This chapter is therefore written under more than usual solemnity, because one is so sure that, in dealing with that scene and the passions that met there in a foaming vortex, words may be penned that will help souls which are caught in the drift of the same black current, and are being swept down. Perhaps this page shall utter a warning voice to arrest them, ere it be too late, and be a life-buoy, or rope, or brother's hand reached out to save them as they rush past on the boiling waters. For there is help and grace in God by which a Herod and a Judas, a Jezebel and a Lady Macbeth, a royal criminal or an ordinary one, may be arrested, redeemed, and saved.
In this, as in every sin, there were three forces at work:--First, the predisposition of the soul, which the Bible calls "lust," and "the desire of the mind." "Among whom," says the apostle, "we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath." Second, the suggestion of evil from without. Finally, the act of the will by which the suggestion was accepted and finally adopted.
It is, in this latter phase, that sin especially comes in. There may be sin in being able and disposed to sin. The possession of a sinful nature needs the atonement and propitiation of the precious blood. There may be sin, also, in dallying with temptation, in not anticipating its advent at a further distance. But, after all, that which is of the essence of sin is in the act of the will, which allows itself to admit and entertain some foul suggestion, and ultimately sends its executioner below to carry its sentence into effect.
I. THE PREDETERMINATION TOWARDS THIS SIN.--The word "lust" is now universally employed and understood in one direction only. It is a pity and a mistake; because we fail to appreciate many of the warning signals which the Spirit of God stations along our path. Any inordinate desire for sensual and pleasurable excitement, whether fixed on a right object, or directed towards a wrong one, comes under the denomination of "lust." Strong and ill-regulated desire or passion, in whatever direction it expresses itself, will work our ruin, and not that alone of impurity, to which this old word is now specially confined.
In dealing with temptation and sin, we must always take into account the presence in the human heart of that sad relic of the Fall, which biases men towards evil. Every one that has handled bowls on the green is familiar with the effect of the bias. The bowls are not perfect spheres, and are weighted on one side in such a way that, as they leave the hand, they will inevitably turn off from a straight course; and on this account the greater skill is required from the hands that manipulate and impel them. Such a bias has come to us all: first, from our ancestor Adam; and, secondly, by that law of heredity which has been accumulating its malign and sinister force through all the ages. God alone can compute the respective strength of these forces; but He can, and He will, as each separate soul stands before his judgment bar.
Herod was the son of the great Herod, a voluptuous, murderous tyrant; and, from some source or other, he had inherited a very weak nature. Perhaps, if he had come under strong, wholesome influences, he would have lived a passably good life; but it was his misfortune to fall under the influence of a beautiful fiend, who became his Lady Macbeth, his Jezebel, and wrought the ruin of his soul. It is a remarkable thing, how strong an influence a beautiful and unscrupulous woman may have over a weak man. And for this reason, amongst others, weakness becomes wickedness. The man who allows himself to drift weakly before the strongest influence is almost certain to discover that, in this world, the strongest influences are those which make for sin; these touch him most closely, and operate most continuously, and find in his nature the best _nidus_, or nest, in which to breed.