THE DIVINE AND THE HUMAN
THE DIVINE AND THE HUMAN
You say — ‘To do nothing without a word from God seems stupendous, and to paralyse all action’. You seem to have the impression that a being governed by the mind of God — literally what our Lord Jesus Christ was here in this world — would be something unnatural and uninteresting. Is there not a beauty and a grace exquisitely adapted in that which is divine, and which cannot be equalled in any measure in a lower order of being? Did you ever think that a good deal of the familiar ways of saints derives its attractiveness from the divine mind, and [p. 274] that which we sometimes dislike in one another is the working of an uncorrected self? I believe the more we were used to the habits and ways of one simply governed by the mind of Christ, the more we should lose taste for any other company, and wherever we went we should seek the high, moral, elevated tone which lends such a charm to the smallest conventionalities of life. Was it not so pre-eminently in our blessed Lord? the true, decided, faithful, affectionate way He walked familiarly with His disciples must have been most charming, and must have imparted to His society an attraction superior to any other. But I also believe that it was exquisitely natural and simple. It is the spurious thing that is unnatural, that affects to be Utopian, when there is an effort to imitate without any principle of life to produce the action. With a man who is governed by divine principle everything would be done at the right time and in the right way. To live the reality of the being I am is the end of creation. I am now a new creation in Christ Jesus, and as I live in Him and act according to His Spirit I must be well pleasing to God, enjoying communion with Him; but also I must be as a man the truest — most reliable because true — truly intelligent because I have the mind of Christ, unselfish, and once I am fully set to disallow in myself all the order of existence that is not of Christ I seek and value and grow in the company where His mind and Spirit rule. I contribute to it and it contributes to me. The mistake is in thinking that we can keep up the two — Christ’s nature and our own. The first great thing is to learn the immense superiority in every way of the former and that it must displace the latter, so that we cultivate the one and stand apart from the other, and the more you seek this, the more empowered you will be by His Spirit to do so, and the more assured that if you have done anything in nature, that in Christ you would have done it better in every way. Until you are really happy and assured as to this, you are not set to renounce and disallow your own nature and will. Then you find that what is of Christ is the true metal and all else, however good it may appear, is valueless, it has the true ring and nothing can surpass or equal it; however similar what is of nature [p. 275] may appear it is not the true metal. Children mistake farthings for sovereigns; one who had never seen the latter could hardly determine the difference, but one who knows the value of the sovereign easily enough and quickly enough distinguishes them.