July 1931
292
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K i n g ’ s
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learned from living men—for these I live. The only trouble is that life is all too short; my eyes are all too dim; my head is all too small.” And so even the seeker after knowledge, as the shades of death close in around him, strains his gazing eyes and whispers with white lips, “I want to know.” But here is one whose life anthem is fixed in the lofti est key, and it rings out clear and true: “For me to live is Christ.” Not that he is a wild-eyed fanatic who for gets that he has a body to be cared fo r; or a stern ascetic who renounces all the sweetness of the life which God has given us richly to enjoy; or one who scorns the treadmill round of business drudgery and expects the Lord to feed him as He fed Elijah, or to support his family by miracu lously multiplying his oil and meal; or an ignoramus who blinks at the light and loves darkness instead; rather, he is a man who loves God, and nothing kindles such a desire for knowledge as does the love of God. Nor does this higher love extinguish or diminish the love of home and country. All experience and observation go to show that the most devoted husbands and wives, the purest patriots, and the broadest philanthropists are those whose master passion transcends all these. That master passion dominated him who said: “For me to live is Christ.” He also said: “The love of Christ constraineth u s ; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all were dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them, and rose again.” It is the constraining love of Christ that girds and impels the Christian. Not for his own sake does he live, nor for the sake of his country men, nor for the sake of humanity. His motive is a per sonal love for Him who loved him and gave Himself for him. The Christian’s motto is : “Ourselves your ser vants for Jesus’ sake.” This is what the apostle meant when he said: “For me to live is Christ.” This is the Christian conception of life, and this is its highest realiza tion.
day. Of talk we have a super-abundance; but underlying the talk, how little, alas, of real thought! Never was there so much of “fussy activity” and pretentious superficiality, never such ponderous and complicated machinery for the doing of so-called Christian work as there is today. We are driven at such high pressure that we seem to have no time to think. But it behooves us to remember that “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The fact is that things below are run by the powers above, and the men that wield the mightiest power on earth are those that draw their inspiration from beyond the stars. What Is It To Live? T h e C hr istian man is the only man that lives at all. Others exist; but mere existence is not life. A man who has an animated body, yet whose mind is a per fect blank, is dead at the top, and he does not live in any true and proper sense. This is the sad state of every unre generate man. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him.” Christ came to this lost race, that was dead in trespasses and sins, to reimpart the life.that it had lost. “I am come that they might have life.” The first Adam died when he sinned, even as God had warned, and “he begat a son in his own likeness,” and he could not impart what he did not have. We, therefore, as descendants of the first Adam, belong to a race of degenerates. Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of man, is the second or the last Adam. “In him' was life.” “it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” By faith we be come one with Him. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” But the life is from Him. Hence Paul cries: “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.” Therefore, when Paul says that for him to live is Christ, his meaning is that Christ is the very essence of his life, for “Christ was formed in him the hope of glory.” In this sense, Christ was the life of his life. Not only so, but Christ was the love of his life. In order to live in any true and proper sense, there must be something to live for, some motive that stimulates to action. The motives are as various, as multitudinous, as are the appetites and passions, the tastes, the admira tions, and the aspirations of human nature. What is your life, your ruling passion, your main pur suit? Many a man would be mightily ashamed, if these questions were answered truthfully for him or by him. Here is one who lives as the swine that eat out of a trough and wallow in the mire. He has not a thought above the level of the trough. When asked what he lives for, if he answers truthfully, he will say, “For me to live is to gratify merely my animal nature, my animal appetites.” Another lives merely to make a display of his person, his property, his horses, his jewels, his talents, so that his less favored fellows may look on with green-eyed envy. Another, if he tells the truth, will say, “For me to live is to make money and to save it. I care nothing for the show of it. What I want is the thing itself, the proud consciousness of possession.” Another: “For me to live is to learn. I love learning for its own sake. To know the things in the heavens above, in the earth be neath, and in the waters under the earth, the secrets of the laboratory, the wonders of the observatory, the trea sures that are stored in books, the truths that may be
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He Will Provide T h e Lord’s my Shepherd, I ’ll not want. He makes me down to lie In pastures green, He leadeth me The quiet waters by. My soul He doth restore again, And me to walk doth make Within the paths of righteousness, E’en for His own name’s sake. Yea though I walk through death’s dark vale, Yet will I fear no ill, For Thou art with me, and Thy rod And staff me comfort still. Goodness and mercy all my life Shall surely follow me, And in God’s house for evermore, My dwelling place shall be. —P salm 23.
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