LECT. XV.

precious.

Fruits of

Did you ever think why lost things seem so precious? It is just because being lost we let Lost things thought dwell on what was beautiful, or sweet, or good in them. But alas! we are seldom so wise in the present. We look only for flaws and defects; we are unappreciative and unsympathetic, and our souls grow lean and hard. We will not contentedly believe in the beautiful, and it fades away from us, and leaves us incapable of joy. Yes, covetous discontent palsies the heart. Behold it in the miser, and in the old age of the discontent. selfish. How lonely, how withered, how hopeless, the end of it all! Behold it in those whose covetous greed of pleasure has hurried them into unlawful lusts and unnatural excitements in the effort to force the senses to yield more than God intended; in the trembling drunkard, the insatiable gambler, the broken debauchee, whose outward brokenness is yet only the feeble index of their inner condition of heart and soul.

covetous

content.

On the other hand, how fine is true content! True It is real independence, genial and sweet at heart, not like the rude independence of the world. Its own mind, and not its belongings, is its source of life. As Dryden says:

"Since all great souls still make their own content, We to ourselves may all our wishes grant;

For, nothing coveting, we nothing want."

Dryden.

LECT. XV. Once the House of Commons was startled by one of its most respected members, who said in A strange his speech, "I am richer than most men,” adding by way of explanation, "not because I have more money, but because I have less wants."

M.P.

St. Paul.

His content and his work.

A truth.

Contentment is real freedom and power. For a proof think of St. Paul. "I have learned," he says, "in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content; I know how to be in adversity, and how to be in prosperity; everywhere, and in all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer want." There was no state of life in which his soul was not free, in which his manhood could not rise above all circumstances and assert itself. And thus, "content with such things as he had," he could go out amongst men, and do the grandest work the world has seen. His freedom from lower cares left all the faculties of his mind and the powers of his soul free for the higher service of his Master. They worked at their best, unclouded and unhampered, all concentrated in the vigour of a whole-hearted passion upon the one thing which he saw had been given him to do. Well may it be said, that "contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever purchases it at the expense of ten thousand desires, makes a wise and happy purchase." The philosophy of the whole

LECT. XV.

sophy.

question lies here; with content the virtues can work freely, can aim at the ideal, and the soul A philocan therefore be in its measure satisfied, whilst the world is benefited; but with discontent the virtues have to struggle for their very existence; it makes civil war in the conscience, and therefore paralyzes both heart and hand.

I advance to the second principle of the law. II. Whilst it enforces content, it produces a discontent which proves it Divine.

Observe that in forbidding us to covet, it passes The law spiritual. down beneath action, or word, or even thought itself. It grapples with desire. It pursues evil to its very source, and condemns it there, and there it bids the inmost feeling of the heart be on the side of right and truth.

Mark the way in which it necessarily works. It rouses the consciousness in a man that he is the subject of a perfect spiritual law, just because it places him in the spiritual court of his own conscience, where judgment deals with motives and dispositions. For in the conscience the question is not what others say, nor what human law decides, it is what the moral sense in me decides for or against myself as I stand before my highest self to receive a sentence which must be as true as possible in order to be true at all.

Here begins the upward tendency. The re

Z

Its spiritconscience.

ual court is

sense must

grow if con

science be true.

LECT. XV. quirement that a man must be as true as possible The moral in order to be true at all never lets a man rest in himself; it binds him to an ideal; it urges him on from one stage to another of moral sensitiveness. Every increase of moral sensitiveness only prepares for and leads on to a further advance. From its very nature a true conscience, in order to be true, must yield itself without reservation to the light that shines, and every better attainment opens out a something better still of law and life. As in scaling mountains, so here every advance upwards only discloses peak upon peak which remains to be scaled, the highest lost in the clouds. Whatever conscience sees to be better than what it has attained, to that it must aspire or cease to be pure. Therefore “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure," after these it must strive in the spirit of "Excelsior."

The rich young man

who lacked something yet.

See that young man of fair form and loveable countenance running after Christ with an anxious question. "I have kept all the law," he cries. "Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and thy mother-all these have I observed from my youth up; what lack I yet? What lack I yet? Why this void, this unrest in my soul? I lack something; tell

me what it is, Thou who art the soul's inter

preter ? "

"Throw away self," says the Divine

voice; "follow me to perfection. This law remains which thou hast not kept.

not covet.'

'Thou shalt

Thus this law, "Thou shalt not covet," sets the conscience in search of perfect truth and purity in motive and desire. It places it at the

foot of a ladder whose top reaches into the heaven of heavens, and bids it climb if it would be true. and find life. But in doing this, it is at once the witness to man's inherent greatness of nature, and the cause of his deepest unrest.

LECT. XV.

The law ladder.

a moral

inherent

1. It bears witness to our greatness of nature. Man's "Look at thyself," it says to each of us, "in greatness. this moral 'glass, and know thyself truly. Nothing can really satisfy thee, except the vision of the perfect, and the pursuit of it. Thy complex being is moulded according to this principle. Thy real self belongs only to what is highest and best. Thou art of so wonderful a nature that not even one defiling thought or one tainted desire must enter into thy secret soul. Purity is thy very life. "Thou shalt not covet." Certainly then this law proves it to be true that we were "made a little lower than the angels, to be crowned with glory and worship."

2. Yet here is the cause of our deepest unrest.