Árdís - 01.01.1964, Page 24

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ÁRDÍ S
with many stern rules for preface, is stored away in a secret place,
and from time to time, at nightfall, the soul is arraigned before it
as before a private judgment bar. The author does not consider
this an erroneous method, but an unsuccessful one, for the reason
that one day the rules will be forgotten.
Drummond is of the opinion that the self-sufficient method,
the self-crucifixion method, the mimetic method and the diary
method are perfectly human, perfectly natural, perfectly ignorant,
and, as they stand, perfectly inadequate. He feels that they distract
attention from the true working method, and secure a result at the
expense of the perfect one.
The true method for the perfection of character, according to
Drummond, is to be found in Paul’s second letter to the Corin-
thians. It is this: “we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror
the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from
glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.” According to this
method, we are transformed, we do not transform ourselves; it is
something outside the soul of man, that produces a moral change
upon him, he must be susceptible to that change, he must be party
to it, neither his aptitudes nor his will can produce it. The first
Law of Motion is also a first law of Christianity; every man’s
character remains as it is, or continues in the direction in which
it is going, until it is compelled by impressed forces to change that
state. Our failure has been the failure to put ourselves in the way
of the impressed forces. There is a clay, and there is a Potter; we
have tried to get the clay to mould the clay.
Whence then these pressures and where this Potter? Drum-
mond finds the answer in Paul’s formula: “By reflecting as a mirror
the glory of the Lord we are changed.” He interprets the meaning
of the “glory” of the Lord as the “character” of the Lord.” Stripped
of its physical enswathment character is Beauty, moral and spirit-
ual Beauty, Beauty infinitely real, infinitely exalted, yet infinitely
near and infinitely communicable.
In his clear meticulous way Drummond paraphrases Paul’s
formula for perfection as follows: We all reflecting as a mirror
the character of Christ are transformed into the same Image from
character to character—from a poor character to a better one, from
a better one to one a little better still, from that to one still more