Verses 10-15
Nature and Practice
Here are men working according to their nature. That is a universal necessity. Here are men who are not only doing evil but desiring to do it; not doing evil in one passionate and hurried act, but doing it constantly; liking to do it, doing it in anticipation, planning it; making all things concur and focus upon it; making evil part of a plot, a plot conceived and wrought out in the burning, vehement heart The mere doing of the evil itself is momentary, and is not worth doing. The devil will not give us time enough when he has brought us to the point of absolute transaction; it is one mouthful of the interdicted fruit, and then sudden hell. Where the enemy gives time is in anticipation, fore-arranging; as who should say, How shall this be done? and when? under what circumstances? What condiment can we add to this to make it titillate the palate? what contributory circumstances can we arrange so as to make the feast long? The devil gives no long feasts. He gives long notice, long preparation; he causes the soul to delight in the outlook upon the positive occasion that is coming; but when it comes it is a sudden opening and a sudden shutting, a baleful light, an everlasting darkness.
"The soul of the wicked desireth evil," likes it, longs for it, delights in it. That was not Paul's particular state of mind as described in the seventh chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. He did evil, and did not want to do it; he put forth his hands to actions which he hated. There is all the difference in the world between desiring to do evil and simply doing it Many a man does the evil who does not desire to do that which is wrong. I have not hesitated to teach that many a man who drinks deeply is no drunkard. His body is drunk, but his soul is sober. Herein is a great mystery the eternal conflict between passion and reason, body and soul, the dust we carry and the deity that burns within us. Paul set forth the experience of such conflict in vivid and graphic terms. He would not do the evil, and then he did it; he would do the good, and then he found himself unable to accomplish his own purpose; he hated the evil and then went out and did it; he longed to serve the good, and when he went out to do it he forgot his road and was brought home a blind man. Do not confuse this state of heart and soul with the disposition that wallows in evil. Many a man is drunk who is a total abstainer. That is the converse truth. We are what we want to be. Out of the heart proceed murders, thefts, adulteries, blasphemies. O thou well-dressed and heavily protected hypocrite! Thou art now caught in a shower of darts; it is no rain that beats upon thee, or thou mightest keep it off, but sharp steel sent down from God's heaven, and thou hast no protection against that assault. What is the state of your heart? Do you wear the saint, and keep the blackguard well concealed? Do you say your prayers, and live your desires? Let every man search himself, whether he preach the judgment, or only hear its proclamation.
So subtle are the operations of the heart, so incalculable are the temptations of the enemy, that even here we have to be very particular lest we take comfort to which we have no right. We must not deceive ourselves; we must not suppose that we are those who would not do evil and yet do it, if in our hearts there is a testimony against us, urgent, not to be kept down, resurgent, that comes up through all temptations and all illusions, and asserts itself as the leading and dominant fact in our spiritual consciousness. Besides, the doing, even the reluctant doing, may excite the desire to do with a will. If we go very frequently back and back to our bad habits they may become easy to us; we shall not always remain in the state of doing the evil which we do not want to do. Presently we may want to do it, we may desire to do it. Observe how wondrously that word "convenient" is used in the New Testament. It is used in connection either with excuses or with debaucheries. "When a convenient day was come." Herod can make his own conveniences. He had arranged that he should be called at this hour and that his interview with unpleasant interlocutors should be interrupted five minutes later, and that his door should be thundered at by an importunate fist, and that he should have wine ready when the simulated spasm tears his breast; and he can arrange that by accident the tempter come upon the scene: whereas the tempter's name was written upon the programme a week ago. "A convenient day" a coming-together day, when lines and threads, and arrangements and appointments, can be made to con, to get together, to form a so-called necessity.
The way of evil is not always agreeable at first. Evil brings its own immediate penalties. It is so with uncleanly practices, with undesirable habits that may afterwards grow into luxuries. Many a young man has had to fight his way into slavery. When he first tasted the thing, it was deadly; he said he revolted from it. The enemy said, Try it again. He tried it again; it was little better. A third time, and it was not so unmanageable; a fourth time, a twelfth time, and then he desired it. Think of a free young soul fighting its way determinedly into bondage! This is possible. Oh, mysterious human nature! "how abject, how august!" When does a man lose his soul? We speak of the loss of the soul sometimes as if it were a momentary and complete act. There is a sense in which the loss of the soul is both momentary and complete. There is a sense in which death may be sudden, though it has been looked for for years. Is not death always sudden? Can any man wholly prepare himself for that grim guest? When he takes his seat does he not take it suddenly, and blight the little festival by his presence? There is another sense in which a man loses his soul little by little. That is the loss to fear. The soul goes down in volume, the soul loses its fine bloom wrought by the summer of God: the will is more reluctant in good directions; the heart has lost its eagerness to pray. The church is not now the sweet necessity of the week; the soul no longer says, When will the Sabbath dawn? when will the golden gates be thrown back that I may enter into fellowship with the saints and into the common prayer and worship addressed to Almighty God the Father? Religious enthusiasm has cooled; we can not adopt an excuse and magnify it into a reason when it is on the side of delay or inactivity. We now look at the barometer, and can be easily persuaded that we are not well enough to go to the sanctuary! Ah, we are losing our souls, we are going down to hell a step at a time. Didst thou think, poor fool, that men went into perdition by one sudden leap? To some men, to go to hell is only the next thing, the next natural thing, the next easy thing; it is not a mile, it is but a span. How solemn is life! The man looks as he has looked for many a day, and yet if you could see him interiorly he is wasted. By what disease? Consumption. Consumption of what? Of the soul; the enemy has nearly eaten it all up. There are those who do not want our preachers to speak of perdition. What is their reason? Hath not the devil some trick of this kind which he plays with a master's hand? Think!
Blessed be God, the rule operates also on the other side: "It is a joy to the just to do judgment." He not only does judgment or justice, but he joys in doing it. He is delighted with the opportunity of doing it; he longs to make men glad, to set the oppressed free, to open the prison door to them that are bound unjustly. When he has to make reparation to any man on his own account he does it magnanimously; he says to the wronged man, I thank God for this opportunity of telling you what injustice I have inflicted upon you; I did not understand you, in the sight and fear of God I must own I did not want to understand you; I closed my eyes and then struck in the direction where I thought a blow would tell upon you: I was wrong: God has now given me the spirit of righteousness and integrity and justice, and I will lie down at your feet and say, Have mercy upon me! I have done wickedly. When Christian men learn to do this they will know what the Cross means. We are not to do our duty merely, barely, grudgingly, with critical nicety; we are to carry up duty to the point of generosity and over-soul and overflowingness of all good feeling; we are to do it again, and again, and again, with the abundance, the wave-chasing-wave fulness of the sea. We never can apologise for doing wrong. We must repeat the apology, and study the eloquence of penitence; where we have done wrong it may take the rest of our lifetime to make reparation, and then we shall need all the help of God to heal the heart or the life we have wronged. Sometimes, however, we can only begin at the point of duty. We must begin good-doing where we can. All men have not the same largeness and richness of nature. There are those who tell us that all men are equal simply because they do not know what they are talking about. No two men are equal. Some men never get beyond the point of servitude a day's wages for a day's work. They can only do what they call their duty, and any man who sets himself simply to do his duty never does it. Duty can only be done from above; we cannot carry up our actions to the point of duty, we must rise above them, and with Heaven's help work according to Heaven's gravitation, and thus do our duty with a masterly hand, as with an eager and grateful heart.
Some men cannot be other than little. They cannot help it; if they are only little in judgment they must be taken for what they are worth, but if their littleness of judgment interferes with their moral integrity then we must watch and rebuke and restrain them. It is impossible for some men to be good. Down to the very last it is impossible for some men to pray to pray in that way that is almost praise, to utter a prayer that has a hymn in the heart of it, to commune with God in some heaven-dissolving way that tears aside all veils and screens, and that sees the Father through the Son, and delights in the ineffable presence. Still we must pray where we can. Sometimes the prayer may be hard and may therefore be costly in the sight of God that is, of great price in the estimation of him who knows through what difficulties we have come to the altar. On the other hand, it is comparatively easy for some men to pray. Let them take care lest they are offering prayers that are not steeped in blood, prayers that are not sacrificial, bleeding at every syllable, prayers that are merely eloquent breath. Each man must examine himself and come to his own conclusion, accepting help from pulpit or press or friend as it may be offered to him. To the last it is hard for some men to give. They cannot part with money. They could part with any amount of good advice in fact, they make themselves the servants of the church in this matter: but in their soul their what? let courtesy prevail over judgment in their soul they are avaricious. Did you ever see Avarice? It is a thing mainly of hands hooked, crooked, grasping hands. Avarice never had a good dinner; even when it dined at others' expense the food went for nothing, because Avarice was thinking what it would do to-morrow. There is avarice in the church, a bargaining spirit in the sanctuary; a spirit that would settle once for all with God in order to get it over: whereas God will not have it so; he would not have it so in Judaism, he must have the sacrifice every morning, every evening, no intermission. He will have the giving to-day and to-morrow and every day, regularly as he gives the sunshine. By such detail and discipline, by such sharpness of exaction and criticism, he brings us to the last refinement of consent and joy.
Blessed be God, the law is equal. As the law operates in one direction, so it operates in the other: as we lose our souls little by little, we may gain them little by little. You may be more a man to-day than you were seven years ago. You delight more in the law of God, in the expectation of the kingdom; you have begun to say, After all there is something in this religious mystery that is necessary to the completeness of human nature, and to the fulfilment of human hope and human destiny. Be glad of that admission. That is a point to begin at. You say that though you cannot make out the mysteries, here and there you come upon a clear point of reason in your studies of these great religious appeals. Now you are beginning to live. Once you could not sing in the sanctuary, but lately you have joined the hymn in a note or two, blessed be God! We shall have you yet; the Lord will hold you as his willing captive. Once you could not speak to others about spiritual affairs, and latterly you have begun almost to design an attack upon some friend in whose spiritual interests you are deeply concerned, and it may be ere the week is out you will venture the first word. God grant it may be so! Then your friend will tell you he has been waiting for, and expecting this; or if he cannot speak to you in words he will send to your heart the thrill of a masonic grip that says, God be thanked for this touch of human sympathy!
Seeing that the whole matter is so intensely spiritual, that it penetrates to the heart and core and essence of things, what can we do with mere theories, inventions, reforms, propositions, and the like? If we are so spiritually constituted we must be spoken to spiritually. If the beginning, continuance, and end of all this mystery of growth is so intensely spiritual, we must be brought into contact with God the Holy Ghost. It is his work; he must take the things of Christ and show them unto us; he must interpret the Cross in all the meaning of its blood to the aching, wondering, despairing heart. You cannot be brought into divinest relations by merely intellectual argument. "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" Let your prayer be for the gift of the Holy Ghost. He only can throw back all the hindrances that keep him from the heart; he alone can find his way into the recesses of the soul, the innermost chambers of our mysterious life. Pray for the Holy Ghost. Say, Take not thy Holy Spirit from me! Say, "Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, with all thy quickening powers." Wait upon God for this. Say to him plainly, Father, this is not a human matter, this is not to be done by human thought and human scheme; this mystery lies between thyself and myself oh, help me! Dost thou believe? saith the voice from above. Let your answer be, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."
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