For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.--_Rom.
3, 23._
A few days more, and we shall have entered upon Lent. What is Lent?
Lent is a time of several weeks which for ages has been set apart
among Christians for a period of more than usual seriousness. As
observed in our Church, it is a time marked out from the rest of the
year as more especially devoted to the contemplation of those vital
truths on which our Christian religion is founded. To be brief,
Lenten time with us is Passion time. Passion, in simple English,
means suffering, more particularly, the suffering of Christ.
Accordingly, Passion time, or Passion tide, is the season when we
are more especially called upon to commemorate, and call to mind,
and ponder, and think over the suffering of our Savior, Christ,
those scenes announced in the Gospel when He was betrayed into the
hands of wicked men, and by them was falsely accused, reviled,
mocked, scourged, crowned with thorns, and at last crucified.
In order that we might do that in the proper manner, as we ought to
do, the Church, from the earliest period, has appointed the forty
days of Lent, just as it has appointed the four Sundays in Advent,
to be a preparation for Christmas. For there are two great seasons
in the year which it behooves every Christian to conscientiously
observe, if he wishes to pay dutiful honor to his Savior.
The first season is Christmas, in memory of His loving kindness in
coming down from heaven, putting on the nature of man. The other
season is Lent, to commemorate His dying love. Both these seasons
are so important, of such moment to the welfare of the soul,
that the Church has set apart the four Sundays which come before
Christmas and the forty days which come before Easter as a time of
preparation. The wisdom of such an arrangement no one can doubt.
Just like the early bell on Sunday is meant to call us to get
ready for church, the service of God's house, so Advent and Lent
call us to get ready for Christmas and Good Friday. When a musical
instrument has been laid by for a while, it needs tuning, or it
will make but sorry music. The minds and hearts of most Christians,
too, require to be gotten into tune before they can bear their
part fitly and harmoniously in the services by which the Church
commemorates the death and resurrection of her Lord. And how? What
is the best way to prepare for a profitable and advantageous Lent?
That is conditioned by another question: What was it that delivered
our blessed Lord into the hands of those wicked men, that caused
Him that shameful treatment, mockery, and finally nailed Him to
the cross? The malice of the chief priest, the treachery of Judas,
the cowardice of Pontius Pilate? Deeper, my beloved, deeper; they
were but the instrumental, not the procuring cause. The real cause,
you know it, was something else,--sin. To do away with, to secure
the pardon of that, Christ died. Then it is plain, that in order
to understand the value of His suffering, to observe that season
aright, we must begin with being convinced of the evil, of the
exceeding hatefulness and danger of sin.
Here is the first elementary truth which meets us at the threshold
of Lent, without which it will be of no more value to you than a
lock without a key, a mine without a shaft; herein consists its best
preparation, to secure a right conviction of sin. That, God blessing
the effort, shall be the intent of our sermon.
When the ostrich, scouring along the sandy desert, finds that it
cannot escape the huntsman, it is said to thrust its head into
a bush, and fancying that the danger which it ceases to see has
ceased to exist, it remains there, quite tranquil, to receive the
death-blow of the huntsman. Poor, senseless, stupid bird! Yet not
one degree more so than is the folly of many who are not birds, but
possessed of reason and soul. Plenty there are who, shutting their
eyes to the evil, burrowing their heads in the sand-heap of excuses
and false peace, thus hide until the fatal stroke of death puts an
end to their earthly career, and opening their eyes in a place where
there is no repentance, as the rich man in the parable, they realize
that it is too late.
If we turn to the Bible, it teaches that there are two great classes
or kinds of sin; and if we turn to the witness within and the
evidence without, we shall find what the Bible tells us everywhere
corroborated and borne out. The one kind of sin is the Original or
Birth Sin, that all men are naturally engendered, are conceived and
born in sin; that is, they are all, from their mother's womb, full
of evil desires and propensities, and that this is the fountainhead
of all other, or actual, sins, such as evil thoughts, words, and
deeds. There are many who reject this doctrine; they contend that
when man is born into this world, his soul is as pure as the snow
that comes down in beautiful flurries from the sky, and as perfect
as the vessel that passes from the potter's hand; they tell us that
we are God's favorite creatures, that He has made us lords of the
creation and heirs of eternal life, and that, therefore, it is quite
impossible that we should be so prone to sin, as our Church, setting
forth the doctrine of the Bible in her confession, declares us to
be. But they are willfully ignorant. The question whether we are
prone to sin from our cradles upward is a mere question of fact. One
has only to look into one's own heart, and what do you find there,
good or evil? You will say, a little of both. Be it so; but tell
me, or rather tell yourselves, honestly and truly, which of the
two cost you the most trouble to learn, and which of the two comes
the easier? Is there a doubt? Does one contract good habits easier
than bad, or the reverse? Is it easier for a sober man to become
a drunkard than for a poor, miserable, besotted drunkard to trace
his steps back and to become sober? Or, another point of view. Ask
mothers, accustomed to watch their children from earliest infancy,
whether every child that has come under their observation had not
something to learn that was good, and something to unlearn that was
evil. Now, whence did this evil come from? It cannot have been
taught to the child, for the evil showed itself at a time before all
teaching; it had it naturally. And so it is in other things. The
good wheat must be sown and looked after, or it will never amount
to much. The weeds sprout up and spread of themselves, and it is as
great a labor to keep them down as to get the good wheat up. The
truth is, "Like begetteth like." "In Adam's fall we sinned all." The
fountain was polluted, so is the stream; sin is born in the bone, as
it were, and without God's help we can no more mend it than a sick
man can mend and cure himself without the help of a physician.
But this original sin is not the only kind. Though men deny that,
they cannot deny the other, what our Catechism calls Actual Sin.
Like trees in the forest does it surround them. Where is the man
that dares affirm that he has never been guilty of doing what he
should never have done, or guilty of not doing what he should have
done? Lives there a person so happy as to look back on the past and
feel no remorse, or forward to the future and feel no fear? What?
Is there no page of your history that you would obliterate, no leaf
that, with God's permission, you would tear from the book of life's
story? To David's prayer, "Lord, remember not the sins of my youth,
nor my transgressions," have you no solemn and hearty Amen? If you
could be carried back to the starting-post, and stood again at your
mother's knee, and sat again at the old school desk with companions
that are now changed, or scattered, or dead, or gone, were you to
begin life anew, would you run the selfsame course, would you live
over the selfsame life? Is there no speech to unsay, no act to undo,
no day, Sunday, or evening to spend better? No one among those with
whom you are now living or among those that have gone before--to
whom you would bear yourself otherwise than you have done? Where is
there a breathing man that can say: "I am pure in my heart. I am
clear from all sin"? If he does, he deceives himself, the truth is
not in him. As well deny your existence as deny the existence of
actual sin.
But what men will not deny they will seek to excuse. It were
amusing, if it were not a matter so serious, to observe with what
palliation and apologies defenses are thrown up by which, after all,
men's sins do not look so exceedingly sinful. Thus there be those
who say: If we are naturally born to evil, as the Bible says and
our experience testifies, we cannot help it, and how can it be a
fault of ours if we do wrong? And how can God blame and punish us
for not being better than He made us? It is thus that Scotland's
famous poet, Burns, sings:
Thou knowest that Thou hast formed me
With passions wild and strong,
And listening to their witching voice
Has often led me wrong.
In other words, I am a sinner, but the fault is not mine, but God's.
Or, again, they ascribe the blame to the power of temptation.
"The serpent beguiled me," was the excuse of the first sinner; it
is still, in a more or less measure, the excuse of every sinner.
Temptation came upon them so suddenly and with such stealth and
vehemence that it swept them off their feet before they were aware
of it. Or (once more), like the original sinner, they lay their
blame upon their fellow-man. "The woman that Thou gavest to be
with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." What parent or
mother has not discovered, in correcting a disobedient boy, that he
is uniformly punishing the wrong one? It was always the other boy
who brought about the evil act, and so, invariably, it is the bad
company, evil influences, peculiar surroundings, locality, that make
people to sin.
Whatever the palliatives and excuses, my beloved hearers, the thing
will not do; it is vain and ignoble, and, in part, what has been
said is blasphemy. In the first place, whatever prompted, tempted
the act, the act was done by the sinner himself, and not by another;
he knew of it, he consented to it, he gave his members and body to
it. It is also useless to say that he was swept away by temptation.
The same excuse might the suicide plead who seeks the river, stands
on its brink, and, leaping in, is swept off to his watery grave. We
go down like Samson to Delilah; we stand in the way of sinners, we
frequent the places of guilty pleasures, and then, falling, complain
about the strength of temptation. Away with all such subterfuges and
opiates that simply drug the conscience!
What is sin? Sin, says God's Word, is the transgression of the Law,
the most terrible and abominable thing in this world. Sin is that
which drove man out of Paradise garden, robbed him of the divine
image, severed the happy relation between him and his Creator,
and plunged him into accursedness and misery. Sin is a disease
which turns all moral beauty into rottenness, causes all grief and
distress, breaks hearts, and fills our cemeteries, man's worst,
man's most ruinous and most formidable enemy, that dogs his every
footstep in this life, and calls down upon his body and soul the
wrath and eternal damnation from a God who hates and who punishes
sin.
What greater comfort, then, than to know how and where to receive
deliverance and remedy from it. It has been stated before among the
excuses that man is born a sinner, and because born so, he cannot be
blamed for sinning, any more than a sick person for dying. He cannot
help it. That seems very plausible, indeed. It would be very unjust
to blame a sick person for dying, provided there were no remedies;
but in a country where there are plenty of physicians and the sick
have only to send for them,--if in such a country a sick man is
obstinate, and will not send for a physician, nor take the means of
being made well, he is to blame, and if he dies, he is guilty of his
own death. And suppose now that the physician does not wait to be
sent for, that he comes of his own accord to the sick man's bedside,
that he brings a medicine of rare herbs in his hand, and says to the
sick man: "My friend, I heard you were very sick, and so I came to
see you and fetch you a medicine which is a certain cure if you take
it. Never mind your poverty, I ask no payment." But the sick man
refuses it; he does not like its look, or he finds it is bitter to
take, or a neighbor has told him not to heed the physician, and he
dies. Who is to blame? That's our case precisely. We have a soul's
sickness. But a great Physician is come to us. He has a dear remedy,
a specific, made of the most precious ingredients, _viz._, His holy,
precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. He brings that
medicine to our doors. Shall we refuse to take it? Shall we say
that we will have none of it? We may do so; there is no compulsion;
this heavenly Physician foists Himself on none. But whose shall
be the blame, who be the loser? Be wise, then. Lenten time is
repenting time. May we, as it says in the Collect, so pass through
this holy time of our Lord that we may obtain the pardon of our
sins. May we enter this incoming season with a solemn earnestness
toward spiritual things, with a resolve to spend its days in sacred
devotion under the cross, and with sorrow over our past failures
set ourselves to a better and more consecrated life. And to this may
the good Lord graciously incline the hearts of every one of us! Amen.