True Words for Brave Men | Page 8

bring them back to
the thought of God and heaven. And they, poor fools, listened to Him,
admired his preaching, agreed that it all sounded very good--but that he
went too far--that it was too difficult--that their present way of life was
very pleasant--that they saw no such great need of change, and so on,
one excuse after another, till they began to be tired of Moses, and gave
him to understand that he was impertinent, troublesome--that they
could see nothing wise in him--nothing great; how could they? So
Moses went his way, and left them to go theirs. And long after, when
some travellers came by, says the fable, they found these foolish people
were all changed into dumb beasts; what they had tried to be, now they
really were. They had made no use of their souls, and now they had lost
them; they had given themselves up to folly, and now folly had taken to
her own; they had fancied, as people do every day, that this world is a
great play-ground, wherein every one has to amuse himself as he likes
best, or at all events a great shop and gambling-house, where the most
cunning wins most of his neighbour's money; and now according to
their faith it was to them. They had forgotten God and spiritual things,
and now they were hid from their eyes. And these travellers found them
sitting, playing antics, quarrelling for the fruits of the field--mere
beasts--reaping as they had sown, and filled full with the fruit of their

own devices.
Only every Sabbath day, says the fable, there came over these poor
wretches an awful sense of a piercing Eye watching them from
above--a dim feeling that they had been something better and nobler
once--a faint recollection of heavenly things which they once knew
when they were little children--a blind dread of some awful unseen ruin,
into which their miserable empty beast-life was swiftly and steadily
sweeping them down;--and then they tried to think and could not--and
tried to remember and could not--and so they sat there every Sabbath
day, cowering with fear, uneasy and moaning, and half-remembered
that they once had souls!
My friends, my friends, are there not too many now-a-days like these
poor dwellers by the Dead Sea, who seem to have lost all of God's
image except their bodies? who all the week dote on the business and
the pleasures of this life, going on very comfortably till they seem to
have quite hardened their own souls; and now and then on Sabbath
days when they come to church, and pretend to pray and worship, sit all
vacant, stupid, their hearts far away, or with a sort of passing
uneasiness and dim feeling that all is not right--try to think and
cannot--try to pray and cannot--and, like those dwellers by the Dead
Sea, once a week on Sabbath day half remember that they once had
souls?
So true it is, that from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that
which he seemeth to have. So true it is, that the wages of sin is death;
death to the soul even in this life. So true it is that why men do not
believe Christ, is because they cannot hear His word. So true it is, that
only the pure in heart shall see God, or love god-like men and god- like
words. So true it is, that he that soweth the wind shall reap the
whirlwind, and that he who will not hear Christ's words, shall soon not
be able to hear them; that he who will not have Christ for his master,
must soon be content to have the devil for his master, and for his wages,
spiritual death. From which sad fate of spiritual death may the blessed
Saviour, in His infinite mercy, deliver us.

IV. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE TREE OF LIFE; OR,
THE FALL.
"Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the
Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said,
Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto
the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the
fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye
shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent
said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that
in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall
be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant