Part 4 (2/2)
His self-indulgence just came to that; he wanted if only for a brief hour to live the larger life, to expand the soul, to enter untrodden regions, and gather to himself new experience. That drunken debauch was a quest for life, a quest for G.o.d. Men in their sinful follies to-day, and their blank atheism, and their foul blasphemies, their trampling upon things that are beautiful and good, are engaged in this dim, blundering quest for G.o.d, whom to know is life eternal. The _roue_ you saw in Piccadilly last night, who went out to corrupt innocence and to wallow in filthiness of the flesh, was engaged in his blundering quest for G.o.d. He is looking for Him along the line of the wrong tendency; he has been gathering to himself what he took to be more abundant life, ”but sin, when it hath conceived bringeth forth death”--death to the sinner as well as to his victim, death of what is deepest and truest in the soul. Yet--I repeat it--all men are seeking life, life more abundant, even in their selfishness and wrong-doing, seeking life by the deathward road.
”Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.
'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, O life, not death, for which we pant, More life and fuller than I want.”
On the following Sunday I preached a sermon ent.i.tled the ”Nature of Sin,” in which the same point was reemphasised with even greater distinctness, as the following extract will show:--
I think I startled some of you last Sunday morning when I happened to remark that sin was, after all, a quest for G.o.d--a mistaken quest, but none the less a quest for G.o.d, for all that. I want to explain to you to-night somewhat more in detail what I mean by this, because the more clearly we can see the truth the more clearly we can perceive sin to be a soul's blunder. There are two tendencies discernible throughout nature and in human history. These two tendencies are essentially opposed, are ever in conflict, and ever will be until the whole world is subdued to Christ, and G.o.d is all in all. I called them last Sunday morning from the pulpit the deathward and the lifeward respectively.
The terms are not very satisfactory, because the deathward tendency usually masquerades as the lifeward, and the lifeward often looks like the deathward. That is why sin is ever possible. A man thinks to get something by it, and though he finds out his mistake afterward, yet he supposes it to be for him the lifeward road. On the other hand, the utterly unselfish deed often looks as though it were a deed that would bring destruction upon the doer. Not so. Jesus Christ saw right to the heart of things when He said, ”He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for My sake the same shall find it.”
If you subst.i.tute for the words ”for My sake,” ”for truth's sake,” or ”for life's sake,” you will get just the same meaning,--”he that keeps back his life shall lose it, and he that gives forth his life shall find it.”
Here, then, are two tendencies sharply contrasted. Now observe their operation in nature and in human experience. You are all aware of, and frequently have been saddened, no doubt, by what you regard as the cruelty of nature. There is a tragedy under every rose leaf, there is unceasing conflict to the death going on in every hedgerow. Nature is indeed cruel. I have often watched, during this winter which is now drawing to a close, the little birds feeding outside the window of my breakfast room in the morning. Like many of you, we put out a few crumbs for these feathered friends who share the same garden with ourselves, and I have always noticed that there is a battle royal fought round those crumbs. There is enough for everyone, and yet the instinct of these little creatures is to try and grab and keep all, each one for itself. The instinct of the lower creation appears to be that a form can only preserve itself, and only expand and express itself, at the expense of other forms. It is a stern and terrible law, as you well know. Forms, by a slow, upward progress in the unfolding of the purpose to which nature exists, have become what they are at the expense of earlier and weaker forms. There is a tendency to grasp and hold, a tendency to kill and to destroy, and this, to some minds, appears to be the strongest tendency in nature or in man. I question it,--in fact, I deny it,--and I want that you and I should arrive at the same conclusion respecting it. For there is another tendency observable working from the very earliest throughout the processes of nature, too. It is that which Henry Drummond describes as the struggle for the life of others. If you like, we will call it mother-love. I saw it ill.u.s.trated only yesterday. A mother sheep, standing in her place amongst the flock, was surprised with the rest at the incursion of a mongrel dog. The flock fled instantly, but the ordinarily timid mother stood her ground. The reason was not far to seek. There was a little lamb cowering behind her, and she, overcoming her natural instinct of self-preservation, turned her face to the dog to draw his attention, if possible, to herself and deflect it from her young one.
Now, that instinct represents the tendency of which I speak, the ant.i.thetic tendency to the other already described. It is the stronger of the two. It indicates the goal toward which nature herself is moving. ”The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now,” but mother-love is a prophecy of a higher yet to be. It is the forth-going instinct, the all-ward, lifeward tendency.
Now turn to humanity. I think you will agree with me that right through human history the same two tendencies are observable. The farther back we go, the stronger seems the self-ward tendency. The natural state of uncivilised man is a state of war. Man in primitive communities only exists and flourishes by destroying other communities.
A most curious thing it is, too, that apparently our domestic and civic virtues have grown out of this state of war. A man used to carry his wife off by main force. She become his property. He exerted his brute force, he magnified his own personality, as it were, in crus.h.i.+ng other personalities. His children were in his hands for life and death. If he afterwards learned to love them, it was in contradistinction to the children that were not his. That which was his, so to speak, gratified his egotism; and, although a more beautiful relations.h.i.+p grew out of it, such was the unpromising beginning. To-day when you hear a man speaking loudly about ”_my_ country,” or ”_my_ family,” or ”_my_ society,” as the case may be, you may be perfectly sure that he is projecting himself into his patriotism, or into his loyalty to family or society; and indeed this was the lowly beginning of what has come to be an excellent virtue. We have had to learn benevolence by concentrating unselfish attention upon the few rather than the many.
The farther back you go in history, the sterner does the operation of that law appear, and the less promising the future of mankind. If people tell me the world is not getting better, I suggest that it might be worth their while to read a chapter of mediaeval or primitive history. In the ”Odyssey,” for instance, Homer sketches for us the career of a strong and remarkable man. His hero, supposed to be a paragon of virtue, is capable of things you would call scoundrelism to-day. He and his band of storm-tossed companions land upon an island of the Grecian Archipelago and find a city there. They promptly sack it and kill all the inhabitants--men, women, and children. It seemed to be the proper thing to do, and found its way into verse, and they boasted about such heroic exploits. It was brutal murder, and the men who were capable of it were nothing more or less than pirates. Yet that stern, terrible tendency thus ill.u.s.trated is just one with that inscrutable law under which nature herself has come to be what she is.
It is what I call the self-ward tendency, the desire to grasp and keep at the expense of other individualities other societies than our own.
But in history, and from those very earliest times down to our own, another tendency has shown itself at work, a counter tendency. The two have been so intertwined frequently--as I have indicated in showing where patriotism comes from--that it has been difficult to dissociate them; but they are quite distinct. Take, for instance, the magnificent devotion of Arnold von Winkelried on the field of Sempach. Switzerland has not existed as a political unit for many centuries, but during that time her roll of heroes has been large. In the formative hour of Swiss independence, when that tiny folk were struggling for their liberty against the overweening power of Austria, it must have seemed a hopeless undertaking--this group of mountaineers against the chivalry of an empire. The great battle of Sempach was fought. The Swiss, armed with nothing but their battle-axes, hurled themselves in vain all day long against the serried ranks of Austrian mail-clad warriors, armed with spears, through which the shepherd men could make no way.
They fell before them, but could not pa.s.s through them, till Winkelried called to his countrymen, ”Provide for my wife and children and I will make a way,” and, rus.h.i.+ng unarmed upon the spearmen of Austria, clasped in his embrace as many of them as he could and bore them to the earth.
A dozen spears pa.s.sed through his body, but through the gap his devotion had made, his countrymen leaped to victory. That one act made possible, humanly speaking, the Swiss independence, which is an object-lesson for us to-day. Such acts as these form part of the cherished lore of nations. We feel they are the light-centres of the world. Something tells us that an act like that, the giving of a life for the sake of an ideal, a cause, a country, was a great thing. It represented the counter tendency to what was going on at that moment.
In that very battle Austria was trying to grasp and hold, Switzerland was trying to get free and live her own life, and here was a man who, for the sake of his country's ideal, gave all that he had--his life.
Will you tell me where to look for the focus and centre of that ideal?
I know what your answer would be. It was at Calvary. The one thing which, consciously or subconsciously, men have recognised in Jesus that has given Him His supreme attraction for the world, is this--He was absolutely disinterested. It is the disinterestedness of Jesus, His utter n.o.bleness, His power of projecting Himself into the experience of others, and trying to lift humanity as a whole to His experience of G.o.d, that gave Him His power with mankind. Jesus not only proclaimed, but lived, the counter tendency to the law of sin and death.
Now, when we have brought the two together, you see the essential distinction between working for self and its deathward look, and working for all with its lifeward gaze. These two are ant.i.thetic, and must be in opposition until the latter absorbs the former, and G.o.d is all in all, and love reigneth world without end.
We are now able to see what sin is more plainly than before. Sin is the tendency to grasp and draw inward, and everything that feeds that tendency makes for death. Sin is the expansion of the individuality at the expense of the race; sin is acting on the belief that the soul can increase at another's cost, can increase by destroying what is another's good. Apply that explanation or definition of sin to what you know about life, and you will soon see when a man is facing the deathward road, and how differently he acts when he is choosing the lifeward road. There are men in this congregation who do not realise, as they should, that lifewardness is G.o.d-wardness; but so it is. The soul and the source of all things is G.o.d, and, consciously or unconsciously, all men are seeking G.o.d in that they are seeking self-expression, seeking life. The man, for instance, who is trying to become rich is a man who is seeking to express himself, seeking power, seeking life, seeking to thrust through the barriers that surround the soul. They are all doing it; the veriest materialist among you is seeking by his daily activities more abundant life. The young man here who feels a burning ambition within his heart, a desire to exploit the world and make a name for himself, to occupy a high station, is not conscious of anything essentially unworthy. It all depends on what he does with the impulse. What you are seeking, young man, is more abundant life, and that is equivalent to seeking G.o.d. Life is G.o.d.
”Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.” And when the tendency goes round and works havoc and ruin in the world, it still remains a quest for G.o.d, although a blundering one. It is a misuse of divine energy. The man who got drunk last night and gratified his lower nature in that delirious hour would be surprised if you were to tell him when you see the result that he was really seeking G.o.d, but so it is. He wants life, and thinks he can get it this way. This is the reason why morbid excitement and the craving for amus.e.m.e.nt have such power in human lives to-day. Your _roue_ in Piccadilly who went out to destroy innocence was seeking life while spreading death. It seems almost blasphemy to say it, but he was seeking G.o.d and thinking--O woful blunder!--that he would find Him by destroying something that G.o.d has made beautiful and fair. So with all acts of selfish gratification of which men are capable--they are the turning of the current of divine energy the wrong way, and seeking self-gratification at the expense of something else that G.o.d has made.
It is a failure to see that we only obtain life by giving life. When an engine goes off the line there is a smash, as a rule, and the greater the power that was driving the engine, the worse is the wreck when it leaves the line. The lightning directed rightly becomes the luminant by which we look on each other's faces to-night. That same power might have brought havoc and destruction if it had not been harnessed in the service of man. And so with the power that G.o.d has given you; all desire for self-expression, all seeking of which you are conscious for larger and better and richer life, is G.o.d-given; but it may mean ruin and destruction unless you see that it is yours, not that you may draw inward, but that you may give outward, yours not to keep and hold, but yours wherewith to bless mankind. Sin is the tendency to keep for self that which was meant for the world. ”The wages of sin is death,” the death of soul. He who is guilty of sin is guilty of soul murder. ”All they that hate Me love death,” and he that spreads pain and ruin over other lives in the gratification of his own lower instincts is using something which is G.o.d-given--yea, which is essentially G.o.d's own life--in the wrong way. The only hope for him is to realise that no act of sin was ever yet worth while, that it does punish itself, must punish itself, for it shrivels and fetters the soul. No eleventh-hour repentance will ever save you, and no cowardly cry for relief will ever bring G.o.d's forgiveness into your soul, until you have realised that sin and selfishness are one, and that what you have failed to give forth of love and service represents the measure of your soul poverty.
Even at the risk of prolixity and repet.i.tion I have thought it right to insert these lengthy extracts from sermons which have been animadverted upon. My readers will be able to judge of the fairness of the criticism which, by abstracting a few lines, strove to make it appear that my teaching denied the reality of sin. Here are the actual words seen in their proper setting. If one were on the lookout for a good ill.u.s.tration of the sinfulness of sin, perhaps the controversial methods of the editor of the _British Weekly_ might furnish it. This kind of criticism is on a par with that of the gentleman who once startled an audience by declaring, ”The Bible says there is no G.o.d.”
He was right, of course, if it be legitimate to suppress the former part of the pa.s.sage, ”The fool hath said in his heart there is no G.o.d.”
It is time we had done with unreal talk about sin. Sin is the murder spirit in human experience. ”Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. If a man say, I love G.o.d, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love G.o.d whom he hath not seen?” Strong language, but I suppose the man who first used it must have known what he was talking about.
Pomposity is sin, because it is egoism; self-complacency and contemptuousness are sin for the same reason. Cupidity is sin whether in a burglar or a Doctor of Divinity. A bitter, grasping, cruel, unsympathetic spirit is sin, no matter who shows it. The scribe and the Pharisee are too much with us, and the religious ideal needs to be rescued from their blighting grasp to-day as much as ever it did. Of all forms of sin an arrogant, malignant, self-satisfied a.s.sumption of righteousness is the worst and the hardest to eradicate, as Jesus found to His cost. The terrible d.a.m.ning lie which is stifling religion to-day is the lie which crucified Jesus, the lie that spiritual pride can ever interpret G.o.d to a needy world. There is something grimly amusing in the suggestion that prosperous people should pay for sending gospel missions to the poor. If sin is selfishness, the poor had better missionise the rich. Imagine how it would be if things were reversed in this way, and a mission band of earnest slum dwellers took their stand in Belgravia and began a house-to-house visitation, with all the theological terms carefully eliminated from the mission leaflets they thrust under the doors or handed to the powdered footmen.
Instead of, ”Flee from the wrath to come,” etc., they might have: ”Don't be selfis.h.!.+ it is hurting you and your neighbours and making you unhappy. Don't pretend! It is poor business in the end. Try to do as much as you can for other people and you will know what G.o.d is.” The attempt would be startling and unwelcome, but it would be far less impudent than the religious exhortations of the prosperous to the poor commonly are. For the truth is that if sin is selfishness,--and it is nothing else,--the degraded habits of people at the lower end of the social scale are no more sinful than the ordinary behaviour of most of their preceptors at the other end. Most of the talk about sin is unreal; that is the trouble; so verily the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before us. In church a man will profess himself to be a miserable sinner, but if we were to address him in the same way out of church he would sue us for libel--if he thought we meant it. For heaven's sake let us have done with the sham of it all and face the truth. What mankind is suffering from is selfishness.
Get rid of that and there would be little left to trouble about.
+Atonement and sin.+--It should now be plain why the doctrine of Atonement has been so closely a.s.sociated with the doing away of sin; it is because, as we have seen, the root idea of Atonement is the a.s.sertion of the fundamental oneness of man with man and all with G.o.d.
Sin is the divisive separating thing in our relations with one another, and with G.o.d the source of all, so the a.s.sertion of our oneness involves getting rid of sin. If we ask how this is to be done, the answer is simple enough: the only way to get rid of selfishness is by the ministry of love. What is it that is slowly winning the world from its selfishness to-day and lifting it gradually into the higher, purer atmosphere of universal love? There is but one thing that is doing it, and that is the spirit of self-sacrifice. Wherever you see that, you see the true Atonement at work. There can be no doubt about the final issue, for behind the spirit of love is infinity, whereas the spirit of selfishness is essentially finite. On the field of human history the death of Jesus is the focus and concentrated essence of this age-long atoning process, whereby selfishness is being overcome and the whole race lifted up to its home in G.o.d. Until Jesus came no self-offering had been so consistent and so complete. No selfish desire could find lodgment in His pure soul. He showed men the ideal life by living it Himself, the life which was perfectly at one with G.o.d and man. In a selfish world that life was sure to end on a Calvary of some kind, but the very fact that it did so demonstrated the completeness of its victory over all considerations of self-interest. Selfishness lost the battle by seeming to gain it. G.o.d was behind the life of Jesus just because it was the life of perfect love, the life which was a perfect gift to the whole, therefore that life immediately arose in power in other lives and has gone increasing its benevolent sway over human hearts ever since. This is the Atonement and it is rightly a.s.sociated with the cross of Jesus in the minds of men, for the cross is the sum and centre of it all.
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