III.

Aptitudes for Discipleship.

JOHN i. 48:

"Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me?"

WHAT are the dispositions of heart which would attract to him who possessed them Christ's most hopeful regards? What the natural elements that furnish the happiest aptitudes for discipleship; the cast and frame of spirit that is the peculiar seed-bed of the Christian graces ?

Prior to experience, we might have greatly erred in forecasting the make of mind on which Christ would look with expectation. If without the Gospel notices of his elective affinities we had conjectured an ideal disciple, we should probably have made a consistent strictness more prominent than sensibility; chosen passionless bosoms for our Lord's head to rest upon, and living stones all of one pattern to build the glory of his Church.

But those who drew to themselves the expectations of Christ, as most likely to reward the travail of his soul, were of a different type. Peter's impulsive readi

ness, eager but self-ignorant; ever generously moved, though ever unequal to the movement; his heart rushing into trials for which his soul had not prepared him ; springing to meet his Lord on every stormy water, and sinking in panic reaction when the peril and the terror were close upon him:-St. John's sensitive affection, of the feminine type, not free from its natural admixture of over-jealous vehemence; desiring for himself the place upon his Lord's breast, and fire from heaven on his foes:-Mary, who sat at his feet, with uplifted eyes, drinking in the spirit of eternal life, whilst the work of the passing hour fell unheeded from her hands: -Martha, eager to do him fitting honour though detained for the moment by the homely cares of love from the Mount of Meditation :-Zaccheus, struggling between spiritual desires and an ungenial occupation: -the Woman who had sinned but was forgiven because she mourned and loved much :-the Youth in the innocent flush of freedom from transgression within his small sphere of duties, whom our Lord, beholding, loved for his ingenuous boast of all known tasks performed, and for his ingenuous, though ineffectual, sorrow when the boast proved vain; retiring from his self-assertion when the testing word found out the weak place in his soul :-these are some of the instances in Gospel story which show the affinities of Christ what susceptibilities of spirit he deemed most open to God and reality, most receptive of the seeds of good

ness, most likely to repay a heavenly culture with the richest returns, though for the time only native wild flowers were in possession of the soil.

In determining from such hints the congenial rudiments of character for the action of Christ, it is clear that we must drop whatever does not touch the sensibilities of heart and soul, whatever does not enter into the natural qualifications for one or other of the Beatitudes. Intellect, genius, sagacity, power over men and things, capacity for affairs, recede from our view. These are great qualities which a member of the kingdom. of heaven may splendidly use in its service if he possesses them, but they will not make him a member of that kingdom. They reach their purest glory when they enter and serve therein, but they do not themselves open the door. The powerful instruments which a man's natural gifts place at the command of his will, do not determine the spirit that directs them, or the cause to which they give their strength. The "understanding heart," the moral affections, the soul's hunger and thirst for love, for beauty and for righteousness, with the thrill of its inward response to all goodness,these draw to their service every other part of our nature, as instruments by which the spirit works its will, or as interpreters to the soul upon its watch of the possibilities of life, of the opportunities of God. The vital question is, Has the love of God reached the will? or, Is it only a lambent glow on occasional

affections? If the first, it is for ever reaching forth to fresh conquests and endeavours in the directions of its natural service. No one who loves God with mind, and heart, and soul, and strength, could be content to live in ignorance of the order of God's thoughts, of the laws by which He works, and according to which all effective work must in God's world be done. "Whatsoever the Son seeth the Father do, these things doeth the Son likewise :" that is the test of a filial love which extends to the whole field of divine co-operation, and makes all knowledge and all power handmaids of Religion. No one, with a love born of God, could mourn over the evil and the sorrow that are in the world, and sigh for the coming of the kingdom of heaven, yet be indifferent as to his own possession of the piercing insight, the glorious vigour, the endowments for destruction or persuasion, the full armour, with which in the great emblematic picture the Archangel rushes as on the wings of light against the Prince of Darkness. A genuine love of God, and of what is dear to God, will enlist the whole nature, mental, emotional, instrumental; but there is no corresponding security that intellectual strength and joy will awaken the soul's thirst for the living water, or open a man's heart to receive in spiritual graces the imprint of the life of God. One glance at Nathanael, one glance at Peter, discovered to our Lord their natural fitness for discipleship; though the one had just scornfully asked

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" and the other, until re-cast in the moulds of Christ, was more entitled to his name as “a rock of offence" than as a foundation-stone.

In looking, then, for the genial soil of the Gospel, we expect to find it in no rigid types-in no hard. natures, without life from within to break surface shape and polish-in no frigid consistency fixed so soon and fast because the elements that compose it are so scanty, and fresh impulses that would disturb its small completeness are not encouraged; but rather in the receptive heart surrendering readily to the movements of a life diviner than its own, delivered from the barrenness of minute self-scrutiny by floods of inspiration from the Fountain of being, and though ever as in an agony of unfulfilled desires, yet never in despair as to what it was, or what it is, or what it is to be, whilst the touch of heavenly power is still felt within it.

The first aptitude for affinity with Christ is the possession of a living soul, susceptible to the natural signs of goodness. An impressionable nature may depend on original organization, and an incalculable addition thus be made to power and personal responsibility; but it is not in that form that it is in strongest relations to the kingdom of heaven. What is born of the flesh is but flesh; only what is born of the spirit is spirit; and there is no strength of spirit where there