I. WHAT THE HEIRS ARE KEPT BY. The military metaphor in the word "kept" is not to be passed by. We have the same word in its literal use in 2 Corinthians 11:32 ("kept with a garrison"), and employed figuratively as here in Philippians 4:7 ("the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds'). Our weak natures are garrisoned as it were by reinforcements of Divine strength. Not by providences acting on our outward lives only, or by any forces upholding us as with external help, but by pouring power to resist and to overcome into our souls does God keep us in our conflicts with evil. His grace within us is yet more blessed than his hand around us. "I can do all things," said Paul, "through Christ strengthening me within." An indwelling Lord is our security. The hard-pressed fort is relieved by fresh troops joining the feeble defenders. We have the right to expect an actual communication of Divine strength breathed into our weakness. As the prophet laid his hands on the king's hands ere he drew the bow, in token of strength infused, so the touch of Christ's tender and strong hand will teach our "hands to war," so that a "bow of steel will be bent by our arms." We are "kept by [literally, 'in'] the power of God." It may not be fanciful to keep the local meaning of the preposition here, and to think of that power as lying around us like some fortress, whose massive walls keep the feeblest in safety. If we keep within our castle, no harm shall befall. The enemy may prowl round the base of the fortress reared high on the cliff, but they cannot climb to it, and their fire cannot shake a stone in its walls. If we dwell in God, we dwell in safety, and whatever storms of war rage without, deep peace abides within.
II. WHAT WE ARE KEPT THROUGH. Faith is the condition, the necessary condition, on which God's power works in and on us. The garrison which God sends to hold our hearts cannot enter unless we open the gate and let down the drawbridge to receive them. Our faith has no power in itself, but as our receptivity for Divine influences it is omnipotent. It is only a channel—the pipe which conveys the water, the hand which grasps God's hand, the open door through which angels can enter and encamp in our poor hearts. They cannot come to our help without it. They will certainly enter if we exercise this faith. Its elements are conscious need, lowly sense of our own weakness, and self distrust, absolute dependence on God in Christ, and a calm confidence and expectation of victory, which, when based on God, is reasonable and self-fulfilling. The measure of our faith will be the measure of our possession of the Divine power. If we open the gate but partially, we hinder the marching in of the celestial warriors whom God sends to our help. "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it."
III. WHAT WE ARE KEPT FOR. The "salvation ready to be revealed" is equivalent to the "inheritance" spoken of in Philippians 4:4. "Salvation" here is of course used in its fullest meaning—complete and eternal deliverance from all the ills that flesh is heir to, and all the sins that mar the spirit, and complete and eternal possession of all the perfection and blessedness possible to glorified humanity. That complete flooding out of evil by the inrushing tide of glory is the goal alike of regeneration (Philippians 4:3) and of the sedulous guardianship of God's grace. It is but the completion of the begun salvation of earth, as the full corn in the ear which gladdens the golden harvest-time is of the tiny shoot peeping above the furrows in bleak, windy March. It is "ready to be revealed," says Peter. Possibly the meaning may be that this "salvation" is conceived of as lying hidden beneath much sin and imperfection in the hearts of Christians, as the full-spread beech-life lies wrapped up in the brown cone that braves the winter. The ultimate completed form of any germ may be said to lie ready to be revealed in its earliest form, and so may the remotest glories of the perfect salvation of the future be said to lie hid in the present, waiting for "the revelation of the sons of God." But perhaps, with more probability, we may regard this expression as in a general way parallel to the reservation of the inheritance, and. as being a strong metaphor intended to convey the certainty of our possession of it, if we on our parts are faithful. Nor must we forget that Christ has gone "to prepare a place" for us; his entrance into the heavens making heaven ready for us in mysterious manner, and his abiding there making our entrance there possible. That other order of things is close around us, enfolding this visible, touching it at every point. The separation is thin and filmy, nothing solid, only a veil. A touch of God's hand on the curtain, and it runs back rattling on its rings, and all the glory blazes out. All is ready—ready from all eternity in the Divine counsels, made ready once for all in time by Christ's death and ascension, being made ready in our hearts day by day by his gracious discipline and indwelling life. At last the veil wilt be done away and the salvation revealed. What an apocalypse that will be! If we open our hearts wide for the entrance of Christ's healing and upholding power, we shall be made ready to go in with him to the feast prepared for believing hearts from of old. Trusting to his death and sharing his life, the heirs will be kept for the inheritance, and the inheritance for the heirs - A.M.
1 Peter 1:6 - The paradox of the Christian life, joy subsisting with sorrow.
When he was young, Peter had been peculiarly impatient of sorrow, and blind to its necessity and worth. He had forgotten his reverence for Christ in his refusal to believe, even on his Master's authority, that sorrow could touch so dear a head. Years and experience had taught him the deed meaning of the prophetic contrast which Christ had drawn between his early self-'willed, unhindered action, and his later days, when his will should be crossed and unwelcome compulsion should lord it over him. This Epistle is remarkable for the clearness of its insight and the frequency of its references to suffering as an indispensable factor in the Christian life. When he was old, he had learned the lesson which had been so foreign to his hot youth. Well for us if our past sorrows lie transfigured and illuminated by a beam of light like this in the text!
I. THE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. We have first the source of the joy. "Wherein ye greatly rejoice." The complex whole of the blessings spoken of—the lively hope, the reserved inheritance, the guarding power, the prepared salvation, its future apocalypse—these are the golden threads from which the bright tissue is woven. So this is the first distinction between the majestic Christian joy and the lighter-winged fluttering mirths and pleasures. It flows from no surface-pools, but from deep fountains, and is fed from everlasting fields of pure snow high on the mountains of God. Then we have the depth and calm rapture of the joy in the strong word of the original, which expresses a high degree of exultation. Peter was possibly quoting our Lord's words to his persecuted people, "Rejoice and be exceeding glad." At all events, Christian joy should be no pale and feeble thing, but full-blooded and fall-voiced. It is far unlike boisterous mirth, which is noisy like the thorn-bushes which crackle and flare in flame for a moment. "The gods approve the depth and not the tumult of the soul." A present salvation, fellowship with a present Christ, the large and. sure hope of his appearing, the exercise of faith and love and obedience, the immunity from fear, and the escape from the miseries of self-will, should all combine, like so many streams pouring down the hillsides, in this one deep and smooth-flowing stream of calm and equable gladness. Religion does us good. only as it makes us glad. Any firm and. adequate grasp of the facts and relations which the gospel brings will certainly make a man joyful. The average religion of this day does not believe in its own creed heartily enough to find in it support against temptations or joy in sorrow. If our Christianity has not the power to bless us with gladness in our hearts, there is something wrong either in the completeness of our surrender to it or in the articles of our belief. If our religion is largely self-inspection, or if it dwells on the sterner side of truth, or is mainly a prohibitory law keeping us from doing what we would like, or if it is a languid emotion not half so powerful as common appetites, we cannot expect to get sweet juice of gladness from such shrunken fruit. The coexistence of this joy with sorrow is, further, brought into prominence here. This paradox of Christian experience has seemed so startling that the future tense has been proposed as the true rendering; but a much deeper and grander sense results from adhering to the present tense. It is possible that joy should live side by side in the same heart with sorrow, and neither converting the other wholly into its own substance, and each made more noble by the presence of its opposite. "Central peace" may "subsist at the heart or' endless agitation." Greek fire will burn under water. Flowers bloom on the glacier's edge. The depths of the sea are still, while winds rave and waves heave and currents race above. In the darkest night of sorrow and loss, starry and immortal hopes wilt brighten in our sky, and the heart that is united to Christ will have an inward solemn blessedness which no tempest of sorrow can extinguish.
II. THE SORROW OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. There is much unreality and consequent powerlessness in the one-sided pictures of the religious life so often drawn. To listen to some people, one would fancy that religion was meant to abolish all trial and sorrow. A picture without shadows is unlike anything on earth. The true Christian view neither portrays an impossible paradise nor preaches a hardening stoicism. Here we have in half a dozen words a theory of the meaning and uses of pain and grief, sufficient to live by and to alleviate many a pang.
1. Nonce the insight rote the true nature and purpose of all sorrow. It is temptation, or, more properly, trial. It is intended as a test, a proof, to reveal us to ourselves and so to better us. We do not get to the bottom of our sorrows till we look at the moral purpose which they serve, and regard them as discipline rather than pain. They take a shallow view who contemplate only the smart of the wound and leave out of sight the surgeon's purpose. They take as shallow a view who dispute or deny the benefit of sorrow, and assert that happiness tends to a sweeter virtue than it does. There is a lowly self-distrust quickly passing into calm faith which only sorrow can produce. The will is never bowed into submission without being softened in the furnace, and there is no real goodness but from a submissive will. The props round which the heart twines its tendrils have to be cut down, that it may fasten itself on the only true support. Only when we have nothing else to lean on do we lean all our weight on him.
2. Observe, too, the recognition of the wise adaptation of our sorrows to our need. They are not sent unless "need be." They are sent as need is. In the great Surgeon's instrument-ease are many shining blades, all for cutting and paining. He chooses the right knife, and cuts where wanted, and close beside the sharp instrument lie bandage and balm. It is hard to believe that a sorrow which strikes many is at the same time proportioned in its force to each. But faith knows that Providence neither forgets the general mass in care for the individual, nor loses sight of the wants of the individual in the crowd, but is at once special and general.
3. Finally, observe the transiency of sorrow. It is for a season. That is the highest attainment of faith, to see how short are the long slow hours which pain and grief lengthen. They seem to creep, as if the sun and the moon stood still as of old, that the storm may have time to break on us. But we have to take Heaven's chronology in our sorrows, and, though their duration seems interminable, to feel that after all it is but a little while. The long hours as they appear of a dream are but moments in reality, and seem so when the sleeper awakes. His anger is but a moment; his favor lasts all the life. Weeping may come to lodge with us—a somber guest—for a night; but when the bright morning dawns Joy comes with a shout, radiant as the morning, and at his coming the black-robed visitant steals out of sight. Then the joy that coexisted with sorrow shall survive alone, and "sorrow and sighing shall flee away."—A.M.
1 Peter 1:8 - The unique love to an unseen Savior.
Peter does not include himself among those who loved the Christ whom they had never seen. To him belonged the blessing of those who had believed because they had seen, and who had loved before they had fully believed. But he n ill not think that he and his fellows, who had been Christ's companions, love him "more than these" who inherit the blessing pronounced by Christ himself on those who have not seen and yet have believed. Perhaps some echo of that benediction may be heard among the antitheses of this verse, blending with some tones caught from the question which, as with triple point, had pierced his heart, "Lovest thou me?"
I. WE HAVE HERE BROUGHT INTO PROMINENCE A UNIQUE FACT, namely, love to an unseen Christ. Thousands in every age since have cherished a passionate attachment to Jesus, wholly unlike what is evoked by any one else. Time and distance seem to be powerless to diminish it. It is no tepid affection; it is no idle sentiment. Those who cherish it aver that it lies at the foundation of their lives. It rules, guides, stimulates. It is the mother of heroisms and of patience. It sheds light on all dark places. It mates and masters the fear of death. The stake and the gibbet, the dungeon and the rack, are powerless to repel those whom it attracts. It brings peace and hope, holiness and wisdom. It conquers the soul, and makes it conqueror of sin, time, and the universe. And all this passionate ardor of love which transforms the heart it enters is called out by and lavished on a Man who died nineteen centuries ago! There is no other fact the least like that.
II. WHAT IS THE EXPLANATION OF THIS UNEXAMPLED PHENOMENON? If Jesus is but one among the great names of the past, however high and pure; if whilst he lived he had no thoughts of us, and now sleeps in the dust and does nothing in the world but by the record of his past,—admiration rising to reverence may be his due, but anything worth calling love is impossible. It was not such a Christ who kindled the hearts of these Asiatics, who had never seen Peter's Master. But if I can believe that Jesus Christ died for me, that I had a place in his Divine-human love when he bore our sins, and that he lives today to love me and to succor and to save, and that he knows when I love him, and delights to accept and to return my love,—then I do not need the ordinary helps to love. All other benefactors and mighty names in the past stand in different relation to us. Praise and admiration are their guerdon. But One alone is loved though unseen, because, and only because, One alone died for each of us and lives to bless us. There are some mutilated forms of Christianity which present a Christ without a cross. They result in a Church without love enough to keep it warm. The Christ whom Peter preached was the Christ to whose transcendent love, as manifest in his death, the uttermost fervor of human love was the fitting and yet all-inadequate return. Is there any other conception of him and of his work which really has power to kindle through all the ages and in all hearts the flame of all-conquering love?
III. THERE IS NO REAL CHRISTIAN LIFE WITHOUT THIS LOVE. At bottom there is only one bond which unites spirits to spirits, men to men, or men to God. Love is the one uniting force. "Cords of love" must fasten us to Christ, or we are not fastened to him; and that love must flow from the faith which recognizes him for Savior by his cross, and trusts him. Love is second, not first; but so second that wherever and as soon as faith is exercised, love comes to life. Imperfect conceptions of Christ's work as Teacher, Example, and the like, do not really unite us to him. They may lead on to loftier and truer thoughts of him, but till we are united to him there will he no real love, and therefore no real union. Faint and feeble our love may be, unworthy of him it ever is; but if we have none we are not Christians. We shall have none unless our faith grasps him as our Savior by his incarnation, cross, and resurrection. The question for us all is—Do we trust to Christ who died for us? Do we therefore love him because he loved us, and gave himself for us? Confidence and love have always been the bonds of union between men, which alone have made human society better than a den of hyenas. They are the bonds which unite us to God. Christ asks no more of us than that we should transfer to him the emotions and affections which we have lavished on one another, and let the tendrils which we have twined round rotten boughs and dead stumps clasp his cross, that there we may cling and climb, and grow and bear fruit. From his cross, from his throne, he asks of each, "Lovest thou me?" Though our eyes have not seen him, our hearts need not falter in the answer, "Thou knowest that I love thee."—A.M.
1 Peter 1:8, 1 Peter 1:9 - Christian joy.
There are better things than joy. A life framed on purpose to secure it is contemptible, anti foredoomed to failure. Like sleep, it comes most surely unsought, and that angel of God meets us as we travel on the way of duty. It is not a worthy motive to urge for loving Jesus Christ that we shall be happy if we do, and much harm has been done by preaching a kind of gospel which winged its exhortations mainly with such calculations. But, on the other hand, it would be overstrained to take no account of the fact that joy follows faith in Christ as surely as fragrance is breathed from opened flowers. A pure and sober-suited gladness is one of the "virgins following" that queen. If it were not so, if there were no connection between goodness and happiness, there would arise a far greater difficulty in vindicating the ways of God than comes from the apparent absence of connection between goodness and prosperity. The strong words of this text assert that connection in the broadest way.
I. THE DEPTH AND HEIGHT OF CHRISTIAN JOY. It is a melancholy testimony to the meager and shallow nature of the ordinary type of Christian life, that, in defiance of plain grammar, the words here have been often taken to refer to the future. They have been felt to be a world too wide for the experience of most of us. They speak of an exuberant joy which might be called a jubilant leaping up of the heart, of a joy far to
and characteristics ("what manner of time"), were not necessarily known by the prophet. Another axiom of modern philosophizers upon prophecy is that predictions must have had a bearing, consolatory or menacing, upon their first hearers. But Peter thinks that a prophecy may have been spoken which was only to be fulfilled long centuries after, and could only have gladdened the hearers with a far-off hope. Yet the prophet was not a mere machine or pipe through which the breath of inspiration blew. His heart throbbed in sympathy with his message, and he pondered it with all his force of thought. Peter's theory of prophetic inspiration is equally far from the naturalistic and from the mechanical theories.
II. THE ANSWERING CHOIR OF EVANGELISTS. The same truths were the theme of prophet and of preacher. The word "reported" and that rendered "preached the gospel" are both compounds of one root. To tell that message which prophets foretold is to preach the glad tidings to the world; and the whole business of the Christian teacher is to proclaim the joyful facts. So we have here:
1. The full identity of the message of the prophet and the preacher. The main difference is in the tense of their verbs. The one speaks in the future; the other, in the present; but the verbs are the same and the nominative is the same. The bud and the flower are one. Prophecy is condensed, outlined gospel. Gospel is expanded, specialized prophecy. Rays which were parted in the prophet's utterance are united in the evangelist's message. Anticipations are ever less definite than realities. But the theme is one, though prophecy touched with but a light hand the mysterious nature of the Messiah whom it proclaimed.
2. The essential substance of the gospel is the proclamation of historical facts. It is not a philosophy, nor directly a theology, still less is it a system of morality. It is the record of what has happened on this solid earth. Philosophy and theology and morality will all be evolved from these facts, but the first form of the gospel is history. Only it is to be remembered that the fact that Jesus has lived and died is not the gospel; but the fact that Christ has died for our sins is. The more plainly Christian teachers deliver their message, not as the product of their own thoughts, but as the message given to them, and the more they center their energy on setting forth the fact of Christ's sufferings in the past and glories in the present, the better for their success and for the world.
III. THE LISTENING, GAZING ANGELS. "To look into" is literally" to bend the body so as to gaze upon an object," as the apostles did at the sepulcher. This graphic figure may, perhaps, be a reminiscence of the quiet forms which sat the one at the head and the other at the foot where the body of Jesus had lain, as gazing upon a mystery and guarding a holy place, or it may even recall the cherubim bending with outstretched and meeting wings above the mercy-seat. At all events, it speaks of the remoter and yet earnest interest which other orders of beings in other worlds take in the story of redemption. Men have the honor of proclaiming it, whether as prophets or evangelists. To them it belongs. He helped not angels, but he helped the "seed of Abraham? Therefore they do not speak of it, but stand around, like spectators in some great arena, all silent and all eyes. Three great truths concerning angelic natures are here. They are capable of learning. They too know God by his work which excites in them wonder and interest as it unfolds. The life and death of Christ, with the resulting salvation, are a revelation of God to angels no less than to men, and, though they have no share in the redemption, they have a share in the knowledge which the cross brings to them as to us. From it far-darting beams of light shoot earthwards and upwards. It is the crowning manifestation of the Divine nature for all worlds and orders of being, as for all ages.
IV. THE ONE SPIRIT DWELLING IN PROPHETS AND EVANGELISTS. Not only is the theme the same, but the animating impulse also. The power by which the prophet saw all the wonder that should be is the same as the power which sat in cloven tongues of fire on the heads of all the Church on Pentecost, and has ever since been the strength of every evangelist and of every Christian. Inspiration is not a past phenomenon, but the permanent possession of the Church. Nay, the Spirit which of old came for special purposes on selected men and. tarried not with them, is now, as it were, a denizen of earth, for it is "sent down from heaven" once for all, to abide among us, touching all lips which humbly and prayerfully speak Christ's Name among men. And it was the "Spirit of Christ" which dwelt in the prophets, and which they ever called "the Spirit of the Lord." From the beginning the Word was God; the manifested Jehovah of the old covenant is the Jesus Christ of the new. He is the Lord and Sender of that Spirit which spoke through all the prophets; he is the Medium of all revelation, the Self-manifestation of God from eternity. It is Christ who binds all the ages into one, filling the past, the present, and the future. It is Christ who binds all worlds and beings into one, revealing and ruling for angels and men. It is Christ who is the Theme and the Inspiration of all prophets and all teachers. To him cherubim and seraphim turn with eager gaze. The goodly fellowship of prophets speak of him; of him speak the great company who publish the Word. Let us, too, yield to the attraction of the cross, which binds all things in heaven and earth in golden unity. Let us gaze on those wonders of Divine pity and righteousness and love which have given to heaven a new conception of God. Let us open our spirits to that Spirit of Christ whose dwelling in our hearts shall set us free from sin and death. Let us cleave to that message which, in the history of his incarnation, death, and royal glories, brings to our hearts the good news that sheds light over all the darkest places of our human experience, and endows us with full salvation - A.M.
1 Peter 1:13 - The hope of Christians.
The grammatical structure of this verse marks out the principal command as being that to hope, while two subsidiary participial clauses give subordinate exhortations to girding up the loins of the mind, and to being sober, as accompaniments of and helps to this Christian hope. The true meaning of the injunction is given in the Revised Version, which substitutes "hope perfectly" for "hope to the end." Peter is not encouraging to persistence but to completeness in our hope. The characteristic which he would have all Christians cultivate refers, not to its duration, but to its degree. Such a perfect hope is the only one corresponding to the perfect object on which it is fixed—the grace that will be ours when Christ shall come. The more clearly that object is discerned, the more vigorous wilt be the joyous anticipation which grasps it. But such strength of hope will not come of itself. It needs effort and discipline, self-stimulating and self-restraint.
I. We have to consider THE PERFECT OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN HOPE. There are three striking ideas suggested by the remarkable language here.
1. We have a very unusual designation for that object, namely, "grace." Usually the future blessings are called glory, and in common religious language, "grace and "glory" are contrasted, as belonging to earth and heaven. Here clearly "grace" means the whole sum of the blessings to be bestowed in another life, and is equivalent to the" salvation ready to be revealed" spoken of in an earlier verse. The unusual expression teaches us that the glories of our ultimate exaltation in all their splendor are purely gratuitous and the product of the undeserved love and liberality of our God. The whole Christian career from first to last owes all it enjoys, possesses, or hopes to "grace." The substantial identity of the Christian character here and there is also implied. Glory is but grace perfected; grace is incipient glory. The gift is one here and there, only the measure varies. What is a spark now, almost smothered sometimes under green wood, flames out ruddy and triumphant then.
2. That ultimate grace is on its way to us. It is "being brought," or, as Leighton puts it, "a-bringing." The same word is used to describe the onward-moving rush of the mighty wind of Pentecost. It is as if some strong angel-choir had already begun their flight with this great gift in their hands, and were hasting with all the power of their majestic pinions to this small island in the deep. The light from fixed stars may take centuries to reach us, but is speeding through space all the while. So that "great far-off Divine event" is coming steadily nearer, as if some star, at first a point in the distance, should take motion towards us and at last pour all its splendor on our eyes. A solemn but invigorating thought, fitted to brighten hope and kindle desire that "now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."
3. This approaching grace is wrapped up in the revelation of Jesus Christ. We may render "at," as the Revised Version does, and yet give full force to the preposition in the original. The grace is included in the revelation of Jesus Christ, as a jewel in a case. The manifestation of Christ in his glory shall be the participation in that glory of all who love him. It overflows, as it were, into us, partly because the sight of him in his glory shall work transformation into his likeness, as a light falling on a mirror makes a brightness; but chiefly because he and we shall be so truly one in deep mystic union that all this is ours, and the glory which streams from him shall brighten us. All which he shows to a wondering world we shall share. This is the perfect object of Christian hope. How different from paltry, perishable earthly hopes! Why let this great faculty trail along the ground, when it might climb to heaven by the trelliswork of God's promises? Why limit it to days and years, when it might expand to lay hold on eternity? Let hearts and hopes mount to fix on Christ, and they shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end.
II. THE PERFECT HOPE WHICH GRASPS THE PERFECT OBJECT. There is no doubt that "hope perfectly" is the injunction here. It is more needful to exhort to perfection in degree than to permanence in duration, which will follow naturally. Hope may exist in all degrees from a tremulous "perhaps" up to "I am sure." Usually it is less than certainty. "Hopes and fears that kindle hope" are "an inextinguishable hope. A leek of doubt slumbers in her fair eyes. How can that be firm which is built on a quagmire?" But it is possible for a Christian to have this perfect hope. God's fixed and faithful Word gives us certainty of future. Nor need our own sin or, weakness dash our confidence, for his promises are made to the sinful and weak. We have rock on which to build. Why should our hope cast its anchor on some floating island which may drift and melt away, when it may be fastened within the veil? It is a duty to hope perfectly, because only such hope corresponds to facts. Not to hope is unbelief. Some good people say "I hope" in such tremulous melancholy tones that it sounds liker "I fear." Joyous confidence becomes those who have God to lean on. "I am persuaded," "we know," are the words with which Paul and John heralded their hopes; and we should be bold to use the same. It is blessedness to hope perfectly. So we escape the alternations which, like the hot and the shivering fits of ague, rack others, and the bitterness of disappointment when some gleaming vision collapses, and, instead of the rainbow-hued bubble, we are left with a drop of dirty water. He who lives by earthly hopes is in danger of dying by earthly disappointments, A fulfilled hope is often a disappointed one. We may have a pillar of fire to guide us in all the darkness, which will glow brighter as we draw near the end. It is strength to hope perfectly. Hope is often a trifler, robbing us of energy, making the present flat, and withdrawing us from working in order to dream. But Christian hope is an armed warrior, grave and calm, ready for conflict because assured of victory. It will be as wings to lift us above care and sorrows, and as cords to bind us to duty and toil.
III. THE SELF-DISCIPLINE WHICH KEEPS THE PERFECT HOPE. It has two parts—"girding up the loins," and "being sober." These two are somewhat difficult to distinguish. But the former enjoins determined effort, the bracing up of all one's powers, or, as we say, "pulling one's self together." Travelers, servants, soldiers, have to tighten their belts and confine loose robes. A slackly braced mind has not force enough to cherish a perfect hope. There are many difficulties in its way, and vigorous effort is needed to concentrate the mind and heart on the truth which warrants it. All Christian virtue needs determined effort. Earthly hopes will not be vigorous unless the intrusive present is shut out by resolute effort, and the attention kept fixed on the future. How can a strong Christian hope be preserved on easier terms? Again, for the completeness of Christian hope, rigid self control and repression are needed. "Be sober" means "keep a tight hand on all desires and tastes, especially on animal passions and appetites." There is no possibility of clear vision of the future if the mists that steam up from these undrained marshes bide it, nor can the soul whose desires turn earthwards go out in keen expectation to the more ethereal joys above. If the plant is allowed to throw out side shoots, it will not run high. Our hopes are regulated by our desires. We have a limited amount to expend, and if we bestow it on things of time and sense, we shall have none to spare for the unseen. If we pour the precious ointment on the heads of earthly loves, there will be none with which to anoint our true Lover and King. A great possibility is set before us weary sons of men, whose hearts have been so often turn by disappointment that we know not whether it is sadder to hope or to despair. We may have the future made as certain as the past, and be made conquerors over sorrow and the dread of to-morrow and the apathy which does not look forward, by a calm hope which knows that it will be fulfilled. We need not build on peradventures, but on "Verily, verily, I say unto you." Do not build on saint when you may build on rock, even on "Christ, who is our Hope"—and you will not be confounded - A.M.
1 Peter 1:14-16 - Christians God-like men.
Probably we are not to see in the first words of these verses any reference to the filial relation which Christians bear to God, tempting as the view is which would make them parallel to Paul's exhortation, "Be ye imitators of God, as dear children." The literal rendering is, "children of obedience," which is plainly a Hebraism, and means simply "persons whose characteristic is obedience," like "sons of light," or "of earth," or "of thunder." Submission to the Divine will in the twofold form of resignation to its appointments and of obedience to its behests is the very life-element of the believing soul. This obedience is to express itself in the ordering of the outward life. There was a time when self-will shaped their lives. They molded themselves according to their own desires, but all that must be at an end now. A new pattern is set before them. They are now to fashion themselves, not after the ideal framed by their own tastes or inclinations, but, as we might read the words, "according to the Holy One who hath called you." So we have here—