Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John Part 27

[336] With the neuter in ver. 4, contrast the individualising masculine in ver. 5, t?? est?? ? ?????.

DISCOURSE XIV.

_SIN UNTO DEATH._

"There is a sin unto death."--1 JOHN v. 17.

The Church has ever spoken of seven deadly sins. Here is the ugly catalogue. Pride, covetousness, l.u.s.t, envy, gluttony, hatred, sloth.

Many of us pray often "from fornication and all other deadly sin, Good Lord deliver us." This language rightly understood is sound and true; yet, without careful thought, the term may lead us into two errors.

1. On hearing of _deadly_ sin we are apt instinctively to oppose it to _venial_. But we cannot define by any _quant.i.tative_ test what venial sin may be for any given soul. To do that we must know the complete history of each soul; and the complete genealogy, conception, birth, and autobiography of each sin. Men catch at the term _venial_ because they love to minimise a thing so tremendous as sin. The world sides with the casuists whom it satirises; and speaks of a "white lie," of a foible, of an inaccuracy, when "the 'white lie' may be that of St.

Peter, the foible that of David, and the inaccuracy that of Ananias!"

2. There is a second mistake into which we often fall in speaking of deadly sin. Our imagination nearly always a.s.sumes some one definite outward act; some single individual sin. This may partly be due to a seemingly slight mistranslation in the text. It should not run "there is _a_ sin," but "there is sin unto" (_i.e._, in the direction of, towards) "death."

The text means something deeper and further-reaching than any single sin, deadly though it may be justly called.

The author of the fourth Gospel learned a whole mystic language from the life of Jesus. Death, in the great Master's vocabulary, was more than a single action. It was again wholly different from bodily death by the visitation of G.o.d. There are two realms for man's soul co-extensive with the universe and with itself. One which leads towards G.o.d is called _Life_; one which leads from Him is called _Death_. There is a radiant pa.s.sage by which the soul is translated from the death which is death indeed, to the life which is life indeed. There is another pa.s.sage by which we pa.s.s from life to death; _i.e._, fall back towards _spiritual_ (which is not necessarily eternal) death.

There is then a general condition and contexture; there is an atmosphere and position of soul in which the true life flickers, and is on the way to death. One who visited an island on the coast of Scotland has told how he found in a valley open to the spray of the north-west ocean a clump of fir trees. For a time they grew well, until they became high enough to catch the prevalent blast. They were still standing, but had taken a fixed set, and were reddened as if singed by the breath of fire.

The island glen might be "swept on starry nights by balms of spring;"

the summer sun as it sank might touch the poor stems with a momentary radiance. The trees were still _living,_ but only with that cortical vitality which is the tree's death in life. Their doom was evident; they could have but a few more seasons. If the traveller cared some years hence to visit that islet set in stormy waters, he would find the firs blanched like a skeleton's bones. Nothing remained for them but the sure fall, and the fated rottenness.

The a.n.a.logy indeed is not complete. The tree in such surroundings _must_ die; it can make for itself no new condition of existence; it can hear no sweet question on the breeze that washes through the grove, "why will ye die?" It cannot look upward--as it is scourged by the driving spray, and tormented by the fierce wind--and cry, "O G.o.d of my life, give me life." It has no will; it cannot transplant itself. But the human tree can root itself in a happier place. Some divine spring may clothe it with green again. As it was pa.s.sing from life toward death, so by the grace of G.o.d in prayers and sacraments, through penitence and faith, it may pa.s.s from death to life.

The Church then is not wrong when she speaks of "deadly sin." The number _seven_ is not merely a mystic fancy. But the _seven_ "deadly sins" are seven attributes of the whole character; seven master-ideas; seven general conditions of a human soul alienated from G.o.d; seven forms of aversion from true life, and of reversion to true death. The style of St. John has often been called "senile;" it certainly has the oracular and sententious quietude of old age in its almost lapidary repose. Yet a terrible light sometimes leaps from its simple and stately lines. Are there not a hundred hearts among us who know that as years pa.s.s they are drifting further and further from Him who is the Life? Will they not allow that St. John was right when, looking round the range of the Church, he a.s.serted that there is such a thing as "sin unto death?"

It may be useful to take that one of the seven deadly sins which people are the most surprised to find in the list.

How and why is sloth deadly sin?

There is a distinction between sloth as _vice_ and sloth as _sin_. The deadly _sin_ of _sloth_ often exists where the _vice_ has no place.

The sleepy music of Thomson's "Castle of Indolence" does not describe the slumber of the spiritual sluggard. Spiritual sloth is want of care and of love for all things in the spiritual order. Its conceptions are shallow and hasty. For it the Church is a department of the civil service; her worship and rites are submitted to, as one submits to a minor surgical operation. Prayer is the waste of a few minutes daily in concession to a sentiment which it might require trouble to eradicate. For the slothful Christian, saints are incorrigibly stupid; martyrs incorrigibly obstinate; clergymen incorrigibly professional; missionaries incorrigibly restless; sisterhoods incorrigibly tender; white lips that can just whisper Jesus incorrigibly awful. For the slothful, G.o.d, Christ, death, judgment have no real significance. The Atonement is a plank far away to be clutched by dying fingers in the article of death, that we may gurgle out "yes," when asked "are you happy"? h.e.l.l is an ugly word, Heaven a beautiful one which means a sky or an Utopia. Apathy in all spiritual thought, languor in every work of G.o.d, fear of injudicious and expensive zeal; secret dislike of those whose fervour puts us to shame, and a miserable adroitness in keeping out of their way; such are the signs of the spirit of sloth.

And with this a long series of sins of omission--"slumbering and sleeping while the Bridegroom tarries"--"unprofitable servants."

We have said that the _vice_ of sloth is generally distinct from the _sin_. There is, however, one day of the week on which the sin is apt to wear the drowsy features of the _vice--Sunday_. If there is any day on which we might be supposed to do something towards the spiritual world it must be Sunday. Yet what have any of us done for G.o.d on any Sunday? Probably we can scarcely tell. We slept late, we lingered over our dressing, we never thought of Holy Communion; after Church (if we went there) we loitered with friends; we lounged in the Park; we whiled away an hour at lunch; we turned over a novel, with secret dislike of the benevolent arrangements which give the postman some rest. Such have been in the main our past Sundays. Such will be those which remain, more or fewer, till the arrival of a date written in a calendar which eye hath not seen. The last evening of the closing year is called by an old poet, "the twilight of two years, nor past, nor next." What shall we call the last Sunday of our year of life?

Turn to the first chapter of St. Mark. Think of that day of our Lord's ministry which is recorded more fully than any other. What a day! First that teaching in the Synagogue, when men "were astonished," not at His volubility, but at His "doctrine," drawn from depths of thought. Then the awful meeting with the powers of the world unseen. Next the utterance of the words in the sick room which renovated the fevered frame. Afterwards an interval for the simple festival of home. And then we see the sin, the sorrow, the sufferings crowded at the door. A few hours more, while yet there is but the pale dawn before the meteor sunrise of Syria, He rises from sleep to plunge His wearied brow in the dews of prayer. And finally the intrusion of others upon that sacred solitude, and the work of preaching, helping, pitying, healing closes in upon Him again with a circle which is of steel, because it is duty--of delight, because it is love. O the divine monotony of one of those golden days of G.o.d upon earth! And yet we are offended because He who is the same for ever, sends from heaven that message with its terrible plainness--"because thou art lukewarm, I will spue thee out of my mouth." We are angry that the Church cla.s.ses sloth as deadly sin, when the Church's Master has said--"thou wicked and _slothful_ servant."

DISCOURSE XV.

_THE TERRIBLE TRUISM WHICH HAS NO EXCEPTION._

"All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death."-- 1 JOHN v. 17.

Let us begin by detaching awhile from its context this oracular utterance: "all unrighteousness is sin." Is this true universally, or is it not?

A clear consistent answer is necessary, because a strange form of the doctrine of indulgences (long whispered in the ears) has lately been proclaimed from the housetops, with a considerable measure of apparent acceptance.

Here is the singular dispensation from St. John's rigorous canon to which we refer.

Three such indulgences have been accorded at various times to certain favoured cla.s.ses or persons. (1) "The moral law does not exist for the elect." This was the doctrine of certain Gnostics in St. John's day; of certain fanatics in every age. (2) "Things absolutely forbidden to the ma.s.s of mankind, are allowable for people of commanding rank."

Accommodating Prelates, and accommodating Reformers have left the burden of defending these ign.o.ble concessions to future generations.

(3) A yet baser dispensation has been freely given by very vulgar casuists. "The chosen of Fortune"--the men at whose magic touch every stock seems to rise--may be allowed unusual forms of enjoying the unusual success which has crowned their career.

Such are, or such _were_, the dispensations from St. John's canon permitted to themselves, or to others, by the elect of _Heaven_, by the elect of _station_, and by the elect of _fortune_.

Another election hath obtained the perilous exception now--the election of _genius_. Those who endow the world with music, with art, with romance, with poetry, are ent.i.tled to the reversion. "All unrighteousness is sin"--except for _them_. (1) The indulgence is no longer valid for those who affect intimacy with heaven (partly perhaps because it is suspected that there is no heaven to be intimate with).

(2) The indulgence is not extended to the men who apparently rule over nations, since it has been discovered that nations rule over them. (3) It is not accorded to the constructors of fortunes; they are too many, and too uninteresting, though possibly figures could be conceived almost capable of buying it. But (generally speaking) men of these three cla.s.ses must pace along the dust of the narrow road by the signpost of the law, if they would escape the censure of society.

For genius alone there is no such inconvenient restriction. Many men, of course, deliberately prefer the "primrose path," but they can no more avoid indignant hisses by the way than they can extinguish the "everlasting bonfire" at the awful close of their journey. With the man of genius it seems that it is otherwise. He shall "walk in the ways of his heart, and in the sight of his eyes;" but, "for all these things"

the tribunals of certain schools of a delicate criticism (delicate criticism can be so indelicate!) will never allow him "to be brought into judgment." Some literary oracles, biographers, or reviewers, are not content to keep a reverential silence, and to murmur a secret prayer. They will drag into light the saddest, the meanest, the most selfish doings of genius. Not the least service to his generation, and to English literature, of the true poet and critic lately taken from us,[337] was the superb scorn, the exquisite wit, with which his indignant purity transfixed such doctrines. A strange winged thing, no doubt, genius sometimes is; alternately beating the abyss with splendid pinions, and eating dust which is the "serpent's meat." But for all that, we cannot see with the critic when he tries to prove that the reptile's crawling is part of the angel's flight; and the dust on which he grovels one with the infinite purity of the azure distances.

The arguments of the apologists for moral eccentricity of genius may be thus summed up:--The man of genius bestows upon humanity gifts which are on a different line from any other. He enriches it on the side where it is poorest; the side of the Ideal. But the very temperament in virtue of which a man is capable of such transcendent work makes him pa.s.sionate and capricious. To be _imaginative_ is to be _exceptional_; and these exceptional beings live for mankind rather than for themselves. When their conduct comes to be discussed, the only question is whether that conduct was adapted to forward the superb self-development which is of such inestimable value to the world. If the gratification of any desire was necessary for that self-development, genius itself being the judge, the cause is ended. In winning that gratification hearts may be broken, souls defiled, lives wrecked. The daintiest songs of the man of genius may rise to the accompaniment of domestic sobs, and the music which he seems to warble at the gates of heaven may be trilled over the white upturned face of one who has died in misery. What matter! Morality is so icy, and so intolerant; its doctrines have the ungentlemanlike rigour of the Athanasian Creed. Genius breaks hearts with such supreme gracefulness, such perfect wit, that they are arrant Philistines who refuse to smile.

We who have the text full in our mind answer all this in the words of the old man of Ephesus. For all that angel-softness which he learned from the heart of Christ, his voice is as strong as it is sweet and calm. Over all the storm of pa.s.sion, over all the babble of successive sophistries, clear and eternal it rings out--"_all_ unrighteousness is sin." To which the apologist, little abashed, replies--"of course we all know _that_--quite true as a general rule, but then men of genius have bought a splendid dispensation by paying a splendid price, and so _their_ inconsistencies are not sin."

There are two a.s.sumptions at the root of this apology for the aberrations of genius which should be examined. (1) The temperament of men of genius is held to const.i.tute an excuse from which there is no appeal. Such men indeed are sometimes not slow to put forward this plea for themselves. No doubt there are trials peculiar to every temperament. Those of men of genius are probably very great. They are children of the sunshine and of the storm; the grey monotony of ordinary life is distasteful to them. Things which others find it easy to accept convulse their sensitive organisation. Many can produce their finest works only on condition of being sheltered where no bills shall find their way by the post; where no sound, not even the crowing of c.o.c.ks, shall break the haunted silence. If the letter comes in one case, and if the c.o.c.k crows in the other, the first may possibly never be remembered, but the second is never forgotten.

For this, as for every other form of human temperament--that of the dunce, as well as of the genius--allowance must in truth be made. In that one of the lives of the English Poets, where the great moralist has gone nearest to making concessions to this fallacy of temperament, he utters this just warning. "No wise man will easily presume to say, had I been in Savage's condition I should have lived better than Savage." But we must not bring in the temperament of the man of genius as the standard of his conduct unless we are prepared to admit the same standard in every other case. G.o.d is no respecter of persons. For each, conscience is of the same texture, law of the same material. As all have the same cross of infinite mercy, the same judgment of perfect impartiality, so have they the same law of inexorable _duty_.

(2) The necessary _disorder_ and _feverishness_ of high literary and artistic inspiration is a _second_ postulate of the pleas to which I refer. But, is it true that disorder _creates inspiration_; or is a condition of it?

All great work is ordered work; and in producing it the faculties must be exercised harmoniously and with order. True inspiration, therefore, should not be caricatured into a flushed and dishevelled thing. Labour always precedes it. It has been prepared for by education. And that education would have been painful but for the glorious efflorescence of materials collected and a.s.similated, which is the compensation for any toil. The very dissatisfaction with its own performances, the result of the lofty ideal which is inseparable from genius, is at once a stimulus and a balm. The man of genius apparently writes, or paints, as the birds sing, or as the spring colours the flowers; but his subject has long possessed his mind, and the inspiration is the child of thought and of ordered labour. Destroying the peace of one's own family or of another's, being flushed with the preoccupation of guilty pa.s.sion, will not accelerate, but r.e.t.a.r.d the advent of those happy moments which are not without reason called creative. Thus, the inspiration of genius is akin to the inspiration of prophecy. The prophet tutored himself by a fitting education. He became a.s.similated to the n.o.ble things in the future which he foresaw. Isaiah's heart grew royal; his style wore the majesty of a king, before he sang the King of sorrow with His infinite pathos, and the King of righteousness with His infinite glory. Many prophets attuned their spirits by listening to such music as lulls, not inflames pa.s.sion. Others walked where "beauty born of murmuring sound" might pa.s.s into their strain.

Think of Ezekiel by the river of Chebar, with the soft sweep of waters in his ear, and their cool breath upon his cheek. Think of St. John with the shaft of light from heaven's opened door upon his upturned brow, and the boom of the aegean upon the rocks of Patmos around him.

"The note of the heathen seer" (said the greatest preacher of the Greek Church) "is to be contorted, constrained, excited, like a maniac; the note of a prophet is to be wakeful, self-possessed, n.o.bly self-conscious."[338] We may apply this test to the distinction between genius, and the dissipated affectation of genius.

Let us then refuse our a.s.sent to a doctrine of indulgences applied to genius on the ground of _temperament_ or of literary and artistic _inspiration_. "Why," we are often asked, "why force your narrow judgment upon an angry or a laughing world?" What have you to do with the conduct of gifted men? Genius means exuberance. Why "blame the Niagara River" because it will not a.s.sume the pace and manner of "a Dutch ca.n.a.l"? Never indeed should we force that judgment upon any, unless they force it upon us. Let us avoid as far as we may posthumous gossip over the grave of genius. It is an unwholesome curiosity which rewards the blackbird for that bubbling song of ecstasy in the thicket, by gloating upon the ugly worm which he swallows greedily after the shower. The pen or pencil has dropped from the cold fingers.

After all its thought and sin, after all its toil and agony, the soul is with its Judge. Let the painter of the lovely picture, the writer of the deathless words, be for us like the priest. The washing of regeneration is no less wrought through the unworthy minister; the precious gift is no less conveyed when a polluted hand has broken the bread and blessed the cup. But if we are forced to speak, let us refuse to accept an _ex post facto_ morality invented to excuse a worthless absolution. Especially so when the most sacred of all rights is concerned. It is not enough to say that a man of genius dissents from the received standard of conduct. He cannot make fugitive inclination the only principle of a connection which he promised to recognise as paramount. A pa.s.sage in the Psalms,[339] has been called "The catechism of Heaven." "The catechism of Fame" differs from "the catechism of Heaven." "Who shall ascend unto the hill of Fame?" "He that possesses genius." "Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord?"

"He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; He that hath sworn to his neighbour and disappointeth him not" (or disappointeth _her_ not) "though it were to his own hindrance"--aye, to the hindrance of his self-development. Strange that the rough Hebrew should still have to teach us chivalry as well as religion! In St. John's Epistle we find the two great axioms about sin, in its two essential aspects. "Sin is the transgression of the law:" there is its aspect chiefly _G.o.dward_.

"All unrighteousness" (mainly injustice, denial of the rights of others) "is sin:" there is its aspect chiefly _manward_.

Yes, the principle of the text is rigid, inexorable, eternal. Nothing can make its way out of those terrible meshes. It is without favour, without exception. It gives no dispensation, and proclaims no indulgences, to the man of genius, or to any other. If it were otherwise, the righteous G.o.d, the Author of creation and redemption, would be dethroned. And _that_ is a graver thing than to dethrone even the author of "Queen Mab," and of "The Epipsychidion." Here is the jurisprudence of the "great white Throne" summed up in four words: "_all unrighteousness is sin_."

So far, in the last discourse, and in this, we have ventured to isolate these two great principles from their context. But this process is always attended with peculiar loss in St. John's writings.

And as some may think perhaps that the promise[340] just succeeding is falsified we must here run the risk of bringing in another thread of thought. Yet indeed the whole paragraph[341] has its source in an intense faith in the _efficacy of prayer_, specially as exercised in _intercessory prayer_.

(1) The efficacy of prayer.[342] This is the very sign of contrast with, of opposition to, the modern spirit, which is the negation of _prayer_.

What is the real value of prayer?