eat out the earnestness and sincerity of a Christian
life, than that he should be--as I, for instance, and every man in my
position has to be--constantly occupied with presenting God's Word to
other people. We are apt to look upon it as, in some sense, our
stock-in-trade, and to forget to apply it to ourselves. So it was with a
very special bearing on the particular occupation and temptation of his
correspondent that Paul said 'Exercise thyself unto godliness' before
you begin to talk to other people.

But that would not be appropriate to my present audience. And I take
this injunction as one of universal application.

I. Notice, then, here expressed the ever-present and universal aim of
the Christian life.

Paul does not say 'be godly'; but 'exercise thyself unto'--with a view
towards--'godliness.' In other words, to him godliness is the great aim
which every Christian man should set before him as the one supreme
purpose of his life.

Now I am not going to spend any time on mere verbal criticism, but I
must point to the somewhat unusual word which the Apostle here employs
for 'godliness.' It is all but exclusively confined to these last
letters of the Apostle. It was evidently a word that had unfolded the
depth and fulness and comprehensiveness of its meaning to him in the
last stage of his religious experience. For it is only once employed in
the Acts of the Apostles, and some two or three times in the doubtful
second Epistle of St. Peter. And all the other instances of its use lie
in these three letters--the one to Titus and two to Timothy; and eight
of them are in this first one. The old Apostle keeps perpetually
recurring to this one idea of 'godliness.' What does he mean by it? The
etymological meaning of the word is 'well-directed reverence,' but it is
to be noticed that the context specifically points to one form of
well-directed reverence, viz. as shown in conduct. 'Active godliness' is
the meaning of the word; religion embodied in deeds, emotions, and
sentiments, and creeds, put into fact.

This noble and pregnant word teaches us, first of all, that all true
religion finds its ultimate sphere and best manifestation in the conduct
of daily life. That sounds like a platitude. I wish it were. If we
believed that, and worked it out, we should be very different people
from what the most of us are; and our chapels would be very different
places, and the professing Church would have a new breath of life over
it