God and bread with other sermons

Contents

PAGB

I. God and Beead 3

II. Does it Pay? 21

II. Does It Pay?

II.

DOES IT PAY ?

" For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his life ? " — Matt. xvi. 26.

"/COMMONPLACE is contemptible," is the ver- V^ diet of modern culture. Not of modern culture only : the Athenians, we are told, were equally impatient of it, and spent their time in nothing else but either to hear or to tell some new thing. But is this a true verdict? Stone pavements, for instance, are very commonplace to us; so much so, that we have ceased to be conscious of them, and walk or ride over them all day long without a thought of what we are treading on. When the street is torn up, when we come to a muddy gap in our accustomed track, we wake up to the fact, that, in a city, stone pavements count for a good deal. Nobody takes notice of lamp-posts; they are very commonplace : but let the lights go out all over the city, and we begin to find out how large a part they play in our convenience and safety. The fact is, that the best things in our lives are the commonplace and familiar things, — the senses, health, home, reading, and writing. It is often the highest praise of a thing that it has become commonplace. A thing which has no value does not pass into common use. The best thing that can be said of bread is, that everybody uses it.

So of texts of Scripture. Certain texts carry a flavor of novelty, while others are household words. Our text to-day is one of these latter. I suppose every preacher in Christendom has preached upon it some time or other. It is more than doubtful if any thing new can be said about it; and yet that is the best reason for preaching about it : for this text is to Christianity just what the solid ground is to our business and building, just what bread is to our living. It is a shaft that opens down into the very heart and centre of the gospel, and branches off under the whole Bible. No reader or preacher of the Bible can escape the truth it tells. He must run against it if he reads the Bible at all.

What, then, is the truth ? It takes the form of a question of value, — a question which, in some shape, interests us all. It is thrown into the setting of the market-place. All life is a bid for something, — that something, whatever it be, which each of us calls his end or object in life. That something we want; and for it we are willing to pay a price, — our labor, our pains, our best thought, our temporary rest and comfort sometimes. I seem to see the great market in the fresh morning. The young, vigorous forms, and the bright, eager faces are pouring in at the gate.

There is one thing up at auction, though there seem to be many. It is the world. Here one cries up honors ! — literary, military, civic honors, — praise of men, nattering of crowds, flaming paragraphs in the newspapers ; social honors, — homage to beauty, society at your feet. Here is a rival vender. Pleasures ! what infinite variety ! appeals to every sense, suited to all tastes ; coarser wares for the coarser grained, and subtler enjoyments for the aesthetic ; pleasures of meat and drink, pleasures of luxurious ease, pleasures of artistic study ; the wildest excitements, the most delicious languors; pleasures of color and of sound and of perfume, — all going, going cheap ! In another corner, wealth ! close beside it, power ! The world is on sale. Do monks and puritans tell us it is a " fleeting show " ? Ha ! it is a good world, full of good things. And the silks and jewels rustle and sparkle, and the banners wave, and the trumpets sound, and the gold chinks, and the sweet odors rise in rich steams, and the air is laden with sweet harmonies, and glowing with lovely hues. A good world, and going so cheap too ! something within the reach of everybody : who will buy ? Do you wonder that young eyes grow brighter, and young cheeks flush, and young hearts beat quicker? So much for youth, especially. Why, the world is for youth. Hope, love, pleasure, — they are all for youth. I seem to see, in the midst of that eager throng, one who appears far more interested in the buyers than in the wares. With a wonderful blending of majesty, affection, and sadness, he scans the young traders as they crowd round the booths. And now I see him lay a hand — a hand with a strange mark on it — upon the shoulder of an eager youth, who is crowding forward, and bidding high and eagerly ; and, as the youth turns impatiently, he gazes into his face with a look which seems to go down to the deepest secret of his heart, with a love which disarms resentment, and says, " Wait a little. There is time enough to buy here. One question only: that thing which you want, and for which you have just bidden so much, what shall it profit you ? "

I have only thrown into a kind of allegory what is actually going on. I have merely used a fancy to carry a fact. I want you to see and feel the fact, if you will, the fact that the world is bidding for your homage, your allegiance, your love, your energy. It is a fact that the world appeals to you to accept its rules, its customs, its modes of thinking, its ends of living. It is a fact that the Lord Christ says to every one of you, "Suppose you get it. Suppose you make it all yours, all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, — what good is it going to do you ? You are about making a bargain : of course you want to make a profitable one. Well, what shall it profit you if you gain the whole world, and lose your own life?"

Notice, then, what our Lord tells you in this text. First, that your choice of a principle and end of living involves an exchange. You get nothing in life, good or bad, without cost. You know very well, that, if you are to succeed in business, you will do it at the cost of leisure and ease and amusement. You must work when you would rather rest. You must stay in the hot, dusty city, when you would rather be among the cool hills, or down by the breezy sea. If you would succeed in medicine, you must conquer your natural repugnance to disgusting sights and odors. If in literature, you must shut yourself up with books, and toil while others sleep. No man ever leaped into a success of any kind without cost to himself. Success is always paid for with some coin or other. Do you expect you will win moral success, spiritual victory, on any other terms? Is this grandest and highest of successes going to be poured into your lap as a free gift, for nothing ? Secondly, look then, at the nature of exchange in this particular case. What do you pay, supposing you buy the world ? You have passed many a shop in cities, in the window of which you nave read, "price fixed." The vender would have you know that you need not try to beat him down. He will take so much, and no less. If you want the article, take it at that price : if -you do not care to pay that price, let it alone. That exactly represents the case here. If you buy the world, you pay a definite price for it, a price from which there is no discount to the most favored buyer ; and that price is your life.

You see our Lord is not merely putting a supposed case, a bare possibility, as if it might possibly happen that a man should do so monstrous a thing as to lose his life for the sake of the world : he states it as a principle, a universal fact, that the man who takes the world takes it at the price of his life. For you will notice that the text is only the conclusion of the statement in the previous verses, about which there cannot be any doubt. " Suppose a man wants to come after me," says our Lord. " He pays for the privilege this price ; namely, that he denies self, and takes up the cross. Suppose a man wants to keep his life, his worldly, selfish, lower life ; to live for self, as we say ; to keep his pleasures, his pursuits, his studies, under the economy of this world. He can do it. He can save that life, but only at the expense of his real life, his better, Christlike self, which Christ stands ready to develop in him. He that would save his life shall lose it." If the neat, smooth, wheat-corn should say, " This form of life is good enough for me : I prefer to remain as I am. I do not like going into the dark earth, and parting with my identity," all that could be answered would be, " Very well. Remain as you are ; only, the price of your remaining is the forfeiture of that higher, more beautiful form of life, — the bearded stalk with its multiplied grains." The higher life is at the expense of the lower. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." If it bring forth fruit, if it would save the lovelier, richer life, it must lose the other form of life. If a man wants his shoulder free of the cross, he can have it so ; only, he forfeits whatever good comes of being Christ's disciple. The two things exclude each other. You cannot have

Christ and self too ; you cannot follow Christ, and be crossless ; you cannot live partly in the higher, and partly in the lower, life : you must choose between them ; and, whichever you choose, you pay for it with the other.

Here, then, is Christ's fixed price, — Your life for the world. He states it to you here: he hears you bid for the world, and he asks you, "What then? Is it a good purchase? If so, you ought to be able to tell why." You pay what seems to me an extravagant price for a piece of land, and yet there may really be no extravagance about it. You may have special reasons for desiring that situation, — reasons which make it more valuable to you than it could be to any other man ; only you can surely give those reasons. You can surely show that you are getting your money's worth. So Christ says to you, " You pay your life for the world. It is a high price, but doubtless you can give a reason for paying it. How shall you be profited if you gain the world and lose your life?"

Will it not be well to stop, and examine the value of this purchase before the bargain is concluded ? And please to note, that, in what I shall have to say about it, I shall appeal mostly to your own observation and experience. I shall go into no guesses nor speculations. But let me first say, that you may be none the less a purchaser of the world if you do not go to the length of our Saviour's supposition, and gain the whole world. You need not be rich nor powerful nor luxurious to be worldly, and to exchange your life for the world. You may be as ignorant and as rude in your life as a Hottentot, and as poor as Lazarus, and yet have gained the world and lost your life. For this is not merely a question of the things which you acquire by your exchange: it is a question of the law under which you put yourself, of the moral quality of the end which you seek. It was not Lazarus' poverty which carried him to Abraham's bosom, nor Dives' riches which put him on the other side of the gulf. It is possible for you to be quite as worldly in poverty as in wealth, in weakness and obscurity as in power. It is enough that you choose to follow the world's rule ; that you find your pleasure, whatever it be, in going the world's way ; that you live, in short, for just such ends, and in just such relations to your fellowmen, as you would if there were no such thing as God and heaven, love and unselfish ministry.

But suppose we go to the entire length of the Lord's words. Suppose you gain the whole world, every thing the world has to give you. I submit to you first, that you have gotten something perishable. Suppose you should buy a beautiful flask of some precious cordial, with the understanding that there was a secret leak in the flask which you could not find nor stop, and through which the precious liquid was slowly trickling away. Would you not be deemed a fool ? Yet you buy the world with this certainty. Grant that its pleasures are ravishing, its sights and harmonies bewitching: you know as well as I do that they cannot last. The world is at the feet of your beauty, young woman. Are you willing to look to-day into a mirror which shall show you the face of thirty years hence ? The world praises you, young man. Do you not know that the world will soon tire of you, and kick you aside for a new object? Do you not know — you may easily know, for the thing is all through history — that the very men who sing " Hosanna ! " to-day, will cry " Crucify him ! " to-morrow? Drip, drip! The golden cordial is going. The clock strikes one ! A drop gone. Two ! Another drop. Three ! Another. And so on round the dial, only to begin again. The world is passing away. Men and women are growing old before your very faces. Your purchase has this quality, at least, — it will not last.

But I submit to you further, your interest in it will not last. I know it does not seem so now. You are so full of burning zeal to grasp the world that it seems as though your desire would never cool. But " the world passeth away, and the desire of it. " The fascination of the world is largely in your zest for it. The richest banquet has no charm for you if you are sick or surfeited. But you see for yourselves that the zest for the world passes away with the world. There were certain things which you longed to have and to do when you were boys and girls ; you are not very old now, but you do not care for those things any more : and that weakening of desire is going on all the time. The time comes to all men when they say, " I have no pleasure in them." The pleasures of youth require the vigor and the freshness of youth. The time comes when the strong man's ambition begins to droop, and he does not kindle at the call of fame. The time comes when the honored and praised man becomes indifferent to honor and praise, and only asks the world to let him go on his way in quiet. You have purchased, in short, something which you will cease to desire.

And yet, ceasing to desire is not satisfaction. Your ceasing to desire will not be the feeling of the man whose appetite is sated, but rather of him whose food has become loathsome. And I say of your purchase, It will not satisfy you. Did you ever achieve any worldly success, or win any worldly prize, that you did not want something else beside ? Why, open your eyes, and look about you. All round you are men and women who have gained the world. The world is all before them where to choose. They can gratify their tastes ; they can eat and drink whatever the world's markets or gardens furnish ; they can command every pleasure for the eye; they can travel when and whither they please; and yet they wander listlessly about, not knowing what to do with them selves, — now in Europe, now on the Nile, now in Asia, going from scene to scene, from gallery to gallery, from spectacle to spectacle, all the while possessed and driven by a consuming restlessness. Or they are in business. The man has gotten his million : he wants another million, and then another. He has gotten his position, but there is another man a step higher than he. Alexander had conquered the world : there was no more to conquer, and he wept. You have purchased something unsatisfying.

But still further. You have gotten something dangerous. Men would laugh to see you buying a pair of fetters or handcuffs in the market, but that is just what you are doing. You think you are buying something to possess : did it ever occur to you that it might possess you ? You are buying the world as a servant : did it ever occur to you that you might change places, and that the world might become master, and a hard one at that? " The wages of sin." But it is a master, and not a servant, that pays wages. No doubt of it. When you buy the world, you buy a master at the price of your life. A terrible mistake, to find that you have paid your best, your all, for slavery, when you thought you were buying freedom. Do you think that is a morbid fancy ? Nay : see for yourselves. Anything that is necessary to a man is his master, is it not ? Did you never see a man whose whole thought and life had been concentrated on moneymaking, and who could not rest when he wanted to, could not live without the excitement of the moneymarket? Did you never know a man's honesty mastered by the love for gain? Did you never know a man who had fed himself on the world's praise, until, when his banquet was withdrawn, and men forsook his shrine for that of another popular idol, his manhood drooped and shrivelled, and he became a disappointed, snarling misanthrope ? Did you ever know a more relentless, masterful demon than that which drives the woman whose chief end in life is social position ? A dangerous thing this purchase !

The selfish man is a suicide : his lower self kills the higher. A man takes on the measure of his aim. He who aims high is the nobler, even though he miss his mark. His arrow will fly higher aimed at the sun, than when aimed at something on his own level. You see and know for yourselves that one who lives for low, sensual ends is lower and meaner in the quality of his manhood. Dangerous ! you know what masters drink and the passion for gaming become. Dangerous ! there is a life going on in certain circles in this city, which veils itself under social proprieties and elegances, but which is aptly described by the term " fast." A continuous whirl of feasting and spectacles and carnivals, which is undermining some of the brightest youthful promise, and blighting some of the best young manhood and womanhood of this city. Do you know what the end of that will be ? Some of you have seen Couture's great picture, " The Decadence of the Romans," in the gallery of the Luxembourg at Paris, — a picture of a luxurious hall, where a frenzied orgie is at its height, a carnival of drunkenness and wantonness. A drunken youth, with a wreath in his tangled hair, sits upon a pedestal ; while a reeling boy proffers a dripping goblet to the marble mouth of a statue. The old Roman dignity is gone from the brutalized faces of the revellers, which contrast sadly with the noble features of the statues of the old Roman worthies ranged round the hall, and with the sad faces of a group of thoughtful-looking men who are quitting the scene. And what is perhaps as significant as any other feature is, that the faces of this picture present a surprising likeness to faces which one sees every day in the streets of Paris, and that the models for this wreck of human nature are furnished by the painter's own city. It is a truth not told by Paris only. It has been told over and over again, as one city after another — Antioch, Corinth, Pome, Sybaris — has gone over the precipice. It is the story of the inevitable end of fast life and of fast society. You buy a dangerous thing when you buy the world.

And, once more, you come to the line at last, and pass over. You and I do not know much about that future world: speculation amounts to little. The word of God is reticent about details ; and all that we do know, we know from that Word. But from that Word we do know something of the moral conditions of the future life. About one thing there cannot be any doubt ; and that is, that the only thing we carry over the line with us is ourselves. What we are goes nakedly into that world, without any of the disguises or deceptions with which circumstances invest character here. " We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." Whatever price you pay for the world, you leave the world behind you when you pass the gate of death. If, then, that is all you have gotten, what do you carry into the next world ? You have given your life for the world. You cannot give it, and have it too. The world has passed away, and you go to face God — with what? The only thing that has any hold on the future is the Christ-like self, trained in the school of faith and self-denial and ministry ; and if you have not that, if you have parted with that for the world, what have you? What shall it profit you if you shall have gained the whole world, and lost your life? I give you Christ's teaching, not mine. He knew both worlds. He has told you the solemn truth betimes, that you might not find it out only when the mischief was done ; and if, when you get into that new life, this truth shall come to you as a new discovery, rest assured it will bring pain and anguish with it.

Christ asks you this morning, " Does it pay ? " He appeals to fact, to your observation, to your common sense. Does it pay? Is it a good bargain ? " What shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his life ? " Or let another evangelist give you the same truth in his way : " For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and lose or forfeit his own self? " Is it a good bargain ? — a world that passes away, a desire that passes away ; an unsatisfying world ; a world that carries in itself the seeds of danger and disaster ; a world that proves a hard and cruel master, and gives slavery instead of freedom. All this for a life inspired and guided by Christ, a life in communion with heaven, a life rich in helpfulness and love ; a faith which conquers the world, and makes you superior to its chances and changes and sorrows ; a hope of eternal rest and eternal life, — is it a good bargain ?

My young friends, I would save you from this fearful mistake. Christ would save you; and therefore his call is strong and urgent to you to-day : " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." You tell me there is much good in the world, much that may rightly be enjoyed ; that God made the world to be used. That is all true. God did make the world for you to use and enjoy, but under his direction ; and it may be well for you to remember, that, setting aside all considerations of the future life, you will make the most of the world by following Christ. You will make the world your servant, instead of your master. You will enjoy its lawful pleasures without a sting, instead of being ridden and driven by it as by a demon. The alternative of this fearful purchase we have been considering is before you. Christ stands beside you in the market-place, and asks what it will profit you to gain the world and lose yourself, and then says to you, " Follow me ! Yes, along the way of the cross ! yes, leaving self behind! but my yoke is easy, and my burden is light : you shall find rest unto your souls ; you shall not walk in darkness ; you shall not want for the best of society. Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Self may die, but the world will be the richer for the fruit of a ministering life ; and beyond is rest, reward, heaven.

III. The Single Need

III.

THE SINGLE NEED.

" But the Lord answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things : but one thing is needful : for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her." — Luke x. 41, 42.

MARTHA was determined to provide a fine entertainment on this occasion. She was doubtless a notable housewife, and, not unnaturally, a little proud of it ; and she had with her, to-day, her dearest and most honored guest, and was bent on setting before him her best, and in her best style. So there was much anxious discussion, we may suppose, about what dishes should be prepared, and not a little worry about their being properly cooked and served, and that the honored guest should have what might please him most. It was a loving impulse on her part, and our Lord did not fail to appreciate it. All natures do not express their affection in the same way. What a blessed fact it is that our Master and Judge sees the love behind the differences, and tolerates the differences for the love's sake !

Mary, though her quiet sitting at Jesus' feet was in strange contrast, apparently, with Martha's bustling activity and worry, showed, on other occasions, that she was not indisposed to active ministry. It was Mary who brought the flask of spikenard, and anointed the Lord's feet at that same table ; and the words in this story seem to indicate that she had been assisting Martha in her preparations before Jesus came : but her finer spiritual instinct discerned that there was a better way of entertaining him than by feasting him. Custom in all ages, I know, has prescribed a feast as an appropriate way of honoring a guest ; and in one sense it is so. You give a man a mark of your confidence and respect by inviting him to your table ; but you do not, after all, if you will think of it, show him the highest mark of respect by inviting him to a splendid and formal banquet, assuming that he is best entertained by the gratification of his appetite. You pay him a higher token of your regard when you invite him to partake of your informal family meal ; taking him into your private life, and assuming that he cares more for your society than for your fare. Mary, I repeat, discerned this fact, with a loving woman's quick perception ; and so she was less anxious than Martha about the details of the feast. She had done all that she thought necessary for comfort and decency ; and she valued her guest enough to desire to get something more out of his visit than the mere pleasure of seeing him eat, or the gratification of having him praise her viands. Call it a kind of selfishness, if you will ; indeed, Martha had no hesitation in calling it so : it was nevertheless true, that Mary was bent on enjoying as well as entertaining her guest. Surely we are all selfish to that extent. She knew the blessing of Jesus' presence in the house. Are there not some Marys to-day, who, if he should come into their houses, would well-nigh forget altogether to lay the table, in their eagerness to hear the words of him who spake as never man spake ? Let us hope so, at least ; because there can be no doubt that Mary's attitude was the more pleasing of the two to the Lord, that her spiritual instinct was keener, and her spiritual fibre finer, than Martha's. The Lord's gentle and affectionate rebuke of Martha, — so gentle, so playful I had almost said, as to rob it of its sting, — and his commendation of Mary, set that beyond question, and give us our lesson to-day, — " Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things : but one thing is needful : for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her."