theologians may dismiss sin as "a mysterious incident" in the
development of humanity, as a grain of sand that has unluckily blown
into the eye, as a thorn that has accidentally pierced our heel,
but the greatest of ethical teachers regarded sin as a profound
contradiction of that eternal will which is altogether wise and good.
More than any other teacher Jesus Christ emphasized the actuality and
awfulness of sin; more than any other has He intensified the world's
consciousness of sin. He never attempted to relieve us of the
sackcloth by asserting our comparative innocence; He never attempted
to work into that melancholy robe one thread of color, to relieve it
with one solitary spangle of rhetoric. Sin was the burden of the life
of Christ because it is the burden of our life. Christ has done more
than insisted on the reality, the odiousness, the ominousness, of
sin--He has laid bare its principle and essence. The New Testament
discovers to us the mystery of iniquity as ungodliness; its inmost
essence being unbelief in God's truth, the denial of His justice,
the rejection of His love, the violation of His law. The South Sea
islanders have a singular tradition to account for the existence of
the dew. The legend relates that in the beginning the earth touched
the sky, that being the golden age when all was beautiful and glad;
then some dreadful tragedy occurred, the primal unity was broken up,
the earth and the sky were torn asunder as we see them now, and the
dewdrops of the morning are the tears that nature sheds over the sad
divorce. This wild fable is a metaphor of the truth; the beginning of
all evil lies in the alienation of the spirit of man from God, in the
divorce of earth from heaven; here is the final reason why the face
of humanity is wet with tears. How vividly Christ taught that all our
fear and we arise out of this false relation of our spirit to the
living God! Above and beyond all, Christ recognizes the sackcloth that
He may take it away. In the anguish of his soul Job cried, "I
have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou Preserver of men?"
Christianity is God's full and final answer to that appeal. In Christ
we have the revelation of God's ceaseless, immeasurable, eternal love.
In Him we have the satisfaction of God's sovereign justice. Our own
awakened conscience feels the difficulty of absolution; it demands
that sin shall not be lightly passed over; it wearies itself to find
an availing sacrifice and atonement. "Behold the Lamb of God, that
taketh away the sin of the world!" In Him, too, we have that grace
which brings us into accord with the mind and government of God.
Christ reveals to us the divine ideal life; He awakens in us a passion
for that life; He leads us into the power and privilege, the liberty
and gladness, of that life. He fills our imagination with the vision
of His own divine loveliness; He refreshes our will from founts of
unfathomable power; He fills us with courage and hope; He crowns us
with victory. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto them." Sin is ungodliness; Christ
makes us to see light in God's light, fills us with His love, attunes
our spirit to the infinite music of His perfection. Instead of
shutting out the signs of wo, Christ followed an infinitely deeper
philosophy; He arrayed Himself in the sackcloth, becoming sin for us
who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
We have redemption in His blood, even the forgiveness of sins; he
established us in a true relation to the holy God; He restores in
us the image of God; He fills us with the peace of God that passeth
understanding.
Not in the spirit of a barren cynicism does Christ lay bare the
ghastly wound of our nature, but as a noble physician who can purge
the mortal virus which destroys us. He has done this for thousands; He
is doing it now; in these very moments He can give sweet release to
all who are burdened and beaten by the dire confusion of nature.
Sin is a reality; absolution, sanctification, peace, are not less
realities. Christ's gate is not shut to the penitent, neither does
He send him empty away. We go to Him in sackcloth, but we leave His
presence in purity's robe of snow, in honor's stainless purple, in the
heavenly blue of the holiness of truth. The Spirit of the Lord God is
upon Him, that He may give to the mourners in Zion beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of
heaviness.
II. We consider the recognition by revelation of sorrow. Sackcloth is
the raiment of sorrow, and as such it was interdicted by the Persian
monarch. We still follow the insane course, minimizing, despising,
masking, denying suffering. Society sometimes attempts this. The
affluent entrench themselves within belts of beauty and fashion,
excluding the sights and sounds of a suffering world. "Ye that put far
away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near; that
lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and
eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the
stall, that chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves
instruments of music, like David; that drink wine in bowls, and anoint
themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the
affliction of Joseph." So do opulent and selfish men still seek "to
hide their heart in a nest of roses." Literature sometimes follows
the same cue. Goethe made it one of the rules of his life to avoid
everything that could suggest painful ideas, and the taint of his
egotism is on a considerable class of current literature which
serenely ignores the morbid aspects of life. Art has yielded to the
same temptation. The artist has felt that he was concerned only with
strength, beauty, and grace; that he had nothing to do with weakness,
agony, wretchedness, and death. Why should sorrow find perpetual
remembrance in art? Pain will tear our bodies, but we will have no
wrinkles on our statues; suffering will rend our heart, but we will
have no shadows on our pictures. None clothed in sackcloth might enter
the gate that is called Beautiful.
Most of us are inclined to the sorry trick of gilding over painful
things. We resolutely put from us sober signs, serious thoughts, and
sometimes are really angry with those who exhibit life as it is,
and who urge us to seek reconciliation with it. When the physician
prescribed blisters to Marie Bashkirtseff to check her consumptive
tendency, the vain, cynical girl wrote, "I will put on as many
blisters as thee like. I shall be able to hide the mark by bodices
brimmed with flowers and lace and tulle, and a thousand other
delightful things that are worn, without being required; it may even
look pretty. Ah! I am comforted." Yes, by a thousand artifices do we
dissemble our ugly scars, sometimes even pressing our deep misfortunes
into the service of our pride. Many of the fashions and the diversions
of the world much sought after have little positive attractiveness,
but the real secret of their power is found in the fact that they
hide disagreeable things, and render men for a while oblivious of the
mystery and weight of an unintelligible world.
Nevertheless suffering is a stern fact that will not long permit us to
sleep. Some have taught the unreality of pain, but the logic of life
has spoiled their plausible philosophizing. A man may carry many
hallucinations with him to the grave, but a belief in the unreality of
pain is hardly likely to be one of them. The laughing philosopher is
quite invincible on his midsummer's day, but ere long fatality makes
him sad. There is no screen to shut off permanently the spectacle of
suffering. When Marie Antoinette passed to her bridal in Paris, the
halt, the lame, and the blind were sedulously kept out of her way,
lest their appearance should mar the joyousness of her reception; but,
ere long, the poor queen had a very close view of misery's children,
and she drank to the dregs the cup of life's bitterness. Reason as we
may, suppress the disagreeable truths of life as we may, suffering
will find us out, and pierce us to the heart. Indeed, despite our
dissimulations, we know that life is not a matter of lutes, doves, and
sunflowers, and at last we have little patience with those who thus
seek to represent it. We will not have the philosophy which ignores
suffering; witness the popularity of Schopenhauer. We resent the art
which ignores sorrow. True art has no pleasure in sin and suffering,
in torture, horror, and death; but on its palette must lie the sober
colorings of human life, and so to-day the most popular picture of the
world is the "Angelus" of Millet. We will not have the literature that
ignores suffering. "Humanity will look upon nothing else but its old
sufferings. It loves to see and touch its wounds, even at the risk of
reopening them. We are not satisfied with poetry unless we find tears
in it." We will not have the theology which ignores sin and suffering.
The preacher who confines his discourses to pleasant themes has a
meager following; the people swiftly and logically conclude that if
life is as flowery as the discourse, the preacher is superfluous.
Foolish we may often be, yet we cannot accept this Gethsemane for a
garden of the gods; the most wilful lotus-eater must perforce see the
streaming tears, the stain of blood, the shadow of death. Nature in
the full swing of her pageantry soon forgets the wild shriek of the
bird in the red talons of the hawk, and all other sad and tragic
things, but humanity is compelled to note the blood and tears which
flow everywhere, and to lay these things to heart.
Christ giveth us the noblest example of suffering. So far from
shutting His gate on the sackcloth, once more He adopted it,
and showed how it might become a robe of glory. He Himself was
preeminently a Man of sorrows; He exhausted all forms of suffering;
touching life at every point, at every point He bled; and in Him we
learn how to sustain our burden and to triumph throughout all the
tragedy. In His absolute rectitude, in His confidence in His Father,
in His hours of prayer, in His self-sacrificing regard for His
fellow-sufferers, in His charity, and patience, we see how the
heaviest cross may be borne in the spirit of victory. We learn from
Him how divine grace can mysteriously make the sufferer equal to the
bitterest martyrdom; not putting to our lips some anodyne cup to
paralyze life, but giving us conquest through the strength and
bravery of reason in its noblest mood, through faith in its sublimest
exercise, through a love that many waters cannot quench nor the
floods drown. Poison is said to be extracted from the rattlesnake for
medicinal purposes; but infinitely more wonderful is the fact that the
suffering which comes out of sin counterworks sin, and brings to pass
the transfiguration of the sufferer.
Christ teaches us how, under the redemptive government of God,
suffering has become a subtle and magnificent process for the full
and final perfecting of human character. Science tells us how the
bird-music, which is one of nature's foremost charms, has risen out of
the bird's cry of distress in the morning of time; how originally the
music of field and forest was nothing more than an exclamation caused
by the bird's bodily pain and fear, and how through the ages the
primal note of anguish has been evolved and differentiated until it
has risen into the ecstasy of the lark, melted into the silver note of
the dove, swelled into the rapture of the nightingale, unfolded into
the vast and varied music of the sky and the summer. So Christ shows
us that out of the personal sorrow which now rends the believer's
heart he shall arise in moral and infinite perfection; that out of the
cry of anguish wrung from us by the present distress shall spring the
supreme music of the future.
The Persian monarch forbidding sackcloth had forgotten that
consolation is a royal prerogative; but the King of kings has not
forgotten this, and very sweet and availing is His sovereign sympathy.
Scherer recommends "amusement as a comfortable deceit by which we
avoid a permanent _tête-à-tête_ with realities that are too heavy for
us." Is there not a more excellent way than this? Let us carry our
sorrows to Christ, and we shall find that in Him they have lost their
sting. It is a clumsy mistake to call Christianity a religion of
sorrow--it is a religion _for_ sorrow. Christ finds us stricken and
afflicted, and His words go down to the depths of our sorrowful heart,
healing, strengthening, rejoicing with joy unspeakable. He finds us
in sackcloth; He clothes us with singing-robes, and crowns us with
everlasting joy.
III. We consider the recognition by revelation of death. We have,
again, adroit ways of shutting the gate upon that sackcloth which is
the sign of death. A recent writer allows that Shakespeare, Raleigh,
Bacon, and all the Elizabethans shuddered at the horror and mystery
of death; the sunniest spirits of the English Renaissance quailed to
think of it. He then goes on to observe that there was something in
this fear of the child's vast and unreasoned dread of darkness and
mystery, and such a way of viewing death has become obsolete through
the scientific and philosophic developments of the later centuries.
Walt Whitman also tells us "that nothing can happen more beautiful
than death," and he has exprest the humanist view of mortality in
a hymn which his admirers regard as the high-water mark of modern
poetry. But will this rhapsody bear thinking about? Is death
"delicate, lovely and soothing," "delicious," coming to us with
"serenades"? Does death "lave us in a flood of bliss"? Does "the body
gratefully nestle close to death"? Do we go forth to meet death "with
dances and chants of fullest welcome"? It is vain to attempt to hide
the direst fact of all under plausible metaphors and rhetorical
artifice. It is in defiance of all history that man so write. It is in
contradiction of the universal instinct. It is mockery to the dying.
It is an outrage upon the mourners. The Elizabethan masters were far
truer to the fact; so is the modern skeptic who shrinks at "the black
and horrible grave." Men never speak of delicious blindness, of
delicious dumbness, of delicious deafness, of delicious paralysis; and
death is all these disasters in one, all these disasters without hope.
No, no, the morgue is the last place that lends itself to decoration.
Death is the crowning evil, the absolute bankruptcy, the final defeat,
the endless exile. Let us not shut our eyes to this. The skeptic
often tells us that he will have no "make-believe." Let us have no
"make-believe" about death. Let us candidly apprehend death for all
that it is of mystery and bitterness, and reconcile ourselves to it,
if reconciliation be possible. If we are foolish enough to shut the
gate on the thought of death, by no stratagem can we shut the gate
upon death itself.
Without evasion or euphony Christ recognizes the somber mystery. The
fact, the power, the terror of death are displayed by Him without
reserve or softening. And He goes to the root of the dire and dismal
matter. He shows us that death as we know it is an unnatural thing,
that it is the fruit of disobedience, and by giving us purity and
peace He gives us eternal life. The words of Luther, so full of power,
were called "half-battles"; but the words of Christ in their depth and
majesty are complete battles, in which sin, suffering, and death
are finally routed. He attempts no logical proof of immortality; He
supplies no chemical formula for the resurrection; He demonstrates
immortality by raising us from the death of sin to the life of
righteousness, by filling our soul with infinite aspirations and
delights. Here is the proof supreme of immortality. "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do
also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto
my Father." The moral works are the greater works. Wonderful is the
stilling of the sea, the healing of the blind, the raising of the
dead, but the moral miracles of our Lord express a still diviner power
and carry with them a more absolute demonstration. If, therefore, we
have known the power of Christ delivering our soul from the blindness,
the paralysis, the death of sin, lifting it above the dust and causing
it to exult in the liberties and delights of the heavenlies, why
should we think it a thing incredible that God should raise the
dead? If He has wrought the greater, He will not fail with the less.
Christianity opens our eyes to splendid visions, makes us heirs of
mighty hopes, and for all its prospects and promises it demands our
confidence on the ground of its present magnificent and undeniable
moral achievements. Its predictions are credible in the light of its
spiritual efficacy. "And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because
of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the
Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that
raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies
by his Spirit that dwelleth in you," Being one with Christ in the
power of purity, we are one with Him in the power of an endless
life. Death has its temporary conquest, but grace reigning through
righteousness shall finally purge the last taint of mortality. Not
through the scientific and philosophic developments of later centuries
has the somber way of viewing death become obsolete; Christ bringing
life and immortality to life has brought about the great change in the
point of view from which we regard death, the point of view which
is full of consolation and hope. In Christ alone the crowning evil
becomes a coronation of glory; the absolute bankruptcy, the condition
of an incorruptible inheritance; the final defeat, an everlasting
victory; the endless exile, home, home at last. Once more, by boldly
adopting the sackcloth Christ has changed it into a robe of light.
"That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death,
that is, the devil"
We cannot escape the evils of life; they are inevitable and
inexorable. We may hide from our eyes the signs and sights of
mourning; but in royal splendor our hearts will still bleed; wearing
wreaths of roses, our heads will still ache. A preacher who complains
that Christianity is "the religion of sorrow" goes on to predict
that the woes of the world are fast coming to an end, and then the
sorrowful religion of Jesus Christ will give place to some purer
faith. "Through the chinks we can see the light. The condition of man
becomes more comfortable, more easy; the hope of man is more visible;
the endeavor of man is more often crowned with success; the attempt
to solve the darkest life-problems is not desperate as it was. The
reformer meets with fewer rebuffs; the philanthropist does not despair
as he did. The light is dawning. The great teachers of knowledge
multiply, bear their burdens more and more steadily; the traditions
of truth and knowledge are becoming established in the intellectual
world. It is so; and those of us who have caught a vision of the
better times coming through reason, through knowledge, through manly
and womanly endeavor, have caught a sight of a Christendom passing
away, of a religion of sorrow declining, of a gospel preached for the
poor no longer useful to a world that is mastering its own problems of
poverty and lifting itself out of disabling misery into wealth without
angelic assistance. This is our consolation; and while we admit,
clearly and frankly, the real power of the popular faith, we also see
the pillars on which a new faith rests, which shall be a faith, not
of sorrow, but of joy." Now, the deepest sorrow of the race is not
physical, neither is it bound up with material and social conditions.
As the Scotch say, "The king sighs as often as the peasant"; and this
proverb anticipates the fact that those who participate in the richest
civilization that will ever flower will sigh as men sigh now. When the
problem of poverty is mastered, when disease is extirpated, when a
period is put to all disorganization of industry and misgovernment,
social and political, it will be found by the emancipated and enriched
community what is now found by opulent individuals and privileged
classes, that the secret of our discontent is internal and mysterious,
that it springs from the ungodliness, the egotism, the sensuality,
which theology calls sin. But whatever the future may reveal, all the
sorrows of life are upon us here and now; we cannot deny them, we
have constantly to struggle with them, we are often overwhelmed by
irreparable misfortune. Esther "sent raiment to clothe Mordecai, and
to take his sackcloth from him; but he received it not." In vain do
men offer us robes of beauty, chiding us for wearing the color of the
night; we cannot be deceived by flattering words; we must give place
to all the sad thoughts of our mortality until haply we find a
salvation that goes to the root of our suffering, that dries up the
fount of our tears.
In a very different spirit and for very different ends do men
contemplate the dark side of human life. The cynic expatiates on
painful things--the blot on life's beauty, the shadow on its glory,
the pitiful ending of its brave shows--only to gibe and mock. The
realist lingers in the dissecting chamber for very delight in
revolting themes. The pessimist enlarges on the power of melancholy
that lie may justify despair. The poet touches the pathetic string
that he may flutter the heart. Fiction dramatizes the tragic sentiment
for the sake of literary effect. Cultured wickedness drinks wine
out of a skull, that by sharp contrast it may heighten its sensuous
delight; whilst estheticism dallies with the sad experiences of life
to the end of intellectual pleasure, as in ornamental gardening, dead
leaves are left on ferns and palms in the service of the picturesque.
But Christianity gives such large recognition to the pathetic element
of life, not that it may mock with the cynic, or trifle with the
artist; not because with the realist it has a ghoulish delight in
horror, or because with the refined sensualist it cunningly aims to
give poignancy to pleasure by the memory of pain; but because it
divines the secret of our mighty misfortune, and brings with it the
sovereign antidote. The critics declare that Rubens had an absolute
delight in representing pain, and they refer us to that artist's
picture of the "Brazen Serpent" in the National Gallery. The canvas is
full of the pain, the fever, the contortions of the wounded and dying;
the writhing, gasping crowd is everything, and the supreme instrument
of cure, the brazen serpent itself, is small and obscure, no
conspicuous feature whatever of the picture. The manner of the great
artist is so far out of keeping with the spirit of the gospel.
Revelation brings out broadly and impressively the darkness of the
world, the malady of life, the terror of death, only that it may
evermore make conspicuous the uplifted Cross, which, once seen, is
death to ever vice, a consolation in every sorrow, a victory over
every fear.
LORIMER
THE FALL OF SATAN
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
George C. Lorimer was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1838. He was
brought up by his stepfather who was associated with the theater,
and in this relation he received a dramatic education and had some
experience on the stage. In 1855 he came to the United States, where
he joined the Baptist Church and abandoned the theatrical profession.
Later he studied for the Baptist ministry, being ordained in 1859. He
died in 1904. His direct and dramatic, pulpit style brought him into
great popularity in Boston, Chicago, and New York. At Tremont Temple,
Boston, he frequently spoke to overflowing congregations. He is the
author of several well-known books, from one of which the sermon here
given is taken as indicating his familiarity with and liking for
dramatic literature. His pulpit manner always retained a flavor of
dramatic style that contributed to his popularity.
LORIMER
1838--1904
THE FALL OF SATAN[1]
[Footnote 1: Copyright, 1882, by "The Homiletic Monthly," New York.]
_I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven_.--Luke x., 18.
Whether the "glorious darkness" denoted by the name Satan is an actual
personage or a maleficent influence, is of secondary moment as far
as the aim and moral of this discourse are concerned. If the ominous
title applies to an abstraction, and if the event so vividly
introduced is but a dramatical representation of some phase in the
mystery of iniquity, the spiritual inferences are just what they would
be were the words respectively descriptive of an angel of sin, and of
his utter and terrible overthrow. I shall not, therefore, tax your
patience with discussions on these points, but shall assume as true
that literal reading of the text which has commended itself to the
ripest among our evangelical scholars.