376 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
perfectly straight one, you may go ahead without fear, and sing on the road.^
2. But the wicked man is not merely to forsake his way, he is to forsake his thoughts. You see, one may, from prudential motives, give up outwardly an evil way, without any change within. From mere self-interest an evil-speaking man may hold his tongue, and yet his thoughts and feelings be as unkind and malicious as ever. From mere self-interest, from regard to his bodily health or his worldly interests, a profligate man may restrain his appetites, and yet his thoughts be still impure. But a mere outward reformation has no value in the eyes of the heart-searching One. There must be forsaking of sin inwardly ; there must be a hating of it, and a giving it up in the thoughts and intents of the soul. The fountain, from which the bitter waters flow, must be stopped. The root, from which spring the poison fruits, must be plucked up.
IF In the third century a great wave of monasticism swept the Church. Men wooed the life of solitude and contemplation, and thought by such a life to escape their evil thoughts. But history testifies to the vanity of such a hope. One of the Church Fathers, Basil, after having sought peace in the quiet of the desert, writes to his friend Gregory, " I have abandoned my life in town, as one sure to lead to countless ills ; but I have not yet been able to get quit of myself. I am like travellers at sea, who have never gone a voyage before, and are distressed and seasick, who quarrel with the ship because it is so big and makes such a tossing, and when they get out of it into the pinnace or dingey, are everywhere and always seasick and distressed. Wherever they go, their nausea and misery go with them. My state is something like this. I carry my own troubles with me, and so everywhere I am in the midst of similar discomforts. So in the end I have not got much good out of my solitude " (Basil, Ep. ii.). As Basil suggests, the only way is a mortification of the passions, and such mortification can come about only by a new birth, a return unto the Lord. If we ask what conditions best favour such regeneration, we are answered by the life of Jesus, which was not one of solitude alone, nor one of activity alone, but a life in which prayer and contem- plation alternated with active service.
Putting the matter broadly and generally : what are the
thoughts from which the sin life, in its various outward forms,
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* C. H. Spurgeon, Tht Messiah, p. 425.
ISAIAH 377
comes ? They are chiefly wrong thoughts about God, about sin, about true happiness. Well, those wrong thoughts about God, as if He were so great that He will not concern Himself about us, or so merciful that He will never punish us, or so dreadful in His holiness that He will never pardon us ; those thoughts must be forsaken. And those thoughts about sin, as if it were no great thing, as if it were easily got over, as if it were little more than a sort of unhappy necessity, instead of a tremendous evil separating the soul from the Most High and making the sinner liable to His wrath and curse ; those thoughts must be forsaken. And those thoughts about man's happiness, as if it consisted in the abundance of the things which he possesses, in earthly honour and prosperity, and not in heart-love and heart- devotion to God and His Son ; those thoughts must be forsaken. That whole course of thinking, feeling, hoping, doing, which springs from nature's awful unbelief, must be given up in deep dislike and real abasement.
1 I remember when we were in Glasgow there was a business man converted, and he was very anxious for all his employes to be converted, and he brought them one after another, and they were blessed. But one man he could not get. He said, " If I am going to be converted I am going to be by the regular stated means." Scotland had got regular churches, and he did not need Americans to come and tell him how to be saved, and he would not come. We went up to the North of Scotland, and the employer had some business to transact there, and he sent that man, and one night we were preaching on the banks of a river, and I was speaking on this text, "1 thought." This man saw the crowd, and he thought he would like to see what was going on, and the text reached his attention — " I thought." He listened, and the arrow of conviction went down into his soul, and the man was convicted. Then he began to inquire who was the preacher, and he found out that it was this same preacher that he would not hear in Glasgow.^
3. Thus much the prophet teaches us on the negative side, as to what is to be turned from ; he goes next to the positive side, and teaches us what is to be turned to. " Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts ; and let him return unto the Lord." That is implied, of course, in any