In the Study
Identifieur interne : 000457 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 000456; suivant : 000458In the Study
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- The Expository Times [ 0014-5246 ] ; 1957-01.
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DOI: 10.1177/001452465706800406
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</publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1177/001452465706800406</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">10.1177_001452465706800406</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>Articles</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>In the Study</article-title></title-group><pub-date pub-type="ppub"><month>1</month><year>1957</year></pub-date><volume>68</volume><issue>4</issue><fpage>114</fpage><lpage>120</lpage><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>sagemeta-type</meta-name><meta-value>Journal Article</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>search-text</meta-name><meta-value>114 In the Study SAGE Publications, Inc.1957DOI: 10.1177/001452465706800406 Virginibus Puerisque Looking unto Jesus BY THE REVEREND J. ITHEL JONES, M.A., B.D., LONDON WE played a wonderful game at a party last week. I've never seen people laugh so much. And what made it all the more delightful was that it was such a simple game. This, briefly, is what happened. Six people were sent out of the room. Then the Master of Ceremonies told us that he was going to go through a little act. He was going to pretend to be a bus conductor. In ` dumb-show ' he would ring the ' go-ahead ' bell and then climb the stairs of his double-decker and book fares on the top deck. Then he would come down the stairs and ring the bell again for the bus to stop. That's all. Now the people who had been sent out knew nothing of this. So he called number one of the six back into the room and went through the act for him, without telling him what it was all about. This man, now, had to act in front of number two what he thought the Master of Ceremonies had done. Then number two called in number three and went through the mime again. And so on until the sixth man had gone through the act. You could scarcely believe your eyes ! Each one got something wrong' and gradually the act changed completely. The Master of Ceremonies had started with a bus-conductor act. The sloth man thought he was a drummer in a military band ! The trouble was, of course, that number two was looking at number one, who was an imperfect copy of the original. Number three was in a still worse position, he had to watch an imperfect copy of an imperfect copy. And so it got worse and worse. Now that's only a game. And as a game it's great fun. But there are some who think that that is just what's wrong with Christians to-day. When Jesus was baptized, God said, ` This is my beloved son ; listen to Him.' But instead of listening to Him and following His pattern, we tend to listen to other Christians and to compare ourselves with them. They, in turn, may well have done the same, and we become far removed from the original pattern. We must not copy imperfect Christians. We must copy Christ. 19115 It is true that St. Paul once said, ' You follow me, as I follow Christ.' But we must remember that when he said that, the Four Gospels had not been written. We are in a better position than were the Christians of those very early days. We have the full story of what Jesus was like. We do not need to copy copies. The Battle Ensign BY THE REVEREND JOHN R. GRAY, V.R.D., B.D., TH.M., GLASGOW ' Who is on the lord's side ? '-Ex 3226. Some months ago I spent some time in an aircraft carrier. One day a particularly big flag was wanted to do some decoration on the ship, and some one suggested that we try to borrow the Battle Ensign. When I asked why we should use the Battle Ensign for such a peaceful purpose I was told that it was far and away the biggest flag in any of Her Maj esty's ships of war. And you see why that should be so, don't you ? In the thick of a naval engagement, amidst all the smoke and confusion, the ships of the Royal Navy fly this huge flag that all may know, friend and enemy alike, whose ships they are and whom they serve. That, too, was what uniform was for, at least at first, that all might know whose side a soldier was on. There is no uniform for God's army, for the soldiers of Christ but if we really belong to it we shall want people to know. And they will know, not so much by how we look, but by what we say and how we behave. Even although we do not very often speak of Christ, if we are kind and cheerful and true, people will know that we are own the Lord's side.' The Christian Year THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY Christian Assurance BY THE REVEREND DOUGLAS STEWART, M.A., LONDON ~ z ` And we ourselves know and we confide in the love which God has for us.'-i Jn 416 (Weymouth). i. ` We ourselves know.' Are Christians at all aware of the offence that that claim gives to the non-Christian majority around us ? To them, inevitably, we appear to be either ignorant or arrogant when we claim to know about the love of God. For consider the universe around us, macroscopic or microscopic. Man is set between the world of the infinitely vast and the world of the infinitely little, and, whether he looks out at the flaming nebulae pouring forth their energies through unimaginable aeons of time into the cold depths of interstellar space, or investigates the mystery of atomic structure and energy, there is nothing there in all that welter of matter in space and time which remotely suggests that God is love. The new vision of man's life set amid forces, ` which care nothing for his hopes and fears,' seems, as Bertrand Russell has claimed, to point only to despair. Are Christians aware of the shock from which humanity is suffering through the discovery that man is a castaway in the universe ? Or consider the history of man on his planet. ' The Martyrdom of Man ' is not a bad title for the story. In our own century we have sufficiently experienced the power of evil over the lives of men. We could not deduce, either from general history, or from the history we ourselves have lived, ' the love which God has for us,' and how could we ` confide in it ' ? Add to the new scientific view of reality, and to the history of mankind, our personal experience of life. The secret fears, the hidden shame, the long frustration, the hopeless waiting, the dreams unfulfilled, the vision faded. 2. What would St. John say to our modern despair ? Upon what did he base his confidence ? Was he arrogant-or just ignorant ? It would be foolish to suggest that St. John shared our modem vision of the Universe around us, but it would be still more foolish to imagine that men in classical times felt more at home with Nature than we do. First-century man was as keenly aware of the hostility of universal forces as we can be. And as to history, which century can you choose which might be said to teach a different lesson from our own ? Certainly not the first century. Nor was personal human life in that age of decline and fall any happier than now. St. John, we may conceive, would be unmoved by the arguments reproduced above, not because he could not feel their force, but because none of them touches the real heart of his assertion. ' he ourselves know and we confide in the love which God has for us,' not because of a deduction from Nature, history or experience, but because of Christ. ` saw Him, followed Him, heard Him, touched Him, loved Him.' That is the central message of the gospel and the epistles. And that is the heart of the Christian certainty. We know the love of God because we know Christ. 20116 3. For some minds this is not offensive so long as it is confined to the first generation of Christians. John did know, and Andrew and James and Peter. Undoubtedly they shared a unique human experience. They had the right, perhaps, to draw from it some deduction about the love of God. But in the nature of the case their experience cannot be the experience of any man now. Now he is dead ! Far hence he lies In the lorn Syrian town ; And on his grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down. This is the twentieth century. Jesus has been gone a long time. All of which is true, but it overlooks the strange reversal of history in our experience of Jesus. For there is a real sense in which Christians to-day know Christ as the first generation could not. ' Whom do men say that I am ? ' What limited answers they gave, arising out of their limited experience : ' John the Baptist,' ' Jeremiah,' ' a prophet.' For us, from our new perspective, Jesus is an infinitely greater figure. We see Him ' towering o'er the wrecks of time.' Since the days of His flesh the world has changed and changed again. Emperors, soldiers, saints, prophets, philosophers, artists, martyrs, revolutionaries have crowded the historic stage. We see that He transcends all human greatness. How impressed they were by what they thought of as the universality of Christ on the day of Pentecost. ' Parthians and Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in IVIesopotamia ... in Egypt ... Cretes and Arabians.' Their world. What a small world. The world of the Mediterranean basin. The shattering truth that He could save the Gentiles travailed for birth in that Early Church, for at Pentecost it was the far-flung children of Israel who heard the gospel. To them the Christendom we know was beyond all imagination. owe know ' the power of Christ as the New Testament writers never could. ' We ourselves know and we confide in the love which God has for us.' 4. ' I do not know.' That is the last refuge of the sceptic. ' I have not experienced Christ. I don't deny your experience, but it has never happened to me.' In one sense we have created this difficulty for ourselves. We have so often preached Christ in terms of ' experience,' that many feel they have the right to deny Him on the basis of their inexperience. The egoism of modern man would make him the measure of all things, including the nature of God. But the fact of Christ is more than a subjective fact-it is that, of course, but it is objective also. You have not experienced smallpox, do you then not believe in smallpox ? ` I've seen the marks of it on others.' Have you not seen the marks of Christ on others ? Along the Congo river in Africa there are graves. They are the graves of men and women born and educated in Britain who, humanly speaking, had nothing to gain by going to Africa. Doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers, evangelists, they might have lived useful and comfortable lives at home. Instead they went to Africa for Christ's sake and some of them died within weeks of their arrival because of our ignorance of climate and tropical disease. And out of that sacrifice has arisen the African Church with its thousands of primitive men and women at this moment awaiting baptism. And, in the Providence of God, it may be that their sacrifice will be remembered in the fateful clash of white and black in that great continent. That is only one small, isolated example of the reality of Christ in the history of men. It can be paralleled in every century and on every continent. ` We know.' For two thousand years we have seen the miracle unfold. In a million lives the marks of the Cross are visible. The denial of Christ is a denial of that continuing river of mercy and charity which is the unseen source of all civilized existence. 5. owe know.' ' We confide.' But why do you not know ? Why has the experience not come to you ? The fundamental reason is a simple one. You are saying, ' Let me know, and then I will trust.' The Bible is saying, ' Trust, and then you will know.' You do not know the love of God because you do not confide in it. You are bitter, and life is frustrating, because your trust is in the wrong things ; in reason, in your own personality, in money or fame, or political action, in human love, in art, in idealism. There is a mental polytheism of the West which matches the objective polytheism of the East, and which leads to despair. The secret of life lies in trusting God. FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY Fearfulness BY THE REVEREND ROBERT MENZIES, D.D., GLASGOW ' And Jesus said unto them, Why are ye so fearful ? how is it that ye have no faith ? '-Mk 440. From this incident that is replete with spiritual suggestion we propose to extract only one line of thought, namely, our Lord's criticism of His disciples' behaviour in this sudden storm that swept the Galilean sea. ' Why are ye so fearful ? How is it that ye have no faith ? ' In these words Jesus raises a central problem about human life. ` Why are ye so fearful ? ' Fearful is the right adjective to apply to their condition. There would 21117 be no reproach in being afraid. Fear is a biological instinct implanted in our being to protect us from needless risks and to promote our efficiency. Fearfulness, however, is quite a different matter. It is fear driven to excess, gone wild and rank, out of hand and beyond control. It serves no efficient end, tends to destroy and paralyse rather than quicken and construct. It is responsible for the numerous types of phobias which set the psychiatrists their problem. In its extreme forms it may completely derange the mind. Its widespread incidence is reflected in these words of H. G. Wells, ' As night goes round the earth, always there are hundreds of thousands of people who should be sleeping, lying awake in their beds, fearing a bully, fearing a competition, dreading lest they cannot make good, ill of some illness they cannot comprehend, distressed by some irrational quarrel, maddened by some thwarted instinct or some suppressed and thwarted desire.' Such being our condition the question of Jesus becomes acutely relevant. It may be useful at this point to try to group our major fears under some general scheme, and try to discover what prescription our Lord has to offer for overcoming them. Victor Hugo helps us here. In his great trilogy of novels which should be read in sequence he classifies these fears. The first, The Toilers of the Sea, deals with man's fear of Nature, the second, Les lvlisérables, with man's fear of society, the third, Notre Dame de Paris, deals with man's fear of God. ' (i) Fear of Nature. Nature launches its terrific thunderbolts-volcanoes, earthquakes, typhoons, floods, droughts, and who of the sons of men can abide their fury ? That is in the large, but there are also Nature's germ assaults, pestilence, disease, attacking and disintegrating the body. And in the rear stalks the figure of death whose claims every man born of woman must honour. These all produce their own crop of corroding fears and the question presses : Can Jesus do anything to meet, match and master these fears ? > ' Jesus has very little to say about the problem of natural evil. He never regarded the world of Nature as His enemy but as His friend. That deep sleep of His in a boat in deadly danger of being swamped is highly significant. He slept because He knew that His Father watched. He conveys to us the comfortable feeling that whatever storms were raging, however menacing were the forces of Nature, the same condition prevailed. The world of Nature was God's creation, not the work of some other power hostile to man, and, that being so, men should be at peace in their hearts. How is it that ye have no faith ? > ' (2) Fear of Society. The pressure of social opinion and more particularly of social action pro- duces its own crop of fears. Few people are courageous enough to resist the power of public opinion, whether it be true or false. Many of the sins of adolescents have their roots in fear. They drink and gamble and do other things that are evil because this is the fashion of the social set in which they move. They betray Christ, like Peter, through fear of being ridiculed or compromised. Men tell lies through fear of the consequences of telling the truth. ' The fear of man,' says the wise man, ' bringeth a snare.' Society not only judges but acts. Human beings are capable of treating each other with sadistic cruelty. Loyalty to principle in business may fling a man into the ranks of the unemployed. Refusal to function in a rotten political system may bring a man to the concentration camp or death. The sponsors of the Christian cause have frequently earned the reward of martyrdom. It is human beings, not God, who are responsible for waging wars, and while fear is responsible for most wars between nations, it in turn sows its own dragon's tecth. The fear of society, the judgments it pronounces, the cruelties it perpetrates, create a major problem for mankind. How can we get rid of these fears ? There is only one way, and that is to meet the fear-complex with the faith-complex. To have faith means that we attach more importance to the judgment of God than of men. This automatically relieves the pressure on our mind of the tyranny of public opinion. All the fears which group themselves round economic insecurity and the means of livelihood melt away before the conviction that we have a Father in heaven who knows that we have need of all these things. As to social action, the things that evil men do to each other, Jesus would have us learn that their power is strictly limited. For Jesus would have us know that in the last resort they are powerless to destroy the soul. They can only destroy the body. He speaks of death to those who are living the filial life as an unimportant incident in a man's career. ' Do not be afraid of those that kill the body,' for after that trifle they are helpless to do anything further.' Once we have companied with Jesus and in His faith faced and laid low that ultimate terror, there is little else that fear can do to us. (3) Tlae Fear of God. Another crop of fears has gathered round this focal centre. A failure on man's part to grasp the true nature of ultimate reality has been responsible for needlessly multiplying the area of fear. ' I remembered God, and was troubled,' said the Psalmist. ' I feared Thee,' said the one-talented man, ' knowing Thee to be an austere man.' Holding these views men have tried to placate God. They have offered Him gifts, sacrifices, even human sacrifices to avert His anger. Even the Atonement has often been falsely 22118 represented as the slaying of a sinless victim to satisfy the demands of an outraged Deity. It is Jesus' most signal contribution to the elimination of fear that He laid bare before men's eyes the real nature of God. To see His face as Jesus showed it to us, to know His mind as revealed in His teaching, and to learn His purpose of grace as traced in the mission of His Son is to put an end to every fear which the thought of God creates. ' Well roars the storm,' wrote Stevenson, ' to those who hear a deeper voice across the storm'. And all that that voice says to the troubled hearts of men is this ' It is I, be not afraid.' FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY The Garment of Patience BY THE REVEREND R. tVATSON MATHEWSON, B.D., S.T.DL, EDINBURGH ` Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, ... patience, forbearing one another ... forgiving each other.'-Col 31'r- (R.S.V.). St. Paul remembers here the age-old and universal convention whereby a man's status is marked by his dress. The soldier is recognized by his uniform, and his rank by its badges ; the colour of the craftsman's apron reveals the nature of his craft ; the priest and the peer have their distinctive vestments. Our increasing uniformity in modern dress may be causing many of these distinguishing marks to disappear, but to some extent they still exist. The grand occasion revives them, and especially an initiation-a graduation ceremony, an investiture, a passing-out parade. Then the dress is donned with solemnity and worn with pride. Its wearer recognizes that it is not to be dishonoured, since in the eyes of society it is the guarantee that he actually possesses those qualities for which the right to wear it is accorded. So, says St. Paul to his fellow-Christians and to us, you have been initiated into the new humanity, into a company whose status is pre-eminent because it is of heaven. You have been chosen and purified and loved by God Himself. Put on, therefore, the garment appropriate to your high calling. But the appropriate robe for the Christian seems strangely inappropriate to his exalted status. ' Put on compassion, kindliness, humility, gentleness and patience.' The garment St. Paul describes will never be fashionable in a world where the vogue is so consistently for the conspicuous and the opulent, but at least by its very lowliness it will be distinc- tive. Particularly will this be so because so predominant in the weaving of it is the thread of patience, and patience, in the full meaning of the word, is a virtue that belongs exclusively to the new humanity in Christ. To the Greeks, in fact, it was not a virtue at all but a vice, which no doubt it is in the proverbial Oriental version, passive resignation to the inevitability of suffering. But the kind of patience that the Christian is to exercise cannot be negative for it is derived from the patience of God Himself. The whole Bible is the record of that amazing patience, that Divine refusal to acquiesce in the inevitability of anything. Although the word itself rarely occurs in the Old Testament it can be read between the lines of practically every page-God patiently wrestling with that rebellious chosen race of His, or like a potter, taking the faulty human material that is marred in the making and patiently shaping it into a new vessel that will still be able to accomplish His almighty purpose. It is there, too, in the New Testament, in the One who was the patience of God incarnate. How patiently Jesus bore with His disciples, with temperamental Peter, with questioning Thomas, even with false Judas. How patient He was with the multitude of the sick and their constant demands upon His strength. How patient He was even with those who crucified Him, to the end retaining His persistent yearning for their salvation -' Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do.' Jesus never utterly gives up any one. So it is because God Himself is so tenaciously patient with us that we are bound to be patient with one another. For how can I say to my neighbour that my patience with him is exhausted when I know that I could not continue another day in life were God's patience with me to fail ? It is in this realm of personal relationships that the Christian will always be recognized by the apparel of patience, and particularly in the realm of personal relationships within the fellowship of the Church. For in the Church's other relationships patience is not the inviolable law of all its policy. The Church that has not the courage in moments of world crisis to act or speak impetuously, but waits till memory fades and conscience is dulled and the issues are confused before venturing its cautious rebukes is not worthy of the One who in a fury of impatience strode through the desecrated temple courts. Where the Church faces the obstinate evils of the world and its own inherent weaknesses its mood must be one of perpetual impatience. But where the issues are individual and personal, within or outside the Christian community, the Saviour can do His work only through the patience of His disciples. 23119 Such patience, says St. Paul, is to work itself out in the everyday life of the community particularly in the realm of reconciliation. Where one member is in any way sinned against by another, he is to practise patience in two respects. First, in forbearance. Forbearance is the exercise of mercy where the natural inclination would be to act in terms of strict justice. I may fully deserve my neighbour's censure for the word I spoke against him, for the detrimental deed. Justice would decree an explosion of anger, and an end to our fellowship ; but forbearance keeps the axe from falling, forbearance refrains from breaking the bruised reed. When we thus exercise Christian forbearance we are only doing what God has all along done with us, God who is slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. You and I know that the one thing we cannot ask of Him is justice, for if we received it we would be without hope. Accordingly we are in no position to deal with our fellows in terms of strict justice either. The rectitude which makes a virtue of insisting on its rights may have its place in a court of law but does not properly belong to a Christian community. There, anxious consideration for the reclamation of the culprit takes precedence over the restoration of any personal rights that may have been infringed by his offence. An outburst of anger against him may no doubt be justifiable but it will drive him from the fellowship. Rather be slow to anger, exercise forbearance and he is given time to repent and to find his feet again within the family whose members are alike only in their dependence on the forbearance of God. Secondly, the Christian is to practise patience in forgiveness. A single act of forgiveness may call for little patience but repeated demands for pardon, possibly for the same often repeated sin, will involve its exercise to a high degree. ' Here St. Paul seems to be thinking of the forgiveness that is required often. ' Be always ready to forgive.' Again the necessity laid upon the Christian to set no limits to the extent of his forgiveness reaches back to the forgiveness he himself receives from God. For we have to admit with shame the weaknesses in ourselves that have brought us again and again as suppliants to Him. Repeatedly He has forgiven us, not seven times but seventy times seven. Accordingly there can be nothing calculating in our forgiveness of one another, no question of ' How far am I prepared to go ? ' The Church, founded upon God's reconciling love and with the message of reconciliation committed to it, must itself be a compelling illustration of unremitting forgiveness. 0 Through forbearance and forgiveness therefore the Christian community is kept ready for its Lord's use and His coming. For patience looks towards the future when reconciliation shall be complete. As the accredited attire of the Christian here on earth patience is also one of the royal robes of heaven. Put on therefore thc garment of patience, the distinctive apparel of the chosen of God. SEPTUAGESIMA The Call to Endurance BY THE REVEREND JOHN L. KENT, M.A., CATHCART, GLASGOW ' So fight I, not as one that beateth the air : Butli keep under my body, and bring it into subjection.'- i Co 926. a~_ The Christian life is an intense battle for the integrity of one's soul, a warfare to be waged with deadly and unrelaxing tenacity. So Paul says. But this does not sound like the great Apostle. Surely he is contradicting himself. His distinctive message is diametrically opposed to the truth in these words. As Professor J. S. Stewart has put it, ' For me, Paul would say, religion began on the day when I ceased straining and striving and struggling for heaven's favour, and was content to bow my head and accept the gift I could never win.' The Christian life is not a battle but a surrender. This is the message we have identified with the Apostle Paul and for whose statement of it the Christian Church will be for ever grateful. How, then, can he reconcile this with the words of our text ? One thing is plain. Whatever Paul means, he has not deviated one step from the fundamental truth that the essence of the gospel rests in God's offer of reconciliation with Himself through His Son our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing we can become or perform can merit this status. It is all the doing of God. This fact having been recognized, accepted and acted upon, what follows ? Surely this. The Christian is under a constant sense of infinite gratitude and obligation. Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all. ' I don't bruise myself,' says Paul, ' to appease the wrath or gain the favour of God. He is entitled to the best that I can do and be. Therefore I fight and keep myself in subjection.' For the Christian, reconciled by the infinite grace of God, life, in consequence, involves conflict. ' So fight I.' The very gospel that makes him what he is provokes the hostility of the world. The natural 24120 man does not want to believe that he cannot win his own salvation. He has been given a brain to plan it and a will to carry it out. Away with your pious and degrading fantasies that all is of God ! Thus what a Christian fundamentally believes sets him in opposition to the world. Immediately he accepts God's grace and gives utterance to his thankfulness the fight is on. This becomes the more clear when he sees the powers of evil striving to win the throne of the world. Says a character in Somerset Maugham's The N mTOW Corner, , I am not willing to accept evil and injustice and ugliness. I am not willing to stand by while the good are punished and the evil go scot free.' Nor is the Christian. By the gospel that has claimed him, the Christian is committed to do combat with the forces of darkness that have ranged themselves against the kingdom of light. The Christian knows that he is engaged in a deadly conflict not merely because immediately he witnesses for his faith he is brought face to face with its foes but because he is aware that the battleground is in his own heart. The natural man whom he encounters in the world outside grapples with him in his soul. The gospel incites us to rebellion. Nobody knew this better than the Apostle himself. Insidious evil is ever whispering its doubts and denials in our ears. ' Look,' it says, ' does it appear as if your Christian ways are successful ? Glittering prizes don't come your way. Ease up, you are being too severe with yourself. After all, you are just human. Don't accuse yourself.' When the Christian realizes that he is engaged in mortal combat, he knows that his security and success depend on his self disci.plirie. ' I keep my body under.' If there was one thing on which the Lord Jesus Christ laid an emphasis, it was this. ' Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.' Not that there is any virtue in self-denial in itself. That merely leads to a distortion of the soul. Yet too many Christians have given the world this impression. They make the Christian life appear dull, drab and grey. No. The value of our self-control and denials is determined by the objectives we set ourselves. The athletes in the Greek games practise the same kind of discipline as mine, says Paul, but they do it for a corruptible crown, but I for an incorruptible. Here is where so many of us fail. VVe agree with the high aims of the Christian faith. We desire to find rest for our souls in the fellowship of God and in the consolations of His love. But we boggle at the cost. That is why onr religion makes such an ineffec- tive impact upon the world and is so unsatisfying to ourselves. Will there be compensating riches for the impoverishments, more durable satisfac- tions for those we surrender ? Will the triumph of the cause justify all the sacrifices of the campaign ? The asking of these questions halts us all but holds too many of us back. Only those who have made self-discipline a settled habit of their Christian life have the courage to break away from the old into the new and prove that this is the way God leads us into a more vigorous and satisfying manhood. We have often wondered why the Lord Jesus Christ chose for His disciples men so slow-witted and commonplace. Perhaps this was His reason. Whatever they lacked, they possessed this essential quality of headlong devotion, a capacity for a service that counted not the cost. A Christian, however, can only be fully sustained in his conflict if he is equipped with something more than his habit of self-discipline. He must have a faith that expresses itself in an euc~rrra~ace that never falters. While the Apostle never doubted that ultimately the conflict into which his Christian profession had thrown him would culminate in triumph, he did not exclude from his mind the possibility of his failure in it. ' Lest I myself should be a castaway.' We may believe in our hearts that victorv in the long run is assured but the facts of life do not confirm that the triumph is such a foregone conclusion. Indeed, the forces of evil and of the Kingdom appear so evenly balanced that sometimes the conquest looks as if it would be with the Devil and not with God. The surge to and fro of the battle line and the number of reverses suffered are a dire and sometimes desperate test of our faith. It must be so. If God has claimed us as His redeemed children through Jesus Christ, then we are undergoing the process of becoming His sons and daughters. If life gave an easy endorsement, a facile ' Amen ' to our faith, the character being fashioned in the fight would be shallow. Mean, said Professor Macneile Dixon, ' rise to their full stature only when challenged. Startle the soul into admiration, ask of it the impossible, to join a forlorn hope and it is endowed with angelic strength.' Our capacity for this endurance depends finally upon the original trust with which we respond to His offer of grace. When we are enshrouded with doubt so that not one step ahead can we see ; when, in the conflict without and within, we are beset with a foe who seems stronger than we can master ; when we know the bitterness of defeat, the endurance that will yet save us arises like a flame out of the ashes because our souls are in the custody of Him who knew the deep and dazzling darkness of the Cross.</meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-wrap></article-meta></front></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>In the Study</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>In the Study</title></titleInfo><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="research-article" displayLabel="research-article" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XTP-1JC4F85T-7">research-article</genre><originInfo><publisher>Sage Publications</publisher><place><placeTerm type="text">Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</placeTerm></place><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">1957-01</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">1957</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>The Expository Times</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/JMC-0GLKJH51-B">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0014-5246</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1745-5308</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">EXT</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">spext</identifier><part><date>1957</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>68</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>4</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>114</start><end>120</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">5949CD773B2216EF3FBD8438AD548E856DC0A39B</identifier><identifier type="ark">ark:/67375/M70-02XFDWMR-V</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1177/001452465706800406</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">10.1177_001452465706800406</identifier><recordInfo><recordContentSource authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XBH-0J1N7DQT-B">sage</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods><json:item><extension>json</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>application/json</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/M70-02XFDWMR-V/record.json</uri></json:item></metadata><author></author><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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