Numbers 16:38

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

Sinners against their own souls." Num 16:38

This is the tremendous hold which God has upon us, namely that we cannot sin against God without committing direct wrong upon ourselves. All experience proves this to be the case. All the lower analogies tend to the confirmation of this doctrine: he who sins against cleanliness sins against his own health; he who sins against social honesty sins against his own advancement; he who sins against social truth deposes himself from the seat of honour and divests himself from all healthy influence. We are physically so constituted that a bad thought lowers the health of the brain; and unregulated passion devastates the nature in which it rages; neglect of discipline means loss of force. Carry up these analogies to the highest level; to cease to pray is to contract the outlook of the soul; to cease to do good is to diminish the power of doing it; to turn away from the heights of heaven is to impoverish the veneration which did homage to old age and bowed itself in the presence of genius and worth. To go down religiously is to go down in every point and line of life. If a man can resist God and yet maintain health of soul, without wound or scar, he would in effect be God himself. If the branch could bear fruit without the vine it would in reality be the vine. If mortality could overcome death it would prove itself to be immortality. It is necessary to the unity of all things that Right should be the fountain of health, harmony, and all that is necessary to spiritual progress. Following the line of this thought, Christians should be living exemplifications of the law which is exceeding broad; they should be men of lofty mind, able to take wide and generous views of all questions, willing to pardon offences and render assistance to weakness; their souls being right with God, their hands should be outstretched in every form of charity. Christianity is infinitely more than a set of theological particulars; it educates the soul, it strengthens the mind, it ennobles all impulses, it increases and consolidates all the forces of manhood. The soul that sins is in a state of ill-health. Sin is a positive wrong done to the quality and function of the soul. It is an insult to the better nature. It is as if a man should strike loveliness in the face, or lay his hand upon the throat of living music. Sin is murder. We must not look upon sin as a mere mistake for which ample apology can be made; it is blasphemy against all right, health, beauty, music. It is all this because it is an offence against God. When night descends upon the earth, it does not darken one room only, it fills the whole house with darkness. So when, sin is committed it is not simply one faculty that is impaired, or one impulse that is discouraged; the whole man goes down and is made the slave of conquering evil. The prodigal son was made to feel that in leaving his father he lost his property, his companions, his brother, his friends; and all these he lost because he first lost himself.