True Words for Brave Men | Page 8

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 to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."--GENESIS iii. 1-6.
Here is a lesson for us all. You and I, and all men brought into the world with us a nature which fell in Adam; and, as it fell before we were born, it is certain enough to fall,