THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD, A Life for a Life and other addresses, A Changed Life, THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY, THE CITY WITHOUT A CHURCH, PAX VOBISCUM, and STONES ROLLED AWAY and other addresses - Henry Drummond (best reads of all time txt) 📗

subject." Talked to him about it! What was the use of talking to a man about Christianity when he was living it every hour of his life? He had done his work without ever having said a word. No. 2 was dying to learn his secret. I need not detail the rest. These two men passed out of the University at the end of their course. No. 1 passed a fairly good examination. No. 2, the man who was lost, graduated with honors and took the medal for his thesis. The last time I heard of No. 1 he was filling an important appointment in London, and No. 2 is known as "the Christian Doctor" of a village in Wales. Now that seems to me to be a thing worth living for; something to look back upon after one's college life is over.
No one knew anything about this. No. 1 was never known as a specially religious man, and yet, in his quiet way, he was living Christ in every direction; and he left more fragrance behind him when he was gone than a dozen of the noisier men.
I ask you, gentlemen, to save your lives, to save your college days, and I appeal to the generous side of you and ask you to remember your fellow men. Remember the man who is going to pieces; remember the man who is down, the man who is tempted. Perhaps if you would stand by him you could help him through. You need not make any great profession of religion. But, if you do that, you will make a great practice of it. It will amount to little, after the college course is over, that you have merely done your work and passed. What is the use of your passing, what is the use of your getting any degree, unless it is going to be of some use to somebody else? There is no particular reason why nine-tenths of us should be alive at all; but the man who begins to live for the Kingdom of God, who sees a chance to do a good turn here and a little one there, and shed a little light here and a little sunniness there, has something to live for. That man's life will never be lost. He lives a more abundant life. There is no other joy or light in the world except that.
And if you gentlemen are going to seek the Kingdom of God, I want to ask you to seek it first. Do not touch it unless you promise to seek it first. I promise you a miserable life and influence and a poor, broken, lost career, if you seek it second. Seek it first, or let it alone. Do not be an amphibian; no man can serve two masters, and, if you only knew it, it is a thousand times easier to seek first the Kingdom of God than to seek it second. I have not the slightest doubt there are many men who are seeking second the Kingdom of God, and their religion is a nuisance to them. It is hard to keep up, and they would get rid of it if they could. The cure is to seek it first, to make it the helm of life. Then only can a man's life go straight, and then only can he fulfill the destiny for which God has put him into the world.


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LIFE ON THE TOP FLOOR
You have had a great time on the mountains, but remember the mountain is not a place to live on. The Mount of Transfiguration is an episode, coming to a man from time to time; but it is not in the ordinary course of nature that a man should always live on the top of the mountain. The mountain is of use to send streams into the valley of our ordinary life, to fertilize and nourish what is there. Perhaps it is not possible that we shall all be living at the same pitch at which you have lived during the days of this week. Before the sacramental wine was dry on the lips of Peter he was untrue to his Saviour. A breakdown to the moral life is just as natural, and just as much a matter of law as the breakdown of an engine. It is important to get to the bottom of these causes. One of the most important things for us to study is the anatomy of the soul, the anatomy of temptation, and the physiology of sin.
You will not agree with me, perhaps, but I have a strong suspicion that the evolutionists are on the right track when they tell us that man's body has come up through the animal creation. Bone for bone, muscle for muscle and nerve for nerve, you and I are exactly the same as the higher vertebrae of the animal kingdom; and after we passed through the animal kingdom, it is supposed by the theorists, we underwent a long probation in which we were somewhat in the condition of the red Indian; and, just as we had the bodies of animals, we had to some extent the minds of animals and the dispositions of savages. If the animal has left me as its legacy a vertebral column and certain nerves, why should it not leave me a legacy of its modes and passions? And if I have once had as my ancestors a long race of savages, why should not the modes and predilections of the savage nature be still in my blood? If I have the blood of the tiger, shall I not have to some extent the spirit of a tiger? If I have the blood of a shark, shall I not be inclined sometimes to play the shark? If I have the blood of a fox, shall I not be inclined sometimes to be foxy? Well, it doesn't matter in the least whether that is true or not, but I appeal to you if it is not a fact that you find in yourselves the residuum of many animals and the disposition of many savages. If there is a man who has nothing of the animal in him, I should like you to introduce me to him. It doesn't matter where it came from. It is there, as a matter of fact. That is to say, man is built in three stories. He is a three-storied structure. On the ground floor there dwells the animal. Above that, on the second story, there is the savage. And on the third floor there is the man. Now, my brother, when you go wrong, it is not you who goes wrong, it is the man who lives in the bottom story. And when you collapse, when you imagine that it is impossible for you to recover again, remember that the true man in you is still there; and that although temptations may come to you from these lower parts of your nature, it is not essential that you should live in idle acquiescence to them. By taking to pieces the moral nature, one sees very clearly what temptation really is. It is the appeal of the animal to the man; and it is no sin for man to hear that appeal. It is no sin for a man to be tempted. In virtue of his nature, man must be tempted. It is when a man leaves the top story and deliberately walks down and spends an hour in the cellar that temptation passes from temptation into sin.
In the same way, one sees very clearly from that little piece of anatomy, how it is possible to overcome temptation. The remedy, of course, is simply to decline ever to move in the lower regions of one's being at all, to regard that as a thing evolved past, and to live constantly in the higher regions. When a man does that, it is impossible for him to break down. Put it in this way. An image is thrown upon the screen of your mind and you look at it. How can you dismiss it? You can only dismiss it by throwing another image on the screen which will be more beautiful, more pure and more attractive, and which, above all, will pre-occupy your mind so that the other image will fade away. It is impossible, I think, in most cases, for the man to deliberately fight the temptation when it comes in certain forms. The only thing he can do is to replace that form by another form. You can do something with temptation at its first stage. You can do everything with it. You can do a little with it at the second stage, but you can do nothing with it after it passes to the third stage. If you let it pass that, you are over Niagara. You must fight it, not by direct fight, but by flight to the higher regions. Paul summed it up in a single sentence, where he said: "Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." In plain English, walk in the fourth flat, and you will not do the things that people do in the cellar. You cannot be in two places at once. If you make up your mind to live continuously in the spirit, ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Spirit is there contrasted with flesh. It does not mean primarily the Holy Spirit, although it includes that. It is here contrasted primarily with the flesh. Either live a cellar or a top-story life, a dog life or a man life. Walk among spiritual things, among high people--not necessarily religious things, but spiritual things. Look not on the things which are seen, but the things which are unseen. Be in the company of good books, beautiful pictures, and charming, delightful and inspiring music; and let all that one hears, sees, reads and thinks lift and inspire the higher. The man who does that is kept above the lower nature. Many and many a thing which is not directly religious, therefore, comes in to make up a part of the nourishment of the spiritual life.
We can always live a high life. We can always have before us beautiful, divine ideals, and the sudden attempt to get from the lower to the higher is the transition between the life of the flesh and the life of the spirit, and the passing from the one region into the other is done by a sudden act, by a sudden mental movement, by a transference of one's interests from one region to another. That mental movement, I think, may be dignified with the name of prayer. That sudden appeal to the purer image which is to displace the other and let it fade away is the spasmodic act of prayer, which instantly places one in the spiritual region; and that is one of the highest uses of prayer, not to get something directly from heaven, but to switch everything up, and not down. If you could keep a Christian and a God-like spirit, it would be impossible for you to have the lower appetites again.
If you want to get a man on his feet again, the thing to do is not to preach or read the Bible to him, but to get him out of the cellar in which he lives. Take him by the hand, and he will be led away from his former life. Those are psychological principles founded upon the fact that the attention cannot be directed to two things at the same moment. You