Matthew 7:6

THAT WHICH IS HOLY

‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs.’

Matthew 7:6

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs—that is to say, never surrender the higher to the lower, never sink the celestial to the terrestrial; never desecrate that which has been consecrated. That was the sound piece of advice that our Lord gave to men and women who were trying to aim at a higher life while they were living in and mixing with the world. As they needed the lesson then, we want it now, when hardly anything is regarded as holy. What shall we say then that we specially need to remember is in danger of losing its sacred character?

I. The holiness of manhood.—Manhood is holy, and yet men desecrate their manhood. I take up some novel, some book, and I read there a character so true to life, a man who carries an atmosphere of unholiness wherever he goes, a man whose character men shudder at when he goes into their clubs, a man whose presence women fear when he goes into their drawing-rooms. It is hard to keep our manhood holy in these days, and as we face the real true facts of life we think perhaps of some one man from that great mass of middle-class men who are the real strength of England, and we think what his manhood is exposed to. He is living, perhaps, in lodgings, he gets home from his work tired and weary, he has his meal alone, and then he goes out through the open door into the streets, and then, to use Bible language, sin lieth at the door. There it is curled up like a dog on the doorstep all ready to meet him. There is the test to his manhood.

II. The holiness of womanhood.—And the same is true of womanhood. We know there are women who in one mad moment have thrown their holiest and their best to the dogs. We know their temptations, we know what it means to them. They have lowered the level of womanhood. They have desecrated the consecrated. They have made themselves a sort of right of way for the public to walk over. To them the Master says, as to the men, ‘Give not that which is holy to the dogs.’

III. The holiness of childhood.—The children are holy; if ever there is a time in life when men and women have been holy it is when they were children. And yet look how children are by their parents literally thrown to the dogs, sent out into life unwarned of everything. What wonder that they go when they are sent to the dogs!

IV. The holiness of health.—Health is holy. Don’t fling away health as men and women do so wildly, so recklessly. Take care of the drugs, take care of the stimulants that are so easily to be had. Take care of the way you spend your recreation hours. Life is in that sense holy, and it is to be treated as you would treat a church or churchyard. Fence it in from the dogs, fence it in from all that desecrates it. All life really is sacred and holy. Your interest, your work in life is holy.

—Canon Holmes.

Illustrations

(1) ‘The picture is of a glorious and a great temple, the priests sacrificing some spotless lamb, and as they stand at the altar the picture is that of an Eastern dog—a coarse, cruel scavenger—creeping up the distance of the temple, and then the priest taking a piece of this pure spotless lamb and throwing it to the dog. Every Jew would regard it as a scandal, every one to whom our Lord was speaking would know to what He referred.’

(2) ‘I have read the story of a child whose after life was the life of many a man. He was a judge’s son, and he stood at last in a felon’s dock, and the judge who was trying the case knew, and knew well, the man’s father. And he said to the prisoner at the dock: “Don’t you remember your father as you stand in that dock?” “Yes,” was the reply, “I do remember my father, and the greatest remembrance that I have of him is that whenever I wanted a word of advice, whenever I wanted him to enter into my boy life, he replied, ‘Go away, and don’t worry or bother.’ ” And the result was that an English judge was enabled to complete a great work that he was writing upon the law of trusts, when there in the dock was his own son, an example of the way in which he had failed to keep that most sacred trust of all—the trust of bringing up a child that he had brought into the world.’