'There is that maketh himself rich, and yet hath nothing.' That
describes accurately the type of man of whom there are thousands; of
whom there are dozens listening to me at this moment; who ignores
dependence and is not conscious of sin, and so struts about in
self-complacent satisfaction with himself, and knows nothing of his
true condition. There is nothing more tragic--and so it would be seen
to be if it were not so common--than that a man, laden, as we each of
us are, with a burden of evil that we cannot get rid of, should yet
conceit himself to possess merits, virtues, graces, that ought to
secure for him the admiration of his fellows, or, at least, to exempt
him from their censure, and which he thinks, when he thinks about it
at all, may perhaps secure for him the approbation of God. 'The
deceitfulness of sin' is one of its mightiest powers. There is nothing
that so blinds a man to the real moral character of actions as that
obstinate self-complacency which approves of a thing because it is
mine. You condemn in other people the very things you do yourself. You
see all their ugliness in them; you do not recognise it when it is
your deed. Many of you have never ventured upon a careful examination
and appraisement of your own moral and religious character. You durst
not, for you are afraid that it would turn out badly. So, like some
insolvent who has not the courage to face the facts, you take refuge
in defective bookkeeping, and think that that is as good as being
solvent. Then you have far too low a standard, and one of the main
reasons why you have so low a standard is just because the sins that
you do have dulled your consciences, and like the Styrian peasants
that eat arsenic, the poison does not poison you, and you do not feel
yourself any the worse for it. Dear brethren! these are very rude
things for me to say to you. I am saying them to myself as much as to
you, and I would to God that you would listen to them, not because I
say them, but because they are true. The great bulk of us know our own
moral characters just as little as we know the sound of our own
voices. I suppose if you could hear yourself speak you would say, 'I
never knew that my voice sounded like that.' And I am quite sure that
many of you, if the curtain could be drawn aside which is largely
woven out of the black yarn of your own evil thoughts, and you could
see yourselves as in a mirror, you would say, 'I had no notion that I
looked like that.' 'There is that maketh himself rich, and yet hath
nothing.'
Ay! and more than that. The making of yourself rich is the sure way to
prevent yourself from ever being so. We see that in all other regions
of life. If a student says to himself, 'Oh! I know all that subject,'
the chances are that he will not get it up any more; and the further
chance is that he will be 'ploughed' when the examination-day comes.
If the artist stands before the picture, and says to himself, 'Well
done, that is the realisation of my ideal!' he will paint no more
anything worth looking at. And in any department, when a man says 'Lo!
I have attained,' then he ceases to advance.
Now, bring all that to bear upon religion, upon Christ and His
salvation, upon our own spiritual and religious and moral condition.
The sense of imperfection is the salt of approximation to perfection.
And the man that says 'I am rich' is condemning himself to poverty and
pauperism. If you do not know your need, you will not go to look for
the supply of it. If you fancy yourselves to be quite well, though a
mortal disease has gripped you, you will take no medicine, nor have
recourse to any physician. If you think that you have enough good to
show for man's judgment and for God's, and have not been convinced of
your dependence and your sinfulness, then Jesus Christ will be very
little to you, and His great work as the Redeemer and Saviour of His
people from their sins will be nothing to you. And so you will condemn
yourselves to have nothing unto the very end.
I believe that this generation needs few things more than it needs a
deepened consciousness of the reality of sin and of the depth and
damnable nature of it. It is because people feel so little of the
burden of their transgression that they care so little for that gentle
Hand that lifts away their burden. It is because from much of popular
religion--and, alas! that I should have to say it, from much of
popular preaching--there has vanished the deep wholesome sense of
poverty, that, from so much of popular religion, and preaching too,
there has faded away the central light of the Gospel, the proclamation
of the Cross by which is taken away the sin of the whole world.