4. Mark where the judgment of God falls. It falls on the highest nature — it falls on the soul ! The man on whom God's disapprobation rests, withers at his very root. His mental power declines, his moral nature shrivels ; he goes down in the volume and quality of his being. Think of a lean soul ! Ko compass, no grandeur, no tenderness of manhood ! A lean soul, narrow, stunted, withered, sapless, blind, deaf, idiotic ! The man would have his prize ; he would set up his own wisdom ; he would be as 1 J. B. C. Murphy, The Service of the MaaUr, 167.
PSALM cvi. 15 343
God unto himself ; and now look at him, and see how hunger- bitten and ghastly is his dishonoured soul. We know the horror, the ghastliness, of external emaciation brought about by illness, when man or woman becomes literally skin and bone. What a suggestion such a sight conveys of the possibilities of inward emaciation ! Beneath the sleek, prosperous, well-fed, comfortable appearance, what if there be, hidden from men but open before God, a horrible emaciation in a man's real self-leanness of soul !
^ You have heard of the white ant that commits such terrible devastations in wooden buildings in some portions of the globe. Tliat little insect will insert itself into the largest wooden structure that men can put up, and in course of time it will eat away the whole of it, leaving nothing but the thinnest outer shell ; the building will look as if nothing had befallen it ; the shape will be unaltered ; but put your finger upon it, or bring the slightest pressure to bear upon it, and you will find that it is no longer solid, but a hollow and useless outline. Is there not a more terrible power that enters into the inner nature of man, and utterly consumes all that is strong and noble and beautiful in his soul ? 1
II.
The Lower Satisfaction.
1. Of how many is it true that the attainment of wealth and the gratification of ambition have not satisfied an ever-increasing longing for more, and that the happiness which they were expected to secure is ever marred by a leanness that enters into the soul. Moral and spiritual decline often follows the too eager pursuit of earthly things. " They that will be rich," says the Apostle, " fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hui tful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." How must it be in this money-loving age with the many whose whole souls are filled with this fatal desire, and how terrible is the spiritual leanness of a soul from which the love of money has wholly driven out the love of God ! So far as our outward circumstances are concerned, our fullest request may have been granted. We may have estates, titles, honours; men may wait for our word, and follow our guidance in all secular speculations and engage-
* Josuph Parker.
344 LEANNESS OF SOUL
ments ; and yet it may be said of us, " In thy lifetime thou reeeivedst thy good things" — so, with the request on the one hand answered to the utmost, we have on the other a soul that has been dwarfed almost up to the point of extinction.
^ There is a deep lesson to be read in a strange picture by Burne Jones, called " The Depths of the Sea." A mermaid, beauti- ful in face, but hideously repellent in her scaly train, has flung her arms around a youth, and is dragging him down through the green waters to her cave. In her face is the intense malignity of cruel triumph and cruel scorn ; in the youth's face is the agony of frustration and of death. And the motto below is, "Habes tota quod mente petisti, Infelix ! " — " Thou hast what thou sought- est with all thy soul, unhappy one." Oh that it were in my power to preach to all young men a sermon of meaning so intense as that picture ! The mermaid, like the Siren of mythology, like the strange woman of the Proverbs, is the harlot Sense. She is the type of carnal temptation, ending in disillusion, shame, anguish, death. It is the meaning of the saying of the rabbis, " The demons come to us smiling and beautiful : when they have done their work, they drop their mask." It is the meaning of Solomon : " But he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guesta are in the depths of hell." God has granted to that youth his heart's desire, and sent leanness withal into his bones. He has got what he passionately longed for, and it is — death ! ^
^ " But sent leanness into their soul." Ah, that " but " ! It embittered all. The meat was poison to them when it came without a blessing : whatever it might do in fattening the body, it was poor stuff when it made the soul lean. If we must know scantiness, may God grant it may not be scantiness of soul : yet this is a common attendant upon worldly prosperity. When wealth grows with many a man his worldly estate is fatter, but his soul's state is leaner. To gain silver and lose gold is a poor increase ; but to win for the body and lose for the soul is far worse. How earnestly might Israel have unprayed her prayers had she known what would come with their answer ! The prayers of lust will have to be wept over. We fret and fume till we have our desire, and then we have to fret still more because the attain- ment of it ends in bitter disappointment.^