with St. Paul's treatment of this complex problem of moral evil, he
moves on the surface. But he is himself; and, in his plain and terse
fashion, he forces upon our attention one truth which, on the principle
that an inch of fact is worth a yard of theory, is, if well in the
mind, more useful than acres of metaphysics which leave us very much
where we were. His broad affirmation is, that temptation does not, and
cannot, put sin into a man's mind or heart. Temptation does not make,
it only finds. "The prince of this world cometh," said our Lord, "and
hath, or findeth, nothing in Me." And His Apostle takes his stand on
the position, that temptation does no more than reveal the latent evil
within us, waiting its opportunity to come out. I mind me of a remark
I once read, and which has suggested whatever of worth there is in this
address. "As to the notion," says the writer, "that our adversary the
devil puts evil thoughts in our mind, I contend that neither God nor
devil does it. God would not, the devil cannot. The most that the
enemy of our souls can do, is to stir and use the possibilities already
there." [1]
This, if I rightly apprehend his meaning, is essentially the contention
of the Apostle James. The temptation is to the latent evil what the
spark is to the inflammable material. If the material were not there
the spark would be as harmless as though it dropped into ice-water. "I
can hear words, I can see things, but they will have power over me only
in the measure that something in me answers to the words and the
things." "I was so tempted," says a man, "and I yielded," which means
that the desire already there came into contact with the opportunity to
gratify it, and in what struggle there was, the desire was greater than
the will-power put out to control it. To say that the sight of
opportunity to do evil often makes evil done may be true, but the sight
does not make the evil, it only discovers the evil ready for the sight.
In the first place, then, the Apostle admonishes us, that we cannot
refer the guilt of our sin, or the responsibility for moral failure, to
causes and sources outside ourselves. We may do that with failure of
many kinds, but never in a case of conscious moral obliquity. The
Apostle James would have agreed with the greater Apostle when he said:
"I find a law within me, that when I would do good, evil is ever
present"; but he would not the less have stood his ground and said:
"Call it a law if you like, but it is not, and is not meant to be,
beyond our control. It is one thing to be tempted, it is another thing
to fall." Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust
and enticed.
Let us allow at this point for a word of qualification, or we may find
ourselves in confusion. As I have just hinted, we must not confound
moral guilt and its consequences with the consequences of troubles and
failures over which we have next to no control.
Here is a man, let us say, who is a hard worker, temperate,
enterprising, and upright. He is making headway in a certain business.
But a powerful combination is formed in the same line, which offers him
the two alternatives of absorption or almost certain ruin. He decides
to hold out against it, to find possibly after a time that his business
is gone, and with it his capital, and he himself in a world that
apparently has no further use for him. Then, soured and bitter,
nursing a sense of wrong, he gradually parts with his self-respect,
probably takes to drink, and goes down below the hope-mark of social
redemption.
The man--and you probably have known such an one--may, or he may not,
have been responsible for his business disasters. He had a right to
trust to his own judgment, and providing that he did not choose to
enter the combination, he was justified in making a struggle for his
own independence. Whether his decision was a wise one is nothing to
the point; it was his decision, and he had the right to exercise it.
It brought trouble. That was a contingency to be reckoned in the risk;
but having taken it, he had no right to sacrifice his manhood to his
trouble. He might not be able to resist the strength of the
circumstances that selected him for a commercial victim, but he was
bound to overcome the weakness in himself to which the circumstances
appealed. He might not be responsible for losing his business, but he
was responsible for losing himself.
We talk about people doing wrong from force of circumstances. Well,
every man who knows anything about it, has felt something of the touch
of omnipotence there may be in circumstances. It is not always either
kind or wise to try to hearten people who are in difficulties, by
concealing or underrating their force and gravity. It is a terrible
experience for a man past a certain age in his life, to find himself in
the grip of financial difficulties, and face to face with social
annihilation. I have seen men there, and the very thought of it
unnerves me.
But past it all, the old saying holds good, there is nothing in life we
can afford to do wrong for; and if, in the stress of circumstances, a
man elects to take a wrong turn, he takes it according to the teaching
of the text, because the inclination towards wrong is there, waiting
its turn. We may sympathize with a man who goes down in his outward
affairs and social status before the impact of circumstances he cannot
resist, but we must maintain at the same time, that while circumstances
may explain the trouble, whatever it is, they cannot justify
wrong-doing either to escape trouble or as a refuge when in it.
Victor Hugo declares that for every crisis we have in us an instinct to
meet it. That is a fine saying. If any man, who has had some moral
training, will obey his first instinct of right, it is marvellous what
possibilities there are at the heart of it. If, finding himself after
the best he can do apparently defeated, he will take heed and be
quiet--that is, do the best he can with what is left, and trust God--he
will also find that the resources of the old word are not yet
exhausted: "Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the
upright in heart."
He may have to lose his means, and step down in the world, as it is
called, but let him do it with a clean conscience and a fine integrity;
and just as "man's periods are only God's commas," so this man's going
down is but a more splendid way of going up. I can imagine that
nothing is more pleasing in the sight of Heaven than to see uprightness
only the more enlightened, quickened, and made imperative by the
troubles and vicissitudes of life. Let a man keep, if he can, what he
has honourably got; but if go it must, let it go rather than attempt to
save it at the cost of moral integrity. Let him say: "Empty my purse
if need be, but fill my soul; take my world, but spare my life; darken
my circumstances, but keep bright my spiritual outlook." And what are
the slights and neglect of a passing and superficial world to a man
whose life is in tune with the Infinite, who hears in secret what one
day will be said from the housetops of time and eternity: "Well done,
good and faithful servant"?
We are not always responsible for the temptations that sweep into our
life. I will go further than that, and say that we are not necessarily
responsible for what the attack of temptation finds in us; that, in
some cases, may be our inheritance, and in others faults of early
training; but we are responsible for what temptation does with what it
finds. For it cannot be repeated too often that temptation never puts
evil in our thoughts, it only makes manifest the evil that is there.
And hardly more do we differ in our features than we do in the things
which, and through which, we are temptable. We cannot all be tempted
by the same thing, but all of us can be tempted by something. You
remember how Achilles was dipped in the magic water and made
invulnerable in all parts except one. "Where the finger and thumb held
the heel it was dry, and, though the arrows glanced off from the other
parts of the body, when they pierced this one soft place he was
wounded, and that unto death."
Each one of us has his vulnerable place, and it is our life-business to
guard it. The weak place is there; the arrow will be aimed at it, and
if it find the place it is aimed at, we may refer the blame to what or
where we will, it does not affect the truth, that the blame is nigh
unto us, even at our own door.
"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot
be tempted with evil things; neither tempteth He any man with, or unto,
evil things; but every man is tempted when he is drawn away, when he
yields to his own lust, and by it is enticed, by it is overcome."
Which means, in the second place, that not only is a man his own worst
enemy, but that no enemy outside of man's self can vitally hurt him,
except so far as he places himself within the enemy's power. This is
not to say that other people cannot hurt us; still less is it to say
that it is not their will and wish to hurt us. To commit oneself to
such a statement would be to speak in the teeth of the commonest
experience of human life. There are men, and women too, who have the
will, the wish, and the power to hurt us. They are, as Christ said of
this brood in His day, of their "father the devil." To say a kind word
about any one, to do a generous turn for others on the road of life,
would be to them a positive task. There are people with whom I would
as soon think of entrusting anything I held sacred, as I would think of
risking the blood in my veins to the instinct of a deadly snake.
Nor is it want of charity to say this; it is want of sense to deny it.
"Beware of men" is as much a word of Jesus as His command to love one
another. There does not seem to be in the mind of most people any
clear conception of the attitude of Christ towards sin and sinful
people. And this confusion is at the bottom of many of our speculative
difficulties, as well as of our practical troubles in the Christian
Church. When we are convinced that a man's policy and his motives as
translated in his policy are inimical to the highest interests of
others, to the commonwealth of good, then we owe it to ourselves and
others to speak and act upon our conviction.
There are men, again, whose vested interests mean our hurt, working
through institutions that are co-extensive with our civilization. Look
about you on the effects of drink, and then think how attractive its
surface accessories are made. Consider the men who make fortunes out
of lust itself; how seductive they make the openings and avenues which
end in the lethal chambers wherein are dead men's bones. We have in
our midst a well-organized body of men who make it their business for
money to trade upon and to tempt the lowest and most dangerous forces
of our carnal nature. And what does it mean when these men are, by the
acknowledgment of public sentiment, the representatives of what is
called "legitimate business"? It can only mean that the sentiment
which should be the active and protective side of a worthy manhood is
being used to destroy it.
Beware of men who say to evil: "Be thou my good!" Reckon with the fact
that in so far as we stand for anything in a life worth living, there
are people who have the will, the wish, and the power to do us hurt.
And yet, I say again, they can hurt us vitally--mark the word
vitally--only so far as we place the opportunity within their power.
We have to hurt ourselves before we can be hurt by anything outside us.
We have to be our own enemy to give the enemy his advantage.
"Nothing," says St. Bernard, "can work me harm except myself; the harm
I sustain I carry about with me, and never am I a real sufferer but by
my own fault."
Recall once more the word of the Lord Jesus, how He said: "The prince
of this world cometh, and findeth nothing in Me." The prince of this
world crucified Christ; he made Him the victim of the fear, the hate,
the murderous fury of the organized religious classes of that day. But
the prince of this world could not pass by a shade the extent which the
saving purpose of the Saviour had Himself decreed and set fast. When
the prince of this world came to the soul of the Saviour, the power of
the prince of this world had reached its limits. Had there been, I
will not say sin, but a sin; had there been the shade of a suspicion of
what the world significantly calls a "past" in that Soul, the devil
would have had his leverage, and the Divine Saviourhood would have
thinned out at the most in the ordinary tragedy of a human martyrdom.
The emissaries of the prince of this world could lay violent hands on
the body of Christ--that was permitted for your salvation and mine; but
their power became impotence when it approached the soul, and there is
where the battle is won or lost. "Fear not him who can kill the body
only, but fear it"--that is the better translation--"fear it, the evil
principle within thee, that can cast both body and soul in hell."
We are told that a man once wrote the late Mr. Spurgeon saying that
unless he received from him within two days a specified sum of money,
he would publish certain things that would go far to destroy the great
preacher's hold upon public estimation. And Mr. Spurgeon wrote back
upon a postcard: "You, and your like, are requested to publish all you
know about me across the heavens." There is a world of meaning in the
answer. This master in Israel had his enemies, who would have hailed
as a providence any report, true or false, which could have been
effectually used to strike at the message through the man. And it was
because the man had not made himself his own enemy, in the past or in
the present, that he could look this devil in the face and tell him
that he was the devil.
This is how one man came out of an encounter with an enemy outside him;
take another case where the enemy of a man was the man himself. He
came to me, this man, when I was working in the South of England. In a
bitter temper he told me that he had been dismissed from a business
house in the town. He had left a good situation six months before he
entered this house, and was now ousted to make room for one who had
resented his appointment from the first, and had been his enemy. I
spoke, as I promised to do, to the employer, with whom I had some
influence, and in whose integrity I had implicit confidence. "It is an
absolute misrepresentation of the facts," he assured me. "The man," he
said, "got his situation on no better than false pretences. He had not
been with us a week when it was evident that he was quite unequal to
the duties of the position he had professed himself competent to
fulfil. It is nonsense to say that any one has ousted him; the truth
is, that he has wasted his time, and thrown away his opportunity, so
that in what should be his own line he has neither training nor
proficiency to be other than a low-placed man."
This is a single line in a large literature. It was a foolish use of
the past that became the man's enemy the moment his present required
something better. And this is an instance of how we can so become our
own enemy, as to make it impossible for God to be our friend, in the
sense we imagine God should be our friend. It would be, not the law
which is the deepest expression of divine thought and love, but immoral
force, if we could waste the time sacred to the preparation for a
better position, and yet be ready for the position when it comes our
way. God can forgive the waste, but God cannot give us back what the
waste has lost out of our life. We must never lose sight of the fact
that divine forgiveness cannot be vulgarized into impunity. I do not
say for a moment, in the case of a middle-aged man, that the enemy he
has made of himself is irredeemable and hopeless. I believe that a
man's own effort and the grace of God can change this enemy into a
valuable friend, if a man is man enough to accept and honour the cost
of the great transformation. But how few people, past a given age,
ever do quite conquer the inward foes whose sinister power is of their
own cultivation? For one man who goes down before an outward enemy,
there are a score who lay themselves in the dust and keep themselves
there by acts that become habits, and habits that become character, and
character that hardens into something that looks like destiny.
This, therefore, suggests a closing word to you younger people. Many
of you to whom I speak are in the making. You are on the threshold of
your manhood, with practically the future in your own hands.
I often recall my faltering energies in thought of a remark I once
heard the revered principal[2] of my college make to a body of students
who were about to enter upon their ministry: "Gentlemen," said he; "you
may be able to offer twenty good reasons in after life for your
failure, if fail you do. People will not concern themselves about your
reason, they will simply look at the fact that you have failed." The
truth in this remark is preeminently a truth for young people. The
world, on one side of it, is very hard and cruel. It will apologize
for failure in the abstract under tricks of speech, and cant about
charity, but for individual failure it has no mercy.
Listen to one who has to fight bitterly his own self-made enemies, when
I counsel you to begin straight from the beginning. Beware of making
to-day the enemy of to-morrow. The present, says a wise man, has
always got to pay the purchase price of the past. Never let the
temptation overcome you, to take a "short and shady" cut to the
gratification of desire, or in the achievement of what is sought as
success. Nothing in life is unrelated, and everything you do which
cannot pass the bar of your higher self is not only sin, but also a
blunder. It may sleep to-day, but it sleeps to wake. When you can
least afford it, it will be more than awake, it will be hungry.
Educate and cultivate your conscience, and never disregard its voice.
Keep your heart with all diligence; keep your heart, and always have in
it room for God.
In the open, and in the secret of your life, watch and pray that day by
day you may say with Spurgeon: "Write, if you like, all you know about
me across the heavens." And while you may have your enemies in men and
circumstances, they will be as nothing and vanity compared with the
friend you have in God and yourself. Never seek to refer your moral
responsibility for actions to influences outside you. Settle it once
and for good, that a thing can radically hurt you there only so far as
you place yourself within its reach. Yield yourselves to the Power
that can lift you by your real need, the need of regeneration, which
can so change your nature that while you are free to many things that
have in them the elements of temptation, you are yet too free to want
them--the Power which can enable each one of us to say: "I fear no foe,
because, by the help of God, I am my own friend."
[1] George Dawson, M.A.
[2] Rev. Dr. Falding--_Clarum et venerabile nomen_.
SELF-RESPECT AND COMPANIONSHIPS
"Is Saul also among the prophets?"--1 Samuel x. 12.
VI
SELF-RESPECT AND COMPANIONSHIPS
Ever since we could hear or notice sayings and things, and for long
before we were here to do either, this text has been in the world as a
kind of proverb-question: "Is Saul also among the prophets?" If a man
says something which is decidedly in advance of his generally-accepted
reputation for intelligence and good sense, if he surprise us by doing
something which rises sheer above the plane of his average life, if we
happen to find him in company that is made up of men who are his
superiors in attainments, character, and social importance, we mark the
unlooked-for circumstance by repeating this text. We say: "How does
this come to pass? What is the explanation?" "Is Saul also among the
prophets?" If we think out our impression, it means that the
unexpected has somehow happened; that the man must have more in him, or
about him, than hitherto he has been credited with having, or by some
accident he is found where we should least have thought of looking for
him. In a word, the popular interpretation of Saul among the prophets
is that Saul had taken a step up. The truth is, the text may mean that
he had taken one down. It all depends who these prophets were. Before
we can say that it is to a man's credit to be found in a certain
company, and that because he is there we must revise our judgments
about him, we must know what the company is, and why for the moment he
is in it. It is also well to reflect that a man may be in a company
and not of it.
In these prophets of the time of Saul, when we first meet them, we have
the type which prophesying had first assumed on Canaanitish soil. They
were men, as Professor Cornill in his suggestive book tells us, after
the manner of Mohammedan fakirs, or dancing and howling dervishes, who
express their religious exaltation through their eccentric mode of
life, and thus it comes that the Hebrew word, which means "to live as a
prophet," has also the signification "to rave, to behave in an unseemly
way."
These men lived together in Israel until a very late date in guilds,
the so-called schools of the prophets. They were, in fact, a species
of begging friars, and were held by the people in a contempt which they
evidently did their best to deserve. To Ahab they prophesied
whatsoever was pleasing to him to hear; and as one of them came into
the camp unto Jehu with a message from Elisha to anoint him king, his
friends asked him: "Wherefore came this mad fellow to thee?" Amos
likewise indignantly resents being placed on the same level with this
begging fraternity: "I was no prophet," he says, "neither was I a
prophet's son." And so when the people exclaimed in astonishment: "Is
Saul also among the prophets?" they did not mean: "How is it that such
a worldly-minded man finds himself in the company of such pious
people?" Their meaning is better represented in a question like this:
"How comes a person of such distinction to find himself in such
disreputable company?"
Let it be understood that these last two or three paragraphs are
roughly paraphrased from Professor Cornill's book, _The Prophets of
Israel_. My opinion as to how far his reading of this proverb-question
will bear criticism is of no value. It may be open to debate whether,
historically, he has not placed certain hysterical phenomena recorded
of these prophets much too late. But whatever scholarship may have to
say about his interpretation of our text, the interpretation commends
itself to my judgment, and it serves the purpose before me. It has, I
venture to think, a very timely message for us all, and especially to
young people.
You have heard the question a score of times, and you will hear it
again if you live. Hear it then, for once, as the remembrancer of this
truth--that when Saul was found among these so-called prophets he had
ceased to respect himself, and when a man does that he must either
recover himself, or accept moral ruin. I care not what his exterior
circumstances may be; just so far as he fears self-scrutiny is he
self-damned, and he knows it. We talk about the "basis of character."
It is this, or it is that, according as a man may regard it from his
standpoint of morals or religion. We may call it what we choose, but
one thing is certain, there can be no worthy character where we have
not established some right to respect ourselves. And this right must
be born and reared, not out of egotism, nor in religious professions,
but in the findings of a cultivated conscience on the motives and
actions of our everyday life. A man may have many things, and many
things pre-eminently worth having--but as a question of character, if
he have not the right to respect himself, that is the lack of the one
thing which is virtually the lack of all.
I have mentioned religious profession, and it is well to mark the
commonplace but important distinction there may be between religion and
our profession of it. Religion, while it is a possession of infinite
worth, may be of no worth to us so long as we know that we are keeping
back some part of the righteousness which is the backbone of any
religion worth the name. A man's religious beliefs and convictions are
his own business. They are between him and a higher tribunal than
ours. What he does concerns us; and what he does he is. It may take a
time to identify the true relation between the two, but our instinct
decides the question, long, it may be, before the actions appear to
justify the verdict of the instinct. Somehow we know through this
worth-discerning faculty whether a man is trying to be what we mean
when we speak of a good man.