» William Blake.
I KINGS XVIII. 21 421
pray ; and how difficult it is to pray then I know full well, for I have had to do it. In a few weeks the work is done ; the boy's pure imagination is polluted, the boy's blood begins to riot with unholy impulses, and on the inward ear there falls more clearly and resistlessly every hour the delirious whispers and suggestions of impure seduction. He begins to think it manly to be cynical, and clever to talk of women in such a way that if his mother heard him she might wish that she had never borne him. And if the evil goes no further, can any say how great the havoc that is wrought ? 1
^ You have heard the story of Frankenstein: how a great chemist strives to make a man, and builds the physical frame up bone by bone, and sinew by sinew, and at last jBnds some occult means whereby he breathes into him the spirit of life, and the monster moves and lives. He is its creator; and from that hour the thing which he has made haunts him, dogs him, will not let him rest, is a walking terror he cannot evade, a hideous presence from which he cannot flee. So he who raises the devil of impure delight raises a devil very difficult to lay. It enters in, and brings with it seven other devils worse than itself. It quenches conscience, it masters the will, it destroys too often intellectual pleasures, it robs the mind of peace, and visits the body with loathsome suffering, till of a man made in God's image it leaves something worse than a beast : and it makes the body, v/hich should be the temple of the Holy Ghost, the mere agent and minister of infamous delights. Purity : it is embodied in an Elijah whose thoughts are full of God, whose
Strength is as the strength of ten, Because his heart is pure.
Sensuality : it is embodied in a Jezebel who has given her name to all bad women, and an Ahab who forgets the duties of kingship in her guilty fascinations.^
(4) He is a Redeemer from sin. — With those who know the new relation in which the human family stands to its Creator through the redemption wrought for us by Jesus Christ, the argument for entire homage and obedience, which depends upon the fact of our being a redeemed people, is perhaps the strongest that can be brought. He who knows that God so loved him that He sent His Son into the world that men might live and not die,
1 W. J. Da^vson. 2 Ibid.
422 HALTING BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS
and who does not acknowledge that on this ground alone he is bound to consider himself as not his own but bought with a price, and under obligation to yield up all his powers to Him who redeemed him, cannot very easily be persuaded by any other argument, that he is bound to love and fear God with all his heart and mind and soul and strength.
ii. The Difficulty of the Decision.
What makes the decision difficult ?
1, It does not seem so easy now as in some former times, to discern what is the good and what is the evil cause. For Homer's hero the one true omen, the one Divine direction, was to fight for the fatherland. To the Athenian, the cause of his city was the cause of his god ; and it was not till the time of Socrates that the thought of some wider conflicting duty dawned upon him. And so for Deborah and Elijah, the God of Israel was the Lord of Hosts, and neither the one nor the other had the slightest hesitation in dooming the Syrian General, Sisera, or the priests of Baal, to death. One clear but narrow rule seemed to point out the path of right ; and he who fell short of it, who " came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty," could not pretend that he was actuated by any motive but unwillingness to do his duty. And when Saul spared even the cattle of the Amalekites, and pled that he spared them to make a greater sacrifice to God, he met at once the stern reproof of the prophet Samuel : " Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."
2. The general widening of our moral and intellectual horizon has made this simple way of opposing good and evil impossible to us. Christianity itself has taught us to sympathize with men of all classes and nations, to see the same humanity manifesting itself in them all ; and this sympathy and insight will not let us regard our national foes as essentially the servants of an evil principle. We cannot echo the blessing pronounced by Deborah on the treacherous act of Jael, or regard the slaughter of Baal's priests as a just measure for the propagation of true religion. We have learned to recognize in all religions at least a partial expression of that reverence for a Divine Power which concen- trates human life, and binds men together in families and nations.
I KINGS XVIII. 21 423
Modern ideas of evolution have taught us to regard the great controversies and wars which have taken place in the past be- tween different parties, different races, different religions, as rarely, if ever, a pure conflict between good and evil, but rather, in many- cases, as issues in which important interests of humanity were maintained on both sides ; so that it would have been a calamity if either side had been absolutely victorious over the other. And the more we discover this in regard to the past, the more we are led to ask ourselves whether it is not also the case with many of the issues most hotly contested in the present day. Such thoughts are, so to speak, in the air, and even those who are not directly conscious of them, are indirectly influenced by them, and are led to regard the exclusive spirit which sees good only in one cause or object, as bigoted and irrational.