Philippians 3

Philippians 3:10

THE MOST Philippians 3:10I HAVE spoken to you touching a part of this text, namely, “the power of His resurrection”. But, since that time, the whole verse has been in the process of illumination for me, and the truths, which it so evidently contains, have been becoming more and more precious to me, until I must speak to this text, “that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death”.As Phillips Brooks has said, “It is one thing to know a fact and another to know the power of that fact. It is one thing to stand on shore and see the great waves and say there is a storm, and it is a very different thing to be out in its waves, tossed every way by them, fighting for your life. On the shore, you know of them. In their midst, you know them. You know their power.

The first is information! The second is experience!”Some men are content with knowing facts. Other people will be content only with knowing powers. An unfelt fact is nothing at all to these last. There is no truth, to them, that does not take their nature and their lives into its hands and change them. Of this last class was Paul, who prayed that he might know the power of Christ’s resurrection.

And Paul also prayed that he might know “the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death”.It is a prayer that not many people make. Some might join in his petition to know Christ, and they might also desire to know the power of His resurrection, but, oh, how few pray to enter into “the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death”!And yet we doubt if any man will ever know Christ as He is; ever know Christ as one might know Him. We doubt if one will ever understand the power of His resurrection, unless he also willingly enters into the fellowship of His sufferings. This morning, then, I want to set the points of this petition in order before you.The first thing for which Paul prayed was to knowJESUS, THE PERSON I think the Apostle wanted to know Him as a Friend.Did it ever occur to you that one must see in Jesus, a Friend, as the very first step to any better knowledge of Him? When we make an acquaintance in this world, we do not attempt to win his love at first. We seek to inspire friendship instead! That must have been a great day with Christ’s disciples when He delivered to them the wonderful discourse in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of John. When were students ever privileged such a teacher and such teaching as they were privileged that day? Their enthusiasm must have risen to its climax when Christ said to them, “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you” (John 15:15).When a man takes the deepest secrets of his heart and bares them before your eyes, it gives one of the best proofs possible of his friendship for you, and, when on this day Jesus let His disciples know some things that He had never spoken to mortal man before, namely, the coming of His death, the circumstances attending it; and, at the same time, gave them promise of the Holy Spirit, and whispered into their ears what He would expect of them as His followers, it proved beyond doubt that He regarded them as His friends, and that He gave His friendship to them.I confess to you that I long to know Jesus as a Friend; to know Him sufficiently to sit with Him in the Heavenly places; to feel in Him that confidence that I know toward a few of the choicest of men, namely, the confidence of heart-exposure, the laying bare before His eyes of every secret of life; and then to have the sweet experience of having Him tell me His secrets as well, of having Him initiate me into the mysteries of His life, and of hearing Him say in so many words, “I love you”.“In the secret of His presence, How my soul delights to hide! Oh, how precious are the lessons Which I learn at Jesus’ side! Earthly cares can never vex me, Neither trials lay me low; For when Satan comes to tempt me, To the secret place I go. “When my soul is faint and thirsty, ‘Neath the shadow of His wing There is cool and pleasant shelter, And a fresh and crystal spring; And my Saviour rests beside me, As we hold communion sweet; If I tried, I could not utter What He says when thus we meet.” A while ago a dear friend of many years was visiting me, a man in whose integrity of character I had perfect trust, and one day as we knelt to pray together over a matter of common interest, when we reached the “Amen” and rose from our knees, each with tears in his eyes, he put his arms kindly about me and said, “I love you.” Oh, to know Christ in that way. It was Paul’s prayer. It ought to be your longing and mine.I sometimes wonder how Catholic Christians get any comfort or inspiration whatever out of bowing before images painted on canvas, or carved in marble. I cannot forget Edith Mary Norris’s poem, “The Stone Christ”, in which she paints her picture by these words:“She drew her rags more closely, As she passed through the biting sleet; And the stones on the pave were icy To her bare and bleeding feet; But none of the passers noted Her anguish, or turned with scorn, And she passed through the open portals Of the house of God, forlorn. For she thought in cloistered precincts, The sacred haunt of prayer, To lose for a while her burden Of sorrow and want and care. Above, from the niche in the pillared aisle, A stone Christ looked with a pitiless smile. “She thought of her lover and husband, The swart bread-winner, slain While earning the pittance doled him For a toil that was almost pain; Great-hearted he was, and tender, And over her soul in a wave Broke the waves of deep affliction, As she thought of his pauper’s grave, And thought of his little children In a garret crying for bread, While down on the pavement splashing, Fell the heart-wrung tears she shed. Above, from the niche in the pillared aisle, A stone Christ looked with a pitiless smile. “‘O Christ, who was born of woman, Give ear to a mother’s prayer, Who asks of Thee bread for her children; Dear God, in Thy mercy spare From the pangs of cold and hunger My darlings, whose hair of gold Makes tangled thickets of sunshine In my attic bare and cold; Whose smiles, as I break and give them The hard and mouldy crust, Tear my breaking heart with anguish; Dear God, dost Thou hear? Thou must!’ Above, from a niche in a pillared aisle, A stone Christ looked with a pitiless smile. “They came on the morrow thronging, And they filled the holy place With the pomp of wealth and fashion, Proud priests in linen and lace, With singers following after, Passed stately up the aisle, While the mellow organ thundered Triumphant strains the while; And the air was rich with incense, From golden censers flung; And a song like that of the angels The white-robed singers sung! Above, from a niche in a pillared aisle, A stone Christ looked with a pitiless smile. “They sang with a silken rustle, On their knees, ‘Thy will be done; Come Thy Kingdom on earth as in Heaven’, They prayed in unison. Then, when the prayers were ended, The preacher took the word; They settled themselves to listen, But never the sense they heard. He spoke in cultured accents Of love and charity: ‘Who doeth it unto the least of these, Lo, he doeth it unto Me!’ Above, from a niche in a pillared aisle, A stone Christ looked with a pitiless smile. “They found on that Sunday morning, In the wretched garret bed, A mother and little children, Lying cold and stark and dead. Lo, her prayer had been heard and answered, She had entered into her rest, The poor heart-broken mother With the wee gold hearts on her breast. They brought them into the chancel, And chanted a requiem song, Too, late, O Christian brethren! They will stand and accuse ere long. And still, from a niche in the pillared aisle, The stone Christ looked with a pitiless smile.” Any system that shuts up the Word of God against the study of the people takes away the true Christ presented in its revelations, the Christ whose , heart-beats are felt in its sentences, and gives to them only a stone Christ, instead.Oh, how grateful we ought to be this morning because the Bible has been open before us. Some of us have found in Christ a Friend, whose life touches our lives, whose words have been to us true wisdom and whose heartbeats we have felt as we have listened to Him speak to us through the Scriptures in expressions of love. It was through Paul’s study of the Word that he expected to know Christ as his Friend.I think Paul wanted to know Him also as His Saviour. Sin had played havoc with Saul’s life. At the very time when he supposed himself to be approved of God, he was engaged in a course which he eventually came to see to have been most criminal so that he was compelled to speak of himself as “the chief of sinners”. One day he was writing to the Church at Rome, and, when he had reached the seventh chapter of his Epistle, he uncovered his past and told them how sin had wrought in him all manner of concupiscence; how sin had deceived him and even slew him, and he concluded by saying, “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members”.

And then he cried, “0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death”?A moment’s silence and then he answers, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. He was coming to know Christ as a Saviour from his sin, and that is how he wants to know Him.

That is how you and I need to know Him.A while ago a young woman in Chicago had fallen into sin and was living in a place of shame. One of the workers in the Moody Institute, a beautiful Christian man, hearing through friends of her whereabouts, went after her, and, by process of law, brought her away from the place. He led her to Christ. He put her into the Moody School as a student, and later he took her unto himself as his own wife And I have often thought that that is just what Jesus does for those who really come to know Him. He delivers us out of our evil association. His love toward us woos us from our bad habits, and, in order to utterly remove our reproach and redeem us from our shame, He weds us unto Himself; and then, like the beloved Husband He is, He shares His own honors with us, and, better than all, He uses His strength against the enemy, and by a constant deliverance, He enables us to stand.Oh, I want to know Him as Saviour!

There are so many sins that I cannot overcome myself, but when I shall know Him as I ought, His intimate presence and His instant help will be the end of them. That is what Paul meant when he said, that I may “be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the Law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith”.Then I think the Apostle wanted to know Him as Sanctifier.I know there are a great many people in the church who are afraid of that term; but Paul did not belong to that class.

In almost every one of his Epistles you will find him employing the term, and, in that wonderful Letter to the Hebrews, he says (Hebrews 2:11) of Christ, “Both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren”.Dr. A. B. Simpson has a little tract on “Himself” that I wish every Christian might read. In that tract he says, “I prayed a long time to get sanctified, and sometimes I thought I had it. On one occasion I felt I had something, and I held on with a desperate grip for fear I should lose it, and of course I did. I lost it because I did not hold onto Him. I had been taking a little water from the reservior, when I might, all the time, have received from Him the fullness of the Fountain itself.

I went to meetings and heard people speak of joy, and I even thought I had the joy, but I did not keep it because I had not Himself as my joy. At last He said to me, oh, so tenderly, ‘My child, just take Me and let Me be in you the constant supply of all this, Myself.’ And when at last I got my eyes off my sanctification and just placed them on the Christ in me, I found I had my sanctification in Him, and oh, it was such rest. It was all right and right forever.”It must be so to those who know Christ if “He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one”.The next thing for which Paul prayed was to knowTHE POWER OF HIS Since we have given an entire sermon to this sentence, I may be pardoned for passing it over today, with but brief discussion. It is evident to me the Apostle longs to know the power of Christ’s resurrection in two respects.First, in that regeneration which means death to sin and a new life in Christ.To him, baptism was a perfect figure of this first. In writing to the Romans he said,“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? “Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection”. Ernest Gordon, in the life of his renowned father, tells the story of the conversion at the Clarendon Street Church of an Irishman by the name of Patrick Daley. Being saved himself, Patrick went after a friend of his, Peter Murphy, who lived in the upper story of the same tenement, and he got this drinking Irishman to sign a Total Abstinence pledge, and then he told him that he must have Jesus to help him keep it. They prayed together and Murphy was saved. Things went on well all the week, but when Sunday morning came around, Joe Healey came over to pay Peter his usual visit, and Murphy, in speaking of it, said, “This was the worst yet, for Healey used to come to see Murphy as regular as Sunday, always bringing a bottle of whiskey with him, and the two would spree it all day until they turned the whole house into a bedlam.“So,” said Daley, “when I went to the door to let him in, he said, “Good morning, Pat, is Murphy in?” I said, “No, Murphy is out! He does not live here any longer!” “Now, Dr. Gordon,” he said, “did I tell a lie?

What I meant was that the old Murphy did not live there any more, for you know Mr. Moody told us that when a man is converted, he is a new creature, and that is what I meant.

Did I tell a lie?”If one will turn to 2 Corinthians 5:17 he will be compelled to admit that Patrick Daley told the truth, for Paul said, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new”.If Paul’s teaching “Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”, is true, the Murphy that Joe Healey knew was dead, and a new man in Christ Jesus dwelt in that upper tenement, through the power of Christ’s resurrection.Then the Apostle Paul wanted to know the power of Christ’s resurrection as exercised against the grave! He says, “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead”.It is in that power that we have the promise of redemption for our bodies. I believe with a recent writer that “those who have not watched the trend of opinion on that point have little idea of the extent to which, even in Orthodox ranks, the Swedenborgian notion of elimination has supplanted the primitive doctrine of resurrection. Instead of holding that at the sound of the last trump God will quicken our mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in us, it is becoming very common to maintain that at death a spiritual, incorporeal substance is released from the body; thus one’s death is his resurrection, since in that event an imprisoned spiritual body breaks its shell and comes forth like the butterfly from the chrysalis. If that were true, it would not be the angel’s trump calling the dead from the grave that ushers in the resurrection, but the sexton’s bell tolling the dead to the grave.”Paul did not believe that. Read the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians, or the fourth chapter of I Thessalonians, and find that the Apostle Paul believes in that power of resurrection which would bring back to us the bodies of our loved ones, changed only in the elimination of corruption, dishonor, weakness, and nature, and the implantation of incorruption, glory, power and spirit.I went one week to Lakewood with a family who laid away a beautiful daughter. She had seen but twelve summers, and I confess to you, as I looked upon their tearstained faces, and realized the agony they had known in having this girl snatched from health to the grave by three days of indescribable suffering, I should have been silent before them, and compelled, if I spake at all, to speak as one who was without hope, could I not have told them that one day the graves would give up their dead and the house broken here by the claims of the cemetery would be perfected there by Christ’s resurrection power.The third thing for which Paul prayed was to knowTHE OF HIS There are two or three respects in which the Apostle might enter into that fellowship.In the lowliness of Christ’s station. In his Epistle to the Philippians, Paul speaks of how Christ Jesus “who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself” (Philippians 2:6).It was not a humility of station merely; it was that true humility of spirit that ever characterizes the unselfish. When He had His choice between sharing the Throne with God and the lowest estate with men, He was moved by the very spirit of love that was in Him to accept the latter. You cannot share the low estate of men without suffering. You cannot go down on a level with the social outcast and stand at his side, and pour your sympathy into his ear, and let him feel the pulse of an honest heart, without suffering. It will bring you social ostracism as it brought it to Christ; and, it will burden your heart, because it will take on the poor man’s woes, and you will be compelled to groan in spirit, as Jesus groaned at the sight of suffering Mary and Martha.Phillips Brooks was right when he said, “True humility on the part of a disciple is one in nature with Christ’s own humility.”Here is a delicate woman who is impelled by His Spirit within her to go into the worst wards of a hospital and serve the lowest and most loathsome there!

But when you ask her why she makes such a sacrifice, she answers with a smile, “Sacrifice? It is a sweet service.” She has entered into the fellowship of His humiliation.Years ago my friends, Mrs.

Riley’s University chum and her husband, young people just graduated, surrounded by a host of close relatives and admiring friends, picked up and set off into Western China, and there in a city of filth and squalor, and among an uncouth and unkempt people, put in their years and found pleasure in the ministry. They entered into the fellowship of Christ’s humiliation. Paul wanted that same spirit to possess him, hence the prayer of our text. Can you pray it? Can I?In the strength of His temptation. Did you ever think of what that wilderness temptation meant to Christ?

Did you ever sit down to contemplate how, in a few sentences, Satan swept every key of human nature, to find if a one were out of tune with God? “If Thou he the Son of God, command that these stones he made bread”. Christ was hungry.

The appeal to Christ was an appeal to employ His Divine power to satisfy Himself. And, oh, how strong that appeal must have been, because for forty days and nights He had not tasted food. There may be men in Minneapolis today who are hungry and who, like Jean Val Jean, are ready to break the laws of the land that the appetite maybe appeased. And yet to go hungry, when one can’t do other righteously, is to come into fellowship with Christ’s sufferings.Again, the devil took Him up into the Holy City, and set Him upon a pinnacle of the Holy Temple, and said unto Him, “Cast Thyself down: for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee: and in their hands they shall hear Thee up”.Oh, what a temptation to come into prominence through an appeal to the eyes. And when you are tempted by gaudy dress, or sensational behaviour, to call attention to yourself, and get a reputation, just remember that to yield to it is to miss the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings in that for years He walked among men unnoticed, and would have died without coming into prominence, rather than do it in any other way than in defense of the right. Jesus longed to have the popular ear.

Jesus took pleasure in seeing the multitudes assemble about Him, for such was His mission of mercy to them that it must have been so, but never once did He descend to any clap-trap suggestions of Satan, to accomplish that prominence and its consequent power. And then see how Satan again “sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them”, and says, “All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me”.

Jesus longed to have these kingdoms. Jesus had been promised these kingdoms. Here was a plan by which He could come into possession of them without suffering on His part, without the exercise of patience, through thousands of years of waiting; and the price to be paid for that coveted privilege was only a single bending of the knee! Sometime when you see a chance to make a few hundred dollars by a dishonest word, by a deceiving look, by silence even, and yet you know that to come into possession of it would please Satan, and, in fact, would be for the moment a prostration of yourself at his feet, just remember that Christ has gone before you there, and when the worlds were offered Him for a single yielding; when all the kingdoms and the glory of them might have been His, by setting conscience aside for one moment, He turned from those possessions to the direst poverty possible, and answered, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve”; and you will spurn the tempting profit and go your way clean-conscienced, having entered into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings.In the extent of His sacrifice! The Apostle Paul saw that Christ had laid down everything for him, and so he says, I want to lay down everything for Christ. The things that were gain to me I want to count as sacrifice for Him.

The world has never realized as yet what Christ’s offering of Himself meant. We have never dreamed the crucible in which Christ lived out His days!

When He was an innocent babe, Herod, animated by Satan, attempted His slaughter. Doubtless His appearance at 12 years of age excited antipathy in the hearts of some of the scribes and Pharisees from which they never recovered. From the day that His public ministry began until the day that He died on the Cross, every indignity, every suffering that Church and State could heap upon Him, He had to endure. Holman Hunt has painted a picture entitled “The Shadow of Death”. It represents Christ in His carpenter shop. At the close of the day He rises from His task and wearily stretches Himself, and, as He stands there with His arms uplifted, His mother, who has come into the shop for some utensil, lifts her eyes a moment, and, lo, the setting sun strikes His form in such a way that the shadow He casts on the shop wall is a perfect cross.

Instantly she is filled with a strange fear, lest it portend His coming agony. Hunt’s conception is in wonderful keeping with the whole teaching of the Word of God.

There was never an hour, after Christ began His public ministry, in which it was not possible to see that the Cross was His destiny. He could not compromise the truth and consequently the church which had departed from it would not accept His words. He could not praise the existing civilization; consequently the state, seeing that His teaching would overturn the very foundations and expose its sinfulness, set its officers on His track. He never spake but He was misunderstood, because men were so sunken in sin that they could not appreciate His high principles of righteousness. Every act of His life was misrepresented. Every point of His conduct maligned.

Daily He was face to face with the question, “Shall I compromise with wickedness, or shall I continue my plea for the right and perish on the Cross?” To this question there was but one answer possible with Him—others He might save, Himself He could not save. Today, every man, who will, may enter into the fellowship of His sufferings at this point.

God save us from drawing back from the experience. If preaching the Truth brings persecution, may God help the men of this hour to enter into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. If obedience to the plain teachings of the Word of God means giving of our silver and gold to the point where, like Christ, we also shall be poor, God help us to enter into the fellowship of His sufferings. If living the Spirit-filled life means for us the crucifixion of the old self, by the putting down of every iniquitous desire, and a perfect surrender of every power, God help us at whatever cost to enter into the fellowship of His sufferings, for “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him”.

Philippians 3:13-14

THE OF Philippians 3:13-14IF there is any one thing upon which the ancients and the moderns agree, it is the admirableness of high character. If there is any one word in which the best thought of heathenism and the highest opinion of Christianity is focused to a point, it is this word—character.Bartol said, “Character is the diamond that scratches every other stone.” Emerson remarks, “Character is more than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think. Goodness outshines genius as the sun makes the electric light cast a shadow.”Confucius wrote, “What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the small man seeks is in others.”James Russell Lowell said, “When all have done their utmost surely he hath given the best who gives a character-erect and constant”; while J. G.

Holland affirms, “Character must stand behind and back up everything—the sermon, the poem, the picture, the play. None of them is worth a straw without it.”The high-minded Christian of the present hour agrees perfectly with each of these opinions; while Paul, the peerless Apostle of Christianity, expresses, in our text, his firm conviction that character in Christ Jesus was the goal of all endeavor; the one end worthy the utmost employment of all of one’s energies.In my judgment, there is no question that such is the proper interpretation of the Apostle’s speech,“I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended of Christ Jesus. “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this owe thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus?’” DEFINED To undertake the definition of character is indeed a difficult task. The elements that enter into it are so varied and so many that volumes have been contributed to their discussion. Years since, Dr. Armitage, in an address delivered in one of our anniversary meetings asked, “What is character?” and answered, “In the productions of art, it is the genius which gives them birth; in nature, it is the force of action; the fertility of the earth is its character; in mind, the strength of intellect, the firmness of will, the radiancy of benevolence are its character.”But all human attempts at definitions are so inadequate and unsatisfactory that I find relief only in turning to the Divine definitions.Christ defined it as child-likeness. In Matthew 18:1-5 we read,“At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven? “And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them, “And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven”. John Watson, treating this beautiful parable, says, “As a type of character, the Kingdom was like unto a little child, and the greatest in the Kingdom would be the most child-like. According to Jesus, a well-conditioned child illustrates better than anything else on the earth the distinctive features of Christian character—because he does not assert or aggrandise himself; because he has no memory for injuries, and no room in his heart for a grudge; because he has no previous opinions, and is not ashamed to confess his ignorance; because he can imagine, and has the key of another world, entering in through the ivory gate, and living amid the things unseen and eternal. The new society of Jesus was a magnificent imagination, and he who entered it must lay aside the world standards and ideals of character, and become as a little child.” Paul conceived character as manliness. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, touching our ascended Lord he said,“And He gave some, Apostles; and some, Prophets; and some, Evangelists; and some, Pastors and Teachers; “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the Body of Christ: “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: “That We henceforth he no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to decieve; But speaking the Truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-15). There is no question that the whole point and purpose of the ministry of Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, Teacher, is character. When Paul speaks of a perfect man as the end of all ministry, he makes that evident. When he contrasts such manhood with the weakness that is “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness”, he seems to condemn childlikeness; but he is only pleading for that progress which shall lift us above the dangers of inexperience, and the weakness of immaturity, and the sin of instability, to that knowledge and rightness, and steadfastness which made possible a Savonarola, a Huss, a Luther, a Wesley, a Washington, a Lincoln—men who have left their littleness and gone to largeness; men who were characterized by strength and not weakness; men who are not babes to be christened by the sprinkling of water, but adults who have passed through the baptism of fire, to be refined and finished thereby.But the Apostle and his Master are of one mind. The true character, like the shields of the ancient times, has its two sides—the simplicity, the humility, the credulity, the active imagination, the fervent love, the unprejudiced mind of the child; and also the strength, the assertion, the honesty, the investigation, the intelligent affection, the fixed opinion of the man.Paul says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things”. But he does not mean he put away the things just mentioned; only his baby prattle, his misunderstanding, his feeble powers of thought. The best elements of childhood are carried up into manhood and combine with it, and the result of the combination is character.To illustrate, years ago, you will remember, Arthur Cumnock entered Harvard College.

He found the atmosphere of that institution like that which now characterizes most of our universities. The fast set were reckoned the first-folk.

The chief end of man was to drink and gamble politely, and wire-pull for fraternities and neglect his studies. With all these odds against him, young Cumnock started to live soberly, studiously, righteously. His conduct so contrasted that of his fellow-students as to render him unpopular at first, and many an hour lie must have spent in the sad consciousness of living under the disapproval of his fellow-students. But never once did he resign his ideal. With the simplicity and sweetness of a child on the one side, the uncompromising attitude of a martyr on the other, he lived his life and did his best to remake that of the institution in which he was but a single student among many. Four years passed by, and the class-day of his Senior year was on; and, as the custom was, the class must choose its favorite and do him honor.

And when the choice was made, it fell on Arthur Cumnock. In the opinion of those same students he was without competitor.

They laid the laurel wreath upon his brow, and publicly proclaimed him the manliest man of them all.I do not know whether it has ever occurred to you, but it has often been in my mind, that Jesus Christ, the only perfect character this world ever knew, was also a combination of child-likeness and man-likeness. On the one side as innocent, as humble, as sweet, as affectionate, as any baby-saint enfolded in the bosom of God; and, on the other side, His fixedness of purpose, His fidelity to the right, His unwavering heroism pales the character of a Napoleon, the daring of a Luther, the stability of a Huss, even as the rising sun, by its very brilliance, obscures the most luminous stars that decked the brow of night. The Apostle Paul, in our text, has done more than set up character as the goal of all conduct. He is interested in its development. He realizes that his own attainments are meager, but that life’s possibilities are great.“Forgetting those things which are behind”, he “reaches forth unto those things which are before”. The text, with its context sets before us very clearly, and I think somewhat fully, the essential elements that enter into the development of character.Paul regards high aspirations as an essential impetus. He longs to be perfect and to that end puts forth his endeavor. Disraeli once said, “The youth who does not look up will look down, and the spirit that does not soar is destined to grovel.” The words of George Herbert are apropos,“Pitch thy behavior low, thy project high So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be. Sink not in spirit, who aimeth at the sky Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.” It is said of Henry W. Longfellow that when he was about 17 he wrote to his father, “Whether nature has given me any capacity for knowledge, or not, she has at any rate given me a very strong predilection for literary pursuits, and I am almost confident in believing that, if I can ever rise in the world, it must be by the exercise of my talent in the field of literature. Whatever I do study ought to be engaged in with all my soul, for I will be eminent in something.It is said, that when Henry Clay was a boy, hoeing corn and following the plow in the Kentucky fields, he was dreaming of the day when he should stand in the halls of Congress. Already he was formulating the orations which he should deliver when elected to that eminence; the arguments, with which he would cut down an opponent as he now laid low the weeds by his hoe, he was fashioning.And who doubts that the dream of the boy Henry Longfellow, and the aspiration of the boy Henry Clay entered as prominent factors into the development to the point of poet for the first and matchless orator for the second!William Watson, in his poem, “The Fugitive Ideal”, writes,“As some most pure and noble face, Seen in the thronged and hurrying street Sheds o’er the world a sudden grace, A flying odor sweet, Then passing leaves the cheated sense Balked with a phantom excellence. “So in our soul, the visions rise Of that fair life we never led; They flash a splendor past our eyes, We start, and they are fled; They pass and leave us with blank gaze, Resigned to our ignoble days.” But, I do not agree with Watson! With the Apostle Paul they did not “pass and leave him with blank gaze resigned to his ignoble days.” With Milton, “The vision did not pass and leave with blank gaze that noble soul resigned to ignoble days. The vision that came to him when he was a boy, sleeping in a bleak garret—the vision of a poem that the world would not willingly let die— remained, until he had wrought it into verse, and it had lifted him to immortal honors; and, when the blind poet lay dying, as he entered the valley and shadow, he whispered to those who were about him, “Still guides the Heavenly vision.”Paul also regarded positive hardships as a necessary pressure in the development of character. Speaking of those trying experiences through which he had passed, and by which he had forfeited all honors and all comforts, and come into the bitterest persecutions and the most dreadful imprisonments, he said, “I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ”.Long before Paul another great Apostle of the faith—David—had come into the understanding of this same truth and wrote, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Thy Word”.The history of progress is set in the mold of suffering. Drudgery, endurance, misrepresentations, misunderstandings, oppositions—these have made the world’s great men. Dr.

Hillis says, “Man learns to swim by being cast into life’s maelstrom and left to make his way ashore. No youth can learn to sail his life-craft in a lake sequestered and sheltered from all storms.”How Abraham Lincoln illustrates the thought that hardship is a necessary pressure to develop character! Born in poverty, bred in the midst of ignorant people, thrown in early life upon his own resources, so homely that the girls shunned him, and so ungainly that the boys made of him a laughing stock; when through force of character, and rectitude of thought he rose to the office of President, it was only to feel the more venomous fangs of Washington’s fastidious set. The head of the nation was ridiculed as “the ape,” called “a stupid block-head,” and caricatured as “Satyr.” Orison Sweet Marden says, “On reading these terrible criticisms, Abraham once said, ‘Well, Abraham, are you a man or are you a dog?’ And after the repulse at Fredericksburg he remarked, ‘If there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do, I pity him.’Little did the people know what they were doing when they were laying upon him the pressure of such opposition. But history tells us, they were developing his character, and making of him a man beside whom our greatest statesman would seem as small as David looked when he came into the presence of his father-in-law—the king. And they were wringing from him tears that would prove not alone a nectar to the blacks of the south, but the waters of salvation to the craft of the state.How beautifully Father Ryan, the poet of the South, has expressed the Apostle’s thought:“The summer rose the sun has flushed With crimson glory, may be sweet— ’Tis sweeter when its leaves are crushed Beneath the winds’ and tempests’ feet. “The rose, that waves upon its tree, In life, sheds perfume all around— More sweet the perfume floats to me Of roses trampled on the ground. “The waving rose, with every breath Scents, carelessly the summer air— The wounded rose bleeds forth in death A sweetness far more rich and rare. “It is a truth beyond our ken— And yet a truth that all may read— It is with roses as with men, The sweetest hearts are those that bleed. “The flower which Bethlehem saw bloom Out of a heart all full of grace, Gave never forth its full perfume Until the Cross became its vase.” A perfect model is a regnant power in the development of character. Paul tells us that he is pressing on toward the goal unto the prize of the high-calling of God in “Christ Jesus”. To the Corinthians he wrote, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).The advantage of Bible study exists in the fact that Christ, the perfect model of character, comes more and more fully before the honest student of the Word. We must see Him before we can be like Him. “Beloved, * * it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall Appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is”.Carlos Martin wrote of Wendell Phillips, “He needed not the sting of guilt to make him virtuous. His character shone conspicuous. He was above pretense—a sincere, conscientious, devoted friend.

He had a deep love for all that was true and honorable; he always detested a mean action. His Bible was always open on the center-table.” I can but believe that that open Book counted for his character, for in that he found his model—“Christ Jesus”.Dr.

Armitage says, “The greatest of minds seek after a sublimity like that of Milton; a richness like that of Taylor; a dignity like that of Howe; an earnestness like that of Baxter; a reasoning like that of Paley; a sweetness like that of Cowper; and an eloquence like that of Hall.”But young artists copy the masters. Why should we be content to copy character at second hand? Christ is the only Master in this realm. Milton, Taylor, Howe, Baxter, Paley, Cowper and Hall but poorly reflect Him. The Apostle Paul sets us the better example, and pushing past all these, stays not until he is face to face with the Christ, and calling back to all, invites us to come into this same presence, where “we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image”.But character does not come from merely studying the Christ. It is the direct consequence of receiving from the Christ.

We are asked to work out (our) own salvation with fear and trembling, but we are encouraged by the statement that God worketh in us.One of the danger points of the present-day theology is here. Men are more and more disposed to feel that Christ is only our perfect model and that having Him as our pattern, we can, by our own efforts, perfect ourselves.

But not so. According to the Scripture, of ourselves we “can do nothing”. According to the same Word of God, we “can do all things through Christ which strengthened” us. And the man who surrenders his life into the hands of the One and only Master-builder in the realm of character, is the one who will be fashioned by those hands into the perfect man.Henry Van Dyke says, “Do you remember the story of the portrait of Dante which is painted upon the walls of the Bargello, at Florence? For many years it was supposed that the picture had utterly perished. Men had heard of it, but no one living had ever seen it. But presently came an artist who was determined to find it again. He went into the place where tradition said that it had been painted.

The room was used as a storehouse for lumber and straw. The walls were covered with a dirty white-wash. He had the heaps of rubbish carried away. Patiently and carefully he removed the white-wash from the wall. Lines and colors long hidden began to appear. And at last the grave, lofty, noble face of the great poet looked out again upon the world of light.“‘That was wonderful,’ you say, ‘that was beautiful!’ Not half so wonderful as the work which Christ came to do in the heart of man,—to restore the likeness of God and bring the Divine image to the light. He comes to us with the knowledge that God’s image is there, though concealed; He touches us with the faith that there is no human being in whom that treasure is not hidden, and from whose stained and dusty soul Christ cannot bring out that reflection of God’s face.”