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The Christian Life written by Thomas Arnold

T >> Thomas Arnold >> The Christian Life




Now, the Scripture judgment of Jacob and Esau, should be in an especial
manner the basis of our judgment with regard to the young. None can
doubt, that amongst the young, when they form a society of their own,
the great temptation is to live by impulse, or according to the opinion
of those around them. It is like a light breaking in upon darkness, when
a young person is led to follow a higher standard, and to live according
to God's will. Esau, in his faults and amiable points alike, is the very
image of the prevailing character amongst boys; sometimes violently
revengeful, as when Esau looked forward with satisfaction to the
prospect of his father's death, because then we should be able to slay
his brother Jacob; sometimes full of generosity, as when Esau forgot all
his grounds of complaint against his brother, and received him on his
return from Mesopotamia with open arms;--but habitually careless, and
setting the present before the future, the lower gratification before
the higher, as when Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of pottage. And
the point to be noted is, that, because of this carelessness, this
profaneness or ungodliness, as it is truly called in the New Testament,
Esau is distinguished from those who were God's people; the promises
were not his, nor yet the blessing. This is remarkable, because Esau's
faults, undoubtedly were just the faults of his age: he was no worse
than the great majority of those around him; he lived as we should say,
in our common language, that it was natural for him to live. He had,
therefore, precisely all those excuses which are commonly urged for the
prevailing faults of boys; yet it is quite certain that the Scripture
holds him out as a representative of those who were not on the side
of God,

If the Scripture has so judged of Esau and Jacob, it must be the model
for our judgments of those whose circumstances, on account of their
belonging to a society consisting wholly of persons young in age,
greatly resemble the circumstances of the early society of the world. I
lay the stress on the belonging to a society wholly formed of young
persons; for the case of young persons brought up at home, is extremely
different; and their circumstances would be best suited by a different
scriptural example. But here, with you, I am quite sure that the great
distinguishing mark between good and evil, is the endeavouring, or not
endeavouring, to rise above the carelessness of the society of which you
are members; the determining, or not determining, to judge of things by
another rule than that of school morality or honour; the trying, or not
trying, to please God, instead of those around you: for the notions and
maxims of a society of young persons are like the notions and maxims of
men in a half-civilized age, a strange mixture of right and wrong; or
rather wrong in their result, although with some right feeling in them,
and therefore as a guide, false and mischievous. That it is natural to
follow these maxims, is quite obvious: they are the besetting sin of
your particular condition; and it is always according to our corrupt
nature to follow our besetting sin. It is quite natural that you should
be careless, profane, mistaking evil for good, and good for evil; but
salvation is not for those who follow their nature, but for those in
whom God's grace has overcome its evil; it is for those, in Christ's
language, who take up their cross and follow him; that is, for those who
struggle against their evil nature, that they may gain a better nature,
and be born, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit of God.

What is to be said to this? or what qualification, or compromise, is to
be made in it? The words of the text will authorize us, at any rate, to
make none: their language is not that of indulgent allowance; but it is
a call, a loud and earnest, even a severe, call, it may be, in the
judgment of our evil nature,--to shake off the weight that hangs about
us; to deliver our hearts from the dominion of that which cannot profit,
and to submit them to Christ alone. This is God's judgment, this is
Christ's word; and we cannot and dare not qualify it. They are evil, for
God and Christ declare it, who judge and live after the maxims of the
society around them, and not after Christ; they are evil who are
careless; they are evil who live according to their own blind and
capricious feelings, now hot, now cold; they are evil who call evil
good, and good evil, because they have not known the Father nor Christ.
This, and nothing less, we say, lest we should be found false witnesses
of God: but if this language, which is that of Scripture, seem harsh, to
any one, oh! let him remember how soon he may change it into the
language of the most abundant mercy, of the tenderest love; that if he
calls upon God, God is ready to hear; that if he seeks to know and to do
God's will, God will be found by him, and will strengthen him; that it
is true kindness not to disguise from him his real danger, but earnestly
to conjure him to flee from it, and to offer our humblest prayers to
God, for him and ourselves, that our judgments and our practice may be
formed only after his example.




LECTURE X.

* * * * *

1 TIMOTHY i. 9.

_The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and
disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy
and profane_.


These words explain the meaning of a great many passages in St. Paul's
Epistles, in which also he speaks of the law, and of not being under the
law, and other such expressions. And it is clear also, that he is not
speaking solely, or chiefly, or, in any considerable degree, of the
ceremonial law; but much more of the law of moral good, the law which
told men how they ought to live, and how they ought not. This law, he
says, is not made for good men, but for evil: a thing so plain, that we
may well wonder how any could ever have misunderstood it. It is so
manifest, that strict rules are required, just exactly in proportion to
our inability or want of will to rule ourselves; it is so very plain,
that, with regard to those crimes which we are under no temptation to
commit, we feel exactly as if there were no law. Which of us ever
thinks, as a matter of personal concern, of the law which sentences to
death murderers, or housebreakers, or those who maliciously set fire to
their neighbours' property? Do we not feel that, as far as our own
conduct is concerned, it would be exactly the same thing if no such law
were in existence? We should no more murder, or rob, or set fire to
houses and barns, if the law were wholly done away, than we do now that
it is in force.

There are, then, some points in which we feel practically that we are
not under the law, but dead to it; that the law is not made for us: but
do we think, therefore, that we may murder, and rob, and burn? or do we
not rather feel that such a notion would be little short of madness? We
are not under the law, because we do not need it; not because there is
in reality no law to punish us if we do need it. And just of this kind
is that general freedom from the law, of which St. Paul speaks, as the
high privilege of true Christians.

But yet St. Paul would not at all mean that any Christian is altogether
without the law: that is, that there are no points at all in which his
inclination is not to evil, and in which, therefore, he needs the fear
of God to restrain him from it. When he says of himself, that he kept
under his body lest that by any means he should become a castaway; just
so far as this fear of being a castaway possessed him, that is, just so
far as there were any evil tendencies in him, which required him to keep
them under by an effort, just so far was he under the law. And this is
so, as we full well know, with us all; for as there is none of us in
whom sin is utterly dead, so neither can there be any of us who is
altogether dead to the law.

Yet, although this be so, there is no doubt that the gospel wishes to
consider us as generally dead to the law, in order that we really may
become so continually more and more. It supposes that the Spirit of God,
presenting to our minds the sight of God's love in Christ, sets us free
from the law of sin and death; that is, that a sense of thankfulness to
God, and love of God and of Christ, will be so strong a motive, that we
shall, generally speaking, need no other; that it will so work upon us,
as to make us feel good, easy, and delightful, and thus to become dead
to the law. And there is no doubt also, that that same freedom from the
law, which we ourselves experience daily, in respect of some particular
great crimes, (for, as I said, we do not feel that it is the fear of the
law which keeps us from murder or from robbing,) that very same freedom
is felt by good men in many other points, where it may be that we
ourselves do not feel it. A common instance may be given with respect to
prayer, and the outward worship of God. There are a great many who feel
this as a duty; but there are many also to whom it is not so much a
duty, as a privilege and a pleasure; and these are dead to the law which
commands us to be instant in prayer, just as we, in general, are dead to
the law which commands us to do no murder.

This being understood, it will be perfectly plain, why St. Paul, along
with all his language as to the law being passed away, and our being
become dead to it, yet uses, very frequently, language of another kind,
which shows that the law is not dead in itself, but lives, and ever will
live. He says, "We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ,
that every one may receive according to what he has done in the body."
And he adds, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade
men." But the judgment, and the terror of the Lord, mean precisely what
are meant by the law. And this language of St. Paul shows more clearly,
that, unless we are first dead to the law, the law is not, and never
will be dead to us.

I should not have thought it useless, to have offered merely this
explanation of a language, which is very common in the New Testament,
which, forms one of its characteristic points, (for St. John's
expression of "Perfect love casteth out fear," is exactly equivalent to
St. Paul's, "That we are dead to the law,") and which has been often
misunderstood, or misrepresented. But yet I am well aware, that mere
explanations of Scripture cannot be expected to interest those to whom
Scripture is not familiar. The answer to a riddle would be very soon
forgotten, unless the riddle had first at once amused and puzzled us.
Just so, explanations of Scripture, to be at all valued, must suppose a
previous knowledge of, and desire to understand, the difficulty; and
this we cannot expect to find in very young persons. Thus far, then,
what I have said has been necessarily addressed, I do not say, or mean,
to the oldest part of my hearers only, but yet to the older, and more
considering part of them. But the subject is capable, I think, of being
brought much more closely home to us; for what St. Paul says of the law,
with reference to all mankind, is precisely that state of mind which one
would wish to see here; and the mistakes of his meaning are just such as
are often prevalent, and are likely to do great mischief, with regard to
the motives to be appealed to in education.

Now, what is the case in the Scripture? Men had been subject to a strict
law of rewards and punishments, appealing directly to their hopes, and
to their fears. The gospel offered itself to them, as a declaration of
God's love to them; so wonderful, that it seemed as though it could not
but excite them to love him in return. It also raised their whole
nature; their understandings, no less than their affections; and thus
led them to do God's will, from another and higher feeling than they had
felt heretofore; to do it, not because they must, but because they loved
it. And to such as answered to this heavenly call, God laid aside, if I
may venture so to speak, all his terrors; he showed himself to them only
as a loving father, between whom and his children there was nothing but
mutual affection; who would be loved by them, and love them forever. But
to those who answered not to it, and far more, who dared to abuse it;
who thought that God's love was weakness; that the liberty to which they
were called, was the liberty of devils, the liberty of doing evil as
they would; to all such, God was still a consuming fire, and their most
merciful Saviour himself was a judge to try their very hearts and reins;
in short, the gospel was to them, not salvation, but condemnation; it
awakened not the better, but the baser parts of their nature; it did not
do away, but doubled their guilt, and therefore brought upon them, and
will bring through all eternity, a double measure of punishment.

Now all this applies exactly to that earlier and, as it were,
preparatory life, which ends not in death, but in manhood. The state of
boyhood begins under a law. It is a great mistake to address always the
reason of a child, when you ought rather to require his obedience. Do
this, do not do that; if you do this, I shall love you; if you do not, I
shall punish you;--such is the state, most clearly a state of law, under
which we are, and must be, placed at the beginning of education. But we
should desire and endeavour to see this state of law succeeded by
something better; we should desire so to unfold the love of Christ as to
draw the affections towards him; we should desire so to raise the
understanding as that it may fasten itself, by its own native tendrils,
round the pillar of truth, without requiring to be bound to it by
external bands. We should avoid all unnecessary harshness; we should
speak and act with all possible kindness; because love, rather than
fear, love both of God and man, is the motive which we particularly wish
to awaken. Thus, keeping punishment in the background and, as it were,
out of sight, and putting forward encouragement and kindness, we should
attract, as it were, the good and noble feelings of those with, whom we
are dealing, and invite them to open, and to answer to, a system of
confidence and kindness, rather than risk the chilling and hardening
them by a system of mistrust and severity.

And for those who do answer to this call, how really true is it that
they do soon become dead, in great measure, to the law of the place
where they are living! How little do they generally feel its restraints,
or its tasks, burdensome! How very little have they to do with its
punishments! Led on by degrees continually higher and higher, their
relations with us become more and more relations of entire confidence
and kindness; and when at last their trial is over, and they pass from
this first life, as I have ventured to call it, into their second life
of manhood, how beautifully are they ripened for that state! how
naturally do all the restraints of this first life fall away, like the
mortal body of the perfected Christian; and they enter upon the full
liberty of manhood, fitted at once to enjoy and to improve it!

But observe, that St. Paul does not suppose even the best Christian to
be without the law altogether: there will ever be some points in which
he will need to remember it. And so it is unkindness, rather than
kindness, and a very mischievous mistake, to forget that here, in this
our preparatory life, the law cannot cease altogether with any one; that
it is not possible to find a perfect sense and feeling of right existing
in every action; nay, that it is even unreasonable to seem to expect it.
Little faults, little irregularities, there always will be, with which
the law is best fitted to deal; which should be met, I mean, by a system
of rules and of punishments, not severe, certainly, nor one at all
inconsistent with general respect, kindness, and confidence; but which
check the particular faults alluded to better, I think, than could be
done by seeming to expect of the individual that he should, in all such
cases, be a law to himself. There is a possibility of our over-straining
the highest principles, by continually appealing to them on very
trifling occasions. It is far better, here, to apply the system of the
law; to require obedience to rules, as a matter of discipline; to visit
the breach of them by moderate punishment, not given in anger, not at
all inconsistent with general confidence and regard, but gently
reminding us of that truth which we may never dare wholly to
forget,--that punishment will exist eternally so long as there is evil,
and that the only way of remaining for ever entirely strangers to it, is
by adhering for ever and entirely to good.

This applies to every one amongst us; and is the reason why rules,
discipline, and punishments, however much they may be, and are, kept in
the background for such, as have become almost wholly dead to them, must
yet continue in existence, because none are, or can be, dead to them
altogether. But now, suppose that we have a nature to deal with, which,
cannot answer to a system of kindness, but abuses it; which, when
punishment is kept at a distance, rejoices, as thinking that it may
follow evil safely; a nature not to be touched by the love of God or
man, not to be guided by any perception of its own as to what is right
and true. Is the law dead really to such as these? or should it be so?
Is punishment a degradation to a nature which, is so self-degraded as to
be incapable of being moved by anything better? For this is the real
degradation which we should avoid; not the fear of punishment, which is
not at all degrading, but the being insensible to the love of Christ and
of goodness; and so being capable of receiving no other motive than the
fear of punishment alone. With such natures, to withhold punishment,
would be indeed to make Christ the minister of sin; to make mercy, that
is, lead to evil, and not to good. For them, the law never is dead, and
never will be. Here, of course, in this first life, as I have called it,
punishment indeed goes but a little way: it is very easy for a hardened
nature to defy all that could be laid upon it here in the way of actual
compulsion. Our only course is to cut short the time of trial, when we
find a nature in whom that trial cannot end in good. Still there may be
those in whom this life here, like their greater life which shall last
for ever, will have far more to do with punishment than with kindness;
they will be living all their time under the law. Continue this to our
second life, and the law then will be no less alive, and they will never
be dead to it, nor will it be ever dead to them. And however a hardened
nature may well despise the punishments of its first life,--punishments,
whose whole object is correction, and not retribution,--yet, where is
the nature so hard as to endure, in its relations with God, to feel more
of his punishment than of his mercy; to know him for ever as a God of
judgment, and not as a Father of love?




LECTURE XI.

* * * * *

ST. LUKE xxi. 36.

_Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before
the Son of Man_.


This might be a text for a history of the Christian Church, from its
foundation to this hour, or to the latest hour of the world's existence.
We might observe how it Lad fulfilled its Lord's command; with what
steadiness it had gone forward on its course, with the constant hope of
meeting Him once again in glory. We might see how it had escaped all
these things that were to come to pass: tracing its course amidst the
manifold revolutions of the world, inward and outward. In the few words,
"all these things that shall come to pass," are contained all the events
of the last eighteen hundred years: indistinct and unknown to us, as
long as they are thus folded up together; but capable of being unrolled
before our eyes in a long order, in which should be displayed all the
outward changes of nations, the spread of discovery, the vicissitudes of
conquest; and yet more, the inward changes of men's minds, the various
schools of philosophy, the successive forms of public opinion, the
influences of various races, all the manifold elements by which the
moral character of the Christian world has been affected. We might
observe how the Church had escaped all these things, or to what degree
it had received from any of them good or evil. And then, stopping at
the point at which it has actually arrived, we might consider how far it
deserves the character of that Church, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any
such thing," which should be presented before the Son of Man at his
coming again.

This would be a great subject; and one, if worthily executed, full of
the deepest instruction to us all. But our Lord's words may also be made
the text for a history or inquiry of another sort, far less
comprehensive in time and space, far less grand, far less interesting to
the understanding; yet, on the other hand, capable of being wrought out
far more completely, and far more interesting to the spiritual and
eternal welfare of each of us. They may be made the text for an inquiry
into the course hitherto held, not by the Church as a body, but by each
of us individual members of it; an inquiry how far we, each of us, have
watched and prayed always, that we might be accounted worthy to escape
all the things which should come to pass, and to stand before the Son of
Man. And, in this view of the words, the expression "all these things
which shall come to pass" has reference no longer to great political
revolutions, nor to schools of philosophy, nor to prominent points of
national character; but to those humbler events, to those lesser
changes, outward and inward, through which we each, pass between our
cradle and our grave. How have we escaped these, or turned them to good
account? Have earthly things so ministered to our eternal welfare, that
if we were each one of us, by a stroke from heaven, cut off at that very
point in our course to which we have severally attained this day, we
should be accounted worthy to stand before the Son of Man?

Here is, indeed, a very humble history for us each to study; yet what
other history can concern us so nearly? And as, in the history of the
world, experience in part supplies the place of prophecy, and the fate
of one nation is in a manner a mirror to another, so in our individual
history, the experience of the old is a lesson to the middle-aged, and
that of the middle-aged a lesson to the young. If you wish to know what
are the things which shall come to pass with respect to you, we can draw
aside the veil from your coming life, because what you will be is no
other than what we are. If we would go onwards, in like manner, and ask
what are the things which shall come to pass with respect to us, our
coming life may be seen in the past and present life of the old; for
what we shall be is no other than what they have been, or than what
they are.

Let us take, then, the actual moment with, each of us, and suppose that
our Lord speaks to each of us as he did to his first disciples: "Watch
and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these
things which shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man." We
ask, naturally, "What are the things which shall come to pass?" and it
is to this question that I am to try to suggest the answer.

Those arrived at middle age may ask the question, "What are the things
which shall come to pass to us?" Now, setting aside extraordinary
accidents, on which we cannot reckon, and the answer would, I think, be
something of this sort: There will not come to pass, it is likely, any
great change in our condition or employment in life. In middle age our
calling, with all the duties which it involves, must generally be fixed
for each of us. Our particular kind of trial will not, it is probable,
be much altered. We must not, as in youth, fancy that, although our
actual occupation does not suit us, although its temptations are often
too strong for us, yet a change may take place to another line of duty,
and the temptations in that new line may be less formidable. In middle
age it will not do to indulge such fond hopes as these. On the contrary,
our hope must lie, not in escape, but in victory. If our temptations
press us hard, we cannot expect to have them exchanged for others less
powerful: they will remain with us, and we must overcome them, or
perish. Have we tastes not fully reconciled to our calling,--faculties
which seem not to have found their proper field? We must seek our remedy
not from without, humanly speaking, but from within: we must discipline
ourselves; we must teach our tastes to cling gracefully around that duty
to which else they must be helplessly fastened. If any faculties appear
not to have found their proper field, we must think that God has, for
certain wise reasons, judged it best for us that they should not be
exercised; and we must be content to render him the service of others.
In this respect, then, the immediate prospect for middle age is not so
much change as steadfastness. Fortune will not suit herself to our
wishes: we must learn to suit our wishes to her.