V.
LIFE ON THE TOP FLOOR
You have had a great time on the mountains, but
remember the mountain is not a place to live on. The Mount of Transfiguration
is an episode, coming to a man from time to time; but it is not in the ordinary
course of nature that a man should always live on the top of the mountain. The
mountain is of use to send streams into the valley of our ordinary life, to
fertilize and nourish what is there. Perhaps it is not possible that we shall
all be living at the same pitch at which you have lived during the days of this
week. Before the sacramental wine was dry on the lips of Peter he was untrue to
his Saviour. A breakdown to the moral life is just as natural, and just as much
a matter of law as the breakdown of an engine. It is important to get to the
bottom of these causes. One of the most important things for us to study is the
anatomy of the soul, the anatomy of temptation, and the physiology of sin.
You will not agree with me, perhaps, but I have a
strong suspicion that the evolutionists are on the right track when they tell
us that man's body has come up through the animal creation. Bone for bone,
muscle for muscle and nerve for nerve, you and I are exactly the same as the
higher vertebrae of the animal kingdom; and after we passed through the animal
kingdom, it is supposed by the theorists, we underwent a long probation in
which we were somewhat in the condition of the red Indian; and, just as we had
the bodies of animals, we had to some extent the minds of animals and the
dispositions of savages. If the animal has left me as its legacy a vertebral
column and certain nerves, why should it not leave me a legacy of its modes and
passions? And if I have once had as my ancestors a long race of savages, why
should not the modes and predilections of the savage nature be still in my
blood? If I have the blood of the tiger, shall I not have to some extent the
spirit of a tiger? If I have the blood of a shark, shall I not be inclined
sometimes to play the shark? If I have the blood of a fox, shall I not be
inclined sometimes to be foxy? Well, it doesn't matter in the least whether
that is true or not, but I appeal to you if it is not a fact that you find in
yourselves the residuum of many animals and the disposition of many savages. If
there is a man who has nothing of the animal in him, I should like you to
introduce me to him. It doesn't matter where it came from. It is there, as a
matter of fact. That is to say, man is built in three stories. He is a
three-storied structure. On the ground floor there dwells the animal. Above
that, on the second story, there is the savage. And on the third floor there is
the man. Now, my brother, when you go wrong, it is not you who goes wrong, it
is the man who lives in the bottom story. And when you collapse, when you
imagine that it is impossible for you to recover again, remember that the true
man in you is still there; and that although temptations may come to you from
these lower parts of your nature, it is not essential that you should live in
idle acquiescence to them. By taking to pieces the moral nature, one sees very
clearly what temptation really is. It is the appeal of the animal to the man;
and it is no sin for man to hear that appeal. It is no sin for a man to be
tempted. In virtue of his nature, man must be tempted. It is when a man leaves
the top story and deliberately walks down and spends an hour in the cellar that
temptation passes from temptation into sin.
In the same way, one sees very clearly from that
little piece of anatomy, how it is possible to overcome temptation. The remedy,
of course, is simply to decline ever to move in the lower regions of one's
being at all, to regard that as a thing evolved past, and to live constantly in
the higher regions. When a man does that, it is impossible for him to break
down. Put it in this way. An image is thrown upon the screen of your mind and
you look at it. How can you dismiss it? You can only dismiss it by throwing
another image on the screen which will be more beautiful, more pure and more
attractive, and which, above all, will pre-occupy your mind so that the other
image will fade away. It is impossible, I think, in most cases, for the man to
deliberately fight the temptation when it comes in certain forms. The only
thing he can do is to replace that form by another form. You can do something
with temptation at its first stage. You can do everything with it. You can do a
little with it at the second stage, but you can do nothing with it after it
passes to the third stage. If you let it pass that, you are over Niagara. You
must fight it, not by direct fight, but by flight to the higher regions. Paul
summed it up in a single sentence, where he said: "Walk in the spirit, and ye
shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." In plain English, walk in the fourth
flat, and you will not do the things that people do in the cellar. You cannot
be in two places at once. If you make up your mind to live continuously in the
spirit, ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Spirit is there contrasted
with flesh. It does not mean primarily the Holy Spirit, although it includes
that. It is here contrasted primarily with the flesh. Either live a cellar or a
top-story life, a dog life or a man life. Walk among spiritual things, among
high people--not necessarily religious things, but spiritual things. Look not
on the things which are seen, but the things which are unseen. Be in the
company of good books, beautiful pictures, and charming, delightful and
inspiring music; and let all that one hears, sees, reads and thinks lift and
inspire the higher. The man who does that is kept above the lower nature. Many
and many a thing which is not directly religious, therefore, comes in to make
up a part of the nourishment of the spiritual life.
We can always live a high life. We can always
have before us beautiful, divine ideals, and the sudden attempt to get from the
lower to the higher is the transition between the life of the flesh and the
life of the spirit, and the passing from the one region into the other is done
by a sudden act, by a sudden mental movement, by a transference of one's
interests from one region to another. That mental movement, I think, may be
dignified with the name of prayer. That sudden appeal to the purer image which
is to displace the other and let it fade away is the spasmodic act of prayer,
which instantly places one in the spiritual region; and that is one of the
highest uses of prayer, not to get something directly from heaven, but to
switch everything up, and not down. If you could keep a Christian and a
God-like spirit, it would be impossible for you to have the lower appetites
again.
If you want to get a man on his feet again, the
thing to do is not to preach or read the Bible to him, but to get him out of
the cellar in which he lives. Take him by the hand, and he will be led away
from his former life. Those are psychological principles founded upon the fact
that the attention cannot be directed to two things at the same moment. You see
that, upon merely psychological principles, the man who understands his nature
and applies that remedy for his case when he finds himself becoming a lower man
than he ought to, is bound to get the victory. It is not by magic that men are
able to succeed in living a high and Christian life. It is by living according
to nature and according to the revelation of our higher nature. It is by living
along the line of the laws under which this system of our human nature is
founded. That is put in other words by Christ, where he says, "Abide in
me"--the same thing on a still higher plane. The man who lives with Christ
cannot sin. "If any man sin," John says, "he hath not known Christ." Sin is
abashed in the presence of Christ. The man who lives in Christ as his ideal
finds in Him a continuous living Saviour, drawing him away from himself and
making it impossible for him to live for himself.
Let no man here to-night think or say that he can
get victory over sin alone. He cannot get that out of religion unless he gets a
great many other things as well, and is compelled to accept them. Deliverance
from sin is only one of the functions of the new nature; and a man is not a new
man if he has got only one arm. The one arm is to fight sin. He must be a full,
perfect man; and the man who has simply got the muscle in his spiritual nature
which is to deal with sin is not a Christian man at all necessarily. The man
who attempts to live in one function alone will find it impossible. Religion is
not a blue ribbon to wear against a single set of things. It is not an
inoculation against a single disease. A man must accept Christ all around, not
only as his Deliverer from sin, but as his friend and guide, his ideal and
Saviour. He must walk his whole life, and every day of his life, in the spirit,
not merely rushing into the top story when temptations are at his heels, but
dwelling there, in that place where the air is always sweet, where the company
is always pure, and where there is nothing to hinder the soul from communing
with God and with the stars. If a man can continuously live in that region, he
is bound to grow better and better. That is the picture of temptation chasing a
man who walks in the Spirit. He hears its bark and feels its bite, like a
dog's; but if he is off its ground it cannot touch him. Just in proportion as
we live in the higher regions are we able to evade temptations.
In dealing with others, it is not enough to
preach to them, to give them tracts, texts or prayers: but we must give them a
new environment, in which the new nature can bud and flower and grow into
perfection. Gentlemen, it is not such an easy business to save a man as some
people think. It is not to be done by a few earnest words. That is why so many
college men have been passed over untouched by our college Y. M. C. A.'s. It is
not because we do not have meetings enough, not because we do not know the
Bible well enough, not because we are not earnest enough; but it is because we
do not proceed rationally enough. It is because we do not sow seeds for
individuals and live so that they may be compelled to live this higher life
with us. We do not do our work half thoroughly enough. Unless we lay down our
lives to save men, we are not following the Master as we ought. It is good
business to devote our lives to individuals. It may not be so picturesque, but
individual work, where every man singles out his individual to help and save,
and stands by him, if multiplied through the universities, would soon win our
universities for Christ.
Make a continuous effort by will power and prayer
power and the power of the Spirit of God to walk in the spiritual region; for
nature abhors a vacuum. If we allow any pause to occur in our high living, if
we leave this place, the enemy will come upon us, and we will be worse off
after this Conference than we were before it.