These are two: one mainly bearing on the outward, the other on the inward, life. By building up yourselves on your most holy faith': that is the one. By praying in the Holy Ghost': that is the other. Let us look at these two.
Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.' I suppose that faith' here is used in its ordinary sense. Some would rather prefer to take it in the latter, ecclesiastical sense, by which it means, not the act of belief, but the aggregate of the things believed.--Our most holy faith,' as it is called by quotation--I think misquotation--of this passage. But I do not see that there is any necessity for that meaning. The words are perfectly intelligible in their ordinary meaning. What Jude says is just this:' Your trust in Jesus Christ has in it a tendency to produce holiness, and that is the foundation on which you are to build a great character. Build up yourselves on your most holy faith.' For although it is not what the world's ethics recognise, the Christian theory of morality is this, that it all rests upon trust in God manifested to us in Jesus Christ. Faith is the foundation of all supreme excellence and nobility and beauty of character; because, for one thing, it dethrones self, and enthrones God in our hearts; making Him our aim and our law and our supreme good; and because, for another thing, our trust brings us into direct union with Him, so that we receive from Him the power thus to build up a character.
Faith is the foundation. Ay! but faith is only the foundation. It is the potentiality of wealth,' but it is not the reality. All things are possible to him that believeth ; but all things are not actual except on conditions. A man may have faith, as a great many professing Christians have it, only as a fire-escape,' a means of getting away from hell, or have it only as a hand that is stretched out to grasp certain initial blessings of the spiritual life. But that is not its full glory nor its real aspect. It is meant to be the beginning in us of all things that are lovely and of good report.' What would you think of a man that carefully put in the foundations for a house, and had all his building materials on the ground, and let them lie there? And that is what a great many of you Christian people do, who' have fled for refuge,' as you say, to the hope set before you in the Gospel'; and who have never wrought out your faith into noble deeds. Remember what the Apostle says, Faith which worketh'; and worketh by love.' It is the foundation, but only the foundation.
The work of building a noble character on that firm foundation is never-ending. Tis a life-long task till the lump be leavened.' The metaphor of growth by building suggests effort, and it suggests continuity; and it suggests slow, gradual rearing up, course upon course, stone by stone. Some of us have done nothing at it for a great many years. You will pass, sometimes, in our suburbs, a row of houses begun by some builder that has become bankrupt; and there are mouldering bricks and gaping empty places for the windows, and the rafters decaying, and stagnant water down in the holes that were meant for the cellars. That is like the kind of thing that hosts of people who call themselves Christians have built. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith … Keep yourselves in the love.'
Then the other way of building is suggested in the next clause, praying in the Holy Ghost'--that is to say, prayer which is not mere utterance of my own petulant desires which a great deal of our prayer' is, but which is breathed into us by that Divine Spirit that will brood over our chaos, and bring order out of confusion, and light and beauty out of darkness, and weltering sea:
"The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed,
As Michael Angelo says, such prayer inspired and warmed by the influences of that Divine Spirit playing upon the dull flame of our desires, like air injected into a grate where the fire is half out, such prayers are our best help in building. For who is there that has honestly tried to build himself up for a habitation of God' but has felt that it must be through a Spirit' mightier than himself, who will overcome his weaknesses and arm him against temptation? No man who honestly endeavours to re-form his character but is brought very soon to feel that he needs a higher help than his own. And perhaps some of us know how, when sore pressed by temptation, one petition for help brings a sudden gush of strength into us, and we feel thatthe enemy's assault is weakened.
Brethren, the best attitude for building is on our knees; and if, like Cromwell's men in the fight, we go into the battle singing,
"Let God arise, and scattered
we shall come out victorious. Ye, beloved, building and praying, keep yourselves.'
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