THE DIVINE STANDARD

THE DIVINE STANDARD

In a way I am glad that you seem to yourself not to be able to grasp what you appreciate, because it shews that you see the greatness of your calling, and this must always impart to us the sense of how little we are up to it. You must not give up the calling because you feel that practically you are below it. To retain a good conscience with a low walk is christendom’s theology; and the tendency even of believers is to lower the standard, in order to meet the walk. Hence there is no progress; the conscience is preserved, but on a low level. The danger on the other side is of holding truth without being exercised in conscience as to the maintenance of it. The former leads to a low but conscientious walk; the latter, to an open breakdown - shipwreck; because conscience is preserved in the former, but not in the latter.

The true way is to accept the divine standard in all its integrity, and to insist on the conscience holding to it wholly, and to nothing but it. This will no doubt give the sense of how little we have attained; but if it does, it only exercises the heart to be led on, and to win Christ, If I have not a divine standard, there can be ^[p. 172] no progress, though I may feel quite conscientious. The quietness of my conscience is more the result of having reached a human standard, than that of one who would suffer the loss of all things to win Christ. In the latter case the conscience is good and true, not because it has reached the divine standard, but because it is conscious of that alone being its aim; and when it is so, every step is progress. An eagle knows more of the power of the sun than we do, because he gets nearer to it, his eye can bear the light, and he sees better as he approaches the source of light; he gains by every advance. Even when the optic nerve is weak, as with elderly people, the more perfect the light, the better they see. In the same way the very height and greatness of the divine standard is a help to me; as I approach it I gain, because my standard, Christ, is the source of power, and light, and of all blessing.

You may say, I cannot always walk in a light above the brightness of the sun. Saul became blind naturally because of the glory of that light. Did he therefore refuse it, or say it was too high for him? No, but he found that the more he turned to it, and was occupied with Christ in it, the better was he morally fitted to bear it, because he was transformed into the same image. Would you lower the standard to a hand lamp, which could only shew you your way on a dark night pointing out the safe path, and warning you of mud and ruts? You might indeed get home safely, but then you would have seen little on the way, nothing, save what concerned your own safety; no beautiful scenery, none of the endless wonders of what eye hath not seen; none of the charms which the most brilliant light displays are known to you; for that light really makes you possessor of the things which it reveals to you. Nothing contributes to us as light does. The man who never sees anything but that on which his eye at first rested in childhood has (no matter how much he has read) a very imperfect idea of everything. Nothing in ordinary ^[p. 173] life tends more to improve the taste and to correct self-consequence than seeing things and people greater than ourselves. The man who is content with the hand lamp (to speak figuratively) thinks only of himself, lives in his own circle; his own exploits and thoughts are his sun, moon, and stars, and he revolves in this circuit day after day; he makes no progress, his centre is himself. But the one who owns no lesser light than that which is above the brightness of the sun, has a range and circuit before him that is boundless; and instead of being occupied with himself, he is engrossed with Him who enables him to enter on this great tour, and introduces him into so fresh a circle of wonders, that he himself is as nothing in the midst of it.

Lower the standard, and you make man the greatest thing before the mind; maintain the divine standard, which is Christ, and you yourself will be lost in your contemplation of Him and in delight of heart with Him. Your selfishness will be corrected and repudiated, and you will daily more and more enjoy the new and wondrous association in which you are set, and will be daily more at home there, and more a stranger anywhere else.

May it indeed be so with us. I would rather bungle and blunder with the sun as my standard of light, than never make a false step with the hand lamp.