His deep unrest.

The law

LECT. XV. I know it is possible to have the peace of lethargy whilst conscience sleeps. But such sleep is sleep, and to be asleep is not to be true. It is to be unconscious of truth; that is, morally dead. But the law flashes light, and rouses conscience, and calls to life. It shakes a man out of the external things in which he has slept, and sets him naked, and fearful, and restless, in the light of the eternal. "These vain things," it says, "are not thy life; thy life is in me. Obey me, and thou shalt live; turn from me, and thou goest into darkness and death."

speaks.

ence of St. Paul.

And the first result is a heart filled with The experi- unrest and fear. The experience of St. Paul instructs us. He tells us, in Rom. vii., how it fared with him. "Without this commandment," he says, "I lived." When it was only a dead letter to him, he felt all right and satisfied with himself. "But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." That is, the sense of moral wrongness and deficiency came into his soul, and all complacency in self passed away. Then came a restless struggle to fulfil the law, and to get rid of the condemnatory feeling which it had roused. But the more he strove to bring motive and desire under its principle of purity, the more he realized the corruption and weakness of his own selfish nature. Two vistas were opened to

his inner sight, one which disclosed upward the LECT. XV. beauty of holiness, the other which disclosed downwards the ingrained taint of his own sinfulness. The final result of all his struggle was

to force on him the utter conviction that he was a poor spiritual slave, whose higher desires to rise into purity were linked to a nature of corrupted passions and a weakened will. It seemed even as if his true self were chained to a loathsome corpse, from which there was no escape. "Oh, wretched man that I am," he cried, "who shall deliver me from the body of this death!”

So the law wrought in him restlessness, and fear, and struggle, until he saw how to lose the covetous nature in the love and faith of Christ.

His final

conviction

and cry.

The moral

purpose of

the law.

And so it ever works, and was meant to work. The moral educational purpose of the law is to make sin appear in its true light to the conscience, "exceeding sinful." Follow after conscience, strive to be a man, to be not only outwardly moral, but inwardly pure and true, and as surely as you are a man, so surely will you come to un- A strange rest, to be burdened with a burden which no

human power can take off

soul. your

reward.

not the best

That may seem a strange end to point to, a Happiness strange good to offer. It may perplex some who argument have been taught that the great argument for Christianity is, that it makes people happy.

of Christianity.

LECT. XV. That is an argument which must be used judiciously; a truth which needs wise application. God cares far more that we should be good than that we should be happy. And indeed there is a crisis in the life of true conscience when happiness seems paltry in comparison of being true; when misery and truth, if such an alternative could be, seem preferable to happiness and falsehood.

Better than happiness is this unrest, because it is the first stage of eternal blessedness. Through it the soul becomes capable of true feeling and true vision. Christ crucified grows gloriously clear as the power of God and the wisdom of God. The atonement is seen to offer more than all self-effort can realize; a conscience righteously set free from sin, and a life Divinely harmonious with holy law.

Was I not right in saying that this law proves itself Divine? Does not all this spiritual development of which it is the moving cause inevitably demand for its author the God who is Jehovah, the “Father of our spirits?" Without Him moral unrest has no meaning, and perfection no reality. But it is His righteousness which is the pillar of fire, shining through the darkness of our fear. His all-seeing eye it is, in whose light exploring our consciences we see light, and know ourselves for what we

really are. It is His Spirit which will not let LECT. XV, us rest in lower things, but ever stirs us up to desire to live. As George Macdonald sings:

"For cause and end of all thy strife

And unrest-as thou art—

Still stings thee to a higher life,

The Father at thy heart."

Oh! wonder and glory of human life—“ the Father at its heart!"

Only our relationship to God explains, I the highest phenomena of our moral life: God can satisfy us. "Be ye holy, for I holy."

George
Macdonald

say,

discontent

only

The Divine demands

am

God as a
Judge.

It is even a logical as well as a moral necessity that the foundations of this law should be in the Invisible God. If man has only human relationships this law is entirely superfluous, for who but God can see the thoughts of the heart? Who can judge of inner truth but He?

true con

tent.

Observe also how it secures true content. Secures Because this Divine discontent seeks to be like God, it leaves no room for covetous discontent in the lower things of life. God's will is good to it, and all He gives and does is well. It realizes too that the path of duty is the path of holiness and service. Thus the greater sense of God absorbs the lesser sense of self.

Lastly, mark how the concluding word of the

LEOT. XV.

It links on

Moses to
Christ.

Law leads up to the Gospel, how the Old Testament culminates in the New, and Moses yields to Christ. In making conscious of sin, it gives birth to the desire of a Saviour. Who shall deliver me from the power of sin? Is there a deliverance ? Thanks be to God, there is, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus Law and Gospel blend in Him, who is the Divine Redeemer, and He comes to us discontent. in answer to the cry which has been roused in us, comes to us, out of the Bosom of the Father, to set us free by the truth into the liberty of love.

Christ ful

fils our