So there have been those who were very hard on all kinds of impurity, and who scoffed at unchast.i.ty, and who said that it was impossible that they should ever be led astray; but to-night they are in the house whose gates are the gates of h.e.l.l! It is a very dangerous thing for a man to make a boast and say, "Such and such a sin I never could be tempted to commit."

There are ten thousand hands of mercy holding us up; there are ten thousand hands of mercy holding us back, or we would long ago have gone over the precipice, and instead of sitting to-night in a Christian sanctuary, amid the respected and the good, our song would have been that of the drunkard, or we would be "hail fellows well met" with the renegade and the profligate. Oh, the restraining mercy of G.o.d! Have you never celebrated it?

Have you never rejoiced in it?

Think also of His guiding mercy. You have sometimes been on a journey, and come to where there were three roads--one ahead of you, one to the right and one to the left. It was a lonely place, and you had no one of whom to ask advice. You took the left-hand road, thinking that was the right one, but before night you found out your mistake, and yet your horse was too exhausted and you were too tired to retrace your steps, and the mistake you made was an irretrievable mistake.

You come on in life, many a time, and find there are three or four or fifty roads, and which one of the fifty to take you do not know. Let me say that there are forty-nine chances out of fifty that you will take the wrong one, unless G.o.d directs you, since it is a great deal easier to do that which is wrong than that which is right, our nature being corrupt and depraved.

Blessed be G.o.d, we have a directory! As a man lost on the mountains takes out his map and sees the right road marked down, and makes up his mind what to do, so the Lord, in His gospel map, has said: "This is the way, walk ye in it." Blessed be G.o.d for His guiding mercy!

Think also of the comforting mercy of G.o.d. In the days when men lived five or six or seven hundred years, I suppose that troubles and misfortunes came to them at very great intervals. Life did not go so fast. There were not so many vicissitudes; there was not so much jostling. I suppose that now a man in forty years will have as many vexations and annoyances and hardships and trials and temptations as those antediluvians had in four hundred years.

No one escapes. If you are not wounded in this side, you must be wounded in that. There are foes all around about you. There is no one who has come up to this moment without having been cleft of misfortunes, without having been disappointed and vexed and outraged and trampled on.

The world comes and tries to solace us, but I think the most impotent thing on earth is human comfort when there is no gospel mixed with it. It is a sham and an insult to a wounded spirit--all the comfort that this world can offer a man; but in his time of darkness and perplexity and bereavement and persecution and affliction, Christ comes to him with the solace of His Spirit, and He says: "Oh, thou tempted one, thou shalt not be tempted above that thou art able." He tells the invalid, "There is a land where the inhabitants never say, 'I am sick.'" He says to the a.s.saulted one, "You are no better than I am; they maltreated me, and the servant ought not to expect to have it easier than his Lord."

He comes to the bereaved one and says: "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." And if the trouble be intricate, if there be so many p.r.o.ngs to it, so many horns to it, so many hoofs to it, that he cannot take any of the other promises and comforts of G.o.d's word to his soul, he can take that other promise made for a man in the last emergency and when everything else fails: "All things work together for good to those that love G.o.d." Oh, have you never sung of the comforting mercy of G.o.d?

Think also of His enthroning mercy. Notwithstanding there are so many comforts in Christ's gospel, I do not think that we could stand the a.s.sault and rebuff of the world for ever. We all were so weary of the last war. It seemed as if those four years were as long as any fifteen or twenty years of our life. But how could we endure one hundred years, or five hundred years, or a thousand years, of earthly a.s.sault? Methinks the spirit would wear down under the constant chafing and the a.s.sault of the world.

Blessed be G.o.d, this story of grief and trouble and perplexity will come to an end! There are twelve gates to heaven, and they are all gates of mercy.

There are paths coming into all those gates, and they are all paths of mercy. There are bells that ring in the eternal towers, and they are all chimes of mercy. There are mansions prepared for us in this good land when we have done with the toils of earth, and all those mansions are mansions of mercy. Can you not now strike upon your soul, saying, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, for thy pardoning mercy, for thy restraining mercy, for thy guiding mercy, for thy comforting mercy, for thy enthroning mercy!"

CHAPTER LXV.

UNDER THE CAMEL'S SADDLE.

Rachel had been affianced to Jacob, and one day while her father, Laban, was away from home she eloped with Jacob. Laban returned home and expressed great sorrow that he had not been there when his daughter went away, saying that he would have allowed her to go, and that she might have been accompanied with a harp and the dance and with many beautiful presents.

Laban started for Rachel and Jacob. He was very anxious to recover the G.o.ds that had been stolen from his household. He supposed that Rachel had taken them, as she really had. He came up in the course of a few days to the party and demanded the G.o.ds that had been taken from his house. Jacob knew nothing about the felony, but Rachel was secreting these household G.o.ds.

Laban came into the tent where she was, and asked for them. She sat upon a saddle of a camel, the saddle having been laid down at the side of the tent, and under this camel's saddle were the images. Rachel pretended to be sick, and said she could not rise. Her father, Laban, supposed that she told the truth, and looked everywhere but under the camel's saddle, where really the lost images were. He failed in the search, and went back home without them.

It was a strange thing for Laban to do. He pretended to be a worshiper of the true G.o.d. What did he want of those images? Ah, the fact was, that though he worshiped G.o.d, he worshiped with only half a heart, and he sometimes, I suppose, repented of the fact that he worshiped him at all, and really had a hankering after those old G.o.ds which in his earliest days he had worshiped. And now we find him in Rachel's tent looking for them.

Do not let us, however, be too severely critical of Laban. He is only the representative of thousands of Christian men and women, who, once having espoused the worship of G.o.d, go back to their idols. When a man professes faith in Christ on communion-day, with the sacramental cup in his hand, he swears allegiance to the Lord G.o.d Almighty, and says, "Let all my idols perish!" but how many of us have forsaken our fealty to G.o.d, and have gone back to our old idols!

There are many who sacrifice their soul's interests in the idolatry of wealth. There was a time when you saw the folly of trying with, money to satisfy the longing of your soul. You said, when you saw men going down into the dust and tussle of life, "Whatever G.o.d I worship, it won't be a golden calf." You saw men plunge into the life of a spendthrift, or go down into the life of a miser, like one of old smothered to death in his own money-chest, and you thought, "I shall be very careful never to be caught in these traps in which so many men have fallen, to their souls' eternal discomfiture."

But you went down into the world; you felt-the force of temptation; you saw men all around you making money very fast, some of them sacrificing all their Christian principle; you felt the fascination come upon your own soul, and before you knew it, you were with Laban going down to hunt in Rachel's tent for your lost idols.

On one of our pieces of money you find the head of a G.o.ddess, a poor inscription for an American coin; far better the inscription that the old Jews put upon the shekel, a pot of manna and an almond rod, alluding to the mercy and deliverance of G.o.d in their behalf in other days. But how seldom it is that money is consecrated to Christ! Instead of the man owning the money, the money owns the man. It is evident, especially to those with whom they do business every day, that they have an idol, or that, having once forsaken the idol, they are now in search of it, far away from the house of G.o.d, in Rachel's tent looking for the lost images.

One of the mighty men of India said to his servants: "Go not near the cave in such a ravine." The servants talked the matter over, and said: "There must be gold there, or certainly this mighty man would not warn us against going." They went, expecting to find a pile of gold; they rolled away the stone from the door of the cave, when a tiger sprang out upon them and devoured them.

Many a man in the search of gold has been craunched in the jaws of destruction. Going out far away from the G.o.d whom they originally worshiped, they are seeking in the tent of Rachel, Laban's lost images.

There are a great many Christians in this day renewing the idolatry of human opinion. There was a time when they woke up to the folly of listening to what men said to them. They soliloquized in this way: "I have a G.o.d to worship, and I am responsible only to Him. I must go straight on and do my whole duty, whether the world likes it or don't like it;" and they turned a deaf ear to the fascinations of public applause. After a while they did something very popular. They had the popular ear and the popular heart. Men approved them, and poured gentle words of flattery into their ear, and before they realized it they went into the search of that which they had given up, and were, with Laban, hunting in Rachel's tent for the lost images.

Between eleven and twelve o'clock one June night, Gibbon, the great historian, finished his history. Seated in a summer garden, he says that as he wrote the last line of that wonderful work he felt great satisfaction.

He closed the ma.n.u.script, walked out into the moonlight in the garden, and then, he said, he felt an indescribable melancholy come upon his soul at the thought that so soon he must leave all the fame that he would acquire by that ma.n.u.script.

The applause of this world is a very mean G.o.d to worship. It is a Dagon that falls upon its worshipers and crushes them to death. Alas for those who, fascinated by human applause, give up the service of the Lord G.o.d and go with Laban to hunt in Rachel's tent for the lost images!

There are many Christians being sacrificed to appet.i.te. There was a time when they said: "I will not surrender to evil appet.i.tes." For a while they seemed to break away from all the allurements by which they were surrounded, but sometimes they felt that they were living upon a severe regimen. They said: "After all, I will go back to my old bondage;" and they fell away from the house of G.o.d, and fell away from respectability, and fell away for ever.

One of the kings in olden times, the legend says, consented that the devil might kiss him on both shoulders, but no sooner were the kisses imprinted upon the shoulders than serpents grew forth and began to devour him, and as the king tried to tear off the serpents he found he was tearing his own life out. And there are men who are all enfolded in adders of evil appet.i.te and pa.s.sion that no human power can ever crush; and unless the grace of G.o.d seizes hold of them, these adders will become "the worm that never dies."

Alas for those who, once having broken away from the mastery of evil appet.i.tes and pa.s.sion, go back to the sins that they once renounced, and, with Laban in Rachel's tent, go to hunt for the lost images!

There are a great many also sacrificed by indolence. In the hour of their conversion they looked off upon the world, and said: "Oh how much work to be done, how many harvests to be gathered, how many battles to be fought, how many tears to be wiped away, and how many wounds to be bound up!" and they looked with positive surprise upon those who could sit idle in the kingdom of G.o.d while there was so much work to do. After a while they found their efforts were unappreciated, that some of their best work in behalf of Christ was caricatured and they were laughed at, and they began to relax their effort, and the question was no more, "What can I do for Christ?" but "How can I take my ease? where can I find my rest?" Are there not some of you who in the hour of your consecration started out n.o.bly, bravely and enthusiastically for the Saviour's kingdom who have fallen back into ease of body and ease of soul, less anxious about the salvation of men than you once were, and are actually this moment in Rachel's tent hunting up the lost images?

Oh, why go down hunting for our old idols? We have found out they are insufficient for the soul. Eyes have they, but they see not; ears have they, but, they hear not; and hands have they, but they handle not. There is only one G.o.d to worship, and He sits in the heavens.

How do I know that there is only one G.o.d? I know it just as the boy knew it when his teacher asked him how many G.o.ds there are. He said, "There is but one."

"How do you know that?" inquired the teacher.

The boy replied, "There is only room for one, for He fills the heavens and the earth."

Come into the worship of that G.o.d. He is a wise G.o.d. He can plan out all the affairs of your life. He can mark out all the steps that you ought to take. He will put the sorrows in the right place, and the victories in the right place, and the defeats in the right place; and coming to the end of your life, if you have served Him faithfully, you will be compelled to say, "Just and true are thy ways; thou art, O Lord, always right."

He is a mighty G.o.d. Have Him on your side, and you need not fear earth or h.e.l.l. He can ride down all your spiritual foes. He is mighty to overthrow your enemies. He is mighty to save your soul. Ay, He is a loving G.o.d. He will put the arms of His love around about your neck. He will bring you close to His heart and shelter you from the storm. In times of trouble He will put upon your soul the balm of precious promises. He will lead you all through the vale of tears trustfully and happily, and then at last take you to dwell in His presence, where there is fullness of joy, and at His right hand, where there are pleasures for evermore. Oh, compared with such a wise G.o.d, such a mighty G.o.d, such a loving G.o.d, what are all the images under the camel's saddle in the tent of Rachel?

CHAPTER LXVI.

HALF-AND-HALF CHURCHES.

There is a verse in Revelation that presents a nauseated Christ: "Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth."

After we have been taking a long walk on a summer day, or been on a hunting chase, a draught of cold water exhilarates. On the other hand, after standing or walking in the cold air and being chilled, hot water, mingled with some beverage, brings life and comfort to the whole body; but tepid water, neither hot nor cold, is nauseating.

Now, Christ says that a church of that temperature acts on him as an emetic: I will spew thee out of my mouth.

The church that is red hot with religious emotion, praying, singing, working, Christ having taken full possession of the membership, must be to G.o.d satisfactory.

On the other hand, a frozen church may have its uses. The minister reads elegant essays, and improves the session or the vestry in rhetorical composition. The music is artistic and improves the ear of the people, so that they can better appreciate concert and opera.

The position of such a church is profitable to the book-binder who furnishes the covers to the liturgy, and the dry-goods merchants who supply the silks, and the clothiers who furnish the broadcloth. Such a church is good for the business world, makes trade lively and increases the demand for fineries of all sorts, for a luxurious religion demands furs and coats, and gaiters to match. Christ says he gets along with a church, cold or hot.

But an unmitigated nuisance to G.o.d and man is a half-and-half church, with piety tepid. The pulpit in such a church makes more of orthodoxy than it does of Christ. It is immense on definitions. It treats of justification and sanctification as though they were two corpses to be dissected. Its sermons all have a black morocco cover, which some affectionate sister gave the pastor before he was married, to wrap his discourse in, lest it get mussed in the dust of the pulpit. Its gestures are methodical, as though the man were ever conscious that they had been decreed from all eternity, and he were afraid of interfering with the decree by his own free agency.