At close quarters

Front matter

Class 3X1171.

Book -H 7 5 Au

Copyright^!?

Contents

I. THE INJURY FROM LOWER APPROVALS . . 9

"How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another . . . ? " S. John v : 44.

II. THE LOSS OF INFLUENCE 16

II

"But he (Lot) seemed unto his sons-in-law as one that mocked." Gen. xix : 14, R. V.

I WANT to speak for a few minutes on the loss of influence. I have taken for my text a verse of Holy Scripture which is a very terrible one when you think about it. When Lot spoke to his sons-in-law, appealing to them to come away from Sodom, he was at the moment altogether in earnest, and he was altogether right. And yet his previous relations with his sons-in-law had been of such a kind that his words had no influence at all: his words had no weight. Lot " seemed unto his sons-in-law as one that mocked,' 9 — as one who was only pretending.

He had lived before their eyes. They had observed him. They had seen him off his guard. They had been admitted doubtless to many intimacies with him, and the consequence of it did not appear until this day of emergency when Lot wanted genuinely to help them, and when he found, and when they found, that there was not that relation between them which would convey or permit any moral influence or authority. When the day came in which he would have truly helped them, they looked across at him as though to say : 6 ' What part is this you are playing now! What do you want to be at? Who are you to adopt that tone ? It was you who brought us into Sodom ; you encouraged us to live in it; you yourself have always seemed to be very much at home in it. What has happened? "

" He seemed unto his sons-in-law as one that mocked." That is a very grave verse. I shall not dwell long upon it. It would not be good to do so. It is not good for the soul to be wrung even with truth. There is a delicacy in the whole apparatus of the soul which makes it a hazardous thing to put too much pressure upon its sensibilities. There is a danger in touching crudely and directly the delicate mechanism; a danger in crossing the threshold of the inner sanctuary. There is a seeing of God which kills us — a seeing of the absolute truth of things which Christ came to spare us. There are some things, said the Apostle, which are not so much as to be mentioned.

The loss of influence! Nothing is more tragic, nothing apparently more hopeless and irremediable. I do not see how, apart from the direct help and intervention of God, any of us can ever recover our influence and prestige once it has broken down. It can be done. It must be able to be done. If we believe in God, there must be resources to fill the chasm between two human souls. And yet it is so difficult, so rare, that we had better set out with the idea that in this matter God has put us each in charge of something of such a kind that if it slips from our hands, it falls upon a pavement and smashes into fragments and dust. You may gather the fragments and put them together more or less: but you cannot gather the dust.

The first thing we may say about the loss of influence is that it is for the most part a gradual result. On the other hand, it is often a very sudden thing, or at least the discovery of it is very sudden. In relation to one another, we may be like the two ships in Clough's poem which set out side by side and all the night they dreamed they were cleaving the self-same waters, but at daybreak they were discovered by each other away on different horizons.

" But blithe breeze; and great seas, Though ne'er that earliest parting past. On your wide plain they join again, Together lead them home at last.

" One port, methought, alike they sought, One purpose hold where'er they fare, — bounding breeze, rushing seas! At last, at last, unite them there! "

A man is one day found out in some wickedness, and there and then the altars of trust are thrown down in the hearts of all who looked to him. But even in such a case, it is only the discovery which is sudden, and the public fact; the process which led up to it all within the man was secret and gradual.

There is this very hard law in life, and we should all lay our account with it, that we may suffer in this very matter of influence, not for our sins only, but for our mistakes. One may suffer, for example, because of his manners, because of the way he speaks, it may be because of an abruptness and thoroughness which does not make allowance for the slowness of other people 's minds. Many a career has been spoiled by the man's address. But unless we are all no better than petted children, this kind of loss of influence is not serious, and if on both sides there is even an approach to good will these separations of spirit will be filled in. And besides, God will not allow any of us to go on in life very long without laying upon us something which will take us more deeply into the heart of things and make us ashamed of these trifling misunderstandings.

Still, life is so short, and these alienations are so pitiable, that we should apply Christian principles to our outward manners and to the little casual things we do towards one another. There ought to be no more poignant regret for any of us than the feeling that we have wounded the sensibilities and prejudices of another. But on the other hand we should be full of an equal regret and sense of blame if we have allowed ourselves to be wounded and aggrieved by things which, when one recalls the profound and tragic nature of our life, were of very small importance. I know of no more beautiful thing in the world than to see two people shaking hands after some such miserable alienation; and with a kind of catch in their voices which betrays the proximity of tears, each protesting that it was he and not the other who was the greater fool. That is one of the scenes on earth which give joy to the angels in heaven. Indeed, our Lord declared that we cannot come before God at all until we have removed any little thing of that kind from our soul.

We may, therefore, pass away — having warned ourselves — from that loss of influence which is due to nothing worse than foolishness or error or misunderstanding. A mistake, after all, leaves a man inwardly clean and erect. It does not corrupt his nature or hinder him from lifting up his face to God without spot.

And one who in any misfortune has still the comfort of God can well wait till the clouds roll by.

A totally different state of matters it is, when a man, in consequence of some lapse from personal or social rectitude, vacates his place in the thought and attitude toward him of other people. But here again let me delay, let me avoid the dark centre of this business, and approach it from an outer circle.

There are many small misdemeanours, that come short of high-handed wickedness, which nevertheless play havoc with our moral influence and prestige over others and their confidence in us. Let me instance one or two of these: they work at the roots of our influence as a worm works at the root of a flower, or at the heart of an apple — hiddenly and from the centre outwards.

Any want of faithfulness to our spoken word is one of the ways by which we may stultify ourselves and reduce ourselves to impotence in relation to other people. And if we have given our word to a religious and Christian profession, to which we are not faithful in the actual habit and direction of our life, we have there reduced ourselves to the position of people who do not mean what they say and who are treated accordingly.

It is not a very original thing to say, but it is a thing which will bear repetition, that it is just here that for the most part the moral authority of parents first begins to totter, or gradually to wear through. We say things and do not stand by them to the letter. We promise things and we even forget what we promised. And so our children come to think that we are ready to say anything to suit the exigency of the moment. In this way we train in our children that most pernicious of all habits of mind, namely, that words are not real things ; that they simply form what constitutes the higher subtilty of man over the animals, or over those who are weaker than himself; that speech is a mere trick, a mere accomplishment by which to escape some pressure of circumstance. But the day comes when a parent does want to speak gravely and lovingly to his child, a father to his son, a mother to her grown-up daughter; and God have mercy upon us if when we speak we see in them something which means that we have forfeited the right to speak to them as we are presuming to speak; that we seem to them what Lot seemed to his sons-in-law, one who is acting a part, one who is merely pretending

There is only one thing that any of us can do to any purpose if we know or suspect that we are losing or have lost the moral respect of those with whom we should like to remain on sound and honourable terms. There is onlyone way by which it may be we can get back the right of entry into their minds and hearts. Of course, it is quite impossible so long as we persist in the very courses which have destroyed our influence. The only thing we can do, the one thing we must do, is to enter into our private chamber, and shut the door, and lift up our heart to our Father Who sees in secret, Who knows everything and understands everything, and Who alone has the entrance into other minds as He has into ours. We cannot patch up a moral or spiritual reputation. We must get and win an entirely new one. And we must begin at the beginning. Let no one regret too sorely that he has to begin again with God. It is better to begin now than to wish to begin some day when it is too late. It is better to try to win back our influence over our children and friends, if we have lost it, or injured it, so long as they are alive, and we have occasion to prove the reality of our concern and love for them; better that, than to wait until they are dead or gone and we can only beat our breast in anger and impotence and shame.

The path by which we recover lost influence, like every path that takes a man nearer to God and to the truth about himself, is sure to be a hard path — a true way of the Cross. But a good man does not want things to be made easy for him. He may have to apologize here and there. He may have to confess things which have lain hidden in his breast. Still, let him not hesitate. He is standing at the gate of new life. It may be an iron gate. Still, let him go right up to it, and I believe he will find that it will open of itself and admit him to the City of God. There may be many a pang of pain by the way: but it will be that kind of pain which we even like to feel — the pain of an old wound which away down at its base has begun to heal. It will be that kind of pain which means that the principle of sound life within us has been established. It will be the pain which itself is a proof that we are now on the way back to moral vigour, back to personal honour and to candid dealings with ourselves and with other people and with God.

And it is on that way back, on that way up, on that way home, that Jesus Christ is with us with a depth and reality and blessedness which are in no other ways to be felt and known.

Ill

"And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast: and they come and say unto Him, Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Thy disciples fast not?

"And Jesus said unto them, . . . The days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days." S. Mark ii : 18-20; S. Matt, ix : 14-15; S. Luke v : 33-35.

IT may be that those disciples of John and of the Pharisees were in trouble about this question of fasting or not fasting. The disciples of the Baptist had accepted a very severe rule of life. Their master had renounced society and had declared that the true life was possible for most people only by the way of abstinence and self-restraint and simplicity. They were the followers of one who had worn a leathern girdle, who had eaten only locusts and wild honey, who had fled from the entanglements of cities, who had gone into the wilderness for the peace and dignity of his soul ; one who in obedience to his private conscience had publicly denounced a King. Such was the Master whose disciples they claimed to be, and they knew that ' ' it is meet that the disciple should be as the master.' '

The Pharisees who supported them in their question to Jesus were in a similar case. The true life for them, the righteous life was a life overshadowed and depressed by the awful demand of an inexorable law, worried and baffled also on every side by scruples and additions. And then, having done everything, they knew that still they had fallen short. They could never hope for ease, for victory, for attainment in their religious life. At the best, religion was for them, on the one hand, a haunting penetrating demand for correctness, depth after depth of scrupulous requirement; and on the other hand, a fatiguing effort to comply and an unrelieved vexation because they knew beforehand that they never could do better than fall short.

Compared with the lot of the followers of Jesus, the followers of John and of the Pharisees were like men toiling at oars, distressed by wind and tide, hands chafed, backs aching, and everywhere around them the terror of the deep, — when at the moment a ship glides past them, making for the same port but with the triumph of sails, and on board men whom those painful rowers know.

It may very well be, therefore, that these men were seriously asking themselves and had decided to ask Jesus, why it was, that for them religion was a demand, whereas for His disciples religion seemed a Power; why, in their case, religion brought anxiety, scrupulousness as of men walking on the edge of an abyss, whereas in the case of His disciples, religion seemed to have brought surefootedness, liberty, joy, and a certain shining of the countenance. It may be that these men were raising the question which S. Paul raised and Luther raised, — the ancient question between faith and works, between legalism, ceremonial, feasts, fasts, and the complicated machinery of tradition, — between all that and the unmistakable fact that a man may be lifted clear out of his failure and impotence by the grace of Jesus Christ and may from that moment live his life with Christ in God. Perhaps they were feeling the contrast between a religion which is to be performed with oars and a religion in which a man may hoist a sail and have joy in his course.

That then is one interpretation of their question: they were serious men asking for guidance on a matter about which they were at a loss.

But another interpretation is possible; and, in all the circumstances, it is perhaps the more likely. It is that these men were simply envious. Because the disciples of Jesus were to all appearances happier than themselves, the disciples of John and of the Pharisees insinuated that therefore they could not be so good.

28 AT CLOSE QUABTERS

" Why do we fast, and you do not fast? n Why is there a certain pressure and strain upon our souls, while others are at ease? Why must we toil at the oars, while others hoist a sail? Why are we aware of troubles, shadows, cares, of which some people whom we know seem to be entirely free? These are questions which we sometimes put to ourselves, and perhaps, when we put them to ourselves, there is always a certain hardness and bitterness in our minds at the moment — the hardness and injustice which envy brings. We may deceive ourselves as to the real feeling in our minds. We may suppose that we are only concerned for people who have not our seriousness, or who have not our experience of difficulties. What is envy on our part may appear to ourselves to be something very different. It may seem to us to be our zeal, and that in it we are doing honour to God and to the soul in man. And yet all the time it may be only envy, — a spirit which hinders any good influence we might be exerting upon others, and meanwhile destroys our own peace.

Let me name some instances in which the sin of envy may very easily assume the cloak of zeal. And there is need that we consider ourselves rather carefully in this. It is a sin to which perhaps only religious, earnest-minded people are liable. Envy itself threatens us all in various ways; but envy which adopts the tone of seriousness, envy which makes us speak as though we were not seeking anything for ourselves, but for God, is a rarer and more exquisite sin. It threatens only religious and serious people, as for example here, the disciples of John and of the Pharisees who, we must not forget, were the most serious people in the world at that moment.

(a) We may fall into the sin of envy under the cloak of zeal in our attitude towards those who are younger than ourselves. They are younger in years or younger in experience than we are. Their hearts in consequence are brighter than ours, gayer, in fact younger. They find occasions for happiness where we find none ; or we know that the happiness which they are making so much of will soon become flat and stale. And so we accuse them to ourselves of being light-minded, enthusiastic, frivolous, wanting in depth and soberness, when the fact is, they are only young. So far as there is the taint of hardness or bitterness in our thought about them, it is mere envy of them, envy that they have still something, the first and natural harmony of the soul which in our own case life has assailed and broken. The proof that there is something sinful in our feeling is that it has made us unfair. It has made us forget the careless joys of our own earlier days. We forget, too, the more serious and abiding joys which are ours now, since we are older, which in the nature of the case they cannot yet have because they are young. We forget what experience has taught us, — the need of faith as a faculty for life, and faith itself which has come to us as a pearl of great price, for it came to us under God in consequence of some wound which was dealt to us in the battle of life. We forget all these things. We forget that "joy cometh in the morning.' 9 We forget that the gaiety and enthusiasm of youth is the wonderful gift of God and serves as a flying start in the long race of life. And in regard to ourselves, we forget, or we do not at the moment esteem at their proper worth, the abiding blessings which life has brought us — the wiser and more informed mind, the deeper understanding, the more disciplined will, and that by the mercy of God we have weathered somehow the perilous promontories of youth.

Surely, instead of envying the young and inexperienced their natural and proper joy and dealing with it forbiddingly, it should be our part, — and our very faith in God urges us, — to give thanks to Him for the never-failing stream of fresh life which He pours into our world, and to pray for all young lives known to us that they may be enabled to bear the delicate chalice of their innocence on into their maturer days, — to carry forward the hope, the natural faith, the very illusions of youth, so that they may remain as a blessed ferment in any later wisdom which they may ever achieve.

(b) It is this same sin, similarly disguised, — envy under the cloak of zeal, — that we have fallen into, when we complain that we have troubles from which others seem to be spared: " Wherefore do we fast and thy disciples fast not? "

We are tempted, for example, to say severe things against those who are rich in this world's goods. And those severe things may all be true. (Riches are often spoken of in the Bible, but they are never well spoken of.) What I am urging is that we must take care in what tone, with what secret motive, we say our severe things. We must see to it that our own indignation and threatening has not a note of bitterness. We must see that when we seem to be speaking for God, we are not merely indulging ourselves, that we are not taking a kind of revenge against a certain class of people. For there is a worldly-mindedness which comes not with the possession of riches but with the absence of riches.

You know the class of feelings with which I am dealing. In the Providence of God our life may have been a very hard one, as we think.

We see people round about us who seem to have no cares; certainly they have not our cares, and the danger is that we blame them, blame them because they have not been called upon to undergo our particular discipline. We find ourselves almost wishing that they might be called upon to suffer what we are suffering, to taste life as we know it. We may even imagine that this is a religious feeling, that we have this wish for them because we think it would do them good. Whereas, once more there may be nothing in our heart but envy, nothing but rebelliousness against the lot which God has given ourselves.

" Why do we fast and they fast not! " we cry : but it is not because we think that fasting would be good for them — at the moment we evidently think it good for nobody ; but because we are envying them their ease. We say our severe things not because our love of God is strong but because for the time being we have lost our love of God. We condemn them simply because we have not their good fortune: and no good can ever come of it. Satan cannot cast out Satan.

(c) Often it is this same sin and under the same disguise — envy under the cloak of zeal — when we suspect the religious life of others because it does not take the same direction, the same kind of expression as our own. It may be that our religious life is habitually burdensome and morose. This may be due to our temperament or it may be one consequence of our earlier life having been self-indulgent and disorderly. Or it may be that we inherit a kind of shadow in our blood which makes our battle a peculiarly lonely one. But whatever be the reason, our religious life, the life which Christ seems to involve us in, is above all things severe, intense, full of cries out of the depths and answers from God that intoxicate. The sky, God's Face, for us holds many formidable clouds. When it is bright with us, it is very bright, and when it is dark, we are ready to die. "We fast oft."

That being our condition we look abroad upon the world of men. We see those who claim to share our faith. They trust the Same Love, they look for Salvation to the Same Cross. But how much happier they are than we. They seem to have entered the Christian life more easily than we found it possible, and to continue in it with less violence of feeling.

And the danger is that we begin to suspect that their devotion to Christ cannot be as real as ours. We find ourselves almost expecting them to break down, to fall away, because we think they have not entered by the strait gate or built their spiritual life upon the Eock.

Once more, we forget everything which would make us charitable; we forget charity itself. We forget that as human souls are different every one from every other, so the Spirit of God works out variously in them. We forget too that God may deal with us severally as He wills. It may please Him, for it may be for our welfare, that our journey should never be easy, that for us as for " Christian " in the " Pilgrim's Progress," our renewed life may present us with a Slough of Despond, a Doubting Castle, a Giant Despair, and even when we reach the River of Death, we may find it swollen and perilous. While for another He may have decreed a different and more prosperous journey. For another He may have ordained as for " Hopeful " in that same great allegory, that there should be no Slough of Despond, and for another as for " Faithful " that when he came to the River of Death he should find the water at its shallowest and the footing safe and easy.

But why should a much buffeted servant of the Lord speak enviously or suspiciously because God has chosen a more pleasant way for others? If God has given them peace and a joyful journey, why should another complain? When we become envious, we forget these things. We forget that as in the story of the miracle, there were those who came early and were sitting at the feet of Jesus, while others, coming late, could not get at Him with their burden, but had to climb the roof and tear it up and let themselves down in front of Him ; — so there are many, God grant there be more and more, who, children of many prayers, born into prayerful homes, their eyes beholding only comely things, may grow up in holiness as by a gentle supernatural pressure upon nature itself, their innocence surviving and confirmed in faith, coming easily to their Saviour because truly they have never been far from Him; — though to the end of the days there will be those who at the last come back to Christ late and with difficulty, — God's prodigal children who will not arise until the loneliness of their condition is such that they can endure it no more. Then something hard breaks within them, and on a flood of tears their soul sets out for God.

Let us rejoice and be glad that God has all kinds of ways for bringing us to Himself. Let us recall that the Heavenly City has twelve Gates, each one a Pearl, and there are pearls like the opal which are full of shadows, and other pearls which are full of sweet and tender light. And in any case, " Love envieth not," " Love thinketh no evil."

IV How Can Satan Cast Out Satan?

"How can Satan cast out Satan?" S. Mark iii : 23.

OUE Lord used these words to repel an evil report which His enemies were trying to put into circulation. The report was that the great work that He was performing, the diseases He was healing, the evil spirits He was casting out, — all this He was doing by the help of that mysterious power for mischief which lay behind everything. He was the agent or instrument of the power of darkness; and therefore, people must not be deceived by the fact that He was doing wonderful things. They must rather avoid and oppose One Who was so manifestly in the hands of some mysterious and diabolical power. Such was the charge which was brought against Jesus at the very beginning of His Messianic life. We may wonder that Jesus had enemies at all. We may wonder that men should actually hate Jesus and lie awake at night planning how they could do Him some new injury. Yet, as we go on living we wonder less and less, until we cease to won-