Sameness.
I. ITS NECESSITY. In ordinary life there must be much of sameness. The same duties, occupations, interests, events, occur from day to day. The same temptations have to be met by the same spiritual weapons. This is very clearly scan when our duties are concerned with the training and teaching of others. The same faults must be rebuked, the same advice given, the same disappointments experienced.
II. ITS TEDIOUSNESS. Many feel this keenly and long for a greater variety and a life full of excitement and change.
III. ITS SAFETY.
1. For ourselves. Excitement ends in revulsion and exhaustion. Sameness builds up a regulated life. Our characters are formed by the repetition of ideas rather than by experiencing a succession of startling events.
2. For others. In dealing with them it is most important that we should be always the same. There is need of justice, self-control, an even temper, and an absence of caprice and partiality.
IV. ITS DIVINE CHARACTER. God is ever the same and works by his own divinely arranged laws. Our moods and our circumstances change, but our Lord is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Where would be our confidence if he were to change? Blessed to have an unchanging Friend and an unchanging home, where there is rest amidst all the changes of our external lives,—V.W.H.
Identity not to be found in continuity of form, but in harmony of the inner spirit.
I. USELESSNESS OF OUTWARD FORMS WHEN THEIR SPIRIT HAS PASSED OUT or THEM. The Judaizing party clung to their circumcision as if it were their title to acceptance with God. St. Paul shows that, since the substance, of which circumcision was the shadow, has been bestowed upon men, to insist upon the outward form was to forfeit the reality of which it was the forecast. The truly circumcised were such as, with or without the form, worshipped God in spirit and in truth. All forms have a tendency to lose their informing spirit and to become empty husks. If this takes place through the lukewarmness of those who use them, the true remedy is to seek to breathe in them once again the spirit which is their life. If that which was formerly their life now finds truer expression in newer forms, it may be a sign that the old has accomplished its purpose and should now cease to be.
II. OBSOLETE FORMS MAY BE HARMFUL AS WELL AS USELESS. They become so as soon as they are regarded as essential, apart from the inner spirit which makes them live. They then become loss instead of gain, and actual hindrances to the promotion of that which they were designed to promote.
III. SEEK TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN MEANS AND END. This is necessary, not only in the cultivation of spiritual life, but in the promotion of any purpose. Not unfrequently means are so multiplied that the end is obscured rather than forwarded. See that the means used are actually means to the desired end and are not tacitly usurping its place. Even the means of grace may cease to be means of grace.—V.W.H.
The knowledge of Christ the one thing needful.
I. WHAT IT IS. To know him is to know God, and to know God is eternal life. It is not knowledge about him, but knowledge of him, that we need. We must know him as we know a person.
II. HOW WE MUST SEEK THIS. All things that hinder us from obtaining this knowledge must be surrendered. Even such things as we have hitherto made a boast of must go if they are preventing us from knowing him. Our reputation for consistency, our hitherto unsuspected character, our most cherished occupations or friends,—all these are "loss" in comparison with the knowledge of him which is to be found in obedience to him.
III. WHAT IT WILL DO FOR US.
1. It will win Christ as Friend, Advocate, Redeemer, King. He will be on our side, however coldly earthly friends may regard us.
2. Thus winning him we shall be fouled in him. When the tempter conies to allure us he will not dare approach, for he will find us in him. When the accuser stands up at the last day to charge us with our many sins his words will fall powerless, for we shall he found in him who is our Defence.
IV. WHAT IT WILL BESTOW UPON US. Righteousness; not the merely external righteousness which may be secured by the punctual observance of legal duties, but the righteousness which is of God. This righteousness of his is incarnate in Christ, and is imparted by him to all who are in union with him through faith. This is complete righteousness, for it is the perfect righteousness which Christ himself has and is.—V.W.H.
The knowledge of Christ: its degrees and its purpose.
I. THE KNOWLEDGE OF HIS PERSON. This is the initiatory step. We must first recognize him to be our own God and Savior, and One who is to be altogether longed for. Nathanael thus knew him (John 1:49), and St. Peter (Matthew 16:16).
II. THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION. This is a step beyond the simple knowledge of his person. It can be found only in our own spiritual experience when we recognize his power in the victory which he wins in us over the power of sin. St. Peter did not learn the power of Christ's resurrection until he had received the Holy Ghost.
III. THE FELLOWSHIP OF HIS SUFFERINGS. When we have experienced the power of his resurrection we begin to find that his sufferings are ours and ours are his. We begin to feel something of that keenest of all his sufferings, the misery of the presence and the power of sin. At the same time, we find that, by a certain law of reciprocity, our own sufferings are no longer exclusively our own, but that he is bearing them with us and for us,
IV. BY THESE STAGES WE ARE MADE CONFORMABLE TO HIS DEATH. His death was an entire death unto sin; by our thus dwelling in him and he in us we also die unto sin.
V. THUS DYING UNTO SIN WE ATTAIN TO THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD; i.e. not merely to the extension of life after physical death, but to the complete resurrection, which is the entire victory over every form of death, natural or spiritual.—V.W.H.