+Devotion to God as distinct from or in opposition to devotion to those
concrete duties and human relationship wherein the divine will is
expressed, is hypocrisy.+--"If a man say I love God and hateth his
brother he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath
seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen."
Pure religion begins in faith and ends in works. It draws from God the
inspiration to serve in righteousness and love our fellow-men. If faith
stop short of God, and rest in church, or creed, or priest; if work stop
short of actual service of our fellow-men, and rest in splendor of
ritual or glow of pious feeling, or orthodoxy of belief; then our
religion becomes a vain and hollow thing, and we become Pharisees and
hypocrites.
THE PENALTY.
+The wages of sin is death.+--The penalty of each particular vice we
have seen to be the dwarfing, stunting, decay, and deadening of that
particular side of our nature that is effected by it. Intemperance
brings disease; wastefulness brings want; cruelty brings brutality;
ugliness brings coarseness; exclusiveness brings isolation; treason
brings anarchy. Just in so far as one cuts himself off from the moral
order which is the expression of God's will; just in so far as there is
sin, there is privation, deadening, and decay. As long as we live in
this world it is impossible to live an utterly vicious life; to cut
ourselves off completely from God and his order and his laws. To do that
would be instant death. The man who should embody all the vices and none
of the virtues, would be intolerable to others, unendurable even to
himself. The penalty of an all-round life of vice and sin would be
greater than man could endure and live. This fearful end is seldom
reached in this life. Some redeeming virtues save even the worst of men
from this full and final penalty of sin. The man, however, who
deliberately rejects God as his friend and guide to righteous living;
the man who deliberately makes self-will and sin the ruling principle of
his life, is started on a road, which, if followed to the end, leads
inevitably to death. He is excluding himself from that sphere of good,
that career of service and devotion, wherein alone true life is to be
found. He is banishing himself to that outer darkness which is our
figurative expression for the absence of all those rewards of virtue and
the presence of all those penalties of vice which our previous studies
have brought to our attention. "Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth
forth death." "The wages of sin is death."
THE END.
INDEX.
Abstinence, total, 14-16
Adulteration, 47
Affectation, 86, 87
Alcibiades, on personal appearance, 22
Ambition, true and false, 164
Amusement, 28;
seeking, 30
Animals, 98
Anxiety, 63
Aristotle, on friendship, 137;
on pleasure, 187
Arnold, M., on insincerity, 105;
on "quiet work," 39
Art, 89
Asceticism, 12
Bashfulness, 106
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account