_PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIAL PURITY ALLIANCE._
THE
HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN.
=An Appeal to Men.=
“_Nox præcessit, dies autem appropinquavit._”
LONDON:
TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.
1876.
[_All rights reserved._]
PREFACE.
The Social Purity Alliance is designed to promote the practical
application of two radical principles—namely, the sacredness of the
home, and the duty of men to live and to suffer women to live in purity.
The members of this Alliance (from whom no formal pledge is required)
may do true service by endeavouring to establish these principles by
every means in their power; by privately using their influence to
elevate the moral tone of the society with which they come in contact;
by personally, according to their opportunities, helping to bring back
into the paths of purity those who have strayed therefrom, whether men
or women; and by lending their aid to combined effort for reinstating,
in honest industry, those women who have been the victims of profligacy.
Some suggestions for carrying into practical effect these
recommendations are given in the following pages, and are in some cases
illustrated by personal experience. These pages are designedly of the
character of a general appeal to men, but it is hoped that they may be
followed by other publications, addressed specially to various classes
of readers, such as workmen and employers of labour, soldiers and
sailors, the medical profession, students and members of the
universities, &c.
It is intended also that the Alliance shall work by means of lectures
and meetings, and by organisation of personal charity, in order to
assist its members or others in practically carrying out the principles
on which the Alliance is based.
The Alliance is open to all, men and women alike, who concur in its aims
and objects. Those who desire to inscribe themselves as members may
obtain forms for this purpose from the Honorary Secretary, 8 Bedford
Row, London, W.C., where also may be had the Address and Reports already
issued by the Committee.
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
PART I.
PART II. POST NAUFRAGIUM TABULA.
PART III. BAPTISMUS LABORIOSUS.
PART IV. AMA, ET FAC QUIDQUID VIS.
THE HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN.
=An Appeal to Men.=
“Watchman, what of the night?”
“The night is far spent; the day is at hand.”
PART I.
The language of this appeal will be incomprehensible to many; it is the
language of one who mourns for sin, and is addressed to all who mourn
for sin, in whatever degree.
There are those among us who, through some moral lapse, have forfeited
the esteem of their fellow-men, and whose consciousness of misery is
aggravated by the sense of the reprobation of society. There are others
who are secretly conscious of actual guilt and shame, while preserving
externally an honourable walk and reputation. There are others, who,
guiltless of any actual wrong done to their fellow-men, are full of a
deep and tender sorrow for the sins of the soul against God. And others
there are who have served well their fellow-creatures throughout their
holy and self-denying lives, and yet for whom also there are times of
trouble and darkness; they have fallen exhausted in the strife, though
the sword of God was in their hand; they saved others, but themselves
they cannot save; poor and in trouble, tempest-tossed and beaten by the
waves, their seeing eyes are darkened for a season, and there is a
wandering of feet, and a stretching forth in the dark night of praying
hands for the Father’s help, and, it may be, a need of a summons from
some fellow-soul assuring them that that help is at hand.
To some of these this appeal may perhaps bring revival of hope, or at
least the sense of companionship in conflict. To men of the world it
will appear morbid or exaggerated; for there are thousands whose eyes
are never lifted higher than the path they are daily treading, who are
unconscious of any aspirations beyond the present life, whose souls no
ray of true self-knowledge or spiritual light has visited. They have no
consciousness of sin; hence they cannot know the meaning of sorrow for
sin. To such, although the heart of the speaker may yearn over them in
deep pity, as over men born blind, these words are not addressed, for to
them they would convey no meaning.
There are different degrees of sorrow for sin. There is a sorrow full of
fear, and there is a sorrow springing from the sense of the love of God
mingled with the sense of our own unworthiness and ingratitude. There
is, however, another word which is more expressive, and has a
distinction more clearly marked than that of sorrow or repentance. That
word is _compunction_, which signifies a piercing, and a piercing
together with our Lord Jesus Christ, a partaking in his wounds. This
sorrow, once conceived, is a sorrow which will last as long as life
lasts, for the contemplation of the love of God is inexhaustible. And
this gives us the key to what has been so often seen, namely, that the
purest souls are they which have sorrowed most for sin; the greatest
saints are they who have known the deepest compunction, because they
have known most of the love of Christ. Such was the illuminated
compunction of St Paul when he called himself the chief of sinners. In
the measure in which the enlightenment of the soul is increased, the
sorrow for sin is deepened. That which hinders sorrow for sin is sin
itself. The more sin is cast out, the more a holy sorrow enters.
Therefore those who have been drawn the nearest to God, and learned the
most of his secrets, have always had the greatest sorrow (but not an
unconsoled sorrow), both for their own sins and the sins of others. Many
who are covered with a multitude of sins know nothing of this holy
sorrow. “It is a perception depending on what we are, and the most
saintly hearts are the most illuminated. St Paul’s language is no pious
exaggeration, no rhetorical overstatement, but is the true expression of
his inward consciousness. The sorrow of Jesus in Gethsemane is the type
of perfect contrition. It was a sorrow for the sin of the world and for
the love of God. His contrition was as the sea, profound, overwhelming,
and immense.”[1] “It is not so much the remembrance of sin as the love
of God which causes the pain of holy souls. Their sorrow, ascending to
God, is like his own sorrow; it is like the divine displeasure with
which the Holy Spirit looks upon our sins, when, as the Scripture says,
we ‘grieve him,’ and he ‘mourns.’ True contrition begets a hatred, not
only of actual sin, but of coldness. It shows us how great a sacrifice
Love made for us. Cold returns for warm friendship are intolerable among
men; so between the soul and God.”[2]
Let those, then, stand aside who, in a coarse and thoughtless mood, have
no other interpretation to give to the cry of the pierced soul
“convinced of sin” than the expression of a vulgar and craven terror of
hell-fire under the scourgings of remorse, unmixed with aspirations
after better things. Let such hold their peace, for they are ignorant of
the soul’s most sacred sorrow, and can by no means interpret the sighing
of the broken heart, nor the pleadings, finding voice even on the lips
of a sinner, of that Holy Spirit which maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered.
If God has given me a keener pity for one class of sufferers than for
another, it is for the enslaved by sin, who are conscious of their
degradation, and who fear that moral renovation is impossible for them;
the renovation which God declares to be possible, of which the
resurrection of Christ is the sure pledge and type, which our eyes have
seen, and yet of which crushed hearts continue to say, to the end of
time, “It is not for me.”
To you first, then, would I speak, to whose lips has arisen the first
feeble birth-cry of the soul, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” albeit
you are well-nigh hopeless, scathed, and suffering in health, intellect,
and soul through sin. I address myself to sinners of the deepest dye; to
men whose very blood may have become corrupt through sin, who have
fathomed the depths of misery and guilt; to sinners such as those
described in the Vision of Dante, ‘i peccator carnali,’ in whom desire
had mastered reason, whom he dimly recognised through the thick
darkness, ceaselessly borne before the blasts of hell with restless
motion, piercing the gloom with their lamentations and cries and
blasphemies against high heaven; to those who, having resolved and
repented, have turned again to their wallowing in the mire; desperate
swimmers, escaping from a stormy sea, and having reached the shore with
great effort, whom a returning wave sweeps back again into the boiling
flood, with hardly life enough left in them to strike out again, and
once more seek the shore; to men of the nineteenth century, who are
worse than the men of Sodom, of Nineveh, and of Athens, inasmuch as they
have sinned beneath the full blaze of Christian morality, and with the
warnings of the Sermon on the Mount sounding in their ears, while the
sinners among the heathen had only a dim light to rebuke their evil
deeds; to Christians who have sinned against Love which poured out its
life for them, against Gethsemane and Calvary, and against the voice and
the power of the Holy Ghost.
My whole soul grows sick, my heart is faint, and my brain reels, I am
haunted, I am stifled as by the smoke of Tophet, when men’s sins rise up
before me, the sins of my countrymen; yet, before God I declare it, I
love you, my countrymen, my brothers. I love the grossest sinner that
lives; in a certain sense I honour him. The poor coin, trampled down in
the mire of the streets, still bears upon it the image and
superscription of the king. I know when I look at the victim of sin—my
brother, worn out, degraded, poisoned through his whole being—that God
can, if he please, stretch forth the arm of his omnipotence and seize
this leprous one proclaiming himself “unclean, unclean,” purify him,
transform him, and raise him up to sit in heavenly places among the sons
of God and saints in light.
One of the greatest obstacles to moral recovery is hopelessness. The
great enemy of God and of souls, the Deceiver, is also “the Accuser.”
Having first ensnared us, he seeks to fix upon us the yoke of despair,
through suggestions which often appear to us only as reasonable
acquiescence in the judgments of an offended God.
You say—you men experienced in sin, but not experienced in the power of
God to cleanse and renew—that moral restoration on earth cannot be; you
acknowledge the inexorable law of nature, the law of the world around
you; you know in your inmost soul that as the seed-time was so must the
harvest be; that as you have sown, so must you reap. You see and bow to
this law, but you see no farther; you know the natural, but you do not
know the supernatural; Nature speaks sternly, truly, and you hear her
voice; but you hear no other voice, speaking from heaven. You submit
yourselves to the silent, awful Nemesis which is come upon you; you
speak despairingly of fate, the fate which you brought upon yourself in
your youthful madness for experience, from the time that ill-disciplined
imaginations ripened into act, and repeated action became welded into
habit; you bow hopelessly, calmly, perhaps even humbly, before what you
believe to be an inexorable decree.
I come to you, knowing your sorrow, comprehending your despair, wounded
in spirit for you and with you, to tell you in the name of God that
restoration is possible for you—complete, perfect restoration. You tell
me that the fountains of thought can never be cleansed, that you
yourselves are hell; I answer that the fountains of thought can be
cleansed, that there is a power, unfelt by you yet, which is stronger
than death, stronger than the grave, stronger than hell. Every great
sinner thinks as you do when he first becomes aware of his own
degradation. His conscience tells him he has destroyed himself; his
ruined health, his impaired intellect, his enfeebled will speak to him
of unavoidable retribution, and he is tempted in his extremity by the
voice which hisses serpent-like in his ear, “Curse God and die,” or,
while the pleasures of the flesh still continue to have any charm, by
the voice in his heart, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”
But a man’s conscience (sinned against) can tell him no more; an
offended conscience cannot tell him of hope, of the new life, of
resurrection, of cleansing, of sanctifying; and the natural man cannot
believe, cannot receive these tidings.
I speak to you as an equal, not a superior, as a fellow-sinner, a
fellow-sufferer; for not in vain have I sat in darkness and in the
shadow of death. I hate your sin with a perfect hatred, but I love you;
I claim you as brothers; your souls are precious to me. The greater your
sorrows, the more are you fitted to be my friends and companions; the
deeper your fall, the more tenderly do I feel for you. Do not reject my
invitation and message of hope, for the language I speak is no rhetoric;
every word is wrung out of a heart which has been exercised by no common
suffering. I know enough of human life and of Divine love to make me
tenderly loving to you were your confessions far more awful than they
are. Let me bear your burdens, let me weep and pray for you, if thereby
I may show you by my love how the Saviour loves you!
He hates _your sin_. He cannot dwell in those hearts of yours in moments
when you are reckless, hypocritical, coarse, impure, or fiercely
sceptical. His Spirit is withdrawn from you then; his face is hidden
from you; yet he loves you still—loves you to the death. His Spirit, the
Holy One, is hovering over you, near you still, mourning, grieving,
waiting for you, omnipotent to change you and make you holy, _when you
will_.
But you will not; you cannot. The strong will you once boasted is now
weaker than a little child’s; your strength to will is gone, as purity
is gone; you are paralysed; to resolve, to determine, are words of the
past for you; you are loaded with chains, and helpless. I know nothing
more awful to contemplate than the helpless impotence of the will which
has once rebelled against God’s laws, nor than the reality of that hell
with which the sinner surrounds himself on earth. I confess with you
that there is a sense in which the judgment which you pronounce upon
yourselves is true. You who have sinned grossly or habitually can never
be the same in earthly relations as those who have escaped the deeper
pollutions. You are wounded for life; you have cherished a disease which
will leave its sting behind; you will be, even when restored by God,
sorrowful men, burdened with bitter memories, weakened through the
wearing of heavy chains, and ever needing to be doubly guarded against
the return of an old and conquered foe. Your own hearts tell you that it
would not be just that in human relations you should rank with men who
have practised self-control and lived purely. It is here, perhaps, that
retribution is most keenly felt. Many a man has felt himself degraded to
the level of the beasts when shameful memories have visited him in the
presence of some pure companion of his life; many a one has been driven
to conceal from the wife of his bosom the thing that he has been, or,
confessing it, to cloud her happiness and shake her reverence. The
bright dreams that may have pleased and gladdened your adolescence are
gone for ever. Except so far as a great spiritual change is worked in
him, a man cannot love purely whose body has been a temple of lust. His
worst sins link themselves on to his purest and deepest affections,
poison the fountainhead of the sweetest emotions, thrust themselves
forward in his holiest moments, and are a scourge to him, it may be,
till the day of his death. In a deeper, sadder sense than a mere
corporeal one, are those inflexible words of Scripture fulfilled,
“Whatsoever a man soweth, _that_ shall he also reap;” “he that soweth to
the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.”
I know all this. I know that you are lost men; that you can never become
what you were,—_never what you were_. Yet hear me tell you, in Christ’s
name, that although you can never undo the past, nor return to
innocence, you may through a mighty regenerating power become something
better than what you were in guileless childhood.
It is true that you have lost much; in respect of this world and its
uses you are the worse for what you have gone through; a very blessed
thing has escaped your grasp for ever; but another thing, a blessed
thing also, is offered to you. I believe that in the kingdom of God you
may gain by your loss. I believe that you may be made a mightier
instrument in his hand by reason of your wounds and your misery. The
serpent has bruised your heel; turn now upon him in wrath, and bruise
his head! There is truth in the saying, “Fractures well healed make us
more strong.” Henceforward you shall take of the very stones over which
you stumbled and fell to pave your path to heaven, and thereby make a
firmer footing for yourself. God places his own omnipotence at your
disposal; stretch forth your feeble paralysed hand, and lay hold of it;
your hand will be restored, and you will hold God. All things are now
“possible to him that believeth,” for “all things are possible with
God,” and by this simple act God and you are _one_. Henceforth, though
like Gideon you may be the least in your father’s house, the heavenly
salutation is to you: “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of
valour!” Arm yourself for the battle!
I have seen a noble sight; it is that of a young warrior armed from head
to foot, watchful from the first, strong and free, passing on unwounded,
victory going before him. He is indeed lovely; he is worthy of our
admiration, for the grace of God was with him to keep him from first to
last unscathed. “His strength is as the strength of ten, because his
heart is pure.” Yet have I seen a not less noble and a more pathetic
sight; it is that of a soldier, wounded almost to death, enfeebled by
the past strife, bleeding at every step, exhausted and weary, rising to
a desperate necessity, and with a sorrow and resolution on his face more
eloquent than words, leading a forlorn hope to victory. The angels in
heaven rejoice, we are told, over the victory of such an one as this. If
you cannot now be the former, you can be the latter. “When the forces of
thy soul are scattered, rally them by believing, and remember that
already _many a wounded soldier hath won the day_.”[3] Through this sad
but noble conflict your souls will become holy, pure, and strong.
“Shall we award
Less honour to the hull, which, dogged
By storms, a mere wreck, waterlogged,
Masts by the board, her bulwarks gone
And stanchions going, yet bears on;
Than to strong lifeboats, built to save,
And triumph o’er the breaking wave?”
I remember to have dreamed a dream which I will tell you. There arose
before me in my dream a beautiful cathedral, exquisite in all its
proportions, perfect in its unity, grandeur, harmony of design, and in
its most delicate details. It stood majestically, its beautiful spires
and towers pointing heavenward, unhurt by violence or time; it was a
temple fit for the worship of God. The sun was setting, and the glory of
the west fell full upon the perfect building, and flashed back the light
from its pure and polished marbles; but it fell upon its outward walls
only. I went further, and I saw before me a ruined abbey, roofless, open
to the sky, with great rents and seams and cracks in its walls
everywhere, its delicate traceries broken or crumbling to pieces, its
carved work, once so beautiful, discoloured and worn by storms. The
glory of the setting sun fell not only _upon_ this second temple, but
entered it, penetrated it through and through, flooded it with glory
without and within, lighted up with a new beauty every torn and broken
fragment, streamed in a flood of gold through every crack and rent of
its ruined walls, lovingly, lavishly dressing its poor decay with a
glory not of earth. As I looked, I wondered at the beauty, and loved the
glorious sunshine which seemed to linger so fondly round this ruin, and
which, because it was a ruin, could so envelope and penetrate it with
its own beauty; and I thought that the glory of this second temple was
greater than the glory of the first. To whom among us sinners has God
denied the beauty of holiness, beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for
mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness? That Lord
to whom I invite you with tears, and with inward groans, as of one who
travails with a deep desire,—that Lord, our God, our Christ said of
himself, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal
the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are
bruised.” And what shall hinder? “Who art thou, O great mountain? before
Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain.” “The Lord of Hosts is with us,
the shout of a King is among us.”
Lift your eyes unto the hills! It is possible, it is possible to be new
created. Christ announced it to the astonished Nicodemus, who, though he
was a teacher in Israel, knew not these things; and when the Holy Ghost
carries the message to your heart in its fulness, and in its deep inner
meaning, you will be equally astonished; till then it is equally hidden
from you.
I speak, it may be, to some who were misled and corrupted very early in
life; planted, perhaps, in one of those hotbeds of youthful vice—wherein
the evil is often so secret as to elude the utmost vigilance of those
who watch for souls—while you were still but little children, with a
conscience only half awakened to the knowledge of good and evil. If so,
God pities you deeply; the anger of the Blessed One is aroused on your
behalf, and he will avenge you of your spiritual adversary, the
malignant foe who, in the person of some wretched tempter, blighted you,
instructing you in evil on the very threshold of life. Those words of
our Lord are very awful, “Take heed that ye offend not one of these
little ones.” His compassion for you who were early tempted may be
measured by his holy indignation; “Woe unto that man through whom the
offence cometh; it were better for that man that a millstone were hanged
about his neck, and that he were cast into the depths of the sea.” That
which happened to you very early in life may often bring a cloud between
you and your confidence in the love of God: “Why, if he is love, did he
permit it?” I can feel deeply for you in this painful questioning, as
hard to answer sometimes in any particular case as it is in the broad
view of it—that of the dark and insoluble mystery of the origin and
existence of evil. Let us leave it, and listen to God as he speaks to us
as the God of love: “It is not the will of your Heavenly Father that one
of these little ones should perish;” “Let no man say when he is tempted,
I am tempted of God;” “Every good and every perfect gift cometh down
from above.” But blight and destruction do not come down from above, and
when they fall upon the weak and innocent, it is not at the command nor
with the consent of the Most High; it is not his will that wrong and
pain and sin should be brought by one upon another. There is _another
will_ at work in the world, an opposing will, a cruel power, only
second, but always second, to the power of good. God can bring good out
of evil. God can turn even the devices of Satan to his own glory, and to
the good of man. It is true that he permits evil, which exists contrary
to his will, to work for a season; but the whole history of man proves,
and the future will still more gloriously prove, that he turns evil
aside, brings good out of it, brings life out of death, power out of
weakness, light out of darkness, glory out of shame. “The zeal of the
Lord of Hosts will do this.”
“This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.” _Believe_
this, apply it to whatever sickness of soul or body afflicts you as the
fruit of sin; embrace this hope, and you will one day praise God with
wonder and love.
How often are we inclined to say, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died;” “If thou hadst been present in that first hour of
temptation, all these woes would not have followed!” Christ was _not_
there, it seems, and the devil and death triumphed. But now call to mind
how calmly Jesus answers these words with “Thy brother shall rise
again;” “Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe, thou
shouldst see the glory of God?” My brother may be worse than sick; he
may be dead in sin, yes, long dead, corrupt, the prey of worms, insomuch
that timid friends may be appalled at the thought of his rising up again
to claim relationship with them, as when Martha cried out, “Lord, by
this time he stinketh;” yet when he who is the Resurrection and the Life
approaches his corpse, he lives again, he _shall_ live again! “Lazarus,
come forth!” Such a stupendous effort of power and love on the part of
the Lord is what is needed in your case, and this he is always ready to
exert. It needs only faith in you, a little faith, “as a grain of
mustard seed;” for it is not the degree of faith upon which the miracle
hangs, but upon the power of God, which the weakest faith may claim.
Believe me, God only suffered Satan to triumph _for a time_, that God
might triumph _for ever_. God will make of you now such a tool in his
hands as you could not have been had you never come into close conflict
with the enemy of souls.
The heart of Christ is very tender towards you, for you did not sin with
a high hand, but were caught in a net, dragged through the mire, victims
to the insatiable lust of the Destroyer, who goes about seeking whom he
may devour. Your souls were tender, and unable to resist the fatal
working of the poison administered to you by the soul-murderers who are
lurking everywhere, the accursed generation whose seed renews itself
from year to year, and from age to age upon the earth, and before whom
the souls of the “poor innocents” fall prostrate, as grass before the
mower’s scythe. Some good gift of God to you, it may be (personal
beauty, a pure face, a frank grace of manner, a sensitive, responsive
nature, unconsciousness of evil), was the thing which first drew upon
you the evil eye which blights that which it looks upon; or perhaps you
did not possess the qualities which attract and ensure popularity among
the young, and so, when unlooked-for affection was offered to you, you
responded to it with an abandonment of gratitude and a wealth of love
which the loneliness of your being up to that time had only served to
intensify; and foul weeds sown by an enemy’s hand sprang up side by side
with fair flowers, dark and deadly evils grew up side by side with
pleasant friendships, and the circumstances which were designed for the
development and strengthening of your social being became ministers to
sin.
There are men in the world so modest that the utterance of an impure
word in their presence is pain to them, and so charitable that the
thought of wilfully betraying the soul of another into sin would be
death to them, who yet are conscious of a cruelly unhappy past, and of a
sense of degradation in the memory of sin; men—I cannot express it
otherwise—of great natural purity, who are yet impure; who were born
with an instinctive repugnance to all that is base and low, yet whose
aching hearts must ever harbour the memory of some inner baseness which
they fain would blot out for ever. When a man whom nature fashioned
coarsely sins coarsely, his sins are at least in harmony with his
nature; but when a man whom God gifted with a pure, refined, and
sensitive nature is betrayed into gross sin, he sins not against God
only, but against his own nature; he does violence to his better self,
and the result is a frightful discord, a terrible incongruity: he is
like two men, hating the one self with the other self; his sins are not
of the same colour as his mind, but are like a dark stain upon a white
garment. Such a man’s sufferings touch my heart more deeply than those
of the stronger sinner, whose punishment in the flesh may be in
proportion to the strength of his fleshly nature; for the finer soul
suffers in the most delicate part of his being, the emotional part; he
is wounded in his inmost tenderness, his idealism, his love of the
beautiful, his sense of worthiness, and fitness, and honour. For such an
one the loss of purity implies such a keen, sorrowful, tender, lifelong
regret, as men of a stronger and coarser mould cannot conceive of; his
is a sadness which sometimes seems to me to resemble the sorrow which
Adam may have felt when he had fallen from his high pristine purity to
become the slave of a new and hated tyranny within him, weak, silenced,
guilty, subject to death, an exile from paradise; sometimes I have
thought it resembled more the agony of a tender woman robbed of virtue,
than that of a man. When to this refinement of nature is added a clear,
keen intellect, and that good gift of God, a humble and just judgment
which discerns with simplicity good and evil, the agony is increased,
the shame is deepened that the lower nature should ever have triumphed,
and the hatred of the evil within him is intensified through the man’s
keen perception of intellectual and moral beauty; his estimate of the
past, of his own part, of God’s part, of his fellow-creatures’ part in
it, is humble, just, and gentle; he does not impatiently nor
irreverently cast off the blame of it upon God’s providence, nor
coarsely accuse his fellows; to his just mind sin has a terrible
personality; it is to him an evil which would never have existed in
God’s universe but for the will of the sinner, nor have ruined himself
but for the guilty concurrence of his own will; he harbours no secret
sullenness against the laws of society which require men to live morally
and to practise self-restraint; for his moral judgment is enlightened
with so much of light from above as to show him that such laws as are
just and pure among men are based upon a divine law, and that the Author
of the divine law is a living, personal God, to whom he himself is
individually accountable for the breach of law—singly and personally
accountable, as much as if there were no society nor human laws around
him, nor any one in the universe except God and himself. He who so
judges himself is surely gently judged by him who “came not to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance;” whose glorious reproach it was
and is, that “He is gone to be a guest with a man that is a sinner.” Who
among us, who even among the righteous, will venture to cast a stone at
such an one?
To such an one, to be absolved from guilt is much, but not enough.
Salvation for him must include more; he must be cleansed for ever from
the accursed thing, separated from it “as far as the east is from the
west.” Even beyond this he feels at times a passionate desire for what
the Greeks say God himself cannot grant, that the past should not have
been, or that, having been, it should be no more; perhaps to the last
day of his life there may be something of that fruitless, impossible
wish. Even at the cost of our immortality that cannot be granted; but
the nearest thing possible is promised—that God will remember our sins
no more. Can God forget? Is oblivion possible for God? Perhaps this may
mean that when our wills are so closely united with his as to be one
with his will, they may then have no more connection with their sinful
actions in the past than he has who created them with possibilities of
evil, from which the only refuge is in him. Most certain it is, at
least, that in his presence all unholiness must have passed away, and
that we shall be pure _even as he is pure_. This is our sure hope, and
for the present life our regret, remorse, dissatisfaction with
ourselves, may become a mighty moving power.
If the passionate remembrance of our loved ones removed by death—the
light of our eyes extinguished, the music of our life silenced—which
seems at first so concentrated in our sorrow and desire for reunion,
may, without desecration or departure from its own simplicity, suffer a
spiritual change into something higher and worthier of those we mourn,
so also may feelings which are less sacred and more full of earthly
bitterness suffer a spiritual change, so as to become subordinated to
the one high motive of our life. It has been said that we need “a goad
in the side as well as love in the heart.” Lovers of purity, who have
been false to the thing you love, you have a double motive to work for
God, and to aid in the overturning of Satan’s kingdom and in the
advancement of Christ’s kingdom on earth! A holy anger and revenge shall
possess your souls, and become a motive only less mighty than grateful
love to your Saviour. The principle of opposition is very strong in some
men, and through the conversion of the whole army of the moral forces
within you, which by the grace of God is as possible as the amendment of
your outward life, that which otherwise would be bad or dangerous in you
may be turned in all its force against God’s enemy and yours; holy
hatred, holy scorn, as well as holy love, shall work in you; that strong
untiring motive of compassion will be greatly increased in you, for you
will feel for those who are entangled by the accursed thing as a man
cannot feel who has never himself been deeply wounded.
I know how deep is the scepticism on this subject among those who have
fallen and are suffering; how difficult it is to receive the hope of a
new creation. One form of delusion arising from this difficulty seems to
me to prevail much. I mean the delusion of supposing that forgiveness of
sins and moral restoration can be separated. It is very common to hear
such language as this: “God can, I know, forgive the blackest offences,
and receive the poor sinner to himself at last, because he is so
merciful; but present holiness and perfect renewal he cannot produce in
such as I am; the spring once poisoned must continue to send forth muddy
waters. Experience has taught me this, and nothing can speak with effect
which speaks contrary to experience.”
You who speak so are in error. God does not save men by only pardoning
them. Salvation is a double work; it is forgiveness and purification.
“Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” “It shall be called the
way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it.” “If a man have not
the spirit of Christ (a spirit of purity), he is none of his.” Believe
me, you are labouring under a great, though a very common delusion, and
one which gains more ground in many a man’s heart, and influences many a
man’s practice, more than he likes to confess to himself. Do you really
believe that God gathers men hastily up at the last, and admits them as
they are (having continued unholy) to the city of God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, to the companionship of the “innumerable company of angels,
and of the spirits of just men made perfect”? Even if he did so, heaven
would be no heaven to them, for being of a different nature from all
that exists there, they would be strangers there, an element of discord
amidst the general harmony, and liable to the question, “How camest
_thou_ in hither?” Nay, nothing that does not in its very essence belong
to heaven and to God can enter there. The heaven or hell of the future
has its beginning now in our hearts here on earth. It rests upon the
awful truth of the permanence of character, the bent and the ultimate
fixity of which God has made dependent on our own deliberate choice,
aiding and seconding, and encouraging with the most tender watchfulness
and love, by the motions of his Holy Spirit, the feeblest efforts and
faintest inclinations of our will towards him.
Denying the hope of being made pure and holy now, you deny every hope.
It is “the pure in heart” who shall “see God.” I pray you to reflect on
the twofold character of this change, and to remember that it renews the
nature while it places the sinner out of condemnation. The love which
holds out to the sinner free forgiveness, infuses also into the heart
which truly believes an element of transforming purity.
Many men go on until death, soothing themselves with this wretched idea
of some final absolution or indulgence, which may be grasped in the
moment of death by one who desires no moral change in himself. They
continue unchanged, and die unholy.
There are some who do not desire this change; you to whom I speak do
desire it, but you doubt its possibility. Your conscience tells you how
strong your sinful nature is, how deeply dyed, how interpenetrated with
impurity; but your conscience is blind regarding the great power of God,
and bears no witness on that side. Is not one part of the great work as
easy to God as the other? Is it not as easy for him to expel your
disease, and bid you rise up and walk, as it is for him to say, “Son,
thy sins are forgiven thee”? You say it is not. “God,” you say, “can
forgive me, because he is so good and merciful; but he cannot make me
pure in heart. He cannot arrest the natural downward tendency, nor do
away with the law which reigns rampant in my flesh.” This is plainly
what you say when you doubt the possibility of a complete change in
yourself. You make God a liar. You dispute his power and his word. You
declare a miracle to be impossible with God (as indeed men do very
freely in these days). You are a materialist, in bondage to supposed
laws of necessity, and denying the power of the Divine Creator Spirit.
If I mistake not, your conscience bears me witness that, in a greater or
less degree, my words concerning you are true.
You do well indeed to profess humbly that you bow to the law of nature,
the law which now curses you; but oh! do not, I pray you, speak in the
same breath of the intent and purpose of God, or yield to the temptation
of supposing that he for a moment acquiesces in your present state of
slavery. God works in nature, and uses her as his handmaid in the
punishment of guilt and correction of the erring; but God is above
nature, and can work exactly contrary to nature. It never was the will
and purpose of God, and never will be, that you should be so cursed, so
hopeless, so degraded. You have gone directly against his will. Call to
mind those pathetic words of Jesus, “Ye _will not_ come unto me, that ye
might have life.” “How often _would I_ ... but _ye would not_.” “O
Israel, thou hast _destroyed thyself_, but in me is thy help.” Yes, you
are self-destroyed, and there is no inexorable divine appointment in
your present state of wretchedness. I repeat that I do not speak as a
person who is ignorant of the power and effects of gross sin. I know its
deadly poison, I have seen its blighting power, its ravages in bodies,
and souls, and intellects. I have fainted before its scorching breath.
But I have seen that where sin abounded grace has much more abounded. I
have seen dead men rising from their graves. I know the power of him who
says, “Behold, I make all things new.” God is able to work in us
“according to the mighty power which raised Jesus from the dead.” Try to
conceive of that power, the power of Jehovah, which so reversed the
order of nature and trampled upon death that it was impossible that
Christ should be holden of it. This is the self-same power which is
waiting now at your door to bring you forth to a new and glorious life.
And although this new birth unto righteousness and perfect purity may be
gradual and painful, yet so powerful, so progressive, so aggressive and
victorious is the Spirit which works this moral change, that no sin, no
memories, no evil habits, no results of evil habits, no disease which
belongs to the soul of man can stand before it. All yields before the
omnipotent working of that silent, awful Spirit.
Flee ye to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope! Take courage; strong,
desperate courage! Approach Christ, the Saviour of our souls, who “also
is the Saviour of the body.” Touch but the hem of his garment, and you
shall be made “perfectly whole.”
Turn to the future in hope; do not waste time in vain regrets and in
cursing yourselves. We must repent and fear, and observe also where and
how we fell; but it is safest not to dwell much on the past. There is a
surer means of attaining to true sorrow for sin, and that is, to see the
love against which we have sinned, and to see all sin as a deep
treachery against love. Then alone is it that we learn what true
contrition means; when we look upon him whom we have pierced, and mourn
because of him.
We are too much inclined to ask for time to be granted us to perform
funeral rites over our dead selves before we will come to God to receive
a new life. How often have I heard the words, “I believe God can restore
me, but it will be a long time first.” But why should it be a long time,
I ask, before the first step is taken by you? The first step is that you
should cast yourself upon God, and place the matter in his hands. This
gained, you have gained much; yet this is only the entrance into the way
of life; the great work is not now completed, but only begun; from this
point you will find that there is more to be learned and unlearned, done
and undone, than you even now imagine. Let the days then of fruitless
mourning over dead hopes and wasted energies be brought quickly to an
end, and let the true sorrow accompany you through your whole life,
joined with true love, and bearing much fruit. Hear the voice of Christ
saying to you, “Let the dead past bury its dead: Follow thou me!”