ON a day before Spring had fairly commenced, some friends were walking together near a hedgerow, when presently they stopped and cried out, “Oh! how sweet!” Then they began to search, and after some minutes diligently spent in looking, a solitary violet was discovered. It was the first time since the past year that these friends had smelt the delicious and welcome odor.
The unseen flower, surrounded with fragrance, is a happy illustration of a spiritual Christian. But there are violets and violets. The scentless flower is as beautiful in its color as its fragrant brother, yet even children hardly care for the “dog-violets.” This is rather an opprobrious title to give so pleasant looking a flower, and whatever its origin may have been, it destroys in the mind all the associations of modesty and fragrance, which are connected with what children would call the “real” violet. Not that one flower is less real than another, which, for our purpose, we may apply by saying, that a Christian is always a Christian; but just as the characteristics of the violet are lacking where no fragrance exists, so when a Christian is only a Christian, and not a spiritual one, the savor of Christ is absent.
Alas! there are many of God’s own dear people, whose pride and self-consciousness forbid the idea of fragrance surrounding them. They are like the “dog-violets,” and are valued accordingly. People do not stop in their walk through life when near them and cry one to the other, “Oh! how sweet,” and long to find the hidden blossom which pours forth fragrance out of its own abundance.
I think if violets could talk, they would say nothing about themselves; I except the poor “dog-violets,” which, having no sweetness of their own, if they did not speak about themselves no one would speak about them, except to say, upon seeing the familiar little flower nestling amongst its dark green leaves, “How disappointing.” For it is disappointing to gather a violet which does not smell. Yet how disappointing to meet a Christian, who is not spiritual, for we expect to perceive in those who are Christ’s, some of the moral fragrance which ever emanated from Him.
It is not necessary for the genuine thing to call attention to itself. No listener in a wood needs to be told that it is not sparrows or tits, but the nightingale that is singing.
“Hark, silence, listen!” a dozen voices cried the other day in a thick copse. Why? Was it the cawing of the rooks in the high trees hard by that they heard, or the merry short song of the chaffinch? No, gentle reader, it was the clear emphatic trilling of a masterly songster. And immediately the clatter of the dozen voices was still to listen to the nightingale.
I know not why, but it seemed a kind of privilege to hear him pouring forth his volume of song, and he is a little bird, too, with a very modest attire.
Perhaps to utterly unaccustomed ears, the song of the thrush might be palmed off as that of the nightingale; but in spiritual things, unless people are born and bred in the city of Destruction, and have no ears to hear heavenly melodies, such impositions are impossible. And even in the world there is often an ability to distinguish between the reality and the make-believe. If the world cannot sing the songs of heaven, it can at least listen to them, and recognize a distinction between the words of him, who utters the praises of Christ, and his, whose clamor is only about himself. Now we are living in a day of imitations; there is very much that is artificial in existence. I was taken into a complete flower garden of artificial blossoms the other day; they looked “better than nature,” as the exhibitor said, and, to add to the fond deceit, they were scented also! But for all that, personally, I had no pleasure in them; such things are useful for fashionable ends, for purposes of decoration and show, but for little else. In divine things, without question, we need reality. Let us beware, lest we are artificial flowers with an imitation scent!
Conformity to religious peculiarities is often accepted as genuine spirituality, so that “if he followeth not with us,” he, whoever he may be, is not regarded as “spiritual”; while the garb, the language, the current ideas, or the technical knowledge—as we might term the peculiar phrases which different coteries use—are accepted as indicating a real spiritual condition. But the truth is, such shibboleths are only artificial scent: they are not the real odor of true spirituality.
For this, Christ must be dwelling in the heart by faith. What is the mystery of the violet’s sweetness? What the secret of the nightingale’s song? The Creator of the flower and of the bird alone can tell. Man may analyze and discourse upon the construction of the flower and the anatomy of the bird, but God Himself gave to the one its fragrance and to the other its melodious powers. And if you would be truly spiritual, there is only one way of being so, you must have divine power—your heart must be full of Christ. No religious conforming can produce the reality in you, though some religious associations can and do hinder it. Your heart, we repeat it, must be full of Christ, if the fragrance of Christ and the songs of heaven are to be poured forth in your life.
We said that a Christian is really a Christian. This is true, for we are all “in Christ” and Christ is “in” all true Christians. But these things are very different from Christ dwelling in the heart by faith (Eph. 3:1717That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, (Ephesians 3:17)), which is solely practical, and true spirituality is ever practical. It is “by faith,” and that is personal, and relates to our individual condition of soul. If the world is in our hearts, then Christ is not in them by faith. If self is filling our hearts, then Christ is not in them by faith. If pride and big thoughts of our own spirituality are filling our hearts, then Christ is not in them by faith. Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, is the effect of the affections being occupied with the Lord Jesus, and Himself being their object. And this, which is deeper than all knowledge, and leads to that heart-knowledge which surpasses all the grasp of mental power, and which is the only way of being “able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ.”
I am sure that every one of us, who has Christ in his heart by faith, will show forth His praises, he will unconsciously give out the fragrance of Christ, and those who perceive it will give God the glory. He will be like the nightingale, and sing both day and night, both in the sunshine and in the darkness, the fullest, loudest, and sweetest song of all, and more, the most varied song, too. There will be no chaffinch-like repetition till the ear grows weary of the self-same iteration of words; and never—no, never—un-Christ-like language.
Need I add, dear reader, that no spiritual Christian is a mockingbird. Each such sings his own song, and has plenty to sing about. He does not retail to you the expressions of Mr. This and of Mr. That, as if such expressions were his own experiences. These mockingbirds are not spiritual persons, but deceivers of their own souls, and attempts at imposition upon others. Nor need I add that the truly spiritual Christian never has a label attached to his neck, with the writing on it, “I am spiritual,” for where such is the case not only does the advertisement demonstrate the absence of the thing advertised, but also the falseness of the heart of the poor self-deceiver.
We have taken up our parable of the new creation from the familiar scent and songs of spring, but we would not have our reader think that any disparagement is intended of the scentless violet or the chirping bird; no, dear fellow Christian, our God has made everything beautiful in its place in His wondrous creation, and whether a flower emits odor or not, and whether a sparrow chirps, or a nightingale sings, all are fulfilling the purpose for which their Creator made them.
The Christian is of the new creation, of which Christ is the head, and unless he is Christ-like he is not fulfilling the object for which God leaves him upon this earth. It is self which hinders our manifestation of Christ, but, if we did yield up ourselves to God, we each should be fulfilling that thing which God would have us be. Let it be our earnest desire that Christ may be magnified in our bodies, whether by life or by death.