"It is no That which a political party which offered him a career under certain conditions of obedience. Now he sees it as the unfolding of a man's real free life in obedience to his noblest possibilities. He saw it in Jesus Christ. As he As he says, he "saw the glory of God shining for him in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. iv. 6). He felt that it was something possible also for him. longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me." seems to him like the Christ-life growing up in him life. Nothing else is of any moment. It is the high God to every man to be the man that he really is. comes to us when we see in the life of the Master what we, too, may be. III. The Process. is his real calling of The call Here in the lesson he makes it clear to us that this is no affair of a moment. True though it is, that the resolve to take a new way of life was a thing come to quickly, the new road is long, endlessly long. There is no limit to the possibilities of our growth along the line of our highest. Life is inexhaustible in its possibilities. Here, after thirty years of strenuous living, he says he does not seem to have real hold of it yet. He is only on the road stretching out to the glorious possibilities of fuller life which are ahead of him. He describes the process as though it were in some sort a reproduction in his own life of the experience which was also that of Jesus. He is getting to understand in himself the power which lifted Jesus beyond the mastery of death itself. Suffering only kills the mean man in me: I, too, in that sense am put to death, even as he was. But, then, out of it I, too, the real I, rise with the power of his resurrection. The figure is strange to us. To Paul with such close personal loyalty to his Lord," it is natural enough. Day by day he said to himself that he, too, is on the same road, making the same experiences with the same glorious and inevitable result. In modern phrase, we, too, find the same results. The confident assurance that it is worth while to let the best in us have the upper hand results in lesser things losing hold of us. Even ill circumstances only deepen our sense of the quality of our real life. We rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things. It is slow, as all real growth is. But the process by which a man comes to win his true life is always slow. He lays the weight of his will on the side of the best of him, lets the higher dreams get a little more control, till so to do becomes a habit. Then, after a time, wider horizons open. What was aimed at has become a constant temper and attitude, easy and habitual. But beyond finer ideals are opening, and wider horizons. He who has travelled farthest on that road is he who sees most ahead. Only the man who does not grow at all thinks that life is complete. He whose delight comes to be in the unfolding of the qualities of his manhood in something of their range and intensity, has before him an endless journey. "All experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades IV. The Main Condition. The phrase, “One thing I am doing," gets at the secret. It is not likely that any dream will realize itself, however fair it be, unless we make it our dream. Explain it as you will, what we call personal resolve is necessary for any high development. In Paul this is very marked. When the new life opens out to his thought, he claims it at once. From that time it is the one thing above all others in which he is interested. Whatever comes, the main thing to him is that he shall get to be the man he really is. It gives a unity and a strength to all his life which few have. There is a certain intensity and vim and swing to it which never comes to any mind which is flabby in its decisions. If it is good and you are sure of it, set your hand and heart to it and keep on. Then results are sure in their inevitable season. V. The Power which makes it Possible. Paul called it the power of God in Christ Jesus. When we say that it is the tide of the divine life, which is behind all things rising in and through us, we say the same thing. But it comes to us most strongly when it is concrete. After all, loyalty to an abstraction is hard. But we can love and admire good men and be strong in the sense of fellowship with them. That is why religion to Paul meant a kind of personal loyalty, which is a power. I CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 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. 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 virtue, and if there be any praise, set your hearts on these things. The things which ye both learned and received and heard and saw in me, those things do. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS, chapter four. CHRISTIAN AMBITION. I. I have learned the Secret. one. We have all of us read of the old search for the elixir of life, whereby length of years is to be attained. But length of years is dependent altogether, as regards its value, on the quality of life. Over circumstances we have, after all, very little control. Good or ill fortune are things we can rarely either court or avoid. Yet whether the fortune that comes to us is good or ill depends, after all, mainly on what we ourselves are. A disaster which is great to a little man is only a new incentive to a brave This is the secret which Paul declares he has found. Greene says, "A mind content both crown and kingdom is." Paul tells us, "Let each man have his glorying with regard to himself alone." Best of all, he himself had demonstrated its possibility. Whether storm came, or sunshine,— courage, hope, self-control, the sense of the larger life, were things over which they had no power. These, moreover, make the goodness of life. When a man has such qualities, all else (beyond his control as it is) matters little. He has the secret of life in himself. Was it not good news, indeed, which Paul preached? That, after all, we ourselves may be, not the puny slaves of fate, but masters. That what seems evil and hard we can use to our own strengthening. That the rock which threatens to stop the course of the stream only makes in the end a deep and quiet pool. That the very best things that life can know are things which no fate can take from us. When we read his life, we know that he spoke of what he himself had proved in face of the hardest fate. Such witness is truth, indeed. II. The Method he followed. The way to this secret is the burden of all that Paul writes. Here, in the noble counsel with which our lesson closes, he tells us that it lies in setting our hearts on those things which are part of our own highest life. Too often we allow ourselves to think that happiness comes from our surroundings. If fate is good to us, we are happy. If she frowns, we lose what makes life. But, if we have learned to love above all else the enlarging of our real life, this is no longer so. Human nature is a thing so large in its powers, that it can find in its own growth something more than the passing sunshine or shadow. Only set our hearts quietly and constantly on the chief good, and little by little we come to know of our own experience that the chief good is something which misfortune cannot take away. Though you cannot own riches, you may be rich. Though you cannot be sure of an easy way, you may indeed win, what is far better, the power to grow strong through the very hardness you feared. If strength, goodness, the sense of growing personal quality, are the things we most love, our content is not in the hands of our surroundings; for these are independent of them. Set your hearts on these things, and there is quietness within, however the storm rage without. The good man is always in good company, most of all when he is alone. What are some of these things on which the man who knew tells us to set our hearts? III. The Things that are Nobly Serious. This is Matthew Arnold's translation for the " things honorable" of the lesson. It is good. If life is shallow and frivolous merely, it lacks strength to stand. If its satisfaction lies in things that are not noble, it is something which we soon exhaust. But if under all lies the love of what is nobly serious, large, and deep and lasting, part of the finest nature we are capable of, we have indeed large resources. Dwell on them. Rejoice in them. Let the day-dreams of quiet moments be of these things. Get into the habit of looking on such as our heritage. Then, even as the flower which turns sunward wins fragrance and beauty, life grows fine. Moreover, it grows strong as well. The heart of its joy gets to lie deep. Its very depth is seriousness, deeper far than the passing gleam of the surface. So it comes to sovereign power. IV. Lovely and of Good Report. We read of Jesus that the power of God in him lay in his gracious kindness. Paul here speaks of the same thing. The man whose life is large is, as he grows, lifted above the pettiness out of which half the ill of life is born. Men take offence only because they themselves are small. As the old saying runs, "It shows great pride and little sense." If we will, we may so |