and corruption characterized the court society.
Perhaps there was no period in the whole history of the
Roman Empire when high capacities and learning and
skill and wealth were so entirely prostituted to unholy
and degrading ends as when Paul was a prisoner within
the walls of the city.
Yet right there in Caesar's household under all the
disadvantages of the place, and against so many alien
influences, the truth made its way, and souls were
persuaded to turn from sin and' accept and follow Jesus
Christ as their Savior. Quite likely these "saints" were
not of the more eminent personages of the house
hold. This is of little consequence; for the badge of
high or low, rich or poor, cultivated or ignorant, which
we fasten on men to designate their standing in our
earthly society, amounts to nothing in the sight of God.

THE SAINTS OF CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD 381
It is soulhood, and not the incidents of soulhood, which
eternity notes. The essential fact is that souls were
plucked as brands from the burning out of the midst of
these corrupt associates.
The same thing can be done anywhere and every
where. Men can be found of the Gospel in high places
and in low places alike, because men are made for the
Gospel and the Gospel is made for men. The Gospel
is what all men need, and it is what all men must have
if they would satisfy their needs. As has been pointed
out by another, if the salvation of Jesus Christ is for
Onesimus the slave, and for Peter the fisherman, it is
also for Luke the physician, and for Zenas the lawyer
and for Zacchseus the public official, and for Cornelius
the soldier. It is for the fashionable circles and the rul
ing circles, and the slums of Paris and Berlin. It is for
the fashionable circles and the ruling circles, and the
slums of London and Washington. It is for Caesar's
househould because every member of Caesar's house
hold from highest to lowest is a sinner, and is to be
saved, if saved at all, through the atoning sacrifice of
Christ. Winning souls to Christ in the household of Caesar
was a typical work. In my judgment the time has
come when the Church ought to return to original
conceptions and methods, and make efforts all along the
line and score results from top to bottom of society.
If the poor and lowly have seemed to accept Christian
ity more readily than the rich, it is not because they
need it more, nor because it is more suited to their
necessities. Wealth cannot wash away the guilt of the
soul, and money bags will be no shield in the day of
Judgment.

382 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
III, A third lesson is that it is possible io develop a
high order of Christian character under influences
and in the midst of surroundings which would seem
io be anything but favorable to spiritual growth.
It would be difficult to conceive of an environment
less favorable to an intelligent and successful cultiva
tion of the graces of the Spirit, — to a putting on of
Christ, and living a Christ=life in the practical affairs
of every day, than this of the household of Caesar.
Men say sometimes: "Oh, we have so many hindrances;
we meet with so much opposition in our efforts to fol
low Christ and be faithful to His precepts and example;
we are so beset with temptations to turn aside and do
as others do in the way of gratifying avarice or ambi
tion or appetite, that it often seems to us of no use
to try to be good and to do good." But where
is one likely to encounter more difficulties in
attempting to be spiritually=minded, and to walk in
the faith of Christ and to pattern the life after the
model of Christ, than were encountered by these dis
ciples back there in Rome, forced as they were to
breathe the atmosphere of a self = indulgent and grossly
voluptuous paganism, and to discharge their duties in
a court and under an administration whose corruption
was rivaled only by its cruelty?
Circumstances do differ; and some circumstances are
more favorable to piety, and to a rapid and symmetrical
growth of Christian character than others. In some
families it is a great deal easier than it is in other
families to regulate the life by Christian standards,
and conform to the conditions of a true spirituality.
So it is in shops and stores and mills. So it is in the
manufacturing establishments. There are shops and

THE SAINTS OF CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD "383
stores and mills and factories where cheating and lying
are a part of the stock in trade, and it is assumed that
to be strictly honest would be to court ruin. In this
kind of association, and in concerns where the leanings
are toward these crooked policies, it calls for no small
amount of energy and pluck to keep the soul in line
with God and under direction of the Spirit. But given
a Joseph, given a Daniel, given an Obadiah, given a
Nehemiah, and no temptations of an Egyptian Court,
or a Babylonian Court, or an Israelitish Court, or a
Persian Court, will prevent the exhibition of a mag
nificent loyalty to God, nor stay progress in righteous
ness. Indeed it is often the adversity of the conditions
under which it has had to come up which lends both
attractiveness and power to the character.
Had "Tom Brown" of Rugby, as Hughes has told
the story, not been compelled to run the gauntlet of
opposition and ridicule on his kneeling down to pray,
his character never would have seemed so exalted, and
his career never would have taken such a hold on our
hearts. The late Dr. William M, Taylor, in addition to some
things here suggested by him, but not quoted, has said:
"Christianity is not a thing of locality but of character.
There are plants which will bloom in some latitudes and
die in others; but Christianity can live where man can
live, because it consists in loyalty of heart and life to
Christ. " This is true. Being true this is what makes
it possible for men and women, be their circumstances
what they may, to rise superior to their circumstances,
and exemplify the high qualities of likeness to Christ,
May it not be, in fact, that the stoutest and best
Christian character is just that which grows up in hard

384 DISCOURSES ON PHILIPPIANS
soil and is often blown upon by harsh winds? Were
there more call in their estimation for watchfulness and
courage; were there a more constant consciousness that
the eyes of unsympathetic critics are on them ; are there
not many believers who would live more consecrated
lives, and who would be more faithful to their covenant
vows, and more devoted to their Christian duties? It
was a hard place to be in; but these saints in Caesar's
household magnified their high calling, and rejoiced in
the fellowship of believers, and did not hesitate to let it
be known as far as Paul's letter could carry the intelli
gence, that they trusted in Christ and rejoiced in the
hope of glory.
In bringing this epistle to a fit conclusion and utter
ing last the best and highest word he knew how to
speak, Paul expressed the desire that the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ might be communicated to these
brethren at Philippi, What he uttered is not merely a
kindly wish, but a high and earnest prayer. It is that
their spirits might be illuminated with divine light, and
girded with divine strength, and elevated into a divine
fellowship. He wanted the love of Christ to overfiow
into their hearts, and the thought of Christ to penetrate
and inform their thoughts, and the life of Christ to
re=appear in their lives. This would give them confi
dence and cheer in hours which otherwise would be
marked by despondency. This would give them conso
lation and comfort when waves of sorrow rolled in on the
soul. This would give them sympathetic and vital con
nection with things invisible, and enable them the more
easily to keep their minds and hearts fixed on the realities
of the world to come. This would give them assurance of
joys and glories such as no prophetic forecast has ever

THE SAINTS OF CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD 385
yet reduced to the measure of human speech. It is
because we do not have more of this grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ — will not consent to have it — that our faith
wavers and our hopes grow dim, and the stars one by
one drop out of our spiritual skies, and our hearts be
come hard, and the breath of the world sweeps over us
like a chilling frost, and our hands lose the sacred art
of clinging to the pierced hand of the Son of God, As
the apostle ended, so it seems to me good to end, and
to say with intensest yearning of prayer: "The grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit."

3 9002 08837 5820

^:j0m^^.