The one is built upon the rock. That just means, of course--and I need
not enlarge upon that--a life which is based upon, and shaped after, the
commandments of Jesus Christ, His Pattern and Example. And that life
will stand. Now, of course, the ideal would be that the whole of His
sayings should enter into the whole of our lives, that no commandment of
that dear Lord should be left unobeyed, and that no action of ours
should be unaffected by His known will. That is the ideal, and for us
the task of wisdom is daily to draw nearer and nearer to that ideal, and
to bring the whole of our lives more and more under the sway and
sanctifying influence of the whole sum of Christ's precepts. Of course,
on the other side, the life that is built on the sand is the life which
is not thus regulated by Christ's will and known commandments.
But I desire rather to bring out, in a word or two, some of the lessons
that may be gathered from this general metaphor of a man's life as a
house. And the first that I would suggest is this:--Have you ever
thought of your life as being a whole, with a definite moral
characteristic stamped upon it? I look upon the men and women that I
come across in the world, and I cannot help seeing that a great many of
them have never got into their heads the idea that their life is a
whole. A house? No. A cartload of bricks, tumbled down at random, would
be a better metaphor. A chain? No! A heap of links not linked. Many of
you live from hand to mouth. Many of you have such unity in your life as
comes from the pressure of the external circumstances of your trade or
profession. But for anything like the living consciousness that life is
a whole, with a definite moral character for which you are responsible,
it has never dawned upon your mind. And so you go on haphazard, never
bringing reflection to bear upon the trend and drift of your days; doing
what you must do because your occupation is this, that, or the other
thing; doing what you incline to do in the matter of recreation; now and
then sporadically, and for a minute or two, bringing conscience to bear,
and being very uncomfortable sometimes when you do. But as for
recognising the mystic solemnity of all these days of yours in that they
are welded together, and are all tending to one end, and that each
passing moment contributes its infinitesimal share to the awful solemn
whole--that has seldom entered your minds, and for a great many of you
it has never had any effect in restraining or stimulating or regulating
your conduct.
Then there is another consideration which this metaphor suggests--viz.
that the house is built up by slow degrees, brick upon brick, course by
course, day by day, and moment by moment. It is slow work, but certain
work. 'Let every man take heed how he buildeth,' and never despise the
little things. Very small bricks make a large house.
Then there is another consideration that I would suggest, and that is,
you have to live in the house that you build. Your deeds make the house
that Christ is here speaking of. Like the chrysalis that spins out of
its own entrails the cocoon in which it lies, so are you spinning, to
vary the metaphor, what you lodge in, until you eat your way through it,
and pass into the next stage of being. Our deeds seem transient, but
although we are building on the sand we are building for Eternity,
because, though the deeds are transient in appearance, they abide.
They abide in memory. Some of you know how true that is. Black memories
haunt some of us, and there could be for some no worse hell than that
God should say, 'Son, remember.' You have to live in the house that you
build. The deeds abide in habit. They abide in limiting and determining
what we can be and do in the future; and in a hundred other ways that I
must not touch upon. Only, I bring to you this question, and I pray God
that you may listen to it and answer it: What are you building? A shop?
That is a noble ambition, is it not? A pleasure-house? That is worse. A
prison? Some of you are rearing for your incarceration a jail where you
will be tied and held by the cords of your sins, and whence you will be
unable to break out. Or are you building a temple? If you are building
on Christ it is all right. Only take heed _what_ you build on that
foundation.