“As some rare perfume in a vase of clay
Pervades it with a fragrance not its own,
So when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul,
All heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.”
The Scriptures make a great deal of having Christ in men, if they are Christians. Christ himself speaks of abiding in his people, and of his life as flowing through them as the life of the vine flows through its branches. The figure of the body is used, believers being members of Christ’s body, and deriving all their life from him. The idea of a building our temple with the divine Spirit as indwelling guest is also employed to represent the Christian’s relation to his Lord. Then, St. Paul says without figure, “Christ liveth in me,” and speaks of being “filled with the Spirit,” “filled with all the fullness of God,” as a possible and most desirable attainment of Christian experience. From the many forms in which this truth is represented in the Scriptures, it is evident that the ideal Christian life is one that is thoroughly pervaded, saturated, so to speak, with the life and spirit of Christ. Far more certainly is implied than mere divine influence over us or upon us from without, such influence as a friend exerts over a friend, a teacher over a pupil, or even a mother over a child. To become a Christian is to have a new spiritual life enter the soul, as when a seed with its living germ is planted in the dead soil: to grow as a Christian is to have this new life increase in strength and energy, making daily conquests over the old nature, extending itself, and expelling the evil by the force of its own good, and ultimately bringing the affections, feeling, desires, and all the activities, even the thoughts of the heart, into subjection to Christ.
There is a great difference between having Christ outside and having him in us. If he is only outside, we may listen for his words, and try to obey his voice, following where he leads; and we may gaze upon his loveliness, and seek to copy it in our lives; but our following and obeying will be under the impulse of duty only, with no inward constraint; and our striving after the divine likeness will be like the carving of a figure in cold marble rather than the growing up of a life from within by its own vital force and energy into fullness of power and beauty.
Page 1