Greatest
Thing in the
World
The
Formula of
Sanctification
By:
Henry Drummond
A
formula,
a receipt, for
Sanctification— can one
seriously speak of this mighty
change as if the process were as
definite as for the production of
so many volts of electricity? It
is impossible to doubt it.
Shall a
mechanical experiment succeed
infallibly, and the one vital
experiment of humanity remain a
chance? Is corn to grow by
method, and character by caprice?
If we cannot calculate to a
certainty that the forces of
religion will do their work, then
is religion vain. And if we
cannot express the law of these
forces in simple words, then is
Christianity not the world’s
religion but the world’s
conundrum.
Where,
then, shall one look for such a
formula? Where one would look for
any formula—among the text
books.
And if we
turn to the text books of
Christianity we shall find a
formula for this problem as clear
and precise as any in the
mechanical sciences. If this
simple rule, moreover, be but
followed fearlessly, it will
yield the result of a perfect
character as surely as any result
that is guaranteed by the laws of
nature.
The finest
expression of this rule in
Scripture, or indeed in any
literature, is probably one drawn
up and condensed into a single
verse by Paul. You will find it
in a letter—the second to
the Corinthians—written by
him to some Christian people who,
in a city which was a byword for
depravity and licentiousness,
were seeking the higher life.
To see the
pointof the words we must take
them from the immensely improved
rendering of the Revised
translation, for the older
Version in this case greatly
obscures the sense. They are
these: “We all, with
unveiled face reflecting as a
mirror the glory of the Lord, are
transformed into the same image
from glory to glory, even as from
the Lord the
Spirit.”
Now observe
at the outset the entire
contradiction of all our previous
efforts, in the simple passive
“we are transformed.”
We are changed, as the Old
Version has it—we do not
change ourselves. No man can
change himself.
Throughout
the New Testament you will find
that wherever these moral and
spiritual transformations are
described the verbs are in the
passive. Presently it will be
pointed out that there is a
rationale in this; but meantime
do not toss these words aside as
if this passivity denied all
human effort or ignored
intelligible law.
What is
implied for the soul here is no
more than is everywhere claimed
for the body. In physiology the
verbs describing the processes of
growth are in the passive. Growth
is not voluntary; it takes place,
it happens, it is wrought upon
matter. So here. “Ye must be
born again” —we cannot
born ourselves. “Be not
conformed to this world but be ye
transformed”—we are
subjects to a transforming
influence, we do not transform
ourselves. Not more certain is it
that it is something outside the
thermometer that produces a
change in the thermometer, than
it is something outside the soul
of man that produces a moral
change upon him. That he must be
susceptible to that change, that
he must be a party to it, goes
without saying; but that neither
his aptitude nor his will can
produce it, is equally
certain.
Obvious as
it ought to seem, this may be to
some an almost startling
revelation.
The change
we have been striving after is
not to be produced by any more
striving after. It is to be
wrought upon us by the moulding
of hands beyond our own. As the
branch ascends, and the bud
bursts, and the fruit reddens
under the cooperation of
influences from the outside air,
so man rises to the higher
stature under invisible pressures
from without.
The radical
defect of all our former methods
of sanctification was the attempt
to generate from within that
which can only be wrought upon us
from without. According to the
first Law of Motion: Every body
continues in its state of rest,
or of uniform motion in a
straight line, except in so far
as it may be compelled by
impressed forces to change that
state. This is also a first law
of Christianity.
Every
man’s character remains as
it is, or continues in the
direction in which it is going,
until it is compelled by
impressed forces to change that
state. Our failure has been the
failure to put ourselves in the
way of the impressed forces.
There is a clay, and there is a
Potter; we have tried to get the
clay to mould the
clay.
Whence,
then, these pressures, and where
this Potter? The answer of the
formula is “By reflecting as
a mirror the glory of the Lord we
are changed.” But this is
not very clear. What is the
“glory” of the Lord,
and how can mortal man reflect
it, and how can that act as an
“impressed force” in
moulding him to a nobler form?
The word
“glory” —the word
which has to bear the weight of
holding those “impressed
forces” —is a stranger
in current speech, and our first
duty is to seek out its
equivalent in working English. It
suggests at first a radiance of
some kind, something dazzling or
glittering, some halo such as the
old masters loved to paint round
the heads of their Ecce Homos.
But that is
paint, mere matter, the visible
symbol of some unseen thing. What
is that unseen thing? It is that
of all unseen things, the most
radiant, the most beautiful, the
most Divine, and that is
Character. On earth, in Heaven,
there is nothing so great, so
glorious as this.
The word
has many meanings; in ethics it
can have but one. Glory is
character and nothing less, and
it can be nothing more. The earth
is “full of the Glory of the
Lord,” because it is full of
His character. The “Beauty
of the Lord” is character.
“The effulgence of His
Glory” is character.
“The Glory of the Only
Begotten” is character, the
character which is “fulness
of grace and truth.” And
when God told His people His name
He simply gave them His
character, His character which
was Himself. “And the Lord
proclaimed the Name of the Lord .
. . the Lord, the Lord God,
merciful and gracious,
long-suffering and abundant in
goodness and truth.”
Glory then
is not something intangible, or
ghostly, or transcendental. If it
were this, how could Paul ask men
to reflect it? Stripped of its
physical enswathement it is
Beauty, moral and spiritual
Beauty, Beauty infinitely real,
infinitely exalted, yet
infinitely near and infinitely
communicable.
With this
explanation read over the
sentence once more in paraphrase:
We all reflecting as a mirror the
character of Christ are
transformed into the same Image
from character to
character—from a poor
character to a better one, from a
better one to ane a little better
still, from that to one still
more complete, until by slow
degrees the Perfect Image is
attained.
Here the
solution of the problem of
sanctification is compressed into
a sentence: Reflect the character
of Christ and you will become
like Christ.
All men are
mirrors—that is the first
law on which this formula is
based. One of the aptest
descriptions of a human being is
that he is a mirror.
As we sat
at table tonight, the world in
which each of us lived and moved
throughout this day was focussed
in the room. What we saw as we
looked at one another was not one
another, but one mother’s
world. We were an arrangement of
mirrors. The scenes we saw were
all reproduced; the people we met
walked to and fro; they spoke,
they bowed, they passed us by,
did everything over again as if
it had been real. When we talked,
we were but looking at our own
mirror and describing what
flitted across it; our listening
was not hearing, but
seeing—we but looked on our
neighbour’s mirror.
All human
intercourse is a seeing of
reflections. I meet a stranger in
a railway carriage. The cadence
of his first word tells me he is
English, and comes from
Yorkshire. Without knowing it he
has reflected his birthplace, his
parents, and the long history of
their race.
Even
physiologically he is a mirror.
His second sentence records that
he is a politician, and a faint
inflexion in the way he
pronounces The Times reveals his
party. In his next remarks I see
reflected a whole world of
experiences. The books he has
read, the people he has met, the
influences that have played upon
him and made him the man he
is— these are all registered
there by a pen which lets nothing
pass, and whose writing can never
be blotted out.
What I am
reading in him meantime he also
is reading in me; and before the
journey is over we could half
write each other’s lives.
Whether we like it or not, we
live in glass houses. The mind,
the memory, the soul, is simply a
vast chamber panelled with
looking-glass.
And upon
this miraculous arrangement and
endowment depends the capacity of
mortal souls to “reflect the
character of the
Lord.”
But this is
not all. If all these varied
reflections from our so-called
secret life are patent to the
world, how close the writing, how
complete the record, within the
soul itself? For the influences
we meet are not simply held for a
moment on the polished surface
and thrown off again into space.
Each is retained where first it
fell, and stored up in the soul
for ever.
This law of
Assimilation is the second, and
by far the most impressive truth
which underlies the formula of
sanctification—the truth
that men are not only mirrors,
but that these mirrors so far
from being mere reflectors of the
fleeting things they see,
transfer into their own inmost
substance, and hold in permanent
preservation the things that they
reflect.
No one
knows how the soul can hold these
things. No one knows how the
miracle is done. No phenomenon in
nature, no process in chemistry,
no chapter in necromancy can even
help us to begin to understand
this amazing operation. For,
think of it, the past is not only
focussed there, in a man’s
soul, it is there. How could it
be reflected from there if it
were not there?
All things
that he has ever seen, known,
felt, believed of the surrounding
world are now within him, have
become part of him, in part are
him—he has been changed into
their image. He may deny it, he
may resent it, but they are
there. They do not adhere to him,
they are transfused through him.
He cannot
alter or rub them out. They are
not in his memory, they are in
him. His soul is as they have
filled it, made it, left it.
These things, these books, these
events, these influences are his
makers. In their hands are life
and death, beauty and deformity.
When once the image or likeness
of any of these is fairly
presented to the soul, no power
on earth can hinder two things
happening—it must be
absorbed into the soul, and for
ever reflected back again from
character.
Upon these
astounding yet perfectly obvious
psychological facts, Paul bases
his doctrine of sanctification.
He sees
that character is a thing built
up by slow degrees, that it is
hourly changing for better or for
worse according to the images
which flit across it.
One step
further and the whole length and
breadth of the application of
these ideas to the central
problem of religion will stand
before us.
Christian
books
|
