Growth

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.—2 Peter 3:18.

1. Throughout the New Testament Christian character is regarded as a growth. Sometimes the growth is architectural—the growth of the building; sometimes it is physiological, Christ being the head, and we growing up into Him in all things; sometimes it is generic growth, as in the case of the vine which brings forth more and more fruit under pruning and culture. The idea of a developing life runs through the whole New Testament, and has every variety of exemplification.

The capacity of growth is that which, more than anything else, distinguishes one mind from another.1 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 27.]

2. Here we are told to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Now the text does not mean, grow into the grace, or into the knowledge. It means, being in grace—grow; being in knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ—grow. That is clear when we read 2 Peter 3:17 as well as 2 Peter 3:18. “Ye therefore, beloved, knowing these things beforehand, beware lest, being carried away with the error of the wicked, ye fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” “Beware lest ye fall,” that is the negative command. The positive command is, “Knowing these things … grow in the grace and knowledge.” You are in the grace, in the knowledge! Grow!

The figure is that of infancy advancing to the full stature of manhood. The gods of the ancients were born full-grown. Minerva is said to have sprung all armed and panoplied from the forehead of Jove. But Christians begin as babes in Christ and advance through certain conditions of normal growth to the “measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

You hold in your hand a “corn of wheat,” and you know there are in that seed untold possibilities. It is planted, it germinates, rises from the tomb of darkness to the light of day, and steadily advances to golden fruitfulness. There is first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. By culture you draw out the mysterious forces of the seed, call to higher energy its potencies of life, and so bring the seed to fuller manifestation of its latent and dormant powers. So the soul is a seed of undeveloped possibilities. There are in it high powers and faculties, mysterious and immeasurable energies of life, that may be developed, but may remain in the germ, may lie unawakened, or may be irregularly or only imperfectly developed. In the soul there are wonderful possibilities of aspiration and humility, of courage and faith, of wisdom and prayerfulness, of holiness and service; and the education of the soul means the calling forth by judicious culture of all these various powers and qualities to their harmonious and effective operation and co-operation. In this way the soul comes to itself, to blessed self-realization.

I

The Kind of Growth Commended

“Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour” These are the qualities in which we are to grow. They are the starting-point and goal of the Christian life. They are exhibited in their fulness in Jesus Christ, and if we are vitally united to Him we shall grow into His likeness.

1. What is grace? The root of the Greek word is a verb which means to rejoice, or be glad. Grace is that which makes the heart glad with pure gladness; the grace of God, the grace of Jesus, is the graciousness, the gentleness, the harmony of life in God and in His Son. You speak to a graceful person—you cannot define the grace that is in him; but it is something which gives more than satisfaction, it gives pleasure; you recognize a spiritual thing even when you see it in the human form, yet more when you see it in the gracious acts of one man or one woman towards another. There is harmony between the being of the one and the being of the other—the recognition by the one of the same nature and the same needs in the other; and the same readiness to be met, to be pleased, or to be hurt; to be sorrowful or glad; the submission of the one nature to the demands of the other nature—that is grace, that is graciousness.

We have, first, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the undeserved love and favour which God in Jesus Christ bears to us sinful and inferior creatures; and, next, we have the consequence of that love and favour in the manifold spiritual endowments which in us become “graces,” beauties and excellences of Christian character. So, then, one who is a Christian ought to be continually realizing a deeper and more blessed consciousness of Christ’s love and favour and manifesting it in his life.

Thus the word “grace” sums up the manifold Divine gifts, gifts of the grace of God—the gift of holiness, the gift of love to God and love to man, the gift of spiritual energy. All the blossoming aspirations, all the budding spiritual hopes, all the ripening fruits of holy endeavour are due to the Divine life within, are through the grace of God in Christ. As the sun shines forth in his radiant strength, thaws the frozen earth, and causes the seed to spring up, the leaves and fruit to appear, so when the sun of God’s grace shines upon the soul, then in the soul will increasingly appear those graces that are an image, however faint, of the Divine grace; and holiness and righteousness and love will “grow from more to more,” manifesting themselves in purer beauty, richer fruitfulness, and nobler power.

By grace Jansen simply meant the birth of a religious sense. This may be strong, or it may be weak; but even its humblest forms are enough to distinguish him who has it from those who have it not—to draw all his actions into a new perspective, and put a different colouring on all his thoughts. In other words, it involves a radical change of character; and, as such a change is beyond man’s power to effect, grace must descend upon him like a whirlwind—as once it descended on Jansen’s two spiritual heroes, St. Augustine and St. Paul—and draw his will “irresistibly, unfailingly, victoriously,” out of darkness into light.1 [Note: Viscount St. Cyres, Pascal, 84.]

The Rev. Adam Lind, minister of the United Presbyterian Church, Elgin, writes: “For some time after coming to Elgin, Brownlow North lived in great retirement, deeply engrossed with his Bible, and abounding in private prayer. I saw him occasionally, and had ample opportunities of observing the workings of his mind; and the mark of true grace which struck me first in his case was the spirit of profound humility, penitence, and adoring gratitude. He seemed like one unable to get out of the region of wonder and amazement at the sovereign kindness of that benignant Being who had borne with him so long in his sin, and such sin, and so much sin; and not only borne with him, but shielded him, and held him back from self-ruin, at length arresting him in his career of folly and wickedness, and bringing him to Himself, a pardoned penitent, a returned prodigal.”1 [Note: K. Moody-Stuart, Brownlow North, 38.]

The grace of God in the heart of man very soon betrays its presence. It is the imparting to the soul of the mind of Christ, which desires the welfare of our brother as well as the glory of our God. In its own nature it is expansive and communicative. It is like light, whose property it is to shine; like salt, whose nature it is to communicate to foreign substances its saltness; like seed, which ever seeks to reproduce itself; like water, which, descending from above into an earthly heart, becomes therein a well of water springing up to everlasting life. These are not accidents; they are essential properties of grace wherever found. The soul that was dead, when made alive is made a new centre, source, and spring of life amid a world of death. Christians are this world’s light amid its night, and this world’s salt amid its putrefaction, and this world’s springs of living water in its wastes of barrenness, and the seed which yet shall fill the world’s face with its fruit. Life loves to work, and where there is no work there is no life, or only weak and dying life.2 [Note: Ibid. 49.]

2. What does the knowledge of Christ mean? The knowledge of Christ means such a sympathetic entering into the springs and motive forces of His life as shall, by its gradual increase, lead us into the perfection of spiritual life.

To know more of Jesus is to know more of God and more of life in its relations to Him. Many religions that have not Christ in them have given their followers a caricature of God. The life of Jesus is a reflection of God. And it is by knowing more of Him that we learn what things God approves—what spirit on our part, and what actions. We cannot make right advancement towards the ideal life, unless we gain more and more knowledge of Him whose character is ideal, and whose gospel is constructive in the highest sense.

To know Christ is thus to know God truly; it is to recognize His hand in all the dispensations of Providence, to know Him in His works, to read His handwriting in the fabric of the earth and the heavens, to feel His love in His dealings with us, to imprint His love upon our hearts by translating it into love for man also; and then in the spirit of this double love to examine ourselves, and learn to understand the intricacies of our own heart; to discover, and without weariness to combat, its selfishness and lurking pride; day by day, and hour after hour, to labour without ceasing for the expulsion of its envyings, jealousies, and sensual lusts; to get the mastery over the tongue, the eyes, the ears; to subdue sloth, peevishness, and anger; in forgetfulness of self, to serve our neighbour with real interest and ardour; and finally to order all our domestic concerns and cares with painstaking devotion to God’s holy will.

I stand with a great artist before a famous picture. I make bold, in my ignorance of art, to confess that I can see nothing extraordinary in it at all. “What,” exclaims my companion, somewhat indignantly but with great enthusiasm, “don’t you observe the splendid manipulation,” and he launches forth into a glowing analysis of the picture before us. While he is explaining I can discern more clearly than I did before what made the picture famous in the eyes of others, but yet at the close I have to exclaim, “Well, my friend, I have no doubt I would speak as you have done if I had your eyes, but I confess I don’t see what makes you so enthusiastic. I should much like, however, to possess your knowledge and enthusiasm, and shall be glad if you will only show me how.” “There is only one way of possessing the knowledge,” replies my companion; “you must begin to learn the first elements of drawing and colouring, and as you make progress in the acquisition of the art of painting you will know.” Without striving to grow in the graces of the painter’s pencil, you will never understand the feelings of the painter himself.1 [Note: W. Skinner.]

II

The Naturalness of Growth

1. Growth is dependent upon life and health. Grant these conditions, and it follows naturally and without effort. If these be absent there can be no growth.

(1) It is dependent on life.—We may sometimes use the word somewhat carelessly in relation to matters which are devoid of life, but, strictly speaking, it always indicates the presence of life. Boys at their play in winter-time will take a small snowball, and, rolling it in the snow, will watch it becoming larger and larger, until one boy says, See how it grows! No, it is not growing. That is not growth. That is enlargement by accretion from without. Growth is enlargement by development from within. The principle of life is necessary to growth. When the Apostle charges us in his Epistle to “grow in grace” he presupposes the presence of life, and it is of the utmost importance that we emphasize that fact. There can be no growth in Christian character save where the Christ-life exists. The man who is born anew can grow in grace. The man who has not received the gift of life cannot grow. Growth in grace is not the result of the imitation of Christ in the power of the human will. It is the result of the propelling force of the Christ-life in the soul.

(2) If growth is dependent on life it is equally dependent upon health.—Wherever there is arrest of development in the Christian life it is due to the fact that the life principle of Jesus Christ is not active and dominant. Some part of the life—the intellect, the emotion, the will, the chamber of the imagination, the palace of the affection, or the seat of thought—is not wholly handed over to the indwelling Christ, is not answering the call of His life, is not responding to its claims. The tides of that life are excluded from some part of the being, and the result is spiritual disease. The spiritual faculties become atrophied. They cannot work. Then follows arrest of development. But granted the full rushing tide of the Christ-life in all the departments of the believer’s life, granted the presence and dominance of that life in all the complex mystery of his being, then he is in health, and his growth is steady and sure.

I saw an uncommon instance both of the justice and mercy of God. Abraham Jones, a serious, thinking man, about fifty years of age, was one of the first members of the society in London, and an early witness of the power of God to forgive sins. He then stood as a pillar for several years, and was a blessing to all that were round about him, till growing wise in his own eyes, he saw this and the other person wrong, and was almost continually offended. He then grew colder and colder, till, at length, in order to renew his friendship with the world, he went (which he had refused to do for many years) to a parish feast, and stayed there till midnight. Returning home perfectly sober, just by his own door he fell down and broke his leg. When the surgeon came he found the bone so shattered in pieces that it could not be set. Then it was, when he perceived he could not live, that the terrors of the Lord again came about him. I found him in great darkness of soul, owning the just hand of God. We prayed for him, in full confidence that God would return. And He did in part reveal Himself again; he had many gleams of hope and love, till, in two or three days, his soul was required of him.

So awful a providence was immediately known to all the society, and contributed not a little to the awakening them that slept, and stirring up those that were faint in their mind.1 [Note: The Journal of John Wesley (Standard Edition), iii. 449.]

2. Growth is spontaneous; it does not come by anxiety or effort. A doctor has no prescription for growth. He can tell you how growth may be stunted or impaired, but the process itself is recognized as beyond control—one of the few, and therefore very significant, things which Nature keeps in her own hands. No physician of souls, in like manner, has any prescription for spiritual growth. It is the question he is most often asked and most often answers wrongly. He may prescribe more earnestness, more prayer, more self-denial, or more Christian work. These are prescriptions for something, but not for growth. Not that they may not encourage growth; but the soul grows as the lily grows, without trying, without fretting, without ever thinking.

I remember, ten years ago, when I first set my face to the other side of the sea, my boy, six years of age, said to me as he bade me good-bye, “How long shall you be away?” I told him two months. He said, “I am going to try hard to grow as big as you are before you come back.” I am not sure that he tried. I suspect he forgot, as children do so blessedly forget their follies. But if he did try, he did not succeed. No child grows by effort. No man “by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature.” Growth in Christian stature is never the result of effort. Granted life and holiness, then there will be growth and development.2 [Note: G. Campbell Morgan, The Simple Things of the Christian Life, 58.]

Much work is done on board a ship crossing the Atlantic. Yet none of it is spent on making the ship go. The sailor but harnesses his vessel to the wind. He puts his sail and rudder in position, and lo, the miracle is wrought. So everywhere God creates, man utilizes. All the work of the world is merely a taking advantage of energies already there. God gives the wind, and the water, and the heat; man but puts himself in the way of the wind, fixes his water-wheel in the way of the river, puts his piston in the way of the steam; and so holding himself in position before God’s Spirit, all the energies of Omnipotence course within his soul. He is like a tree planted by a river whose leaf is green and whose fruits fail not.1 [Note: H. Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 140.]

3. And yet this growth is commanded. The will is involved. And the fact that it is a command teaches us that we are not to take this one metaphor as if it exhausted the whole of the facts of the case in reference to Christian progress. You would never think of telling a child to grow any more than you would think of telling a plant to grow, but Peter does tell Christian men and women to grow. Why? Because they are not plants, but men with wills which can resist, and can either further or hinder their progress.

Lo! in the middle of the wood,

The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud,

and there

Grows green and broad, and takes no care.

But that is not how we grow. The desire of the soul to be like Christ, the constant longing to imitate Him, the imagination ever picturing Him, the emotions ever clinging to Him, the will ever gladly obedient to Him—all this if cherished must naturally and inevitably lead to Christian growth. We can resolve to wish and long for an object until it becomes in us the supreme, uncontrollable desire, a mighty and commanding passion, a passion which, like Aaron’s rod, shall swallow up all competitors; and when Christ is that object—a living, present Christ—then we easily and gladly declare: “I do not live, Christ lives in me”; “I count all things but loss that I may know Him and be like Him.” Any man can form the wish and cherish the desire, for the Holy Fire ever waits to kindle each living soul. And we can either try to make the spark burn, or we can put it out, or let it die.

Two children resolved to share the night between them in watching by a mother’s sick-bed. The command to each of them was most imperative: whatever else they did they were not to let the fire go out, and not to make the room too heated; life depended on their watchful obedience; ample fuel was close by for each. The first, a thoughtful, loving nature, watched and fed that fire with unsleeping vigilance. The second made the fire up once, and with morning light slept, neglected it, and let it go out, with a fatal issue. Your heart is the hearth, prepared to receive the Holy Fire; the fuel is abundant; the command is imperative that you feed life’s spiritual flame and force. Neglect, want of interest, or unsuitable fuel are the secret of life’s spiritual coldness, poverty, and death.1 [Note: R. H. Lovell, First Types of the Christian Life, 271.]

4. Growth is of course a gradual process. The great change from sin to righteousness is not the work of a day, but the slow and patient process of a lifetime. There may seem to be no progress as measured by the eye; but the soul comes to its maturity as the babe becomes a man—fed and furthered by the experience of the moment, and helped by the grace of God to grow.

What does moral perfection begin in? It begins in the disposition, in the will, in the heart. If you are urged to escape from polar winter, with its ice, and snow, and frost, and barrenness, to tropical summer, with its warmth, and flowers, and geniality, and luxuriance, is it meant that you are to accomplish the journey at one long stride, or that it is to be completed step by step, little by little? When a child is required to become perfect as a musician, is it intended that in one day his uncrafty fingers shall liberate the angel-strains that are jailed in the musical instrument? Or is it meant that he shall master the gamut, and grope his way through the scale, and gently touch the unknown notes to ascertain, as if by a whisper, whether they are the strains of which he is in quest, and proceed with all diligence and zeal until the instrument shall tell all its secrets, and shake with many-voiced delight at the touch of his friendly hand? Were you to tell an acorn to become perfect as an oak, would you mean that all the growing was to be completed in a night, or that the development was to proceed gradually, unfolding branch after branch, bud after bud, leaf after leaf, till it became a great cathedral-tree, in which the feathered choristers should pour out their songs in the hearing of God? It is even so with our Saviour. When He tells us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, He means that we are to grow in grace; we are to “press toward the mark”; we are to set our faces toward the holy temple.1 [Note: J. Parker.]

While coarse growths are apt to be rapid, all fine growths are apt to be slow, and come up through a long process of ministration and development. The reed grows, as it were, in a day; but the sweetest things in my garden weary me with the tardiness of their maturing. The warmth of many suns must wait on them, and the moisture of many tranquil nights must coax them, before they feel bold enough to expose their inner life to the gaze of sun and stars, or the touch of the gentle winds. So it is with soul life. No one day answers for its growth. No single benefaction, coming with swift and sudden motion, matures it. It groweth after the growth of one that hath all eternity to grow in. The food on which it feeds comes to its mouth, not as by the hand of a special gift, but by the hand of a provision furnished by a benevolence which is general and for ever attentive. My soul takes of God’s ministrations by grace, as my body takes of His administrations by nature. I know that while the body lasts nature will feed it. I know that while my soul endures God’s grace shall supply its every need. I ask no more for my garden than that the sun shall continue to shine.2 [Note: W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit, 301.]

5. We cannot lay down any fixed and rigid rule for the order of this growth. We may not say, for instance, that in every case the new life begins with contrition, and then passes through faith and assurance of forgiveness to perfect peace. No such rigid and uniform rule as this is laid down in Scripture. We may as well say beforehand in what order the leaves in spring should burst out upon the budding trees. In every true child of God all the phases of spiritual life will surely display themselves, but not all in the same order. In some the new life may begin in tears and agonies of sorrow, and pass on into smiles of joy and peace; in others it may begin in quiet and peaceful trust and happy service, to be disturbed, it may be ere long, with deep contrition for sin, begotten not of fear but of love. It is the height of presumption to attempt to limit the manner of the Spirit’s working, or to judge of His presence by any other test than the presence of the work of the Spirit, the conformity to the image of Christ. Whereever there is a Christ-like soul, there is Christ and the Spirit of Christ; wherever there is not this likeness, then, be the feeling or emotion ever so strong, or ever so strictly according to the prescribed rule, there Christ is not.

Life claims freedom; true freedom is life true to itself and its source. Every generation of men, like every year in nature, has its own independent characteristics. Every generation likes to hear its own accent; to hold up its own “earthen vessel” for the blessing which comes from above; to see the truth with its own eyes, and tell the vision in its own way. But the great facts contained in the message, and in those who receive it, are identical from year to year—human sin that has to be repented of, and Divine grace that is to be thankfully taken. There is nothing creative in the varying dialectics of the generations. It is faith that, in its essence, cannot alter which brings the power from God. Reason merely sifts and sorts: it has no originality, no creative power. What served Dr. Kidd’s generation must serve ours. Nature is permanent in its principles and forces, though its aspects vary: so is Grace.1 [Note: J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 94.]

No harsh transitions Nature knows,

No dreary spaces intervene;

Her work in silence forward goes,

And rather felt than seen:

For where the watcher, who with eye

Turned eastward, yet could ever say

When the faint glooming in the sky

First lightened into day?

And happy, happy shalt thou be,

If from this hour with just increase

All good things shall grow up in thee,

By such unmarked degrees;

For the full graces of thy prime

Shall, in their weak beginnings, be

Lost in an unremembered time

Of holy infancy.2 [Note: Trench, Poems, 23.]

III

The Requisites of Growth

1. The first requisite of growth is vital force.—A plant cannot grow unless it is rooted in its native element. Many plants get all their food from the air, through leaf and branch, and yet if you cut the root the plant withers and dies, not for the want of food, but for want of that living touch with the ground by which it receives its power to live. What that vital force is no one knows; we know some of its conditions and limitations, but the thing itself is mysterious as life. There is a force that makes life beautiful and death repulsive, a force that leaves a man’s body when the beating of the heart stops, a force that we cannot see, weigh, or detect, and yet is real and mighty in our being. For want of a more defining term we, in our ignorance, call it vital force. Now, in the plant this vital force seems to find its store or reservoir in the root. The moment the root is disturbed the plant shows less of vitality and beauty, droops, fades, withers. The health of the root is the health of this force.

More than even feeding on Christ, more than appropriating His qualities, is the soul’s living touch of the living Christ. We are deeply conscious of the force and stimulus of some people’s presence; we can speak better when they are present to listen; we do our best and beyond it—we “excel ourselves”—when they praise us; we feel helped to goodness and lowered to badness by some personal associations. But the true Christian man knows that far more than any human presence his spirit is sensitive to Christ’s personality.

In all soils, earths, and rocks there are certain salts, which are as necessary to the life of the plant as iron is necessary to our blood. To get these salts out of the earth and to get them into the plant is the work the root has to perform. To do this it is furnished with a number of little fine wavy rootlets; these are the subtle tongues of the root, by which it first tastes, and then separates and eats the diet on which its life, and the plant’s, depends. When these are eaten the root performs another function; it does not always at once send all the nourishment up into the plant; it is eminently a wise and thrifty housekeeper; it stores up the nourishment, as in the bulb of crocus or hyacinth, or as in the radish, or carrot, or potato, and so the root becomes a storehouse or refuge to feed the little plant in its infancy, and to protect it in bad and barren times if they should come. All this work of eating is done, not by the great thick roots, but by the little delicate wavy tips; they choose, they appropriate, they convey, and their choice it is which gives the varied autumn tints to the separate trees.1 [Note: R. H. Lovell, First Types of the Christian life, 260.]

There is a secret down in my heart

That nobody’s eye can see;

In the world’s great plan it has no part,

But it makes my world to me.

The stars regardless have onward rolled,

But they owe my secret half their gold.

It lies so low, so low in my breast,

At the foot of all else ’tis found;

To all other things it is the rest,

And it makes their fruit abound;

By the breath of its native life it lives,

It shines alone by the light it gives.

It fills my heart and it fills my life

With a glory of source unseen,

It makes me calm in the midst of strife,

And in winter my heart is green.

For the birds of promise sing in my tree

When the storm is breaking on land and sea.

2. The second requisite of growth is suitable food.—The waste and wear of the Christian life must be constantly repaired. Nor can it be repaired in public assembly or in seasons of religious fervour. Then and there you get the stimulus for repair, advice for repair, but the growth-processes are in quiet, in unseen meditation, and in more delicate and minute operations; they are eminently personal. Faith sometimes loses its force and realness, love loses its fire, our ideals become commonplace, our energy decreases, our enthusiasm wanes, our aspiration becomes dulled, our spiritual taste loses its piquancy, and our appetite becomes cloyed. Now the food necessary to remedy this is simply Christ, and only Christ. He alone can re-inspire ideals, re-create taste, nourish energy, fire love, make faith real, stimulate appetite. The personality and love of the living Christ are the only food of the Spirit’s more sensitive roots. In a word, we live in Him, and the measure in which He nourishes us is at once the measure of our health, our strength, and our life.

This food never grows stale. The soul drives the spiral of its ascent upward into eternity, not by reason of strength derived from the gross food of the earth, but as that strange bird of which the mystics tell, whose food was grown for it in the air, and on which it feasted as it flew, developing strength for motion, and finding food ever more plentiful to its mouth as it soared. So the soul finds on the crest of every moral altitude it reaches food prepared for its hunger, eats of it, and then moves upward to a loftier height—knowing that, on that farther crest, there too it shall find provision waiting for it.1 [Note: W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit, 303.]

Where do we find Christ? First and foremost in the Bible. Our staple sustenance is therefore to be derived from the Word of God. No other means of growth can take the place of this. We can no more develop Christian character by service without study of the Word and without prayer than we can make the thundering locomotive run along the track unless we feed its fires. We cannot live by work in the physical realm unless we have proper food. And to feed our soul we must not only read the Word and study the Word, hut yield our whole life to the claim of the Word.

3. But for the soul’s health there is also needed the vigorous and active use of all our powers.—Disuse and decay are as clearly connected in the one as in the other. The grace which we do not exercise, like the limb we never use, or the faculty we never exert, withers and dies at last. The duties that are appointed us are not arbitrarily chosen, they are each of them designed to exercise and strengthen some one or other spiritual faculty. And the neglect of any one of these can never be compensated by any additional activity in the performance of any other; we can never omit any one of these without injuring and weakening some corresponding grace, without making our Christian character one-sided and distorted, and therefore weak and sickly. Every talent is to be accounted for.

It was Jenny Lind’s intense conviction that her art was a gift of God, to be dedicated to His service. This belief was continually on her lips. “I have always put God first,” she said, during her last days. It was this which you could feel in her pose, as she stood high-strung and prophetic, to deliver a great theme, such as “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” It was this which was the key to her superb generosity to the sick and the suffering; she was fulfilling her consecrated office towards them. It was this which sent her voice thrilling along the wards of the Brompton Hospital, where she loved to sing to those for whom she had herself built a whole wing. It was this which kindled all her enthusiasm for Mlle. Janotha, in whom she found a kindred mind—Janotha who had said to her (she told me), “What is this ‘world’ of which people speak? I do not know what’ the world’ is. I play for Jesus Christ.”1 [Note: H. Scott Holland, Personal Studies, 21.]

4. Finally, all growth has its periods of rest.—Trees and plants grow downward first, then horizontally for awhile, and then laterally; then the horizontal and lateral periods succeed each other regularly until the fulness is reached. So Christian growth needs silence, obscurity, and regular periods of rest, periods for broadening, for strengthening, for ripening, for shadowing the growths that have already been made. All living things here need sleep, and even our spirits have their periods of rest. This rest is the outcome of trust in God. The active energetic follower of Christ is in danger of becoming irritated and irritating. The remedy is trust.

A letter to S. S., 1861, touches artistic ways and means: “As I was going to bed I thought of the straitness of my income, and the wants of the family, and the possibilities of the future; and, for a time, felt faithless and unbelieving. But my mind turned to God, and I thought of the unchangeable love which has led me, and fed me, and delivered me from all evil, and forgiven me, and made me happy; so that in spite of a fearful heart, and an uncertain tenure, and a host of evils within and without, life is really a joyful thing. And what God has done for me, who began life with nothing, not even godliness, He can do for my children. And so I lay down quite light-hearted and free from all anxious care; and with a breeze of thankfulness and praise blowing through the avenues of my soul.”2 [Note: James Smetham, 122.]

IV

The Direction of Growth

1. The direction of Christian growth is upward. It is towards Jesus Christ. “Unto each one of us was the grace given that we may grow up in all things into him, which is the head, even Christ.” Where life from God, through full obedience, is received by a soul, that soul is day by day, hour by hour, yea, moment by moment, growing into the likeness of the Son of God. When, by God’s grace, we reach the perfection of consummation, when we have done with the bud of promise and the blossom of hope, and have come to the fruitage of realization, what will that final glory be? The psalmist had a fore-glimpse of it when he said, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.” The Apostle John saw it even more clearly, “Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is.” The consummation of Christian character is perfect approximation to the character of Jesus Christ. We shall have reached the fruitage of Christian life when we see Him, and when we are like Him. Growth into His likeness, then, is the line of Christian development.

And so all growth that is not toward God

Is growing to decay. All increase gained

Is but an ugly, earthy, fungous growth.

’Tis aspiration as that wick aspires,

Towering above the light it overcomes,

But ever sinking with the dying flame.1 [Note: George MacDonald, Poetical Works, i. 13.]

2. There is a growth downward, that is, growth in the knowledge of our own hearts. “Study thyself;” for if you would educate the soul, you cannot wisely or efficiently do so unless you not only look but dwell within, and so come to learn what you truly are, and what you may yet become. Says Coleridge: “It is the advice of the wise man, dwell at home, or with yourself, though there are very few that do this; yet it is surprising that the greatest part of mankind cannot be prevailed upon at least to visit themselves sometimes.”

A man once bought a barometer under a mistaken idea of its purpose, and then complained that he could not see that it had made any improvement in the weather. The spiritual barometer of self-examination may not directly improve the weather, but may show what the spiritual weather is. It helps one to obey the old Delphic oracle, “Know thyself.”2 [Note: The Treasury, May 1902, p. 82.]

3. There is a growth outward. The man who does something for others does something for himself. If he is freezing and obeys an impulse to keep another man from freezing, the warmth which he generates reacts upon himself. Exercise is not only expenditure but accretion. As the pendulum swings out only to travel back on the same arc, so the force which goes out in exercise comes back in the form of strengthened fibre. So is it also in the realm of intellect and the domain of soul. Expenditure is followed by enrichment. One gives out the treasures of his mind, only to find that clearer perception and more facile diction are the result of his effort, and he can do better the second time because he has been aided by his first attempt. The soul grows by virtue of every effort to do good. And altruism means not only the blessing of mankind but also the evolution of character.

For three months Mrs. Sellar, my husband’s mother, lay in her room, her bodily powers gradually failing, but nothing clouding her mind nor weakening her immense power of loving.

Except Robert, the Australian, all her sons were in this country at this time. They all came and went constantly to see her: the best-beloved, Johnnie, came down twice a week from London to be with her. Though she could not eat much, it was a pleasure to him to bring all kinds of little comforts to her. And she who counted that day lost in which she had given nothing, was always touched and surprised by gifts bestowed on herself. Once he brought her down a beautiful soft grey dressing-gown, and the first time she had it on I happened to slip unseen into the room. He was sitting beside her, and she was stroking his hand, saying, “My dear Johnnie, my bonnie boy”; and then, with a funny little touch of humour she added, “Would it be profane to say, ‘Thou hast warmed me, clothed and fed me’?”1 [Note: Mrs. Sellar, Recollections and Impressions, 234.]

V

The Tests of Growth

1. One test of growth is a warmer and more unselfish love.—As our knowledge of Christ becomes more intimate we love Him for what He is in Himself, and not so much for what He has done. The latter is not free from a taint of selfishness. It is one thing for me to be intensely grateful to the man who pulls me out of the fire, but it is another thing to love him as a man, apart from his act. I must be often with him first, and learn what manner of spirit he is of, before I can be said to love him. Applying this test to Christ, do I love Him most because He is the incarnation of virtue and goodness? Then is my love not altogether unworthy of Him. It has, at any rate, lost the alloy of impulse and selfishness, so apt to spoil the most precious ore of the heart.

I believe that if we were like Christ even the wild beasts of our woods and fields would flee to us for refuge and deliverance; and man must be in the world as He was in the world, and then the world will blossom around him with all God’s meanings, and not merely with men’s sayings. We shall grow in the graciousness and in the knowledge of the Lord Christ until we ourselves are blessed with the same joy with which Christ was blessed, until we are glad with the eternal gladness of the eternal God. And less than that Christ would not have died for, less than that could be wrought at less expense.1 [Note: George MacDonald.]

2. Another test of growth is what we outgrow.—Bring me the coat I wore as a boy at school, and let me try it on; I shall soon discover whether I have grown. Bring me the essays I wrote at eighteen, and let me read them; I shall soon be able to tell you whether my mind has grown. So I like to go back over my older views of God, my ideas and wants as to communion with Him, my previous felt need of Him and joy in Him, and when I know how I think of Him, need Him, talk to Him, walk with Him now, I can soon see if the old spiritual garments of twenty years ago would fit now, or are too small.

In some of our houses there are little faded marks on the walls or door-posts, where the children when they were growing stood to have their height registered; but now that they have done growing the marks are neglected. Is there in your life any experience like this? You used to be anxious about your spiritual condition; are you now, or are these matters only a faded memory? Have you of late grown spiritually? When will you reach the measure of the stature of a perfect man in Christ?2 [Note: R. H. Lovell, First Types of the Christian Life, 281.]

Away in the hills at Candy in Ceylon there is a great artificial lake, round the edge of which palm-trees of a certain kind are planted. Look at the trunk of one of the trees. You see the bark is covered with rings, one above another, from the roots to the very top of the tree. Every ring represents a year; and so from the number of the rings I can tell the age of the tree. Now, it is not quite so easy as that to mark your growth in grace. It is true, however, that very often the face bears traces of the growing goodness within. But when a man grows out of old, doubtful friendships, when he grows out of old habits that were not lovely—habits of idleness, impatience, exaggeration, spitefulness, deceit, pettishness—then I know that man is growing in grace.1 [Note: A. A. Cooper, God’s Forget-me-not, 44.]

When passing southward, I may cross the line

Between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans,

I may now know, by any test of mine,

By any startling signs or strange commotions

Across my track.

But if the days grow sweeter, one by one,

And e’en the icebergs melt their hardened faces,

And sailors linger, basking in the sun,

I know I must have made the change of places,

Some distance back.

When, answering timidly the Master’s call,

I passed the bourne of life in coming to Him,

When in my love for Him I gave up all;

The very moment when I thought I knew Him,

I cannot tell.

But, as unceasingly I feel His love;

As this cold heart is melted to o’erflowing,

As now so clear the light comes from above,

I wonder at the change, and pass on, knowing

That all is well.

3. Another test of growth is power to resist temptation.—They say that the sea has welded together by its continuous action the stones that form Plymouth Breakwater. When first they were tipped into the ocean, and each was a separate stone, the ocean might have carried them away; but now the waters have compacted them into a solid mass that nothing can move. Change the figure: a newly planted young tree a boy may root up; no man can root up the oak that has grown for fifty years. Growth so roots us and grounds us that storms which would once have caused us terror come only as music.

Principal Rainy’s son, the late Mr. Rolland Rainy, M.P., once said that he never saw his father out of temper, never even momentarily perturbed during the appalling troubles through which the Free Church was called to pass when the decision of the House of Lords threatened to ruin her. “How do you manage to control yourself?” he asked the Principal one day; “do you know, I never remember seeing you bursting into a passion?” “My son,” was the reply, “I once lost my temper atrociously in public, and I made such a fool of myself and did such damage to the cause which I represented that I resolved, for my own soul’s sake and for Christ’s sake, never again to commit such folly and sin; and I prayed the Lord to help me to keep my vow. By His grace I have been able to set a watch before the door of my lips.”1 [Note: British Weekly.]

4. But there is no test of growth so easily applied as beauty of character.—It is a test which we ourselves may not be able to apply; its very existence is dependent on our unconsciousness of its existence. But it is the test beyond every other which others apply to us. And it is the most conclusive.

Some years ago, a member of one of my former congregations, a Christian woman of refinement and of great consecration, went to stay in the home of her sister in the country, where she had not stayed for many years. Her sister was a woman of the world, engrossed in worldly pleasures and interests. When my friend was leaving the home, after a stay of two weeks, her sister, taking her by the hand, and looking into her face, said, “I do not understand your religion, but I will tell you one thing; it has made you far easier to live with.”2 [Note: G. Campbell Morgan, The Simple Things of the Christian Life, 63.]

Liddon had that which we call “distinction.” You might agree with him, or not agree; you might criticize and discuss his gifts; but, anyhow, he had the quality of speciality. In any roomful of men, his presence was felt with a distinct and rare impression. If he let himself speak, his voice, manner, style, articulation, arrested you; you wanted to listen to him, whoever else was speaking; his phrases, his expressions, caught your ear. Here was somebody notable; so you knew. He stood out from his fellows; there was a flavour in his company which was unique. And this impression is one which belonged to character; it was not the result of any particular and separate gift, but it made itself known through them all.3 [Note: H. Scott Holland, Personal Studies, 140.]

Growth

Literature

Bruce (J.), Sermons, 238.

Burrell (D. J.), The Spirit of the Age, 163.

Cooper (A. A.), God’s Forget-me-not, 41.

Girdlestone (A. G.), The Way, the Truth, the Life, No. 13.

Hare (A. W.), The Alton Sermons, 31.

Horne (C. S.), The Rock of Ages, 27.

Lovell (R. H.), First Types of the Christian Life, 286.

Maclaren (A.), Creed and Conduct, 192.

Magee (W. C.), Growth in Grace, 1.

Morgan (G. C.), The Simple Things of the Christian Life, 53.

Murray (W. H.), The Fruits of the Spirit, 301.

Pierce (C. C.), The Hunger of the Heart for Faith, 111.

Ryle (J. C.), Holiness.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, viii. (1862) 1.

Stanley (A. P.), Addresses and Sermons in St. Andrews, 136.

Steel (T. H.), Sermons in Harrow Chapel, 117.

Troup (G. E.), Words to Young Christians, 69.

Williams (T. Ll.), Thy Kingdom Come, 42.

Christian World Pulpit, viii. 27 (Beecher); xiii. 116 (Skinner); xxviii. 344 (Macdonald); xxx. 298 (Beecher); xxxiv. 45 (Tymms); xlv. 236 (Stewart).

Church Pulpit Year Book, ix. (1912) 239.

Homiletic Review, li. 222 (Burgwin); liii. 380 (Webb-Peploe).