Dignity—there is an element of dignity which enters into this attitude also. For humility is not to be mistaken for a degrading supineness. Lowliness of mind is far from being the same with lowness of mind. When Paul ceased to be self-led and became Christ-led, he did not by that step become low in mind or morals; it was a step upwards, and not downwards. There is a lurking feeling in most of us, no doubt, that our dignity consists just in our self-government. Self-sufficiency is its note, or, as we perhaps prefer to call it, self-dependence. That man is really a man, we are prone to think, who carves out his own fortune, rests on his own efforts, and seeks favour and certainly direction from no one. Now there is a proper basis for this feeling; we need courageous men who call no man master and swear in the words of none; this self-centred, self-poised, and independent nature is one of the best gifts of God—cultivate it! But it is very easy for a proper self-pride and a high-minded independence to pass into a very improper self-sufficiency. We were not intended to defer with servile incapacity to any fellow-creature’s direction; but there is a place for authority in the world after all; and as liberty must not be allowed to lapse into licence, so independence must not be permitted to degenerate into self-assertion. God did not create mankind atomistically but as a race; and it is the part of true dignity to find our true relations and to subject ourselves to them. It is not a mark of manhood to separate ourselves from the bands that unite mankind into an organism, but to take each his place in the organism and thoroughly to fill it.

He who hitches his chariot to a star is not thereby sinking to a lower status. True as this is in worldly matters it is superlatively true in spiritual affairs. The man led by the Spirit of God—the Christ-led man—is the man of highest, and not of lowest, dignity. As it is the mark of a Christian man that he is “under orders,” so it is the source of all his dignity that he is “under orders.” With that odd penetration into the essence of things, which so often characterizes the words of Rudyard Kipling, he seems to have grasped and set forth this fundamental fact of the Christian life in the refrain of one of his “Barrack Room Ballads.” He says:

“The ’eathen in ’is blindness bows down to wood and stone— ’E don’t obey no orders, unless they is ’is own.”

The point is, of course, the fine soldierly conception of the value of order and discipline; the soldier recognizes the fact that he is “under orders” as the source of all that gives value and worth to his life; his coming “under orders” was his transmutation from a “hoodlum” into a “soldier”; the discipline of the army has made, as we say, a man of him. But Rudyard Kipling has so phrased his refrain as to make it hint a far wider and higher truth. The characteristic of heathenism, as he sees it, from this soldier-like point of view, is precisely that the heathen man—like the hoodlum,—that the heathen world—like a mob—obeys no orders; each man goes his own way; is left, as the Scriptures say, to his own devices. On the other hand, the characteristic of the Christian man is that he has orders to obey—he is “under orders.” And the soldier, conscious of all that being under orders is to him—of what it has wrought in him—of how it has given him self-respect, a sense of his value, a consciousness of dignity and worth,—sees in this parallel fact the essence of Christianity. The Christian man is the man who is under orders; the heathen, he—who like the man in the slums—obeys nothing but his own caprices.

Rudyard Kipling was, perhaps, speaking more wisely than he knew; for what is the primary characteristic of Christendom but just this,—that God has taken charge of it, given it His orders, a revelation we call it; while heathendom is without this book of general orders. And what is the characteristic of the Christian man but just this: that he has found his Captain and receives his orders from Him? “What shall I do, Lord?”—that is the note of his life. And is it not clear that it is the source of an added dignity and worth to his life? Just as the soldier is nothing but the hoodlum licked into shape by coming under orders—under the establishing and forming influence of legitimate and wise authority—so the Christian is nothing but the sinner, come under the formative influence of the Captain of us all.

Power—it lies in the very nature of the case that such a coming under orders is the source of a vast increase also of power. For it is at once to find our place in a great and powerful organism. So the soldier finds it, though this is not the primary fact of his betterment which he perceives as a result of his coming under orders. That, as Kipling rightly sees, is the subjective effect on himself, the increase of self-respect and of general dignity and conscious worth which comes to him. But the increase of power also is a factor of high moment. A cog wheel is a useless piece of iron by itself; but in its legitimate place in the machine it works wonders. An individual is as nothing in this seething mass of humanity which we call the world; be he never so energetic he can work no effect, but all his activity is like the aimless dashing of a moth about the destroying flame. But let him find his true place in the organism of humanity, and the weakest of us becomes a factor in the inevitable rush of the whole towards its destined end. See, then, the element of power in the question, “What shall I do, Lord?” For we must keep fully in mind that this human race of which we are members is not simply a chance aggregation of individuals, like a mass of worms crawling restlessly this way and that as the native impulse of each directs. It cannot be atomistically conceived. It is an organism, in which each individual has his appointed place and function. It is not merely the dictate of wisdom but the condition of efficiency and power that we should each find this, our place, and fulfil our own function.

If sin had never entered the world, this would doubtless be an easy task; we should each fit well into the place in which we find ourselves and should fulfil our required functions smoothly and easily, and each in his appointed measure advance the race to its destined goal. But sin has spoiled all; and the disjointed mechanism lies broken and dismantled and unable to work at its task. It is, therefore, that Christ Jesus has come into the world, the head of a new humanity, for the restoration of the race to its harmony with itself, the universe, and its appointed work. It is only through Him and through His direction as the Captain of our salvation that we may discover or occupy our place in His Church, which is only another name for reorganized humanity. Therefore the noble figure of Paul, which compares the Church to a body and us to members in particular. How shall the members of a body act? Each going his own way, independently of and inconsiderately of the others? Where then would be the body? But how find our true place and task in this organism of the body of Christ? There can be but one way and that way is pointed to by Paul’s question, “What shall I do, Lord?” He and He only can appoint to their functions the members of His body, and thus the way of continued humility and dignity is easily seen to be also the way of power.

Take another example from military affairs. What shall the soldier in battle do, if he would wish to be effective as a factor in the result? Go his own way, or obey orders? Let each seek to go his own way, and that army is doomed. But let each only strictly obey orders, and if the leading is wise and sure—as our leading under our Divine Captain is—the end is certain victory. Each soldier may seem to himself isolated as he makes his way through the underbrush; he can see no companion; he can hear no neighbour. It may seem to him that on his sole arm is laid the whole burden and heat of the day. Let him but obey orders and he is, on the contrary, a link in the one great design, and after a while, as the brushwood is threaded and the open plain is reached, the bugle sounds the charge, and out he charges—all by himself—to find suddenly that he is not by himself. Out of the ground as it seems, to the right and to the left of him, others start up—who have obeyed orders like himself—and they sweep a united band to the victory. Brethren, that is the way we are to conquer the world; and our part in it is just to obey orders. “What shall I do, Lord?” is to be our one question, and simple obedience to the response our one duty. Ah, in all our ministerial life, if we value success—the success of Christ—let us make Paul’s question the one single, simple matter of our lives. Let “Lord, what shall I do?” be our sole chart for all the journey of life.

---

← Prayer as a Means of Grace · Contents · The Summation of the Gospel →