2 Timothy 4:6-8 For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.… The interest o the Second Epistle to Timothy is altogether exceptional. It is the interest of a heart-moving tragedy; and yet the tragic gloom which rolls above its heavens is relieved, is almost illumined with golden glory by a strain and temper of pathetic tenderness. It is, as far as we are concerned, the last earthly utterance of an altogether remarkable man; the last will and testament, so to speak, of one in whose character commanding ability, simple and unswerving purpose, unflagging energy, unselfish enthusiasm, and warm and wide and sunny sympathy were combined in a degree unrivalled in the history of our race. And then, too, St. Paul, as he writes, may indeed be "the aged," but age can scarcely slacken power in such a soul, and here, consequently, he wins the unforbidden homage we pay spontaneously to one who, in the fullest vigour and energy of life, looks straight and calmly into the eyes of death. The text is, I suppose, one of the best-known verses in the Bible, an utterance of profound humility and lofty courage and unvarying truth; it is to us altogether interesting — interesting, doubtless, because it reveals the character of such a one as Paul; but more, a word of worldwide import, for at such moments great men are themselves revelations. Paul was alone in a sense in which he had never been before. The dear Churches — that is, the dear souls, loved with such strength and joy as was in "him to love with — were far away; their faces he would never gaze upon again; the old places were gone; no more would he see the Holy City so rich in memories, no more the long blue line of the Abarim bounding the land of the chosen race, no more the jagged hills of his native Tarsus, no more the dancing waters of the blue AEgean, no more the Aeroceraunian crests, only lately marking the path of his pilgrimage from Corinth to Rome. Nature had closed her doors to the wanderer; from his prison on the Esquiline, or from the cave near the Capitol, or wherever it was that, in their last days, his eyes closed and opened to the light of the Roman summer, those eyes were straining beyond even objects of human affection to the unimagined wonders of another world; he was looking forward. At such a time it is that great natures fall back upon the principles which have governed life; and to us their utterances then, are supremely interesting, for such principles are the exhibition, in fact, of universal law. St. Paul, in his words illustrated by his life, is indeed proclaiming a fundamental law of the Church of his Master. "The Reign of Law!" Need I remind you that of that realm we are all the subjects? It is fundamental, it explains, as it has guided, the Church's influence; it teaches, as it has trained, souls to tread the only way of lasting usefulness. It applies to all. It is not the heritage of the peerless apostle, but also the rule of the quiet Christian; obedience to it decides indeed the value of our choice in crises of destiny, but it also ennobles the "trivial round" of daily life. Here, indeed, it is thrown out in vivid colour from a dark background of death; here, indeed, in full force, it is borne in upon the mind, because it comes as no abstract statement, but the life-rule written in the heart's blood of a living and a dying man. In him it found a wonderful completeness: it is the fundamental law of the Church of Jesus — the Law of Sacrifice. And now, I ask, "How for Paul was the grave transfigured?" and the answer is, "By the same power by which life was governed, by the law of sacrifice." What, then, is sacrifice? By sacrifice, speaking morally and spiritually, as now, I mean this: The willing surrender of legitimate desire in submission to a sovereign, an authoritative claim; and the interest of the text lies in this, not only that it expresses the rich result of that law operating in its completeness in a human soul, but also, it limits the stages of trial by which such completeness was achieved. What, let us ask, were some at least of those stages? 1. First, then, he had wakened up to the reality and requirements of the spiritual life. Man is a creature of two worlds, but of one sphere of being; standing he is within the boundary of time, but one foot is planted across the frontier of eternity. Little we see of man's real working, just here and there a hint is given by the definite act which meets the senses, excites our blame or sets the chorus of praise re-echoing through the halls of history, but day by day and hour by hour man's spirit, shrouded, veiled from his fellow man, is at work in the spirit sphere. Now to waken up to this, and to the consequent requirements of duty in this interior life, is to be brought under the law of sacrifice, because it is at once to be under the necessity of war. "The Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience," is no mere tendency to wrong, but a personal spirit, with a personal power. And surely it has been the experience not only of the saints — the giant explorers in the regions of spiritual life — but the experience of earnest, commonplace children of God, that besides their struggle with their own corruption, they have been conscious of sudden assaults, of well-timed suggestions of sin, alarming, astounding, distinctly to them distinguishable from any picture of imagination; painfully, evidently separated from themselves, and clearly coming with the force and horror of the agency of a personal tempter. The action of the hierarchy of evil was indeed perhaps more evident to the Christians when St. Paul taught and lived than to ourselves. The entire imperial system of Rome might well appear to him an organisation of evil; and indeed, so awfully had the creature forsaken his Creator — read the first chapter of the Roman Epistle and say was it not so? — that that splendid fabric sprung from the genius of Pagan civilisation had become little else than a series of well-worked agencies of sin. It is true that the life of the second Adam permeating the race of the Redeemed has made of modern civilisation a very different story. But tell me, is there not enough in modern life to witness to the presence of the same tremendous power? Can you open your newspaper any morning without being impressed by the fact that the world is trying to get rid of the incubus of the thought of God? without being conscious of tones of thought and views of life nowise condemned by society at large, which would, to say the least, have shocked apostles? Is there not an air of unruffled indifference, or a tone of quiet patronage assumed towards moral evil which give the lie to the brave, the necessary hostility taught us in the Catechism when we were children? Does not this subtle tolerance of sin flow through society, invade the Church, deprave the mind? Hence men lose all sense of the severe requirements of a righteous God, because they have first lost all sense of His character of severe essential holiness; hence, young men, you are the victims (are you not?) in business life of habits of language, alliance with, almost toleration of, which you feel to be inconsistent with any nobility of mind, not to say any sincerity of Christian character. Ah! how are you to escape? Certainly not without struggle. Roused to the facts, roused to the requirements of spiritual life, you find yourself in battle; self must be denied, duty must be done, strength must be sought (faithfulness is needed in sacraments and prayer — faithfulness, too, in using strength when given). You must submit, and heartily, to the law of sacrifice. Spiritual activity on the side of right and truth and purity and duty — this is a stage towards a complete achievement. Paul had learned it; whether his description is drawn from the racecourse or the battle it matters not; he had learned at any rate the necessity of struggle. "I have fought a good fight." 2. It is well, is it not, to awaken to the mystery, to recognise the reality, of the spiritual world? But there is surely a farther stage for the wayfarer in this path of sacrifice. What shall be the standard to measure and direct the struggle of life? To an earnest Christian what God forbids is bad — unutterably, inexcusably bad. Right is right and wrong wrong, without palliation or possibility of compromise. To do good is not merely wiser than to do ill; it is the place, calling, need of the creature; wilful sin, self-chosen evil, is the damnable, ruinous, and sorrowful thing, which may call for a tribute of sadness and pity, but admits of no defence. Need I say it? this necessary revelation of God's will is furnished by the moral law. Conscience speaks first. I do not now pause to define its office or assign its place, or dwell upon the limits of its dominion; only let me remark in parenthesis — Obey your conscience, respect its warnings, listen for its whispers, submit unhesitatingly to its commands; you will be all the wiser, better men. Here Paul had first read and obeyed the will of God, and because he had tong been trained in that sincere and accurate submission, he was ready, when the face of Jesus was flashed upon him from the flaming heaven, above the peaks of the Hauran, at once to recognise, and unconditionally to obey. The prophets, the psalmists, the teachers of Israel had for him enlarged upon and enforced the lessons of that primal instruction, as revelation of the Christ, and the New as well as Old Testament Scriptures have ever since done for us all; but for him and for each since his time, the larger laws of Divine guidance have been particularised and pointed by special providence and special trials. The requirements of that Will are often — at least to human frailty — severe. The heart's most fierce desires are not most easily assuaged, the world's most prized successes are not most surely secured, by obedience to the will of God. No. Splendid indeed the results, moral, spiritual, of such adherence and such submission, but the process is pain. Honestly and earnestly to choose Chat standard is to be subject to the law of sacrifice. Paul chose it, and, like him, each one who does, fulfils, though it be in pain, an allotted mission. "I have finished," says the apostle, "the course marked out for me." 3. But there is one further stage of conquest dependent upon the most stern self-discipline. If there be anything that a man would seem entitled to call his own, it is his thought. Surely in thought, at least, man is free; surely "I can think what I like," as it is the expression of a natural craving, so it is the statement of a truth. Scarcely; for thought, if untrained, undisciplined, and unrepressed, becomes a tyrant, not a slave; and thought, which shares the heritage of our nature's blight, can only fulfil its intended function when purified by submission to the law of sacrifice. My brothers, to plant the footstep of your thoughts on the track of Divine Revelation, to refuse to them the by-paths of ungoverned fancy, to restrain them in their wild impulsive leaps, is to start them, nay, far to advance them, on the journey which ends in God. Be sure that to "learn obedience" to the truths of the Christian Faith, to bathe the mental habits in the cleansing waters of the Spirit, who gives light, humility, courage, and truth, is the one way possible for emancipating the mind from the thraldom of corruption; but to do this, how hard, how full of sorrow, how severe at times the trial and the strain; ah me I as in other things, in this also, "obedience is learned by the things" we "suffer." To leave men's criticism, and desire the Revelation of God; to quit our own miserable inquiries, and choose the path of the Pathless One; to watch against the wilfulness that slights, the sin that weakens our power of believing; this, as it is an evidence of strength, and even of stern decision, is not lacking in an element of trial, requires submission to the law of sacrifice. "Kept the Faith," mark you; for as to reach the path needed some self-conquest, so to keep the track required unflagging earnestness and persevering power. To submit to the Faith, in such an one as Paul, meant moral earnestness; to keep it implied moral force; for him, as for all men, to govern thought by God's revelation implies obedience to the law of sacrifice. Paul, I say, did it, did it utterly, did it also in the face of extremest external difficulty, did it when to be faithful to conviction implied fierce persecution and inevitable death; it is a triumphant climax that last stage of struggle — "I have kept the Faith." So the saintly soul advanced to that completeness of surrender which is completeness of power, and finds expression in the text. In fact, spiritual activity, a creaturely temper, and a humble mind, were the stages of his self-sacrifice. One question remains — Whence came its impulse? whence its sustaining strength? The answer is easy. It came whence only it can come, from supernatural, but personal affection. My friends, we are not all St. Pauls: very much the reverse usually, almost infinitely short of him in spiritual vigour, most of us. But being all professed disciples of Jesus Christ, God demands of each of us in our degree, submission to the law of sacrifice. 1. We are under special trial when the soul is subject to the illumination of some new truth. A light comes — such a course long lived is wrong, or is not the best. We must obey, but to us — for man is very frail and only human — this is sharp. 2. Or we lose something very dear. It may be an old friendship, it may be an old friend; it may be old, long-cherished, long-loved dreams; it may be that the mystery of the freshness of early life, once making all things fresh, has fled. There is, remember, nothing lost without a something gained, if the soul walk by this law, mind this rule. 3. Or, as you may be this week, as you and I have often been, there may be a time of temptation. How sorely some of you are tried I know. How not seldom England's commercial greatness means that young souls must often choose between the loss of place, which means loss of maintenance — some-times too for wife and children dearer than self — and the loss of peace with God. This I am not forgetting. Oh brother, tempted, you or I, to wrong, in the interests of self-advancement, are we not after all only victims submitted to the law of sacrifice? Do not shrink. It is severe and painful, but it is the law of life. 4. And there is death. True, here we have no choice; but still, when that comes, how we shall comport ourselves may depend in very large, in very serious measure, oil our habit of sacrifice now. Every life, believe it, to be trained for God, for goodness, must be trained by sacrifice. Every work, believe it, that you do will be of lasting value in "proportion to the amount of sacrifice entailed in doing. In fact, it is by submission to this law that the Church teaches you how to use the world. This world may be viewed in many lights, so many-sided it is, so strange! For instance, it is a burying-earth, a world of death, a huge and sombre grave. "The world is full of death!" We tread on the dust of a thousand generations, and other pilgrims, children of our children, shall tread on ours when we lie low! Stop! A powerful principle can transfigure everything, even the horror of death. The world is an altar of sacrifice: lives have been lived, and therefore deaths have been died of abundant fruitfulness and unending power. Why? Because these souls, which live each an endless life, have expressed themselves in sacrifice, have lost, have strangled the only death-giving principle, the principle of self, in undying devotion to truth and holiness. Further, then: the world is the vestibule of a palace of complete achievement. However, all here seems stamped with imperfection, branded with the trade-mark of unfinished labour, yet death, on such terms, is in truth the entrance to essential life; sacrifice, the birth-throe of a spirit satisfied. (Canon Knox Little.) Parallel Verses KJV: For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.WEB: For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure has come. |
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