THE LAST FARTHING.

_'Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence,

till thou have paid the last farthing._'--ST. MATTHEW v. 26.

There is a thing wonderful and admirable in the parables, not readily

grasped, but specially indicated by the Lord himself--their

unintelligibility to the mere intellect. They are addressed to the

conscience and not to the intellect, to the will and not to the

imagination. They are strong and direct but not definite. They are not

meant to explain anything, but to rouse a man to the feeling, 'I am not

what I ought to be, I do not the thing I ought to do!' Many maundering

interpretations may be given by the wise, with plentiful loss of

labour, while the child who uses them for the necessity of walking in

the one path will constantly receive light from them. The greatest

obscuration of the words of the Lord, as of all true teachers, comes

from those who give themselves to interpret rather than do them.

Theologians have done more to hide the gospel of Christ than any of its

adversaries. It was not for our understandings, but our will, that

Christ came. He who does that which he sees, shall understand; he who

is set upon understanding rather than doing, shall go on stumbling and

mistaking and speaking foolishness. He has not that in him which can

understand that kind. The gospel itself, and in it the parables of the

Truth, are to be understood only by those who walk by what they find.

It is he that runneth that shall read, and no other. It is not intended

by the speaker of the parables that any other should know

intellectually what, known but intellectually, would be for his

injury--what knowing intellectually he would imagine he had grasped,

perhaps even appropriated. When the pilgrim of the truth comes on his

journey to the region of the parable, he finds its interpretation. It

is not a fruit or a jewel to be stored, but a well springing by the

wayside.

Let us try to understand what the Lord himself said about his parables.

It will be better to take the reading of St. Matthew xiii. 14, 15, as

it is plainer, and the quotation from Isaiah (vi. 9, 10) is given in

full--after the Septuagint, and much clearer than in our version from

the Hebrew:--in its light should be read the corresponding passages in

the other Gospels: in St. Mark's it is so compressed as to be capable

of quite a different and false meaning: in St. John's reference, the

blinding of the heart seems attributed directly to the devil:--the

purport is, that those who by insincerity and falsehood close their

deeper eyes, shall not be capable of using in the matter the more

superficial eyes of their understanding. Whether this follows as a

psychical or metaphysical necessity, or be regarded as a special

punishment, it is equally the will of God, and comes from him who is

the live Truth. They shall not see what is not for such as they. It is

the punishment of the true Love, and is continually illustrated and

fulfilled: if I know anything of the truth of God, then the objectors

to Christianity, so far as I am acquainted with them, do not; their

arguments, not in themselves false, have nothing to do with the matter;

they see the thing they are talking against, but they do not see the

thing they think they are talking against.

This will help to remove the difficulty that the parables are plainly

for the teaching of the truth, and yet the Lord speaks of them as for

the concealing of it. They are for the understanding of that man only

who is practical--who does the thing he knows, who seeks to understand

vitally. They reveal to the live conscience, otherwise not to the

keenest intellect--though at the same time they may help to rouse the

conscience with glimpses of the truth, where the man is on the borders

of waking. Ignorance may be at once a punishment and a kindness: all

punishment is kindness, and the best of which the man at the time is

capable: 'Because you will not do, you shall not see; but it would be

worse for you if you did see, not being of the disposition to do.' Such

are punished in having the way closed before them; they punish

themselves; their own doing results as it cannot but result on them. To

say to them certain things so that they could understand them, would

but harden them more, because they would not do them; they should have

but parables--lanterns of the truth, clear to those who will walk in

their light, dark to those who will not. The former are content to have

the light cast upon their way; the latter will have it in their eyes,

and cannot: if they had, it would but blind them. For them to know more

would be their worse condemnation. They are not fit to know more; more

shall not be given them yet; it is their punishment that they are in

the wrong, and shall keep in the wrong until they come out of it. 'You

choose the dark; you shall stay in the dark till the terrors that dwell

in the dark affray you, and cause you to cry out.' God puts a seal upon

the will of man; that seal is either his great punishment, or his

mighty favour: 'Ye love the darkness, abide in the darkness:' 'O woman,

great is thy faith: be it done unto thee even as thou wilt!'

What special meaning may be read in the different parts of magistrate,

judge, and officer, beyond the general suggestion, perhaps, of the

tentative approach of the final, I do not know; but I think I do know

what is meant by 'agree on the way,' and 'the uttermost farthing.' The

parable is an appeal to the common sense of those that hear it, in

regard to every affair of righteousness. Arrange what claim lies

against you; compulsion waits behind it. Do at once what you must do

one day. As there is no escape from payment, escape at least the prison

that will enforce it. Do not drive Justice to extremities. Duty is

imperative; it must be done. It is useless to think to escape the

eternal law of things; yield of yourself, nor compel God to compel you.

To the honest man, to the man who would fain be honest, the word is of

right gracious import. To the untrue, it is a terrible threat; to him

who is of the truth, it is sweet as most loving promise. He who is of

God's mind in things, rejoices to hear the word of the changeless

Truth; the voice of the Right fills the heavens and the earth, and

makes his soul glad; it is his salvation. If God were not inexorably

just, there would be no stay for the soul of the feeblest lover of

right: 'thou art true, O Lord: one day I also shall be true!' 'Thou

shalt render the right, cost you what it may,' is a dread sound in the

ears of those whose life is a falsehood: what but the last farthing

would those who love righteousness more than life pay? It is a joy

profound as peace to know that God is determined upon such payment, is

determined to have his children clean, clear, pure as very snow; is

determined that not only shall they with his help make up for whatever

wrong they have done, but at length be incapable, by eternal choice of

good, under any temptation, of doing the thing that is not divine, the

thing God would not do.

There has been much cherishing of the evil fancy, often without its

taking formal shape, that there is some way of getting out of the

region of strict justice, some mode of managing to escape doing _all_

that is required of us; but there is no such escape. A way to avoid any

demand of righteousness would be an infinitely worse way than the road

to the everlasting fire, for its end would be eternal death. No, there

is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it--no plan

to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out

Satan must go, every hair and feather! Neither shalt thou think to be

delivered from the necessity of _being_ good by being made good. God is

the God of the animals in a far lovelier way, I suspect, than many of

us dare to think, but he will not be the God of a man by making a good

beast of him. Thou must be good; neither death nor any admittance into

good company will make thee good; though, doubtless, if thou be willing

and try, these and all other best helps will be given thee. There is no

clothing in a robe of imputed righteousness, that poorest of legal

cobwebs spun by spiritual spiders. To me it seems like an invention of

well-meaning dulness to soothe insanity; and indeed it has proved a

door of escape out of worse imaginations. It is apparently an old

'doctrine;' for St. John seems to point at it where he says, 'Little

children, let no man lead you astray; he that doeth righteousness is

righteous even as he is righteous.' Christ is our righteousness, not

that we should escape punishment, still less escape being righteous,

but as the live potent creator of righteousness in us, so that we, with

our wills receiving his spirit, shall like him resist unto blood,

striving against sin; shall know in ourselves, as he knows, what a

lovely thing is righteousness, what a mean, ugly, unnatural thing is

unrighteousness. He _is_ our righteousness, and that righteousness is

no fiction, no pretence, no imputation.

One thing that tends to keep men from seeing righteousness and

unrighteousness as they are, is, that they have been told many things

are righteous and unrighteous, which are neither the one nor the other.

Righteousness is just fairness--from God to man, from man to God and to

man; it is giving every one his due--his large mighty due. He is

righteous, and no one else, who does this. And any system which tends

to persuade men that there is any salvation but that of becoming

righteous even as Jesus is righteous; that a man can be made good, as a

good dog is good, without his own willed share in the making; that a

man is saved by having his sins hidden under a robe of imputed

righteousness--that system, so far as this tendency, is of the devil

and not of God. Thank God, not even error shall injure the true of

heart; it is not wickedness. They grow in the truth, and as love casts

out fear, so truth casts out falsehood.

I read, then, in this parable, that a man had better make up his mind

to be righteous, to be fair, to do what he can to pay what he owes, in

any and all the relations of life--all the matters, in a word, wherein

one man may demand of another, or complain that he has not received

fair play. Arrange your matters with those who have anything against

you, while you are yet together and things have not gone too far to be

arranged; _you will have to do it_, and that under less easy

circumstances than now. Putting off is of no use. You must. The thing

has to be done; there are means of compelling you.

'In this affair, however, I am in the right.'

'If so, very well--for this affair. But I have reason to doubt whether

you are capable of judging righteously in your own cause:--do you hate

the man?'

'No, I don't hate him.'

'Do you dislike him?'

'I can't say I _like_ him.'

'Do you love him as yourself?'

'Oh, come! come! no one does that!'

'Then no one is to be trusted when he thinks, however firmly, that he

is all right, and his neighbour all wrong, in any matter between them.'

'But I don't say I am all right, and he is all wrong; there may be

something to urge on his side: what I say is, that I am more in the

right than he.'

'This is not fundamentally a question of things: it is a question of

condition, of spiritual relation and action, towards your neighbour. If

in yourself you were all right towards him, you could do him no wrong.

Let it be with the individual dispute as it may, you owe him something

that you do not pay him, as certainly as you think he owes you

something he will not pay you.'

'He would take immediate advantage of me if I owned that.'

'So much the worse for him. Until you are fair to him, it does not

matter to you whether he is unfair to you or not.'

'I beg your pardon--it is just what does matter! I want nothing but my

rights. What can matter to me more than my rights?'

'Your duties--your debts. You are all wrong about the thing. It is a

very small matter _to you_ whether the man give you your rights or not;

it is life or death to you whether or not you give him his. Whether he

pay you what you count his debt or no, you will be compelled to pay him

all you owe him. If you owe him a pound and he you a million, you must

pay him the pound whether he pay you the million or not; there is no

business-parallel here. If, owing you love, he gives you hate, you,

owing him love, have yet to pay it. A love unpaid you, a justice undone

you, a praise withheld from you, a judgment passed on you without

judgment, will not absolve you of the debt of a love unpaid, a justice

not done, a praise withheld, a false judgment passed: these uttermost

farthings--not to speak of such debts as the world itself counts

grievous wrongs--you must pay him, whether he pay you or not. We have a

good while given us to pay, but a crisis will come--come soon after

all--comes always sooner than those expect it who are not ready for

it--a crisis when the demand unyielded will be followed by prison.

The same holds with every demand of God: by refusing to pay, the man

makes an adversary who will compel him--and that for the man's own

sake. If you or your life say, 'I will not,' then he will see to it.

There is a prison, and the one thing we know about that prison is, that

its doors do not open until entire satisfaction is rendered, the last

farthing paid.

The main debts whose payment God demands are those which lie at the

root of all right, those we owe in mind, and soul, and being. Whatever

in us can be or make an adversary, whatever could prevent us from doing

the will of God, or from agreeing with our fellow--all must be yielded.

Our every relation, both to God and our fellow, must be acknowledged

heartily, met as a reality. Smaller debts, if any debt can be small,

follow as a matter of course.

If the man acknowledge, and would pay if he could but cannot, the

universe will be taxed to help him rather than he should continue

unable. If the man accepts the will of God, he is the child of the

Father, the whole power and wealth of the Father is for him, and the

uttermost farthing will easily be paid. If the man denies the debt, or

acknowledging does nothing towards paying it, then--at last--the

prison! God in the dark can make a man thirst for the light, who never

in the light sought but the dark. The cells of the prison may differ in

degree of darkness; but they are all alike in this, that not a door

opens but to payment. There is no day but the will of God, and he who

is of the night cannot be for ever allowed to roam the day; unfelt,

unprized, the light must be taken from him, that he may know what the

darkness is. When the darkness is perfect, when he is totally without

the light he has spent the light in slaying, then will he know

darkness.

I think I have seen from afar something of the final prison of all, the

innermost cell of the debtor of the universe; I will endeavour to

convey what I think it may be.

It is the vast outside; the ghastly dark beyond the gates of the city

of which God is the light--where the evil dogs go ranging, silent as

the dark, for there is no sound any more than sight. The time of signs

is over. Every sense has its signs, and they were all misused: there is

no sense, no sign more--nothing now by means of which to believe. The

man wakes from the final struggle of death, in absolute loneliness--

such a loneliness as in the most miserable moment of deserted childhood

he never knew. Not a hint, not a shadow of anything outside his

consciousness reaches him. All is dark, dark and dumb; no motion--not

the breath of a wind! never a dream of change! not a scent from far-off

field! nothing to suggest being or thing besides the man himself, no

sign of God anywhere. God has so far withdrawn from the man, that he is

conscious only of that from which he has withdrawn. In the midst of the

live world he cared for nothing but himself; now in the dead world he

is in God's prison, his own separated self. He would not believe in God

because he never saw God; now he doubts if there be such a thing as the

face of a man--doubts if he ever really saw one, ever anything more

than dreamed of such a thing:--he never came near enough to human

being, to know what human being really was--so may well doubt if human

beings ever were, if ever he was one of them.

Next after doubt comes reasoning on the doubt: 'The only one must be

God! I know no one but myself: I must myself be God--none else!' Poor

helpless dumb devil!--his own glorious lord god! Yea, he will imagine

himself that same resistless force which, without his will, without his

knowledge, is the law by which the sun burns, and the stars keep their

courses, the strength that drives all the engines of the world. His

fancy will give birth to a thousand fancies, which will run riot like

the mice in a house but just deserted: he will call it creation, and

_his_. Having no reality to set them beside, nothing to correct them

by; the measured order, harmonious relations, and sweet graces of God's

world nowhere for him; what he thinks, will be, for lack of what God

thinks, the man's realities: what others can he have! Soon, misery will

beget on imagination a thousand shapes of woe, which he will not be

able to rule, direct, or even distinguish from real presences--a whole

world of miserable contradictions and cold-fever-dreams.

But no liveliest human imagination could supply adequate representation

of what it would be to be left without a shadow of the presence of God.

If God gave it, man could not understand it: he knows neither God nor

himself in the way of the understanding. For not he who cares least

about God was in this world ever left as God could leave him. I doubt

if any man could continue following his wickedness from whom God had

withdrawn.

The most frightful idea of what could, to his own consciousness, befall

a man, is that he should have to lead an existence with which God had

nothing to do. The thing could not be; for being that is caused, the

causation ceasing, must of necessity cease. It is always in, and never

out of God, that we can live and do. But I suppose the man so left that

he seems to himself utterly alone, yet, alas! with himself--smallest

interchange of thought, feeblest contact of existence, dullest

reflection from other being, impossible: in such evil case I believe

the man would be glad to come in contact with the worst-loathed insect:

it would be a shape of life, something beyond and besides his own huge,

void, formless being! I imagine some such feeling in the prayer of the

devils for leave to go into the swine. His worst enemy, could he but be

aware of him, he would be ready to worship. For the misery would be not

merely the absence of all being other than his own self, but the

fearful, endless, unavoidable presence of that self. Without the

correction, the reflection, the support of other presences, being is

not merely unsafe, it is a horror--for anyone but God, who is his own

being. For him whose idea is God's, and the image of God, his own being

is far too fragmentary and imperfect to be anything like good company.

It is the lovely creatures God has made all around us, in them giving

us himself, that, until we know him, save us from the frenzy of

aloneness--for that aloneness is Self, Self, Self. The man who minds

only himself must at last go mad if God did not interfere.

Can there be any way out of the misery? Will the soul that could not

believe in God, with all his lovely world around testifying of him,

believe when shut in the prison of its own lonely, weary all-and-nothing?

It would for a time try to believe that it was indeed nothing,

a mere glow of the setting sun on a cloud of dust, a paltry dream that

dreamed itself--then, ah, if only the dream might dream that it was no

more! that would be the one thing to hope for. Self-loathing, and that

for no sin, from no repentance, from no vision of better, would begin

and grow and grow; and to what it might not come no soul can tell--of

essential, original misery, uncompromising self disgust! Only, then, if

a being be capable of self-disgust, is there not some room for hope--as

much as a pinch of earth in the cleft of a rock might yield for the

growth of a pine? Nay, there must be hope while there is existence; for

where there is existence there must be God; and God is for ever good,

nor can be other than good. But alas, the distance from the light! Such

a soul is at the farthest verge of life's negation!--no, not the

farthest! a man is nearer heaven when in deepest hell than just ere he

begins to reap the reward of his doings--for he is in a condition to

receive the smallest show of the life that is, as a boon unspeakable.

All his years in the world he received the endless gifts of sun and

air, earth and sea and human face divine, as things that came to him

because that was their way, and there was no one to prevent them; now

the poorest thinning of the darkness he would hail as men of old the

glow of a descending angel; it would be as a messenger from God. Not

that he would think of God! it takes long to think of God; but hope,

not yet seeming hope, would begin to dawn in his bosom, and the thinner

darkness would be as a cave of light, a refuge from the horrid self of

which he used to be so proud.

A man may well imagine it impossible ever to think so unpleasantly of

himself! But he has only to let things go, and he will make it the

real, right, natural way to think of himself. True, all I have been

saying is imaginary; but our imagination is made to mirror truth; all

the things that appear in it are more or less after the model of things

that are; I suspect it is the region whence issues prophecy; and when

we are true it will mirror nothing but truth. I deal here with the same

light and darkness the Lord dealt with, the same St. Paul and St. John

and St. Peter and St. Jude dealt with. Ask yourself whether the

faintest dawn of even physical light would not be welcome to such a

soul as some refuge from the dark of the justly hated self.

And the light would grow and grow across the awful gulf between the

soul and its haven--its repentance--for repentance is the first

pressure of the bosom of God; and in the twilight, struggling and

faint, the man would feel, faint as the twilight, another thought

beside his, another thinking Something nigh his dreary self--perhaps

the man he had most wronged, most hated, most despised--and would be

glad that some one, whoever, was near him: the man he had most injured,

and was most ashamed to meet, would be a refuge from himself--oh, how

welcome!

So might I imagine a thousand steps up from the darkness, each a little

less dark, a little nearer the light--but, ah, the weary way! He cannot

come out until he have paid the uttermost farthing! Repentance once

begun, however, may grow more and more rapid! If God once get a willing

hold, if with but one finger he touch the man's self, swift as

possibility will he draw him from the darkness into the light. For that

for which the forlorn, self-ruined wretch was made, was to be a child

of God, a partaker of the divine nature, an heir of God and joint heir

with Christ. Out of the abyss into which he cast himself, refusing to

be the heir of God, he must rise and be raised. To the heart of God,

the one and only goal of the human race--the refuge and home of all and

each, he must set out and go, or the last glimmer of humanity will die

from him. Whoever will live must cease to be a slave and become a child

of God. There is no half-way house of rest, where ungodliness may be

dallied with, nor prove quite fatal. Be they few or many cast into such

prison as I have endeavoured to imagine, there can be no deliverance

for human soul, whether in that prison or out of it, but in paying the

last farthing, in becoming lowly, penitent, self-refusing--so receiving

the sonship, and learning to cry, _Father_!