"As it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes
that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear."--ROMANS
xi. 8.
"Blindness in part is happened to Israel."--ROMANS xi. 25.
It is a sad and painful reflection, and one which is continually forced
upon us as we read the New Testament, that the long training and
preparation of the Jews brought them at the last not to the acceptance
but to the rejection of Jesus.
They had been taught, generation after generation, that they were the
called and chosen people of God. Psalmists and prophets had enriched
their life with the outpouring of their moral and spiritual revelations,
and fired their hopes with promises. They lived in the expectation of
the Messiah who was to complete these revelations of the God who had led
them and taught them ever since the days of their Egyptian bondage.
Yet, when this crowning revelation came to them, they could not even
recognise it. The Son of God "came unto His own and His own received Him
not." As St. Paul expresses it in my text, while grieving for them with
all the intensity of his fervid affection, their life was overgrown with
a sort of spiritual dulness. They were suffering from a sort of
ossification of the spirit, so that the last and greatest revelation of
God could make no impression upon them.
But this picture of the Jews rejecting and crucifying their Saviour, and
unable to appreciate or to receive the gift of new life which was offered
to them, blind to its beauty, unattracted by its charm, is not only one
of the saddest sights in history, it is very instructive for every one of
us, because it is charged with warnings that are never out of date. For
there is no individual life, and no society, that is not liable to drift
into a similar dulness of vision, and so to reject or disregard what God
gives for its enlightenment. The great critical events in the world's
history, the events that make epochs in the consciousness of men, are not
different in kind from those of our own obscure lives. They are, as it
were, our own familiar experience, written prophetically and written
large.
So the blindness that happened to Israel, and arrested their spiritual
growth, may be happening no less to any of us. As God gave them the
spirit of slumber, so it may be with our lives.
And the very thought of our possible risks in this respect is valuable to
us.
To be conscious that in regard to any of the higher and better things of
life our eyes may possibly be growing dim, and our ears dull of hearing,
and that God may be pressing upon us gifts of great price which we are
too dull to see or to accept--if our soul is sufficiently awake to feel
this, then the very feeling may of itself be the germ of new life in us.
And it is very certain, on the other hand, that if we are altogether
without any such feelings there is a risk, which even amounts to a
probability, that the hardening or deadening influences of custom and
tradition will sooner or later degrade our life. And if it should be
asked,--How comes it that we are so liable to be affected by this dulness
of spirit and of general habit?--we have to reply that it is because of
the sensitiveness of the human soul to surrounding influences.
It is because our souls are so receptive, so imitative, and in
consequence so easily perverted, darkened, blinded, or misled. I suppose
we are all of us conscious of this sensitiveness of the moral and
spiritual nature; we should all say, if questioned, that we are quite
aware of it, and that no one would dispute it. The soul of every child
or man, we should say, is a fine and delicate and sensitive instrument,
with the possibilities in it of we know not what Divine harmonies, but
easily spoilt.
And yet, when we look at all the common and traditional ordering of
daily life, whether in our educating of the young or in the influences
that we allow to prevail among young and old, it would seem sometimes as
if this thought of the soul's sensitiveness had never dawned upon us.
When we once really grasp this thought, or, let us rather say, when this
thought has once really fastened upon our mind, and fixed itself there,
so that it remains with us, and goes about with us; and when, in
consequence, we come to feel how easily any soul may be perverted, or
rendered hard or dull; in one word, how easily it may be degraded; then
it follows that we look with new eyes on many things, many customs, many
influences which the unthinking hardly notice, or notice only to
misjudge.
In the light of this feeling of the soul's sensitiveness, the thoughtful
man is very often intolerant of things which to others seem of little
moment, because he sees how they are tending to dull or deaden the eye of
the soul, or to pervert or to kill its finer instincts; and how, in
consequence, though tradition may have given them a sort of spurious
consecration, or the world in its blindness may have come to honour them,
they are in fact laden with mischief to the general life.
It was the thought of this sensitiveness of the soul to external
influences, and of the ease with which any bad influence, or bad custom
or practice or fashion, perverts common lives, and of the untold mischief
which is consequently latent in it, that winged the words of a well-known
writer when she protested, some years ago, against what she designated as
debasing the moral currency.
That writer was thinking primarily of vulgar jesting on great subjects,
which should stir us to admiration and reverence, and so debasing men's
tastes. She had in her mind the class of persons who have the art of
spoiling things that are noble or beautiful by their vulgar handling of
them; and of the mischief which is done by such persons to public taste
and tone and character.
But we may widen the reference. Whosoever, in anything that concerns
the conduct of life, spreads low notions, or drags down men's opinion or
taste, thus helping to pervert ordinary minds from those higher aims and
motives and those reverent views of character and life which should be
cherished for our common use and service, is debasing the moral currency.
Here, then, we have a very practical question for our consideration and
answering. "Is there anything in my life"--so the question comes to us
in our self-examination--"which could be so described? any influence,
spreading from my conduct, of which men might truly say that it also is
helping to debase the moral currency? Is there to be seen in it anything
that tends towards the lowering of common standards? any misuse of things
sacred or holy? any foolish or vulgar estimate of the higher things of
life?" And if we are in any doubt how to put these questions in a
concrete and practical shape, we have only to remember how any one who
helps to lower any standard of taste or conduct is debasing the moral
currency of life; how, for instance, all those are debasing it who
substitute any wrong notion of honour for right notions of honour, or who
put roughness and coarseness in place of manliness, or who set the
fashion of cynical judgments on good and bad characters.
Or we might take an illustration from what is, unhappily, a very common
element in English life: the habit of gambling sport. Wherever this
habit spreads, in any class of society, from the highest to the lowest,
its effect is invariable; it undermines integrity, it hardens the heart
and debases taste, and is the willing handmaid of other vices. Moral
degradation is its inseparable companion. Therefore, if you mix in it,
or share in it, or give any adhesion or countenance to it, which helps,
as men say, to make it respectable, and so to spread its influence, you
are debasing the moral currency.
Or take another common case. You are familiar with the poet's
description, "And thus he bore without abuse the grand old name of
gentleman." That is a noble thing for any man or boy to have said of
him; and there is not one among you who does not desire always to be able
to claim that name as his own.
But, wherever we go in the world, how many men there are who claim it and
yet debase it by ignoble use! They help to spread the notion that a man
may be a man of low morality and still a gentleman; that his
gentlemanliness may be a mere varnish of culture and manners, a thin
veneering having underneath it only meanness, or coarseness, or
corruption; and that, notwithstanding this, he may still claim to be
called a gentleman. Those who spread such doctrines are debasing the
moral currency of English life. And it should be the mission of schools
like this, and of those who grow up in them, to pour upon all such
persons the contempt which they deserve, and to restore the currency of
common life to something of Christian purity.
Remembering, then, how sensitive the soul is, and how easily by example,
or conduct, or fashion it may be so perverted as to lose its clear vision
and higher aims, its pure tastes and ennobling emotions, we have to make
it our ambition and endeavour that our life may be kept free from such
debasement.
But, if we are to succeed in this, we must make it our daily prayer that
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ will enlighten the eyes of our
understanding, and give unto us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in
the knowledge and love of Him.