Thoughts on the Spiritual Life - I - H. C. G. Moule

Friends:
Years ago, I happened upon an 1888 copy of Thoughts on The Spiritual Life by then Principal of Ridley Hall, H. C. G. Moule; later Bishop of Durham. It is an excellent work, aimed especially at those active in "direct work for the kingdom of our Lord." I plan to publish the whole here on this blog. Below is the first installment; a little less than 1/3rd of the first chapter. I hope it's a blessing to you.
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Chapter I

Work and Faith.

Gal. ii.20-The life which I live in the flesh I live by the faith of (i.e., by faith in) the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Joh. vi.29. – This is the work of God, that ye believe in Him whom He hath sent.

We are about to engage in some thoughts on the principles and practice of the Spiritual Life. That Life, as to its source and secret, is “in the Son of God,” the Gift of the Father; in Him who is “the Life,” as well as “the Way and the Truth.” As to its reception, it is received in receiving Him; “he that hath the Son hath the life.” As to its issue, exercise, and manifestation, it is the doing of the Will of God in all things, with a chastened, penitent, peaceful and loving confidence in Him as He is revealed and reconciled in Jesus Christ our Lord. As to its standard, it recognizes nothing lower than His revealed holiness; “even as He is pure.” As to its purpose and hope, it looks, with a faith reposed upon His promise and power, to “walk pleasing Him,” here and now, under the shelter of the atoning Cross, and hereafter to be indeed “like Him, seeing Him as He is.”

As to its beginning and its maintenance, both of them are, from the divine side, by the Holy Spirit, “the Lord, the Giver of Life,” who brings Christ and the soul together. From the side of human experience, both of them are by faith, by submissive reliance on the promise and the Promiser. Faith is the hand that accepts the bread and the water of Life, the mouth that eats and that drinks them. From first to last the Life of God, like the Righteousness of God, “is revealed from faith to faith.”

First among our detailed thoughts upon this sacred Life I place now this – an enquiry into the place of Spiritual Effort in a life which is as yet in its essence everywhere and always a walk by faith, a life of faith. There is such a place. Work (I speak here of the spiritual and internal kind of work) not only has a function beside that of the happy quietism of a God-given reliance on the Lord and reception out of His fulness; it has a deep relation to it and connexion with it.

This connexion is not always recognized in Christian thought and exposition. Things are sometimes said about the life of holy faith, the life of rest upon and in the Son of God, which leave, or seem to leave, no place for spiritual effort and resolve. Yet the Scriptures have very much to say about these latter things. They speak of “girding up the loins of the mind,” of “working out salvation,” of “being in earnest” (our English Bible renders it “labouring”) “to enter into the” heavenly “rest,” of “giving diligence to make our calling and election sure,” of “watching and being sober,” of “keeping under the body and bringing it into subjection,” of “labouring fervently in prayer.” We may be very sure, then, that this fact of spiritual effort is no accident of the Spiritual Life, but a large and vital truth in it. It would be strange if it were otherwise. All conscious personal life has much to do with exercise and effort in the course of its healthful development. A life, conscious and personal, which should be a life of mere and pure quiescence, would hardly be a life worth living. Could we wish for such a condition of the Spiritual Life?