have told you that you must retire from the world altogether in order
to become holy. Paul says, "Away with all that nonsense!" We are
living in a real world; Christ lived in a real world: Christ did not
retire from men. And He says all that you have to do in order to be
like Christ is to carry His image with you in your heart. That is
all. To be with Him, to let Him stand before you and command your
love, that will infallibly change you into His image. I do not know
that we sufficiently recognise the simplicity of Christian methods.
We do not understand what Paul meant by proclaiming it as the
religion of the spirit, as a religion superior to everything
mechanical and external. Think of the deliverance it was for him who
had grown up under a religion which commanded him to go a journey
three times a year, to take the best of his goods and offer them in
the Temple, to comply with a multitude of oppressive observances and
ordinances. Think of the emancipation when he found a spiritual
religion. Why, in those times a man must have despaired of becoming a
holy man; But now Paul says you will infallibly become holy if you
learn this easy lesson of carrying the Lord Jesus with you in your
heart.

Another recommendation of this method is that it is so obviously
grounded on our own nature. No sooner are we told by Paul that we
must act as mirrors of Christ than we recognise that nature has made
us to be mirrors, that we cannot but reflect what is passing before
us. You are walking along the street, and, a little child runs before
a carriage; you shrink back as if you were in danger. You see a man
fall from a scaffolding, crushed; your face takes on an expression of
pain, reflecting what is passing in him. You go and spend an evening
with a man much stronger, much purer, much saner, than yourself, and
you come away knowing yourself a stronger and a better man. Why?