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

ii. But where then is the place for effort? Such a place there is, as we have seen, amply recognized in the Word of God, and never to be discredited in our teaching or thinking. Perhaps the word “effort” is not the best; let us rather say “work.” In the case of the body it is, I believe, a medical maxim that what wears and kills is not work, but effort; fitful, acute, abnormal exertion. And the word “work” is sanctioned by our blessed Lord Himself, in the passage quoted at the head of this chapter; Joh. vi. 29.

What sort of work is indicated there by the divine Teacher? It is the work, the labour, involved in getting to know, and to remember, what and why to believe. It is the mental and spiritual work of inquiry, judgment, recollection, applied to the subject of Jesus Christ, with a view to trust. This, I am persuaded, is the bearing of our Lord’s words at Capernaum. But even should the reader think otherwise about that passage, the truth which to my mind those words convey is a truth conveyed by many another Scripture. It is delightfully impled, for example, in the words of St. Paul quoted also above: “The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” For that brief clause is enough to shew us the Apostle at work in the way of memory, and judgment, and estimate, and contemplation; gathering up the facts of his Lord’s Person and Work, and of his own relations to his Lord in consequence. And all this is working, working upon the grounds of faith. Every deliberate process of recollection is internal work; every habit of thought so developed is developed by work. The Christian believer works when he takes earnest pains and uses proper means to gather and to keep together within him the revealed facts about Jesus Christ and life in Him. He works when he dwells in soul on Who He is, on what He has done, and is doing now; on the mystery of His Natures, on the glory of His Person, on His Atonement, His Exaltation, His Headship, His royal High Priesthood, His Intercession; on the revealed privileges and resources of Union with Him. He works, too, when he deliberately and diligently bears in mind his own perpetual needs, of sinfulness and weakness. All this is work, internal work, not to be done automatically, or as in a dream; not to be done by “trusting it to be done.” And great is the need of such work, more than ever great, if possible, in an age like ours, at once so occupied and, alas, so superficial.

The word “recollectedness” was a favourite word with our Christian fore-fathers, in the vocabulary of spiritual life. It conveyed well the thought of a deliberately formed, and steadily maintained, acquaintance with our deep need in ourselves and our spiritual riches in our Lord, and the temper of mind in which those riches could best be applied to the needs of life. But recollectedness, if it implies such things, cannot be found and kept without care, thought, resolve; without time saved or made; without persevering acts and habits. In order that we may live indeed by faith on the Son of God, we must, as to the rule and usage of our lives, set apart time, at whatever sacrifice, to ascertain and weigh what are those great treasures on which we are to draw. We must make prayer a real work; we must dig with real toil into our inexhaustible Bible, reverently, painstakingly, and with method; we must cultivate habits of worship, public and private – by many Christians too much neglected; we must use the divinely appointed ordinances of the Church of God.

Nor must we vainly think, as too many allow themselves to do, that we have “risen above” articulate doctrines, and may spare ourselves mental pains about them; a thought which leaves many a pious but indolent mind exposed in a very helpless way to the spell of false doctrines, well and sympathetically stated. “In understanding we must be men”; and that means a development not attainable without exercise.