CHRISTIAN EMANCIPATION.
By S.
UNTIL we can control our thoughts, we are not free men; we have not been emancipated from a most fatal slavery; can not live a pure and acceptable Christian life. It is virtually true that as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. The thing that takes up our attention is the thing that is molding and shaping our character. We become like that which we contemplate. If it be the law of God that takes up our attention, we are bound to grow into its similitude, by the very recreating process which emanates from that divine instrument. Dwell upon the wondrous love of God, and out of your own heart will flow a richer, deeper, fuller, purer love, both for God and the creatures of His hand, than you had ever known before. But contemplate self and self-advancement, and turn away your face from the contemplation of God's love, and the soul will shrink and shrivel while the arm grows strong and the heart cruel to crush and trample on everything and every one that stands in the way of our ambition. The thoughts we think are building roads for us, either upward toward heaven and all that is good and true and pure and lovable and lasting, or downward toward the earth and all that is sordid, selfish, unlovable, and transient. It is an important matter—there is none more so. The wisdom of God gives us this admonition: “Keep thy heart with all diligence.” And the reason follows: “for out of it are the issues of life.” Prov. 4:23. Out of the heart diligently kept there flows life, because of the fact that into such a heart the life of God can flow, and it can not flow into any other. The heart that is not diligently kept can not receive the inflow of the life of God, and consequently has none to give out. But the “issues of life” from the heart that is diligently kept do not pertain wholly to those for whom we labor. They pertain also to the individual himself. Such a keeping has life in it for the one who does the keeping as well as for those for whom he labors. When the heart is right, the ear will hear the promptings of the Spirit of Christ; the eye will see His glory and the things that make for our peace; the mouth will be filled with God's praise and words of comfort, consolation, and exhortation; the feet will be swift to obey the promptings of the mind of Christ in errands of mercy; and the hands will not fail in deeds of kindly ministration. Truly, out of such a heart are “the issues of life.” Such a one has the freedom that Christ alone can give; for He alone can give the strength for such a keeping of the heart. But he who throws open the doors and windows of his heart to the miasma of evil thoughts becomes a bond-servant to the evils which such an act entails. “To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness.” Rom. 6:16. By permitting ourselves to indulge in evil thoughts we voluntarily enslave ourselves in a slavery whose only end is death, in which there is nothing good or satisfying, and out of which can come nothing that is honorable or enduring. The thing which commands our attention is the thing that constitutes our treasure. If that be God's glory and the good of His creatures, we are laying up a treasure of which time can never rob us. But there can be no half-way work about it. It requires all there is of us. Half-hearted service will never do. It must be the whole might, mind, soul, and strength. That includes the thoughts we think. The admonition of the Lord is: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.” Those are the very first steps in the new life. We can not pass over them nor around them. The unrighteous man must forsake his thoughts before he can be a man free from the bondage of sin; and as long as a man is in the bondage of sin, Christ is not ruling in his heart, and can not rule there. Of course, these first steps are not taken in human strength; but when they are taken in the strength that comes by answered prayer, then the Lord “will have mercy upon him,” and “our God” will “abundantly pardon.” Isa. 55:7. Instead of being a captive then, he brings into captivity the very instruments which made him a captive before; that is, his thoughts. As the conqueror casts down the strong holds of his conquered enemy, so his work is to be “casting down imaginations” and “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Cor. 10:5. In this he has overcome God's enemy, the carnal mind (Rom. 8:7), and learns to hate what God hates, the imaginations of evil (Zech. 8:17). Then we are to “gird up the loins of our mind;” “let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus;” “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,” pressing “toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13, 14); arming ourselves with the same mind which He had, and thus abiding in Christ. That means emancipation from the bondage of sin on the one hand, and on the other it means the most glorious liberty to which it is possible for man to attain. Freedom in Christ means freedom from all that debases and drags down, and freedom in all that is noble, pure, and worthy of everlasting endurance. That is the emancipation which God gives, and He is holding it out now to every son and daughter of Adam.