Life in
Christ
-- Handley C. G. Moule
CHAPTER I
It is a happy feature of our day that, go I where we will, we find among Christian men and women a marked and manifest desire for "something more." The desire takes very different shapes and expressions, and some of them sadden rather than gladden the observer who knows the depth and strength of the old "faith once delivered." (Jude 3) But even these phenomena have a connection with the fact that far and wide there is a longing for "a closer walk with God," "a yearning for a deeper peace not felt before," a search after more power and serviceableness in the work of the Lord., Is not this an altogether happy omen in itself?
The desire is no new thing. It is old as the Gospel, and continuous as the Gospel. Young Christians who think it was born with their generation know little of the past, and will gain much by "preparing themselves to the search of their fathers;" such fathers, for example, as Baxter, and Romaine, and Brainerd, and Hervey, and Fletcher, and Martyn, and M'Cheyne. But the extent over which the desire is felt in depth and force is a new and manifestly growing thing. So viewed, the phenomenon calls for glad and thankful welcome, and not least from the students and lovers of the Christian past. For, in its essence, in its nature, it is just a proof of the immortal vigour of the old Gospel. It forebodes no change in one iota of that Gospel. It is a cry for new realization of old truth. It has no necessary tendency towards novel theories of acceptance, or of life, or of power. No, but towards a firmer grasp, a deeper-sighted and more restful appropriation, a more buoyant and expectant use, of what in itself, and in " the faith Of God's elect," (Tit. 1:1) is the same yesterday and for ever. Thanks be to God for this stronger and fuller pulse of life in an immortal frame. Happy the Christian man who feels its holy warmth and health at work in his own soul. Happy the Christian teacher who, in face of it, knows how to guide without discouraging, to warn without repelling, to welcome the heavenly upspringing gale, and give thanks for it, without forgetting chart, compass, helm, and anchor.
The double heading of these chapters is suggested by two directions of this blessed spread of the "desire for more." On the one hand there is a large and growing sense that the New Testament doctrine of our Union with the Son of God as our Life spiritual and eternal is a truth pregnant with "boundless stores of grace." Life in Christ may be a phrase sometimes appropriated by error, but it is felt by more believing souls, and by yet more, to be a primary treasure of the truth itself. And on the other side, as to exercise and outcome, there is a growing sense all over our living Christendom that the holy life-power is meant for a holy life-practice and life-service. Christ in Life is for many among us a motto charged with the force of a new realization. In the rising warmth and light of the spiritual life, certain imaginary partitions between supposed secular and consecrated parts of a Christian's walk and work melt away into air. He discovers himself, in many a case where once it was quite undiscovered, to be always and everywhere the bondservant of Jesus Christ, and the living limb of the blessed Head, and the vital branch of the blessed Root. He not only accepts as theory but assimilates as living truth the certainty that he is everywhere and always not his own; that he exists morning, noon, and night, and then tomorrow again, as one who has nothing and is nothing irrespective of Him in whom and by whom he lives.
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