THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION
A FORMULA, a receipt, for Sanctification--
can one seriously speak of this mighty change as if the process were as
definite as for the production of so many volts of electricity? It is
impossible to doubt it. Shall a mechanical experiment succeed infallibly, and
the one vital experiment of humanity remain a chance? Is corn to grow by
method, and character by caprice? If we cannot calculate to a certainty that
the forces of religion will do their work, then is religion vain. And if we
cannot express the law of these forces in simple words, then is Christianity
not the world's religion but the world's conundrum.
Where, then, shall one look for such a formula?
Where one would look for any formula--among the text books. And if we turn to
the text books of Christianity we shall find a formula for this problem as
clear and precise as any in the mechanical sciences. If this simple rule,
moreover, be but followed fearlessly, it will yield the result of a perfect
character as surely as any result that is guaranteed by the laws of nature. The
finest expression of this rule in Scripture, or indeed in any literature, is
probably one drawn up and condensed into a single verse by Paul. You will find
it in a letter--the second to the Corinthians--written by him to some Christian
people who, in a city which was a byword for depravity and licentiousness, were
seeking the higher life. To see the point of the words we must take them
from the immensely improved rendering of the Revised translation, for the older
Version in this case greatly obscures the sense. They are these: "We all, with
unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed
into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit."
Now observe at the outset the entire
contradiction of all our previous efforts, in the simple passive "we are
transformed." We are changed, as the Old Version has it--we do not
change ourselves. No man can change himself. Throughout the New Testament you
will find that wherever these moral and spiritual transformations are described
the verbs are in the passive. Presently it will be pointed out that there is
a rationale in this; but meantime do not toss these words aside as if
this passivity denied all human effort or ignored intelligible law. What is
implied for the soul here is no more than is everywhere claimed for the body.
In physiology the verbs describing the processes of growth are in the passive.
Growth is not voluntary; it takes place, it happens, it is wrought upon matter.
So here. "Ye must be born again" --we cannot born ourselves. "Be not
conformed to this world but be ye transformed"--we are subjects
to a transforming influence, we do not transform ourselves. Not more certain is
it that it is something outside the thermometer that produces a change in the
thermometer, than it is something outside the soul of man that produces a moral
change upon him. That he must be susceptible to that change, that he must be a
party to it, goes without saying; but that neither his aptitude nor his will
can produce it, is equally certain.
Obvious as it ought to seem, this may be to some
an almost startling revelation. The change we have been striving after is not
to be produced by any more striving after. It is to be wrought upon us by the
moulding of hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends, and the bud bursts,
and the fruit reddens under the co-operation of influences from the outside
air, so man rises to the higher stature under invisible pressures from without.
The radical defect of all our former methods of sanctification was the attempt
to generate from within that which can only be wrought upon us from without.
According to the first Law of Motion: Every body continues in its state of
rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far as it may be
compelled by impressed forces to change that state. This is also a first
law of Christianity. Every man's character remains as it is, or continues in
the direction in which it is going, until it is compelled by impressed
forces to change that state. Our failure has been the failure to put
ourselves in the way of the impressed forces. There is a clay, and there is a
Potter; we have tried to get the clay to mould the clay.
Whence, then, these pressures, and where this
Potter? The answer of the formula is "By reflecting as a mirror the glory of
the Lord we are changed." But this is not very clear. What is the "glory" of
the Lord, and how can mortal man reflect it, and how can that act as an
"impressed force" in moulding him to a nobler form? The word "glory" --the word
which has to bear the weight of holding those "impressed forces" --is a
stranger in current speech, and our first duty is to seek out its equivalent in
working English. It suggests at first a radiance of some kind, something
dazzling or glittering, some halo such as the old masters loved to paint round
the heads of their Ecce Homos. But that is paint, mere matter, the visible
symbol of some unseen thing. What is that unseen thing? It is that of all
unseen things, the most radiant, the most beautiful, the most Divine, and that
is Character. On earth, in Heaven, there is nothing so great, so
glorious as this. The word has many meanings; in ethics it can have but one.
Glory is character and nothing less, and it can be nothing more. The earth is
"full of the Glory of the Lord," because it is full of His character. The
"Beauty of the Lord" is character. "The effulgence of His Glory" is character.
"The Glory of the Only Begotten" is character, the character which is "fulness
of grace and truth." And when God told His people His name He simply
gave them His character, His character which was Himself. "And the Lord
proclaimed the Name of the Lord . . . the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and
gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth." Glory then is not
something intangible, or ghostly, or transcendental. If it were this, how could
Paul ask men to reflect it? Stripped of its physical enswathement it is Beauty,
moral and spiritual Beauty, Beauty infinitely real, infinitely exalted, yet
infinitely near and infinitely communicable.
With this explanation read over the sentence once
more in paraphrase: We all reflecting as a mirror the character of Christ are
transformed into the same Image from character to character--from a poor
character to a better one, from a better one to ane a little better still, from
that to one still more complete, until by slow degrees the Perfect Image is
attained. Here the solution of the problem of sanctification is compressed into
a sentence: Reflect the character of Christ and you will become like Christ.
All men are mirrors--that is the first law on
which this formula is based. One of the aptest descriptions of a human being is
that he is a mirror. As we sat at table to-night, the world in which each of us
lived and moved throughout this day was focussed in the room. What we saw as we
looked at one another was not one another, but one mother's world. We were an
arrangement of mirrors. The scenes we saw were all reproduced; the people we
met walked to and fro; they spoke, they bowed, they passed us by, did
everything over again as if it had been real. When we talked, we were but
looking at our own mirror and describing what flitted across it; our listening
was not hearing, but seeing--we but looked on our neighbour's mirror. All human
intercourse is a seeing of reflections. I meet a stranger in a railway
carriage. The cadence of his first word tells me he is English, and comes from
Yorkshire. Without knowing it he has reflected his birthplace, his parents, and
the long history of their race. Even physiologically he is a mirror. His second
sentence records that he is a politician, and a faint inflexion in the way he
pronounces The Times reveals his party. In his next remarks I see
reflected a whole world of experiences. The books he has read, the people he
has met, the influences that have played upon him and made him the man he is--
these are all registered there by a pen which lets nothing pass, and whose
writing can never be blotted out. What I am reading in him meantime he also is
reading in me; and before the journey is over we could half write each other's
lives. Whether we like it or not, we live in glass houses. The mind, the
memory, the soul, is simply a vast chamber panelled with looking-glass. And
upon this miraculous arrangement and endowment depends the capacity of mortal
souls to "reflect the character of the Lord."
But this is not all. If all these varied
reflections from our so-called secret life are patent to the world, how close
the writing, how complete the record, within the soul itself? For the
influences we meet are not simply held for a moment on the polished surface and
thrown off again into space. Each is retained where first it fell, and stored
up in the soul for ever.
This law of Assimilation is the second, and by
far the most impressive truth which underlies the formula of
sanctification--the truth that men are not only mirrors, but that these mirrors
so far from being mere reflectors of the fleeting things they see, transfer
into their own inmost substance, and hold in permanent preservation the things
that they reflect. No one knows how the soul can hold these things. No one
knows how the miracle is done. No phenomenon in nature, no process in
chemistry, no chapter in necromancy can even help us to begin to understand
this amazing operation. For, think of it, the past is not only focussed there,
in a man's soul, it is there. How could it be reflected from there if it were
not there? All things that he has ever seen, known, felt, believed of the
surrounding world are now within him, have become part of him, in part are
him--he has been changed into their image. He may deny it, he may resent it,
but they are there. They do not adhere to him, they are transfused through him.
He cannot alter or rub them out. They are not in his memory, they are in him.
His soul is as they have filled it, made it, left it. These things, these
books, these events, these influences are his makers. In their hands are life
and death, beauty and deformity. When once the image or likeness of any of
these is fairly presented to the soul, no power on earth can hinder two things
happening--it must be absorbed into the soul, and for ever reflected back again
from character.
Upon these astounding yet perfectly obvious
psychological facts, Paul bases his doctrine of sanctification. He sees that
character is a thing built up by slow degrees, that it is hourly changing for
better or for worse according to the images which flit across it. One step
further and the whole length and breadth of the application of these
ideas to the central problem of religion will stand before us.