SIN UNTO DEATH— 1Jo 5:17
THE Church has ever spoken of seven deadly sins. Here is the ugly
catalogue. Pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, hatred, sloth.
Many of us pray often "from fornication and all other deadly sin,
Good Lord deliver us." This language rightly understood is sound and
true; yet, without careful thought, the term may lead us into two
errors. 1. On hearing of deadly sin we are apt instinctively to
oppose it to venial. But we cannot define by any quantitative test
what venial sin may be for any given soul. To do that we must know
the complete history of each soul; and the complete genealogy,
conception, birth, and autobiography of each sin. Men catch at the
term venial because they love to minimise a thing so tremendous as
sin. The world sides with the casuits whom it satirises; and speaks
of a "white lie," of a foible, of an inaccuracy, when "the ‘white
lie’ may be that of St. Peter, the foible that of David, and the
inaccuracy that of Ananias!" 2. There is a second mistake into which we often fall in
speaking of deadly sin. Our imagination nearly always assumes some
one definite outward act; some single individual sin. This may
partly
be due to a seemingly slight mistranslation in the text. It should
not run "there is a sin," but "there is sin unto" (e.g., in
the direction of, towards) "death." The text means something deeper and further reaching than any single
sin, deadly though it may be justly called. The author of the fourth Gospel learned a whole mystic language from
the life of Jesus. Death, in the great Master’s vocabulary, was more
than a single action. It was again wholly different from bodily
death
by the visitation of God. There are two realms for man’s soul
coextensive with the universe and with itself. One which leads
towards God is called Life; one which leads from Him is called
Death.
There is a radiant passage by which the soul is translated from the
death which is death indeed, to the life which is life indeed. There
is another passage by which we pass from life to death; i.e.,
fall back towards spiritual (which is not necessarily eternal)
death. There is then a general condition and contexture; there is an
atmosphere and position of soul in which the true life flickers, and
is on the way to death. One who visited an island on the coast of
Scotland has told how he found in a valley open to the spray of the
northwest ocean a clump of fir trees. For a time they grew well,
until they became high enough to catch the prevalent blast. They
were
still standing, but had taken a fixed set, and were reddened as if
singed by the breath of fire. The island glen might be "swept on
starry nights by balms of spring"; the summer sun as it sank might
touch the poor stems with a momentary radiance. The trees were still
living, but only with that cortical vitality which is the tree’s
death in life. Their doom was evident; they could have but a few
more
seasons. If the traveller cared some years hence to visit that islet
set in stormy waters, he would find the firs blanched like a
skeleton’s bones. Nothing remained for them but the sure fall, and
the fated rottenness. The analogy indeed is not complete. The tree in such surroundings
must die; it can make for itself no new condition of existence; it
can hear no sweet question on the breeze that washes through the
grove, "why will ye die?" It cannot look upward—as it is scourged
by the driving spray, and tormented by the fierce wind—and cry, "O
God of my life, give me life." It has no will; it cannot transplant
itself. But the human tree can root itself in a happier place. Some
divine spring may clothe it with green again. As it was passing from
life toward death, so by the grace of God in prayers and sacraments,
through penitence and faith, it may pass from death to life. The Church then is not wrong when she speaks of "deadly sin." The
number seven is not merely a mystic fancy. But the seven "deadly
sins" are seven attributes of the whole character; seven master
ideas; seven general conditions of a human soul alienated from God;
seven forms of aversion from true life, and of reversion to true
death. The style of St. John has often been called "senile"; it
certainly has the oracular and sententious quietude of old age in
its
almost lapidary repose. Yet a terrible light sometimes leaps from
its
simple and stately lines. Are there not a hundred hearts among us
who
know that as years pass they are drifting further and further from
Him who is the Life? Will they not allow that St. John was right
when, looking round the range of the Church, he asserted that there
is such a thing as "sin unto death"? It may be useful to take that one of the seven deadly sins which
people are the most surprised to find in the list. How and why is sloth deadly sin? There is a distinction between sloth as vice and sloth as sin. The
deadly sin of sloth often exists where the vice has no place. The
sleepy music of Thomson’s "Castle of Indolence" does not describe
the slumber of the spiritual sluggard. Spiritual sloth is want of
care and of love for all things in the spiritual order. Its
conceptions are shallow and hasty. For it the Church is a department
of the civil service; her worship and rites are submitted to, as one
submits to a minor surgical operation. Prayer is the waste of a few
minutes daily in concession to a sentiment which it might require
trouble to eradicate. For the slothful Christian, saints are
incorrigibly stupid; martyrs incorrigibly obstinate; clergymen
incorrigibly professional; missionaries incorrigibly restless;
sisterhoods incorrigibly tender; white lips that can just whisper
Jesus incorrigibly awful. For the slothful, God, Christ, death,
judgment have no real significance. The Atonement is a plank far
away
to be clutched by dying fingers in the article of death, that we may
gurgle out "yes," when asked "are you happy?" Hell is an ugly
word, Heaven a beautiful one which means a sky or a Utopia. Apathy
in all spiritual thought, languor in every work of God, fear of
injudicious and expensive zeal; secret dislike of those whose
fervour
puts us to shame, and a miserable adroitness in keeping out of their
way; such are the signs of the spirit of sloth. And with this a long
series of sins of omission—"slumbering and sleeping while the
Bridegroom tarries"—"unprofitable servants." We have said that the vice of sloth is generally distinct from the
sin. There is, however, one day of the week on which the sin is apt
to wear the drowsy features of the vice—Sunday. If there is any day
on which we might be supposed to do something towards the spiritual
world it must be Sunday. Yet what have any of us done for God on any
Sunday? Probably we can scarcely tell. We slept late, we lingered
over our dressing, we never thought of Holy Communion; after Church
(if we went there) we loitered with friends; we lounged in the Park;
we whiled away an hour at lunch; we turned over a novel, with secret
dislike of the benevolent arrangements which give the postman some
rest. Such have been in the main our past Sundays. Such will be our
others, more or fewer, till the arrival of a date written in a
calendar which eye hath not seen. The last evening of the closing
year is called by an old poet, "the twilight of two years, nor past,
nor next." What shall we call the last Sunday of our year of life? Turn to the first chapter of St. Mark. Think of that day of our
Lord’s ministry which is recorded more fully than any other. What a
day! First that teaching in the Synagogue, when men "were
astonished," not at His volubility, but at His "doctrine," drawn
from depths of thought. Then the awful meeting with the powers of
the
world unseen. Next the utterance of the words in the sick room which
renovated the fevered frame. Afterwards an interval for the simple
festival of home. And then we see the sin, the sorrow, the
sufferings
crowded at the door. A few hours more, while yet there is but the
pale dawn before the meteor sunrise of Syria, He rises from sleep to
plunge His wearied brow in the dews of prayer. And finally the
intrusion of others upon that sacred solitude, and the work of
preaching, helping, pitying, healing closes in upon Him. again with
a
circle which is of steel, because it is duty—of delight, because it
is love. Oh, the divine monotony of one of those golden days of God
upon earth! And yet we are offended because He who is the same
forever, sends from heaven that message with its terrible
plainness—"because thou art lukewarm, I will spew thee out of my
mouth." We are angry that the Church classes sloth as deadly sin,
when the Church’s Master has said—"thou wicked and slothful
servant." |