HOW TO MAINTAIN MORAL SUPERIORITY

^[p. 170] HOW TO MAINTAIN MORAL SUPERIORITY

It is the way we act in old things, things in which we were once at home, or rather the way in which they affect us, that discloses the nature and amount of change in us and the power to maintain the newness of life. To be really and fully a new person in old circumstances and ruled by a new power is the acme and joy of the new life - it is the Spirit’s work, the walk of Christ here. To suit our company and in principle to say, Let us have but one purse, is what the world calls manners, but no one or no thing is so really esteemed or admired as that which preserves its identity inviolably; and the more uncommon or unique its type, the more it commands respectful attention, as it braves every influence, and maintains its peculiarity. An exotic is admired and valued, and the more truly it grows here like what it would be in the tropics, or elsewhere, the more it attracts attention and is commanded - the beauty and peculiarity of the plant are acknowledged, whereas if the lily of the Nile would, in order to be at home with the lilies here, become a common iris or flag (as they are called in the country) who would be attracted by it, or who would commend it?

There is really nothing which commands so much reverence as moral superiority. Man in his conscience knows that he has lost God, and hence has lost the superiority once belonging to him, for we were made for God. Now through grace we are new - “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3: 10); and as we maintain this image, not in figure or imitation, but by a new man - renewed in knowledge, that is, intelligence of our new being - so are we exotics of the most wonderful order, and whether it be owned or not, we command the profoundest respect. Dives does not own or acknowledge Lazarus but he observed him, and in his heart took note of him and testified of his worth and excellence in the day of visitation. I ^[p. 171] believe it is the exquisite moulding and conformation of Christ, the new man, as it is presented in its true temperament and habits, which arrests souls, and wins them too, far more than the concession or the connivance to the inferior man which one is by nature, as are all men. To be a lily among the flags is really the way to arrest and convince the flags of the beauty and greatness of the lily, not by the lily dwindling down into a flag. With a saint his joy and his strength are consolidated as he maintains his exotic character, and if he cannot, he had better avoid all association with what will only lower him to the level of nature, and strip him of the unique beauty which belongs to the new man.