like Wesley, ā the effect of all saintly lives upon
the Vv'orld is the same. They are to the Jews a
stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness.
It is not simply working Christianity that is an
offence. The whole spiritual life, to the natural
man, is an eccentric thing. Take such a mani-
festation, for instance, as Prayer. The scientific
men of the day have examined it and pronounced
it hallucination. Or take Public Prayer. A con-
gregation of people with bowed heads, shut eyes,
hushed voices, invoking, confessing, pleading, en-
treating One who, though not seen, is said to see,
who, speaking not, is said to answer. There is no
other name for this incantation from the world's
standpoint than eccentricity, delusion, madness.
We are not ashamed of the terms. They are the
guarantee of quality. And all high quality in the
world is subject to the same reproach. For we
are discussing a universal principle. It applies
to inventors, to discoverers, to philosophers, to
poets, to all men who have been better or higher
io6 THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION
than their time. These men are never understood
by their contemporaries. And if there arc mar-
tyrs of science, the centres of science being in
this world, seen, demonstrated, known, how much
more must there be martyrs for rehgion whose
centre is beyond the reach of earthly eye?
III. It follows from this, that the more active
religion is, the more unpopular it must be.
Christ's religion did not trouble His friends at
first. For thirty years, at all events, they were
content to put up with it. But as it grew in
intensity they lost patience. When He called
the twelve disciples, they gave Him up. His
work went on, the world said nothing for some
time. But as His career became aberrant more
and more, the family feeling spread, gained
universal ground. Even the most beautiful and
tender words He uttered were quoted in evidence
of His state. For John tells us that after that
exquisite discourse in the tenth chapter about
the Good .Shepherd, there was a division among
the Jews for these sayings : " And many of them
said. He hath a devil and is mad. Why hear ye
Him?" It seemed utter raving.
Have you ever noticed ā ^ and there is nothing
more touching in history ā how Christ's path
narrov/ed ?
The first great active period is called in books
The year of public favour. On the whole it was
a year of triumph. The world received Him for a
time. Vast crowds followed Him. The Baptist's
THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 107
audience left him and gathered round the new
voice. Palestine rang with the name of Jesus.
Noblemen, rulers, rabbis, vied with one another
in entertaining Him. But the excitement died
down suddenly and soon.
The next year is called The year of opposition.
The applause was over. The crowds thinned.
On every hand He was obstructed. The Sad-
ducees left Him. The Pharisees left Him. The
political party were roused into opposition. The
Jews, the great mass of the people, gave Him up.
His path was narrowing.
With the third period came the end. The path
was very narrow now. There were but twelve left
to Him when the last act of the drama opens.
They are gathered on the stage together for the
last time. But it must narrow still. One of the
disciples, after receiving the sop, goes out. Eleven
are left Him. Peter soon follows. There are but
ten. One by one they leave the stage, till all for-
sook Him and fled, and He is left to die alone.
Well might He cry, as He hung there in this awful
solitude ā as if even God had forgotten Him, " My
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
But this is not peculiar to Jesus. It is typical
of the life of every Christian. His path, too, must
narrow. As he grows in grace, he grows in isola-
tion. He feels that God is detaching his life from
all around it and drawing him to Himself for a
more intimate fellowship. But as the communion
is nearer, the chasm which separates him from his
io8 THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION
fellow-man must widen. The degree of a man's
religion, indeed, is to be gauged by the degree of
his rejection by the world. With the early Chris-
tians was not this the commonest axiom, " We
told you before," did not Paul warn them, " that
we should suffer"? " Unto some it was given in
the behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him,
but also to suffer for His sake." It was the posi-
tion of honour, as it were, in the family of God
to be counted worthy of being persecuted for the
sake of Christ.
It is a sad reflection that, as in the case of
Christ, the keenest suffering may come sometimes
still from one's own family circle. Among our
friends there may be one on whom we all look
askance ā one who is growing up in the beauty
of holiness, and we not knowing what it is that
makes him strange. It often needs Death to
teach us the beauty of a life which has been lived
beside our own ; and we only know the worth of
it when God proves it by taking it to Himself,
Finally, it may be objected to all this that if
eccentricity is a virtue, it is easily purchased.
Any one can set up for an eccentric character.
And if that is the desideratum of religion we
shall have candidates enough for the office. But
it remains to define the terms on which a Chris-
tian shall be eccentric ā Christ's own terms. And
let them be guides to us in our eccentricity, for
without them we shall be not Christians, but
fanatics.
THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 109
The qualities which distinguish the eccentricity
of godhness from all other eccentricities are three ;
and we gather them all from the Life of Christ.
1. Notice, His eccentricity was not destructive.
Christ took the world as He found it, He left it
as it was. He had no quarrel with existing insti-
tutions. He did not overthrow the church ā He
went to church. He said nothing against politics
ā He supported the government of the country.
He did not denounce Society ā His first public
action was to go to a marriage. His great aim, in
fact, outwardly, and all along, was to be as nor-
mal, as little eccentric as possible. The true
fanatic always tries the opposite. The Spirit
alone was singular in Jesus ; a fanatic always
spoils his cause by extending it to the letter.
Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil. A
fanatic comes not to fulfil, but to destroy. If we
would follow the eccentricity of our Master, let
it not be in asceticism, in denunciation, in punc-
tiliousness, and scruples about trifles, but in large-
ness of tieart, singleness of eye, true breadth of
character, true love to men, and heroism for
Christ.
2, It was perfectly composed. We think of ec-
centricity as associated with frenzy, nervousness,
excitableness, ungovernable enthusiasm. But the
life of Jesus was a calm. It was a life of marvel-
lous composure. The storms were all. about it,
tumult and tempest, tempest and tumult, waves
breaking over Him all the time till the worn body
no THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION
was laid in the grave. But the inner life was as
a sea of glass. It was a life of perfect compos-
ure. To come near it even now is to be calmed
and soothed. Go to it at any moment, the great
calm is there. The request to " come " at any
moment was a standing invitation all through His
life. Come unto Me at My darkest hour, in My
heaviest trial, on My busiest day, and I will give
you Rest. And when the very bloodhounds were
gathering in the streets of Jerusalem to hunt Him
down, did He not turn to the quaking group
around Him and bequeath to them ā a last legacy
ā "My Peace"?
There was no frenzy about His life, no excite-
ment. In quietness and confidence the most ter-
rible days sped past. In patience and composure
the most thrilling miracles were wrought. Men
came unto Him, and they found not restlessness,
but Rest. Composure is to be had for faith. We
shall be worse than fanatics if we attempt to go
along the lonely path with Christ without this
spirit. We shall do harm, not good. We shall
leave half-done work. We shall wear out before
our time. Do not say, " Life is short." Christ's
life was short; yet He finished the work that was
given Him to do. He was never in a hurry.
And if God has given us anything to do for
Him, He will give time enough to finish it with
a repose like Christ's.
3. This life was consistent.
From the Christian standpoint a consistent life
THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION in
is the only sane life. It is not worth while being
religious without being thorough. An inconsist-
ent Christian is the true eccentric. He is the
true phenomenon in the religious world ; to his
brother Christian the only madman. For mad-
ness, in a sense, is inconsistency; madness is
incoherency, irrelevancy, disconnectedness ; and
surely there is nothing more disconnected than a
belief in God and Eternity and no corresponding
life. And that man is surely beside himself who
assumes the name of Christ, pledges perhaps in
sacramental wine, to be faithful to His name and
cause, and who from one year to another never
lifts a finger to help it. The man who is really
under a delusion, is he who bears Christ's name,
who has no uneasiness about the quality of his
life, nor any fear for the future, and whose true
creed is that
He lives for himself, he thinks for himself,
For himself, and none beside;
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
As if He had never died.
Yes, a consistent eccentricity is the only sane life.
" An enthusiastic religion is the perfection of
common sense." And to be beside oneself for
Christ's sake is to be beside Christ, which is
man's chief end for time and eternity.
NUMBER V
<<^To Me to Live
is Christ"
(In connection with Acts ix. 1-18)
Philippians i. 21
THERE is no more significant sign of the
days in which we live than the interest
society seems to be taking in the biographies
of great men. Almost all the more popular
recent books, for instance ā the books which
every one is reading and has to read ā come
under the catalogue of biography; and, to meet
the demand, two or three times in each season
the market has to be supplied with the lives, in
minute detail, of men who but for this would per-
haps have lain in unnoticed graves.
This thirst for memoirs and lives and letters is
not at all to be put down in every case to the
hero worship which is natural to every heart. It
means, perhaps, a higher thing than this. It
means, in the first place, that great living is being
appreciated for its own sake ; and, in the second,
that great living is being imitated. If it is true
that any of us are beginning to appreciate great-
ness for its own sake ā greatness, that is to say,
"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 113
in the sense of great and true living ā it is one
of the most hopeful symptoms of our history.
And if we are, further, going on from the mere
admiration of great men to try and live like
them, we are obeying one of the happiest im-
pulses of our being. There is indeed no finer
influence abroad than the influence of great men
in great books, and all that literature can do in
supplying the deformed world with worthy and
shapely models is entitled to gratitude and
respect.
But a shadow sometimes comes over this
thought of the magnetic attraction which great-
ness is having upon our age ā the thought how
hard it is to get our greatness ///rr. The well is
deep, it may be, and the fountain sparkles to
the eye ; but we ask perhaps for a guarantee of
quality in vain. Each new ideal we adjust our
life to copy turns out to have its adulteration of
selfishness or pride, like the one we studied last,
till the pattern we sought to follow surprises us
by becoming a beacon for us to shun.
There are a few biographies, however, where
men may find their greatness pure ; and amongst
them is one familiar writing which, though seldom
looked at as biographical in this sense, really
contains the life and letters of the greatest man
probably of human history. That man was Paul.
The life of Paul the man, apart from the theology
of Paul the Apostle, is a legitimate and fruitful
study from the mere standpoint of the biography
114 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST"
of a great and successful life. Judged by his in-
fluence on human history, no single life is entitled
to more admiration for what it has done, or in-
deed more worthy of imitation for what it was.
And in our quest after a true life, a worthy and
satisfying life, there may be some light for us in
this old biography which we have missed per-
haps in the lives of later men.
If we were to begin by seeking an appropriate
motto for Paul's life, we should not need to go
further than the quotation which forms our text.
This fragment from one of his own letters lets us
in at once to the whole secret of his life. The
true discovery of a character is the discovery of
its ideals. Paul spares us any speculation in his
case. " To me to live," he says, " is Christ."
This is the motto of his life, the ruling passion of
it, which at once explains the nature of his suc-
cess and accounts for it. He lives for Christ.
" To me to live is Christ."
Now here at the outset is a valuable practical
point settled in this biography. When we turn
to the biographies of most great men, we find
either no key or a very complex one ; and we
rise from the perusal with nothing more than a
vague desire to do better, but with no discovery
how. We gain stimulus, indeed, but no knowl-
edge, which is simply injurious. We are braced
up enthusiastically for a little, and then do noth-
ing. At the end of it all we are not better, we
are only exhausted. This is the reason why
"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 115
biography-hunters often, after long dogging the
footsteps of greatness, find that they arc perhaps
no further on the road to it themselves, but
rather more inchned than before to He down
where they were.
But Paul explicitly announces to us the work-
ing principle of his life. If the lines are great
lines, there is nothing mysterious about them.
If we want to live like Paul, we have simply to
live for Christ ; Christ our life on one side, our
life for Christ on the other, and both summed up
together in Paul's epitome : " To me to live is
Christ."
This being the clue to Paul's life, the instructive
question next arises. What exactly did Paul mean
by this principle, and how did he come to find it
out? But the question, "What is this object of
life?" is so closely bound up with how Paul came
to have this object of life, that the answer to the
last question will form at once an explanation
and an illustration of the first.
Therefore let us go at once for the answer to
the life itself. Great principles are always best
and freshest when studied from the life, and it so
happens that a circumstance in Paul's life makes
it peculiarly easy to act on this rule here.
That circumstance was that Paul had two lives.
Many men besides Paul have had two lives, but
the line is cleaner cut in Paul's case than in al-
most any biography we have.
Both lives were somewhere about the same
ii6 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST"
length, so far as we know, but so distinct in their
general features and details that Paul had not
only two lives, but, as if to mark the distinction
more strikingly, two names. Let us look for a
moment at the first of these lives ā the reason
will appear presently.
Paul's first life, as we all know, was spent under
the most auspicious circumstances, and for cer-
tain reasons it will be worth while running over
it. Born of a family which belonged to the most
select theological school of that day, the son was
early looked upon as at once the promise of his
parents and the hope of their religion. They
sent him when a mere lad to Jerusalem, and en-
rolled him as a student in the most distinguished
college of the time. After running a brilliant
college career, and sitting for many years at the
feet of the greatest learning the Jewish capital
could boast, we find him bursting upon the world
with his splendid talents, and taking a place at
once in the troubled political movements of the
day. It was impossible for such a character with
his youth's enthusiasm and a Pharisee's pride to
submit to the tame life of a temple Rabbi, and he
sees his opportunity in the rise of the Christian
sect. Here, at last, he would match his abilities
in a contest which would gain him at once a field
of exercise and a name. So far, doubtless, he
thought his first life great.
Into his work of persecution he seems to have
next entered witk all an inquisitor's zest. His
"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 117
conspicuous place among the murderers of the
first martyr stamped him at once as a leader,
and gave him the first taste of a popularity
which, but for the interruption of the hand of God,
had ended perhaps disastrously to the struggling
Christian Church. His success as an inquisitor
is recognised in the highest quarters of the land ;
and the young man's fortune is made. No young
man of that time perhaps had such prospects now
as Saul. " He was a man raised up for the emer-
gency," said all Jerusalem, and henceforth the
Jewish world was at his feet. Courted as the
rising man of his day and flushed with success,
he leaves no stone unturned to find fresh oppor-
tunities of adding to his influence and power.
And as he climbed each rung of the ladder of
fame, we can imagine, as a great student of Paul
has said, how his heart swelled within him as he
read these words at night from the Book of Wis-
dom: " I shall have estimation among the multi-
tude, and honour with the elders, though I be
young. I shall be found of a quick conceit in
judgment, and shall be admired in the sight of
great men. When I hold my tongue they shall
abide my leisure, and when I speak they shall
give good ear unto me." Such was the man who
said, " To me to live .is Christ."
Upon the little Church at Jerusalem he has
already wreaked his vengeance to the full. The
town and neighbourhood at last are well nigh
ridded of the pest, and, an unlooked-for calam-
ii8 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST"
ity, in the height of his triumph Saul finds his
occupation gone. Dispersed in all directions,
members of the little band have found their way
in secret through Judaea and Samaria, through
Syria and Phoenicia, even into strange cities.
And Paul finds round about Jerusalem no fuel to
feed the martyrs' fire or add more lustre to his
name.
But there is no pause in the pursuit of human
fame. Tke young lawyer's reputation can never
end in an anti-climax like this. And with the am-
bition which knows not how to rest, and in the
pride of his Pharisee's heart, he strikes out the
idea to reverse the maxim of the crucified Leader
of the hated sect, and go into all the world and
suppress the gospel in every creature. He
applies to the high-priest for commission and
authority, and, breathing out threatenings and
slaughter, the man who is going to live for Christ
starts out on his Christless mission to make
havoc of the Church.
This is the last act of Paul's first life. Let us
note it carefully. We are on the bridge which
separates Paul's two lives. What marks the tran-
sition is this : up to this time his life has been
spent in public. It has been one prolonged whirl
of excitement and applause. But no sooner have
the gates of Jerusalem closed upon him than Paul
begins to think. The echoes of the people's
praises have died away one by one. He has
gone out into the great desert. It is strangely
*'TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 119
silent and soothing, and the lull has come at last
upon his soul. It is a long time, perhaps, smce
he has had time to think; but Saul was far too
crreat a man to live long an unthinking life. His
time for reflection has come. And as he wanders
with his small escort along the banks of the Jor-
dan or through the solitary hills of Samaria, his
thoughts are busy with the past. And if Saul
was far too great a man to live an unthinking
life he was also too great a man to think well of
his'life when he did think. Each new day as he
journeyed away from the scene of his triumph,
and looked back upon it all from that distance ā
which always gives the true perspective to man's
life ā his mind must have filled with many a sad
reproach. And as he lay down at night in the
quiet wilderness his thoughts must often have
turned on the true quality of the life to which he
was sacrificing his talents and his youth. With
his quick perception, with his keen trained intel-
lect, with his penetration, he must have seen that
after all this life was a mistake. Minds of lesser
calibre in the applauding world which he had left
had told him he was great. Now, in his calmer
moments, he knew he was not great. The eter-
nal heavens stretching above him pointed to an
infinity which lay behind it all ; and the stars and^
the silence spoke to him of God. And he felt that
his life was miserably small. Saul's thoughts
were greater than Saul's life. How he had been
living beneath himself- how he had wasted the
I20 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST"
precious years of his youth ā how he had sold
his life for honour and reputation, and bartered
the talents God had given him for a name, he
must have seen. He had been dazzled, and that
was all. He had nothing really to show for his
life, nothing that would stand the test of solid
thought. It was all done for himself. He, Saul
of Tarsus, the rising man of his time, was the
centre of it all. " After all," perhaps he cried in
agony, " To me to live is Saul," " To me to live
is Saul."
Paul's first great discovery, as we have seen ā
and it is the discovery which precedes every true
reformation of life ā was the discovery of him-
self. When Paul said, "To me to live is viy-
selfy' his conversion was begun. There was no
retreat then for a man like him. He was too
great to have such a little centre to his life; or,
rather, he felt life too great to be absorbed with
even such a personality as his.
But the next element in the case was not so
easily discovered, and it is of much more impor-
tance than the first. His first achievement was
only to discover himself. His second was to
discover some one better than himself. He
wanted a new centre to his life ā ā where was he
to find W. The unseen hand which painted his
own portrait in its true colours on the dark back-
ground of his mind had painted every other life
the same. The high priests at Jerusalem, the
members of the Sanhedrim, his own father at
"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 121
Tarsus ā all the men he knew were living lives
like himself. They were no better ā most of
them worse. Must the old centre of Paul's life
remain there still.'* Is there nothing better in
all the world than himself.^
It may be conjecture, or it may be nearer
truth, that while such questionings passed
through the mind of Paul, there came into his
thoughts as he journeyed some influences from
a life ā a life like that for which his thoughts
had longed. Paul's best known journeys are his
missionary tours, and we generally associate him
in our thoughts with the countries of Asia and
Italy and Greece. But this time his way leads
through the holy land. He has entered the land
of Christ. He is crossing the very footsteps of
Jesus. The villages along his route are fragrant
still with what Jesus said and did. They are
not the bitter things that Saul had heard before.
Kind words are repeated to him, and tender acts
which Jesus did are told. The peasants by the
wayside and the shepherds on the hills are full
of stories of a self-denying life which used to
pass that way a year or two ago, but now will
come no more. And the mothers at the cottage
doors remember the stranger who suffered their
little children to come unto Him, and got them
to repeat to Saul, perhaps, the children's bless-
ing which He left behind. Perhaps, in passing
through Samaria, the traveller met a woman at
a well, who tells her strange tale for the thou-
122 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST"
sandth time, of a weary man who had sat there
once and said He was the Christ. And Galilee
and Capernaum, and Bethsaida, and the lake
shore at Gennesaret, are full of memories of the
one true life which surely even then had begun
to cast a sacred influence over Paul. At all
events, there seemed a strange preparedness in
his mind for the meeting on the Damascus road,
as if the interview with Jesus then was not so
much the first of his friendship as the natural
outcome of something that had gone before.
And no doubt the Spirit's silent working had