that it is an offence against God, an assault upon His throne, an
attack upon His life, an evil all but infinite? All the other
expressions of the evil of sin, the cries of misery which it has
wrung from its victims, the warnings which natural reason has
uttered against it, the tender lamentations with which the saints
have bewailed it, the penalties with which God has threatened to
visit it, all pale before the announcement that God sent His Son
into the world to die for it. I do not wonder that, as the
evangelist tells us, the multitudes who came together at the
sight of our Saviour's crucifixion returned smiting their
breasts. Oh, what an awakening of stupefied consciences there
must have been that day! How many, who came out in the morning
careless and thoughtless, went back to the city with anxious
hearts, with a secret grief and fear within they had never felt
before. I suppose that even the scribes and Pharisees, who had
plotted our Saviour's death, felt, for the moment at least, a
guilty fear. Why, even Judas, when he saw what he had done,
repented, and went and hanged himself saying: "I have sinned in
that I have betrayed the innocent blood." And this book of the
Passion has been ever since the source from which penitents have
drawn their best motives for conversion, and saints their
strongest impulses to perfection. Here, on the cross, is the root
of that uncompromising and awful doctrine about sin--the
doctrine, I mean, that sin is in no case whatever to be allowed,
that even the smallest sin for the greatest result can never be
permitted; that it is an evil far greater than can be spoken or
imagined; that it must never be trifled with, or made light of;
that it is to be shunned with the greatest horror, and avoided,
if need be, even at the cost of our life--which has always been
so essential a part of Christianity.
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And now, my brethren, it is because men forget the cross, because
their minds no longer move on a Christian basis, that they make
light of sin. There is a tendency in our day to do so. Crime--men
acknowledge that, an offence against law, an offence against good
order. Vice--they acknowledge that, a hurtful and excessive
indulgence of passion; but _sin_, a creature's offence
against God, that they think impossible. "What! can I, a frail
creature," say they, "ignorant and passionate, can I do an injury
to God? I err by excess or defect in my conduct; I bring evil on
myself it is true; but what difference can that make to the
Supreme Being? Can He be very much displeased at my follies? Will
His serene Majesty in heaven be affected because I on this earth
am carried too far by passions? Can He care what my religious
belief is? or will He separate Himself from me eternally because
I have happened to violate some law?" Such language is an echo of
heathenism, and heathenism not of the best kind, for some
heathens have had a doctrine about sin which approached very near
to the Christian doctrine. It is moreover, a degrading doctrine;
for, while it leaves a man his intellect and animal nature, it
takes away his conscience. What is that conscience within us but
a witness that God does concern Himself about us--that my heart
is His throne, and that my everlasting destiny is union with Him.
"Every one that is born of God," says the apostle, "doth not
commit sin, for he cannot sin, because he is born of God." Not
that sin is a physical impossibility with him, but it is in
contradiction to his regenerate nature. In order, then, to soothe
yourself into the belief that sin is not so very bad, that God
cannot be very angry with you for it, you have got to tear
conscience from your heart, you have got to give up the good
gift, and the powers of the world to come, which came upon you at
your baptism; and you have to give up all the brightest hopes of
Christianity for the life hereafter. Nay, more, you have got to
deny the cross, to deny our Lord's divinity, to deny His
sufferings for sin, and thus to render yourself without faith as
well as without conscience.
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I conclude with the affectionate exhortation of St. John the
Apostle. "_My children, these things I write to you that ye sin
not." "All unrighteousness is sin_." Every breach of the moral
law is a failure in that homage, that obedience, that service we
owe to God. It is a direct offence against God. It is a thing
exceedingly to be feared and dreaded. A wrong word spoken or a
wrong action done has consequences which go far and wide. Do not
say, you have sinned, but have done harm to no one. You have done
harm to God, and you have certainly done harm to yourself. Do not
sin. Do not commit mortal or venial sin. Do not make light of
sin. Do not abide in sin. If you are in sin now, remember at this
holy time to repent and turn back to God: and if your conscience
tells you that you are now in the friendship of God, oh, let it
be all your care to avoid sin. Fly from the face of sin. Fly from
the approach of sin. Avoid the occasions of sin. Watch against
sin, and pray continually, not to be led into sin: and when your
hour of trial comes, when some strong temptation assails you,
then be ready to say, as the prophet Joseph, "What! shall I do
this wicked thing, and offend against God?" This is that fear of
God which is the beginning of wisdom. This is the happiness of
which the Psalmist spoke: "_Blessed is the man that hath not
walked in the council of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of
sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence; but his will is in
the law of the Lord, and on His law he shall meditate day and
night. And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the
running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit in due season.
And his leaf shall not fall off; and all, whatsoever he shall do,
shall prosper._" [Footnote 80]
[Footnote 80: Ps. i. 1-3.]
--------------------------------
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Sermon XIII.
Divine Calls And Warnings.
(A Sermon For Lent.)
"Seek ye the Lord while He may be found,
call upon Him while He is near."
--Isai. LV. 6.
The Wise Man tells us that "_all things have their season, and
in their times all things pass under heaven_." [Footnote 81]
Certainly, it is so in the natural world. There is a time for the
birds to migrate. "_The kite in the air knows her time, the
turtle and the swallow and the stork observe the time of their
coming_." [Footnote 82]
[Footnote 81: Eccl. iii. 1.]
[Footnote 82: Jer. viii. 7.]
There is a time for seeds and shrubs to grow. Seed-time and
harvest do not fail. There is a busy time and a slack time in the
world of commerce. There is a time for education, a time when the
mind is inquisitive and the memory retentive, and it is easy to
acquire knowledge; and another time, when the powers of the mind,
like the limbs of the body, seem to grow stiff and rigid, and can
be employed only with difficulty. But does this law reach also to
the supernatural world? Has the grace of God also its seasons and
its times? I believe it has; and it is to this fact, so important
in its bearing on our salvation, that I wish now to direct your
attention.
But you may ask me what I mean by saying that the grace of God
has its special times and seasons. Are not all times alike to
God? Is not God always ready to save the sinner, and to bestow
the graces necessary to his salvation? Undoubtedly He is. We,
Catholics, believe that God gives to every man living sufficient
grace, that is, He gives him the grace to pray; and if he prays,
God is ready to give him other and higher graces, which will
carry him on to salvation; but, ordinarily speaking, men do not
use this common grace, unless some special and particular grace
is given which excites them to do so.
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Now, it is of these special graces of which I speak, when I say
that they have their times and their seasons. I refer to those
Divine Calls and Warnings, those Providences, those sacred
inspirations, which stir the heart beneath its surface, and bring
it, for a time at least, in conscious contact with the Infinite
and Eternal. These, I say, come and go. They have a law of their
own. We cannot have them all the time. We cannot appoint a time,
and say we will have them to-morrow, or next year. They are like
the wind that blows; we hear the sound of it, but we cannot tell
whence it comes and whither it goes. They are like the lightning,
that shines from the east even unto the west. They come suddenly,
and dart a flash of light upon our path, then they are gone. They
are like the visit of Christ to the two disciples at Emmaus: as
soon as their hearts began to burn within them, and they
discovered who it was that talked with them, He vanished out of
their sight.
Certainly there are proofs enough that such is the law of God's
dealings with the soul. If we look back at our own lives, do we
not see that we have had our special times when Christ visited
us? our times of grace? red-letter days in the calendar of our
life? I know God's grace acts secretly; and oftentimes when we
are under the strongest influence of grace, we are least
conscious of it. But when the time is past and over, and we look
back upon it, we can see that there was a Divine influence upon
us, especially if we have corresponded to it. I think each one of
us, if he looks back upon the past, will see clearly the times
when he has been under the impulse of some unusual movement of
the mind, the result of some special grace of God. Perhaps it
came in the shape of some great affliction. You had a happy home.
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The purest of earthly joys was yours--domestic happiness, perfect
sympathy in gladness and in sorrow. But death entered your abode,
and the loving voice was silenced, and the kindly eye was closed.
And in that deep grief, in that darkness and loneliness Christ
spoke to your sinking heart, saying, "Fear not;" and you came
forth out of that affliction with a new strength, with purer
aims, with a quietness and peace of heart which only suffering
can give.
Or, perhaps, the crisis in your history was your attendance on a
"mission." You had lived in neglect of religion, almost complete.
Confession was a bugbear to you. Years of sin and forgetfulness
of God had hardened your conscience. But suddenly all was
changed. You seemed a new man. Your faith was illuminated with a
new brilliancy. Sin had a new horror. The string of your tongue
was loosed, and oh, with what ease, with what fidelity and
exactness, you made that dreaded confession! What comfort you
derived from it! and with what energy and determination did you
enter on the duties of a Christian life!
Or, it might have been in less striking ways that grace did its
work. It may have been a book, a word, an interior inspiration,
some of the seasons of the holy Church, holy communion, some of
the lesser changes of life, a fit of sickness, a violent
temptation: these may have been the instruments which God made
use of, from time to time, to convey special graces to your soul.
Sometimes the aim of these graces was to arouse you out of some
deeply-seated habit of sin; sometimes to draw your heart away
from the world to heaven; sometimes it was a call to prayer;
sometimes a warning of danger: in fine, for some purpose bearing
on your salvation, there they are, those visits of grace in your
past life, as distinct and unmistakable as any other part of your
history. When we read the Bible story of such saints as Abraham,
Moses, and Elias, what strikes us as most wonderful and most
beautiful is the familiarity in which they lived with God, how
God drew near to them and spoke to them.
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Now, such passages have a parallel in the history of each one of
us. There are times in our lives, and not a few such times, when
God draws near to the soul, when He confronts it, makes special
demands upon it, addresses it no longer in general, but
particularly and individually; when He says to the soul, Go and
do this, Do not do that, as unmistakably as when He said to
Abraham: "_Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred,
and out of thy father's house, and come into the land which I
shall show thee_." [Footnote 83]
[Footnote 83: Gen. xii. 1.]
And if this be so, the mode in which we receive these divine
communications must have a great deal to do with our guilt or
innocence before God. We read in the Book of Judges, that on a
certain occasion an angel of the Lord appeared to Manne and his
wife, with a message from on high. He appeared to them in a human
shape, and spoke with a human voice, and they did not know that
he was an angel. It was not until they saw him ascend to heaven
in the flame from the altar that they understood that they had
been talking with one of the heavenly host. Then they said:
"_We shall certainly die because we have seen God!_"
[Footnote 84]
[Footnote 84: Judges xiii. 22.]
Now, there is a sense in which this exclamation is neither
superstitious nor strange, as the expression, that is, of their
anxiety lest in their ignorance they might have treated their
heavenly visitor in some unseemly way. O my brethren, it is no
light thing for God to draw near to a human soul. It is no light
thing for Him to speak to us. When He speaks we cannot be as if
He had not spoken. "His word shall not return to Him void." The
relation between the Creator and the creature is such, that the
moment He speaks our position is altered. When He calls we must
either follow or refuse to follow; there is no neutrality
possible.
{344}
Oh, what a thought, that if indeed God has spoken to us often in
our past lives, if He has given us special calls and warnings, we
must often have resisted Him! There are many of us, I fear, who
have altogether too little conscience on this subject. A man
comes to confession after an absence of several years. He
confesses his more prominent sins against the divine
commandments, but perhaps he does not even mention his failure to
perform each year his Easter duty. And if the confessor calls his
attention to it, he has nothing to say but, "Oh, yes, I neglected
that." You see, he does not realize at all that God has been
calling him from year to year, has met him again and again, and
exhorted him to repent, and he has refused.
Another man hears a sermon which thoroughly awakens his
conscience. He sees in the clearest light the danger of his
besetting sin. His conscience is stirred, he almost resolves to
break off his sin, but he does not quite come to the point, he
postpones his conversion, and, after a little, dismisses the
subject from his mind. Now here again, you see, is a distinct
resistance to grace. The man has not only continued in sin, but
has continued in sin in spite of God's warning.
Again, a person, free from the grosser forms of sin, has some
radical fault of character; some fault which is apparent to
everyone but himself; a deep obstinacy; a dangerous levity; an
inveterate slothfulness; an overbearing temper; a domineering
spirit--faults which are the source of innumerable
difficulties--and he is plainly warned of these faults, but
refuses to acknowledge them, strengthens himself in his
self-deception, and clings to these faults as if they were a
necessary part of his character. What is he doing, but
frustrating the designs of God, despising His reproof, and
rejecting the grace which was meant to make him so much better,
so much happier, so much more useful?
{345}
Resisted grace! What is that but to withstand God to His face,
and to say: _I will not serve?_ To resist grace, what is
that but to despise the precious Blood of Christ. To obtain for
us those graces, the Blood of Christ and all His sufferings were
given, and without them we should have been left in our sins and
miseries; and so to refuse these graces is to make light of
Christ's most bitter Death and Passion. To resist grace, what is
that but to refuse glory. For each grace of God has a
corresponding degree of glory attached to it; and, if we refuse
the one, we reject the other. The truth is, we forget too much
God's personal agency in our salvation. We are on earth, and God
is far away in heaven. He has indeed left us His Law, and He is
coming to judge us at the last day, but He is not now a present,
watchful, living, speaking God to us. We forget that "_He is
not far from every one of us_." We forget that He is about our
path, and about our bed; that He watches us with the eagerness
and tenderness of a mother for her child; that He intensely
desires our salvation; that He pleads with us, warns us, calls to
us, stretches out His Hand to us all the day long. It is nothing
that He Himself tells us He stands at the door and knocks; it is
nothing that He calls to us from without, saying: "_Open to Me,
My love, for my head is wet with dew, and My locks with the drops
of the night;_" we open not; we heed Him not; we hear Him not.
Oh! I believe, at the Judgment Day, many a man will be appalled
to see how he has treated Christ. In the description which our
Lord has given us of that day, He tells us that the wicked shall
say, in answer to His reproofs: "_When saw we Thee hungry or
thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did
not minister to Thee?_" So, I believe, many will say: "O Lord,
when did we refuse to hear Thee? When did we shut our hearts to
Thy grace?" And He will answer: "When, at the voice of My
preacher, you refused to forsake that sin; when, at the
invitation of My Church, you refused to repent and amend; when,
at the call of My Spirit, you refused to awake from your sloth,
and follow after that perfection I demanded of you. In rejecting
My agents, you have rejected Me. It was I; I, your God and your
Saviour; I, your End and Reward, who walked with you on your way
through life, who opened to you the Scriptures, and sought to
enter in and tarry with you."
{346}
And, again, as resistance to grace is a special sin in itself,
and a special matter about which we must render an account to
God, so, when persisted in, it is the sure road to final
impenitence and reprobation. Let me bring before your mind some
of our Lord's emphatic teaching on this point.
Toward the latter part of our Lord's life, in preaching to His
disciples on a certain occasion, He used this parable: "A certain
man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking
fruit on it and found none. And he said to the tiller of the
vineyard: Behold, these three years I came seeking fruit on this
fig-tree, and I find none. Cut it down therefore; why doth it
take up the ground? But he answering, said to him: Lord, let it
alone this year also, until I dig about it and dung it. And if
happily it bear fruit: but if not, then after that thou shalt cut
it down." [Footnote 85]
[Footnote 85: St. Luke xiii. 6-9.]
The same lesson which in this parable Christ conveyed to the ear,
He addressed, about the same time, by a striking action, to the
eye. As He was going from Bethany to Jerusalem, He saw a fig-tree
by the wayside. "_And he came to it, and found nothing but
leaves only, and He said to it: May no fruit grow on thee
henceforward forever. And immediately the fig-tree withered away.
And the disciples seeing it, wondered, saying: How is it
presently withered away?_" [Footnote 86]
[Footnote 86: St. Matt. xxi. 19.]
The apostles could not fail to connect this action with the
parable quoted above, and to understand them both as referring to
the rejection of the Jewish people. For three years He preached
to that people, warned them, and instructed them. Then, at last,
when they refused to listen to Him, He withdrew from them His
presence, grace, and blessing, and left them to the consequences
of their unbelief and hardness of heart; left them to "wither
away."
{347}
Listen to His lamentation over that guilty city. It is Palm
Sunday. He is coming to the city in triumph. The crowds are
shouting hosannas. At last, in His journey He comes to the Mount
of Olives, whence the Holy City is full before His view. He looks
at it; He thinks of all He has done to warn that people and
convert them; He thinks of the ill success He has met with; He
knows that he is going there for the last time, and that in a few
days they will fill up the measure of their sins by nailing him
to the cross; and, as he looked upon it, He wept over it, and
said: "_If thou hadst known, and that in this thy day, the
things that are for thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy
eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall
cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten
thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy
children who are in thee: and they shall not leave in thee a
stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy
visitation_." [Footnote 87] Behold the end! a people resisting
grace, until at last grace forsakes them, and they are left to
their own impenitence and hardness of heart! And behold the
fearful image of a soul which has resisted grace, until its final
reprobation!
[Footnote 87: St. Luke xix. 41-44.]
Yes, my brethren, this is but the fearful image of what passes in
many a soul. What does the Holy Scripture say? "_The man that
with a stiff neck despiseth him that reproveth him shall suddenly
be destroyed; and health shall not follow him._" [Footnote 88]
[Footnote 88: Prov. xxix. 1.]
God does not desire the death of the wicked. God never entirely
ceases to strive with man. God never leaves a man altogether
destitute of grace. But then God is not bound to impart special
graces; and when He finds that these graces are uniformly
rejected, when he meets only a hardened heart and a will
obstinately bent on evil, He withholds them, or gives them less
frequently. Meanwhile bad habits increase; sins multiply; the
root of sin in the heart becomes deeper and stronger: years pass
on in sin, and at last death comes. What kind of a death
naturally follows such a life?
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What kind of death often, in point of fact, follows such a life?
I will tell you: an impenitent death; the death of the reprobate
and the lost. Perhaps the man dies a sudden death. He may die in
his bed, but die a sudden death for all that; for he may die out
of his senses, and unable to do any thing whatever toward making
his peace with God. Or, he may die in daring rebellion against
God. It is possible for men to die so. It is possible for a man
who has a deep enmity in his heart to refuse to give it up at the
last hour; and it does happen. It is possible for a man who has
dishonest wealth in his possession to clutch it even while his
fingers are cold and blue in the last agony; and that does
happen. It is possible for a man who has lived in shameful sins
of unchastity to refuse to dismiss the partner of his guilt,
though in five minutes his soul will be in hell; and that too has
happened. Or, a man may die in despair. The devil may bring the
fearful catalogue of his sins before his mind, in all their
blackness and enormity; the remembrance of bad confessions and
broken resolutions may paralyze his will; and the dreadful record
of communions made in sacrilege may complete the temptation, and
the poor soul turn away from the crucifix, turn away from the
priest, and die pouring forth the ravings of despair.
Or, on the contrary, he may die in presumption, in self-deceit.
He may indeed go through the form of a confession, may receive
the sacraments, and cheat himself into thinking it is all right,
and be all the time a hypocrite, turning from his sins, not
because he hates them, but because he can no longer enjoy them;
and may receive the absolution of the priest only to hear it
reversed the moment he gets into the presence of the unerring
Judge, before whom are open all the secrets of the heart.
{349}
Death in some such form is, I say, the natural end of neglect of
divine calls and warnings; and such a death is, in point of fact,
not unfrequently the actual end of such a course. "_For_,"
says the apostle, "_the earth that drinketh in the rain, which
cometh often upon it, and bringeth forth herbs useful for them by
whom it is tilled, receiveth blessing from God. But that which
bríngeth forth thorns and briers, is rejected, and very near to a
curse, whose end is to be burnt_." [Footnote 89]
[Footnote 89: Heb. vi. 7, 8.]