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

Chapter iii, continued.

On: “Let your yieldingness be known unto all men; the Lord is near.”

What is it? We shall find the answer partly by remembering how, from another point of view, the Gospel enjoins, and knows how to impart, the most resolute unyieldingness. If anything can work the great miracle of making a weak character strong, it is the Gospel. Like nothing else, it can make the victim of sensual temptation turn his back decisively upon it. It can make the weak spirit which has habitually “saved itself trouble” by falsehood – and the merest avoidance of “trouble” is the motive of numberless falsehoods – immoveably loyal to truth, at all costs to ease. It can make the regenerate say “no” to self on a hundred points where never anything but “yes” was heard before. Nothing in the moral world is so immoveable as the will of a living Christian, sustained by the power of God the Holy Spirit, on some clear case of principle. I lately read of the uncompromising decision of a Christian man, in high military command in India, fifty years ago. He had accepted office, and £10,000 a year, being far from rich meanwhile in private means, on the condition that he should not be asked to give official countenance to idolatry. The condition was not observed. He was required to sign a grant of money to an idol temple. The East India Company would not give way, nor would their distinguished servant. He resigned his command promptly, and came home without a murmur, and without a compensation.*

Here, in a conspicuous case, was the unyieldingness of the Gospel, a mighty grace which, thank God, is being daily exemplified in His sight in a thousand smaller instances.

Yet this very case equally well illustrates from another side the yieldingness of the Gospel. From the point of view of principle this admirable Christian was fixed as a rock, as a mountain; from the point of view of self-interest he was moveable as air. That it was a sacrifice of self’s gain and glory to resign was as nothing in his path. His interests were his Master’s. Jesus Christ was in him where by nature self is. He was jealous and sensitive for the Lord; indifferent, oblivious, for himself. If I understand aright, he did not resign with a flourish of trumpets, so to speak; he did not do it sullenly or bitterly; he did not come home in that most unhappy and inglorious character – a man with a personal grievance. Quietly, and in the way of Christian business, he withdrew from a post where he could not be loyal to his King and Saviour; this was all.

Yieldingness, in our passage, is in fact SELFLESSNESS. It is meekness, not weakness; the attitude of a man out of whom the Lord has cast the evil spirit of self. It is the discovery and practice of the blessed secret how to put Jesus Christ upon the throne of life, and let that divine fact within work upon the life without. It is the grace which manifests itself in a calm, bright, willing superiority of thought and purpose to considerations of self’s comfort, credit, influence. It is the noble, the blessed readiness to rejoice, for instance, in the success of others in the field of Christian work, as simply and naturally as in our own. It is the aim not to get a reputation, but to walk and please God; not to secure the applause of others, but to compass their good and blessing; not to vindicate our opinion, but only and purely our Lord’s word and truth; not to be first, but where He would put us – second, or third, or hundredth, if it is His will; not to get our rights for our sake, but to be loyal to His claims, and attentive for His sake, with scrupulous and kindly attention, to the rights and wants of others. It is a grace passive in form, if I may borrow a phrase of grammar, but active in meaning. It is holy Charity, at her work of suffering long and being kind; envying not, vaunting not herself, seeking not her own, being not easily provoked, not reckoning up the evil, rejoicing with the truth, bearing, believing, hoping, enduring all things, in the path of the will of God, the path of service of His Son.

*See the Church Missionary Intelligencer, August, 1887.