"And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the
dead, they will repent. But he said, If they hear not Moses and the
prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the
dead."--ST. LUKE xvi. 30, 31.
It is by no means uncommon for any one who is living a life which does
not satisfy his own conscience to console himself with the fancy that if
only such and such things were different around him he would be a new
man, filled with a new spirit, and exhibiting a new character. But is it
so very certain that this would be the case?
Such persons are apt to dream of some goodness or some virtue which under
other circumstances they would make their own; and there are, in fact,
few conditions more dangerous than that of this class of dreamers,
whether among boys or men. To all who may be tempted in this way, our
Lord's words in the parable come with a very significant warning: "Nay,
father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will
repent. But he said, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither
will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
When insidious and delusive hope would draw us on and beguile us in any
sinful way, whispering that God will some day send special gifts and
messengers of grace to inspire us with new life, this is his plain
answer: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be
persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
And hardly any one can say that he is altogether free from this tendency
to lean upon the future with vain hopes, and is in no need of the warning
which this text conveys to us.
In serious moments, when the mind is calm, and neither passion nor
appetite is stirring, we feel how good a thing it is to have crucified
the flesh and to be living close to Christ; but when we are within the
fiery circle of trial or temptation, when sinful desires arise, or
passions are strong, or solicitations to evil are subtle and enticing,
then we are only too ready to catch at any hopes about the vague future.
To the unstable and incontinent, to those whose nature is weak while
their conscience is not dead, this hope is a dangerous temptation,
beguiling them with the suggestion that some day there will open before
them an easy path to that virtue or self-denial to which the way is too
rough at present. "Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from
the dead, they will repent." By-and-by, they say, as they dream about
the future, God will lay His hand upon them; the Holy Spirit will touch
their souls with new life; they will receive in some inscrutable way new
power, and in the exercise of this power they will cast off the bondage
of sin or weakness; but how and by what means this great and necessary
change is to be brought about they do not stop to think, and meanwhile
they yield to worldly or fleshly appetite, trusting vaguely to an
uncertain future for some Divine gift.
If you look into the thoughts and habits of your life, some of you may be
compelled to acknowledge that this case is not unfamiliar to you. So men
sometimes dally with a temptation, and linger beside it, courting its
company, instead of flinging it away from them, as the snare of the
devil, because of some secret hope that by-and-by God will place them out
of the way of it, or give them some new strength against it, which as yet
has not been given. How easy it is for us to entice ourselves in this
way out of the narrow path of present duty into the tangled wilderness of
a weak and sinful life, from which escape becomes every day more
difficult.
And this enticement along the ways of sin being so easy, it may be
happening to some of you. You may feel that, judged even by your own
standard, which is more likely to be too low than too high, your life is
somehow unsatisfactory; your better instincts may be telling you that you
were born for something higher, purer, stronger than what you are or have
been; and you are cherishing the hope that it will be different with you
some day; your circumstances, you think, or your occupation, or your
companionship will have changed, and so you fondly imagine that you
yourself will be sure to change, as if your soul were just a weathercock
that answers to every changing breeze. So perhaps you hope that some
habit of self-indulgence or idleness will drop off, or some evil temper
be eradicated; and whilst all this vague and mischievous dreaming goes on
you yield very likely to some besetting sin, making no serious effort to
get away from it now, and you yield all the more because of this
misleading hope that some day you will be touched by a supernatural hand,
and will rise up to a regenerate life. And yet our reason tells us that
all this is the very essence of self-deceit, and that such dreams and
hopes are the devil's most subtle temptation. This kind of vain hope is
based on a complete misconception of the nature of our conflict with sin,
and the way to escape from it. To think thus of spiritual gifts and the
growth of the spiritual life, is to follow a very dangerous delusion. It
was just such a misunderstanding that is expressed in the hope of Dives
about his brethren: "If one went unto them from the dead, they will
repent." Their ordinary daily teachings, he seems to say, the voice of
Moses and of the prophets, the examples of good men around them, the
warnings, the exhortations, these, being so familiar, may not have
startled them out of their sin; but if only one were to go to them from
the dead, some messenger of strange voice and aspect, who had seen hell,
and could paint its horrors, then surely the course of their life would
be checked and changed, and their spirit would wake up in them, and they
would sin no more. But to all this comes back the stern warning of the
Divine answer: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will
they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
And we may profitably consider what this means in its application to our
own life. Such a warning is evidently meant to remind us that the
mystery of sin in human life is not to be got rid of by any such reliance
on vague hopes. This mystery of sin in the heart and life, misleading,
weakening, dragging us down, means in fact the subtle, poisonous,
creeping power which evil inclinations exercise over a weak and depraved
will. Are we, then, to trust to some sudden visitation from above, for
which we make no preparation, to break down or overthrow a power of this
kind? On the contrary, the words of this parable stand here to declare
to us that it is nothing less than perversity and folly in any man to go
on either defiling his nature, or degrading it, or even neglecting to
strengthen and support it, under this delusion that some day the breath
of Heaven will sweep it clean or give it new vigour. And your own
experience is in exact accordance with these parabolic warnings of the
Saviour. You know that your moral and spiritual nature is now at this
present time undergoing a process of continual and momentous change, that
every day, or week, or month leaves its mark upon it; and that your
soul's life means not waiting for some angel of God's providential grace
to visit you and carry you up into a new air; but it means that you are
weaving the web of your unchangeable destiny by your use or abuse of the
gifts of God that are in your hands to-day.
Born into the world with the taint of inherited corruption in us, as also
with the germs of pure affection and high instinct and purpose, we have
to take care for ourselves and for each other that the taint does not eat
out the good, by growing into sins of boyhood or of youth, or by
hardening into depraved habits in our manhood. If we let our youth take
an unhappy downward course, whether in taste or habit, every day puts
salvation farther off from us, because every day any fault which is
indulged or nursed tends to grow deeper and more inveterate; and yet,
forgetting this, how many, while their early years are running to waste,
nurse the vain hope that some day they will receive the sudden baptism of
a new birth.
So, then, instead of vaguely trusting, any of us, to the hope of what
some future call or help or happy visitation may do for us, let us obey
the Divine injunction, which, when rightly understood, is very pressing,
urging us, as we hope to see good days, to be very jealous of our present
life and its tendencies; let us do this, standing always firm and
immovable in the things that are pure and of good report.
However it may be in some other matters, in this matter of our moral and
spiritual life, the greatest, the most important, the most serious thing
of all, it is almost invariably true that the child is father of the man,
and we feel that we have no right to expect it to be otherwise. In our
everyday consideration of life, we recognise all this: we speak of growth
in character and formation of habit as facts which no one would ignore,
and which cannot be overestimated. But to acknowledge these, and at the
same time to trust that God will hereafter arrest any stream of sinful
tendency in us which we ourselves do not attempt to stop now, is to add
presumption to sin.
When we speak of Heaven and Hell, we have in our thoughts the vision of
those ultimate points towards which the diverging courses of men's lives
are slowly tending day by day. And the question rises: "On which of
these lines is my life travelling at the present time, and towards which
side of the impassable gulf?"
At present we know that the way of Christ is still open before us, and
that He calls us with a voice which never grows weary; but we feel
equally that the future is dark, if we waste or misuse the present, and
we do not know how long the heavenward path may be as open, or as easy,
as it is to-day. For the question is not a question of God's untiring
patience or the never-failing love of Christ. It is not how long will
His Spirit continue to strive with us, as it has striven hitherto,
through the care and love of parent or friend, through the exhortations
or efforts of a teacher, or the example of a companion, or in a thousand
other ways. The question is rather whether it is not folly to expect
that God will send upon us some other more powerful regenerating and
strengthening influence, if we are now neglecting all this care and love
and patient striving on our behalf. "If they hear not Moses and the
prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
Consider these things while life is fresh, and good influences are
present with you. Whatever our faults may be, they all come under this
one rule, that to-day is given us to win our freedom from their power--to-
day and not to-morrow. The question which is pressed home through the
warning of this parable is thus a very plain one: "What is my future hope
or prospect, if I let this or that particular sin lurk and linger in my
heart, feeding upon me every day, and growing stronger in consequence?
What if I do not resist any fault that has a hold upon me? What if I do
not pray to be delivered from it? What if I do not flee from it?"
If you hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will you be persuaded,
though one rose from the dead.