It is a hard saying, but our conscience acknowledges the truth of it. We are not the toy of circumstances, but such as we have made ourselves; and our lives would have been pure if the stream had flowed from a pure fountain. However modern sentiment may rejoice in highly coloured pictures of the noble profligate and his pure minded and elegant victim; of the brigand or the border ruffian full of kindness, with a heart as gentle as his hands are red; and however true we may feel it to be that the worst heart may never have betrayed itself by the worst actions, but many that are first shall be last, it still continues to be the fact, and undeniable when we do not sophisticate our judgment, that “all these evil things proceed from within.”
It is also true that they “further defile the man.” The corruption which already existed in the heart is made [pg 193] worse by passing into action; shame and fear are weakened; the will is confirmed in evil; a gap is opened or widened between the man who commits a new sin, and the virtue on which he has turned his back. Few, alas! are ignorant of the defiling power of a bad action, or even of a sinful thought deliberately harboured, and the harbouring of which is really an action, a decision of the will.
This word which makes all meats clean, ought for ever to decide the question whether certain drinks are in the abstract unlawful for a Christian.
We must remember that it leaves untouched the question, what restrictions may be necessary for men who have depraved and debased their own appetites, until innocent indulgence does reach the heart and pervert it. Hand and foot are innocent, but men there are who cannot enter into life otherwise than halt or maimed. Also it leaves untouched the question, as long as such men exist, how far may I be privileged to share and so to lighten the burden imposed on them by past transgressions? It is surely a noble sign of religious life in our day, that many thousands can say, as the Apostle said, of innocent joys, “Have we not a right? ... Nevertheless we did not use this right, but we bear all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ.”
Nevertheless the rule is absolute: “Whatsoever from without goeth into the man, it cannot defile him.” And the Church of Christ is bound to maintain, uncompromised and absolute, the liberty of Christian souls.
Let us not fail to contrast such teaching as this of Jesus with that of our modern materialism.
“The value of meat and drink is perfectly transcendental,” [pg 194] says one. “Man is what he eats,” says another. But it is enough to make us tremble, to ask what will issue from such teaching if it ever grasps firmly the mind of a single generation. What will become of honesty, when the value of what may be had by theft is transcendental? How shall armies be persuaded to suffer hardness, and populations to famish within beleaguered walls, when they learn that “man is what he eats,” so that his very essence is visibly enfeebled, his personality starved out, as he grows pale and wasted underneath his country's flag? In vain shall such a generation strive to keep alive the flame of generous self-devotion. Self-devotion seemed to their fathers to be the noblest attainment; to them it can be only a worn-out form of speech to say that the soul can overcome the flesh. For to them the man is the flesh; he is the resultant of his nourishment; what enters into the mouth makes his character, for it makes him all.
There is that within us all which knows better; which sets against the aphorism, “Man is what he eats;” the text “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he;” which will always spurn the doctrine of the brute, when it is boldly confronted with the doctrine of the Crucified.
The Children And The Dogs.
“And from thence He arose, and went away into the borders of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered into a house, and would have no man know it: and He could not be hid. But straightway a woman, whose little daughter had an unclean spirit, having heard of Him, came and fell down at His feet. Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophœnician by race. And she besought Him that He would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. And He said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. But she answered and saith unto Him, Yea, Lord: even the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And He said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. And she went away unto her house, and found the child laid upon the bed, and the devil gone out.”—Mark vii. 24-30 (R.V.).