Sermons (Massillon)/Sermon 29
SERMON XXIX.
ON THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS.
"Come and see." — John xi. 34.
The most hardened sinner could never submit to the horror of his situation, were he able to see and to know him self such as he is. A soul grown old in guilt, is only bearable to itself, because that the same passion, from which all his miseries spring, conceals them from him, and that his disorder is, at the same time, both the weapon which inflicts the wound and the fatal bandage which hides it from the eyes of the patient.
Behold wherefore the church, in order to lay the sinner open to himself during this time of penitence, almost continually displays to us, under various images, the deplorable state of a soul who has grown old in his iniquity: one while under the figure of a paralytic young man; that is, to mark to us the insensibility and fatal ease which always follow habitual guilt: another, under the symbol of a prodigal reduced to feed with the vilest animals; and, under these traits, it wishes to make us feel his abasement and his infamy: again, under the image of a person born blind, and that is in order to paint to us the depth and the horror of his blindness: and, lastly, under the parable of a deaf and dumb person possessed with a devil; and that is, more animatedly to figure to us the subjection under which habitual guilt holds all the powers of an unfortunate soul.
To-day, in order, as it were to assemble all these traits under a single image, still more terrible and striking, the church proposes to us Lazarus in the tomb, dead for four days, emitting stench and infection, bound hand and foot, his face covered with a napkin, and exciting only horror even in those whom affection and blood had most closely united to him in life.
Come then and see, you, my dear hearer, who live, for so many years past, under the shameful yoke of dissipation, and who are insensible to the misery of your situation. Approach this tomb which the voice of Jesus Christ is now to open before your eyes; and, in that spectacle of infection and putrefaction, behold the true picture of your soul. You fly to profane spectacles in order to see your passions represented under pleasing and deceitful colours: approach, and see them expressed here such as they are: come, and, in that infectious and loathsome carcass, behold what you are in the sight of God, and how much your situation is worthy of your tears.
But in exposing here only the horrible situation of a soul who lives in disorder, lest I trouble and discourage, without holding out to him a hand in order to assist him in quitting that abyss,— that may omit nothing of our Gospel, I shall divide it into three reflections: in the first, you will see how shocking and deplorable is the situation of a soul who lives in habitual irregularity; in the second, I shall show to you the means by which he may quit it; and, in the third, what the motives are which determine Jesus Christ to operate the miracle of his resurrection and deliverance. O my God! let thine all-powerful voice be now heard by those unfortunate souls who sleep in the darkness and shadow of death; command these withered bones once more to be animated, and to recover that light and that life of grace which they have lost.
Reflection I. — I remark, at first, three principal circumstances in the deplorable spectacle which Lazarus, dead and buried, offers to our eyes. First, already become a mass of worms and corruption, he spreads infection and stench; and behold the profound corruption of a soul in habitual sin. Secondly, a gloomy napkin covers his eyes and his face; and behold the fatal blindness of a soul in habitual sin. Lastly, he appears in the tomb, bound hand and foot; and behold the melancholy subjection of a soul in habitual sin. Now, it is that profound corruption, that fatal blindness, and that melancholy servitude, typified in the spectacle of Lazarus, dead and buried, which precisely form all the horror and all the wretchedness of a soul long dead in the eyes of God.
In the first place, there is not a more natural image of a soul grown old in iniquity, than that of a carcass already a prey to worms and putrefaction. Thus the holy books every where represent the state of sin under the idea of a shocking death; and it seems as if the Spirit of God had found that melancholy image the most calculated to give us, at least, a glimpse of all the deformity of a soul in which sin dwells.
Now, two effects are produced on the body by death; it deprives it of fife, it afterward alters all its features and corrupts all its members. It deprives it of life: in the same manner it is that sin begins to disfigure the beauty of the soul; for, God is the life of our souls, the light of our minds, and the spring, as I may say, of our hearts: our righteousness, our wisdom, our truth, are only the union of a righteous, wise, and true God with our soul: all our virtues are only the different influences of his Spirit which dwells within us; it is he who exciteth our good desires, who formeth our holy thoughts, who produceth our pure lights, who operateth our righteous propensities; insomuch that all the spiritual and supernatural life of our soul is only, as the apostle speaks, the life of God within us.
Now, by a single sin, that life ceases, that light is extinguished, that Spirit withdrawn, all these springs are suspended. Thus the soul, without God, is a soul without life, without motion, light, truth, righteousness, or charity: it is no longer but a chaos, a dead body; its life is no longer but an imaginary and chimerical life; and, like those inanimate substances set in motion by a foreign influence, it seems to live and to act; but "it is dead while living."
Behold the first degree of death, which every sin which separates a soul from God introduces into it; but habitual sin, like inveterate death, goes farther. Thus, Lazarus not only is without life in the tomb, but, having been there for four days, the corruption of his body begins to spread infection: for, although the first sin, which causes the loss of grace, leaves us, in the eyes of God, without life and without motion, yet we may say, that certain impressions of the Holy Spirit, certain seeds of spiritual life, certain means of recovering the grace lost, still remain to us. Faith is not yet extinguished; the feelings of virtue not yet effaced; a sense of the truths of salvation not yet lost: it is a dead body in truth; but life being only just withdrawn, it still preserves, I know not what, of marks of warmth, which seem to spring from some remain of life. But, in proportion as the soul remains in death, and perseveres in guilt, grace withdraws; all extinguishes, all changes, all corrupts, and its corruption becomes universal.
I say universal; yes, my brethren, all changes, all corrupts, in the soul, through a continuance of disorder: the gifts of nature, gentleness, rectitude, humanity, modesty, even the mental talents; the blessings of grace, the feelings of religion, the remorses of conscience, the terrors of faith, and faith itself; the corruption penetrates all, and changes into putrefaction and a spectacle of horror both the gifts of heaven and the blessings of the earth: nothing remains in its original situation: the loveliest features are those which become the most hideous and the most undistinguishable; the charms of wit become the seasoning of debauchery and the passions; feelings of religion are changed into freethinking; superiority of knowledge into pride and a vain and shocking philosophy; nobility of mind is no longer but a boundless ambition; generosity and tenderness of heart but a yielding to the sway of impure and profane connexions; the principles of glory and honour handed down to us with the blood of our ancestors, but a vain ostentation, and the source of all our hatreds and animosities; our rank, our elevation, the cause of our envies and mean jealousies: lastly, our riches and our prosperity, the fatal instruments of all our crimes.
But the corruption is not confined to the sinner alone: a dead body cannot be long concealed without a smell of death being spread around: it is impossible to live long in debauchery without the smell of a bad life making itself felt. In vain is every precaution employed to conceal the ignominy of a disorderly life; in vain is the sepulchre, full of putrefaction and infection, externally whitened and embellished, the stench spreads; guilt, sooner or later, betrays itself; a black and infectious air always proceeds from that profane fire which, with so much care was concealed. A disorderly life betrays itself in a thousand ways; the public, at last undeceived, opens its eyes, and the more their character becomes blown, the more they discover themselves; they become accustomed to their shame; they become weary of constraint and decency; that guilt which is only to be purchased with attention and arrangements, appears too dear; they unmask themselves; they throw off that remainder of restraint and modesty which make us still cautious of the eyes of men; they wish to riot in disorder without precaution or care: and then, servants, friends, connexions, the city, and country, all feel the infection of their irregularities and example. Our rank, our elevation, no longer serve but to render more striking and more durable the scandal of our debaucheries; in a thousand places our excesses serve as a model: the view of our manners perhaps strengthens, in secret, consciences whom guilt still rendered uneasy: perhaps they even cite us, and make use of our example, in seducing innocence, and in conquering a still timorous modesty; and, even after our death, the fame of our debaucheries shall stain the history of men, shall perhaps embellish lascivious tales, and, long after our day, in ages yet to come, the remembrance of our crimes shall still be an occasion and a source of guilt.
Lastly, (but I would not dare to enlarge here,) the corruption which habitual guilt sheds through the whole interior of the sinner is so universal that even his body is infected; debauchery leaves the shameful marks of his irregularities on his flesh: the infection of his soul often extends even to a body which he has made subservient to ignominy. He says, in advance, to corruption, like Job, " Thou art my father; and to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister!" The corruption of his body is a shocking picture of that of his soul.
Great God! can I then flatter myself that thou wilt yet cast upon me some looks of compassion! Wilt thou not groan at the sight of that mass of crimes and putrefaction which my soul presents to thine eyes, as thou now groanest in the spirit over the tomb of Lazarus? Ah! avert thine holy eyes from the spectacle of my profound wretchedness; but let me no more turn away from it myself, and let me be enabled to view myself with all that horror which my situation deserves: tear asunder the veil which hides me from myself; my evils shall in part be done away from the moment that I shall be able to see and to know them.
And behold the second circumstance of the deplorable situation of Lazarus; a mournful cloth covers his face: that is the profound blindness which forms the second character of habitual sin.
I confess that every sin is an error which makes us mistake evil for good; it is a false judgment which makes us seek in the creature that ease, grandeur, and independence which we can find in God alone; it is a mist which hides order, truth, and righteousness from our eyes, and, in their place, substitutes vain phantoms. Nevertheless, a first falling off from God does not altogether extinguish our lights; nor is it always productive of total darkness. It is true that the Spirit of God, source of all light, retires, and no longer dwells within us; but some traces of light are still left in the soul: thus, though the sun be already withdrawn from our hemisphere, yet certain rays of his light still tinge the sky, and form, as it were, an imperfect day; it is only in proportion as he sinks that the gloom gains, and the darkness of night at last prevails. In the same manner, in proportion as sin degenerates into habit, the light of God retires, darkness gains, and the profound night of total blindness at last arrives.
And then all becomes occasion of error to the criminal soul; all changes its aspect to his eyes; the most shameful passions no longer appear but as weaknesses; the most criminal attachments but sympathies brought with us into the world and inherent to our hearts; the excesses of the table but innocent pleasures of society; revenge but a just sense of injury; licentious and impious conversations but lively and agreeable sallies; the blackest defamation but a customary language, of which none but weak and timid minds can make a scruple; the laws of the church but old-fashioned customs; the severity of God's judgments but absurd declamations which equally disgrace his goodness and mercy; death in sin, the inevitable consequence of a criminal life, mere predictions in which there is more of zeal than of truth, and refuted by the confidence which a return to God, previous to that last moment, promises to us: lastly, heaven, the earth, hell, all creatures, religion, crimes, virtues, good and evil, things present and to come, all change their aspect to the eyes of a soul who lives in habitual guilt; all show themselves under false appearances; his whole life is no longer but a delusion and a continued error. Alas! could you tear away the fatal veil which covers your eyes, like those of Lazarus, and behold yourself, like him, buried in darkness, all covered with putrefaction, and spreading around infection and a smell of death! But now, says our Saviour, all these things are hid from thine eyes; you see in yourself only the embellishments and the pompous externals of the fatal tomb in which you drag on in sin; your rank, your birth, your talents, your dignities, your titles, that is to say, the trophies, and the ornaments which the vanity of men has there raised up; but, remove the stone which covers that place of horror; look within, judge not of yourself from these pompous outsides, which serve only to embellish your carcass; see what, in the eyes of God, you are; and if the corruption and the profound blindness of your soul touch you not, let its slavery at least rouse and recall you to yourself.
Last circumstance of the situation of Lazarus dead and buried; he was bound hand and foot: and behold the image of the wretched slavery of a soul long under the dominion of sin.
Yes, my brethren, in vain does the world decry a Christian life as a life of subjection and slavery. The reign of righteousness is a reign of liberty; the soul, faithful and submissive to God, becomes master over all creatures; the just man is above all, because he is unconnected with all; he is master of the world, because he despises the world; he is dependent neither on his masters, because he only serves them for God; nor on his friends, because he only loves them according to the order of charity and of righteousness; nor on his inferiors, because he exacts from them no iniquitous compliance; nor on his fortune, because he rather dreads it; nor on the judgments of men, because he dreads those of God alone; nor on events, because he considers them all as in the order of Providence; nor even on his passions, because the charity which is within him is their rule and measure. The just man alone, then, enjoys a perfect liberty: superior to the world, to himself, to all creatures, to all events, he begins, even in this life, to reign with Jesus Christ; all is below him, while he is himself inferior to God alone.
But the sinner, who seems to live without either rule or restraint, is, however, a vile slave; he is dependent on all, — on his body, on his propensities, on his caprices, on his passions, on his fortune, on his masters, on his friends, on his enemies, on his rivals, on all surrounding creatures; so many gods to which love or fear subject him; so many idols which multiply his slavery, while he thinks himself more free by casting off that obedience which he owes to God alone; he multiplies his masters, by refusing submission to him alone who renders free those who serve him, and who gives to his servants dominion over the world, and over every thing which the world contains.
You often complain, my dear hearer, of the hardships of virtue; you dread a Christian life, as a life of subjection and sorrow: but what in it could you find so gloomy as you experience in debauchery? Ah! if you durst complain of the bitterness and of the tyranny of the passions; if you durst confess the troubles, the disgusts, the frenzies, the anxieties of your soul; if you were candid on the gloomy transactions of your heart, there is no lot but what would appear preferable to your own; but you despise the inquietudes of guilt which you feel; and you exaggerate the hardships of virtue which you have never known. But, in order to hold out to you an assisting hand, let us continue the history of our Gospel, and let us see, in the resurrection of Lazarus, what are the means offered to you, by the goodness of God, of quitting so deplorable a situation.
Reflection II. — The power of God, says the apostle, is not less conspicuous in the conversion of sinners than in raising up the dead; and the same supernatural power which wrought upon Jesus Christ to deliver him from the tomb, ought to operate upon the soul long dead in sin, in order to recall it to the life of grace. I find there only this difference, that the Almighty voice of God meets no resistance from the body which he revives and recalls to life. On the contrary, the soul, dead and corrupted, as I may say, through the long duration of guilt, seems to retain a remainder of strength and motion only to oppose that powerful voice which is heard even in the abyss in which it is plunged, and which resounds for the purpose of restoring it to light and life. Nevertheless, however difficult may be the conversion of a soul of this description, and however rare such examples may be, the Spirit of God, in order to teach us never to despair of divine mercy, when we sincerely wish to quit the ways of iniquity, points out to up at present, in the resurrection of Lazarus, the means of accomplishing it.
The first is, confidence in Jesus Christ. Lord, says Mary, the sister of Lazarus, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died; but I know that, even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. I am the resurrection and the life, said Jesus unto her; believest thou this? Yes, Lord, said she, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. It is through this that the miracle of raising up Lazarus begins, namely, the perfect confidence that Jesus Christ is able to deliver him from death and corruption.
For, my brethren, the delusion continually employed by the demon, in order to render our desires of conversion unavailing, and to counteract their progress, is that of despondency and mistrust: he warmly retraces to our imagination the horrors of an entire life of guilt; he says to us, in secret, that which the sisters of Lazarus say to Jesus Christ, though in a different sense, — that we ought, at a much earlier period, to have checked our career; that it is now impossible, when so far advanced, to return; that the time for attempting a change is now passed: and that the virulency and age of our wounds no longer admit a resource. Upon this they abandon themselves to languor and indolence; and, after having incensed the righteousness of God through our debaucheries, we insult his mercy through the excess of our mistrust.
I confess that a soul long dead in sin must suffer much in returning to God; that it is difficult, after so many years of dissipation, to form to one's self a new heart and new inclinations; and that it is even fit that the obstacles, the sufferings, and the difficulties, which always attend the conversion of souls of that description, should make great sinners feel how dreadful it is to have been almost a whole life-time removed from God.
But I say, that from the moment a truly contrite soul wishes to return to him, his wounds, however virulent or old, ought no longer to alarm his confidence: I say, that his wretchedness ought to increase his compunction, but not his despondency: I say, that the first step of his penitence ought to be that of adoring Jesus Christ as the resurrection and the life; a secret confidence that our wants are always less than his mercies; a firm persuasion that the blood of Jesus Christ is more powerful in washing out our stains than our corruption can be in contracting them: I say, that the fewer resources of strength a criminal soul may find in himself, the more ought he to expect from him who taketh delight in rearing up the work of grace upon the nothingness of nature; and that the more he is inwardly opposed to grace, the more does he, in one sense, become an object worthy of divine power and mercy, for God wisheth that all good shall evidently appear as coming from above, and that man shall attribute nothing to himself.
And, in effect, my dear hearer, whatever may the horror of your past crimes be, the Lord will not long refuse you grace, from the moment that he hath inspired you with the desire and the resolution of asking it. It is written in Judges, that the father of Samson, terrified by the apparition of the angel of the Lord, who, after announcing to him the birth of a son, commanded him to offer up a sacrifice, and then, like a devouring fire consumed the victim and the pile, and vanished from his sight; that, terrified, I say, at the spectacle, he was convinced that both himself and his wife were to be struck with death because they had seen the Lord. But his wife, holy and enlightened, condemned his mistrust. If the Lord, said she to him, wished to destroy us, he would not have made fire from heaven to descend on our sacrifice; he would not have accepted it from our hands; he would not have discovered to us his secrets and his wonders, and what we had hitherto been ignorant of.
And behold what I now answer to you. You believe your death and your destruction to be inevitable; the state of your conscience discourages you; in vain do sparks of grace and of light fall upon your heart; in vain do they touch you, solicit you, and almost gain the point of consuming the sacrifice of your passions; you persuade yourself that you are lost beyond resource. But, if the Lord wished to abandon and to destroy you, he would not make fire from heaven to descend upon your heart; he would not light up within you holy desires and sentiments of penitence: if he wished to let you die in the blindness of your passions, he would not manifest to you the truths of salvation; he would not open your eyes on those miseries to come which you prepare for yourself. Besides, how do you know if Jesus Christ has not permitted your falling into such a deplorable state, for the purpose of making a prodigy of your conversion an incitement to the conversion of your brethren? How do you know if his mercy has not rendered your passions so notorious, in order that thousands of sinners, witnesses of your errors, despair not of conversion, and be inflamed at the sight of your penitence? How do you know if your crimes, and even your scandals, have not entered into the designs of God's goodness with regard to your brethren; and if your situation, which seems hopeless, like that of Lazarus, is not rather an occasion of manifesting God's glory than a presage of death to you?
When grace recalls a common sinner, the fruit of his conversion is limited to himself; but when it singles out a grand sinner, a Lazarus, long dead and corrupted, ah! the designs of its mercy are then much more extensive; in one change it prepares a thousand to come; it raises up a thousand out of one; and the crimes of a sinner become the seed of a thousand just. You give way to despondency in feeling the extremity of your wretchedness; but it is perhaps that very extremity which draws you nearer to the happy moment of your conversion, and which the goodness of God has reserved for you, that you might be a public monument of the excess of his mercies toward the greatest sinners. Only believe, as Jesus Christ said to the sisters of Lazarus, and you shall see the glory of God; you shall see your relations, your friends, your inferiors, and even the accomplices of your debaucheries, become imitators of your penitence: you shall see the most hopeless souls sighing after the happiness of your new life; and the world itself forced to render glory to God, and, in recalling your past errors, to admire the prodigy of your present lot. Take, even from your wretchedness itself, new motives of confidence: bless, in advance, the merciful wisdom of that Being, who, even from your passions, shall know how to extract advantages to his glory: every thing co-operates toward the salvation of his chosen, and he permitteth great excesses only in order to operate great mercies. God ever wisheth the salvation of his creature; and, from the moment that we form a wish of returning to him, our only dread ought to be, not that his justice reject us, but lest our intention be not sincere.
And the surest proof of our sincerity is the absenting ourselves from every occasion which may place an obstacle to our resurrection and our deliverance; obstacle, figured by the stone which shut up the mouth of Lazarus's tomb, and which Jesus Christ orders to be removed before he begins to operate the miracle of his resurrection. — Remove the stone: second mean, marked in our Gospel.
In effect, every day shows sinners, who, tired of disorder, wish to return to God, but who cannot prevail upon themselves to quit those objects, those places, those situations, and those rocks, which have been the cause of their removal from him: they vainly persuade themselves that they shall be able to extinguish their passions, to terminate a disorderly life; in a word, to rise from the dead, without removing the stone. They even make some efforts: they address themselves to men and God; they adopt measures for a change; but it is of those measures which, not removing the dangers, do not, in the smallest degree, forward their safety; and thus their whole life sorrowfully passes away in detesting their chains, and in the utter inability of breaking them asunder.
Whence comes this, my brethren? It is that the passions begin to weaken only after the removal of such objects as have lighted them up; it is absurd to suppose that the heart can change while every thing around us continues, with regard to us, the same: you would become chaste, yet you live in the midst of the dangers, the connexions, the familiarities, the pleasures, which have a thousand times corrupted your heart; you would wish to reflect seriously on your eternity, and to place some interval between life and death, yet you are unwilling to place any between death and those debaucheries which prevent you from reflecting on your salvation; and, in the midst of agitations, pleasures, trifles, and worldly expectations, from which, on no account, will you abate, you expect that the inclination and relish for a Christian life will come to you unsought-for: you would that your heart form new propensities, surrounded by every thing which nourishes and fortifies the old; and that the lamp of faith and grace blaze up in the midst of winds and tempests, — that light which, even in the sanctuary, is so often extinguished through want of oil and nourishment, and, to lukewarm and retired souls, converts into a danger even the safety of their retreat.
You come, after that, to tell us that good- will is not wanting; that the moment is not yet come. How, indeed, should it come in the midst of every thing that repels it? But what is that good will, shut up within you, which has never any consequence, which never leads to any thing real, and never seriously adopts a single measure toward a change? That is to say, that you would wish to change, could it be done for nothing; you would wish to work out your salvation by the same conduct which occasions your destruction; you would wish that the same manners which have separated your heart from God should approach you to him; and that what has hitherto been the cause of your ruin should itself become the way and the mean of your salvation. Begin by removing the occasions which so often have been, and still continue to be, the rock of your innocence: remove the stone which shuts up the entry of grace to your soul; after that, you shall be entitled to demand of God the completion of this work in you. Then, separated from those objects which nourished iniquitous passions within you, you shall have it in your power to say to him, It is thy part now, O my God! to change my heart; to thee I have sacrificed every attachment which might still fetter it; I have removed all the rocks upon which my weakness might still have split; as much as in me lay, I have changed the outward man; thou alone, O Lord, canst change the heart; it depends upon thee now to complete what yet remains to be done, to break the invisible chains, to overcome all internal obstacles, and totally to triumph over my corruption: I have removed the fatal stone which prevented me from hearing thy voice; let it now resound, even through the abyss in which I am still buried; command me to depart from that fatal tomb, that place of infection and putrescence, but command me with that Almighty word which makes itself to be heard even by the dead, and is to them a word of resurrection and life; give me in charge to thy disciples, to be unloosed from those chains which hold captive all the powers of my soul; and let the ministry of thy church put the last seal to my resurrection and my deliverance.
And behold, my brethren, the last mean held out in our Gospel. Immediately, on the removal of the stone, our Saviour cries, with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth! Lazarus comes forth, still bound hand and foot, and Jesus Christ remits him to his disciples to be unloosed.
Observe here, that Jesus Christ doth not order his disciples to unloose Lazarus till after he had entirely quitted the tomb. We must manifest ourselves to the church, says a holy father, before we can, through its ministry, receive the blessing of our deliverance. Lazarus, come forth! that is to say, continues that father, how long wilt thou remain concealed and buried inwardly in thy conscience? How long wilt thou conceal thine iniquity within thy breast?
You undoubtedly are not ignorant, my brethren, that remission of our sins is only granted through the ministry of the church, and that it is necessary to lay open and to present our bonds to the piety of the ministers, who alone have authority to bind and to unbind on the earth; this is not upon what you require instruction. But, I say, that, in order that the conversion be solid and durable, we must, like Lazarus, show ourselves quite out of the tomb. An ordinary confession is not the matter in question; a hardened sinner ought to go back even to his infancy, even to the birth of his passions, even to the youngest periods of his life, which have been the commencement of his crimes. Neither doubts nor obscurities must longer be left in the conscience, nor mists over the youthful manners, under pretence that they have already been revealed; a general manifestation is required, and whatever may hitherto have been done must be reckoned as nothing; every duty of religion, performed during a disorderly and worldly life is even to be ranked among our crimes; the conscience must be considered as a chaos, into which no light has, as yet, penetrated, and over which all our fictitious and past penitence has spread only additional darkness.
For, alas! my brethren, a contrite soul, after returning from the errors of the world and the passions, ought to presume that, having to that period lived in criminal habits and propensities, every time the sacrament has been received in that state was only a profanation and a crime.
In the first place, because, having never felt real contrition for his errors, nor, consequently, any sincere desire to purge himself of them, the remedies of the church far from having purified, have only completed his foulness, and rendered his disease more incurable.
Secondly, because he has never been known to himself; and, consequently, could never make himself known to the tribunal of his conscience. For, alas! the world, in the midst of which this soul has always lived, and in which he has ever thought and judged like it; the world, I say, finding reasonable and wise only its own maxims and manner of thinking, does it sufficiently know the holiness of the Gospel, the obligations of faith, and the extent of duties, to be qualified to enter into the detail of those transgressions which faith condemns?
Thirdly, and lastly, because that, even admitting he should have known all his wretchedness, never having had any real sorrow for it, he has never been qualified to make it known; for nothing but heartfelt sorrow can explain itself as it ought, or truly represent those evils which it feels and abhors; it must be a feeling heart that can make itself to be understood on the wounds and the sufferings of a heart itself. A sinner full of a profane passion expresses it much more eloquently, and with more animation: nothing is left unsaid of the foolish and deplorable sufferings he endures; he enters into all the windings of his heart, his jealousies, his fears, and his hopes. As the mind of man, says the apostle, alone knows what passes in man, so likewise it is only the heart which can know what passeth in the heart. Contrition gives eyes to see, and words to express every thing; it has a language which nothing can counterfeit: thus, in vain may a worldly soul, still chained by the heart to all his disorders, come to accuse himself; he cannot be understood. Without any absolute intention of concealing his wounds, he never exposes all their horror, because he neither feels nor is struck with them himself; his words always relish of the insensibility of his heart; and it is impossible that he should expose, in all their ugliness, deformities which he knows not, and which he still loves. He ought, therefore, to consider the whole period of his past life as a period of darkness and blindness, during which he has never viewed himself but with the eyes of flesh and blood; never judged but through the opinions of passion and self-love; never accused but in the language of error and impenitence; never exhibited himself but in a false and imperfect light. It is not enough to have removed the stone from the tomb; the criminal soul must come forth from it himself, that he may exhibit himself, as I may say, in open day; that he may manifest his whole life; and that, from his earliest years even to the blessed hour of his deliverance, nothing be concealed from the eyes of the ministers ready to unbind him.
But this step, you say, has difficulties which may be the occasion of casting trouble, embarrassment, and discouragement through the conscience, and of suspending the resolution of a change of life. What! my brethren, you involve yourselves in discussions so arduous and so endless, for the purpose of clearing up your temporal concerns; and, in order to establish regularity and serenity in your conscience, and to leave nothing doubtful in the affair of your eternity, you would cry out from the moment that a few cares and investigations are required? How often do you proclaim, when a decisive step is in agitation which may determine the ruin or preservation of our fortune, that nothing must be neglected, nothing must be left to chance; that one's own eyes must look into every thing; that every thing must be cleared up, every thing fathomed even to the bottom, that you may have nothing afterward wherewith to reproach yourselves; and this maxim, so reasonable when connected with fleeting and frivolous interests, should be less so when applied to the grand and only real interest, that of salvation!
Ah! my brethren, how poor are we in faith! And what have we, in this life, of more importance than the care of arranging that awful account which we have to render to the eternal Judge, and to the searcher of hearts and of thoughts? That is to say, the care of regulating our conscience, of dispelling its darkness, of purifying its stains, of clearing up its eternal interests, of confirming its hopes, of strengthening ourselves as much as the present condition permits, and making ourselves acquainted, as far as in our power, with its situation and its dispositions; and not to make our appearance before God like fools, unknown to ourselves, uncertain of what we are, and of what we must for ever be. Such are the means of conversion marked out to us in the miracle of raising up Lazarus: let us conclude the history of our Gospel, and see what the motives are which determine Jesus Christ to operate it.
Reflection III. — To enter at once into our subject, without losing sight of the consequence of the Gospel, the first motive which our Saviour seems to have, in the resurrection of Lazarus, is that of drying up the tears, and rewarding the prayers and the piety of his sisters. Lord, said they to him, he whom thou lovest is sick: and behold the first motive which often determines Jesus Christ to operate the conversion of a great sinner, — the tears and the prayers of those just souls who entreat it.
Yes, my brethren, whether it be that the Lord thereby wish to render virtue more respectable to sinners, by according favours to them only through the mediation of just souls; whether it be that he intended more closely to knit together his members, and to perfect them in unity and in charity, by rendering the ministry of the one useful and requisite to the other; it is certain that it is through the prayers of the good, and in their intercession, that the source of the conversion of the greatest sinners springs up. As all is done for the just in the church, says the apostle, so it may be said that every thing is done through them; and, as sinners are only endured in it to exercise their virtue, or to animate their vigilance, they are also recalled from their errors only to console their faith and to reward their groanings and prayers.
To love just souls is a beginning, then, of righteousness to the greatest sinners: it is a presage of virtue to respect it in those who practise it: it is a prospect of conversion to seek the society of the good, to esteem their acquaintance, and to interest them in our salvation; and, even admitting that our heart still groan under iniquitous bonds, and that attachment to the world and to pleasures still separate us from God, yet from the moment that we begin to love his servants, we accomplish, as it were, the first step in his service. It seems as if our heart already becomes tired of its passions, from the moment that we take pleasure in the society of those who condemn them; and that a relish for virtue is on the eve of springing up in us, from the moment that we take delight in those whom virtue alone renders amiable.
Besides, the just, instructed by ourselves with regard to our weaknesses, keep them continually present before the Lord: they lament, before him, over those chains which still bind us to the world and to its amusements; they offer up to him some weak desires of virtue, which we have entrusted to their charge, in order to induce his goodness to grant more fervent and more efficacious ones; they carry, even to the foot of the throne, some feeble essays toward good which they have noted in us, in order to obtain for us the perfection and plenitude of his mercy. More affected with our evils than for their own wants, they piously forget themselves, in order to snatch from destruction their brethren who are on the point of perishing before their eyes: they alone love us for ourselves, because they alone love in us but our salvation: the world may furnish sycophants, flatterers, social companions in dissipation, but virtue alone gives us friends.
And it is here that you who now listen to me, who, perhaps like Mary, were formerly slaves of the world and the passions, and who, latterly, touched with grace, like her, quit no more the feet of the Lord; it is here that you ought to remember that, in future, one of the most important duties of your new life is, that of continually demanding, like the sister of Lazarus, from Jesus Christ, the resurrection of your brethren, the conversion of those unfortunate souls who have been accomplices in your criminal pleasures, and who still, under the dominion of death and sin, sorrily drag on their chains in the ways of the world and of error. You ought continually, in the bitterness of your heart, to be saying to Jesus Christ, like the sister of Lazarus, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick; those souls to whom I have been a stumbling-block, and who have less offended thee than I, are still, however, in the shadow of death and in the corruption of sin; and I enjoy a deliverance of which I was more unworthy than they! Ah! Lord, the delight I feel in appertaining to thee shall never be perfect while I behold my brethren thus miserably perishing before mine eyes: I shall but imperfectly enjoy the fruit of thy mercies, while thou refusest them to souls to whom I have myself been the fatal cause of their departure from righteousness: and I shall never think that my crimes are fully forgiven, while I see them existing in those sinners who have been removed from thee only through my example and my passions.
Not, my brethren, that you ought to place your whole dependence on the prayers of the good, or to expect from them alone a change of heart and the gift of penitence. For this is a very general illusion, and more especially among those who are high in the world: they suppose that, by respecting virtue, by showing favour to the good, and by interesting them to solicit our conversion from God, our chains shall drop off of themselves without any effort on our part; they comfort themselves upon that remainder of faith and religion which renders virtue in others still dear and respectable to us; they give themselves credit for not having, as yet, reached that point of freethinking and impiety, so common in the world, which makes virtue the public butt of its censures and derision. But, alas! my brethren, it availed nothing to king Jehu that he had publicly rendered honour to the holy man Jehonadab; his vices still subsisted with all that respect he had for the man of God. It availed nothing to Herod that he had honoured the piety of John the Baptist, and that he had even loved the holy freedom of his discourses: the deference which he had for the precursor left him still all the excess of his criminal passion. The honours which we pay to virtue attract aids to our weakness; but they do not justify our errors: the prayers of the good induce the Lord to pay more attention to our wants; but they do not render him more indulgent to our crimes: they obtain for us victory over the passions which we begin to detest; but not over those which we still love and which we still continue to cherish: in a word, they assist our good desires; but they do not authorize our impenitence.
The miracle of raising up Lazarus teaches just souls, then, to solicit the conversion of their brethren; but the conversion and deliverance of their brethren likewise serve to animate their lukewarmness and slothfulness. — Second motive which Jesus Christ proposes: he wishes by the novelty of that prodigy, to arouse the faith of his disciples still dormant and languishing.
And such is the fruit which Jesus Christ continually expects from the miracles of his grace: he operates before your eyes, you who have long walked in his ways, sudden and surprising conversions, in order by the fervour and the zeal of these newly risen from the dead, to confound your lukewarmness and indolence. Yes, my brethren, nothing is more calculated to cover us with confusion, and to make us tremble over the infidelities which we still mingle with a cold and languishing piety, than the sight of a soul buried, but an instant ago, in the corruption of death and sin, and whose errors had perhaps inflated the vanity of our zeal, and served as a butt to the malignity of our censures; than the sight, I say, of such a soul, vivified, a moment after, by grace, freed from his chains, and boldly walking in the ways of God, more eager after mortification than formerly after pleasure; more removed from the world and its amusements than apparently he was once attached; scrupling to himself the most innocent recreations; allowing himself almost no bounds to the vivacity and transports of his penitence; and every day making rapid advances in piety: while we, after many years of piety, alas! still languish on the beginning of that holy career; while we, after so many signal favours received, after so many truths known, after so many sacraments and other duties of religion attended, alas! we still hold to the world and to ourselves by a thousand ties; we are yet but in the first rudiments of faith and of a Christian life, and still more distant than at first from that zeal and that fervour which constitute the whole value and the whole security of a faithful piety.
My brethren, the dreadful prophecy of Jesus Christ is every day fulfilled before our eyes. Publicans and sinners, persons of a scandalous conduct according even to the world, and as distant from the kingdom of God as the east is from the west, are converted, repent, surprise the world with the sight of a retired and mortified life, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; and, perhaps, we, who are looked upon as children of the kingdom, — we, whose manners present nothing to the eyes of the world but what is orderly and laudable; we, who are held out as models of propriety and piety; we, whom the world canonizes, and which we glorified with the reputation and the appearances of piety; alas! we shall perhaps be rejected and confounded with unbelievers, for having always laboured at our salvation with negligence, and having preserved a heart still altogether worldly, in the midst even of our pious works.
Thus, my brethren, you whom this discourse regards, do not judge of yourselves from the comparison which you inwardly make with those souls whom the world and the passions hurry away. We may be more righteous than the world, and yet not enough so for Jesus Christ: for the world is so corrupted, the Gospel is so little known in it, faith is so weakened, the law and truth so little observed, that what is virtue, with regard to it, may still be a great iniquity in the sight of God.
Rather compare yourselves with those holy penitents who formerly edified the church by the prodigy of their austerities, and whose life, even at this day, appears to us so incredible; with those noble martyrs who gave up their body for the truth, and who, amidst the most cruel torments, were transported with joy in contemplating the holy promises; with those primitive believers who suffered death every day for Jesus Christ, and who, under persecution, loss of property, and of their children, thought themselves still possessed of all, as they had neither lost faith nor the hope of a better life: behold the models by whom you ought to measure your piety, to find it still deficient, and all worldly. Unless you resemble them, in vain do you not resemble the world; you shall perish like it; it is not enough that you do not imitate the crimes of the worldly, you must also have the virtues of the just.
Lastly. Not only the goodness of Jesus Christ wishes, in this miracle, to furnish to his disciples and to the Jewish believers a fresh motive for believing in him, but in it his justice likewise supplies a fresh occasion of obstinacy and incredulity to the unbelieving Israelites: last circumstance of our Gospel. They take measures to destroy him; they wish to put Lazarus himself to death, that so striking a testimony of the power of Jesus Christ may no longer continue among them. They had wept his death; scarcely is he recalled to life when he appears worthy only of their fury and vengeance. And behold the sole fruit which the generality of you commonly reap from the miracles of grace; that is to say, from the conversion and the spiritual resurrection of great sinners. Before that the mercy of Jesus Christ had cast looks of grace and salvation upon a criminal soul, and while delivered up to the dominion of the passions, he was not only dead in sin, but spread every where around the infection and the stench of his disorders and scandals, you seemed touched for his errors and shame; you deplored the misery of his lot: you mingled your tears and regrets with the tears and regrets of his friends and relatives, and the public irregularity of his conduct experienced from you every sorrow and compassion of humanity; but, scarcely hath the grace of Jesus Christ, recalled him to life, scarcely, come forth from the tomb and that abyss of corruption in which he was buried, does he render glory to his deliverer by the holy ardours of a tender and sincere piety, than you become the censurers even of his piety: you had appeared touched for the excess of his vices, and you publicly deride the excess of his pretended piety: you had blamed his warm pursuits after pleasure, and you condemn the fervour of his love for God. Be consistent, therefore, with yourselves, and decide in favour either of the just or of the sinner.
Yes, my brethren, if the happiness of a soul, who before your eyes, returns from his errors, excite not your envy; if the contrition of a sinner, who was formerly the companion perhaps of your pleasures and excesses, leave you all your indifference with regard to salvation, ah! insult not at least his good fortune; despise not in him the gift of God; take not even from the miracles of grace, so proper to open your eyes, a fresh motive of blindness and unbelief; and do not thus change the blessings of God to your brethren, into a dreadful judgment of justice against you.
In reading the history of our Gospel, you are sometimes astonished that the obstinacy and blindness of the Jews should be able to resist the most striking miracles of Jesus Christ; you do not comprehend how the raising up of the dead, the curing of persons born blind, and so many other wonders wrought before their eyes, did not force them to acknowledge the truth of his ministry and the sanctity of his doctrine: you say that much less would convince you; that any one of all these miracles would suffice, and that you would immediately yield to the truth.
But, my brethren, you condemn yourselves out of your own mouth; for, (without refuting here that absurd manner of speaking, by those grand and sublime proofs which religion furnishes against impiety, and which we have elsewhere employed); candidly, is it not a more arduous and more astonishing miracle, that a soul, delivered up to sin, and to the most shameful passions, — born with every propensity to voluptuousness, pride, revenge, and ambition, and more distant than any one, by the nature of his heart, from the kingdom of God, and from all the maxims of Christian piety; that all at once, that soul should renounce all his gratifications, break asunder all his warmest attachments, repress his liveliest passions, change his most rooted inclinations, forget injuries, attention to the body and to fortune; no longer have a relish but for prayer, retirement, the practice of the most gloomy and repulsive duties, and hold out to the eyes of the public, in a change, in a resurrection so palpable, the spectacle of a life so different from the former, that the world, that freethinking itself, shall be forced to render glory to the truth of his change, and that they shall no longer know him to be the same; — is it not, I say, a more arduous and more astonishing miracle?
Now, doth not the mercy of Jesus Christ operate such miracles almost every day before your eyes? Doth not his holy word, though in a weak and languishing mouth, still raise up, every day, new Lazaruses from the dead? You behold them; you know and you appear astonished at them; yet, nevertheless, do they touch you? Do these wonders which, with so much majesty, the finger of God maketh to shine forth, recall you to truth and to the light? Do these changes, a thousand times more miraculous, than the raising up of the dead, convince you? Do they bring you nearer to Jesus Christ, or restore to you that faith which you have lost.
Alas! your whole care, like the Jews, is to stand out against, or to weaken their truth. You deny that grace hath any part in the glory of these wonders: you seek to trace their motives in causes altogether worldly; you consider them as delusions and impositions; you attribute to the artifices of man the most shining operations of the Holy Spirit; you insist that such a new life is only a fresh snare to entrap the public credulity, and a new path more securely to attain some worldly purpose. Thus, the works of the almighty power of Jesus Christ harden you; thus even the wonders of his grace complete your blindness; thus, you make every thing conducive toward your destruction. Jesus Christ becomes to you a stumbling-block, when he ought to have been a source of life and salvation. The examples of sinners stain and corrupt you: their penitence revolts and hardens you.
Great God! suffer, then, in order that a life altogether criminal at last be terminated, that I now raise my voice to thee out of the depths in which I have, for so many years, languished. The impure chains with which I am bound, attach me, by so many folds, to the bottom of the gulf in which I drag on my gloomy days, that, in spite of all my good desires, I still remain fettered, and almost incapable of any effort toward disengaging myself and returning to thee, O my God, whom I have forsaken. But, Lord out of the depths even in which thou seest me, like another Lazarus, fettered and buried, I have, at least, the voice of the heart free to send up, even to the foot of the throne, my sorrows, my lamentations, and my tears.
The voice of a repentant sinner is always agreeable, O Lord, to thine ear; it is that voice of Jacob which awakens all thy tenderness, even when it offers to thy sight but hands of Esau, and still covered with blood and crimes.
Ah! thine holy ears, O Lord, have now been sufficiently turned away from my licentious and blasphemous words; let them now be attentive to the voice of my supplications; and let the singularity of the words which T now address to thee, O my God! attract a more favourable attention to my prayer.
I come not here, great God! to excuse my disorders in thy sight, by alleging to thee the occasions which have seduced me, the examples which have led me astray, the misfortune of my engagements, and the nature of my heart and of my weakness; cover thine eyes, O Lord, upon the horrors of my past life , the only possibility of excusing them is, not to behold or to know them. Alas! if I am unable myself to support even their view; if my crimes dread and fly from mine own eyes, and if my terrors and my weakness render it absolutely necessary to turn my sight from them, how, O Lord, should they be able to sustain the sanctity of thy looks, if thou search into them with that eye of severity which finds stains in the purest and most laudable life?
But thou, O Lord, art not a God like unto man, to whom it is always so difficult to pardon and to forget the injuries of an enemy: goodness and mercy dwell in thine eternal bosom; clemency is the first attribute of thy supreme being; and thou hast no enemies but those who refuse to place their trust in the abundant riches of thy mercy.
Yes, Lord! be the hour what it may when a criminal soul casts himself upon thy mercy; whether in the morning of life or in the decline of age; whether after the errors of youthful manners, or after an entire life of dissipation and licentiousness, thou wouldst, O my God! that their hope in thee be not extinguished; and thou assurest us that the highest point of our crimes is but the lowest degree of thy mercy.
But, likewise, great God! if thou listen to my desires; if, once more, thou restore to me that life and that light which I have lost; if thou break asunder my chains of death which still fetter me; if thou stretch out thine hand to withdraw me from the gulf in which I am plunged, ah I never, O Lord, shall I cease to proclaim thine eternal mercies. I will forget the whole world, that I may be occupied only with the wonders of thy grace toward my soul. I will every moment of my life render glory to the God who shall have delivered me: my mouth, for ever shut against vain things, shall with difficulty be able to express all the transports of my love and of my gratitude; and thy creature, who still groans under the dominion of the world and of sin, then restored to his true Lord, shall, henceforth and for evermore, bless his deliverer.