'Think on these things.' To begin with, that advice implies that we can,
and, therefore, that we should, exercise a very rigid control over that
part of our lives which a great many of us never think of controlling at
all. There are hosts of people whose thoughts are just hooked on to one
another by the slightest links of accidental connection, and who
scarcely ever have put a strong hand upon them, or coerced them into
order, or decided what they are going to let come into their minds, and
what to keep out. Circumstances, the necessities of our daily
occupations, the duties that we owe to one another, all these make
certain streams of thought very necessary, and to some of us very
absorbing. And for the rest--well! 'He that hath no rule over his own
spirit is like a city broken down, without walls'; anybody can go in,
and anybody can come out. I am sure that amongst young men and women
there are multitudes who have never realised how responsible they are
for the flow of the waves of that great river that is always coming from
the depths of their being, and have never asked whether the current is
bringing down sand or gold. Exercise control, as becomes you, over the
run and drift of your thoughts. I said that many of us had minds like
cities broken down. Put a guard at the gate, as they do in some
Continental countries, and let in no vagrant that cannot show his
passport, and a clear bill of health. Now, that is a lesson that some of
you very much want.
But, further, notice that company of fair guests that you may welcome
into the hospitalities of your heart and mind. 'Think on these
things'--and what are they? It would be absurd of me to try to exhaust
the great catalogue which the Apostle gives here, but let me say a word
or two about it.
'Whatsoever things are true . . . think on these things.' Let your minds
be exercised, breathed, braced, lifted, filled by bringing them into
contact with truth, especially with the highest of all truths, the
truths affecting God and your relations to Him. Why should you, like so
many of us, be living amidst the small things of daily life, the trifles
that are here, and never coming into vital contact with the greatest
things of all, the truths about God and Christ, and what you have to do
with them, and what they have to do with you? 'Whatsoever things are
true . . . think on these things.'
'Whatsoever things are honest,' or, as the word more properly and nobly
means, 'Whatsoever things are _reverent_, or _venerable_'--let grave,
serious, solemn thought be familiar to your minds, not frivolities, not
mean things. There is an old story in Roman history about the barbarians
breaking into the Capitol, and their fury being awed into silence, and
struck into immobility, as they saw, round and round in the hall, the
august Senators, each in his seat. Let your minds be like that, with
reverent thoughts clustering on every side; and when wild passions, and
animal desires, and low, mean contemplations dare to cross the
threshold, they will be awed into silence and stillness. 'Whatsoever
things are august . . . think on these things.'
'Whatsoever things are just'--let the great, solemn thought of duty,
obligation, what I ought to be and do, be very familiar to your
consideration and meditation. 'Whatsoever things are just . . . think on
these things.'
'Whatsoever things are pure'--let white-robed angels haunt the place.
Let there be in you a shuddering recoil from all the opposite; and
entertain angels _not_ unawares. 'Whatsoever things are pure . . . think
on these things.'
Now, these characteristics of thoughts which I have already touched upon
all belong to a lofty region, but the Apostle is not contented with
speaking austere things. He goes now into a region tinged with emotion,
and he says, 'whatsoever things are lovely'; for goodness is beautiful,
and, in effect, is the only beautiful. 'Whatsoever things are lovely . . .
think on these things.' And 'whatsoever things are of good report'--all
the things that men speak well of, and speak good in the very naming of,
let thoughts of them be in your minds.
And then he gathers all up into two words. 'If there be any
virtue'--which covers the ground of the first four, that he has already
spoken about--viz. true, venerable, just, pure; and 'if there be any
praise'--which resumes and sums up the two last: 'lovely and of good
report,' 'think on these things.'
Now, if my purpose allowed it, one would like to point out here how the
Apostle accepts the non-Christian notions of the people in whose tongue
he was speaking; and here, for the only time in his letters, uses the
great Pagan word 'virtue,' which was a spell amongst the Greeks, and
says, 'I accept the world's notion of what is virtuous and praiseworthy,
and I bid you take it to your hearts.'
Dear brethren, Christianity covers all the ground that the noblest
morality has ever attempted to mark out and possess, and it covers a
great deal more. 'If there be any virtue, as you Greeks are fond of
talking about, and if there be any praise, if there is anything in men
which commends noble actions, think on these things.'
Now, you will not obey this commandment unless you obey also the
negative side of it. That is to say, you will not think on these fair
forms, and bring them into your hearts, unless you turn away, by
resolute effort, from their opposites. There are some, and I am afraid
that in a congregation as large as this there must be some
representatives of the class, who seem to turn this apostolic precept
right round about, and whatsoever things are illusory and vain,
whatsoever things are mean, and frivolous, and contemptible, whatsoever
things are unjust, and whatsoever things are impure, and whatsoever
things are ugly, and whatsoever things are branded with a stigma by all
men they think on _these_ things. Like the flies that are attracted to a
piece of putrid meat, there are young men who are drawn by all the
lustful, the lewd, the impure thoughts; and there are young women who
are too idle and uncultivated to have any pleasure in anything higher
than gossip and trivial fiction. 'Whatsoever things are noble and
lovely, think on these things,' and get rid of all the others.
There are plenty of occasions round about you to force the opposite upon
your notice; and, unless you shut your door fast, and double-lock it,
they will be sure to come in:--Popular literature, the scrappy
trivialities that are put into some periodicals, what they call
'realistic fiction'; modern Art, which has come to be largely the
servant of sense; the Stage, which has come--and more is the pity! for
there are enormous possibilities of good in it--to be largely a minister
of corruption, or if not of corruption at least of frivolity--all these
things are appealing to you. And some of you young men, away from the
restraints of home, and in a city, where you think nobody could see you
sowing your wild oats, have got entangled with them. I beseech you, cast
out all this filth, and all this meanness and pettiness from your
habitual thinkings, and let the august and the lovely and the pure and
the true come in instead. You have the cup in your hand, you can either
press into it clusters of ripe grapes, and make mellow wine, or you can
squeeze into it wormwood and gall and hemlock and poison-berries; and,
as you brew, you have to drink. You have the canvas, and you are to
cover it with the figures that you like best. You can either do as Fra
Angelico did, who painted the white walls of every cell in his quiet
convent with Madonnas and angels and risen Christs, or you can do like
some of those low-toned Dutch painters, who never can get above a brass
pan and a carrot, and ugly boors and women, and fill the canvas with
vulgarities and deformities. Choose which you will have to keep you
company.
II. Now, let me ask you to think for a moment _why_ this counsel is
pressed upon you.
Let me put the reasons very briefly. They are, first, because thought
moulds action. 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.' One looks
round the world, and all these solid-seeming realities of institutions,
buildings, governments, inventions and machines, steamships and electric
telegrams, laws and governments, palaces and fortresses, they are all
but embodied thoughts. There was a thought at the back of each of them
which took shape. So, in another sense than the one in which the saying
was originally meant, but yet an august and solemn sense, 'the word is
made flesh,' and our thoughts became visible, and stand round us, a
ghastly company. Sooner or later what has been the drift and trend of a
man's life comes out, flashes out sometimes, and dribbles out at other
times, into visibility in his actions; and, just as the thunder follows
on the swift passage of the lightning, so my acts are neither more nor
less than the reverberation and after-clap of my thoughts.
So if you are entertaining in your hearts and minds this august company
of which my text speaks, your lives will be fair and beautiful. For what
does the Apostle immediately go on to add to our text? 'These things
do'--as you certainly will if you think about them, and as you certainly
will not unless you do.
Again, thought and work make character. We come into the world with
certain dispositions and bias. But that is not character, it is only the
raw material of character. It is all plastic, like the lava when it
comes out of the volcano. But it hardens, and whatever else my thought
may do, and whatever effects may follow upon any of my actions, the
recoil of them on myself is the most important effect to me. And there
is not a thought that comes into, and is entertained by a man, or rolled
as a sweet morsel under his tongue, but contributes its own little but
appreciable something to the making of the man's character. I wonder if
there is anybody in this chapel now who has been so long accustomed to
entertain these angels of whom my text speaks as that to entertain their
opposites would be an impossibility. I hope there is. I wonder if there
is anybody in this chapel to-night who has been so long accustomed to
live amidst the thoughts that are small and trivial and frivolous, if
not amongst those that are impure and abominable, as that to entertain
their opposites seems almost an impossibility. I am afraid there are
some. I remember hearing about a Maori woman who had come to live in one
of the cities in New Zealand, in a respectable station, and after a year
or two of it she left husband and children, and civilisation, and
hurried back to her tribe, flung off the European garb, and donned the
blanket, and was happy crouching over the embers on the clay hearth.
Some of you have become so accustomed to the low, the wicked, the
lustful, the impure, the frivolous, the contemptible, that you cannot,
or, at any rate, have lost all disposition to rise to the lofty, the
pure, and the true.
Once more; as thought makes deeds, and thought and deeds make character,
so character makes destiny, here and hereafter. If you have these
blessed thoughts in your hearts and minds, as your continual companions
and your habitual guests, then, my friend, you will have a light within
that will burn all independent of externals; and whether the world
smiles or frowns on you, you will have the true wealth in yourselves; 'a
better and enduring substance.' You will have peace, you will be lords
of the world, and having nothing yet may have all. No harm can come to
the man who has laid up in his youth, as the best treasure of old age,
this possession of these thoughts enjoined in my text.
And character makes destiny hereafter. What is a man whose whole life
has been one long thought about money-making, or about other objects of
earthly ambition, or about the lusts of the flesh, and the lusts of the
eye, and the pride of life, to do in heaven? What would one of those
fishes in the sunless caverns of America, which, by long living in the
dark, have lost their eyes, do, if it were brought out into the
sunshine? A man will go to his own place, the place for which he is
fitted, the place for which he has fitted himself by his daily life, and
especially by the trend and the direction of his thoughts.
So do not be led away by talk about 'seeing both sides,' about 'seeing
life,' about 'knowing what is going on.' 'I would have you simple
concerning evil, and wise concerning good.' Do not be led away by talk
about having your fling, and sowing your wild oats. You may make an
indelible stain on your conscience, which even forgiveness will not wipe
out; and you may sow your wild oats, but what will the harvest be?
'Whatsoever a man soweth that'--_that_--'shall he also reap.' Would you
like all your low thoughts, all your foul thoughts, to return and sit
down beside you, and say, 'We have come to keep you company for ever'?
'If there be any virtue . . . think on these things.'