Meanings and Methods of the Spiritual Life (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906. Excerpt: ... XVIII HOW DISCIPLESHIP MADE PAUL VIEW LIFE "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."--Philippiansl 21. As Paul writes these early verses of the epistle to the Philippians, he looks at living and dying in a manner curiously different from the manner in which we usually look at them. Here is a man who clings to life, not, as we so often do, because life seems pleasanter than death, but just because it seems harder than death. And here is a man who shrinks from death, not as we so often do, because there is any terror in it, but just because he loves it so well. Living is hardship and imprisonment and pain, a burden that weighs with crushing heaviness on the apostle's soul; but since the very hardship and imprisonment and pain tell somehow on behalf of Christ and Christ's gospel, he wants to carry the burden of life a little longer. Dying would be gain and happiness and release; but just because it would be these things, he cannot be selfish enough to long to die. To live was for Paul harder than to die; but for Christ's sake he turns away from the joy of dying, and takes up the load of his painful life again. For the key-idea of Paul's view of life was this--he looked on every circumstance of his experience, not as it affected himself, but as it affected the cause and gospel of his Master. "To me to live is Christ." "The things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel"--and one can imagine how there was a smile on his face as he wrote a little further on, "and therein I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." For himself he did not care about living: his life meant nothing that was worth having to himself: to die would be gain. But for his Lord he did care about living: his life did mean something to Christ and to the gos...