of all it needs, and this is the centre of His message, a heart at rest, a heart fixed on God in simple trust and humble love.

Nothing so completely reveals the consistent attitude of the New Testament toward this whole subject as the petition of the Intercessory Prayer, "I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil." 1 In face of full knowledge of the bitter hatred and cruel malice of men, and of their moral insensibility and passive opposition to spiritual things; and in face of full knowledge of the subtler danger to true life in the numberless seductions and alluring temptations that clamber at the heart, the prayer accepts the situation as the proper environment of Christian life. It was first of all for the world's sake. The choice and training of the Twelve meant only the small beginning of the Kingdom, the first reddening of the dawn, the faint flush along the eastern sky. To pray that the disciples should in any form be taken out of the world would be to give up the work at the start, to falsify the past, and to relinquish the future. It was also for the disciples' own sake; for discipline is just the process ordained for disciples, and character is no hot-house plant. There is a form of piety which has many attractions to the meditative contemplative temper, withdrawing itself from the rough work-a-day world, and spending itself in devotions. There is a sweetness of mind, and an attractive culture of spirit, to be got in retirement; but that may not necessarily be a sign of a strong character. The ungenial surroundings, the untoward lot, the very temptations, may be the condi1 John xvii. 15.

1

tion of a man's sanctification. The ordinary relations of life, with their duties and responsibilities, with their trials and sorrows and joys, are the divinely appointed environment to develop character, and to train disciples into robust vigour of life. It is easy to keep the hands clean by keeping them from work, and easy to have a kind of refinement of soul by shirking contact with the coarse outer world; but the secret of life can never be attained by moral cowardice, and never by the selfishness which would disentangle the life from the lives of other men. Jesus desired for His disciples the culture of character, which comes from the good fight of faith in the world.

UNIVERSITY

T

XII

THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION

HE two opposing methods which we have been considering reflect the conflict in human nature, the facts that seem to contradict each other; and each of the methods ignores the other side, and is blind to what does not tell in favour of its particular theory. Self-culture is really based on a form of optimism, which gaily assumes that nothing more is wanted but the harmonious and joyous development of all the powers existing in man. It has infinite faith in natural education to draw out latent capacities of power and joy, and so to make life sweet and sane. Self-restraint as an exclusive method is essentially a form of pessimism, which has little faith in the natural, and has no confidence that, even if the best means of culture be used, the result will be of much value. It is so impressed with the presence of evil in man and in the world, that the harmony is always turned into discord; and it sees no hope for ultimate good, except by heroic measures for the extirpation of the evil. Whatever be our special sympathy with either of these extremes, according to our particular mood of mind, we must accept the facts on which both are founded, if we are to approach anything like a full and true solution. We can accept what each asserts, without being bound to follow each in what they deny. We bow to the Hebraic preaching of the necessity for

moral discipline, and also to the Hellenic gospel of the love of the beautiful and the joy of living; but we need not assent, when Culture makes light of sin as if it did not exist except in some morbid imaginations, or when Restraint rejects the fairest flowers of natural joy and human genius.

The facts which give force and weight to the æsthetic ideal are unimpeachable, and every fresh soul that enters the world instinctively expects its share of what seems its natural birthright of light and joy. No doleful pronouncement of "vanity of vanities" will convince the heart of youth that the world can be only a diabolic instrument to ensnare the soul and that the rich powers of mind and imagination and heart are only to be discarded. If repression be the secret, then its task is unending; for it would need to be begun again with every new life, which comes endowed with the same keen zest for the mere act of living, and with the same deep instinct for selfexpression. The ascetic ideal also takes firm stand on facts, and experience only increases their force, and adds to their number. No surface scheme of culture, however garishly it paints the prospect, can for long cover over the ugly symptoms, and hide the evil taint in life. Nor can it even secure the happiness it promised, having no protection from the blows of misfortune, and no safeguard against the inevitable disillusionment. The pain and sorrow of life are facts to the believer and the unbeliever alike; and all that unbelief can do, at its best or at its worst, is to rob the facts of their redemptive purpose, and empty them of any intelligible or moral meaning.

Whether we have any prospect of reconciling them

or not, our first duty is to admit the deep-seated antagonisms of human life, to accept the conflict in man's nature, the combined glory and penury of his life. To be true to all the facts, we must see amid the nobility and achievements traces of the sordid and base; and also see a soul of good in men and things evil. This is the Christian position, the simple acceptance of both sides, looking with clear eyes on the whole situation. On the one hand it rejects the rose-coloured optimism, which is wilfully blind to the tragic facts, and which sees in history and experience nothing but easy steps of progress towards perfection; and on the other hand it rejects the bland denial of pessimism, which means despair of good, and in the final issue means unfaith in the divine element of the world and human life. It sees sin in man, but its last word is not sin but redemption. The world is full of menace to good, a place of trial and discipline, but it is God's world, with beauty, and truth, and joy. To see how completely the antagonisms of life are accepted, we need only think how the heart of the Christian faith can be expressed by the word Reconciliation. Its very purpose was to reconcile, and bring together, all that stood in unnatural opposition through sin. Its work is to reconcile man to God, and man to man, and all the diverse unrelated parts of man's nature with each other in a centre of unity. All the discord is changed to harmony by reconciling man to God; for with that all other reconcilements come. The deepest thought of Christ's teaching and life is simple confidence in God, as seen both in the world and in human life, recognising Him in nature and in man. This consciousness of the divine takes precedence of all