holiness, and renewed into the image and likeness of God. You will find plenty of persons now, as in all times, who will tell you that you need not do that; that all you need, for this world or the world to come, is some righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees; calling that—oh shame that such a glorious and eternal truth should be so caricatured and degraded by man—justification by faith: while all they mean is, justification not by faith, but by mere assent; assenting to certain doctrines; keeping certain religious watch-words in your mouth, and, over and above, leading a tolerably respectable life. But what says our Lord? “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Not merely—not dwell in it for ever, but not even enter it, not even get through the very gate, and cross the very threshold, of it. The merely assenting, merely respectable, even the so-called religious and orthodox life will not let you into the kingdom of heaven, either in this life or the life to come. No. That requires the noble life, the pure life, the just life, the gentle life, the generous life, the heroic life, the Godlike life, which is perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect, because He lets His sun shine on the evil and on the good, and His rain fall on the just and on the unjust. But how will this help you to rise in life? Our Lord Himself answers—and our Lord should surely know—“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Have faith in God, and in His promise; and your faith in God shall be rewarded. You shall find
that your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things; and has arranged His kingdom, and the whole universe, accordingly. The very good things of this world—wealth, honour, power, and the rest, for the sake of which worldly men quarrel, and envy, and slander, and bully, and cringe, and commit all basenesses and crimes—all these shall come to you of their own accord by the providence of your Father in heaven and by His everlasting Laws, if you will but learn and do God’s will, and lead the Christlike and the Godlike life. Honour and power, wealth and prosperity, as much of them as is justly good for you, and as much of them as you deserve—that is, earn and merit by your own ability and self-control—shall come to you by the very laws of the universe and by the very providence of God. You shall find that godliness hath the promise of this life, as well as of the life which is to come. You shall find that God’s kingdom is a well-made and well-ordered kingdom; and that His laws are life, and are far more worth trusting in than the maxims of that ill-made and ill-ordered world of man, which you all renounced at your baptism. You shall find that the promises of Scripture are no dreams, but actual practical living truths, which come true, and fulfil themselves, in the lives and histories of men.
Choose, young men; choose now; and make up your minds which way you will rise in life; by merely getting money; or by getting wisdom and honour and virtue. The Psalmists of old, yea our Lord Himself, tell you what will happen in each case. If you want
only to be rich, why then be rich; if you are clever enough. The Lord may give you what you want, in this evil world. He may give you your portion in this life, and fill you with His hid treasure. He may let you heap up money which you do not know how to spend, and be a laughing-stock to others while you live; and after you die, your children will probably squander what you have hoarded; while you will carry away nothing when you die, neither will your pomp follow you: and take care lest you wake, after all, like Dives in the torment, to hear the fearful but most reasonable words—“Son, thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and therefore thou art tormented.” Those words too, I fear, will come true, in this very generation, of many a wretched soul who while he lived counted himself a happy man; and had all men speaking well of him, because he did well unto himself. On whose souls may God have mercy.
Choose, young men: choose; now in the golden days of youth, and strength, and honour, ere you have laid a yoke on your own shoulders—even the yoke of money-worship;—not light and easy, like the yoke of Christ, but heavier and heavier as the years roll on, while you, with fading intellect, fading hopes, and it may be fading credit, and certainly fading power of any rational enjoyment, have still, like the doomed souls in Dante’s Inferno, to roll up hill the money-bags which are perpetually slipping back. I have seen that, and more than once or twice; and it is, I think, the saddest sight on earth—save one. Choose, I say again, then, young men, before you
have spread a net round your own feet, which, as in disturbed dreams, grows and tangles more and more each time you move—even the net of greed and craft, which men set for their neighbours; and are but too apt, ere all is done, to be taken in themselves; the net of truly bad society, of the society of men who have set their hearts on making money, somehow or other; and with whom, if you cast in your lot, you may descend—O God, I know full well what I am saying—to depths from which your young spirits now would shrink; till your higher nature be subdued to the element in which it works; and the poet’s curse on all who bind themselves to natures lower than their own come true of you—
Thou shall lower to their level, day by day,
All that once was fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.
Or you may choose—God grant that you may choose—the other path; the path of the law of Christ, and of the Spirit of Christ; the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And then shall come true of you, as far as God shall see good for your immortal soul, those other promises—
“Come, ye children, and hearken unto me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is he that loves life, and would fain see good days? Let him keep his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no deceit. Let him eschew evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers. . .
For the Lord ordereth a good man’s going, and maketh his way acceptable to Himself. Though he fall he shall not be cast away, for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand . . . I have been young, and now am old, and yet never saw I the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread. Flee from evil, and do the thing that is good, and dwell for evermore. For the Lord loveth the thing that is righteous. He forsaketh not His that be godly, but they are preserved for ever.”