MATTHEW vi. 13.
It is good for us sometimes to stand still for a moment and consider our use of very familiar words. And this pet.i.tion may appropriately ill.u.s.trate our need of such an exercise.
It is on your lips every day. Every Sunday you offer it you hardly know how many times, in private and in public prayer: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." And the moment you stop to think about it you feel--who does not?--that it is a very solemn and moving pet.i.tion if you offer it before G.o.d in sincerity, and with an honest desire to be kept out of the way of sin; but it becomes a fearful mockery if it is offered with unclean lips, or by one who is living in any sort of sinful practice, either secret or open.
And yet, as we all know, it is possible to do this, making the prayer mere lip service, under the influence of daily custom. This, then, is the question it suggests to us whenever we stop to think about it: How far are we endeavouring to keep our lives in accordance with the spirit of such a pet.i.tion? "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Most of you, I can well believe, would not voluntarily or deliberately step out of your way to meet a temptation, or to seek any evil course of life. You would not do it of your own free choice, or in cold blood, as we say. This, at any rate, is your own feeling about sin, whether the feeling is consistent with your life or not. As you contemplate any low form of life in another, you recognise its ugliness and its degrading character, and you call it very likely by the name it deserves. If, then, you find yourself involved in any sin, in spite of these feelings, and although you take this daily prayer upon your lips, how comes it to be so? How comes it that you remain in this pitiable condition?
Your answer is, perhaps, that temptation comes upon you unawares, and that it takes you by surprise; or it seems to watch for some moment of forgetfulness or weakness; or you fight against a temptation, but still it clings to you as if it had a life of its own and were independent of you; or you are drawn into sin you scarcely know how; or you are driven into it by some one whom you fear although you despise him; or it seems to you to be in the very air you breathe. And although such answers explanatory of a life of sin or waste are no real excuse for it, they are very often quite true. If it were not so, the devil would not be the dangerous enemy that he a.s.suredly is to our spiritual life; our risk of failure in our battle with sin would not be so great as experience shows it to be. We must therefore expect that temptations to sin will sometimes come upon us quite by surprise and at unlocked for moments, and that some temptations will linger and cling to us with a hateful persistence; you must be prepared also to find that some companion may draw you towards a sin, or a bully may endeavour to drive you into it.
Your life is a happy one if it is free from all such risks, but you cannot count upon such freedom. So that, if any one begins his life thinking that his conflict with evil and its manifold temptations is going to be an easy one, he begins under a dangerous delusion, and he is likely to end in some disastrous failure.
You desire, let us hope, to keep your soul unstained by evil ways. If, then, you remember that to secure such a stainless and unpolluted life you have not only to fight with some external enemy now and then, but against dark and insidious powers of evil which seem to start up around you and in the very citadel of your heart unawares, and that except through a constant sense of G.o.d"s presence in your life you cannot hope to keep free from their influence, this feeling should give reality and earnestness to our daily prayer to be delivered from the evil.
And, indeed, this feeling that our life is set in the midst of many and great dangers is one of the first requisites for its moral safety. It stands beside us with its warning, whenever a temptation to some sin besets us, reminding us that, no matter how pleasant or attractive the temptation may seem to be, or how trifling the sin that it suggests, it is in fact an outpost of a great army, whose name is legion, and that we should hold no parleyings and have no dealings with it, for it breathes corruption, and it brings degradation and death behind it.
"_Obsta principiis_" may indeed be said to be a warning specially needed by us in regard to every kind of temptation. But we may go further than this. Our safety from particular sins depends very often and very largely, at a critical moment, upon our general att.i.tude and feeling towards sin in every shape.
It must be acknowledged, I think, that most sins which lay their hold upon us and master us, or struggle long and hard for the mastery, make their first entrance into the soul so easily, because they find it swept and garnished for their reception, and its doors wide open. With reference to this you have only to reflect on some chapter of your own experience. Has it never happened that, when some wrong or sinful act or thought or speech was first presented to you, it stirred a feeling of shrinking, or strong dislike, or fear, or uneasiness, or, it may be, disgust; but instead of listening to that warning voice, and spurning the temptation utterly, as your feeling bade you do, you were attracted somehow to turn and gaze upon it. You knew it to be sin, but you felt no repulsion. Your soul was not garrisoned and defended by any strong sense of the hatefulness and deadly influence of all sin as such; so if you fled from it it was with a backward look; and then you allowed yourself to think of it in others, or you lived on friendly and familiar terms with those who were stained by it; possibly you even jested about it; you let your thoughts feed upon it; you expressed no stern disapproval of it; you allowed the atmosphere of your life to be tainted by it; and at last your adversary the devil, having rejoiced to see his wiles thus gathering round you, saw you slip or plunge into the sin, and go one great step nearer to becoming his bondslave--just as some foolish bird, fluttering this way and that instead of spreading its wings for a heavenward flight into the pure and safe upper air, might plunge into the snares of the fowler. And yet all the while, although you were living this weak and vacillating life, which is the seed-field of sin, you were praying to G.o.d every day--"Lead us not into temptation."
If we remember any such experience we may at least gather from it some lessons of safety and strength for the time to come. It reminds us first of all how vitally important is our general att.i.tude towards every form of sin and its allurements. On this att.i.tude it very often depends whether your life is to be comparatively free from pitfalls, or whether it is to be beset with dangers at every turning. If by your att.i.tude and behaviour you cause it to be felt that sin is hateful to you, and that you are sincere when you pray that G.o.d may keep you from all evil, a great many of the temptations that would otherwise make your life difficult and dangerous will shrink away abashed; or if the tempter ventures to a.s.sail you, he will do it half-heartedly when he sees that you repel him with a whole-hearted repugnance. It is this att.i.tude even more than individual acts which fixes the tone of a society.
When there is no prevalent sense that there are those present who maintain this att.i.tude of hatred and contempt for sin and everything that breeds or fosters it, the tone, as men say, becomes low, or lax, the air becomes corrupt, and life in such surroundings becomes full of peril. If the good are timid, shrinking, showing no positive fervour, no zeal for virtue, and no moral indignation against evil influence, then the bad in their society will lift up their heads and walk boldly. But when, on the other hand, they who are in their hearts convinced of the sinfulness of sin, and of the infinite mischief that may arise out of any form of it, are not ashamed to show it by their att.i.tude, they cause the base to hide itself in its proper darkness, and they create an atmosphere around them in which temptations lose a great deal of their force and strength.
Let this, then, be your feeling about your life--that when it is a.s.sailed by any sin, that sin is not something isolated or insignificant; it is not something which may be indulged or accepted, as if it had no relation with other sins; it is a part of an infinite brood of evil; and that if you admit it within the circle of your life, or tolerate it in the air you breathe, you never know where its pestilent germs may fall, and breed, and multiply, and what mischief may come of it.
It is this feeling of the mysterious vitality of sin, and the subtle kinship of one form of sin with other forms, and its destructiveness when it seizes on a life or poisons an atmosphere, that helps us more than anything else to feel the force and the intensity of the Saviour"s prayer for us: "Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me. I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from evil." It is this same feeling of the spreading, insidious, infectious and destructive nature of sin that makes us echo this as our first and most earnest prayer for all we love, that G.o.d may keep them from evil; and it is this that makes us value so highly and recognise with thankful hearts every example of a pure and strong life, which gives inspiration and strength to those around it.
XVI. SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS.
"As it is written, G.o.d hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear."--ROMANS xi. 8.
"Blindness in part is happened to Israel."--ROMANS xi. 25.
It is a sad and painful reflection, and one which is continually forced upon us as we read the New Testament, that the long training and preparation of the Jews brought them at the last not to the acceptance but to the rejection of Jesus.
They had been taught, generation after generation, that they were the called and chosen people of G.o.d. Psalmists and prophets had enriched their life with the outpouring of their moral and spiritual revelations, and fired their hopes with promises. They lived in the expectation of the Messiah who was to complete these revelations of the G.o.d who had led them and taught them ever since the days of their Egyptian bondage.
Yet, when this crowning revelation came to them, they could not even recognise it. The Son of G.o.d "came unto His own and His own received Him not." As St. Paul expresses it in my text, while grieving for them with all the intensity of his fervid affection, their life was overgrown with a sort of spiritual dulness. They were suffering from a sort of ossification of the spirit, so that the last and greatest revelation of G.o.d could make no impression upon them.
But this picture of the Jews rejecting and crucifying their Saviour, and unable to appreciate or to receive the gift of new life which was offered to them, blind to its beauty, unattracted by its charm, is not only one of the saddest sights in history, it is very instructive for every one of us, because it is charged with warnings that are never out of date. For there is no individual life, and no society, that is not liable to drift into a similar dulness of vision, and so to reject or disregard what G.o.d gives for its enlightenment. The great critical events in the world"s history, the events that make epochs in the consciousness of men, are not different in kind from those of our own obscure lives. They are, as it were, our own familiar experience, written prophetically and written large.
So the blindness that happened to Israel, and arrested their spiritual growth, may be happening no less to any of us. As G.o.d gave them the spirit of slumber, so it may be with our lives.
And the very thought of our possible risks in this respect is valuable to us.
To be conscious that in regard to any of the higher and better things of life our eyes may possibly be growing dim, and our ears dull of hearing, and that G.o.d may be pressing upon us gifts of great price which we are too dull to see or to accept--if our soul is sufficiently awake to feel this, then the very feeling may of itself be the germ of new life in us.
And it is very certain, on the other hand, that if we are altogether without any such feelings there is a risk, which even amounts to a probability, that the hardening or deadening influences of custom and tradition will sooner or later degrade our life. And if it should be asked,--How comes it that we are so liable to be affected by this dulness of spirit and of general habit?--we have to reply that it is because of the sensitiveness of the human soul to surrounding influences.
It is because our souls are so receptive, so imitative, and in consequence so easily perverted, darkened, blinded, or misled. I suppose we are all of us conscious of this sensitiveness of the moral and spiritual nature; we should all say, if questioned, that we are quite aware of it, and that no one would dispute it. The soul of every child or man, we should say, is a fine and delicate and sensitive instrument, with the possibilities in it of we know not what Divine harmonies, but easily spoilt.
And yet, when we look at all the common and traditional ordering of daily life, whether in our educating of the young or in the influences that we allow to prevail among young and old, it would seem sometimes as if this thought of the soul"s sensitiveness had never dawned upon us.
When we once really grasp this thought, or, let us rather say, when this thought has once really fastened upon our mind, and fixed itself there, so that it remains with us, and goes about with us; and when, in consequence, we come to feel how easily any soul may be perverted, or rendered hard or dull; in one word, how easily it may be degraded; then it follows that we look with new eyes on many things, many customs, many influences which the unthinking hardly notice, or notice only to misjudge.
In the light of this feeling of the soul"s sensitiveness, the thoughtful man is very often intolerant of things which to others seem of little moment, because he sees how they are tending to dull or deaden the eye of the soul, or to pervert or to kill its finer instincts; and how, in consequence, though tradition may have given them a sort of spurious consecration, or the world in its blindness may have come to honour them, they are in fact laden with mischief to the general life.
It was the thought of this sensitiveness of the soul to external influences, and of the ease with which any bad influence, or bad custom or practice or fashion, perverts common lives, and of the untold mischief which is consequently latent in it, that winged the words of a well-known writer when she protested, some years ago, against what she designated as debasing the moral currency.
That writer was thinking primarily of vulgar jesting on great subjects, which should stir us to admiration and reverence, and so debasing men"s tastes. She had in her mind the cla.s.s of persons who have the art of spoiling things that are n.o.ble or beautiful by their vulgar handling of them; and of the mischief which is done by such persons to public taste and tone and character.
But we may widen the reference. Whosoever, in anything that concerns the conduct of life, spreads low notions, or drags down men"s opinion or taste, thus helping to pervert ordinary minds from those higher aims and motives and those reverent views of character and life which should be cherished for our common use and service, is debasing the moral currency.
Here, then, we have a very practical question for our consideration and answering. "Is there anything in my life"--so the question comes to us in our self-examination--"which could be so described? any influence, spreading from my conduct, of which men might truly say that it also is helping to debase the moral currency? Is there to be seen in it anything that tends towards the lowering of common standards? any misuse of things sacred or holy? any foolish or vulgar estimate of the higher things of life?" And if we are in any doubt how to put these questions in a concrete and practical shape, we have only to remember how any one who helps to lower any standard of taste or conduct is debasing the moral currency of life; how, for instance, all those are debasing it who subst.i.tute any wrong notion of honour for right notions of honour, or who put roughness and coa.r.s.eness in place of manliness, or who set the fashion of cynical judgments on good and bad characters.
Or we might take an ill.u.s.tration from what is, unhappily, a very common element in English life: the habit of gambling sport. Wherever this habit spreads, in any cla.s.s of society, from the highest to the lowest, its effect is invariable; it undermines integrity, it hardens the heart and debases taste, and is the willing handmaid of other vices. Moral degradation is its inseparable companion. Therefore, if you mix in it, or share in it, or give any adhesion or countenance to it, which helps, as men say, to make it respectable, and so to spread its influence, you are debasing the moral currency.
Or take another common case. You are familiar with the poet"s description, "And thus he bore without abuse the grand old name of gentleman." That is a n.o.ble thing for any man or boy to have said of him; and there is not one among you who does not desire always to be able to claim that name as his own.
But, wherever we go in the world, how many men there are who claim it and yet debase it by ign.o.ble use! They help to spread the notion that a man may be a man of low morality and still a gentleman; that his gentlemanliness may be a mere varnish of culture and manners, a thin veneering having underneath it only meanness, or coa.r.s.eness, or corruption; and that, notwithstanding this, he may still claim to be called a gentleman. Those who spread such doctrines are debasing the moral currency of English life. And it should be the mission of schools like this, and of those who grow up in them, to pour upon all such persons the contempt which they deserve, and to restore the currency of common life to something of Christian purity.
Remembering, then, how sensitive the soul is, and how easily by example, or conduct, or fashion it may be so perverted as to lose its clear vision and higher aims, its pure tastes and enn.o.bling emotions, we have to make it our ambition and endeavour that our life may be kept free from such debas.e.m.e.nt.
But, if we are to succeed in this, we must make it our daily prayer that the G.o.d of our Lord Jesus Christ will enlighten the eyes of our understanding, and give unto us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge and love of Him.
XVII. A NEW HEART.
"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you."--EZEKIEL x.x.xvi. 26.
In the beautiful and suggestive dream of Solomon, which is recorded in the third chapter of the First Book of Kings, G.o.d appears to him, saying, "Ask what I shall give thee"; and Solomon"s answer is, "O Lord, I am but a child set over this great people, give me, I pray Thee, a hearing heart." And G.o.d said to him, "Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life, nor riches; behold, I have done according to thy words. I have given thee a wise and understanding heart, and I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches and honour." And the record of this vision was clearly meant to indicate that the supreme gift of the wisest of men was the hearing or understanding heart. On the other hand, there is nothing against which our Lord in the Gospels utters stronger warnings than that dulness or deadness of spirit which is described as having eyes that see not, and ears that are dull of hearing, and hearts that do not understand. And in ill.u.s.tration of this we read how, while the crowds throng or press upon Jesus, it is the stricken woman who, with soul sensitive to His influence, feels the virtue come out of Him though she only touches the hem of His garment.
Thus we are warned to beware lest that should come upon us which was the ruin of the Jews, dulness or deadness of spiritual faculty; and we are exhorted to pray for and to cherish the hearing heart, the soul that sees and feels spiritual influences, and is sensitive to every high call. And if your soul is thus open and receptive, it is marvellous how full the world becomes to you of Divine voices. They come upon you unexpected, unsought, sending through your heart some illuminating flash of surprise, so that you wonder at your previous dulness; they strike you with the sudden shock of some new knowledge or insight, and make you feel, as never before, the true nature of your daily conduct or your duty and your relation to other men; or they come as the unresting presence of some new thought, which, once roused, haunts and troubles you with questions which you cannot answer, or feelings which you cannot get rid of.
When the soul is roused in this way we see and feel the hatefulness of any sin that may have tempted or beset us; or we contrast our own life with that of those whose lot is so much harder than ours, and we are struck with shame at our selfishness, or waste, or our indifference to the privation, and sin, and suffering that are all around us in the world.
Or sometimes these Divine voices in our ears bring it home to us how much we are losing out of our life"s higher possibilities, if from sinful or selfish habit, from dulness of spirit or lack of sympathy, we cut ourselves off in thought and feeling and interest from the great needs, the great sorrows, the great pulsations of the larger world.
But why, you may ask, do I dwell on all this? It is because these are the true Advent voices for us, coming as they do to rouse us out of narrow preoccupation, to open our eyes to the sinfulness of sin, to make us feel that the self-centred, isolated, self-seeking life is a life of a low type, and to stir us with social and religious interests and enthusiasms.
These calls that come to you, whether invited or not, and that stir your heart, speaking to you out of the mult.i.tudinous life of the time you live in, are like the watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, which never hold their peace day nor night.
This ferment of higher life within us and around us, these voices of the Spirit in us, as it struggles to lift us out of the region of fleshly influences, is renewed in every generation and in every single life. If you hear no such voices, if the phenomena of life make no such impression upon you, if you are deaf to all these calls, and care for none of these things, then it is clear that your soul is not yet awake in you; you are living with a dull or darkened heart. It is a sort of cave life, or subterranean life, you lead in such a case, a life of lower rank and lesser hopes.