SERMON VII.

FAITH AND THE WORLD.

PROV. xi. 21.

"Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished: but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered."

WHE

HEN we hear speak of the wicked, we are apt to think that men of abandoned lives and unprincipled conduct, cruel, crafty, or profligate men, can alone be meant. This obtains almost universally; we think that evil, in any sufficient sense of the word, is something external to us, and at a distance. Thus in the case of children, when they hear of bad men and wicked men, they have no conception that evil can really be near them. They fancy, with a fearful curiosity, something which they have not seen, something foreign and monstrous, as if brought over the seas, or the production of another sphere; though, in truth, evil, and in its worst and most concentrated shape, is born with them, lives within them, is not subdued except by a supernatural gift from God, and is still in them, even when God's grace has brought it under. And so, when we grow up, whether we are thrown upon the world or not, we commonly do not understand that what Scripture says of sin, of its odiousness

and its peril, applies to us. we see it, appears not to be the world; that is, not the world which Scripture speaks of. We do not discern, we do not detect, the savour of its sinfulness; its ways are pleasant to us; and what Scripture says of wickedness, and of misery as attending on it, does not, as we think, apply to the world we see.

The world itself, even though

And hence it is, that when we read, as in the text, of the short triumph and the overthrow of wickedness, when we read that "though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished," we have a picture brought before us of some overbearing tyranny, or some perfidious conspiracy, or some bold and avowed banding against religion, some event of a generation or a century, and nothing short of it. And such specimens of evil doubtless are especially intended by the sacred writer; still, after all, much more is included in his meaning, much which is ordinary, much which we see before our eyes.

Can it indeed be otherwise? Is not the world in itself evil? Is it an accident, is it an occasion, is it but an excess, or a crisis, or a complication of circumstances, which constitutes its sinfulness? or, rather, is it not one. of our three great spiritual enemies, at all times, and under all circumstances and all changes, ungodly, unbelieving, seducing, and anti-christian? Surely we must grant it to be so. Why else in Baptism do we vow to wage war against it? Why else does Scripture speak of it in the terms which we know so well, if we will but attend to them? St. James says, that "the friendship of the world is enmity with God," so that "whosoever

1 James iv. 4.

will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." And St. Paul speaks of "walking according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience';" and exhorts us not to be "conformed to this world," but to be "transformed by the renewing of our mind';" and he says that Christ "gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world." In like manner St. John says, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him "." Let us be quite sure, then, that that confederacy of evil which Scripture calls the world, that conspiracy against Almighty God of which Satan is the secret instigator, is something wider, and more subtle, and more ordinary, than mere cruelty, or craft, or profligacy; it is that very world in which we are; it is not a certain body or party of men, but it is human society itself. This it is which is our greatest enemy; and this it is of which the text in its fulness speaks, when it says that "though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished." It is powerful at present, but in the end it shall be overthrown; and then these its separate members "shall not be unpunished," but "the seed of the righteous shall be delivered."

Now I shall attempt an explanation of what may be supposed to be meant in the text by "hand joining in hand," and of the sense in which it is fulfilled in the course of human affairs in every age. The one peculiar and characteristic sin of the world is this, that whereas 1 Eph. ii. 2.

2 Rom. xii. 2. 3 Gal. i. 4.

1 John ii. 15.

God would have us live for the life to come, the world would make us live for this life. This, I say, is the world's sin; it lives for this life, not for the next. It takes, as the main scope of human exertion, an end which God forbids; and consequently all that it does becomes evil, because directed to a wrong end.

This is a thing which seems easy to say, but which should be steadily considered. In this respect the temptations of the world differ from temptations of the flesh. The flesh is not rational, nor appeals to reason; but the world reasons. The works of the flesh are such as St. Paul describes them,-variance, hatred, murders, adulteries, uncleanness, and drunkenness. Pride, cruelty, wrath, revenge, obstinacy, sensuality, are works of the flesh. They are the spontaneous fruit of the unrenewed mind, as thorns and thistles are the natural growth of the earth. But the case is different as regards the world. The world has many sins, but its peculiar offence is that of daring to reason contrary to God's Word and will. It puts wrong aims before itself, and acts towards them.

It

goes wrong as if on principle, and prefers its own way of viewing things to God's way. When Eve saw that the forbidden fruit was good for food, she was tempted through the flesh; and when the serpent said, "Ye shall not surely die," he used the temptation proper to the world-false reason.

Now you will see this by taking a survey of the world, and seeing how and why it disobeys God. God,. in Scripture, says one thing; the world says another.. God says that we should live for the life to come; the world says that we should live for this life. How is it

[S. D.]

G

able to say so? what are the arguments it uses? Let us consider.

Men seem made for this world; this is what prevails on them to neglect the next world: they think they have reason for concluding, they think they see, that this world is the world for which they are to labour, and to which they are to devote their faculties. And therefore they persist in denying that they must live for the next world. It is not that they profess to run counter to God's Word, but they deny that He has said that they must live directly for the next world. As the Israelites did not avowedly cast off the God of Abraham when they worshipped the golden calf, but professed to worship Him under that symbol, so men generally, when they pursue this world as their supreme good, and as their god, deny that they are disowning their Lord and Maker, but maintain that He wishes them to worship Him by means of and in this world.

Now these are the sort of considerations which seduce them to think that this world is all in all :

1. For instance, there are a number of faculties and talents which secm only to exist in this world, and to be impossible in another. Consider the varieties of mental gifts which are in active exercise on all sides of us, and you will see what I mean; such as talent for business, or talent for the useful arts, mechanical talent. Or, again, consider the talents which go to make up a great warrior. They seem as if evidently made for this world, and this world only. If such ability is not to be used, it may be asked, why is it given? If a person lives only for the next world, what is the use of it?