No tiny wave of influence ever yet sped forth from a Christian heart, but what reached its mark and wrought its work of beneficent power.
_For suggested meditations during the week, see Appendix._
"For I am come down from Heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me."
To-day we are going to speak of the soul not in its popular sense, as set over against the body, but in the scriptural meaning of the word as the broad equivalent of life.
To enter upon a philosophical discussion might prove interesting from a merely academic point of view, but would be eminently unpractical. Suffice it to say that when S. Paul speaks of the "body, soul and spirit" (1 Thess. v. 23), he takes the two latter as different faculties of the invisible part of man.
Soul ([Greek: psychê]) is the lower attribute which man has in common with the animals; spirit ([Greek: pneuma]) the higher one which they do not possess, and which makes man capable of religion.
In this sense, then, the soul would mean the life the man or woman is leading, in the home, the business, the pleasures, the relaxations, as distinct from the definite exercise of devotion or worship.
Of course it is absolutely impossible to draw a hard and fast line between sacred and secular. All secular affairs, rightly conducted, have their sacred side; and conversely all sacred matters have their secular side, for they form part of the life the man is living "in the age."
It is the neglect of this truth which is responsible for much of the moral and religious failure of the day.
Business is secular, prayer is sacred, and so they have no practical connection each with other.
Amusement is secular (often vastly too much so, in the very lowest sense of the word); Holy Communion is sacred; therefore there is no link between them. Whereas the prayer and the Communion should be the ennobling and sanctifying power alike of work and play.
Bearing this caution in mind, we shall to-day look at certain features of the so-called secular life of the day in which discipline needs to be strongly exercised.
No doubt about it, the soul of the nation has been growing sick, sick "nigh unto death."
Luxury has been increasing with giant strides; the mad race for pleasure has helped to empty our Churches, to rob our Charities, to diminish the number of our Candidates for Holy Orders, to make countless ears deaf to the call which the country, through that magnificent Christian soldier, Lord Roberts, and many others, has been making to manhood of the land. Week-ending, meals in restaurants, turning night into day, have robbed home-life of its grace and power, and produced a generation of young folk _blasé_ and discontented before they are out of girlhood and boyhood.