Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 30
Fifth Sunday After Easter.
The Christian's Jacob's Ladder.
" Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself unspotted from this world." — James i. 27.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex.: I. Ideal life. II. Charity, prayer, clean heart. III. Inversion.
I. Undefiled : 1. Occasions of sin. 2. Israelitic defilements. 3. Cover on vessel.
II. Prayerful : 1. Pray always. 2. Vocal and mental. 3. Effects of prayer.
III. Charitable: 1. Life's miseries and blessings. 2. Nobility of poor. 3. Charity's effect.
Per.: 1. Reversion. 2. Our sinfulness. 3. Our Jacob's ladder.
SERMON.
Brethren, in to-day's Epistle and Gospel, if taken and studied together, you will discover the outlines of an ideal Christian life. Our Lord's discourse on prayer is supplemented by St. James's definition of religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father. To suppose that Christian perfection consists altogether in contemplation or lip service is to deceive ourselves. We must not only be hearers but doers of the word, for it is not the man who saith " Lord, Lord," but he who doth the Father's will, that is saved. Righteousness demands, therefore, that the Christian, besides being possessed of a prayerful spirit, should plunge into the thick of life's activities, bear the full weight of life's inevitable cross, extend a helping hand to the fatherless and the widows in their tribulation, and withal keep himself unspotted from this world. These, then, are the three rounds in the Jacob's ladder whereby we clamber heavenward: a merciful hand, a prayerful soul, and a clean heart. In considering them let us invert their order so as to represent to ourselves a Christian guarding against defilement by prayer and acts of mercy — an order more convenient and logical and one sanctioned by Christ when in Gethrsemani He said to His Apostles: "Watch ye and pray, that in the hour of trial ye enter not into temptation."
"To keep oneself unspotted from this world." Brethren, the world reeks defilement, it is full of the occasions of sin. As surely as the body, our shoes and clothing and our skin contract or exude uncleanness amid the efforts of a busy day, so surely does the soul become more or less contaminated by contact with the world. Within, without, at home, abroad, everywhere, temptations are encountered. In the nineteenth chapter of the book of Numbers we read that when a death occurred, the tent and every person and thing therein, and every open vessel that had no covering bound upon it, were unclean. Being then in the desert, the Israelites lived in tents and stored their necessaries in earthen jars. Of the many things prescribed by law as rendering men unclean, unfit to mingle with their fellows and worship before God's tabernacle, none left so dark a stain as sin's consummation, death. One day sufficed to purge from other defilements, but he that closed the dying eyes, or washed or buried the corpse, whatever the home contained and whosoever entered it — all were made unclean and remained unclean until, having washed in the water of expiation on the third and again on the seventh day, they were thus restored to fellowship with their kindred. But note, I pray you, the exception. Whatever vessel had a cloth upon it escaped defilement. Brethren, we are earthen vessels all, fashioned by the hand of God, and the very air around is charged with death, with physical and moral death. Our dangers of defilement outnumber those of the Israelites as much as his outnumbered those of the vessels in his tent. Within our homes, lonely though they be, within ourselves lurk sin's occasions, and if, walking abroad, we come in touch with our fellowmen, the dangers increase a hundredfold. Nor does defilement work in us less mischief or bring less hardship than it did to the Israelite. Once defiled, we become morally ostracized, cut off from God and a menace to our fellowman. Oh well were it if, until expiation had been done, sinners were obliged to stand aloof and cry: " Unclean! unclean! " for they only serve to contaminate all with whom they come in contact. But, says the text, whatever vessel had a cloth bound on it was not defiled. Brethren, such vessels are our hearts, and the cloth with which we must securely cover them is the grace of God. In our hearts we treasure up God's gifts and thence disperse them to our fellowman, but believe me, unless the vessel be covered over by God's grace, its contents will be spoiled and our charity all in vain. No matter how precious or how common the contents, no matter how plain or how beautiful the vessel, unless it be covered securely it is sure to be defiled. Securely, did I say, aye and constantly, for so insistent and all-pervading is the death around us that there is need on our part of a holy watchfulness. Our eyes, our ears, our tongue, all our external and internal senses are so many openings to the heart and soul, and must be closely and continually guarded if we 'hope to keep ourselves unspotted from this world. Not that our hearts should be as vessels void and empty, but there should be a steadfast shutting in of virtue and of truth and as resolute a shutting out of error and of sin. " Thy Kingdom Come " should be our so prevailing sentiment that no room would be left for any less noble thought. Such is the cloth which must cover our hearts and be bound upon them, sealed, as it were, with the seal of perseverance— an unremittingly watchful cooperation with the grace of God. " And what I say to you," says Christ, " I say to all; watch."
Watch and pray. Brethren, if even the Apostles had to be reminded of the necessity of prayer in repelling temptation, how much more we, poor laggard followers of Christ! And reminded we are on almost every Gospel page. Our Lord's example, His nightlong vigils on the mountain side, is supplemented by His teaching: " Pray ye always and faint not." Note the word " always." It is frequently explained away as meaning that to labor is to pray, provided that whatever we do in word or in work, we do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the context calls for a more literal interpretation. It was her importunity that secured the widow justice, and incessant knocking opened the baker's door, and these and such like parables Christ uses to illustrate what holy insistence must characterize our prayers. Not that we must be ever on our knees; but as we always find sufficient time for meals, so we must learn to always snatch from business cares sufficient time for prayer. " On the law of the Lord," says Holy Writ, " the just man meditates by night and day," that is, at uniform and stated intervals. In fact, if we consider upon the one hand God, and ourselves upon the other, it would seem we are bound to pray much oftener than is generally thought possible or consistent with our duties. God's earthly abode, be it in a temple or a human soul, should be a house of prayer. The heart is where its treasure is, and if we loved God as we should, ours would be prayerful lives. Could the young man feel for God the love he feels for his sweetheart, how assiduously he would meditate the law of the Lord, how often his thoughts and dreams would wander heavenward, what a great saint he would become! Our wretched destitution, too, should teach us the need of prayer. Directly they fell, our first parents realized their nakedness. They had lost their robe of innocence, and humanity since then has continued to clothe itself in the rags of sin. Nay, sin has soaked in like water through the entire human system, and permeated like oil its very bones, and there produced a sort of moral paralysis. Of ourselves we can do nothing. We are as helpless as a nest of unfledged birds, and like them we should lift our arms in supplication, and open-mouthed cry to our heavenly Father to give us each day our daily bread. Prayer is the second round in our Jacob's ladder. Guard as we may against defilement, we shall never achieve perfection without prayer. It will not do to remove our vices as we do our beards, leaving the roots for a further growth. Our malady is internal, and not to be cured by such outward appliances as alms or fasts, but only by the internal medicine of heartfelt prayer. That is the cordial that fires the soul and sends the blessed heat through the entire man, rendering him malleable as fire does the iron, and making him glow as glowed Christ's face and garb on Thabor. But lip service will not do; our prayers must be mental as well. Prayer purely vocal is like a brief but violent summer shower — it does more harm than good, but prayer that is likewise mental is as the soft but steady drizzle that delights the husbandman and produces abundant fruit. But the chief factor in prayer is the heart. Our minds should not retain but pass along the spiritual pabulum to our wills and hearts. A well-trained beagle will not devour the game, but brings it to his master's feet. So, too, intelligence collects ideas for the heart. True, a toll may be levied by the intellect on what it passes in, but if it confiscate all, the heart will starve. If the nurse not only masticates her baby's food but swallows it besides, the infant dies. And given a heart once cold or dead, all attempts at prayer are as a sounding* brass or a tinkling cymbal. But a tongue, a mind, and heart delicately attuned to prayer lift like sweet music their happy possessor heavenward. Like a man on a lofty tower, we begin to appreciate the littleness of earthly things. Our judgments are comparative, and so accustomed becomes the prayerful man to the contemplation of God's greatness, that he learns soon to despise this little world, to bear misfortune with equanimity and prosperity with indifference. In the words of the Psalmist: "He hath made the Most High his refuge, and no evil can come to him."
Watch and pray and visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation. Brethren, practical benevolence is the third round in the ladder of perfection, the final requisite in a religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father. The truly religious are essentially altruistic. In playing the good Samaritan or humanity's Simon of Cyrene, they forget their own and lighten their neighbor's burdens. " Man born of woman, liveth a short time and is filled with many miseries." Such is humanity's biography. Torture at birth, misery through life, at death agony. In driving our first parents from paradise God said: " Cursed be the earth, thorns and thistles shall it bear you," and that curse has echoed down the ages in one unbroken series of human woes. Divine and human wisdom agree that the yoke is heavy on every child of Eve, from the time he comes from his mother's womb until he returns into the womb of mother earth, for suffering and death knock with impartial hand at the peasant's cot and the palaces of kings. Consider the numberless diseases of childhood, the spiritual afflictions of maturity, and the miseries of the aged, when, like drowning men, they feel the last plank slipping from their grasp, and see the great ocean of eternity slowly but surely rising to engulf them. Life begins with a scream and ends with a moan, because there is in our hearts an aching void that nothing short of God can ever appease. True, we are sometimes happy, but our happiness is as that of one born with heart disease, who never having tasted the sweetness of relief, scarcely feels the bitterness of his pain. If we could see ourselves as we are, as the angels see us, we would weep for selfish pity, and the unbegotten babe would beg to be left in its nothingness forever. Still it is all God's mercy. We prodigals wander afar from Him and with the scourge of tribulation He drives us back. When miseries multiply, the blessed resolve: " I will arise and go to my Father " is easily made. It is only when he has become as wretched and forlorn as the blind beggar by the gates of Jericho that the sinner strains to hear the approaching footsteps of his Lord, and lifts his voice in that blessed prayer: " Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." Not more true is this of the individual Christian than of the Christian Church, for whereas she thrives best under unremitting persecution, temporal prosperity has ever wrought in her ruin and corruption. The same is true of the human race — the more they prospered the farther they wandered from God and the more dire the periodic calamities with which He recalled them. In fact God's truest servants are ever more numerous among the afflicted and the poor than in the ranks of fortune's favorites. The poor are the true Christian nobility, and among them are enacted day by day scenes of Christian heroism, deeds of heroic fortitude and patience, such as the proud aristocrats with all their pretensions are seldom capable of performing or appreciating. For though worldlings must taste betimes the chalice of suffering, it is not the chalice of Christ, but of the world, it is not drained with Christian cheerfulness and resignation, but with sorrow and loathing. Only they, says Holy Writ, who drink the chalice of the Lord are made the friends of God. But this divine affiliation is produced both in the actual sufferers and in those witnesses of those sufferings who try to relieve them. Go into the homes of poverty and disease and see the trials there so patiently endured and tell me if you are not a better man for the experience. See the little orphans wailing farewell to one another and to the old home perhaps forever, and going off to spend and end their lives how or where God only knows. Again see the parentless brother and sister, or the widowed mother proudly braving the great world, and winning from it an independent subsistence for the little ones at home. Stand by the deathbed of these latter-day saints and martyrs, and watch their last brave struggle and you will feel as though your heart's blood might well up to your eyes and you could shed tears of blood for very pity. And pity is akin to love, for he who can and does feel a hearty and practical pity for a suffering fellowcreature is very near to the love and the kingdom ol God. From nothing else can we derive such solid spiritual comfort, such an uplifting of our whole being, as from an earnest effort to relieve the unfortunate. When a man, his heart swelling with sympathy, hastens to comfort sorrow or relieve affliction, he is truly God-like. Bearing in, his soul the image of God, he presents in his outward demeanor a likeness as perfect as may be of the Christ sympathizing with sorrow and healing the diseased. Nay more, his charity has Christ Himself for its object, " for," says He, " whatsoever you do unto them you do likewise unto Me." Tribulation, therefore, is but a form of God's mercy. Spiritual ills and spiritual death render men unclean, but worldly trials, on the contrary, tend to ennoble and to sanctify. They are blessings in disguise, affording us, as they do, opportunities for atonement, detaching us from the world, evoking all that is purest and best in our natures, and, when sin has been done, sending us like frightened children back into God's arms crying: "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me."
A clean heart, a prayerful soul, a generous hand. In this order, Brethren, we agreed to consider these three, but alas! it was an error, we deceived ourselves. The sinless can afford to confine their thoughts to the higher things, as how to keep themselves pure by pious exercises and works of mercy, but who alack! who of us is sinless? If we say we are without sin, the truth is not in us. So earthly are we that the first stage in our progress toward God will be to emerge from the black pit of sin into the light and life of grace. We must first come up into God's kingdom on earth, and drawing our Jacob's ladder after us, plant it there anew and resume our journey heavenward. We plant it and reverse it. Under the stress of manifold tribulations we turn prayerfully to God and so emerge chastened and cleansed from sin, but our farther progress upward will be by the same steps reversed, a watchfulness against defilement, a less selfish, a higher and a holier form of prayer and a complete abandonment of self in the interest of humanity and of God. For " this is religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father, to watch and pray and to visit the widows and the orphans and comfort them in their tribulation."