PROVERBS IV. 23 251
are pure, think on these things." One thought there is which above all others is fruitful and powerful, and which should be familiar to every tempted Christian soul ; it is the thought of the Cross and of Christ Crucified. "In hoc signo vinces." David slew the Pliilistine with a sling and with a stone, but the sling was ready in his hand, and foresight had caused him to fill the bag with stones out of the brook. To the soul which fights the faithful battle in the realm of thought, and cries aloud in the darkness of its night to Christ Crucified, what wondrous light and power are given by the merits of the Cross and Passion.
Here is the heart's true bulwark found 1
And here is rest secure; And here is love's most certain ground,
And here salvation sure.^
^ 0 how well he is guarded and armed against the snares of the devil and evil thoughts and impure imaginations, who has the image of the Crucified fixed in his heart, penetrating all his interior : and always and everywhere urging to the thought and performance of every good ! Then inwardly consoled with wondrous sweetness of heart from the presence of Christ shall he be able justly to say, what holy David with great joy sang to God: "I have run the way of thy commandments; when thou didst enlarge my heart." ^
^ The Lenten Collects, 33.
* Thomas k Eempis, Sermons to the Novices Regular, 76.
Wronging the Soul.
feSS
Literature.
Black (H.), Edinburgh Sermons, 11.
Dewey (0.), Works, 15.
Finlayson (T. C), Hie Divine Gentleness, 291.
Harris (S. S.), The Dignity of Man, 108.
Holden (J. S.), Redeeming Vision, 144.
Matheson (G.), Messages of Hope, 81.
Mitchell (J,), Shot and Shell, 70.
Newton (J.), The Problem of Personality, 59.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, viii. 193.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xvi. (1878), No. 1060.
Christian World Pulpit, Ixi. 401 (W. L. Watkinson) ; Lxx. 379
(R. Mackintosh). Eomiletic Review, xx. 426 (H. A. Stevenson).
•94
Wronging the Soul.
He that sinneth against me [misseth me — R.V. marg.] wrongeth his own
soul ; All they that hate me love death.— Prov. viii. 36.
This is represented as the language of Wisdom. The attribute of wisdom is personified throughout the chapter, which closes its instructions with the declaration of the text : " He that sinneth against me (or misseth me) wrongeth his own soul : all they that hate me love death." The theme, then, is obviously the wrong which the sinner does to himself, to his nature, to his own soul.
He does a wrong, indeed, to others. He does them, it may be, deep and heinous injury. The moral offender injures society, and injures it in the most vital part. Sin is, to all the dearest interests of society, a desolating power. It spreads misery through the world. It brings that misery into the daily lot of millions. The violence of anger, the exactions of selfishness, the corrodings of envy, the coldness of distrust, the contests of pride, the excesses of passion, the indulgences of sense, carry desolation into the very bosom of domestic life ; and the crushed and bleeding hearts of friends and kindred, or of a larger circle of the suffering and oppressed, are everywhere witnesses to, and victims of, the sinner's folly.
But all the injury, great and terrible as it is, which the sinner does or can inflict upon others is not equal to the injury that he inflicts upon himself. The evil that he does is, in almost all cases, the greater, the nearer it comes to himself ; greater to his friends than to society at large ; greater to his family than to his friends ; and so it is greater to himself than to any other. Yes, it is in his own nature, whose glorious traits are dimmed and almost blotted out, whose pleading remonstrances are sternly disregarded, whose immortal hopes are rudely stricken down, — it is in his own nature
256 WRONGING THE SOUL
that he does a work so dark and mournful, and so fearful, that he ov^ht to shudder and weep to think of it.
I.
The Sin against Wisdom.
The Hebrew term rendered " he that sinneth against me," means literally, " he who misses me," who fails to " hit," to find me and to hearken to me. The Greek word used in the Septuagint has reference to an archer who misses his object, and of the arrow that fails to hit the mark. In the text "missing" is a true antithesis to finding. The Arabic reads it much in this sense: " he who errs from me."
1. There are various definitions of sin, each one of which is true according to our standpoint. If we regard sin as a violation of man's true destiny, which we recognize not only in God's loving command, but also in the very law of man's own being, then sin is the transgressing of the law. If we regard sin as variation from the right, the good, the true, then sin is unrighteousness. If we regard sin as the negation of man's true nature as a spiritual being, and the identifying of him with the things of sense, then sin is materialism. If we regard sin as the fixing of the affections — affections that were intended for glories beyond the stars — upon the perishing things of this world, then sin is worldliness. And finally, if we regard sin as the failure or refusal of the soul to apprehend and confide in the unseen, then sin is unbelief. In the sphere of law, then, sin is transgression ; in the sphere of morals, it is unrighteousness ; in the sphere of thought, it is materialism ; in the sphere of conduct, it is worldliness ; in the sphere of spiritual apprehension, it is unbelief. But it is always one and the self- same thing, the same grim and ghastly thing — in the godless man of the world and in the ruffian who outrages law, in the smooth libertine and in the vulgar thief, in the respectable atheist who says there is no God, and in the brave outlaw who lives his creed and acts upon his belief.