Luke 12:35-36

IDEALS LOST AND RECOVERED

‘Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning: And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately.’

Luke 12:35

It is not for correction only, but for our great encouragement, that our Lord gives us this image of a Christian life.

I. The worldliness of individuals is more pressingly important for us than the danger of a worldly development in the society in which we live. In this matter, we very roughly distinguish three stages of opinion, three states of mind.

(a) There is the man who thinks rightly of the whole development of society as being not for itself, but all for God; as having no kind of worth within itself, or its justification in its own growth, but as being altogether a growth prepared for the service and glory of God. That is the true imperialism.

(b) There is a second stage in which a man, without thinking of himself or caring what his place may be in the social organism, longs for the development of that organism and for its enrichment and strength, as if it were an end in itself. That is the state, I imagine, of a good Japanese who has no self-seeking. He does not desire to stop at home and grow rich; all he cares for is the strength, the enrichment, and triumph of the body to which he belongs. This is patriotism.

(c) The third state is the state of the man who, while he is well content that his country should grow rich, is particularly anxious that he should grow rich in it.

II. High ideals disappearing.—It is not in one class alone that high ideals are disappearing. It is not among the rich only. The rich love comfort and display. But there are others, not rich, who are also eagerly pressing upward in the world’s scale, who desire to rise ‘from kitchen table to mahogany desk.’ This is natural enough. New classes with fresh energy, and unsatiated appetites for the world’s good things, are coming into their inheritance. They have to be warned with the greater earnestness against the terrible danger of becoming slaves of a Babylonian—a worse than Egyptian—bondage. It is a poor thing to be delivered from hard and ill-rewarded tasks, from brickmaking under compulsion, only to fall into the grip of a spirit of selfish gain, and soulless, godless advance! And once again, It is not only that the motives are mixed as they have always been mixed. But that the narrow, evil, senseless ideal is proclaimed with outspoken frankness. I must speak with the greatest sympathy with those who have not enough, or who have formed various ties which bring responsibilities and financial problems. I will never speak lightly or with contempt of their longing for money. Such money is often peace, honour, and sleep at nights, and baby’s health and the wife’s. When the young man in the office asks for a rise, that is not worldliness. Worldliness comes when the rise closes his view and he does not see what it is for; does not translate it into peace, and honour, and baby’s health. Or, again, on the very first day he does one thing against honesty or kindness to promote in the smallest degree his own prosperity. Selfishness, unkindness, trampling on the right and interest of another, or sinning against oneself by the smallest concession to the temptations of dishonesty—in these is worldliness and the worship of mammon.

III. Now what do these things gain their new strength from?—Why is it that men are more subject to them now than formerly?

(a) Partly because of the rumours of unbelief; the shaking, or the rumours of the shaking, of the foundations of religion. Numbers of men who do not give up religion have a vague idea that its foundations have really been shaken, and might be known to be ruined if only one had time to inquire. They have not had the day free to go and look at the debris where it has fallen in, but they have heard that the roof has fallen and are content to take it for granted from the newspapers. Do not be shaken out of your unworldliness, your discipline, and your joy, by any notion at all that the genuine foundations of religion have been in the smallest degree affected by all that has been said and done in the last two hundred years.

(b) And to this influence of rumour must be added the example of so many thousands all running after perishing things.

IV. What must we do against these two evils?

(a) We must live more in the companionship of those who know God. We must live more with the holy saints. We must escape from the stupid literature, the foolish, narrow writing of our time, the prejudiced and often crippled theology of our time, with its short breadth and its small outlook, and its half-hearted statements of the truth, to the language, the society, and the temper of the followers of Christ in all ages. We must try to make actual our share in the communion of saints. We can all read the greatest saints, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the Epistles of the holy Apostles, St. Peter, and St. Paul. We may live with St. Jude and St. James, and hear the great Revelation made to John the Divine. In these we may have an abundance of holy companionship with blessed spirits, who, while they walked on the earth, were living with God and loved Him, and who now intercede for us and look down upon us, and wait for us, and long for our perfection in fidelity to Him Whom—as the great St. Peter, as if in pity, says of us—‘having not seen we love.’ It is a great gain, a great rescue from worldliness, to move freely in the broad fields of Holy Scripture, so that in the companionship of the elect we may be kept in the power of the Divine Spirit.

(b) Another great help against worldliness is in the ‘gathering of ourselves together’ in solemn worship. Cherish and love and make more and more of the opportunities of public worship. Go on as you have in the past in this holy practice. Besides all their other beautiful effects, the holy services of the Church have a wonderful value and virtue if only because they interrupt our life. Our life needs such interruption. Apart from our selfishness there is our absorption. We are swimming in one stream of things, and unless we are lifted from it, we cannot see beyond its waters.

(c) Pray Him earnestly to make us ready, to bring us to the expectant fidelity which He loves. Let none be overcome by base and hopeless regret that he has been so far from this happy, this ‘blessed’ attitude. Let helpless regret give place to hopeful repentance. Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, be watchful, and hope to the end. If we are sorry and anxious about our failure, is He not infinitely desirous of our success, of our salvation? If we have feebly marked our own failings, does not He with infinite love and wisdom regard them, Who ‘watching over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps.’ The very grief with which we acknowledge our conformity to the world is a movement of the Eternal Spirit, Who will transform us by the renewing of our minds, and make us Christ’s true servants by the love of God shed abroad in our hearts.

—Rev. P. N. Waggett.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

BURNING LIGHTS

In that wondrous Eastern land servants may be seen watching on the great stone benches inside the heavy doors, waiting for their master’s return from the wedding or the feast. All the Eastern pleasure is taken at night time, then the air is cool, then every one goes forth to lantern-lit places of amusement, the torches gleam, lamps glitter, and one realises how true the Scriptures are in comparing joy and gladness to light, and God’s blessing to the lamp, and prosperity to the candles of the Lord.

The Lord asks each one of you to be His lamp-bearers. He urges upon you to be sincerely Christian and to walk in love and to serve Him.

I. What are the lamps which each good doorkeeper of the Lord, each well-doer for Jesus Christ, must needs, have burning?—They are ten. We are variously gifted, and all good gifts are from above, and come down from the Father of Lights. One will be conspicuous for one virtue, one will need this lamp or that. God’s Spirit will supply the oil, and the flame the spirit of prayer; but we must yield these earthen vessels which are our hearts, to be the receivers of that precious gift, and “Let our light so shine before men that they see our good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven.’

Now the lamps of life are these—the old Church Catechism in its statement of our duty towards our neighbour shall be my witness.

(a) The lamp of love for father and mother; (b) Loyalty; (c) Learning; (d) Obedience; (e) Kindness; (f) Truth; (g) Temperance; (h) Soberness; (i) Chastity; and (j) Contentment.

II. Let us be ready.—Our loins girded, and these our lamps burning, and be as those who watch for the coming of the Lord. Behold, we know not when or how He will enter our souls, and make our hearts glad with the light of His countenance; but we know that every good word, and deed, and thought, is a surety of His presence, and we know that ever at the gates of our hearts, though they be barred against Him, He stands and knocks.

Rev. Canon R. D. Rawnsley.

Illustration

‘Hearts good and true

Have wishes few,

In narrow circles bounded;

And hope that lives

On what God gives,

Is Christian hope well-founded.

Small things are best;

Grief and unrest

To rank and wealth are given,

But little things

On little wings,

Bear little souls to heaven.’