Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXIV
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XXIV.
It would therefore be to their profit, for the young to refrain from
laying down1519
| 1519 The
negative (μὴ
νομοθετεῖν) is found in Codd. Reg. and Morell. | for themselves their future
course in this profession; and indeed, examples of holy lives for them
to follow are not wanting in the living generation1520
| 1520 τὴν ζωὴν. So βίος also is used in
Greek after 2nd century. “They (the monks) make little show in
history before the reign of Valens (a.d. 364).
Paul of Thebes, Hilarion of Gaza, and even the great Antony, are only
characters in the novels of the day. Now, however, there was in the
East a real movement towards monasticism. All parties favoured it. The
Semi-arians were busy inside Mt. Taurus; and though Acacians and
Anomœans held more aloof, they could not escape an influence which
even Julian felt. But the Nicene party was the home of the
ascetics.” Gwatkin’s Arians. | . Now, if ever before, saintliness abounds
and penetrates our world; by gradual advances it has reached the
highest mark of perfectness; and one who follows such footsteps in his
daily rounds may catch this halo; one who tracks the scent of this
preceding perfume may be drenched in the sweet odours of Christ
Himself. As, when one torch has been fired, flame is transmitted to all
the neighbouring candlesticks, without either the first light being
lessened or blazing with unequal brilliance on the other points where
it has been caught; so the saintliness of a life is transmitted from
him who has achieved it, to those who come within his circle; for
there is
truth in the Prophet’s saying1521
, that one who
lives with a man who is “holy” and “clean” and
“elect,” will become such himself. If you would wish to
know the sure signs, which will secure you the real model, it is not
hard to take a sketch from life. If you see a man so standing between
death and life, as to select from each helps for the contemplative
course, never letting death’s stupor paralyze his zeal to keep
all the commandments, nor yet placing both feet in the world of the
living, since he has weaned himself from secular ambitions;—a man
who remains more insensate than the dead themselves to everything that
is found on examination to be living for the flesh, but instinct with
life and energy and strength in the achievements of virtue, which are
the sure marks of the spiritual life;—then look to that man for
the rule of your life; let him be the leading light of your course of
devotion, as the constellations that never set are to the pilot;
imitate his youth and his gray hairs: or, rather, imitate the old man
and the stripling who are joined in him; for even now in his declining
years time has not blunted the keen activity of his soul, nor was his
youth active in the sphere of youth’s well-known employments; in
both seasons of life he has shown a wonderful combination of opposites,
or rather an exchange of the peculiar qualities of each; for in age he
shows, in the direction of the good, a young man’s energy, while,
in the hours of youth, in the direction of evil, his passions were
powerless. If you wish to know what were the passions of that glorious
youth of his, you will have for your imitation the intensity and glow
of his godlike love of wisdom, which grew with him from his childhood,
and has continued with him into his old age. But if you cannot gaze
upon him, as the weak-sighted cannot gaze upon the sun, at all events
watch that band of holy men who are ranged beneath him, and who by the
illumination of their lives are a model for this age. God has placed
them as a beacon for us who live around; many among them have been
young men there in their prime, and have grown gray in the unbroken
practice of continence and temperance; they were old in reasonableness
before their time, and in character outstripped their years. The only
love they tasted was that of wisdom; not that their natural instincts
were different from the rest; for in all alike “the flesh lusteth
against the spirit1522
;” but they
listened to some purpose to him who said that Temperance “is a
tree of life to them that lay hold upon her1523
;” and they sailed across the swelling
billows of existence upon this tree of life, as upon a skiff; and
anchored in the haven of the will of God; enviable now after so fair a
voyage, they rest their souls in that sunny cloudless calm. They now
ride safe themselves at the anchor of a good hope, far out of reach of
the tumult of the billows; and for others who will follow they radiate
the splendour of their lives as beacon-fires on some high watch-tower.
We have indeed a mark to guide us safely over the ocean of temptations;
and why make the too curious inquiry, whether some with such thoughts
as these have not fallen nevertheless, and why therefore despair, as if
the achievement was beyond your reach? Look on him who has succeeded,
and boldly launch upon the voyage with confidence that it will be
prosperous, and sail on under the breeze of the Holy Spirit with Christ
your pilot and with the oarage of good cheer1524
| 1524 τῷ πηδαλί& 251·
τῆς
εὐφροσύνης | .
For those who “go down to the sea in ships and occupy their
business in great waters” do not let the shipwreck that has
befallen some one else prevent their being of good cheer; they rather
shield their hearts in this very confidence, and so sweep on to
accomplish their successful feat. Surely it is the most absurd thing in
the world to reprobate him who has slipped in a course which requires
the greatest nicety, while one considers those who all their lives have
been growing old in failures and in errors, to have chosen the better
part. If one single approach to sin is such an awful thing that you
deem it safer not to take in hand at all this loftier aim, how much
more awful a thing it is to make sin the practice of a whole life, and
to remain thereby absolutely ignorant of the purer course! How can you
in your full life obey the Crucified? How can you, hale in sin, obey
Him Who died to sin? How can you, who are not crucified to the world,
and will not accept the mortification of the flesh, obey Him Who bids
you follow after Him, and Who bore the Cross in His own body, as a
trophy from the foe? How can you obey Paul when he exhorts you
“to present your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto
God1525
,” when you are “conformed to
this world,” and not transformed by the renewing of your mind,
when you are not “walking” in this “newness of
life,” but still pursuing the routine of “the old
man”? How can you be a priest unto God1526
| 1526 Gregory alludes to Rev. i. 16: ἐποίησεν
ἡμᾶς
βασιλεῖς καὶ
ἱερεῖς τῷ
θεῷ καὶ πατρὶ
αὐτοῦ. | ,
anointed though you are for this very office, to offer a gift to God; a
gift in no way another’s, no counterfeited gift from sources
outside yourself, but a gift that is really your own, namely,
“the inner man1527
,” who must be
perfect and blameless, as it is required of a lamb to be without spot
or blemish? How can you offer this to God, when you do not listen to
the law forbidding the unclean to offer sacrifices? If you long for God to manifest
Himself to you, why do you not hear Moses, when he commands the people
to be pure from the stains of marriage, that they may take in the
vision of God.1528
If this all seems
little in your eyes, to be crucified with Christ, to present yourself a
sacrifice to God, to become a priest unto the most high God, to make
yourself worthy of the vision of the Almighty, what higher blessings
than these can we imagine for you, if indeed you make light of the
consequences of these as well? And the consequence of being crucified
with Christ is that we shall live with Him, and be glorified with Him,
and reign with Him; and the consequence of presenting ourselves to God
is that we shall be changed from the rank of human nature and human
dignity to that of Angels; for so speaks Daniel, that “thousand
thousands stood before him1529
.” He too who
has taken his share in the true priesthood and placed himself beside
the Great High Priest remains altogether himself a priest for ever,
prevented for eternity from remaining any more in death. To say, again,
that one makes oneself worthy to see God, produces no less a result
than this; that one is made worthy to see God. Indeed, the crown of
every hope, and of every desire, of every blessing, and of every
promise of God, and of all those unspeakable delights which we believe
to exist beyond our perception and our knowledge,—the crowning
result of them all, I say, is this. Moses longed earnestly to see it,
and many prophets and kings have desired to see the same: but the only
class deemed worthy of it are the pure in heart, those who are, and are
named “blessed,” for this very reason, that “they
shall see God1530
.” Wherefore
we would that you too should become crucified with Christ, a holy
priest standing before God, a pure offering in all chastity, preparing
yourself by your own holiness for God’s coming; that you also may
have a pure heart in which to see God, according to the promise of God,
and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory for ever and ever.
Amen.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
