The Indissoluble Life THE BACCALAUREATE SERMON TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 1894 "Not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life."— HEBREWS 7:16. It is necessary to see what these words mean in this connection, and from that force to proceed toward the great idea which they open, and which the local application illustrates. The expression stands in a paragraph whose purpose it is to show the supreme priesthood of Jesus Christ, that He is beyond and above the Levitical succession, that He is after the order of that great king-priest to whom even Abraham gave tithes, accepting his blessing as of a better than himself;- that Christ's priesthood, single, complete, unchangable—is the fulfillment and ideal, which no high-priest of Israel had ever attainedoffering one final sacrifice, without infirmity and perfected for evermore. And this paragraph (and chapter), which, however far away it may seem to us, came close to the daily thinking of the Hebrews who first read it, is part of a minute and patient, and at last triumphant and rapturous, argument, to show the devout Jews, who in those apostolic days had accepted Jesus as the true Messiah, that all that they had loved and lived in of rubric and rite was not now despised but transcended;—that they were not to be troubled because the venerable things of their past were changed; for they were fulfilled not destroyed. In Christ, all which they had held so intimate as the vessel and vehicle of a precious covenant and a common worship, was not only made good, but made better. LAW WORKS IN WHILE LIFE WORKS OUT 127 The whole letter to these believing Israelites is based upon the comparison of the old and the new. Contrasts, general and special, are its whole structure. It is ruled by antithesis and argues a fortiori. This our text is an expression eminently characteristic of the argument into which it enters. Christ's place and office is not carnal, transient, legal: but mighty, quickening, enduring. Put compactly, here is a summary and a confronting—the Old against the New. Law on the one side, life on the other. The life does not deny the law, it surpasses it, taking a higher outlook and a wider outreach. Law works inward from without. Life works outward from within. It is rim versus centre, -exterior restraint versus interior constraint. The word 'endless' in the text, is much more exactly rendered, as in the margin, by the word indissoluble-a life then essentially and uninterruptedly one in all its parts. The old dispensation which led up to the fulness and the fulfillment in Christ is set forth as rudimentary and preliminary. It is pedagogical. It is mechanical not dynamic; and so, a moment later, our writer says "for there is a disannulling of a foregoing commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness (for the law made nothing perfect), and a bringing in thereupon of a better hope, thro which we draw nigh unto God." The thought I urge is that this contrast between the temporary scope of that special commandment and the boundless scope of that Supreme Life, bases upon and illustrates a general truth of high importance. The contrast is representative of the permanent conditions that divide punctiliousness from power, the narrowness of legality from the abundance of life. In all the things which we are saying the chief point is this that there is all the difference between the artificiality of commandment and the spontaneity of life that there is between Aaron and Christ. The law of all commandment is the law of criticism and re pression, the power of all life is the law of appreciation and expansion. The destructive opposes the constructive because it is per se inhibitive and cannot be creative. All precepts are good only as they lead to principles. The literal rule is only a means to the ends of the right living. Law measures imperfection-life alone can repair and replace. Law may introduce but it can never complete. The Bible is not only a history but it also gives a philosophy of history and it shows the degrees by which carnal rule is led on to spiritual power. The whole climate of Hebrews is changed from that of Leviticus. This was God's way-always is His way. While at first life, so far as it can be, is stated in the terms of law, at last law is to be transfigured in the terms of life. Painters and sculptors know rules and work with them: but what knowledge of their rules alone could make a Rubens or Thorwaldsen! The Idylls of the King are grammar plus Tennyson. A Lamia is prosody plus Keats! The Gettysburg speech was history plus Lincoln ! By law we learn to avoid death, but it is by the contact of the inspiration of a superior life that we learn to live. And these two dispensations of law and of life furnish us with two realms, an upper and a lower, in one of which we must all dwell. The upper includes the lower-life is not extra legal, but super legal. He who denies or despises law has not learned it, and must, if he would ever go up, go down again to the first principles and rudiments of the teaching of Christ: but law cannot say the last word. For instance, marriage is a contract. That is a sorry marriage which forgets its contract, that is also a sorry marriage which is only a contract. Carnal commandment must be underneath, but it must be underneath,-the "power of an indissoluble life." We may choose, and we must, whether we will live positively or negatively. I mean whether we shall be actively or passively HOW TWO EQUALS TEN 129 good. Whether we shall have that timid and hand-to-mouth behavior which is concerned mainly not to make mistakes, or that vital eagerness which is more concerned to avoid making nothing! A man may be negatively good, in the sense that he does no mischief. Such an one idolizes caution until it becomes impotence. His keeping of law is as if one for fear of going wrong were to lash himself to the sign-post at a four-corners, or as if a soldier were to save his powder for fear his gun might burst, or as if a sick man to assure himself against an error by the pharmacist, were to swallow the prescription. Keeping law means more than eluding penalty-he is still coarse and carnal who does not perceive that sin and the consent thereto is the thing law indicates, that seeing it in its naked abominableness, the soul may cry out for His help who has the power of the indissoluble life-in whom "the law of the spirit of life makes free from the law of sin and death." - The differentiation of Negative from Positive goodness may be seen in noting the altitude of the Siniatic Law in contrast with the Teaching on the Mount - desert Arabia and fertile Galilee. Here we get right at the idea. The two ways of the one God but one introductory, the other complete. We may not refuse Him either way, and we must be sure that the primer of particular command is mastered-it cannot be skipped. Neither is it the end. It is much to avoid concrete evil, and so the ten words go on "Thou shalt not"— it is goodness by by exclusion it is safe: but when Christ comes to translate precept into spirit, he gives goodness by inclusion, and that is strong. He "Blesses" the humble, suffering, restrained, eager for right, merciful, pure, pacific,-in other words He chooses and extols the life that begins within. Again in summing the law of Moses into two commandments, He made active love to God and Man the whole result. Christ states goodness; but in a new way. He shows how ten "thou-shalt-nots" equal two "thou-shalts." Positive goodness is less verbal and more direct. Life advances by exchanging negatives for affirm atives. By mastering rules we grow into relations — we walk in the go-cart that we may walk without it. When the mechanical has become the natural when effort has become spontaneity, when the crudeness of intention has become the secondnature of intuition, when one has learned to absorb the princithat is the kernel of the rule then the elocutionist has become the orator- the disciple the apostle. One noble conformance is worth eight or ten avoidances. Too much 'searching of scripture' is a search for vetos, too much pruning and too little mulching. Doubtless too much of the education of children says, " don't "-" don't" instead of "do"-do." The primary lesson, so long as it is needed (but no longer) must be to turn from error; but to proceed in right is the path of life. Preoccupation is a strong protection. A higher interest can supplant a lower. When a child can be made to laugh it is already stopped from crying. The way for a man to stop being stingy is by beginning to be generous. Presently Scrooge is no longer himself! It was because his goodness had been so far only negative-keeping the "shalt-nots"-that the young man, whom Christ invited into the positive and eternal life, went away sorrowful! Meaning not to do harm is much less than determining to do good. The two commandments go deeper than the ten and so at first seem harder to keep: but when drudgery has been overruled by vitality they prove easier — there is all the difference that lies between a balloon and a bird-inflation and wings. We never do anything right well until we do it unconsciously. To be too much aware of self is to be awkward, or a least artificial. The senses are to be "exercised by use" until they cease to do ill by learning to do well. One must think of the target not of the arrow,―of the bird not of the gun, of the listener and not the song, of the soul and not of the sermon. Medative goodness is prim and timid-it is too self-concerned to dare aggression. It guards its rear instead of advancing its front it adopts the tactics of McClellan rather than of Sheri |