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Henry Drummond ERS.E. EG.S
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THE CHANGED LIFE
The Changed Life
AN ADDRESS
BY
HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E., F.G.S.
AUTHOR OF "GEHATBST THING IM THE WORLC," KTC.
AUTHOR'S EDITION
NEW YORK
JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS
14 AND 16 ASTOR Place
1891
THE NEW
PUBLIC :■•
Copyright
JAMES POTT & CO.
2891
TllO»i
PREFACE.
Last autumn, in a book-shop in California, the
author found a little book with his name upon
the title-page — a book which he did not know
existed ; which he never wrote ; nor baptized
with the title which it bore. This stray publi-
cation — taken from shorthand notes of a spoken
Address — he does not grudge. Already, it
seems, it has done its small measure of good.
But owing to the imperfections which it con-
tains it has been thought right to issue a more
complete edition.
The theme, like its predecessors in this se-
ries, represents but a single aspect of its great
PREFACE.
subject — tlic man-ward side. The light and
shade is apportioned with tliis in view. And
the reader's kind attention is asked to this
limitation, lest he wonder at points being left
in shadow, which theology has always, and
rightly, taught us to emphasize.
It was the hearing of a simple talk by a
friend to some plain people in a Highland
deer-forest which first called the author's atten-
tion to the practicalness of this solution of
the cardinal problem of Christian experience.
What follows owes a large debt to that Sun-
day morning.
mc . all
•wnitb . unvcdcD . race
IReflectincj
Bs . a . /Wblrror
Zbc . (3lors . ot . tbe . 3LorC)
Brc . transformed
Unto . the . same image
3from . Glor^ . to . (5lors
^ven . as . from . tbe . XorD
Zbc . Spirit*
Q^a
THE CHANGED LIFE.
*' I PROTEST that if some great Power would agree to
make me always think what is true and do what is
right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock
and wound up every morning, I should instantly close
with the offer."
These are the words of ^Ir. Huxley. The
infinite desirability, the infinite difficulty of
being good — the theme is as old as humanity.
The man does not live from \vhose deeper
being the same confession has not risen, or
who would not give his all to-morrow, if he
could "close with the offer" of becoming a
better man.
lO THE CHANGED LTFE.
I propose to make that offer now. In all
seriousness, without bein*; "turned into a sort
of clock," the end can be attained. Under
the right conditions it is as natural for char-
acter to become beautiful as for a flower ; and
if on God's earth there is not some machinery
for effecting it, the supreme gift to the world
has been forgotten. This is simply what
man was made for. With Browning : " I say
that Man was made to grow, not stop." Or
in the deeper words of an older Book : " Whom
He did foreknow, lie also did predestinate
. . . to be conformed to the linage of His
Son."
Let me begin by naming, and in part dis-
carding, some processes in vogue already, for
producing better lives. These processes are
far from wrong ; in their place they may even
be essential. One ventures to disparage them
only because they do not turn out the most
perfect possible work.
i
THE CHANGED LIFE. II
The first imperfect method is to rely on
Resolution. In will-power, in mere spasms of
earnestness there is no salvation. Struggle,
effort, even agony, have their place in Chris-
tianity, as we shall see ; but this is not where
they come in. In mid-Atlantic the other day,
the Etruria, in which I was sailing, suddenly
stopped. Something had gone wrong with
the engines. There were five hundred able-
bodied men on board the ship. Do you think
if we had gathered together and pushed against
the mast we could have pushed it on ? When
one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he
is trying to make his boat go by pushing
against the mast. He is like a drowning man
trying to lift himself out of the water by pull-
ing at the hair of his own head. Christ held
up this method almost to ridicule when He
said, " Which of you by taking thought can
add a cubit to his stature ? " The one redeem-
ing feature of the self-sufficient method is this
12 THE CHANGED LIFE.
— that those who try it find out ahnost at once
that it will not i;ain the goal.
Another experimenter says : " But that is
not my method. I have seen the folly of a
mere wild struggle in the dark. I work on a
principle. My plan is not to waste power on
random effort, but to concentrate on a single
sin. By taking one at a time, and crucifying it
steadily, I hope in the end to extirpate all."
To this, unfortunately, there are four objections:
For one thing, life is too short ; the name of
sin is Legion. For another thing, to deal with
individual sins is to leave the rest of the nature
for the time untouched. In the third place, a
single combat with a special sin does not affect
the root and spring of the disease. If one only
of the channels of sin be obstructed, experience
points to an almost certain overflow through
some other part of the nature. Partial con-
version is almost always accompanied by such
moral leakage, for the pent-up energies accumu-
THE CHANGED LIFE. I3
late to the bursting point, and the last state of
that soul may be worse than the first. In the
last place, religion does not consist in negatives,
in stopping this sin and stopping that. The
perfect character can never be produced with a
pruning-knife.
But a third protests : " So be it. I make
no attempt to stop sins one by one. My
method is just the opposite. I copy the
virtues one by one." The difficulty about the
copying method is that it is apt to be
mechanical. One can always tell an engrav-
ing from a picture, an artificial flower from a
real flower. To copy virtues one by one has
somewhat the same effect as eradicating the
vices one by one ; the temporary result is
an overbalanced and incongruous character.
Someone defines d^ prig as " a creature that
is over-fed for its size." One sometimes finds
Christians of this species — over-fed on one
side of their nature, but dismally thin and
14 THE CHANGED LIFE.
starved-lookin<^ on the other. The result, for
instance, of copying Humility, and adding it
on to an otherwise worldly life, is simply
grotesque. A rabid Temperance advocate,
for the same reason, is often the poorest of
creatures, flourishing on a single virtue, and
quite oblivious that his Temperance is making
a worse man of him and not a better. These
are examples of fine virtues spoiled by as-
sociation with mean companions. Character
is a unity, and all the virtues must advance
together to make the perfect man. This
method of sanctification, nevertheless, is in
the true direction. It is only in the details
of execution that it fails.
A fourth method I need scarcely mention,
for it is a variation on those already named.
It is the very young man's method ; and
the pure earnestness of it makes it almost
desecration to touch it. It is to keep a pri-
vate note-book with columns for the days
THE CHANGED LIFE. 1 5
of the week, and a list of virtues with
spaces against each for marks. This, with
many stern rules for preface, is stored away
in a secret place, and from time to time, at
nightfall, the soul is arraigned before it as
before a private judgment bar. This living
by code was Franklin's method ; and I sup-
pose thousands more could tell how they had
hung up in their bedrooms, or hid in lock-
fast drawers, the rules which one solemn day
they drew up to shape their lives. This
method is not erroneous, only somehow its
success is poor. You bear me witness that it
fails ? And it fails generally for very matter-
of-fact reasons — most likely because one day
we forget the rules.
All these methods that have been named —
the self-sufficient method, the self-crucifixion
method, the mimetic method, and the diary
method — are perfectly human, perfectly natu-
ral, perfectly ignorant, and, as they stand, per-
l6 THE CHANGED LH-E.
fectly inadequate. It is not argued, I repeat,
that they must be abandoned. Their harm
is rather that they distract attention from the
true workini; method, and secure a fair result
at the expense of the perfect one. What
that perfect method is we shall now go on
to ask.
THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICA-
TION.
A FORMULA, a receipt, for Sanctification —
can one seriously speak of this mighty
change as if the process were as definite as
for the production of so many volts of elec-
tricity ? It is impossible to doubt it. Shall
a mechanical experiment succeed infallibly,
and the one vital experiment of humanity
remain a chance ? Is corn to grow by
method, and character by caprice ? If we
cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces
of religion will do their work, then is religion
vain. And if we cannot express the law of
these forces in simple words, then is Chris-
1 8 THE CHANGED LIFE.
tianity not the world's religion but the
world's conundrum.
Where, then, shall one look for such a
formula ? Where one would look for any
formula — among the text-books. And if we
turn to the text-books of Christianity we
shall find a formula for this problem as
clear and precise as any in the mechanical
sciences. If this simple rule, moreover, be
but followed fearlessly, it will yield the result
of a perfect character as surely as any result
that is guaranteed by the laws of nature.
The finest expression of this rule in Scripture,
or indeed in any literature, is probably one
drawn up and condensed into a single verse
by Paul. You will find it in a letter— the
second to the Corinthians — written by him
to some Christian people who, in a city which
was a byword for depravity and licentious-
ness, were seeking the higher life. To see
the point of the words we must take them
THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 19
from the immensely improved rendering of
the Revised translation, for the older Version
in this case greatly obscures the sense. They
are these : " We all, with unveiled face re-
flecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are transformed into the same image from
glory to glory, even as from the Lord the
Spirit."
Now observe at the outset the entire con-
tradiction of all our previous efforts, in the
simple passive "we are transformed." We
are changed^ as the Old Version has it —
we do not change ourselves. No man can
change himself. Throughout the New Testa-
ment you will find that wherever these moral
and spiritual transformations are described
the verbs are in the passive. Presently it
will be pointed out that there is a rationale
in this ; but meantime do not toss these
words aside as if this passivity denied all
human effort or ignored intelligible law. What
20 THE CHANGED LIFE.
is implied for the soul here is no more than
is everywhere claimed for the body. In
physiology the verbs describing the processes
of growth are in the passive. Growth is not
voluntary ; it takes place, it happens, it
is wrought upon matter. So here. " Ye
must be born again" — we cannot born our-
selves. " Be not conformed to this world but
be ye trausformcd'' — we are subjects to a
transforming influence, we do not transform
ourselves. Not more certain is it that it is
something outside the thermometer that pro-
duces a change in the thermometer, than it
is something outside the soul of man that
produces a moral change upon him. That
he must be susceptible to that change, that
he must be a party to it, goes without saying;
but that neither his aptitude nor his will can
produce it, is equally certain.
Obvious as it ought to seem, this may be
to some an almost startling revelation. The
THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 21
change we have been striving after is not to
be produced by any more striving after. It is
to be wrought upon us by the moulding of
hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends,
and the bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under
the co-operation of influences from the outside
air, so man rises to the higher stature under
invisible pressures from without. The radical
defect of all our former methods of sanctifica-
tion was the attempt to generate from within
that which can only be wrought upon us from
without. According to the first Law of Mo-
tion : Every body continues in its state of rest,
or of uniform motion in a straight line, except
in so far as it may be compelled by itiipressed
forces to change that state. This is also a first
law of Christianity. Every man's character
remains as it is, or continues in the direction in
which it is going, until it is compelled by im-
pressed forces to change that state. Our fail-
ure has been the failure to put ourselves in the
22 THE CHANGED LIFE.
way of the impressed forces. There is a clay,
and there is a Potter ; we have tried to get the
clay to mould the clay.
Whence, then, these pressures, and where
this Potter? The answer of the formula is
" By reflecting as a mirror the glory of the
Lord we are changed." But this is not very
clear. What is the " glory " of the Lord, and
how can mortal man reflect it, and how can
that act as an '* impressed force " in moulding
him to a nobler form ? The word " glory "
— the word which has to bear the weight of
holding those " impressed forces " — is a stran-
ger in current speech, and our first duty is to
seek out its equivalent in working English.
It suggests at first a radiance of some kind,
something dazzling or glittering, some halo
such as the old masters loved to paint round the
heads of their Ecce Ilomos. But that is paint,
mere matter, the visible symbol of some unseen
thing. What is that unseen thing ? It is that of
THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 23
all unseen things the most radiant, the most
beautiful, the most Divine, and that is Char-
acter. On earth, in Heaven, there is nothing
so great, so glorious as this. The word has
many meanings ; in ethics it can have but one.
Glory is character and nothing less, and it can
be nothing more. The earth is " full of the
glory of the Lord," because it is full of His
character. The " Beauty of the Lord " is
character. ''The effulgence of His Glory" is
character. " The Glory of the Only Begotten "
is character, the character which is " fulness of
grace and truth." And when God told His
people His name He simply gave them His
character. His character which was Himself :
" And the Lord proclaimed the Name of the
Lord . . . the Lord, the Lord God, mer-
ciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant
in goodness and truth." Glory then is not
something intangible, or ghostly, or transcen-
dental. If it were this how could Paul ask
24 THE CHANGED LIFE.
men to reflect it? Stripped of its physical
cnswathement it is Beauty, moral and spiritual
Beauty, Beauty infinitely real, infinitely ex-
alted, yet infinitely near and infinitely com-
municable.
With this explanation read over the sentence
once more in paraphrase : We all reflecting as
a mirror the character of Christ are transformed
into the same Image from character to char-
acter — from a poor character to a better one,
from a better one to one a little better still,
from that to one still more complete, until
by slow degrees the Perfect Image is attained.
Here the solution of the problem of sanctifica-
tion is compressed into a sentence : Reflect the
character of Christ and you will become like
Christ.
All men are mirrors — that is the first law on
which this formula is based. One of the
aptest descriptions of a human being is that he
is a mirror. As we sat at table to-night the
thp: formula of sanctification. 25
world in which each of us lived and moved
throughout this day was focussed in the room.
What wc saw as we looked at one another was
not one another, but one another's world. We
were an arrangement of mirrors. The scenes
we saw were all reproduced; the people we met
walked to and fro ; they spoke, they bowed,
they passed us by, did everything over again as
if it had been real. When we talked, wc were
but looking at our own mirror and describing
what flitted across it ; our listening was not
hearing, but seeing — we but looked on our
neighbour's mirror. All human intercourse is a
seeing of reflections. I meet a stranger in a
railway carriage. The cadence of his first word
tells me he is English, and comes from York-
shire. Without knowing it he has reflected
his birthplace, his parents, and the long history
of their race. Even physiologically he is a mir-
ror. His second sentence records that he is a
politician, and a faint inflexion in the way he
26 THE CHANGED LIFE.
pronounces TJic Times reveals his party. In
his next remarks I see reflected a whole world
of experiences. The books he has read, the
people he has met, the influences that have
played upon him and made him the man he is
— these are all registered there by a pen which
lets nothing pass, and whose writing can never
be blotted out. What I am reading in him
meantime he also is reading in me ; and before
the journey is over we could half write each
other's lives. Whether we like it or not, we
live in glass houses. The mind, the memory,
the soul, is simply a vast chamber panelled
with looking-glass. And upon this miraculous
arrangement and endowment depends the
capacity of mortal souls to " reflect the char-
acter of the Lord."
But this is not all. If all these varied re-
flections from our so-called secret life are pat-
ent to the world, how close the writing, how
complete the record, within the soul itself ?
THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 2/
For the influences we meet are not simply
held for a moment on the polished surface and
thrown off again into space. Each is retained
where first it fell, and stored up in the soul for
ever.
This law of Assimilation is the second, and
by far the most impressive truth which under-
lies the formula of sanctification — the truth
that men are not only mirrors, but that these
mirrors, so far from being mere reflectors of the
fleeting things they see, transfer into their own
inmost substance, and hold in permanent pres-
ervation, the things that they reflect. No one
knows how the soul can hold these things.
No one knows how the miracle is done. No
phenomenon in nature, no process in chemistry,
no chapter in necromancy can even help us to
begin to understand this amazing operation.
For, think of it, the past is not only focussed
there, in a man's soul, it is there. How could
it be reflected from there if it were not there ?
28 THE CHANGED LIFE.
All things that he has ever seen, known, felt,
believed of the surrounding world are now
within him, have become part of him, in part
are him — he has been changed into their
image. He may deny it, he may resent it,
but they are there. They do not adhere to
him, they are transfused through him. He
cannot alter or rub them out. They are
not in his memory, they are in Jiiin. His
soul is as they have filled it, made it, left it.
These things, these books, these events, these
influences are his makers. In their hands are
life and death, beauty and deformity. When
once the image or likeness of any of these is
fairly presented to the soul, no power on
earth can hinder two things happening — it
must be absorbed into the soul, and for ever
reflected back again from character.
Upon these astounding yet perfectly obvious
psychological facts, Paul bases his doctrine of
sanctification. He sees that character is a
THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 29
thing built up by slow degrees, that it is
hourly changing for better or for worse ac-
cording to the images which flit across it. One
step further and the whole length and breadth
of the application of these ideas to the central
problem of religion will stand before us.
THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE.
If events change men, much more persons.
No man can meet another on the street with-
out making some mark upon him. We say
we exchange words when we meet ; what we
exchange is souls. And when intercourse is
very close and very frequent, so complete is
this exchange that recognizable bits of the
one soul begin to show in the other's nature,
and the second is conscious of a similar and
growing debt to the first. This mysterious
approximating of two souls who has not wit-
nessed ? Who has not watched some old
couple come down life's pilgrimage hand in
hand, with such gentle trust and joy in one
THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 3 I
another that their very faces wore the self-
same look ? These were not two souls ; it
was a composite soul. It did not matter to
which of the two you spoke, you would have
said the same words to either. It was quite
indifferent which replied, each would have said
the same. Half a century's reflecting had told
upon them ; they were changed into the same
image. It is the Law of Influence that ive
become like those whom zve habitually admire :
these had become like because they habitually
admired. Through all the range of literature,
of history, and biography this law presides.
Men are all mosaics of other men. There
was a savour of David about Jonathan and a
savour of Jonathan about David. Jean Val-
jean, in the masterpiece of Victor Hugo, is
Bishop Bienvenu risen from the dead. Me-
tempsychosis is a fact. George Eliot's message
to the world was that men and women make
men and women. The Family, the cradle of
32 THE CHANGED LIFE.
mankind, has no meaning apart from this.
Society itself is nothing but a rallying point
for these omnipotent forces to do their work.
On the doctrine of Influence, in short, the
whole vast pyramid of humanity is built.
But it was reserved for Paul to make the
supreme application of the Law of Influence.
It was a tremendous inference to make, but
he never hesitated. He himself was a changed
man ; he knew exactly what had done it ; it
was Christ. On the Damascus road they met,
and from that hour his life was absorbed in His.
The effect could not but follow — on words,
on deeds, on career, on creed. The " impressed
forces " did their vital work. He became like
Him Whom he habitually loved. *' So we
all," he writes, " reflecting as a mirror the glory
of Christ, are changed into the same image."
Nothing could be more simple, more intel-
ligible, more natural, more supernatural. It is
an analogy from an everyday fact. Since we
THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 33
are what we are by the impacts of those who
surround us, those who surround themselves
with the highest will be those who change
into the highest. There are some men and
some women in whose company we are al-
ways at our best. While with them we can-
not think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous
words. Their mere presence is elevation,
purification, sanctity. All the best stops in
our nature are drawn out by their intercourse,
and we find a music in our souls that was
never there before. Suppose even that influ-
ence prolonged through a month, a year, a
lifetime, and what could not life become ?
Here, even on the common plane of life,
talking our language, walking our streets,
working side by side, are sanctifiers of souls ;
here, breathing through common clay, is Hea-
ven ; here, energies charged even through a
temporal medium with the virtue of regenera-
tion. If to live with men, diluted to the
34 THE CHANGED LIFE.
millionth degree with the virtue of the High-
est, can exalt and purify the nature, what
bounds can be set to the influence of Christ ?
To live with Socrates — with unveiled face —
must have made one wise ; with Aristides,
just. Francis of Assisi must have made one
gentle ; Savonarola, strong. But to have lived
with Christ ? To have lived with Christ must
have made one like Christ ; that is to say,
A Christian.
As a matter of fact, to live with Christ did
produce this effect. It produced it in the case
of Paul. And during Christ's lifetime the ex-
periment was tried in an even more startling
form. A few raw, unspiritual, uninspiring men,
were admitted to the inner circle of His friend-
ship. The change began at once. Day by day
we can almost see the first disciples grow.
First there steals over them the faintest possible
adumbration of His character, and occasionally,
very occasionally, they do a thing, or say a
THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 35
thing that they could not have done or said had
they not been living there. Slowly the spell of
His Life deepens. Reach after reach of their