Obedience and Liberty [pp. 65-86]

OBEDIENCE AND LIBERTY.
of obedience. And no man can live a life that is after the fash ion of this Divine Model, and in accord with the Divine Word,
without obedience. "What shall we do, that we might work the
works of Gocl? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is
the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." We
are to love-love is the fulfilling of the law; but love is to be
demonstrated by keeping the divine commandments. We are to
grow-to grow daily in spiritual apprehension; but this growing again, wherein our souls are to have vision more and more
luminous of the Divine Being, and an ever-increasing sense of
the Divine Nearness, comes, as our Lord distinctly tells us,
throtglh doing the will of God. It is obedience, in some manner
of it, all the way through. And we are not to rest content,
as though all were attained, and the great victory were won, until we have cast down "imagination" and "every high thing that
exalteth itself against the knowledge of God," and have brought
"into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."
That is the teaching, clear and uniform and emphatic, of the
Scriptures.
But, in some quarters, this theory of life is held to be faulty,
and is sharply and elaborately criticised on the ground that it is
too narrow and restrictive, and does not afford sufficient opportunity for the unfolding, into their best and most harmonious
possibilities, of the various elements of our soulhood. By a
very eminent author, in a work in many respects of great merit,
and of wide circulation, itis declared, in substance, that this doctrine of obedience, which Christian men inculcate, is one that
cramps and dwarfs the soul, and so defeats those ends which
might be attained by a larger liberty.
Speaking of these who follow custom until they are the vic.
tims of emptiness, the writer referred to, in his celebrated work
On Liberty, says: "Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke;
even in what people do for pleasure conformity is the first thing
thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only in
things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of
conduct, are shunned equally with crimes; until, by dint of not
following their own nature, they have no nature to follow; their
human capacities are withered and starved; they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are genenerally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or
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