English
If God justifies us freely by His grace, not putting down our human infirmities in a vindictive reckoning, but blotting them out with a frank for- giveness, we have need that by the same grace He should guide us into holiness. As our technical theologians say, we must not only be 'justified,' but * sanctified.' Nor indeed would the cleansing of our conscience be complete, unless our minds were 8ANCTIFICATI0N — GRACE. 337 hallowed by an implanting of that likeness to God, which He intended them to bear. So long as our conscioasness is darkened by a sense of something in us, the knowledge of which it shrinks fi'om sharing with the Searcher of our spirits, so long we are neither at peace with ourselves, nor with that Highest Being. The barrier thus raised between us and Him is but of thought, and yet we shrink from passing it. Then a sort of burthen bows us, so that we cannot lift our mental gaze into the highest Heaven. It is this sense of separation at heart from that which of all things we have the greatest need to turn to, which has lain heavier on many men than the dread of penalty, though that too might be felt. Whereas if any one could raise our life into harmony with our thought, and make our performance equal our aspiration, we should no longer shrink firom the eye which reads our thoughts, but the Divine presence would be our infinite stay, instead of a thing to be at war with, or to tremble at. But such is our weakness, that this seems humanly not possible. Our very knowledge comes through many steps of ignorance; and thus conspires with impulses, which go wrong in striving to fulfil an instinct that yet ought to find fulfilment; Things which, moderately enjoyed, should have been for our health, become, when snatched at with greediness, occasions of our falling. We avoid dangers, as of society and lightness, and thereby run into greater, as of solitude and moroseness. Our activity risks mischief, and our quietude has the contempt of uselessness. What crimes do not come of starvation, ignorance, and passions difiering only in name from insanity ! Thus blameable as men become, their sins are so bound up in the mystery of a free agency limited by forces far vaster than itself, that we feel the sentence of God to be according to truth, when He compassionates us rather than blames. Our faith then looks up to Him for alli- ance in the warfare in which we are engaged, and for safe- guard against temptation. Partly we ask Him to govern the changes and chances of our outward life, and partly to mould M. P. 22 338 GRACE. the framework of our mind. Nor is it easy to define, liow macli help comes to us in the way of providence, and liow much by more immediate gift, or by what Christians call grace. In whatever way thoughts are suggested to us, as now by outward event, or by teaching, or experience, and again by deeper im- pulse of the mind, which has laws and processes harder to trace, lying as they do beneath our more distinct consciousness, yet every good instance of such suggestion comes of the Divine gift. Only as Christians conceive of the body as the soul^s instrument rather than its master, and of action as properly generated from within rather than from without, so they magnify the Divine guidance in its more secret workings (whatever method may regulate them) upon the soul, rather than in its lessons from outward events. The more, however, we know of the way in which thought is generated within us, the more easily we con- ceive how the Spirit of God may guide us. Even the sense of His favour is alone a kind of life. Like a man bound for death among cruel enemies, if he hears words of hope from some sudden ally, springs into a resistance which otherwise he had not courage for, so the poor soul of man, bewildered by tempta- tions, and fettered by circumstance as if in a net, so soon as it sees clearly that it has an everlasting Helper, shakes away all bonds of evil habit, and starts on a fresh course of well-doing, with faith as an invincible shield over its weakness. Again, even in some worse moment of wandering, the remembrance of a Heavenly Father, whom he had once known, may come upon a man like a familiar eye in a strange place, and recall him by a reproof without voice, the infinite pity of which is stronger than blame. Nor is it the least preservative fit)m evil, that when our Divine Master employs all our powers in some good work, we have less leisure to go astray, and that dangerous faculty of imagination is shut up from the sallies into which it is ever apt to tempt us forward. Again, to be watchftil, as he who prays for the Divine countenance should needs be, against little sins, is to win half the battle against great ones. By holy SALVATION. 339 prayers good impukes are fostered, and out of impulses are moulded habits, whicli make strong. Thus in manj ways, which better people conld describe better, we beKeve that God leads U8 not into temptation. Such therefore is our daily prayer for His grace. " But deliver us from evil. You have been curious to know wh^ace comes evil ? I have answered, from the largeness of the scale of creation and the confusion of relations in it, as when things intended for one end turn to another; from the possi- bilities which must of eternal fitness be implied in the very capacities of good, or, in short, from the conditions preliminary even to the thought of a world's existence ; from the many ten- dencies frustrated, or shortcomings in the manifestation of an idea which strives to realise itself; and especially from the wrongdoing of agents, who cannot rise to tlieir moral stature, without freedom of choice, either for right or wrong. It is only to be remembered fiuiher, that such agents may choose evil, not only amongst mankind, as we see, but amongst the unseen beings, whom we may reasonably imagine God to have created of every kind, and with powers more or less than our own, in the spiritual world. " But whatever are the forms of evil, we have an overruling Deliverer from them all. First, He lays the axe at the root, by persuading us that the greatest mischief is an evil spirit working within ourselves. By casting out this from our souls, He takes away the seed of many evil fruits. By taking away sin, He dries up the source of many sharp pains and pinings. By chang- ing hatred into goodwill. He takes away envyings, backbitings, wars, and murders. By bidding us not be over anxious about things that perish, He both calms our own spirits, and cuts away covet- ousness and all the fraud and tyranny which come of it. And when He persuades us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to be ready to dedicate ourselves as instruments of the Divine beneficence to man, He utterly abolishes the self-seeking, or self-exaltation, which in one or other of its developments brings 22—2 340 EVIL. out the many-headed growth of all human evils. In whatever degree, then, we have entered His kingdom of thought and feel- ing with our minds, and bring out in our actions the design of His Will, and ask our daily bread only as He would have us seek it, and forgive oflFences to others because our own are forgiven of Him, while by His grace we are led not into temp- tation, in the same degree we are making eflFectual our prayer, that He would deliver us from evil. Again, as to outward acci- dents which must needs happen to us in this entangled world, not always as we would choose, our Divine Master partly per- suades us that they are of little moment, as compared to the inward peace which He suffers nothing to take from us ; partly He even overrules them for good, and makes them instruments of our growth ; and, again, He comforts us with a faith that even things most adverse are bringing out strength by op- position, and all discords being blended into a harmony to be. The higher, indeed, and the broader our view becomes, the more we see already (what He who is without limit to thought is ever conscious of) that these oppositions in the world cany on a design, of which therefore in a way they are parts. We do not, for instance, call matter, or nature, intrinsically evil, seeing that it is moulded, however slowly, after a thought, which can only be of the highest Being. Hence we so far agree with the A'ch^uya, that we have no duality in existence, in the sense of two eternally opposing and equally originant Principles, such as of good and of evil. For with us too.