Risen with Christ
If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.—Col 3:1.
1 There are three aspects in which the New Testament treats the resurrection, and these three seem to have come successively into the consciousness of the Church. First, as is natural, it was considered mainly in its bearing on the person and work of our Lord. We may take for illustration the way in which the resurrection is treated in the earliest of the apostolic discourses, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Then it came, with further reflection and experience, to be discerned that it had a bearing on the hope of the immortality of man. And last of all, as the Christian life deepened, it came to be seen that the resurrection was the pattern of the life of the Christian disciples. It was regarded first as a witness, next as a prophecy, then as a symbol. Three fragments of Scripture express these three phrases: for the first,” Declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead”; for the second, “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept”; for the third, “God raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places.”
2. The resurrection of our Lord secured His ascension to the right hand of God and His eternal session on the equal throne of Deity. As “the power of his resurrection” is applied to the believer, the process of the Saviour’s triumph is re-enacted in one who is still encased in the disabilities of this earthly life, and is constantly and painfully aware of the pertinacity of the law of sin in his members. His life occupies at one time two spheres, that of the flesh and that of the spirit (“The life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God”). Through the spirit there is conveyed to him without intermission the life of the ascended and glorified Lord; the flesh still solicits to sin. The two spheres must be brought into one: the life in the flesh—trials, sorrows, anxieties, perplexities, infirmities, temptations—must be taken up and placed in the region of spirit. Every desire springing from the flesh that is not itself sinful, every thought which is straitened by the limits that our encompassing mortality imposes, must be lifted into the presence of God, that it may there be disciplined and controlled by the Spirit of Christ who dwells within us.
A great principle animates all the members of the animal kingdom, from the lowest to the highest organism, a principle that prompts them to rise towards the great source of light and heat in order to perfect their structure and improve their functions in the glorious light of the sun. The infusoria of the deep seas ascend from a lower existence in the sunless abyss, they rise into the upper, illuminated waters; give time enough, and they leap on shore, and succeeding species are slowly perfected until the obscure life that originated in the ocean slime mounts the air, exulting in the lark singing at heaven’s gate and in the eagle soaring in the sun. Everywhere an instinct stirs in the animal creation, prompting to aspirations in perfecting organisms and their functions. There is also an inherent principle in plants urging them to rise from underground darkness into the regions of light, from the gloomy cave into the bright realms of day, from the shady forest high up into the radiant sky.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, 95.]
Every clod hath a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, grasping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.
I
A Possession
1. The possession is life through Christ’s resurrection.—When Christ rose from the dead, He raised His people with Him into a new life. In St. Paul’s conception, those who had not accepted Christ were “dead in trespasses and in sins.” He looked upon the natural state of man as a state of spiritual death; and every step out of that natural condition he regarded as corresponding to something in the life and experience of Jesus Christ. Thus, as Christ died for sin, men were exhorted to die unto sin: to be “buried with him in baptism.” They were asked to crucify their flesh, as He was crucified. Then, after the crucifixion of the flesh—after the burial of the old man in baptism—they were said to “put on the new man” and to “walk in newness of life,” after the pattern of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The man who had thus died to his old life was made alive with a new life. The highest and best faculties, the spiritual faculties, which were lying, as it were, shrouded in the tomb, were called into new life and activity. And thus men were said to be risen with Christ. For himself, St. Paul says, “I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord … that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection.”
The spiritual facts in a man’s experience, which are represented by these two great symbols of a death and a rising, are like the segment of a circle which, seen from the one side, is convex, and from the other, is concave. But however loosely we may feel that the metaphors represent the facts, this is plain, that unless a man dies to flesh, to self-will, to the world, he never will live a life that is worth calling life. The condition of all nobleness and all growth upwards is that we shall die daily, and live a life that has sprung victorious from the death of self. All lofty ethics teach that, and Christianity teaches it, with redoubled emphasis, because it says to us, that the Cross and the resurrection are not merely imaginative emblems of the noble and the Christian life, but are a great deal more than that. For by faith in Jesus Christ we are brought into such a true deep union with Him that, in no mere metaphorical or analogous sense, but in most blessed reality, there comes into the believing heart a spark of the life that is Christ’s own, so that with Him we do live, and from Him we do live a life cognate with His, who, having risen from the dead, dieth no more, and over whom death hath no dominion.1 [Note: A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, 133.]
2. Resurrection with Christ is a present experience.—There is a triumph over death for which we do not need to wait until the graves are opened. We may have it at once. There is a victory of life for which we do not need to look to some far-distant morning. We may feel it to-day. St. Paul felt it as he sat in his Roman prison, writing to his friends at Colossæ. Worn, and feeble, and aged before his time, bound with chains, waiting for his trial before a cruel and bloody Cæsar, St. Paul knew even then that he was a risen man. By faith in the things that are unseen and eternal he had already won the victory over the world. In prison he was free, in weakness he was strong, in chains he was cheerful, in exile he was exultant, in trouble he triumphed, and in the drear winter of old age his spirit was quickened with an immortal spring. Surely this is a veritable resurrection, and they who have entered into such an experience are risen indeed.
The higher Christian life, rightly conceived, not only does not separate itself from the present, or make the saving of the soul something distinct and apart from doing good now, but it finds its development in well-doing. It takes up into itself every aspect of our present existence—personal, social, even political—and throws around all its own hallowing lustre. It raises our whole life by rooting it in God; and so far from discrediting or belittling any real interest of humanity, it really magnifies and exalts every such interest. It implies the cultivation of every noble quality and high affection of our nature; the amelioration of human society; the development of “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.” It embraces whatever tends to exalt or idealize man—to make him more of a true hero—courageous, temperate, and self-restrained in the hour of danger, as well as whatever makes him meek and lowly of heart; the zeal that may work for God and the bravery that may die for Him; as well as the purity that can alone see God. The Christian ideal is no one-sided development of our manifold nature; still less is it any mere longing after a heavenly Jerusalem with milk and honey blessed. Such pictures have their use. There is good in a vivid realization of the heavenly state if God grant us such a blessing. But there is a higher good in rightly setting the affections on things above—in the culture, that is to say, of all good within us, the achievement of every real virtue, the beautifying and ennobling of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come.
For resurrection living
There is resurrection power,
And the praise and prayer of trusting
May glorify each hour.
For common days are holy,
And years an Eastertide,
To those who with the living Lord
In living faith abide.
3. Death to sin precedes resurrection.—We die to sin when we sink ourselves into the death of our Lord. We identify ourselves with Him, receiving into our own life (in the contact of faith and of the Spirit) all the triumphant energies of a love, a compassion, an endurance, a meekness, a lowliness, a truthfulness, a fidelity, a righteousness, which rose to meet the last and loftiest demands of the Divine holiness. We withdraw the controlling force of our nature (let us call it our personality) from those sinful affections which reside in the flesh, and centre it on those which have been introduced into our life through union with Christ.
It seems to me that the Bible teaches us that such truths as that of the death to sin are by no means to be considered as true only under conditions and limitations, only by a tacit suppression of existing facts; nay, that such truths express just the most absolutely true and fundamental facts, and that any other facts which are apparently at variance with them are themselves only conditionally and secondarily true.
St. Paul acknowledges the deflexion of men’s acts from the state in which he believes them actually as a matter of fact to stand, just as much as any modern religionist could do; but he does not make the deflexion itself to be the true characteristic of men. He says, “You are in a right and true state, I beseech you to walk accordingly.” This is hip standard formula. He refers men’s irregular acts to their walk, not to what they are. There is, of course, a question behind, on which language must needs be contradictory—In virtue of what are men dead to sin? and further, Who then are dead to sin?
The first question is of course answered by St. Paul—in virtue of Christ’s death on the cross. But, though this really contains the answer to the second question, it is not usually understood to do so. The answer must be, All who bear the same flesh and blood which Christ bore. It is therefore strictly true that every Jew, heathen, or outcast from the true fold of any kind is, in St. Paul’s words, already “dead to sin.” But it is not the less needful that this eternal and invisible truth should have a temporal and outward embodiment and attestation; and that can be only by baptism. Therefore St. Paul connects the state with a past completed act, by which it was formally taken possession of. The outward temporal act of passing from the world into the Church was the true symbol of the transition (if so it may be called) from “nature” to “grace,” from the life of sin and death of man (Rom 7:9-10) to the death to sin and life of man, which in reality does not belong to time at all, at least only in so far as evil and sin themselves are only temporal.1 [Note: F. J. A. Hort, Life and Letters, i. 407.]
As Christ died, so must we die. Wilberforce died to fashion that he might live unto humanity; Ruskin died to gold that he might live to beauty; Darwin died to society that he might live to science; and every man’s higher life begins in a death.2 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, 111.]
A beautiful treatise has come to us out of the Middle Ages. It is entitled “The Craft of Dying.” Its aim is so to fortify the child of God, as he addresses himself to go down into the “ghostly battle” that marks the end of his militant course, that he may “die well.” We need a similar treatise to teach us how to die with Christ. “Ye have died with him,” says the Apostle, therefore “reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.”3 [Note: D. M. McIntyre, Life in His Name, 176.]
Touch the rock-door of my heart,
Christ, dead for my sin!
Say, “Come—let us rise, and depart
From the shadows within—
Out where the light of the stars
Shines clear overhead,
Where the soul is free from its bars,
And Sin lies dead.”
And dead the old Shadow lies,
That has chilled my breast;
Say to the sleepers, “Arise!”
Lead them to rest!
(1) The Apostle seems to have had in his mind the sacrament of Baptism, which was viewed as symbolic of the death and rising again of Christ, and of the Christian in mystical union with Him. The convert went solemnly down into the font, and this was expressive of his spiritual burial; then after immersing his head three times, he ascended out of the font, and this was expressive of his new and spiritual life in Christ. In the previous chapter we read, “Buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”
(2) But there was another sense in which men were said to be “risen with Christ.” When He came forth from the tomb, it was not as a single instance of Divine power over life and death; it was to show the purpose of God in respect to all mankind. He came forth from the grave to prove that there was immortality for all God’s children. The bursting open of His tomb was a prophecy of the opening of every grave, and of the resurrection of all flesh. To St. Paul, Christ crucified was the great sacrifice for sin, but Christ risen was the pledge of the glorious destiny of every believer in Him. Men rose with Him in faith, in hope, and in assurance, to the heavenly mansions of the Father’s house.
Our Lord’s resurrection from the grave is no greater miracle than His being man, and yet absolutely sinless. His power over sin and His power over death are, like the heat and light of the sun, two radiations of the self-same energy—either of them containing evidence of the presence of the other, either of them justifying His own claim to be the very God, the central source alike of holiness and of immortality. And because He is divinely, creatively holy and immortal, He can and will make His people holy and immortal too. But while in Him the two attributes are in reality but one, in us the creatures of time there lies a lifelong day between them. First we hear His voice saying, “Thy sins be forgiven thee,” and afterwards “Arise and walk.” Once to have heard the first voice is a pledge that we shall hear the second. For once to have felt within us the victory over sin is a proof—an infinitely stronger proof than any philosophic speculation ever gave—that we already possess the quickening, immortalizing Spirit that will not suffer His holy ones to see corruption. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” It is this confidence that makes St. Paul view our two resurrections so closely together that he speaks of them in places as virtually one, and addresses Christians as already risen with Christ, that is, not like Christ, but in, and through, and by, the actual presence of Christ within them.
In an address which he gave at the West London Mission, he said, “I hope I shall not soon forget the resurrection sweetness that I instantly knew when I felt that I had really died to self. It seemed so proper a foretaste of the passage into the world which is to come … How wonderfully small a thing death may be; not a river, but a rill, scarce ankle-deep, across which we may step into the Glory-land beyond.”1 [Note: J. Rendel Harris, Life of F. W. Crossley, 212.]
What lies beyond?
I have but little care—
Since Christ is there—
Himself the deathless bond,
For ever binding me
Unto the Home where I would be—
Himself its temple, and its light,
Of more than noonday radiance bright—
Himself the Rest where I would dwell—
The Haven where my anchor soon shall fall—
Himself my All in all.
I cannot tell
Of glory that awaits
Within the gates:
A little while I walk with vision dim,
But O, I know that He is there,
All-glorious, All-fair,
And I shall be with Him.2 [Note: E. H. Divall, A Believer’s Rest, 15.]
II. A Prize
1. The prize is “the things that are above.” When St. Paul speaks of the things above, and the things below, he is not setting in contrast the abode of the blessed and our present dwelling-place. The contrast is rather between the good and the evil, the fleshly and the spiritual, Christ’s way of looking at things, and the ordinary earthly way. There is a way of measuring and estimating things as if we were merely human; not only so, but as if we were just educated animals with bodily affections and feelings, short-lived and perishable, like all the material things around us. And there is another way of surveying and judging them, which is the way of elevated, immortal, and spiritual creatures, creatures who are akin to Christ, and look with Christ’s eyes. And this higher way is what we are to aspire to. Christ has enthroned certain qualities with Himself at the right hand of God—certain qualities and thoughts, ways of thinking, and ways of judging. He has exalted them with Himself. He has made them supremely beautiful. They are the Divine, all-attractive, all-victorious things, and we are to prize them above all things and to set our affections on them. Think of all things as Christ thinks of them, judge and weigh all things as Christ judges them. Read His meaning into all things. You are risen with Him; let your thoughts and affections move on His high level.
O glorious Head, Thou livest now!
Let us Thy members share Thy life;
Canst Thou behold their need, nor bow
To raise Thy children from the strife
With self and sin, with death and dark distress,
That they may live to Thee in holiness?
Earth knows Thee not, but evermore
Thou liv’st in Paradise, in peace;
Oh fain my soul would thither soar,
Oh let me from the creatures cease:
Dead to the world, but to Thy Spirit known,
I live to Thee, O Prince of life, alone.
Break through my bonds whate’er it cost,
What is not Thine within me slay,
Give me the lot I covet most,
To rise as Thou hast risen to-day.
I nought can do, a slave to death I pine,
Work Thou in me, O Power and Life Divine!
Work Thou in me, and heavenward guide
My thoughts and wishes, that my heart
Waver no more nor turn aside,
But fix for ever where Thou art.
Thou art not far from us; who loves Thee well,
While yet on earth in heaven with Thee may dwell.1 [Note: Tersteegen.]
2. Where is it that Christ sitteth on the right hand of God? Surely not in some distant region, invisible and inaccessible to mortals. To read the law of the risen life thus would be to rob it of its meaning and its power for the present moment. God is not secluded in some far-off heaven. He is dwelling and working in this very world where we live. His “right hand” is manifest in all His works of wisdom and righteousness and goodness and love. Christ sitteth on the right hand of His Father because He is exalted to share in all these glorious works, because He is the Mediator between the Divine and the human, because His spirit brings men into harmony with God and inspires the pure and holy thoughts, the just and noble deeds, the generous and blessed affections that lift the world. He is not far away from us. He is with us always, even unto the end of the world. He sitteth close beside us, breaks bread at our tables, walks with us in the city streets and among the green fields and beside the sea. The “things that are above” are the things that belong to Him and to His Kingdom, the spiritual realities of a noble life, whatsoever things are pure and lovely and of good report. These are the things that we are to seek.
There is a kind of life, that of the mole or of the worm, which burrows in the dark; another life, like the reptile’s which crawls. The life in the eagle makes it soar up to gaze at the sun. Put the eagle-life into the mole, and it would seek to rise. Put the mole-life into the eagle, and it would seek to burrow. By nature we have the mole and reptile life which burrows in the dark or crawls on the earth’s surface. God gives us through Christ the resurrection life which looks up, and its very nature leads us to “seek the things above.”2 [Note: A. C. Dixon.]
3. Let us practise the upward look: it brings heaven nearer. We stand on some height just before sunrise, gazing upon a dull, opaque mass of cloud and vapour, chilly and sad, till, presently, a broad band of gold appears on the horizon, broadens, changes into a ruddier glow, and the sun himself appears, and diffuses an unutterable glory over the whole scene. So there are times when the outlook on this life, with all its dulness under the show of activity, all its falsehood beneath the mask of a thousand hypocrisies, depresses, disgusts, saddens and chills us to the very heart. And the saddest of all is that we feel ourselves to be a part of this melancholy system, and as mundane as all the rest. And then it is that those magnificent inspirations and revelations of the Gospel burst upon us, and we feel that behind these lifelong disguises, often so hideous, always so perplexing, something glorious is concealed.
A year or two ago, after the Lord’s Day service, I was standing before the house of a friend with whom I was staying, and looking abroad upon one of the fairest scenes in Scotland. At the horizon’s edge there was a great cincture of hills; the middle distance was filled with woods and fields yellowing into gold; and just at our feet, at the bottom of a little hill, there was a town, with the smoke sunfilled rising into the windless heavens. An expression of unlimited admiration escaped me; but a friend who stood by said: “Yes, it is beautiful, but it is too circumscribed; there is no outlook on the world beyond. It does not lie in a wide horizon.”
If you were to ask me to describe in a sentence the difference between a Christian and another man, picking out the best natural man you know, the finest specimen you can, and putting him over against the Christian man, the grand difference is this: the Christian has an infinite horizon, and that infinite horizon dominates the whole situation.1 [Note: John Smith, in The Keswick Week, 1899, p. 156.]
During the fifteenth year of the ministry of Horace Bushnell he had a marvellous revelation, enabling him spiritually to discern spiritual things. On an early morning of February (1848) his wife awoke to hear that the light they had waited for had risen indeed. She asked, “What have you seen?” He replied “The Gospel!” It had come to him, not as something reasoned out, but as an inspiration—a revelation from the mind of God Himself. This new and glorious conception of Jesus Christ lifted Bushnell into a higher life, gave him new insight and power, and shaped all the remaining years of his quickening and extraordinary ministry. His voice, like the lark’s, sang at heaven’s gate.2 [Note: T. L. Cuyler.]
4. The vision of the ideal influences and controls our daily life. In morals every man is subject to the highest he knows. The standard is that which is absolute and ideal, according to the measure of a man’s knowledge and feeling. The only things worthy of man’s seeking are “with Christ at the right hand of God.” The unrest which destroys men’s lives and the sense of dissatisfaction with themselves arise from their aim being below their conscious standard of conduct. And it is here that the practical value of fellowship with Christ is clearly seen. Through the life which men thus obtain, they are helped to do what they see and acknowledge to be right. And in nothing is this more apparent than in men’s efforts at moral reformation. It is a great matter that men desire to reform themselves. But when they enter upon their task they speedily discover how true are the words of Christ, “Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin.” One of the penalties of sin is impaired willpower. What men most need in such cases is an accession of spiritual energy. It is new life they want, and this new life they receive who are risen with Christ: and in its power they are able to free themselves from the accursed fetters of old sins, and to find a new desire for higher things, a new joy in seeking them.
This natural world is part of a grand universal system; its vital forces stream in from wider regions, its tides and seasons are governed from above; so man is the subject of a vast spiritual kingdom, whose influences penetrate, whose laws determine, all his mundane and physical interests. To seek other things in preference to that kingdom and its righteousness is to subvert the rational order, to subordinate the higher to the lower, the principal to the secondary; it is to take the surest way to failure even in our secular pursuits, which lose their vitalizing elements and true savour so soon as they are cut off from the springs of spiritual motive and experience.1 [Note: G. G. Findlay, The Things Above, 11.]
As the culminating point of a mountain-chain bears on the lower hills that for miles and miles buttress it, and hold it up, and aspire towards it, and find their perfection in its calm summit that touches the skies; so the more we have in view, as our aim in life, Christ who is “at the right hand of God,” and assimilation, communion with Him, approbation from Him, the more will all immediate aims be ennobled, and delivered from the evils that else cleave to them. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” and all your other aims—as students, as thinkers, as scientists, as men of business, as parents, as lovers, or anything else—will be granted by being subordinated to the conscious aim of pleasing Him. That aim should persist, like a strain of melody, one long, holden-down, diapason note, through all our lives. Perfume can be diffused into the air, and dislodge no atom of that which it makes fragrant. This supreme aim can be pursued through, and by means of, all nearer ones, and is inconsistent with nothing but sin.1 [Note: A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, 138.]
III. A Pursuit
1. “Seek,” says the Apostle—“seek the things that are above.” That is the pursuit. It is an image based on our moral nature, local elevation being the instinctive symbol of spiritual aspiration and refinement. They were to seek above what they had once sought below—above the level of the ordinary pagan desire and aim; higher things than money, place, selfish gratification, or any material and secular good, and distinctively those things for which Christ had been distinguished, and which prevailed at their best and brightest, which ruled, and were everything in that upper realm to which He had passed—truth, righteousness, purity, and noble love.
The real aim of the Christian is an upward one. “Things that are above” are of supreme consequence to him, and the setting of his affection on them determines the fashion of his whole life among men. His spiritual conceptions and aspirations are expressed in the ordinary activities of his life before others, and he makes all its necessary duties but stepping-stones to the realization of the higher realities. Indeed, the direction of all our external doings is in the nature of things determined and controlled by the power of our inner life. Hence to realize that we are “risen with Christ” lends to all life a sanctifying force which manifests itself in every sphere and realm.
Apart from all revelation, we find in ourselves instincts seeking upward, aspirations towards things higher than those of time and sense; we look beyond the physical life; we conceive ideas and hopes touching the unseen and the eternal. However it may be explained, we persist in dreaming great dreams, we aspire to higher spheres, we seek to realize ourselves in an upper universe—we impatiently long for a sky in which to spread our wings as royal birds do, we reach yearningly towards a central light in which our being may glow and blossom like the flowers. Much about human nature and life seems poor and disappointing, but this impetus and this passion for the transcendent shed a wonderfully redeeming light on our apparent mortality and meaness.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, 96.]
“Risen with him.” Seated with Him! Then our outlook in life is not an upward, but a downward one! Here is the demand for Christian imagination. How does life look from Heaven? Think of our discontent in lowly places, our feverish longing for great work, our love of tinsel, our chafing under discipline, our hard judgments, our cherished grievances. How would they appear to us, seen from above? How do they look to Jesus? Put yourself in your true place, and judge accordingly. Our citizenship is in Heaven; let our conversation be heavenly.2 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 28.]
I have done little more than desire the good thing, and seek to know nothing about the mysteries of our being, but I like to think that even unuttered aspirations may have a material force.3 [Note: George Frederic Watts, i. 312.]
2. The very fact of being raised with Christ is an inspiration and incitement to reach up to higher levels of attainment. “Seek things above,” says St. Paul, “because of what has been granted you, not that you may have something granted to you.” There is nothing more to be procured; the utmost is yours in the ascension of Christ, for you are risen with Him; therefore give yourselves to excel. Virtue was the end—the end for which they were dignified with immortality. They were summoned to reach after it on the ground of their investiture. The inducement presented is the claim of high position, the responsibility of rich possession. It was as though the writer had said, “Remember your rank and standing, and act in accordance with it; labour to be worthy of it.”
There is in a little churchyard in Switzerland a simple inscription on the tomb of one who perished in an Alpine accident, which has always appealed to me with singular force: “He died climbing.” He had heard the call of the mountains and lost his life in endeavouring to respond. We have heard the call of the risen Christ, but unlike the climber, we gain our lives in our sustained attempt to respond worthily. “Seek those things that are above” is a call to enjoy the largest possible life, for the very struggle develops latent possibilities and capacities, and each step upward is into fuller liberty and more perfect manhood.1 [Note: J. Stuart Holden, Redeeming Vision, 53.]
Higher still, and higher!
O to leave the clouds below,
And the creeping mists that throw
Doubt on all the way we go
As we would aspire
Higher still, and higher!
Higher still, and higher!
Ah! how little way I make,
Plunging where the black bogs quake,
Slowly hewing through the brake
Tangled with old briar!—
Higher still, and higher!
Higher still, and higher!
Courage! look not down to see
How high thy footing now may be,
Upward set thy face where He
Calls thee to come nigher,
Higher still, and higher.
Higher still, and higher!
Lo! the sun is sinking fast,
And lengthening shades are round thee cast,
Let not thy heart fail at the last;
’Tis no time to tire—
Higher still, and higher!
Higher still, and higher!
Sweet the air is, pure and clear,
And thy Lord is ever near
Yonder where the songs I hear
And the golden lyre—
Higher still, and higher.
Higher still, and higher!
What, if Death be standing right
In thy way, and dreadful night?
All beyond is life and light,
And thy soul’s desire—
Higher still, and higher!1 [Note: Walter C. Smith, Thoughts and Fancies for Sunday Evenings, 104.]
3. To seek the things which are above is to show that our life is really hid with Christ in God. Little or nothing may be said; a look or whisper is often enough. Sometimes the change may be marked by self-restraint, by the absence of chatter about self and our petty likes and dislikes. Or it may be expressed in acts of self-denial which involve delicate consideration for the feelings as well as the tastes of others—that “sweet and innocent compliance which is the great cement of love.” Sometimes it may be seen in a quiet silent prayer in the bedroom a little longer than usual, a determination to have a few minutes in church before or after service, a posture of unaffected reverence, or a hushed tone in using Scripture words and in saying the name of God—all these are often eloquent signs.
The best motto is not an inscription for your tombstone: “Resurgam, I shall arise, when earthly life is over, when the graves unclose.” It is a watchword for your hearts: “Resurgo, I arise, I am delivered, I am quickened, I begin to live upward, through Christ, for Christ, unto Christ.”2 [Note: H. van Dyke, The Open Door, 39.]
Myers said in most deliberate words that his own history had been that of a soul struggling into the conviction of its own existence, and that he had postponed all else to the one question whether life and love survive the tomb. To give and to receive joy, companionship with nobler spirits—these seemed to him the real aims of life; and while doubt remained as to the permanence of the human soul, even these aims appeared to be futile and fruitless. But when the conviction of immortality dawned upon him, as it did, he said that it gave him a creed which encouraged him to live at his best, and inspired the very strongest hopes that can incite to exertion.3 [Note: A. C. Benson, Leaves of the Tree, 171.]
In the best pictures of great masters, tone is almost everything. Form goes for much. Form, indeed, and the steadiness of the drawing, go for very much in the “composition” of the picture; but deprive it of the wonderful non so che called tone, and it stands out hard and unpleasing, and supplies to the soul no real pleasure. On the other hand, let the tone of the true artist be there, and how it covers in a great degree even badness in the drawing. In the same way, in nature, atmosphere counts for much, very much, in the charm of a scene, in its power, that is, to touch the heart; and when you come to personal life, what tone is to the picture, what atmosphere is to the landscape, such is general temper to the human character. Now the power and beauty of “the things which are above,” and the consequent necessity and blessedness of seeking them—all this is placed in evidence by the altered temper of the life in an advancing Christian.1 [Note: W. J. Knox Little, Characteristics and Motives of the Christian Life, 33.]
Lord, grant us wills to trust Thee with such aim
Of hope and passionate craving of desire
That we may mount aspiring, and aspire
Still while we mount; rejoicing in Thy Name,
Yesterday, this day, day by day the Same:
So sparks fly upward scaling heaven by fire,
Still mount and still attain not, yet draw nigher,
While they have being, to their fountain flame.
To saints who mount, the bottomless abyss
Is as mere nothing, they have set their face
Onward and upward toward that blessed place
Where man rejoices with his God, and soul
With soul, in the unutterable kiss
Of peace for every victor at the goal.2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Out of the Deep, 9.]
