Ridley Hall, Cambridge Conclusion of Chapter XI v. Lastly, and let this reflection touch and attune every other, let us "walk in love, for love is of God." Even the few pages of this little book, dealing with topics of the inner life, have led me to definite statements of conviction on many points of truth and doctrine. My whole soul is sure of the importance of clearness and firmness in such things. Nevertheless, there is no region of Christian life in which the need is more constant and more strong to remember how to walk in love, than the doctrinal region. It is easy, very easy, as we have observed more than once already, to disguise to ourselves a jealousy for our own views as such under an aspect of jealousy for the revealed truth of God. There lies the danger; there lies the need. And the remedy, the supply, lies above all things in a deepening personal acquaintance with "the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." In the divine serenity of...

Chapter XI, continued. iv. And one remark let me make here on the study of the Scriptures, which are the Word of God. On the duty, privilege, and method, I am not going to enlarge. It is in special connexion with the life of Christian Holiness, the life of new Obedience, that I speak of Scripture study; and specially in view of the fact that Scripture is the one articulate account, by the Lord Himself, of His "will in Jesus Christ concerning us." For you, believing friend, who long to know and to do His will, as at once your rest and your goal, let the Bible bear this aspect of sacredness very specially, that it is the one definite and articulate utterance of that Will by our Master Himself. From this point of view how singular is the value of the hundred and nineteenth Psalm! It has been beautifully said that the essence of the thought of that Psalm is, the sacredness and sweetness of God's Will, to be known and done by His bondservant; so that we may reverently ...

Chapter XI, Concluding Thoughts, Continued. iii. In the practice of daily life, in the derivation from the risen Lord of the power of “new obedience,” let me and my reader recollect steadily, and weave into one cord - a cord that at once binds and knits - two sacred facts of our state as believers. First, we BELONG to the Lord; secondly, we are JOINED to Him. “Whether we live, we live unto the Master; whether we die, we die unto the Master.” Let the words “I BELONG” be written, in redeeming blood, across your whole life. Wake up with that fact in recollection; not that feeling but that fact. Carry it into morning, noon, and night. Lie down upon your bed with it. We have dwelt on this side of truth already, elsewhere.* But let it be pressed home on heart and will once more. Everything else tends to fall abroad and into pieces without it. Nature fears it, but when by the grace of God a man has looked it in the face, or far rather has looked in the face THE MASTER who makes the ...

Gates to Trinity College, Cambridge. Chapter XI, continued. ii. As one part of this general subject, I lay it upon myself and my reader, as we seek to live day by day in the strength of the risen Jesus Christ, all the more to lean our experience before God wholly, solely, upon the finished Work of our redeeming Sacrifice, “the Lord our Righteousness.” The holy thirst and hunger to please God is a radically different thing from the anxious effort to reconcile God. Blessed be His name, that work is done, is completed, for us, by the obedience of One. In the deep words of the Second Article, “Christ, very God and very man, truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice not only for original guilt but also for all actual sins of men.” And in the words of the Eleventh, never to be separated from those others, “We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith ...

H. C. G. Moule, M.A., Principal of Ridley Hall, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Bishop of Durham XI. Concluding Thoughts In closing these simple pages, let me put before my friend and reader a few remarks, somewhat detached in form. i. First, an earnest caution against an overdrawn introspection . It may be thought that this book itself looks another way, often suggesting and encouraging a close inward examination. I do indeed seek to press, on myself first, the duty of self-examination, a scrutiny within that shall not stop short of motive, purpose, inmost state of affection and will. Many Christian lives, I am sure, greatly lose in depth, consistency, and chastened soberness, by failure to examine within; and the habit and practice of such examination, not without a certain system, is a duty of Christian life. For most of us it would be well to make this exercise a regular element, say, in secret evening devotion. Nevertheless, introspection is a sec...

Chapel of Ridley Hall, Cambridge. Chapter x, concluded. In immediate conclusion, I would most earnestly plead, then, in the interests of true Christian service, for what in these hurrying times we need so specially: a deeper entrance of our souls into the secret of the presence of the Lord. Work is not food for the spirit any more than for the body. Amidst a multitude of works the worker’s soul may wither, and the works will feel the difference in due time. We must, because we are servants, and not masters, bondservants and not contractors, limbs and not Head, we must see to it that we are living and serving not only so as to get through a great deal of action, but so as to be vessels meet for the Master’s use, in His way and not our own. And for this we must live, so to speak, behind our service; we must live, in a true and holy sense, independent of it. We must live upon Jesus Christ, not upon energy, upon success, upon notice, upon praise; God forbid. And to live upo...

Plaque in the chapel of Ridley Hall. Chapter x, continued. This leads me to say a little, in closing, of the all-importance to the servant of Jesus Christ of the maintenance of his own personal joy and glory in his Master. The sad secret of the spirit I have just sought to deprecate lies in the subtle substitution, somewhere and somehow, of self for Jesus Christ. It is calling the work “mine” instead of “His.” It is working for my credit rather than for His glory. It is attracting, or trying to attract, to me, not altogether to Him. And where shall we go for the remedy? It must be to Him. It must be found in the renewal of our sight of Him, without one cloud between, even the cloud of our own restless activities. We must get a new view of “the fair beauty of the Lord,” and of the blessedness and pleasantness of our lot and part in Him. “From the loss of our glory in Thee, preserve and keep us, gracious Lord and God.” Such is one response in a solemn Litany of t...

Handley Moule. Image: http://web.mac.com/brian.douglas/Anglican_Eucharistic_Theology/Welcome.html Chapter x, continued. To turn to another point, which is, after all, but one point of special brightness in the bright circle of consistency. I refer to that great qualification for Christian Service on which we have already dwelt in a previous chapter – an honest and unaffected self-forgetfulness, let me call it selflessness, in the worker’s soul, with reference to the work. Deep in our nature, in the Fall, lies the sin of which this is the blessed contrary; and alas for the manifestations of that sin in the circles of Christian service! It appears all too often in just the most energetic, the most versatile, the most clever, of the servants of Christ those, perhaps, gifted with most capacity to originate and direct. Their capacities are the Master’s golden talents, and are certainly meant to be employed, in His time. But then, as the solemn associations of the misused word ...

Durham Cathedral Chapter x, continued. Such, briefly indicated, is Christian Service. It is for all always. And the conditions to its true exercise are the same for all; a walk with God in the secret of the soul; a renunciation of all thought of intermittancy in the service; a simple and expectant reliance on the heavenly Master’s will to accept it and power to use it. For our present purpose, however, we will consider Christian Service under a limitation. We will think of it as meaning the service rendered by any of the great multitude of “Christian workers” as such. It may be the service of the commissioned pastor of the flock; it may be that of the visitor of the sick, of the rescuer of the fallen, of the teacher of the Bible class or the Sunday School, of the lay worker in mission-room or open air. It may be any one who seeks definitely to influence others for Christ. If such is service, what then are the qualifications for it, or more properly, some of the chief ...

Entrance to Ridley Hall, Cambridge - busy with some work that day! X. christian service. This chapter reproduces a written Address prepared for a public occasion. It has been left on purpose nearly as it originally stood. C hristian Service, in its full idea, is a phrase practically coextensive with Christian life; and Christian life is, in the intention of the Gospel, nothing less, nothing narrower, than the whole life of the Christian; morning, noon, and night; alone, in private, in society, in public; at all times and in all places. From one point of view, and that a most important point, he not only is a servant of the Lord, but he is a servant of the Lord in such a way, under such conditions, that the whole action of his life falls under the description of service. As he always exists, as a Christian, in and by his Master, so he always exists for his Master. He has, in the reality of the matter, no dissociated and independent interest. Not only in preaching and teachin...

Durham Cathedral Cloister Image: http://www.flickr.com/groups/durham/ Conclusion of Chapter ix. iii. Now for a few moments let us pass on to the Temple cloister, to the Lord’s utterance on the great day of the feast. Here is the living water again, and the coming, and the receiving. And here is this development of the promise; there shall be an overflow. I say nothing on the place of the quotation; “as the Scripture hath said.” Enough for us now that Christ, in this Scripture, hath said it. What does it mean? It means that the man who really drinks of Christ, drinking of the Spirit, shall assuredly be a conveyer, a conductor, for the Spirit, for Christ, to others. It means that the really and livingly spiritual man shall be a spiritual blessing, a spiritual power. The thought requires, of course, a reverent caution. It cannot mean that he shall be an origin of grace; and indeed this is guarded by the special imagery, in which the thought is fixed on the drinking...

Chapter ix, Continued ii. Now turn to the promise of the Well. Its main concern is with the personal possession of this Gift; not yet with its liberation, so to speak, and distribution through the possessor. The Lord undertakes that the man who drinks that water shall never thirst; obviously in the sense of never needing to complain of an intermittent supply from this well. He shall find that he has received the ultimate answer to his entire end. He shall find that he has so received it that he may, if he will, be always enjoying it, always resting in it, always living in it. To follow the precise words further, the water which Christ shall give him, the water which he shall owe to the work and love of Christ, “shall become (so literally) in him a spring of water, of water leaping up, unto eternal life.” I do not examine minutely those last three words. It is interesting to ask whether they mean, “until the arrival of the state of glory, the ultimate phase of eternal...

Chapter ix, Continued i. The Gift; the Living Water. St John , that is to say, the Holy Spirit by him, explains this to mean the Holy Spirit. It is the personal Paraclete. And it is the Paraclete in a mode of presence and action specially conditioned by the soul’s having come to Christ, having believed on Christ, already. True it is, deeply true, that when we come and believe it is already because of the Spirit, the Spirit of Faith. But this is not the phase of truth before us in these two utterances. The Lord takes the case of the man as having, anyhow, come and believed. Then, in the sense of after-experience, after-life, in manifestation, unfolding, indwelling, empowering, the man shall “receive the Spirit.” In a sense different from that which might have been true before, the Spirit, the Holy Ghost, shall be in him, and he in the Spirit. He shall be a “spiritual” man, not in any vague sense, not merely as having, somehow, a higher range of interests and idea...

Chapter ix. living water. The last chapter was full of thoughts of the River and the Well. Let us linger a while longer in the same region of Scriptural imagery; it is a region full “of fountains and depths, that spring out of valleys and hills.” The words “living water” occur in two remarkable passages of St. John’s Gospel, passages widely separated in time and circumstance, but closely united in spiritual significance by this phrase, and that, too, in a way which makes the second passage the true sequel and development of the first. In ch. iv. 14., the Lord Jesus tells the woman of Sychar that had she known the gift of God, and known Him who spoke to her, she would have asked, and He would have given living water; and that this water would have precluded all thirst for ever; and that it would prove to be, within its recipient, a fountain of water, of water not stagnant but “springing, leaping, unto eternal life.” And in ch. vii. 38, we hear the same Voice speak of livi...

Chapter viii - Conclusion I have quoted at the head of the chapter those words of the Psalmist which lead us up the River to its Source. “For with Thee is the fountain of Life”; with Thee, Jehovah ; with Thee, Jehovah-Christ , for “in Thee is Life”; “he that that Thee hath life.” Let that verse just remind us of the duty and the blessing of continual remembrance of Him as our reason and our rest. There is such a thing as studying even the “possibilities of grace” more than Him who is “the God of all grace.” It is because of what He is that His people are, even for a moment, what He would have them be. And one deep secret of the development in them of what He would have there, is the contemplation of Him. Our life and walk, in a sense most practical, need be no intermittent stream of peace and of obedience. Why? Because He is no intermittent spring. Every winter, in modern Jerusalem , a remarkable phenomenon is observed. The channel of the Kedron, usually dry as the ...

Chapter viii, continued. Our verse delightfully negatives the thought of grace as a something to be stored up in our own hands on occasions; a limited supply, to be economized and managed, and made to last, till it runs dry, or almost dry, and must be replenished by some new means. Here it flows for us, by us, in us, for evermore; ever passing, ever abiding, "new every morning, failing not,” for the soul which is in contact with the eternal source. Let us go forth in peace, in the peace which is itself a power, in great peace, while peace most humble, recollecting this truth, into the “changes and chances of this mortal life.” No two days and hours are quite alike; no two hearts and lives. On this we have already dwelt, as we considered* the manifoldness of need. But here is the heavenly antidote to the trials of succession , as we saw it above to the trials of multiplicity . For the succession in us there is this divine succession in our Lord. For th...

Chapter viii grace for grace. Joh. i. 16. – Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. Psal. xxxvi. 11[sic]. – For with Thee is the fountain of life. In the last chapter we have had much to say about the applications of sanctifying grace, and in the last but one something of its nature. Here is a Scripture which speaks of it again, and describes a delightful special aspect of our derivation of grace from its fountain. On the first clause of the quotation from St John I say but little. Only observe that it points to Jesus Christ as the embodiment, the reservoir, the fountain, of all that grace means for us. And it speaks of the vital connexion of us, of His believing followers, with Him as a definite and accomplished fact. “We have received,” or, somewhat more literally, “we did receive.” Of himself and of all believers St John says this. They have come into receptive contact with Jesus Christ, with the divine fulness th...

Chapter vii, concluded. iii. Now we turn from St Peter to St Paul , and hear him speak of what is manifold also; “the manifold wisdom of God .” The words have a special reference, as will be seen, of special and beautiful significance. The Apostle speaks of his manifold wisdom, not in the abstract, but as illustrated and in action in the true Church, that is to say in “the blessed company of all faithful people”;* and in the view of very important spectators. “The principalities and powers,” the spirits of the heavenly world, “angels and archangels and the company of heaven,”* are seen in this wonderful verse studying the wisdom of God as shown in the believing company. To take the simplest aspects of this disclosure of God’s word; we have it indicated here that Christians, of every grade, and character, and situation, and age, and name, are capable of thus being viewed from above, to the glory of the wisdom of their God. The poorest, humblest, most forgott...

VII. manifoldness. I Pet. i. 6. – Manifold temptations. I Pet. iv. 10. – Manifold grace. Eph. iii. 10. – Manifold wisdom. There is an obvious contrast of subject-matter between the first of these quotations and the others. But the idea of manifoldness, variety, appears in all, and this connects them, and suggests important facts regarding the relation between the Christian’s needs, and his Lord’s supplies, and his Lord’s purposes towards him. i. Manifold temptations . On the word “temptation” I do not dwell at length, only remarking that the original word lends itself equally to denote the solicitations of the great Enemy and the tests of the Eternal Friend; “temptation” and “trial” respectively, in our present parlance. And it is obvious that these things are very often, perhaps always, in the case of the believer, two aspects of the one thing. In the history of Job we see Satan tempting, with resolute and merciless purposes of evil; we see the Lord trying...

Chapter VI, Part II [Phil. iv. 7], Concluded. Observe, as we pass on, the phraseology of the verse. It is that of promise. Sweet is the sound of “the peace of God” when uttered at the close of Sabbath worship; when spoken after the heavenly Communion Feast. But there it is a benediction, a holy invocation; here it is more, it is a promise; not “may it,” but “it shall.” Such a thing then as this peace of God there is, and is meant to be, in the experience not of some but of all watchful believers, of all who “stand in the Lord,” their strength. It is guaranteed to them. They are invited humbly to claim it, and to possess it, under the Covenant of peace. Yes, remember this, busy and burthened disciple; man or woman tried by uncertain health; immersed in secular duties; forced to a life of almost ceaseless publicity, social, ministerial, or however it may be. Here is written an assurance, a guarantee, that not at holy times and welcome intervals only, not only in...