Psalms 97

LIFE AND CHARACTER

‘O ye that love the Lord, see that ye hate the thing which is evil.’

Psalms 97:10 (Prayer Book Version)

Holy Scripture teaches us that the outcome and the end of life is not what a man has done, or what a man has said, but it is what life has made of the man. Not so much what man has made of the life, but what life has made of the man. Life is a machinery with its complicated system for the working out of character, and at the end the soul comes out beaten upon by all the manifold forces and influences of life; the soul comes out of all those forces which baffle analysis, and there is your man. Holy Scripture says that the outcome of life is the formation of character, and that, compared with this, nothing else in the world matters.

I. Character is defined by one of two movements of the human will.—That man is a good man, whatever his creed may be, who is always striving after what he thinks is the best. And that man, whatever his creed may be, is not a good man who, when he sees the good, deliberately turns away from it. That man is not good who, seeing the best, gropes after what he likes, and not after what he ought to like, who aims not at the high but at the low. That man is not a good man who does not aim at what he thinks to be noblest and the purest and the best. Underneath all the variety of nationality, race, and religion, underneath all variety of these things that change and give colour to life, underneath all is this distinction between men good and bad. ‘I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God’—the dead, morally small, intellectually small, morally great and intellectually great—‘I saw them stand before God,’ and I observed a division: and what was the cause of that division? One man could say with truth, ‘Lord, when saw I Thee in prison, or sick, and did not try to help?’ And the other man saw good and turned away; saw light and turned away; saw moral rectitude and chose moral evil.

II. Here is the key to human life.—You tell me about a man. He may be a great public character, and you say to me, ‘He is a man of great gifts and great wealth.’ And I say to you, ‘Tell me something about the man.’ And you say, ‘He is a man of extraordinary fascination and wonderful power of influence.’ I say, ‘Tell me something about the man.’ You say, ‘He is a man of wonderful power of mind and body and reason.’ I say, ‘I do not know the man yet; tell me something about the man.’ And then you say, ‘And all these powers of influence and fascination and wealth he used for his own ends.’ Now I know your man. That one act of the will is the secret of that man’s life, and all the rest is only a setting to the picture. But, further, you may say, ‘Well, but I cannot feel that I am perfectly free. I cannot feel that my will is absolutely free.’ No man in his senses will ever say to you that at any given moment of your life you are free from anything that you have done in the past. It is in the power of every man to work himself out of bad habits. He can get free by struggle, hard struggle. Not to-day, not to-morrow, it may be, not for a year, perhaps, but he can get free if he will struggle in the light of God, and in the power of God’s might he can get free, and at last he will sing with joy and peace, ‘The snare is broken and I am delivered.’

III. And now, how shall these things be?—I find that I seem to have two wills. ‘I am,’ you say, ‘a man of strong purpose, and yet, when I come to things moral, I seem to be powerless. What am I to do?’ St. Paul says that behind your conscience, and behind your reason, you can set a person, a person whom you love. And now supposing that you set the greatest and the dearest of men, Jesus Christ, and supposing you learn to love Him, and supposing that you hear His voice, the voice of One who died for the honour of God and for the sake of men, the voice that called the Magdalene to His feet. Suppose you hear that voice sounding through your conscience, will not at length devotion to Him, the love of Him, draw all your passions, one by one, upon the side of right as against wrong? ‘O ye that love the Lord! see that ye hate the thing that is evil.’

IV. There are many things that society hates.—It hates being dull, it hates being bored, it hates badly fitting clothes, it hates long sermons, it hates being found out. It hates evil when evil touches its pocket or injures its character in the face of men, but it does not hate evil as evil. Ye that love the Lord, see that ye hate above all things the thing that is evil. And as you learn to love the Lord, as you learn to hate evil, you will learn to love good, until at length, stealthily, quietly, in moments unknown and unmeasured, one by one, all your errant desires will come back from the side of wrong and take their place on the side of right, until at last your whole nature is brought into submission, and your whole heart flung down at the feet of God.

Prebendary Storrs.

Illustration

‘Sometimes we see a man who has been raised from poverty up to wealth, and we say, “I liked that man better when he was poor, for when he was poor there seemed to be a splendour of character about him, which has now been overlaid by all this comfort and luxury and ease.” Here is a fine lady who is lying upon her death-bed. She has had her day, and she has had her sway, and she has done her acts, and she has said her words, and she has had her receptions, and, as you, her friends, stand by her bedside, why is it that you do not feel any of that triumph which comes from a sense of strength and power? It is because you know, who knew her well, that, underneath all, her character has deteriorated, and she has become small instead of great. Or, once more, you stand by the coffin of your dead friend. You have crossed his hands in calmness and peace, and closed his eyes. Why is it that, in spite of all he has done—and he seems to have done great things—why is it that you are unhappy? It is because you know that, underneath it all, his moral nature has worsened. He has become a poorer character than he was.’