I. Spontaneousness. There are three lines

along which one may seek for evidence of the Spontaneousness of growth. The first is Sci- ence. And the argument here could not bs summed up better than in the words of Jesus. The lilies grow, He says, of themselves ; they toil not, neither do they spin. They grow, that is, automatically, spontaneously, without try- ing, without fretting, without thinking. Ap- plied in any direction, to plant, to animal, to the body or to the soul this law holds. A boy grows, for example, without trying. One or two simple conditions are fulfilled, and the
136 GROWTH.
growth goes on. He thinks probably as little about the condition as about the result; he fulfils the conditions by habit, the result fol- lows by nature. Both processes go steadily on from year to year apart from himself and all but in spite of himself. One would never think of telling a boy to grow. A doctor has no prescription for growth. He can tell me how growth may be stunted or impaired, but the process itself is recognized as beyond control — one of the few, and therefore very significant, things which Nature keeps in her own hands. No physician of souls, in like manner, has any prescription for spiritual growth. It is the question he is most often asked and most often answers wrongly. He may prescribe more earnestness, more prayer, more self-denial, or more Christian work. These are prescriptions for something, but not for growth. Not that they may not encourage growth ; but the soul grows as the lily grows, without trying, with- out fretting, without ever thinking. Manuals of devotion, with complicated rules for get- ting on in the Christian life, would do well sometimes to return to the simplicity of nat- ure; and earnest souls who are attempting sanctification by struggle instead of sanctifica- tiou by faith might be spared much humilia- tion by learning the botany of the Sermon on the Mount. There can indeed be no other principle of growth than this. It is a vital act. And to try to make a thing grow is as absurd as to help the tide to come in or the •sun rise.
GROWTH. 187
Another argument for the spontaneousness of growth is universal experience. A boy not only grows without trying, but he cannot grow if he tries. No man by taking thought has ever added a cubit to his stature ; nor has any man by mere working at his soul ever approached nearer to the stature of the Lord Jesus. The stature of the Lord Jesus was not itself reached by work, and he who thinks to approach its mystical height by anxious effort is really receding from it. Christ's life unfolded itself from a divine germ, planted centrally in His nature, which grew as naturally as a flower from a bud. This flower may be imi- tated ; but one can always tell an artificial flower. The human form may be copied in wax, yet somehow one never fails to detect the •difference. And this precisely is the difference between a native growth of Christian principle and the moral copy of it. The one is natural, the other mechanical. The one is a growth, the other an accretion. Now this, according to modern biology, is the fundamental distinction between the living and the not living, between an organism and a crystal. The living organ- ism grows, the dead crystal increases. The first grows vitally from within, the last adds new particles from the outside. The whole difference between the Christian and the moral- ist lies here. The Christian works from the centre, the moralist from the circumference. The one is an organism, in the centre of which is planted by the living God a living germ. The other is a crystal, very beautiful it may
138 GROWTH.
be ; but only a crystal — it wants the vital prin- ciple of growth.
And one sees here also, what is sometimes very difficult to see, why salvation in the first instance is never connected directly with mo- rality. The reason is not that salvation does not demand morality, but that it demands so much of it that the moralist can never reach up to it. The end of Salvation is perfection, the Christlike mind, character and life. Morality is on the way to this perfection; it may go a considerable distance towards it, but it can never reach it. Only Life can do that. It requires something with enormous power of movement, of growth, of overcoming obstacles, to attain the perfect. Therefore the man who has within himself this great formative agent, Life, is nearer the end than the man who has morality alone. The latter can never reach perfection; the former must. For the Life must develop out according to its type ; and being a germ of the Christ-life, it must unfold into a Christ. Morality, at the utmost, only develops the character in one or two direc- tions. It may perfect a single virtue here and there, but it cannot perfect all. And espe- cially it fails always to give that rounded har- mony of parts, that perfect tune to the whole orchestra, which is the mark characteristic of life. Perfect life is not merely the possession of perfect functions, but of perfect functions perfectly adjusted to each other and all con- spiring to a single result, the perfect working « the whole organism. It is not said that the
GROWTH. 139
character will develop in all its fulness in this life. That were a time too short for an Evolution so magnificent. In this world only the cornless ear is seen ; sometimes only the small yet still prophetic blade. The sneer at the godly man for his imperfections is ill- judged. A blade is a small thing. At first it grows very near the earth. It is often soiled and crushed and downtrodden. But it is a living thing. . That great dead stone beside it is more imposing ; only it will never be any- thing else than a stone. But this small blade — it doth not yet appear ichat it shall be.
Seeing now that Growth can only be synony- mous with a living automatic process, it is all but superfluous to seek a third line of argUr ment from Scripture. Growth there is always described in the language of physiology. The regenerate soul is a new creature. The Chris- tian is a new man in Christ Jesus. He adds the cubits to his stature just as the old man does. He is rooted and built up in Christ ; he abides in the vine, and so abiding, not toiling or spinning, brings forth fruit. The Chris- tian in short, like the poet, is born not made; and the fruits of his character are not manu- factured things but living things, things which have grown from the secret germ, the fruits of the living Spirit. They are not the produce of this climate, but exotics from a sunnier land.