*

The law tells That which is

The language of the text plainly looks at this sterner side of human life as something which needs emphasis. We are apt to overlook or underestimate it; and therefore the apostle takes care that it shall be brought clearly into sight, and that we shall be under no mistake about it. The harvest is always after its kind. "He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."* "Let every man prove his own work." with equal force on both sides. sown to the Spirit is spiritual, and the harvest thereof is everlasting life. The good seed brings forth good fruit. The lives of the good teem with an ever-accumulating wealth of goodness, and the golden grain hangs more heavily in the late autumn of their years. But this side of the divine law needs not so much to be enforced as the darker side. Men readily believe that if they do well, God will deal well with them. Or if there is a strange spirit of distrust sometimes on this score-as with the man who hid his talent in the parable-yet such a temper is less frequent than the dearth of spiritual insight altogether. It is far more common for men to think * Galatians, vi. 8.

+ Ibid. vi. 4.

of God as likely to overlook sin than to fail in rewarding good. The latter state of mind may not be uncommon amongst serious people. From the very depth of devout awe there springs sometimes a strange distrust of God as a hard taskmaster, reaping where He has not sown, and gathering where He has not strawed. But even this worst type of a perverted Calvinism is better-as it is certainly less frequent upon the whole, than spiritual deadness, or that natural Epicureanism which takes its chance of good or evil, and thinks that the Divine order is not so unbending, after all-that life is not so grave as religion would make it, or moral punishment so sure as God threatens.

In our time there is but little fear that men will sink into a superstitious dread of God. The spirit of awe is not a prevailing spirit in our modern life and literature. Men and women alike are sufficiently alive to their rights; and the talent, instead of being hid away in a napkin, in fear of what the Lord will say, is used in the face of all, with a free audacity which plainly means that we know what we are doing, and that we are not afraid of God's reckoning with us in the end as to the use of our gifts and opportunities. The modern spirit, if it has not

lost the old reverence for God-for there may be a true reverence beneath much freedom-has yet ceased to be afraid of Him. It looks to Him with a sure and bright confidence that honest service of every kind will not fail of its reward. It is only too self-confident; and its dangers are all on the side of self-confidence. Is there, after all, a Divine order? it is apt to say. Is wrongdoing, after all, of so much consequence? Is it in the largest sense wrongdoing to yield free indulgence to my pleasure-loving instincts-to gratify, in such way as appears to me good, my natural desires and appetites? Why should I not do as I please and live as I will? This is the tendency of modern life; and it is against this tendency that the text, and many texts,

warn us.

It is very natural for men in high health and fulness of strength to think that they may do as they please, and give free rein to the power of natural passion or the gratification of worldly instinct. But let them not be deceived. There is a Divine order, although men may ignore it or fail to recognise it; and no misconception of theirs can alter or reverse it. Against this order all life which is not right must break and go ruin. If we yield ourselves to fleshly indulgence,

to

we shall reap in the end corruption; and nothing can save us from it. The laws of health are invariable. Let us use our bodies well-restrain and discipline and refine them—and they will be well. Let us use them ill, and make them the instruments of unlawful excess, and it will be ill with them. This may not appear all at once. The laws of temperance and purity may be broken for a time, or may seem to be broken with impunity and the strong man may rise again and again with what looks like unbroken health from the disgrace of self-indulgence. But his heart deceives him in the moment of his strength, and the day of retribution is travelling swiftly onwards in the very morning of his pleasures. It may be said without any exaggeration that not a single sensual excess is ever practised with impunity. It leaves some weakness of body or foulness of mind behind it-probably both. The divine rules of temperance and purity bind us, body and soul, in their golden links; and let us break off any of these links, or rudely dislocate them, and the order of health is not merely disturbed, but the life for whose protection it was given is deeply injured. And let excess of any kind be continued, and the golden security becomes an iron bondage. The

Iwill which has ceased to restrain itself within the Divine order gradually loses all due control, and finds its only pleasure, which is at the same time its greatest misery, in self-abandon

ment.

The world is full of lives thus broken and flawed in a vain struggle with the Divine order which rules them and will not let them go free. From bad they have gone to worse, ever downward in the course of self-indulgence, till they can only look upward from an abyss of shame to an irrecoverable ideal. At first it seemed a little thing to yield. Why should they not taste the pleasures which so many had tasted before them, and from which apparently they had reaped no harm? But the harm never fails if the evil is really done. It works somehow-invisibly, if not visibly. And the vengeance which may tarry in one case comes swiftly in another. The temptations which some have struggled with and mastered, prove demons of power over others, and leave them no rest. And so the love of indulgence grows more irresistible, and the path of what was thought pleasure becomes the path of misery and disgrace. We say with pity, What a wreck such a man has made of his life! And there is no wreck so pathetic, if we clearly think