Henry Bickersteth Durrant - The Mind of a Master Builder (1912)

8/23/2019 Henry Bickersteth Durrant - The Mind of a Master Builder (1912)

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PRESENTED BYThe Estate of theRev. John B. Wiedinp-er


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THE MIND OF A MASTER-BUILDER


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THE MINDMASTER-BUILDERAN INTERPRETATION OF ST PAUL'SFIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

BY THE REV,HENRY BICKERSTETH DURRANT, M.A.

PRINCIPAL OF ST, JOHN'S COLLEGE, AGRA; SOMETIMESCHOLAR OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

HODDER AND STOUGHTONLONDON NEW YORK TORONTO


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Printed in 191 2.


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PREFACEThere is probably no character in thewhole portrait gallery of the New Testa-ment that appeals to us so closely and soconstantly as that of St. Paul. And thereason of this is not only, or even chiefly,the amazing success of the Master-Builderit is even more the intense humanity ofthe man. It is significant that as it isin his " weakness " that St. Paul " glories,"so it is his " weakness " that draws us tohim most : the proof that is furnished byevery page that he wrote that, for all hisgreatness, he was a man and a brother.The following studies are an attempt

to show how the principles and the ideals


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vi PREFACEof the worker and the personality of theman, his apphcation of the eternal veritiesof the Faith to the life and problems ofthe Church, and to the sore needs of theindividual soul, come out from a con-sideration of the First Epistle to theCorinthians.The chapters are the substance of

addresses given at Retreats of Clergy inNorth India in 1910-11. In their finalshape, they were written at a time whenthe writer had no access to books, sothat the quotations are for the most partfrom memory, and may contain verbalinaccuracies. The citations from the textof the Letter are generally given in thewords of the Authorised Version, butwhere it seemed desirable fresh trans-lations have been made.

St. John's College, Agra.


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CONTENTSPAGEIntroduction ix

CHAPTER IThe Christian Heritage ... 3

CHAPTER IICulture and the Cross : A ContrastAND A Reconciliation ... 19

CHAPTER IIIIf the Resurrection be a Great De-

lusion, WHAT THEN ? . . .33CHAPTER IV

A Test of the Quality of Work . 47CHAPTER V

Indifference to and Suspension ofHuman Judgment.... 63


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viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI PAGEThe Unity of the Body of Christ . 77

CHAPTER VIIThe Differentiation of Functions in

the Body of Christ . . .91CHAPTER VIII

The Sacramental Character of theEvents of Human Life . . . 105

CHAPTER IXThe Pilgrim of Eternity . . .119

CHAPTER XThe Mind of the Master-Builder . 135


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INTRODUCTIONWe frequently get from the MissionField to-day books of quickening power,produced by the men and women wholive in the van of Christ's army, atclose grips with the non-Christian forces.Mr. Bernard Lucas, in his Empire ofChrist, has laid all English-speaking peopleunder an obligation. Mr. Hogg's ChrisfsMessage of the Kingdom has been pro-nounced by a great theologian as the mostimportant work on Theology which hasappeared in the last year.

Mr. Durrant's brief book, which is nowbefore the reader, has some of the samequalities as the works of these otherIndian missionaries. The subject is trite,

b ix


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X INTRODUCTIONbut the message is fresh. It is as if,looking at the millions of India, andholding in his hand the New Testament,the writer realises the significance of theChristian truth, and the power by whicnit can conquer the world, as we at homehardly do.Our missionaries go out to win the

unchristian world to Christ, but in worklike that presented in this little book theyreact upon the church that sent them andbring it back to Christ, or at least openits eyes to the possession that it mayclaim in Christ.The book needs no commendation when

it is read. It immediately justifies itself.If any should be induced to read it bythese brief words of introduction, I knowI shall earn their gratitude.

Robert F. Horton.Hampstead.


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THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGE


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CHAPTER ITHE CHRISTIAN HERITAGE

*' All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, orCephas, whether the world, or life, or death, whetherthings present, or things to come ; all are yours."1 Cob.iU. 22.

This passage is one of many in St. Paul'swritings in which the thought seems toglow and burn. The wonder of the visionbursts on him as he writes. The thoughtsare two : the poverty of party spirit andthe wealth of the Christian's heritage.

I. The Poverty of Party SpiritHe has been dwelling sadly enough on

the state of things in the Corinthian


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4 THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGEChurch. They had owed much to threeteachers, each no doubt with his ownspecial message, some special aspect ofthe truth that each had particularly-emphasised. If preaching be truth throughpersonality, every man's preaching mustbe distinct and individual. And thisChurch, instead of thanking God for theirriches in this threefold presentation ofthe truth, had used it as an occasion forbreaking up into three parties, each ex-alting their own teacher at the expenseof the other two. The argument thatSt. Paul uses here is very striking, andjust as applicable to-day as it was whenhe wrote. The partisan, he implies, therabid member of a particular school ofthought in the Church, is no doubt guiltyon other grounds ; he is also guilty onthis : he is deliberately impoverishing him-self, signing away his right to part of the


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THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGE 5great inheritance of truth. Every teacher,every school that is really of Christ hasits own contribution to make to the full-orbed presentation of Christ; and in sofar as we are partisans, we renounce allbut one small part of that wealth. Thetrue remedy is not to minimise or let gothat aspect of the truth for which eachparty stands, but to recognise that truthis big and that no one school of thoughtcan have the monopoly of it.But we feel, as we read, that this does

not exhaust the meaning of the passageSt. Paul's thought here, as so often in hiswritings, carried him farther than heknew it would when he began the argu-ment ; and from the idea that the Chris-tian is rich in that he is lawful heir to,lawful owner of all the truth that Godhas revealed to men, there bursts on hisview the whole glory of the Christian's


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6 THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGEinheritance. That little band of despisedand persecuted men, their leaders made*' the offscouring of all things, a spectacleto angels and to men," their ranks con-taining " not many wise men after theflesh, not many rich, not many noble,"were heirs to wealth undreamed of; andso he breaks into one of those wonderfulexhaustive lists which are such a featureof his style.

II. The Chbistian's WealthWe have the feeling in reading this

verse that we get sometimes in mountainclimbing, when we reach some command-ing ridge or crag^the sense of wide spaces,free air, illimitable prospects. Becausewe belong to Christ, because we are onewith Him, because we are joint heirswith Him, all these are ours. " I openedmy mouth aad drew in my breath."


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THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGE 7And first notice that we are reminded

here of another passage somewhat similarto this : "I am persuaded that neitherdeath nor Hfe, nor angels, nor princi-palities, nor powers, nor things present,nor things to come, can separate us fromthe love of God which is in Christ." Anoble thought, but here he seems to havereached a still higher plane. There hepictures all the contents of life as ourenemies, trying, though trying in vain, tocompass our ruin. Here he rises in amoment of wonderful insight to the higherconception still, that these things them-selves are part of our inheritance, part ofthe great wealth to which we are heirsin Christ. Let us look at the severalparts of these riches.The world. The use of this word in

the New Testament is most interest-ing, and repays the closest study. We


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8 THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGEhave two main conceptions given tous.We have first the conception that we

associate chiefly with the writings of St.John, the idea of the world as the im-placable, though in the long run the im-potent enemy of the Church. The worldin St. John, Bishop Westcott writes, ishuman society organising itself apartfrom God. The New Testament writershad before their eyes a concrete exampleof the world in this sense in the splendidfabric of the Roman Empire. Strength,magnificence, organisation, law, art,literature, and beauty, forming a wholethat dazzled the eyes of the beholder,deliberately shut God out. This is theclear and simple conception of the worldwhich has laid hold of the Christianconscience and imagination. No doubtthis is needed still, but we must not


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THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGE 9forget the profounder idea suggestedhere.In some mysterious sense the world

belongs to the Christian in a way thatit does not to the worldling, who seems tomove at ease among its splendours andto be breathing his native air. Whatcan it mean ? I would suggest whatmay, at any rate, be part of the idea inthe mind of St. Paul. Human society,as we know it, is really built upon certainfundamental instincts and needs of humannaturethe love of society, the love ofbeauty, the love of order, the admirationfor a splendid organisation, the deep in-eradicable longing for happiness. In theworld we see these things monstrouslyperverted : the social instinct run to seedin an endless round of assemblies thathave long ceased to be really social ; thedisciplined subordination where the weak


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10 THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGEcan rest upon the strong, and the fooUshon the wise, deteriorated into a senselesssystem of etiquette and snobbery and sel-fish caste-distinction ; the love of beauty,as in the decadence of the old Greek world,fastening on the external and physicalrather than on the spiritual and internalthe longing for happiness finding expres-sion in a feverish hectic pursuit of so-called pleasure. And from one point ofview the Christian can only stand alooffrom these things. But in a deeper sensestill they belong to him ; these instinctsare God-implanted. He made us to loveorder, beauty, society; to admire power,splendour, organisation. And in Himthese instincts find satisfaction ; thereis no longing in our hearts which Christcannot satisfy, no empty aching placein our life which He cannot fill. " Thineis the kingdom, the power, the glory;"


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THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGE 11and because " Thine," ours. In Christthe world is ours ; all in it that attractsour truer selves we shall find in Him andin His Church.

Life. This, which in one sense belongsto all, is said here to be in some specialsense the possession of the Christian.Life, according to the old often-quoteddictum, is adjustment to environment,the power to draw from our surroundingsall that is needed for the full and freedevelopment of personality, all that isrequisite for complete self-expression.The longing for life in this sense, the

passionate plea that all have the rightto live, the craving for this self-expressionis at the root of most of the movements inindividual and national history, from theprodigal who chafes at the restrictionsof home and goes to a far country, to thenation which claims the right to live a


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12 THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGEnational life. St. Paul has somewherea beautiful expression, translated in theAuthorised Version, " That which is lifeindeed"; and when he says that life ispart of the Christian heritage he mustsurely mean this : that in Christ we areplaced in conditions that are of all othersthe most favourable for the developmentof our personality. Not seldom a strongleader, by the very force and weight ofhis own personality, seems to kill theindividuality of his followers. But Christnever did this ; even from the briefGospel history we can see that thedisciples were more unlike each otherafter their three years' association withJesus than they were before it : thattheir individuality had grown more markedthrough their fellowship with Him. Part,then, of the Christian's heritage is this:that he can drawjust because he is so


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THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGE 18placed in Christfrom all his surroundings,physical and mental, seen and unseen, allthat is needed for the development ofthe individual self. " By your patienceye shall win your souls ; " that is, ye shallbecome yourselves.

Death, Here, again, something thatseems to be the inalienable right of allis said to belong in some special sense tothe Christian. What does this mean ?It does not mean for a moment that theChristian is the only man who is notafraid of death. There is hardly anemotion in the human heart so weak andfleeting but that it has proved strongenough to overcome the fear of death.Avarice, ambition, duty, patriotism, love,even the spirit of adventure and desirefor change, have over and over againmastered that fear. Again, it does notmean that to the Christian alone death


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14 THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGEhas seemed a boon ; while St. Paulwrote, " To depart is better," pessimism,disappointment, weariness, disillusion-ment have made men of the world in allages cry, " Death after life doth greatlyplease." But I think it does mean thatto the Christian alone death is the entryinto a fuller life. Death to the ancientGreek and Roman was a passing intothe life of '' the Shades " ; death to theChristian means leaving the world ofshadows and entry into the land of thereal. Men of other creeds and otherages have believed in a life the other side,but no one but a Christian could havewritten *' Crossing the Bar," with its centralidea that death is the beginning of thevoyage, the entry into the trackless oceanof the wider life to be. Nowhere, perhaps,but in a Christian environment couldthose fine lines have been penned


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THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGE 15" The Master of all good workmen

Shall set us to work anew ;And only the Master shall praise us.And only the Master shall blameAnd no one shall work for money.And no one shall work for fame,

But each for the love of the working."

Christ brought " incorruption " to hghtthrough the Gospel, the knowledge thatno human power, no true human facultycan be taken from us by death. If lifebelongs to the Christian, so does death.And so the wonderful list of the treasuresof the Christian heritage comes to an end." All things are ours," whether under theconditions that we know now" thingspresent "or under the conditions thatwe shall know then" things to come "" all things are ours, and we are Christ's,and Christ is God's."


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CULTURE AND THE CROSS: ACONTRAST AND A RECON-CILIATION


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CHAPTER IICULTURE AND THE CROSS : A CONTRAST

AND A RECONCILIATION"I determined to know nothing among you, save

Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." 1 Cob. ii. 1.^The whole of the section of the Epistle,in which the words quoted appear, canbe summed up in the title of this chapter,and the thought may perhaps be best con-sidered by thinking first of the two ideals,and then of their reconcilement in Christ.

Practically all through the world'shistory there have been two apparentlyirreconcilable ideals that have governedmen's living and thinking. We can de-scribe these by various terms, each of

^ For the whole subject vide Culture and Restraint, byHugh Black.

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20 CULTURE AND THE CROSSwhich perhaps adds something to ourunderstanding of the contrast: self-de-velopment and self-denial, self-expressionand self-repression, self-limitation andself-expansion, self-realisation and self-sacrifice, Hellenism and Hebraism, cultureand the Cross.

I. The two IdealsThe ideal of culture. We need to be

careful, I think, lest the unsightly carica-tures and burlesques of this ideal shouldblind us to what is to be said for the idealitself. We have all been irritated by theabsurdities of the camp-followers ofthis school of thought ; the smug, self-satisfaction with which they look downupon those whom they are pleased to callPhilistines. But these extremes oughtnot to make us unjust to the true ideal,which might, I imagine, be stated some-


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A CONTRAST AND A RECONCILIATION 21thing like this : from the root-meaningof the word we get the true conceptionthat by the tilling, the cultivation of afield, all its powers, all its possibilities offruitfulness and development are broughtto realisation ; so that the whole principleof culture might be expressed thus : wehave our human heritagethe body, withits natural craving for meat and drinkand rest and exercise, and its enjoymentin the use of all the senses ; the mind, withits curiosity after truth and its joy inwrestling with work ; the imagination,with its eager delight in beauty ; thewill, with its passion for domination andpower ; the heart, with its yearnings forlove and friendship and the sweet inti-macies of home.Here is our heritage ; what are we to

do with it ? The answer of the Greekwas unhesitating and clear. The very


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22 CULTURE AND THE CROSSexistence of an instinct or a faculty wasenough to justify its satisfaction. Inspite of the serious break-down of Greekthought in its practical application inthe life of the nation, there is a side of ournature to which this conception mostpowerfully appeals ; there is at firstsight a sanity about it that seems itscomplete justification. Surely each manhas the right to use, develop, and enjoyall those powers that God has given tohim. But there have been ages in theworld's history, there are moods in eachman's life, when this ideal fails to satisfy,and so we find its complete oppositeexercising its influence on the minds andlives of men.

The ascetic ideal. It has been held bymany that religion means not the develop-ment, but the repression of all our naturalinstincts : that not to cultivate, but to


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A CONTRAST AND A RECONCILIATION 23crucify oneself, is the road to perfection.It is of course especially interesting tothose who have anything to do withIndia, that it is this aspect of religiousliving that appeals most to the thinkersof that great country. There is an oldlegend quoted in Culture and Restraint,which puts this in striking fashion : thatwhen, centuries before Christ, the Bud-dhist missionaries went out two and twointo the world to preach their gospel, twoIndian friars burned themselves to deathbefore the eyes of the wondering Atheniansas a last desperate effort to present theirdoctrine of renunciation. This, then, isthe other ideal, the ideal that has becomesymbolised and embodied in the Cross.

II. The RECONCiLAtiON of the TwoIdeals in Christ

To the Corinthians there came, as there


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24 CULTURE AND THE CROSScomes to us, the necessity of reconcilingthese two apparently opposite ideals ifthey were to make the most of the lifethat God had given them. And St.Paul's teaching is as full of meaning andwisdom to us to-day as it was nearlytwo thousand years ago ; it took, of course,the line specially suggested by their specialcircumstances and needs. He seems tohave in mind two thoughts, which I willcall the Cross as an example and theCross as a mystery.

The Cross as an example. When Corinthwas rebuilt after being razed to the groundby the Romans, immigrants, who wereapparently freed slaves from Rome, weresent to colonise the place. The situationof the city as a seaport town, nay thevery air and influences of Greece itself,tended to develop unduly the first ofthese two life ideals. A liberty that had


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A CONTRAST AND A RECONCILIATION 25degenerated into licence had invaded theChurch itself ; there was a scandaloustendency to condone the grossest sin.Their life, as we see from this letter, wasrich and full : they " came behind in nospiritual gift." But the ascetic ideal,foreign to the very air they breathed,had lost its right place in their lives.And the message they needed, and hegave, was Jesus Christ, and this Jesuscrucified. He sums up his message asthe message of the Cross. It becomesthen necessary to inquire carefully whatwas the message of Jesus as to the placeof the two ideals in the life of His followers,a message given not merely in His words,but in His life and death upon the Cross.Though isolated sayings have been

quoted to prove that He was an ascetic,He was not so, nor did He preach asceti-cism. The love of little children, the love


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26 CULTURE AND THE CROSSof home, the love of wife and family, thelove of natureall found their place inHis conception of the spiritual life. Thereis a story quoted in Culture and Restraintof a mystic, who, on his walks abroad,used to pull his hat over his eyes lest theviolets should distract his attention fromcommunion with God. Contrast thatwith his Master, Who said, " Consider thelilies," and found *' every common bushafire with God." He recognised the lifeof culture, the life of self-expression tothe full. He would, we believe, haverecommended the complete life with twoqualifications. There are two thingswhich may bid us mutilate our life, thecall of prudence and the call of service.

The call of prudence. " If thy righteye offend thee, pluck it out and cast itfrom thee ; for it is better for thee to enterinto life with one eye, rather than having


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A CONTRAST AND A RECONCILIATION 2Ttwo eyes to be cast into hell fire." AsBishop Gore paraphases it : " The safelife is better than the complete life ; "in other words, nothing matters in com-parison with the supreme importance ofmaintaining communion with God. Ifthat can be maintained, as by countlessgifted souls it can, in conjunction withthe other, well ; if not, cut it off and castit from thee.

The call of service. It is clear from thelife and words, both of St. Paul and hisMaster, that it may be incumbent on aman to limit and restrict his own in-dividual life, to forgo his rights for thesake of the work he is called to do. Thehighest life that the world has everseen was a life of voluntary limitation,not only in that " He became obedientunto death, even the death of the Cross,"but in that " He emptied Himself and


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28 CULTURE AND THE CROSStook upon Him the form of a servant."St. Paul's life, too, was full of the samevoluntary forgoing, at the call of service,of the right to the complete life. " Ifothers have a share in this authorityover you, have not we still more ? "But " we did not use this authority,nay we repress all things, lest we shouldgive any obstacle to the Gospel of Christ."He deliberately forwent marriage, towhich he had the right in common withthe other Apostles.

St. Paul's message, then, to them andto us seems to be this : human powerswere given to us for use, capacities fordevelopment, instincts for satisfactionthe ideal of culture is not in itself to bedeprecated, but on each true Christianlife must fall the shadow of the Cross.There is no general rule for its application :it would be much simpler and easier if


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A CONTRAST AND A RECONCILIATION 29there were. But at the call of prudenceand the call of service each Christianmust in his own way take up the Cross.The Cross as a mystery. The word itself

is used in this passage, and it is the regularPauline phrase for the idea running allthrough, namely something that cannotbe discovered by the human intellect,but only by the revelation of God. Aswe should have expected from their en-vironment, the Corinthians were inclinedto attach great weight to knowledge,wisdom, subtlety of argument, brilliantand rhetorical presentation of truth ; itwas to the intellect that they gave theirheartiest, most spontaneous admiration.The simple, or apparently simple, teach-ing of the Cross was to them foolishness.St. Paul reminds them of a fact thatneeds emphasis as much to-day as itneeded it then; namely, that religious


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80 CULTURE AND THE CROSStruth is in one sense on a different planefrom! intellectual truth. It too is wisdom," the wisdom of God in a mystery "not to be unravelled by the scientificmethod of observation"Eye hath notseen nor ear heard "not to be dis-covered by the philosophic method ofreasoning" it hath not entered into theheart of man to conceive " ; but revealedby the Spirit to spiritual men. We can-not understand the Cross, but the con-viction of its truth flashes on us as wekneel and pray. We know that for Jesus'sake, because of what He has done, we,even we, shall one day " stand faultlessbefore the presence of the throne of Hisglory with exceeding joy."


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IF THE RESURRECTION BE AGREAT DELUSION, WHAT THEN?


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CHAPTER IIIIF THE RESURRECTION BE A GREAT

DELUSION, WHAT THEN ?"If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are

of all men most miserable." 1 Cob. xv. 19.^It would be quite easy to attach a mean-ing to this passage which would be in-consistent with the teaching of otherparts of the Bible ; so far as the wordsgo, they might well mean this: that ifthe Resurrection were untrue, the policyof the Christian lifethe policy of restraint,of self-denial, of patiently enduring

1 In the Greek the word " only " comes at the end ofthe sentence, and should therefore qualify the whole,and not merely the words *'in this life." This mightbe brought out by some such translation as this : "Ifin this life we have been hoping in Christ, and that isall, we are more to be pitied than all other men."

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34 IF THE RESURRECTION BEpersecution even unto deathwould be amistaken policy ; that if you take awaythe promise of the life the other side,the Christian life is a foolish kind of life.No thoughtful Christian would for amoment accept this as being true. Webelieve that, even from the point of viewof this life, the Christian policy of livingis wise. " Godliness," writes St. Paulelsewhere, " hath the promise of the lifethat now is as well as that which is tocome." As Robertson of Brighton putsit in that noble and often-quoted sentencein one of his sermons : " Even if therebe no God, and no hereafter, it is stillbetter to be true than false, chaste thanlicentious, brave than a coward." If,then, the verse cannot mean this, whatcan it mean ?

I would say first that, if the belief in aResurrection be a delusion, the Christian


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A GREAT DELUSION, WHAT THEN ? 85is to be pitied, because all delusion ispitiable. No matter how strong an in-ducement to right-living the delusion be,no matter how great the peace andcomfort it pours into the soul, it is betterto face facts, to see things as they reallyare, even if it breaks a man's heart. Thisstatement might not win universal ac-ceptance ; some of our popular proverbs,which have been defined as " the wisdomof many and the wit of one," and there-fore may be regarded as expressing theviews of the majority, assert the con-trary : '' Where ignorance is bliss 'tisfolly to be wise." But George Eliot, inone of her letters, puts the matter moretruly. She uses a very striking metaphor,when, writing from her own standpoint,she compares the soothing and anaestheticeffects of a belief in God and immortalityto the effects of opium. " The highest


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86 IF THE RESURRECTION BEcalling and election is to do withoutopium, and to face life with serene clear-eyed endurance." If you grant her pre-mises, surely she is right ; howeverennobling, however comforting, howeveruplifting a delusion may be, truth is best.To be deluded is to be pitiable.And we might perhaps express the

meaning of this verse in some such wayas this : that if there be no Resurrectionthe Christian is more to be pited thanall other men, because the greatest truston which man ever leaned would beshattered, and the greatest hope that everbrightened man's life would be destroyed.

I. Man's Greatest TrustIt has become, thank God, almost a

commonplace to say that Christianitymeans Christ. I suppose the truth under-lying all our theological dogmas about


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A GREAT DELUSION, WHAT THEN ? 37faith, the essence of all those countlessstatements made by Christ Himself aboutthe necessity of faith, the truth and theessence is just this : that Christianitymeans leaning upon the personal Christ asthe drowning man leans upon the strongswimmer who is rescuing him, as thetempest-driven traveller leans against therock to shelter him from the pitilessstorm, as we lean upon a teacher to makeus wise and on a doctor to make uswhole. It has been the fashion of lateto say that it does not matter what a manbelieves so long as he is sincere. Butthis statement really seems to mean, ifyou look into it, nothing at all. Ifthere is no reality answering to my faith,I have indeed believed in vain. If thecork be taken out of the life-belt and theempty canvas shell thrown to the strug-gling swimmer, no trust in it, however


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38 IF THE RESURRECTION BEpassionately sincere, can make it supportthe drowning man. If there be no realityin Christ answering to our faith in Him,we have believed in vain. And in thesedays of juggling with the articles of ourfaith, we cannot insist too strongly ortoo often on this : that if Christ be notrisenI would say it with all reverenceHe has failed us. He is not what Heclaimed to be, an ever-living Friend, byour side through " all the days," thedays of storm, the days of clear shiningafter rain, and the days of dull greyweather. If we have prayed for half alifetime to One who cannot hear, if wehave believed with all our heart in aPresence that was not there, if, in aword, we have tried to live the Christianlife with reference to a living, glorified,ever-present Christ, and all the time Helies " where on His grave the Syrian


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A GREAT DELUSION, WHAT THEN ? 39stars look down," we are more to bepitied than all other men, because a truston the like of which man never leantbefore is a delusion and a lie.

II. Man's Brightest HopeIt would not, of course, be the least

true to say that the Resurrection ofJesus gave the hope of another life tomankind. As Bishop Westcott pointedout, the translation that Christ brought" immortality " to light through theGospel, is singularly unfortunate, becausethe statement is quite untrue. A beliefin some kind of immortality is commonapparently to all nations and almost allcreeds, and the Jews, it seems, held sucha circumstantial belief in the resurrectionof the body, that it could be used as aparable by Ezekiel in the vision of **thevalley of dry bones." But what the


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40 IF THE RESURRECTION BEResurrection of Jesus did for us wasthis : it not only gave a certainty to ourhope, which nothing else could give savethe return of one from that bourne fromwhence hitherto no traveller had re-turned, but it gave a form and colourto that hope which has given a newsignificance to human life. Hungry withcuriosity, as we naturally are about thatlife to which we are going, these accounts ^of the forty days after the Resurrection,and of St. Paul's meeting with the RisenMaster on the Damascus road are scannedeagerly for light as to what His Resur-rection, which shall be ours, really means.And there seem to be two things whichstand out with special prominence, twomain elements in the hope that we oweto the Resurrection. It assures us oftwo things: the continuance of personal

1 For this whole subject, vide Latham's Risen Master*


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A GREAT DELUSION, WHAT THEN ? 41identity and the permanence of personalrelationships.The continuance of "personal identity. I

mean much more by this hope than thebare words seem to imply. Written overthe whole wonderful series of narrativesI read these words : " This same Jesus."This is all the more striking, because therewere changes in the outward form of theResurrection-body which at times sealedtheir eyes, so that for a time they did notknow Him. Have you noticed how, asLatham points out, it was not the profferedproof of the touch of the hands and sidethat brought faith to doubting Thomas,but the familiar characteristic of hisMaster that he knew so wellthat thatMaster could read his thoughts ?Have you noticed how, after that walk

to Emmaus, it was something familiar inHis manner as He blessed and brake


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42 IF THE RESURRECTION BEbread that reminded them of that LastSupper, so that He " was known to themin the breaking of bread " ? Have younoticed in that meeting on the Damascusroad how instinctively His thoughts findthe old familiar form of expression, thatof parable drawn from the commoncountry life around, and how His wordshave the old familiar touch of the life ofthe Syrian fields : " It is hard for thee '*(like the rebellious ox) " to kick against thegoad " ? Can there be any hope that meetsmore absolutely one of the deepest needsof our hearts ? The haunting fear of be-reavement is the fear of change, the feel-ing that, while the new life may holdmuch that is good, the old life that weloved has gone for ever, the personality,of which every smallest characteristic hadgrown dear to us, must have sufferedchange. " The same Jesus " : death and


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A GREAT DELUSION, WHAT THEN ? 43Resurrection no break in personal identity.A hope like this robs death of its sharpeststing.

The permanence of personal relation-ships. It is true that Christ's first act,on His rising again, was to dispel a falsenotion as to this point. His words, thatsound like a harsh repulse of earthly-affection, were really a reminder that areturn to the old life did not exhaust themeaning of His victory over death. But,when once that had been made clear, allthe rest of the forty days were a tenderrenewing and maintaining of the earlierlinks. It is surely significant that theonly one to whom He appeared, who wasnot previously a believer in His divineclaims, was one linked to Him by thehuman tie of brotherhood. John wasstill the disciple whom Jesus loved, Peterstill in the inner circle of His friends.


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44 THE RESURRECTIONHuman links are not for time only, butfor eternity ; otherwise we should beright in saying, " Love not, love not ; thething you love shall die." It is onlythrough faith in Christ's Resurrection, thata noble thought like that of a recentwriter becomes possible : " One chief useof this life is to make friendships foreternity."

" Fame is a fleeting breath,Hopes may be false or fond ;

Love shall endure till death.And perhaps beyond."

As we follow out a train of thought likethis, we begin to understand just a verylittle of the wealth of our heritage in thisfaith in the Resurrection of Jesus, to feelthat if He had not risen, if our trust andhope had been delusions, we had beenindeed more to be pitied than all othermen.


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A TEST OF THE QUALITY OFWORK


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CHAPTER IVA TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORK

" If any man build upon the foundation gold, silver,precious stones, wood, thatch, reeds, the work of eachman shall be made manifest ; for the day shall makeit clear, because it is unveiled by fire, and the fire shalltest each man's work of what sort it is."1 Cob. iii.10-15.

Great emphasis is sometimes laid on thecontrast between " being " and " doing,"the individual spiritual life of the manand his work. And the tendency, Ithink, is to exalt the importance of beingat the expense of the importance of work-ing. But this needs careful statement ifit is not to lead to misunderstanding. Ifthe supreme and vital question abouteach man is how much he has contributed

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48 A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORKto the life of " the body of Christ," thenwe may say that " being " is chiefly im-portant because it is the most effectivemethod of "doing." And the insistenceon the supreme importance of the cultiva-tion of the inner life of the individual reallyrests on this fact, that a man who spendsmuch time and thought on the culture ofhis own spiritual life will, though probablyunconsciously, do more effective workthan he who, working more, prays less.The strongest advocate of the importanceof " being " would, if pressed, be the lastto make light of the necessity of working.And this is borne out by the fact thatthere is a universal human instinct thatmakes a man long for success in his work.This longing outlives the passionate youth-ful craving for happiness, which is alsocommon to us all; and long after a manhas realised that this world is not the place


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A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORK 49of dreams materialised that he fondlyhoped, he still longs that his work maytell, that he may not spend his strengthfor nought.There are surely two kinds of ambition,

the true and the false; ambition is onlyvulgar, if it be for some unworthy aim, forplace or power or wealth or fame orthat dreadful clerical word" prefer-ment." Each man, in so far as he is aman, is bound to be ambitious for suc-cess; that is, that his work may tell.But when we come to ask what consti-

tutes success we find a bewildering num-ber of standards to confuse us. I passover without comment the world's stan-dard, that a man's success is to bemeasured by the remuneration that hereceives, or the splendour and dignity ofthe office that he wins. But there areother standards less obviously false than

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50 A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORKthis. A very common measure by whichto gauge the value of a man's work is thatof size, extensivenessthe number ofreaders that a book finds, the number ofhearers that a preacher attracts, thegreatness of the organisation that a leaderoriginates and controls. Others, moreplausibly, would weigh work not by ex-tensiveness, but by intensiveness. Thebook, the sermon, the poem, the lecturethat lays hold of some man's very soul,would seem to them the successful bookor sermon ; to them the mother whogives her life to stamp her individualityon her two or three children would seemthe type of the successful worker. Andthis view wins some support from the factthat our Lord seems to have restrictedthe sphere of His work and to have spentmost of His time in fashioning the charac-ter of His handful of immediate disciples.


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A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORK 51Others would take permanence, otherscompleteness as the standard ; but whilethere is something to be said for all theseviews, St. Paul here propounds a test,by which the success of work will be tried,other than any of these. He says thatthe Advent, "the day," "the fire," willtry every man's work of what sort it is.

I. The Metaphor here employed forWork

It is worth while to look for a momentat the metaphor here employed for work.St. Paul's writings are full of these germ-parables, and this letter is particularlyrich in them. We have work picturedby the functions of the various membersof the body, by the labour of the husband-man ; and here we have a metaphor thathas become part of human language andbeen used by more writers than we can


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52 A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORKcount, the metaphor of building. Justas one of our great English cathedralshas risen to its stately beauty by the toilnot only of many men, but of manygenerations ; and the work is never finallycompleted, because maintenance, adorn-ment, and repair still call for fresh labourso it is with the Church. It has beenstrengthened by the solid thought oftheologian and philosopher, enriched bythe jewel fancies of the artist and thepoet, enlarged by the evangelist with hiscontribution of living stones, repairedby the prophet and reformer. And everyChristian, no matter how humble hissphere, is adding something to that pile :perhaps not in every case by bringingfresh stones to the building, but by pre-paring the way for others to do so; byfashioning the stones already in theirplace, by love, by thought, by sacrifice,


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A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORK 53by conserving and adapting the old, bycontributing the new, we are each playinga part in the work, and still the raisingof the Temple goes on. It is a noblemetaphor for Christian work.

II. The Metaphor for the Testing ofWorkThis is suggested naturally enough by

the picture of the town of Corinth thatwould be in St. Paul's mind as he wrote.In the year 146 B.C. the city was com-pletely destroyed by the Roman GeneralMummius, who put it to the flames.For a hundred years it lay in ruins, andthen a few years before St. Paul's timeit was rebuilt. But the traces of theordeal by fire through which the city hadpassed would still be visible enough. Themassive blocks of stone and marble hadstood the test, but the incongruous super-


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54 A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORKstructures built up upon them showedhow much of the old city had simply beendemolished by the flames. How muchof the work of those early builders hadsimply passed away, leaving nothing butcharred ashes to tell of what had been !It may be that the memory of the richerquarters of the town, where no wealthhad been spared and gold and preciousstones had been lavished, and of thedwellings of the poor where squalid super-structures of wood and thatch and mudand straw rose on some massive block ofstone or marble, a relic of the pastitmay be that these memories suggestedthe language here. At any rate, as hewrites with this picture of the city beforehis mind, he thinks of this searching testof fire, through which the work of thebuilder had had to pass: *'the fire shalltest the work of each man of what sort


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A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORK 55it is." If we have ever seen a greatfire doing its work of destruction, it isdifficult to imagine a more telling pictureof a test of work than this : the lightcombustible thatch that goes first ; thetimber that resists longer, but goes witha crash too ; the stucco that looked likestone to the inexpert eye, but is revealednow for what it really is ; and only thestone and marble that remains in the end,gutted and stripped bare of all less solidthan itself. So will it be with our workin the testing day.

III. St. Paul's Idea that Good MenMAY DO Bad Work

A word needs to be said in passingabout the startling idea suggested here.We are accustomed to the thought whichmay be expressed roughly by saying thatbad men can do good work. The Old


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56 A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORKTestament is full of the notion that Godcan and does take bad men and use themas the instruments of His will ; here wehave a suggestion more startling, namelythat good men may do bad work, worthlesswork. I remember reading somewhere aphrase written by a great man at the endof a long lifea most despairing phrase :*' I have spent the whole of my lifelaboriously doing nothing at alV^ : " labor-iously doing nothing at all " : buildingstructures that the first leaping flamesof the testing time would destroy.

IV. The Application of the TestIs it possible for us to apply this test

here and now to our work, so that wemay be sure that we are not spendingour strength for nought ? In one sense,no. The bridge cannot be really testedtill the flood comes down from the hills ;


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A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORK 57the ship cannot finally be proved sea-worthy till the storm strikes her. Butjust as the engineer, while he cannotapply the test of the flood till it comes,can and does go anxiously through pagesand pages of calculations to see whetherthe bridge is constructed on right mathe-matical principles, so must we anxiouslyinquire whether our work is being done onsuch principles as will make it likely tostand the test of that day. One thoughtmay be suggested here as a possibleguide to our inquiry : there are twothings of which the absolute permanenceis asserted in the New Testament ; theone is love and the other is law.

Of all the beautiful things St. Paul saysabout love, the one that he feels mostdeeply seems to be this, that love isadmirable because it lasts : love neverfails; prophecy, tongues, knowledge, all


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58 A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORKpass; love abides. He, then, who hasimplanted one thought about God, whichleads men to see the lovableness of God,he who has led men one step along theroad to unity, concord, mutual love, hasadded something to the fabric of Christ'sChurch, which will stand the testing day.There is one more thing of which the

absolute permanence is asserted in theNew Testament in the strongest terms.The Lord Jesus said, " Heaven and earthshall pass away, but My words shall notpass away." The words of Jesus werethe expression of the mind of God, thoseeternal principles which we sum up underthe general title of " Law." Work, nomatter how humble, how trivial, that isdone in accordance with those principles,is work for eternity. This thought needsillustration. Bishop Westcott of Durham,in one of his last addresses, said these


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A TEST OF THE QUALITY OF WORK 59words : " If I have failed ... it has beenbecause I have often not acted on theeternal law, that he who would help menmust demand something of them." Inanother place the same writer suggests tous another great law : " The intrusionof self is the ruin of any great work."The New Testament is full of thoseeternal laws, those great principles onwhich work must be done. And evenhere and now we can test our work bythem. It will be a humbling study.How often we shall have to say that thisor that piece of work was worthlessbecause in it I broke one of the laws ofGod : I let self come in, I ignored this orthat element in human nature. Howmuch will pass ! May God in His infinitemercy grant that something may remain.


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INDIFFERENCE TO AND SUS-PENSION OF HUMAN JUDG-MENT


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CHAPTER VINDIFFERENCE TO AND SUSPENSION OF

HUMAN JUDGMENT" To me it is a matter of supreme iinimportance that

I should be judged by you or by any human judgment(Hterally "human day ") ; "but I do not even judgemine own self ; for I am not conscious of anythingagainst myself, but I am not by this justified ; but Hewho judges me is the Lord. Therefore do not judgeanything before the time, until the Lord come, whoshall both bring to light the hidden things of darknessand shall make manifest the counsels of the hearts."1 Cor. iv. 3-5.

This letter seems to me one of the mosthuman documents ever written. Thesituation was this : the Christians atCorinth were divided up into factions,each exalting some particular leader atthe expense of the others. St. Paul with

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64 INDIFFERENCE TO ANDhis high birth, his gentle nurture, hisgreat attainments, his wonderful gifts,found himself pilloried by a large sectionof the Church, his pretensions derided,his claims belittled, his leadership dis-owned, and his orders disobeyed. We arecontinually conscious in reading boththe Letters to the Corinthians of thisperfectly natural human soreness. Wenone of us like being depreciated andbelittled, and the message of St. Paulspeaks with all the more force becauseof this touch of human nature that makeshim kin with ourselves. For in the pas-sage quoted above we have the thoughtof one of his hours of insight, when hehas risen right above it for a time, whenhe sees things as they really are, and forthe moment is able to declare his com-plete indifference to the verdict of man'sjudgment, j


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SUSPENSION OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 65I. Indifference to Human Judgment" It is a matter of supreme unimportance

that I should be judged by you or anyhuman judgment." While such a state-ment moves our envy, while we areconscious of the glorious liberty of suchindependence, of the protection it wouldafford against the restless anxiety ofthe desire to please, and the pin-pricksand the sword-thrusts that wound ourvanity or self-esteemwhile we feel this,we also feel that there is something to besaid on both sides of the question. Itis absolutely natural to care what peoplethink about us if we like them or lovethem, as St. Paul loved the Corinthians;and it is by no means the weakest orthe worst people who care most. Manyof us are beset at times by great wavesof self-mistrust of our powers, our policy,

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66 INDIFFERENCE TO ANDour effectiveness ; and to have the heartysupport of the approval of some onewhom we love and trust seems often justto add the little bit of strength andconfidence that we need. Of CharlesKingsley it was said that he made mengood by believing them to be so. Andit is not only natural: it may be a mostpowerful motive for righteousness. Thefear of shattering the trust of some onewho believed in them has kept more menstraight than perhaps any other incentiveto goodness. And yet there is a deepand real danger in depending on thejudgment of others and allowing our-selves to be elated by their approvaland depressed by their censure, for in sofar as we do this we are substitutinganother's conscience for our own, andweakening our personality in somethingthe same way as a man, who gets into the


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SUSPENSION OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 67habit of using a crutch, loses the powerof walking alone.

Indifference, then, to the judgment ofothers about us means freedom andstrength ; but how did St. Paul attain it ?He tells us expressly here. We know itwas not from a natural callousness ; nomore delicately sensitive nature than hiswas ever exposed to the stings andpricks of life. Callousness is an evilbecause it inevitably makes men not onlyindifferent to the pain others inflict onthem, but equally so to the pain they in-flict on others ; and no man was ever lesscallous than St. Paul. He expressly stateshere, too, that it was not a consciousnessof personal rectitude that made himindifferent to the condemnation of others.It is true that he was not " conscious ofanything against himself " ; but knowinghow incapable man is of an unbiassed


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68 INDIFFERENCE TO ANDjudgment of himself, he writes, " Yetam I not hereby justified." His in-dependence comes from a strong con-sciousness that God is the only one whoreally matters : " He that judgeth me is theLord." He here touches, surely, the verydeepest root of the matter: the way toget a right attitude towards men's opinionsis to practise getting right away into aregion of consciousness, where one isonly aware of two entities, God and thesoul. Those moments of desperate loneli-ness, when men cry, " The heart knowethits own bitterness, and a stranger dothnot intermeddle with its joy," afford justthat needed opportunity for staying thesoul upon God. " We live alone, we sufferalone, we die alone, we inhabit the lastresting-place alone ; but there is nothing toprevent our opening our loneliness to God.And then what was austere monologue


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SUSPENSION OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 69becomes dialogue ; restlessness passes intopeace. All is well ; my God envelopsme" (Amiel's Journal Intime).The second part of this passage deals

with another thought, equally important,and equally perplexing, namely our dutyas to the judgments that we form ofothers.

II. The Suspension of HumanJudgment

" Judge nothing before the time, untilthe Lord come." There is a sense inwhich this appeals to what we feel to beone of the weaker sides of our present-day thought, the tendency which bidsus " Believe it not, reject it not, butwait it out, O man ! " But it cannot meanthat we are to go through life with ourminds, our opinions, in what Stevensoncalls " a state of accurate balance and


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70 INDIFFERENCE TO ANDblank," making up our minds aboutnothing, inclining neither to the one sidenor the other. No man who has a mindat all can read the newspaper in themorning without forming certain judg-ments about things; for instance, aboutthe truth or falsehood of certain claimsmade, the wisdom or unwisdom of a certainpolicy, the merit or demerit of certainactions. A man who in this sense keptalways an open mind would end by havingno mind to keep open ; he would lose, thatis, his faculty of judgment altogether.But there is a kind of judgment to

which we are fatally prone, and whichis forbidden absolutely and altogether;namely, the judgment of human character,the pronouncing this or that man good orbad, honest or dishonest, noble or base.The command obviously needs to be in-terpreted by the aid of common sense. A


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SUSPENSION OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 71schoolmaster asked for a character of oneof his boys ; the mistress of a housequestioned about one of her servantsthese are bound to say honestly whatthey think. But the vast majority ofjudgments pronounced by men and womenupon one another have no such justifica-tion ; they are made merely to point anepigram, or wile away an idle hour, orgratify a spite. And even where suchjudgments have to be pronounced we areto remember their exceeding fallibility.And St. Paul gives us the reason here whysuch judgments are to be as far as pos-sible withheld : they are quite prema-ture. " Until the Lord come " we havenot the data. " The hidden things ofdarkness " seem to be those parts of aman's life which he wilfully hides, andyet which must be known if the verdictis to be fair. How many men seem to


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72 INDIFFERENCE TO ANDtake a pride in concealing their betterselves ! " The counsels of the heart,"apparently, are those things which in thevery nature of the case cannot be known,namely the motives and purposes withwhich things are done. These things areinevitably concealed now, and yet, as weknow from Christ's teaching, it is themotive that gives the real colour to anyaction. And so the Lord's command," Judge not," is emphasised here by theApostle, and we are further told to post-pone all such judgments till the greatday " of the unveiling." What does thisunveiling of the great day mean ? Not,I think, that all the details of our past lifewill be dragged out into the pitiless lightof daythat is forgiven; and forgivenin God's language means forgottenbutthat our real self, the sum of our past, willbe stripped bare of all disguise, and shown


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SUSPENSION OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 73as it really is. Until that day of revealingwe are as far as may be to suspend, re-serve judgment as to human character,committing all to Him that judgethrighteously.


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THE UNITY OF THE BODY OFCHRIST


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CHAPTER VITHE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRIST" For just as the body is one and hath many members,

and all the members of the body being many are onebody, so also is Christ."1 Cob. xii. 12.The discovery that society is an organismsimilar to the human body is no new idea,nor is it an exclusively Christian idea.It was used long before Christ in the fableof " The belly and the members " famousin Roman history. But the advancesmade in the knowledge of biology andsociology show us more and more howextraordinarily apt the comparison is.For there are two ideas that biology hasbrought out with increasing clearness,both of which are strongly emphasised in

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78 THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRISTthe twelfth chapter of this letter. Theseare the nature of organic unity and thedifferentiation of functions or the divisionof labour. We are told that the morehighly developed the organism is, thegreater is its unity, and yet the moreminute is the subdivision of its functions.We will deal in this chapter with St.Paul's conception of the unity, and in thenext with his conception of the differentia-tion of functions as applied to the bodyof Christ.We are told that in the lowest forms of

life the means of communication betweenthe various parts of the organism are soimperfect that, provided nuclear materialbe present in each piece, an organism,such as an amoeba, can be cut in pieceswithout seriously interfering with its lifeand growth.

This is certainly so in primitive forms


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THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRIST 79of society. Take, for instance, the inhabi-tants of England in the earliest times.The lack of means of communicationbreaks up such a body into a large num-ber of independent parts. There is noreal unity ; injury to one part does notinjure the whole ; advantage to one partdoes not advantage the whole. In India,before the construction of railways, it wasno uncommon thing to find famine pre-vailing in one district, and in another, onlythirty miles away, the most abundantplenty. In the most advanced forms oflife, such as we see in the human body, onthe other hand, the means of communica-tion are so perfect between the differentparts of the body that it becomes in themost complete sense one body. Pain orpleasure to one part are instantly trans-mitted to the whole. It is the same in thesocial and economic organism ; com-


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80 THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRISTmunication by means of road, rail, post,and telegraph is so perfect, the inter-dependence of the different parts is socomplete, that a depression in one tradefilters its way through the whole indus-trial structurethe body is one. This isthe kind of unity that is asserted here bySt. Paul of the body of Christ, the Chris-tian Church ; it is organic unity.

There are, roughly speaking, twomethods by which a number of men maybe made one : there is the unity that isimpelled from without, and the unitythat grows from within.Men may be united by an outside force

drawing them or driving them together.Sometimes, if the outside influence bevery strong, the unity will seem to bevery real : for instance, a common dan-ger has sometimes drawn the passengerson a ship so much together, that differ-


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THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRIST 81ences of rank, temperament, education,have all been for the time being sweptaway, and they have been made one bythe peril shared. Of course the charac-teristic of this kind of unity is that it ismerely temporary ; the peril over, thepassengers edge away from each otheragain, wondering how they can ever havedrawn so close. We know, and we grieveto know, that the union of the Indianpeoples under our rule is at present ofthis kind. If the strong hand of theBritish Government were withdrawn, thatunion would cease to be, just as, if yousplit the bag that holds the pound of shot,you make what seemed one whole into athousand separate entities again.

Utterly unlike this is the unity thatgrows from within. The tree is one, be-cause it draws its sap from one system ofroots ; the family is one, because its life

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82 THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRISTcomes from a common stock ; the body isone, because it is informed by a commonlife. Take away the lifeour very wordfor death, " dissolution," shows itandthe different members of the body fallinto disintegration once more, dust re-turns to dust ; but while the life is there,the body is one.

There are two results said here tofollow from this kind of unity. First itobliterates all minor differences. St. Paulstates this in magnificent language" There is neither Jew nor Greek, bondnor free, male nor female, for ye are allone in Christ Jesus." G. K. Chestertongives us a definition of the democraticspirit, of which the drift is this, thatby this spirit we realise how supremelyunimportant are the things in whichmen differ and how supremely importantthe things in which they are alike. This


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THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRIST 83seems to be the thought in the mind ofSt. Paul : difference of race, differenceof education, difference of birth, rank,breeding, and position are all as nothingin the thought of the common life sharedby all. When we look away from thisideal to the present-day actual, and recallthe cleavages, social, racial, sectarian,that divide us, it is some comfort torealise that St. Paul in his day was faceto face with differences as great, that hehad to fight as hard as we for that unitywhich he knew to be the mind of Christmore especially can those racial dis-tinctions, which make the problem ofthe Church so difficult in our Empireover seas, be paralleled by the problemof Jew and Gentile, to the solving ofwhich he brought such magnificent faithand insight and courage.The second result that follows from


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84 THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRISTthis unity is what we should now callsolidarity. " If one member suffer, allthe members suffer with it ; if one memberis glorified, all the members rejoice withit." I suppose that not so very manyyears ago a statement like this wouldhave been dismissed from the mind ofthe reader as idle rhetoric. For we havehere an amazingly strong statement thatthe members of the Body of Christ, thosewho are baptized into His name, are onein such a sense that injury to one isinjury to all, and advantage to one isadvantage to all. Long before this letterwas written Christ had made the sameassertion about His own unity with Hisfollowers : " He that receiveth you re-ceiveth Me " ; he that feeds or clothesor visits or tends one of the least of theseMy little ones, feeds and clothes andtends Me ; he that neglects the least,


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THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRIST 85neglects Me. We have an illustrationof this solidarity in the highest form ofhuman love, the love of a mother for herchild. In the most literal sense, a motherfeels an injury inflicted on her child tobe an injury inflicted on herself, andkindness to him kindness to herself. Nowhere in this passage we have the furtherinevitable application of the same thoughtif Christ is one with us in this sense, then,by virtue of our union with Him, we areone with each other ; " through Him "is " the whole body fitly joined together " ;injury to a part is injury to the whole.And this is not merely a picturesque wayof describing what we commonly callsympathy ; it is a statement, the strongestthat we can conceive, of solidarity. Andwe are much more able to-day to graspthis idea intelligently than we should havebeen a few years ago.


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86 THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRISTIt is true that our conception of one

of the ways in which the human race isone has been weakened by further know-ledge. It would seem that heredity isnot so strong a force as we thought itto be. Apparently the transmission of" acquired characteristics " is not, at anyrate, a particularly common occurrenceand where, for instance, a man, with aninherited tendency to drink, wins tovirtue and self-control, he is much morelikely to transmit the inherited vicioustendency than the acquired virtue tohis children. This may seem at firstsight to weaken the motive urging himto self-mastery for the sake of others.But, while we know that heredity is aweaker bond of union than we thoughtit to be, we have learnt that influenceis a far stronger and more mysteriouslink between men than we could have


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THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRIST STformerly conceived. We know, from theestablished facts of telepathy, that in-dependently of the ordinary means ofwritten or spoken word, thought andfeeling can be transmitted, even uncon-sciously, across vast distances. It is nolonger merely a beautiful figure of speechto say that if one member suffer, thewhole body suffers with it ; we begin tosee how this may be literally true.There are two thoughts suggested by

this wonderful truth : it supplies in-spiration not only for the life of theindividual soul, but also for the work.What a wonderful dignity this idea givesto the lonely struggle of the individualsoul ! It is true that, from one pointof view, we are each of us utterly alone." The heart knoweth its own bitterness,and a stranger doth not intermeddlewith its joy." And yet, if this statement


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88 THE UNITY OF THE BODY OF CHRISTof St. Paul be true, our obscure struggleswith temptation, our hard-won littlevictories, our grievous defeats are ofmoment to the whole body to which webelong. What a motive this supplies forfighting on, for struggling to improvethe quality of our individual lives ! " Noman liveth to himself, and to himself noman dieth." And what inspiration thisthought gives for our little bit of obscurework ! As we deal with the individualin our study, as we visit the cottage inthe parish, as we teach the tiny class inthe village school, our work is universalin the most literal sense of the word.Our failure or success in this little bit ofwork, of which no one ever hears, mattersto the whole Church. " For if onemember suffers, all the members sufferwith it; and if one member be glori-fied, all the members rejoice with it."


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THE DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNC-TIONS IN THE BODY OFCHRIST


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CHAPTER VIITHE DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTIONS IN

THE BODY OF CHRIST" For just as the body is one and hath many members,

and all the members of the body being many are onebody, so also is Christ."1 Cor. xii. 12.We tried to show in the previous chapterhow, the more highly developed theorganism, the more perfect is its unity.But there is a truth supplementary tothis which is quite equally importantthe more highly developed the organism,the greater is its subdivision of functions." The lowest forms of life have either nodistinct organs or very few ; but thehigher we ascend in the scale of being,

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92 DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTIONSthe more numerous and the more dis-tinctly differentiated are the organs."In the lowest forms one member dis-charges several functions, and the animaluses the same organ for locomotion asit uses for eating and digesting ; in thehigher there is a separate organ to per-form each function. We know that thisis true of society. In its primitive formsthere is almost no differentiation offunctions. The same man is priest, king,legislator, judge, and executive ; eachman supplies his own needs and is forhimself farmer and craftsman. Thengradually, as civilisation advances, labourbecomes more and more subdivided untilwe come to the amazing phenomena ofmodern industrial life, where, for instance,there are eighteen distinct processes inmaking a pin, twenty-one in making aneedle, each performed many thousands


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IN THE BODY OF CHRIST 93of times each day by a separate individual,who devotes his whole life to that onetiny portion of a productive process.The present day is the age of specialisa-

tion, and St Paul's conception, as statedhere, of divided labour in the Church ofChrist is full of interest ; and it is perhapslegitimate to wonder whether specialisa-tion, which has achieved such wonderfulresults in other fields, might not be moreextensively used in Christian work.The origin of specialisation, as impliedhere, increases our sense of the importanceof the whole subject : its origin is divine,since it arises from differences of gift Allthese different gifts mentioned in thispassage, comprising practically everypossible qualification for every kind ofChristian workgifts of perception, giftsof expression, gifts of executionall haveone origin, the Spirit, who " distributes


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94 DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTIONSto every man separately according to hispleasure." Putting it in the simplestway, we may say that God has recognisedand ordained specialisation, because byHis arrangement each man can do onething much better than he can do otherthings. The analogy of the body helpsus here. It is possible to perceive theshape and form of an object both by theeye and the hand ; but the perceptionconveyed by the eye is so much theclearer and more accurate, that it isobvious that the eye was intended for thiskind of work.There is a thought underlying the whole

of this passage, which our own experienceproves true, namely that, where thereare differences of gift and consequentlyspecialisation of work, there will be atendency for men to belittle their ownshare of the common work, not in a


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IN THE BODY OF CHRIST 95spirit of modesty, but in a spirit of covet-ousness : a tendency for the foot to say," because I am not the hand, I am notof the body " ; and the ear, " Because I amnot the eye, I am not of the body." In-stances of great men who have admiredand longed for gifts other than their ownwill occur to every reader. GeneralWolff crying that he would rather havewritten Gray's Elegy than taken Quebec,Carlyle speaking of the bridge built byhis mason-father and saying that a goodbuilding will last longer than most books,are cases illustrating this tendency of thehuman heart. While it may be only agenerous admiration for other men's giftsand work, it may also be a dangeroustendency to belittle our own; and St.Paul's twofold answer to those in theCorinthian Church who were temptedby this feeling well repays study. He


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96 DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTIONSsays first that all the functions are neces-sary : it is not perhaps possible to saythat all are equally necessary to the lifeof the body, but all are equally necessaryto its complete life.And if there are any degrees of neces-

sariness in the matter, we must, says St.Paul, give first place to those functionswhich are most obscure and have leastgrace about them. We can instance per-haps in the work of the Church, the taskof collecting money, of keeping accounts,the burden of organisation, the drudgeryof teaching. But there is another re-flection suggested by St. Paul's analogyof the body that is of great importance;namely this, that the highest developmentof the individual organ does not alwayscoincide with the good of the body as awhole. We know, as a matter of fact,that, where the life of the body is in-


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IN THE BODY OF CHRIST 97complete, that of the individual organmay be most perfect. In blindness, forinstance, the sense of touch becomesabnormally acute, and in deafness thesense of sight grows phenomenally keen.From this surely the deduction may bemade, that, since the good of the bodyas a whole is the consideration of para-mount importance, it may be incumbenton individuals to continue in posts ofwork where their gifts do not perhapsreach their highest development.

Specialisation, or division of labour, isan inspiring theme ; there is somethingin the fact of combined labour that appealsto a very deep and universal instinct ofhuman nature. Selfish and individualisticfrom some points of view we may be,and yet there is something in us whichmakes us love to subordinate our ownpersonality in combination with others.

7


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98 DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTIONSNo individual sport will ever really takethe place of the great social games, cricket,football, and hockey, where a man playsnot for himself but for his side. No one,who has ever experienced it, can forgetthe thrill of the combined effort in rowing,when the boat leaps forward at the be-ginning of the stroke. And, I supposeif we try to analyse it, that the charmlies here : that by combination we cantake part in efforts and enterprisesgrotesquely impossible for our individualstrength. Economists tell us that oneof the great advantages of division oflabour is that the services of " women,children, and weak men " can be utilised,each contributing their little quota ofeffort.One longs that some writer of power

would describe for us the joys of com-bination in work for Christ, such as we


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IN THE BODY OF CHRIST 99get in some of our Mission Stations inIndia and in some large and well-workedparishes at home. The common life, towhich each contributes and from whicheach draws ; the combined worship andintercession, with its special promise ofresult ; the careful subdivision of labour,each doing that in which he is most strongthe governmentthe holding of the helmof the shipresting in the strong hand,guided by the calm brain of him bestable to bear it ; the special gift of themissioner finding full exercise ; thelecturer, the accountant, the man ofbusiness, the preacher, the man of prayer,each spending most of his time in thework for which God has best fitted him.No room for petty jealousy or meancovetousness, because each man has hisown gift and envies not his brother's.It is a moving theme.


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100 DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTIONSBut when all has been said that can be

saidand it is muchabout the inspira-tion of combined, divided labour, it re-mains true that this method of work hasa danger of its own. It is the danger lest,occupied with a minute part, we shouldlose sight of the whole; busied over ourown little bit, we should forget the idealconcerned with the means, we shouldconfound it with the end. We see thisplainly enough in modern industry : thewatchmaker, under modern conditions,who spends his whole life on some minuteportion of a process in the making ofwatches, is obviously more in danger ofdoing his work mechanically, listlessly,uninterestedly, than the man who makesthe whole watch from beginning to endwith his own hands. Or, again, there isthe other danger allied to this, the greatdanger of our modern life, which merits


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IN THE BODY OF CHRIST 101far fuller treatment than it can receiveherethe danger lest we mistake meansfor ends. We all know how easily theorganisation of a parish, the perfection ofmethod in an office, the games and ex-aminations in a college or school may-come to be regarded as ends in them-selves rather than as only means to anend. It becomes, then, more than evernecessary under modern conditions ofwork to pause frequently to re-form ourideal, to look away to that " far-off divineevent to which the whole creation moves,"and to realise that our work and ourlives are to be weighed by the extent towhich in their tiny measure they arehelping to bring about that end.


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THE SACRAMENTAL CHARACTEROF THE EVENTS OF HUMANLIFE


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CHAPTER VIIITHE SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER OF THE

EVENTS OF HUMAN LIFE" All our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed

through the sea ; and were all baptized unto Mosesin the cloud and in the sea : and did all eat the samespiritual meat and drink the same spiritual drink, forthey drank of that spiritual rock which followed them,and that rock was Christ." 1 Cob. x. 1-5.The wording seems too plain to admit ofthe possibility of misunderstanding. Itis inconceivable that one writing whenthe two Christian Sacraments had beeninstituted for some years could use thesephrases without some such meaning asthis : that these Israelites, whom he isholding up as a warning to the Corinthians,m


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106 THE SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER OFhad had events in their Hves answeringto the Christian Sacraments ; that is,that these events were not merely re-minders or symbols of God's presence,but channels whereby God willed to con-vey Himself to men. We seem, then, hereto have a statement of a very remarkabletruth which for want of a better name Iwill call the Sacramental Character of theevents of the Human Life.

There are probably few things morecrushing, more paralysing to all effort,than the conviction, which seems to haveforced itself on some minds, that life is ameaningless thing: I mean the convic-tion that men, with all their exquisitecapacities for happiness and pain, theiralmost infinite possibilities of basenessand nobleness, are the prey of randomforces, the sport of mighty but purpose-less powers, the flotsam and jetsam of


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THE EVENTS OF HUMAN LIFE 107chance. But it might be said that it isimpossible for a man in these days to be-lieve that. We know more than we everknew before about the wide and orderlyreign of law ; caprice and chance havebeen almost eliminated from our schemeof the universe.But when we turn to some of the men

who hold most strongly that life isgoverned by law, we find a despair hardlyless appalling than that of those who be-lieve that we are at the mercy of resist-less chance. It is true that we have noone to-day who would hold with Rousseauthat barbarism is a better thing thancivilisation, that knowledge has only cor-rupted us,and that all our so-calledprogresshas been a movement backwards, sincethe days when man lived a naked savagein the woods. But we find hauntingdoubts as to what constitutes progress,


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108 THE SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER OFand as to whither the law, that we seegoverning human Hfe, is leading us. Thereis an often-quoted passage in Huxley'swritings which expresses strikingly thissense of despair : " I do not hesitate toexpress the opinion that, if progress is tobring no greater benefits to the masses ofthe people in the future than it has donein the past, I should hail the advent ofsome kindly comet, that would sweep thewhole affair away, as a consummationdevoutly to be wished." William Watsonuses a touching incident to illustrate thesame view. He tells the story of amountain-climber who was overtaken bya mist on the summit and was frozen todeath there. When he was found nextmorning, it was seen that he had scratchedwith a knife on the rock by which he wassitting these words : " It is cold, andclouds shut out the view."


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THE EVENTS OF HUMAN LIFE 109" So mounts the child of ages of desire,

Man, up the steeps of thoughtBut on the last lone height he sighs, * 'Tis cold.And clouds shut out the view.'

It by no means follows that a belief inthe reign of law can solve " the riddle ofthe painful earth."

It is a relief to turn from statements likethis to the extraordinary thought of St.Paul. But it is important not to mini-mise the meaning : he does not only saythat he finds God's face in Nature :

** I found Him in the flowering of His fields ;I saw Him in the shining of the stars."

He does not only say that he " foundHim in His ways with men," that he hadproved that the events of individual lifeare ordered with wise purpose and that" all things work together for good " ; hedoes not only say that the course of theworld is in His hand, and that events are


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110 THE SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER OFmarching on in ordered sequence to anexpected end; but he says that certainevents in the Hfe of the IsraeHtes weresacramentschannels through which thehighest of all gifts, union with and pos-session of God, were meant to be conveyed.

In order to make this point clear letus look a little more closely at the secondof the two events mentioned here by S

Henry Bickersteth Durrant - The Mind of a Master Builder (1912)

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