GROWTH
" Is not the evidence of Ease on the very
front of all the greatest works in existence? Do they not say plainly to
us, not `there has been a great effort here,' but `there has been a
great power here'? It is not the weariness of mortality but the strength
of divinity, which we have to recognise in all mighty things; and that is just
what we now never recognise, but think that we are to do great things by help
of iron bars and perspiration; alas! we shall do nothing that way, but lose
some pounds of our own weight."
RUSKIN.
"Consider the lilies of the field how they
grow."--The Sermon on the Mount.
" Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia
dicit."--Juvenal.
WHAT gives the peculiar point to this
object-lesson from the lips of Jesus is, that He not only made the
illustration, but made the lilies. It is like an inventor describing his own
machine. He made the lilies and He made me--both on the same broad principle.
Both together, man and flower, He planted deep in the Providence of God; but as
men are dull at studying themselves He points to this companion-phenomenon to
teach us how to live a free and natural life, a life which God will unfold for
us, without our anxiety, as He unfolds the flower. For Christ's words are not a
general appeal to consider nature. Men are not to consider the lilies simply to
admire their beauty, to dream over the delicate strength and grace of stem and
leaf. The point they were to consider was how they grew--how without
anxiety or care the flower woke into loveliness, how without weaving these
leaves were woven, how without toiling these complex tissues spun themselves,
and how without any effort or friction the whole slowly came ready-made from
the loom of God in its more than Solomon-like glory. `So,' He says, making the
application beyond dispute,' you care-worn, anxious men must grow. You, too,
need take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink or
what ye shall put on. For if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day
is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O
ye of little faith? `
This nature-lesson was a great novelty in its
day; but all men now who have even a "little faith" have learned this Christian
secret of a composed life. Apart even from the parable of the lily, the
failures of the past have taught most of us the folly of disquieting ourselves
in vain, and we have given up the idea that by taking thought we can add a
cubit to our stature.
But no sooner has our life settled down to this
calm trust in God than a new and graver anxiety begins. This time it is not for
the body we are in travail, but for the soul. For the temporal life we have
considered the lilies, but how is the spiritual life to grow? How are we to
become better men? How are we to grow in grace? By what thought shall we add
the cubits to the spiritual stature and reach the fulness of the Perfect Man?
And because we know ill how to do this, the old anxiety comes back again and
our inner life is once more an agony of conflict and remorse. After all, we
have but transferred our anxious thoughts from the body to the soul. Our
efforts after Christian growth seem only a succession of failures, and instead
of rising into the beauty of holiness our life is a daily heartbreak and
humiliation.
Now the reason of this is very plain. We have
forgotten the parable of the lily. Violent efforts to grow are right in
earnestness, but wholly wrong in principle. There is but one principle of
growth both for the natural and spiritual, for animal and plant, for body and
soul. For all growth is an organic thing. And the principle of growing in grace
is once more this, "Consider the lilies how they grow."
In seeking to extend the analogy from the
body to the soul there are two things about the lilies' growth, two
characteristics of all growth, on which one must fix attention. These are,--
First, Spontaneousness.
Second, Mysteriousness.
I. Spontaneousness. There are three lines along
which one may seek for evidence of the spontaneousness of growth. The first is
Science. And the argument here could not be summed up better than in the words
of Jesus. The lilies grow, He says, of themselves; they toil not, neither do
they spin. They grow, that is, automatically, spontaneously, without trying,
without fretting, without thinking. Applied in any direction, to plant, to
animal, to the body or to the soul this law holds. A boy grows, for example,
without trying. One or two simple conditions are fulfilled, and the growth goes
on. He thinks probably as little about the condition as about the result; he
fulfils the conditions by habit, the result follows by nature. Both processes
go steadily on from year to year apart from himself and all but in spite of
himself. One would never think of telling a boy to grow. A doctor has no
prescription for growth. He can tell me how growth may be stunted or impaired,
but the process itself is recognised as beyond control--one of the few, and
therefore very significant, things which Nature keeps in her own hands. No
physician of souls, in like manner, has any prescription for spiritual growth.
It is the question he is most often asked and most often answers wrongly. He
may prescribe more earnestness, more prayer, more self-denial, or more
Christian work. These are prescriptions for something, but not for growth. Not
that they may not encourage growth; but the soul grows as the lily grows,
without trying, without fretting, without ever thinking. Manuals of devotion,
with complicated rules for getting on in the Christian life, would do well
sometimes to return to the simplicity of nature; and earnest souls who are
attempting sanctification by struggle instead of sanctification by faith might
be spared much humiliation by learning the botany of the Sermon on the Mount.
There can indeed be no other principle of growth than this. It is a
vital act. And to try to make a thing grow is as absurd as to help the
tide to come in or the sun rise.
Another argument for the spontaneousness of
growth is universal experience. A boy not only grows without trying, but he
cannot grow if he tries. No man by taking thought has ever added a cubit to his
stature; nor has any man by mere working at his soul ever approached nearer to
the stature of the Lord Jesus. The stature of the Lord Jesus was not itself
reached by work, and he who thinks to approach its mystical height by anxious
effort is really receding from it. Christ's life unfolded itself from a divine
germ, planted centrally in His nature, which grew as naturally as a flower from
a bud. This flower may be imitated; but one can always tell an artificial
flower. The human form may be copied in wax, yet somehow one never fails to
detect the difference. And this precisely is the difference between a native
growth of Christian principle and the moral copy of it. The one is natural, the
other mechanical. The one is a growth, the other an accretion. Now this,
according to modern biology, is the fundamental distinction between the living
and the not living, between an organism and a crystal. The living organism
grows, the dead crystal increases. The first grows vitally from within, the
last adds new particles from the outside. The whole difference between the
Christian and the moralist lies here. The Christian works from the centre, the
moralist from the circumference. The one is an organism, in the centre of which
is planted by the living God a living germ. The other is a crystal, very
beautiful it may be; but only a crystal--it wants the vital principle of
growth.
And one sees here also, what is sometimes very
difficult to see, why salvation in the first instance is never connected
directly with morality. The reason is not that salvation does not demand
morality, but that it demands so much of it that :he moralist can never reach
up to it. The end of Salvation is perfection, the Christlike mind, character
and life. Morality is on the way to this perfection; it may go a considerable
distance towards it, but it can never reach it. Only Life can do that. It
requires something with enormous power of movement, of growth, of overcoming
obstacles, to attain the perfect. Therefore the man who has within himself this
great formative agent, Life, is nearer the end than the man who has morality
alone. The latter can never reach perfection; the former must. For the
Life must develop out according to its type; and being a germ of the
Christ-life, it must unfold into a Christ. Morality, at the utmost, only
develops the character in one or two directions. It may perfect a single virtue
here and there, but it cannot perfect all. And especially it fails always to
give that rounded harmony of parts, that perfect tune to the whole orchestra,
which is the marked characteristic of life. Perfect life is not merely the
possessing of perfect functions, but of perfect functions perfectly adjusted to
each other and all conspiring to a single result, the perfect working of the
whole organism. It is not said that the character will develop in all its
fulness in this life. That were a time too short for an Evolution so
magnificent. In this world only the cornless ear is seen; sometimes only the
small yet still prophetic blade. The sneer at the godly man for his
imperfections is ill-judged. A blade is a small thing. At first it grows very
near the earth. It is often soiled and crushed and downtrodden. But it is a
living thing. That great dead stone beside it is more imposing; only it will
never be anything else than a stone. But this small blade--it doth not yet
appear what it shall be.
Seeing now that Growth can only be
synonymous with a living automatic process, it is all but superfluous to seek a
third line of argument from Scripture. Growth there is always described in the
language of physiology. The regenerate soul is a new creature. The Christian is
a new man in Christ Jesus. He adds the cubits to his stature just as the old
man does. He is rooted and built up in Christ; he abides in the vine, and so
abiding, not toiling or spinning, brings forth fruit. The Christian in short,
like the poet, is born not made; and the fruits of his character are not
manufactured things but living things, things which have grown from the secret
germ, the fruits of the living Spirit. They are not the produce of this
climate, but exotics from a sunnier land.
II. But, secondly, besides this Spontaneousness
there is this other great characteristic of Growth--Mysteriousness. Upon this
quality depends the fact, probably, that so few men ever fathom its real
character We are most unspiritual always in dealing with the simplest spiritual
things. A lily grows mysteriously, pushing up its solid weight of stem and leaf
in the teeth of gravity. Shaped into beauty by secret and invisible fingers,
the flower develops we know not how. But we do not wonder at it. Every day the
thing is done; it is Nature, it is God. We are spiritual enough at least to
understand that. But when the soul rises slowly above the world, pushing up its
delicate virtues in the teeth of sin, shaping itself mysteriously into the
image of Christ, we deny that the power is not of man. A strong will, we say, a
high ideal, the reward of virtue, Christian influence,--these will account for
it. Spiritual character is merely the product of anxious work, self-command,
and self-denial. We allow, that is to say, a miracle to the lily, but none to
the man. The lily may grow; the man must fret and toil and spin.
Now grant for a moment that by hard work and
self-restraint a man may attain to a very high character. It is not denied that
this can be done. But what is denied is that this is growth, and that this
process is Christianity. The fact that you can account for it proves that it is
not growth. For growth is mysterious; the peculiarity of it is that you cannot
account for it. Mysteriousness, as Mozley has well observed, is "the test of
spiritual birth." And this was Christ's test. "The wind bloweth where it
listeth. Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or
whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit". The test
of spirituality is that you cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.
If you can tell, if you can account for it on philosophical principles, on the
doctrine of influence, on strength of will, on a favourable environment, it is
not growth. It may be so far a success, it may be a perfectly honest, even
remarkable, and praiseworthy imitation, but it is not the real thing. The
fruits are wax, the flowers artificial--you can tell whence it cometh and
whither it goeth.
The conclusion is, then, that the Christian is a
unique phenomenon. You cannot account for him. And if you could he would not be
a Christian. Mozley has drawn the two characters for us in graphic words: "Take
an ordinary man of the world--what he thinks and what he does, his whole
standard of duty is taken from the society in which he lives. It is a borrowed
standard: he is as good as other people are; he does, in the way of duty, what
is generally considered proper and becoming among those with whom his lot is
thrown. He reflects established opinion on such points. He follows its lead.
His aims and objects in life again are taken from the world around him, and
from its dictation. What it considers honourable, worth having, advantageous
and good, he thinks so too and pursues it. His motives all come from a visible
quarter. It would be absurd to say that there is any mystery in such a
character as this, because it is formed from a known external influence--the
influence of social opinion and the voice of the world. `Whence such a
character cometh' we see; we venture to say that the source and origin of it is
open and palpable, and we know it just as we know the physical causes of many
common facts."
Then there is the other. "There is a certain
character and disposition of mind of which it is true to say that `thou canst
not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.' . . . There are those who
stand out from among the crowd, which reflects merely the atmosphere of feeling
and standard of society around it, with an impress upon them which bespeaks a
heavenly birth. . . . Now, when we see one of those characters, it is a
question which we ask ourselves, How has the person become possessed of it? Has
he caught it from society around him? That cannot be, because it is wholly
different from that of the world around him. Has he caught it from the
inoculation of crowds and masses, as the mere religious zealot catches
his character? That cannot be either, for the type is altogether different from
that which masses of men, under enthusiastic impulses, exhibit. There is
nothing gregarious in this character; it is the individual's own; it is not
borrowed, it is not a reflection of any fashion or tone of the world outside;
it rises up from some fount within, and it is a creation of which the text
says, We know not whence it cometh."[53]
Now we have all met these two characters--the one
eminently respectable, upright, virtuous, a trifle cold perhaps, and generally,
when critically examined, revealing somehow the mark of the tool; the other
with God's breath still upon it, an inspiration; not more virtuous, but
differently virtuous; not more humble, but different, wearing the meek and
quiet spirit artlessly as to the manner born. The other-worldliness of such a
character is the thing that strikes you; you are not prepared for what it will
do or say or become next, for it moves from a far-off centre, and in spite of
its transparency and sweetness, that presence fills you always with awe. A man
never feels the discord of his own life, never hears the jar of the machinery
by which he tries to manufacture his own good points, till he has stood in the
stillness of such a presence. Then he discerns the difference between growth
and work. He has considered the lilies, how they grow.
We have now seen that spiritual growth is a
process maintained and secured by a spontaneous and mysterious inward
principle. It is a spontaneous principle even in its origin, for it bloweth
where it listeth; mysterious in its operation, for we can never tell whence it
cometh; obscure in its destination, for we cannot tell whence it goeth. The
whole process therefore transcends us; we do not work, we are taken in
hand--"it is God which worketh in us, both to will and to do of His good
pleasure." We do not plan--we are "created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
There may be an obvious objection to all this. It
takes away all conflict from the Christian life? It makes man, does it not,
mere clay in the hands of the potter? It crushes the old character to make a
new one, and destroys man's responsibility for his own soul?
Now we are not concerned here in once more
striking the time-honoured "balance between faith and works." We are
considering how lilies grow, and in a specific connection, namely, to discover
the attitude of mind which the Christian should preserve regarding his
spiritual growth. That attitude, primarily, is to be free from care. We are not
lodging a plea for inactivity of the spiritual energies, but for the
tranquillity of the spiritual mind. Christ's protest is not against work, but
against anxious thought; and rather, therefore, than complement the lesson by
showing the other side, we take the risk of still further extending the plea in
the original direction.
What is the relation, to recur again to analogy,
between growth and work in a boy? Consciously, there is no relation at all. The
boy never thinks of connecting his work with his growth. Work in fact is one
thing and growth another, and it is so in the spiritual life. If it be asked
therefore, Is the Christian wrong in these ceaseless and agonizing efforts
after growth? the answer is, Yes, he is quite wrong, or at least, he is quite
mistaken. When a boy takes a meal or denies himself indigestible things, he
does not say, "All this will minister to my growth"; or when he runs a race he
does not say, "This will help the next cubit of my stature." It may or it nay
not be true that these things will help his stature, but, if he thinks of this,
his idea of growth is morbid. And this is the point we are dealing with. His
anxiety here is altogether irrelevant and superfluous. Nature is far more
bountiful than we think. When she gives us energy she asks none of it back to
expend on our own growth. She will attend to that. " Give your work," she says,
"and your anxiety to others; trust me to add the cubits to your stature." If
God is adding to our spiritual stature, unfolding the new nature within us, it
is a mistake to keep twitching at the petals with our coarse fingers. We must
seek to let the Creative Hand alone. "It is God which giveth the increase." Yet
we never know how little we have learned of the fundamental principle of
Christianity till we discover how much we are all bent on supplementing God's
free grace. If God is spending work upon a Christian, let him be still and know
that it is God. And if he wants work, he will find it there--in the being
still.
Not that there is no work for him who would grow,
to do. There is work, and severe work,-- work so great that the worker deserves
to have himself relieved of all that is superfluous during his task. If the
amount of energy lost in trying to grow were spent in fulfilling rather the
conditions of growth, we should have many more cubits to show for our stature.
It is with these conditions that the personal work of the Christian is chiefly
concerned. Observe for a moment what they are, and their exact relation. For
its growth the plant needs heat, light, air, and moisture. A man, therefore,
must go in search of these, or their spiritual equivalents, and this is his
work? By no means. The Christian's work is not yet. Does the plant go in search
of its conditions? Nay, the conditions come to the plant. It no more
manufactures the heat, light, air, and moisture, than it manufactures its own
stem. It finds them all around it in Nature. It simply stands still with its
leaves spread out in unconscious prayer, and Nature lavishes upon it these and
all other bounties, bathing it in sunshine, pouring the nourishing air over and
over it, reviving it graciously with its nightly dew. Grace, too, is as free as
the air. The Lord God is a Sun. He is as the Dew to Israel. A man has no more
to manufacture these than he has to manufacture his own soul. He stands
surrounded by them, bathed in them, beset behind and before by them. He lives
and moves and has his being in them. How then shall he go in search of them? Do
not they rather go in search of him? Does he not feel how they press themselves
upon him? Does he not know how unweariedly they appeal to him? Has he not heard
how they are sorrowful when he will not have them? His work, therefore, is not
yet. The voice still says, "Be still."
The conditions of growth, then, and the inward
principle of growth being both supplied by Nature, the thing man has to do, the
little junction left for him to complete, is to apply the one to the other. He
manufactures nothing; he earns nothing; he need be anxious for nothing; his one
duty is to be in these conditions, to abide in them, to allow grace to
play over him, to be still therein and know that this is God.
The conflict begins and prevails in all its
life-long agony the moment a man forgets this. He struggles to grow himself
instead of struggling to get back again into position. He makes the church into
a workshop when God meant it to be a beautiful garden. And even in his closet,
where only should reign silence--a silence as of the mountains whereon the
lilies grow--is heard the roar and tumult of machinery. True, a man will often
have to wrestle with his God--but not for growth. The Christian life is a
composed life. The Gospel is Peace. Yet the most anxious people in the world
are Christians--Christians who misunderstand the nature of growth. Life is a
perpetual self-condemning because they are not growing. And the effect is not
only the loss of tranquillity to the individual. The energies which are meant
to be spent on the work of Christ are consumed in the soul's own fever. So long
as the Church's activities are spent on growing there is nothing to spare for
the world. A soldier's time is not spent in earning the money to buy his
armour, in finding food and raiment, in seeking shelter. His king provides
these things that he may be the more at liberty to fight his battles. So, for
the soldier of the Cross all is provided. His Government has planned to leave
him free for the Kingdom's work.
The problem of the Christian life finally is
simplified to this--man has but to preserve the right attitude. To abide in
Christ, to be in position, that is all. Much work is done on board a ship
crossing the Atlantic. Yet none of it is spent on making the ship go. The
sailor but harnesses his vessel to the wind. He puts his sail and rudder in
position, and lo, the miracle is wrought. So everywhere God creates, man
utilizes. All the work of the world is merely a taking advantage of energies
already there.[54] God gives the wind, and the
water, and the heat; man but puts himself in the way of the wind, fixes his
water-wheel in the way of the river, puts his piston in the way of the steam;
and so holding himself in position before God's Spirit, all the energies of
Omnipotence course within his soul. He is like a tree planted by a river whose
leaf is green and whose fruits fail not. Such is the deeper lesson to be
learned from considering the lily. It is the voice of Nature echoing the whole
evangel of Jesus, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest."
[53] University Sermons, pp. 234-241.
[54] See Bushnell's "New Life."