WHY is "the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears" culpable?
Not, surely, because of any involuntary deafness: but because whatever degree of infirmity she may or may not have labored under, she willed to be and to remain deaf.
Honest difficulties in the way of her hearing may have existed: incomparably beyond them in baneful influence appears to have been the circumstance that she stopped her ears.
We may fairly conclude that had her deafness been absolute she would not have felt any impulse to stop her ears: she could not have apprehended enough to set her against apprehending more.
Because she heard somewhat, she stopped her ears; and because hearing somewhat she took measures to hear no more, therefore she abides condemned.
If because we see her stop her ears we judge and condemn her on that very evidence of her having heard, let us judge ourselves no less honestly.
The responsibility we avoid facing, we have already caught a glimpse of: we are at the least so far cognizant of it as to know that we might ascertain more.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
July 30
"He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me." -- (ST. JOHN xxiv.21.)
SUCH is our Lord's own authoritative definition of His true lover.
But not seldom it would seem as if this His definition fails to satisfy His disciples. Thus one, a self-deceiver, substitutes an emotion for obedience: while another, a self-tormentor, depreciates the obedience he can and (allowing for human frailty) does render, in comparison with emotions he longs after but cannot experience.
The self-deceiver's remedy is simple strenuous obedience, without reference either to sensibility or insensibility.
The self-tormentor's remedy is cheerful, trustful obedience "as to the Lord, and not unto men:" for whosoever studies himself in his obeidence is--is he not?--obeying as "unto a man" rather than "as to the Lord."
Such an honest scrupulous person may, perhaps, derive comfort from a very homely illustration. When water boils, the bottom of the vessel containing it can be touched with impunity: wherefore? because it lacks heat? on the contrary, because all its heat is carried upward and away from itself.
SUCH is our Lord's own authoritative definition of His true lover.
But not seldom it would seem as if this His definition fails to satisfy His disciples. Thus one, a self-deceiver, substitutes an emotion for obedience: while another, a self-tormentor, depreciates the obedience he can and (allowing for human frailty) does render, in comparison with emotions he longs after but cannot experience.
The self-deceiver's remedy is simple strenuous obedience, without reference either to sensibility or insensibility.
The self-tormentor's remedy is cheerful, trustful obedience "as to the Lord, and not unto men:" for whosoever studies himself in his obeidence is--is he not?--obeying as "unto a man" rather than "as to the Lord."
Such an honest scrupulous person may, perhaps, derive comfort from a very homely illustration. When water boils, the bottom of the vessel containing it can be touched with impunity: wherefore? because it lacks heat? on the contrary, because all its heat is carried upward and away from itself.
July 29
THROUGH burden and heat of the day
How weary the hands and the feet,
That labor with scarcely a stay,
Through burden and heat!
Tired toiler whose sleep shall be sweet,
Kneel down, it will rest thee to pray:
Then forward, for daylight is fleet.
Cool shadows grow lengthening and gray,
Cool twilight will soon be complete:--
What matters this wearisome way
Through burden and heat?
How weary the hands and the feet,
That labor with scarcely a stay,
Through burden and heat!
Tired toiler whose sleep shall be sweet,
Kneel down, it will rest thee to pray:
Then forward, for daylight is fleet.
Cool shadows grow lengthening and gray,
Cool twilight will soon be complete:--
What matters this wearisome way
Through burden and heat?
July 28
2.
TEMPTATION is Satan's sieve: and a wonderful sieve-maker is Satan.
For he can ply as sieves advantages, gifts, even graces.
More than this: he can turn what we have not into an exceptionally searching sieve.
In one case pride, vanity, self-confidence, contempt of others, are likely to come to the surface. In the other case discontent, envy, rebellion. All alike hideous blotches, eating ulcers.
Nevertheless, it is at his own cost that he sifts, and not necessarily at all at ours; although for the time being it cannot but be at our deadly peril.
For he can never carry his point and destroy us, unless we first make a covenant with death and an agreement with hell: whereas we shall infallibly save our souls alive, if holding fast our profession and our patience, we are careful to maintain good works.
Meanwhile he is doing us an actual service by bringing to the surface what already lurked within. However tormenting and humiliating declared leprosy may be, it is less desperate than suppressed leprosy.
Or rather, nothing is desperate which can and will turn to Christ: --
"There came a leper to Him, beseeching Him, and kneeling down to Him, and saying unto Him, If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth His Hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed."
TEMPTATION is Satan's sieve: and a wonderful sieve-maker is Satan.
For he can ply as sieves advantages, gifts, even graces.
More than this: he can turn what we have not into an exceptionally searching sieve.
In one case pride, vanity, self-confidence, contempt of others, are likely to come to the surface. In the other case discontent, envy, rebellion. All alike hideous blotches, eating ulcers.
Nevertheless, it is at his own cost that he sifts, and not necessarily at all at ours; although for the time being it cannot but be at our deadly peril.
For he can never carry his point and destroy us, unless we first make a covenant with death and an agreement with hell: whereas we shall infallibly save our souls alive, if holding fast our profession and our patience, we are careful to maintain good works.
Meanwhile he is doing us an actual service by bringing to the surface what already lurked within. However tormenting and humiliating declared leprosy may be, it is less desperate than suppressed leprosy.
Or rather, nothing is desperate which can and will turn to Christ: --
"There came a leper to Him, beseeching Him, and kneeling down to Him, and saying unto Him, If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth His Hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed."
July 27
1.
"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." --ST. LUKE xxii. 31)
THESE words of our Blessed Lord, spoken in the first instance to one Apostle, have ever since warned, and still cease not to warn, each Christian soul.
For though an ordinary Christian is no conspicuous prey, like the College of Apostles, yet Satan deems him well worth a shake of the sieve.
The warning conveyed by our Lord's words is awful: for our "adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." A flesh and blood lion is appalling to human flesh and blood: how tenfold appalling is a spiritual roaring, devouring lion to man's spirit.
But the encouragement in those same precious words rings through and above the alarm they sound. "Satan hath desired" to have us: but of whom? Of Him to Whom we are as the apple of the eye.
And wherefore does he desire to have us? That he may sift us as wheat. We are certified as good seed by Satan's desiring permission to sift us: for whoever heard of his desiring to sift tares?
As to tares, Satan is quite satisfied so long as they grow unmolested, ripen, shed seed, propagate, flourish until the harvest.
Wheat only does he reckon worth his sifting: therefore whatever he sifts is wheat.
"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." --ST. LUKE xxii. 31)
THESE words of our Blessed Lord, spoken in the first instance to one Apostle, have ever since warned, and still cease not to warn, each Christian soul.
For though an ordinary Christian is no conspicuous prey, like the College of Apostles, yet Satan deems him well worth a shake of the sieve.
The warning conveyed by our Lord's words is awful: for our "adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." A flesh and blood lion is appalling to human flesh and blood: how tenfold appalling is a spiritual roaring, devouring lion to man's spirit.
But the encouragement in those same precious words rings through and above the alarm they sound. "Satan hath desired" to have us: but of whom? Of Him to Whom we are as the apple of the eye.
And wherefore does he desire to have us? That he may sift us as wheat. We are certified as good seed by Satan's desiring permission to sift us: for whoever heard of his desiring to sift tares?
As to tares, Satan is quite satisfied so long as they grow unmolested, ripen, shed seed, propagate, flourish until the harvest.
Wheat only does he reckon worth his sifting: therefore whatever he sifts is wheat.
July 26
FEAST OF ST. ANNE, Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
THAT the Lord's Handmaiden had a mother is indubitable; that she was blessed with a holy mother is conjecturable. That this pious mother bore the name of Anne is quite uncertain: but under this name we do well to venerate the memory of her who, bearing whatever name, was privileged to become an ancestress of the Son of God, and so was constituted a link in that providential chain of persons and events which ended in the atoning Cross.
It is comfortable to turn from saints whose history is unauthenticated, to saints whose history is assured, from the Worthies of tradition to the Worthies of Holy Scripture. At every turn that which is human fails or eludes us, that which is Divine endures and suffices.
"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."
THAT the Lord's Handmaiden had a mother is indubitable; that she was blessed with a holy mother is conjecturable. That this pious mother bore the name of Anne is quite uncertain: but under this name we do well to venerate the memory of her who, bearing whatever name, was privileged to become an ancestress of the Son of God, and so was constituted a link in that providential chain of persons and events which ended in the atoning Cross.
It is comfortable to turn from saints whose history is unauthenticated, to saints whose history is assured, from the Worthies of tradition to the Worthies of Holy Scripture. At every turn that which is human fails or eludes us, that which is Divine endures and suffices.
"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."
July 25
FEAST OF ST. JAMES THE GREAT, APOSTLE AND MARTYR.
Killed with the sword in the year 44.
ST. JAMES, who had craved the Right Hand or the Left Hand seat, and had accepted the cup and baptism proposed to him, was the first of the Apostles to lay down life for his Master's sake.
St. John, who had proffered the same prayer and incurred the same obligation, was the last of them all to die, and that not by martyrdom.
Together they had left nets and boat for Christ. Together they had borne the title of Sons of Thunder. Together they had companied with the Lord Jesus, and afterwards had seen Him ascend into heaven. Together they had received the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and had preached the Gospel by words and by lives more eloquent than words.
Till a day came when one was taken, the other left: one "followed," the other "tarried." Lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their death they were divided.
Now these twain were princes and great men of the better Israel; true yokefellows, moreover, and fellow-heirs; set side by side in their high places on the battle-field of the world and in the kingdom of the Church.
Yet each had to finish separately and differently the course begun hand in hand and alike.
Only now once more, and for these eighteen hundred years past, they are together.
Whence we feel vividly that as "circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God," so also life or death, so also even martyrdom or a natural death is "nothing," but the doing or suffering the Will of God. Amen.
Killed with the sword in the year 44.
ST. JAMES, who had craved the Right Hand or the Left Hand seat, and had accepted the cup and baptism proposed to him, was the first of the Apostles to lay down life for his Master's sake.
St. John, who had proffered the same prayer and incurred the same obligation, was the last of them all to die, and that not by martyrdom.
Together they had left nets and boat for Christ. Together they had borne the title of Sons of Thunder. Together they had companied with the Lord Jesus, and afterwards had seen Him ascend into heaven. Together they had received the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and had preached the Gospel by words and by lives more eloquent than words.
Till a day came when one was taken, the other left: one "followed," the other "tarried." Lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their death they were divided.
Now these twain were princes and great men of the better Israel; true yokefellows, moreover, and fellow-heirs; set side by side in their high places on the battle-field of the world and in the kingdom of the Church.
Yet each had to finish separately and differently the course begun hand in hand and alike.
Only now once more, and for these eighteen hundred years past, they are together.
Whence we feel vividly that as "circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God," so also life or death, so also even martyrdom or a natural death is "nothing," but the doing or suffering the Will of God. Amen.
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