The Moral Foundations of Life - A Series of Talks on the Ethical Principles of the Christian Life #606885

Our wishes move in various domains. We cannot hold ourselves in a handful for we are never sure what is going to happen in the domain of our wishes. We may have all our wishes in a certain domain and be perfectly master of them, with everything clear and simple; then a bereavement comes, and instantly the domain of our wishing is completely altered, we are suddenly put into sensitive sympathy with things we never thought about before. When Jesus Christ is in the ascendant the wish moves in the domain in which He lives, the sensitiveness of our wishing answers to Him in a general softening of our whole nature. We are not conscious of wishing to possess any particular virtue, of wishing to be this or that; we simply wish to be in perfect sympathy with Him and His purposes. The only point of rest is for a man to have his sympathies sensitised by Jesus Christ, because the basis of our nature is always open to let us into some unsuspected “hell” until we have been dominated by Our Lord. When Our Lord speaks of discipleship He catalogues the other loves (see Luke 14:26), and says that our love to Him must be the dominant love of all, because any of those other loves may be a trap-door to something entirely removed from God’s purposes.