"_WHAT_ did you think of the sermon, Mr. Braxton?" said one church
member to another, as the two men passed from the vestibule of St.
Mark's out into the lofty portico.
Mr. Braxton gave a slight shrug, perceived by his companion as a sign
of disapproval. They moved along, side by side, down the broad steps to
the pavement, closely pressed by the retiring audience.
"Strong meat," said the first speaker, as they got free of the crowd
and commenced moving down the street.
"Too strong for my stomach," replied Mr. Braxton. "Something must have
gone wrong with our minister when he sat down to write that discourse."
"Indigestion, perhaps."
"Or neuralgia," said Mr. Braxton.
"He was in no amiable mood--that much is certain. Why, he set
nine-tenths of us over on the left hand side, among the goats, as
remorselessly as if he were an avenging Nemesis. He actually made me
shudder."
"That kind of literal application of texts to the living men and women
in a congregation is not only in bad taste, but presumptuous and
blasphemous. What right has a clergyman to sit in judgment on me, for
instance? To give forced constructions to parables and vague
generalities in Scripture, about the actual meaning of which divines in
all ages have differed; and, pointing his finger to me or to you,
say--'The case is yours, sir!' I cannot sit patiently under many more
such sermons."
Mr. Braxton evidently spoke from a disturbed state of mind. Something
in the discourse had struck at the foundations of self-love and
self-complacency.
"Into one ear, and out at the other. So it is with me, in cases like
this," answered Mr. Braxton's companion, in a changed and lighter tone.
"If a preacher chooses to be savage; to write from dyspeptic or
neuralgic states; to send his congregation, unshrived, to the nether
regions--why, I shrug my shoulders and let it pass. Most likely, on the
next Sunday, he will be full of consideration for tender consciences,
and grandly shut the gate he threw open so widely on the last occasion.
It would never answer, you know, to take these things to heart--never
in the world. We'd always be getting into hot water. Clergymen have
their moods, like other people. It doesn't answer to forget this. Good
morning, Mr. Braxton. Our ways part here."
"Good morning," was replied, and the men separated.
But, try as Mr. Braxton would to set his minister's closely applied
doctrine from Scripture to the account of dyspepsia or neuralgia, he
was unable to push from his mind certain convictions wrought therein by
the peculiar manner in which some positions had been argued and
sustained. The subject taken by the minister, was that striking picture
of the judgment given in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, from the
thirty-first verse to the close of the chapter, beginning: "When the
Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him,
then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be
gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a
shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." The passage concludes:
"And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous
into life eternal."
Now, although Mr. Braxton had complained of the literal application of
this text, that term was hardly admissible, for the preacher waived the
idea of a last general judgment, as involved in the letter of
Scripture, and declared his belief in a spiritual signification as
lying beneath the letter, and applicable to the inner life of every
single individual at the period of departure from this world; adding,
in this connection, briefly: "But do not understand me as in any degree
waiving the strictness of judgment to which every soul will have to
submit. It will not be limited by his acts, but go down to his ends of
life--to his motives and his quality--and the sentence will really be a
judgment upon what he _is_, not upon what he has _done_; although,
taking the barest literal sense, only actions are regarded."
In opening and illustrating his text, he said, farther: "As the word of
God, according to its own declarations, is spirit and life--treats, in
fact, by virtue of divine and Scriptural origin, of divine and
spiritual things, must we not go beneath the merely obvious and natural
meaning, if we would get to its true significance? Is there not a
hunger of the soul as well as of the body? May we not be spiritually
athirst, and strangers?--naked, sick, and in prison? This being so, can
we confidently look for the invitation, 'Come, ye blessed of my Father,
if our regard for the neighbor have not reached beyond his bodily life?
If we have never considered his spiritual wants and sufferings, and
ministered thereto according to our ability? Just in the degree that
the soul is more precious than the body, is the degree of our
responsibility under this more interior signification of Scripture. The
mere natural acts of feeding the hungry and giving water to the
thirsty, of visiting the sick, and those who lie in prison, of clothing
the naked and entertaining strangers, will not save us in our last day,
if we have neglected the higher duties involved in the divine
admonition. Nor will even the supply of spiritual nourishment to hungry
and thirsty souls be accounted to us for righteousness. We must find a
higher meaning still in the text. Are we not, each one of us, starving
for heavenly food?--spiritually exhausted with thirst?--naked, sick, in
prison? Are we eating, daily, of the bread of life?--drinking at the
wells of God's truth?--putting on the garments of
righteousness?--finding balm for our sick souls in Gilead?--breaking
the bonds of evil?--turning from strange lands, and coming back to our
father's house. If not, I warn you, men and brethren, that you are not
in the right way;--that, taking the significance of God's word, which
is truth itself, there is no reasonable ground of hope for your
salvation."
It was not with Mr. Braxton as with his friend. He could not let
considerations like these enter one ear and go out at the other. From
earliest childhood he had received careful instruction. Parents,
teachers and preachers, had all shared in the work of storing his mind
with the precepts of religion, and now, in manhood, his conscience
rested on these and upon the states wrought therefrom in the
impressible substance of his mind. Try as he would, he found the effort
to push aside early convictions and early impressions a simple
impossibility; and, notwithstanding these had been laid on the
foundation of a far more literal interpretation of Scripture than the
one to which he had just been listening, his maturer reason accepted
the preacher's clear application of the law; and conscience, like an
angel, went down into his heart, and troubled the waters which had been
at peace.
Mr. Braxton was a man of thrift. He had started in life with a purpose,
and that purpose he was steadily attaining. To the god of this world he
offered daily sacrifice; and in his heart really desired no higher good
than seemed attainable through outward things. Wealth, position, honor,
among men--these bounded his real aspirations. But prior things in his
mind were continually reaching down and affecting his present states.
He could not forget that life was short, and earthly possessions and
honors but the things of a day. That as he brought nothing into this
world, so he could take nothing out. That, without a religious life, he
must not hope for heaven. In order to get free from the disturbing
influence of these prior things, and to lay the foundations of a future
hope, Mr. Braxton became a church member, and, so far as all Sabbath
observances were concerned, a devout worshiper. Thus he made a truce
with conscience, and conscience having gained so much, accepted for a
period the truce, and left Mr. Braxton in good odor with himself.
A man who goes regularly to church, and reads his Bible, cannot fail to
have questions and controversies about truths, duties, and the
requirements of religion. The barest literal interpretation of
Scripture will, in most cases, oppose the action of self-love; and he
will not fail to see in the law of spiritual life a requirement wholly
in opposition to the law of natural life. In the very breadth of this
literal requirement, however, he finds a way of escape from literal
observance. To give to all who ask; to lend to all who would borrow; to
yield the cloak when the coat is taken forcibly; to turn the left cheek
when the right is smitten--all this is to him so evidently but a figure
of speech, that he does not find it very hard to satisfy conscience.
Setting these passages aside, as not to be taken in the sense of the
letter, he does not find it very difficult to dispose of others that
come nearer to the obvious duties of man to man--such, for instance, as
that in the illustration of which, by the preacher, Mr. Braxton's
self-complacency had been so much disturbed. He had never done much in
the way of feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing
the naked, or visiting the sick and in prison--never done anything of
set purpose, in fact. If people were hungry, it was mostly their own
fault, and to feed them would be to encourage idleness and vice. All
the other items in the catalogue were as easily disposed of; and so the
literal duties involved might have been set forth in the most
impassioned eloquence, Sabbath after Sabbath, without much disturbing
the fine equipose of Mr. Braxton. Alas for his peace of mind!--the
preacher of truth had gone past the dead letter, and revealed its
spirit and its life. Suddenly he felt himself removed, as it were, to
an almost impossible distance from the heaven into which, as he had
complacently flattered himself, he should enter by the door of mere
ritual observances, when the sad hour came for giving up the delightful
things of this pleasant world. No wonder that Mr. Braxton was
disturbed--no wonder that, in his first convictions touching those more
interior truths, which made visible the sandy foundations whereon he
was building his eternal hopes, he should regard the application of
doctrine as personal and even literal.
It was not so easy a thing to set aside the duty of ministering to the
hungry, sick, and naked human souls around him, thousands of whom, for
lack of spiritual nourishment, medicine and clothing, were in danger of
perishing eternally. And the preacher in dwelling upon this great duty
of all Christian men and women, had used emphatic language.
"I give you," he said, "God's judgment of the case--not my own.
'Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it
not unto me. And these shall go away;' where? 'To everlasting
punishment!' Who shall go thus, in the last day, from this
congregation?"
As Mr. Braxton sat alone on the evening of that Sabbath, troubled by
the new thoughts which came flowing into his mind, the full impression
of this scene in church came back upon him. There was an almost
breathless pause. Men leaned forward in their pews; the low, almost
whispered, tones of the minister were heard with thrilling distinctness
in even the remotest parts of the house.
"Who?" he repeated, and the stillness grew more profound. Then, slowly,
impressively, almost sadly, he said:
"I cannot hide the truth. As God's ambassador, I must give the message;
and it is this: If you, my brother, are not ministering to the wants of
the hungry and thirsty, the stranger, the sick and in prison, you are
of those who will have to go away."
And the minister shut the Book, and sat down. If, as we have intimated,
the preacher had limited Christian duty to bodily needs, Mr. Braxton
would not have been much exercised in mind.
He had found an easy way to dispose of these merely literal
interpretations of Scripture. Now, his life was brought to the judgment
of a more interior law, as expounded that day. It was in vain that he
endeavored to reject the law; for the more he tried to do this, the
clearer it was seen in the light of perceptive truth.
"God help me, if this be so!" he exclaimed, in a moment of more perfect
realization of what was meant in the Divine Word. "Who shall stand in
the judgment?"
For awhile he endeavored to turn himself away from convictions that
were grounding themselves deeper and deeper every moment,--to shut his
eyes in wilful blindness, and refuse to see in the purer light which
had fallen around him. But this effort only brought his mind into
severer conflict, and consciously removed him to an almost fatal
distance from the paths leading upward to the mountains of peace.
"This is the way, walk ye in it." A clear voice rose above the noise of
strife in his soul, and his soul grew calm and listened. He no longer
wrought at the fruitless task of rejecting the higher truths which were
illustrating his mind, but let them flow in, and by virtue thereof
examined the state of his inner life. Now it was that his eyes were in
a degree opened, so that he could apprehend the profounder meanings of
Scripture. The parables were flooded with new light. He understood, as
he had never understood before, why the guest, unclothed with a wedding
garment, was cast out from the feast; and why the door was shut upon
the virgins who had no oil in their lamps. He had always regarded these
parables as involving a hidden meaning--as intended to convey spiritual
instruction under literal forms--but, now, they spoke in a language
that applied itself to his inward state, and warned him that without a
marriage garment, woven in the loom of interior life, where motives
rule, he could never be the King's guest; warned him that without the
light of divine truth in his understanding, and the oil of love to God
and the neighbor in his heart, the door of the kingdom would be shut
against him. Ritual observances were, to these, but outward forms, dry
husks, except when truly representative of that worship in the soul
which subordinates natural affections to what is spiritual and divine.
At last the seed fell into good ground. Mr. Braxton had been a
"way-side" hearer; but, ere the good seed had time to germinate, fowls
came and devoured it. He had been a "stony-ground" hearer, receiving
the truth with gladness, but having no root in himself. He had been as
the ground choked with thorns, suffering the cares of this world and
the deceitfulness of riches to choke and hinder the growth of heavenly
life. Now, into good ground the seed had at last fallen; and though the
evil one tried to snatch it away, its hidden life, moving to the
earth's quick invitation, was already giving prophetic signs of thirty,
sixty, or a hundredfold, in the harvest time.
Why was there good ground in the mind of Mr. Braxton? Good ground, even
though he was wedded to external life; a self-seeker; a lover of the
world? In the answer to this question lies a most important truth for
all to whom God has committed the care of children. Unless good ground
is formed, as it was in his case, by early instruction; by storing up
in the memory truths from the Bible, and states of good affection; by
weaving into the web and woof of the forming mind precepts of
religion--there is small hope for the future. If these are not made a
part of the forming life, things opposite will be received, and
determine spiritual capabilities. Influx of life into the soul must be
through prior things; as the twig is bent, the tree is inclined; as the
child's memory and consciousness is stored, so will the man develop and
progress. Take heart, then, doubting parent; if you have in all
faithfulness, woven precious truths, and tender, pious, unselfish
states into the texture of your child's mind--though the fruit is not
yet seen, depend on it, that the treasured remains of good and true
things are there, and will not be lost.