The ancient law that nature abhors a vacuum holds true in the moral
realm. The heart of man is never long empty. And yet the whole scheme
of modern ecclesiastical regulation of life is built on the plan of
making a man holy by emptying him of all evil and stopping there,
leaving a negative condition, without a thought of the necessity of
filling the void.
So long have we been trained in this that we are all a good deal more
concerned about the things we ought not to do than about the things we
ought to do. We spend our days nipping off the buds of evil
inclinations, pulling up the weeds of evil habits, wondering how it
happens they multiply so fast, forgetting altogether the wiser plan we
would adopt with weeds and briers in our gardens.
There are many who still think of the pious man as one who succeeds in
accomplishing the largest number of repressions in his life, the ideal
being the colourless life, never doing a thing that is wrong or subject
to criticism. The energy of many a life is being spent in a campaign
against a certain list of proscribed deeds. Blessed is the
man--according to their beatitudes--who has the largest number of
things he does not do.
But if rightness is abstinence from evil, then a lamp-post must always
be better than a man, for it justly can lay claim to all the negative
virtues. What an easy way of life is this, simply to find out the
things we know other people like to do and to determine that if we only
can leave them undone we are holy in the sight of heaven.
But not only is this a way of folly, it is a way of positive harm, a
way fatal at last to the true life. To do no more than to turn out one
set of devils only is to invite other and worse devils into the heart.
To seek emptiness only is to invite yet more iniquity. An empty heart
is as dangerous as an empty hour.
Emptiness is not holiness, it is idiocy. There cannot be an empty
heart. To take a bad thing away from a man gives an opportunity for a
worse thing to enter unless you simply choke the bad by implanting the
good. Some of the most dangerous people are those who feel pious
because they can say, We never did any harm.
Religion often has come to mean only a multitude of repressive
regulations, apparently a scheme for making others abstain from those
things for which we have no appetite. Little wonder that children feel
only repulsion for a church which seems to take delight in finding
impiety in every natural pleasure; that men turn from a path which,
according to its prospectus, promises nothing but pain, privation, and
emptiness.
We do not object to the pain and privation provided they have their
purpose. But all nature objects to a course of life that maims,
pinches, and restricts without corresponding and compensating
development and liberty somewhere. We fight against every law of life
and court the ways of death so long as we endeavour to develop
character by putting it into bandages, leading strings, and legal
restrictions.
There is evil to be eliminated; there are thousands of things we ought
not to do. But the best way to get rid of the tares is to sow good
wheat in abundance. The way to avoid the things we ought not to do is
to do the things that ought to be done. The empty life is a standing
invitation to temptation; the busy man seldom finds the devil's card
left at his door.
Live the life above the things you would overcome. It never has been
found necessary to pass a law prohibiting the president from playing
marbles; larger interests fill his life so that these things do not
even occur to him. Give a man a great work to do and you will save him
from a thousand temptations to do small and unworthy things. Do not
allow the modern conception of religion as gloom and denial to keep you
from that which is your right as a spiritual being, the strength, joy
and beauty of the divine life.
Holiness of life is not in innocence of evil but in positive
forcefulness for good; not in doing as little harm as we can, but in
filling the whole life with worthy, helpful, uplifting deeds. The good
life not only has no debts--it has large assets, deep and lasting
value; it enriches all life. It offers to the world not barren land
claiming the virtue of freedom from the thorn and the brier, it crowns
all with the abundance and glory of fir and myrtle.