To-night I want to talk to the man who is down, to
the man who has his back to the wall, and who is being embattled by his own
temptations. It is, perhaps, not an academic subject, but it is the greatest of
all subjects on which one can speak to young men. There are men here who are
lost in the abyss; but there are more men who are on the brink of the precipice.
Temptation is a universal experience--the one thing that makes every man his
brother, and creates within any one who thinks about it a grave sense of
tenderness as he thinks of those around him, when he remembers that every man he
meets has the same black spot in his nature that he has, and the same terrible
fight going on from day to day. But, gentlemen, temptation is more than a
universal experience. It is an individual thing. Just as you have your own
handwriting, your own face, or your own walk, you have your own temptation--
different in every case, but generally some one temptation which means
everything to you, which sums up the whole battle of life, and which, if you
could conquer, you would conquer the world. That temptation follows you wherever
you go like your shadow. I have gone into the heart of Africa. When I opened the
curtains of my tent in the morning, the first face I saw was the hideous face of
my own temptation. Go where you like, you cannot avoid that. It will follow you
wherever you go, and lie with you in the grave. Temptation is not only a
universal experience and a personal experience, but you have doubtless noticed
this about it, that it is very lonely. It cuts a man off in a moment from all
his fellowmen; and in the silence of his own heart he finds himself fighting out
that battle on which the issues of life hang. Christ trod the wine press alone,
and so do you and I. That is one of the things that makes it harder, because
there is no one to blame us when we go wrong, and there is no one to applaud us
when we do right.
More than that, temptation is a pitiless thing. It
goes into the church and picks off the man in the pulpit. It goes into the
university and picks off the flower of the class. It goes into the Senate and
picks off the great man. Let him that thinketh he standeth, however high up,
however sheltered, take heed lest he fall. Why is it that we have to run the
gauntlet of temptation all our lives, and what does it mean? Can we analyze it?
We have seen its strength. Can we find out whence it comes and how to meet it?
There are many theories as to how it came into our nature. Some think there is a
virus in human nature somewhere, a bias towards wrong; but I don't think we need
to look very far for the origin at least of a great many of our temptations. We
have in our bodies the residua of the animal creation. We have bones and muscles
and organs which are now mere curiosities, but which once played a great part in
the life of our progenitor; and I suppose it is now accepted as a scientific
fact, at all events so far as the body is concerned, that it has come down the
long ladder from the invertebrate world. That is to say, we have in our nature a
part of the animal; and if we have an animal's body in us, we have to a certain
extent the residua of an animal's mind, of an animal's proclivities and
passions. Whether that is the origin of them or not, it is certain every man
among us has a certain residuum of the animal in him. After passing through the
animal stage, it is believed that man passed through a long, long discipline in
the savage state; so that, in addition to the animal, relics of the savage are
still left in our nature.
There are two great classes of sins--sins of the
body and sins of the disposition. The prodigal son is a typical instance of sins
of the body; and the elder brother a typical illustration of sins of the
disposition. He was just as bad as the prodigal, probably worse. The one set of
temptations comes from the animal and the other from the savage. What are the
characteristics of the savage? Laziness for one thing, and selfishness for
another. The savage does nothing but lie in the sun all day and allow the fruits
to drop into his mouth. He has no struggle for life. Nature has been so kind as
to supply all his wants; and he is, above all, characteristic of selfishness. He
has no one to think about or care for, nor has he any capacity. A great preacher
said not long ago to his congregation that he would tell them the mark of the
beast, and that he also knew its number. He said the mark of the beast was
selfishness, and its number was No. 1. Now the mark of the beast, selfishness,
is in every man's breast, less or more. We are built in three stories --the
bottom, the animal; a little higher up, the savage; and on the top, the man.
That is the old Pauline trichotomy--body, soul, spirit. Paul spoke of this body
of death. Science speaks of it in almost precisely the same language. Whatever
the origin, that is the construction of a man. He is built in those three
layers. With this analysis, it is perhaps easier to see how temptation may be
met.
Many a man goes through life hanging his head with
shame and living without his self-respect because he has never discovered the
distinction between temptation and sin. It is only when a man sees temptation
coming and goes out to meet it, welcomes it, plays with it and invites it to be
his guest that it passes from temptation into sin; but, until he has opened the
door of his own accord and let it in, he has done no wrong. He has been a
tempted man--not a sinful man. The proof, of course, that temptation is no sin
is that Christ was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. Many a
man is thrown back in his attempts to live a new life by the clinging to him of
this residua of his past; and he does not discover until perhaps too late that
there is nothing wrong in these things until they have passed a certain point.
If he sees them coming and turns his back upon them, he has not sinned. Indeed,
temptation is not only not sin, but it is the most valuable ingredient in human
nature. Who was it that said, "The greatest of all temptations is to be
without any"? The man who has no temptation has no chance of becoming a man
at all. The only way to get character is to have temptation. If a man never
exercises his muscle, he will get no muscle. If a man never exercises his moral
nature in opposing temptation, he will get no muscle in his character.
Temptation is an opportunity of virtue. What makes a good picture? Practice.
What makes a good oarsman? Practice. What makes a good cricketer? Practice.
Temptation is the practice of the soul; and the man who has most temptations has
most practice. I fancy we all imagine we have more temptations than anybody
else. That is a universal delusion. But, instead of praying to be delivered from
our temptations, we ought to try to understand their essential place in the
moral world. Taken from us, these would leave us without a chance of becoming
strong men. We should be insipid characters, flaxen and useless. That is why the
New Testament says the almost astonishing thing: "Count it all joy when ye
fall into divers temptations." We are apt to call it hard lines because we
are tempted. James says, count it joy; congratulate yourself because of your own
temptation. It is the struggle for life almost solely which has helped on the
evolution of the animal kingdom, passing on into the moral region and giving you
practice in growth.
Now, then, granting that this discipline is to be
ours, that every day of our lives we have to face temptation, how are we to set
about it? We have seen that temptation lies in the projection on the human area
of our life of the animal and of the savage. I think the first thing we have to
do is to deal decisively with those two parts of our nature. The animal body was
finished thousands and thousands of years ago. Nature took a long time to work
it out, then stopped and went on to develop the mind. Let us recognize the
development of the body as a fact in the past, and have no more to do with it.
The body is finished. The hand of creation is done working at it. That is what
Paul meant very largely when he gave it as his advice to men to get over
temptation, "Reckon ye yourselves dead." Reckon that all beneath. It
is not only wrong to allow the body to prevail in a man's life, but it is a
denial of his development. It is unnatural and irrational. It is contrary to the
teachings of science, borrowed altogether from the teachings of religion.
Therefore, the first thing a man must do is to make up his mind that the body
which is prompting him is a dead thing and is to be taken as a dead thing. If we
can give our animal nature its true place, we will soon learn to rise above it.
What did Cato do when he was buffeted? Ask Seneca. He did not strike back, fly
into a passion: he did not resent it, but denied that it had been done. That is
to say, the body being nothing, nothing had happened.
But that is not enough. We cannot live negatively.
It is not enough to forsake the old life, the old habit; but we must take
another piece of advice which I think the New Testament also sums up for us in
language of exceeding simplicity and yet of absolute scientific accuracy. Paul
says: "Walk in the spirit." Live in the top flat. You find yourself
living in the animal part of your being. Escape and get into the upper story,
where the roof is open to God, and where you can move amongst beautiful things,
and amongst holy memories and amongst high ideals. Walk in the spirit and ye
shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. A man can't do it. That is to say, he
has to evolve the past, the animal and the savage, and develop the new nature.
The new nature is renewed from day to day, little by little. Just as the body is
built up, microscopic cell by microscopic cell, so the new nature is built up by
a long series of crucifixions of the old nature, by taking in food from the
higher world and getting those things built into our nature which work for
righteousness and truth and beauty and purity.
Now, the man who encourages the higher part of his
nature continuously will get an absolute victory over the lower parts of his
being. He will come to live in those higher parts of his being. It will become
as habitual to live there as it was to live in the lower; and, while this
building up is going on within, there will be the degeneration of the old
nature. How has man evolved past the animal and the savage, and how has so much
that is in them passed away from him? By mere disuse. And so, by the mere disuse
of the propensities of the body and the discouragement of selfish and petty
interests, by merely giving up the animal ways and the animal passions, and the
savage tempers and the savage laziness, the impulse, the function which makes
these things, will wither--atrophy. As the one goes on, the other inevitably
follows. As the old man passes away, the new man is renewed in righteousness.
That can be explained not only in the language of development but in the
language of psychology as a perfectly rational principle. A man cannot have two
things in consciousness at the same moment. Suppose a man has been lost out in
the West and wandered away from the railway depot where he had put up at a
hotel. Perhaps he has been four or five days on the prairie. One day he staggers
back, almost dropping with hunger and calls out for food; but finds lying upon
his table, while waiting for food, a telegram reporting the sudden death of his
wife. The hunger is gone, completely gone. The man who was perishing a few
moments ago is now absolutely above it; and if I could keep up the emotion of
sorrow, I could keep down forever the appetite of hunger. If you want to get
over an appetite on philosophical principles, not to speak of religion, the
thing to do is to pass into another region, and let your mind be preoccupied
with something higher. Unless you take in the higher, it is tremendously
difficult to crush out the lower. The new man can only be put on as the old man
is put off.
You remember Augustine's history of temptation in
four words--cogitatio, imaginatio, delectatio and assensio: a
thought, a picture, a fascination, and a fall. You can cut off the series
between the first and second. Between the second and third, it is almost
impossible. Between the third and fourth, it is absolutely impossible. When the
image is thrown upon the screen and you are delighting in it and it is just
beginning to enthrall you, you can still do one thing. You can suddenly throw
another image on the screen and look at that. If you look for two seconds at the
first image you are lost; but if you look one second you are not yet lost, and
there is still a chance to be saved. You can throw another image over it and let
the first dissolve away; and, by the mere possession of consciousness, you have
got over that temptation.
You see, then, how, upon merely natural
principles, it is possible to fight temptation. If we simply walk in the spirit,
we shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. We must evolve past them, in plain
words. By cultivating ideals of all kinds and by strengthening our moral nature
by all the opportunities we can get in society, in literature and in the church,
we will gradually accumulate a body, a higher body, of life and mind and truth,
in which we can live; and the old tenements in which we lived will not only be
uninhabited but uninhabitable. Hence the value of everything that is beautiful
and pure and lovely and wholesome in the world; and not only their use as
auxiliaries to the religious life, but as indispensable to it; because all these
are things in the higher nature, and the man who cultivates them is building up
a region in which he can live. A man must live. He must live in the body, in the
savage or in the man. At every moment he must live, and so at every moment he
must make his choice. He cannot suppress it. If you take this subject in terms
of energy, you will find that the energy which leads to sin must not be
suppressed, but must be transformed into an energy which leads to virtue; so
that when the desire to do something wrong comes in, instead of trying to
suppress that desire, we have simply to turn the helm in the right direction;
and in the new channel it will not only save us from a fall which we would have
had, if we had allowed it to go the other way, but it will carry us higher
towards the new life.
Now I have tried to explain the way in which any
man here can rise above himself and be a man. I care not how far he has dropped.
It is an historical fact that a man can be saved to the uttermost. You say to
me, is there no religion in all this? It is all religion. You say, do I not need
to put more religion into it? The more the better. I have spoken of walking in
the spirit. I have spoken of ideals. I know no ideal that will act so promptly
as the ideal of the perfect Man. I know no picture that you can throw upon the
screen which will fascinate more immediately than the picture of the character
of Christ. You may throw people upon the screen, a line of poetry, an epigram
from a moralist, a memory of your mother, a warning of some one you love, and
all these are reflections in some form of Christ; and they will all be effective
up to a point. But most of all effective is the power of Christ Himself; and,
unless a man has a moral environment which is full of these things, he cannot
live. There is no hope for his new life, unless he has that. No man can live
without these things morally. Take that gas which gives us light. The light is
not in the gas. It is half in the air and half in the gas. Take away the half
from the air, and the gas goes out. "Without me, ye can do nothing."
Your life will go out. Without Me, whether as the Light of the world itself, or
as diffused through books, and through men and through churches, without that
your life will come to nothing; but, if you take that and all the reflections of
it, and let these constitute a spiritual atmosphere about you, your redemption
from this hour is a certainty. There is no haphazard about Christianity. It is
based upon the laws of nature and the laws of the human mind.
The man who lives in Christ cannot go wrong. He
will be kept. In the nature of things, he must be kept. He cannot sin. You
remember John said: "Whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known
Him." John's Friend was such, so inspiring and so influential, that it was
inconceivable to John that anybody could ever have met Him without forevermore
trying to live like Him. Sin is abashed in the presence of the purity of Jesus
Christ. There are many heroes in life. They will all help a man; but we will get
on better and quicker by giving ourselves to Christ.
I have just two things to add. The first is: if
any man here to-night takes this seriously and means business; if he means for
the future not to keep up the sham fight that he has been pretending to wage,
and means to get to the bottom of things, let me ask him for a few days from
this time to treat himself as a man who has been very ill and dare not do
anything. Let him consider himself as a convalescent for a few weeks and take
care where he goes, what he reads, what he looks at, and the people he speaks
to. He is not strong enough for the outer air. When he first begins the new
life, he is young and tender. Therefore, let him beware of the first few days.
Mortality is greatest amongst children for the first few hours: then it is
greater for the first few days; then it is great for the next few months, and
lessens as the children grow older. If you are careful not to catch cold for the
first few weeks after you begin to lead a new life, you will succeed; but, if
you do to-morrow what you did to-day, you will go wrong, because you are not
strong enough to resist. You will have to build up this new body cell by cell,
day by day, just as the old body of temptation has been built up. If any man
here knows any other man who is in that convalescent condition, let him take
care, and neither by jest, or word, or temptation, throw that man back. Stand by
him, if you know such a man. If you are such a man, do not be ashamed to get
somebody else to back you and go along with you. Very few men can live a
solitary Christian life. You will find it a great source of strength to get
another man's life wound about you. You can help each other.
The other thing I want to say is this: Do not
imagine that you can get deliverance from sin alone--I mean without getting
other things, and without doing other things. Deliverance from sin is only a
part of the Christian life--by no means the whole. It is only one wing of the
new nature; but no man can get on with one wing. Deliverance from temptation is
only one function of the new nature. Therefore, you must consecrate your whole
life to Christianity, and go into it wholly and with a whole heart, if you
expect to get deliverance in this one direction; and the best way you can do
that is to make up your mind that you will give much of your life to
Christianity, to purify the air of the world, so that other men will feel less
temptation than you do. Sin is a kind of bacillus, and it cannot take root in
the world unless there is a soil, and it is our business to make the world's
soil pure and sanitarily sweet, so that the disease of sin cannot exist. |
