02.04 The kingdom in the soil
IV. THE KINGDOM IN THE SOUL
Consider the truth first in its relation to the individual soul. When “the grace of God” which is nothing else than the infused life of the Christ is fully and honestly taken into the soul, it quietly and inevitably penetrates and transforms all the capacities and energies of the character. But its law of growth is from within, outward. How often we attempt to reverse the process! In our desires to live rightly, as we say, “to be good,” we begin at the circumference of life business, daily habits, intercourse with others. We make resolutions and frame rules to control this outward life of conduct; and we think that this dutiful, regulated outward life will somehow pass its virtue into the inner soul.
Now it is of course right that we should thus bring all our outward life into order; but the rules and resolutions must be the result, the expression, of the inward life. It is the old lesson which S. Paul learned in the bitterness of his own experience and taught once for all in his Epistle to the Romans. The law cannot give life; life must issue in law. To forget this is to entangle ourselves in the struggle and the bondage from which S. Paul was set free. We may go on making rules and breaking them; making them again and striving to keep them better; and yet find that even earnest moral struggle results in little moral progress and brings us no nearer to the sense of freedom. We forget that the first thing is by whole-hearted faith and self-surrender to welcome and respond to the grace of God in the inward soul. With all our self-discipline, we must begin, continue and end with “conversion.”
Then, if at the centre of our life we are really surrendered to God, His grace will work its way out to the farthest circumference of our conduct, permeating as it passes all our desires and thoughts and interests.
Learn from the parable of the leaven that first and last lesson of the life of the Kingdom in the soul that it works from within, outward.
TAGS: [Parables]