* J. Wai'schauer, The Way of Understanding, 97.
• A. Farindon, Sermons, ii. 43L
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salutes; but the seller is often sent off with a churlish "No." In the moral and spiritual market, however, it is hard to buy and easy to sell. There are always numerous buyers bidding against each other in their eagerness to buy what we are prepared to sell. It is easy to sell one's spiritual birthright for a morsel of meat. There are scores of Jacobs lying in wait ready to help us to that transaction. It is easy to sell our principles and convictions for some paltry bribe, some pecuniary or social advantage. It is easy to sell our veracity or our honesty, to make people think more highly of us, or to secure additional gain. It is easy for young men to sell all their chances in this world and the world to come for the excitements of the drink-shop, the betting-ring, and the lewdnesses of the streets. It is easy for young fools to sell the Bible, the faith, and all the truths for which the martyrs died, just to gain the cheap reputation of being modern, up-to-date, independent free-thinkers, and that other fools may pat them on the back and tell them how clever they are. And it is easy to sell the last rewarding sentence of the Great Judge and King for the paltry toy, the painted gewgaws of the prince of this world.
2. When we sell the truth we always make a bad bargain, just as in buying the truth we always make a good bargain. In all other bargains, the gain of one party is loss to the other, but in this bargain there is only gain and no loss at all; the buyer gains, and yet no seller loses. So the sale of the truth is of all bargains the worst and the most foolish. For in other sales, although somebody may lose, yet somebody gains. But when the truth is sold, there is nothing but mere loss ; no man is, no man can be, the better for the sale of the truth :
Vendentem tantum deserit et minuit :
" Only the seller grows the worse ; there is no buyer grows the better."
^ Man parted with the truth of God in the garden of Eden, when he believed the lies of the devil, and disobeyed the strict injunction of his Maker. Then was the truth lost, then was it " sold," and with it man lost the dignity of his nature — the bright- ness of his future hopes and prospects, and the peace and happiness of his mind. The command had been of the simplest nature — " Thou shalt not eat of it, neither shalt thou touch it, lest thou
340 BUYING AND SELLING OF TRUTH
die." But the disobeying of that simple command entailed con- sequences the most terrible ; he did eat, and the great poet of England sketches the result, even to inanimate nature, in a picture, perhaps, not at all overdrawn : —
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
That all was lost. . . .
Sky loured, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completing of the mortal sin
Original.
And what did man get in return for his sale of the truth ? He got a dark and clouded intellect, an alienated and corrupted heart, and a soul dead in trespasses and sin. He got all the misery, wretchedness, and woe that have been since blighting earth, and earth's fairest scenes, and which still appear in the dark prospec- tive opening of eternity; and he got the beauteous work of creation, that had hitherto lain smiling under the sunshine of Heaven's blessing, blasted by the withering curse of the Great Eternal.^
3. The man who cannot see the priceless value of truth is always capable of selling it. That is the logic of history. That is the tragedy of materialism. Judas sold his honour, his place in the brotherhood, the great trust of his life, and the very love of God. Men little think what impiety, treachery, and shame lurk beneath the materialistic appraisement of life. This is peculiarly a peril of the city. Those who till the soil and wait in field and garden for God's sunshine and His raiu have all about them a sacrament of the priceless things. But those who dwell in the city, amid so much that is artificial, so much that is not easily suggestive of the unseen sources and spiritual values of life, may perhaps think themselves in special danger of judging earthly judgments. But, after all, whether a man drive a ploughshare or drive a bargain, there is but one way of escape from the peril of the earthly view and the earthly valuation — a peril never far from the hearts of the children of men. And that is in the evangel of the grace of God.
^ Art has fought in vain with the coarse and stubborn material- ism of the world, ^stheticism, with its eclectic discipleship and
1 J. Gregg, The Life of Faith, 76.
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its demand for a measure of intellectual reJSinement, has never been able to make the plea for the priceless a real factor in the life of a workaday world. Only Christ can do that. In His cross He has revealed life to us as the priceless gift of God to every humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart.