Why do the sacred writers give us so many stories of this kind? Surely it is because we need both the warning and encouragement. It is to prove to us that on one side of our nature we are greater than we think, and on the other side weaker and lower than we believe. It is to inspire the diffident with courage, and the despairing with hope, while it pulls up the forward, the careless, and the over-confident with the wholesome and humbling word, "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall." These men of the Bible were strangely mixed. They were conspicuous instances of the contradictions and surprises which are in us all. For that is the point: the thing comes home to us.
Believe me, we are all a riddle to ourselves. Each man is to himself, and each woman too, the greatest of all mysteries save the one greater mystery, God. None of us know of what elements he is composed, and how strangely the good and evil mix and mingle and clash and strive in each day's doings, and through the whole of life. They who believe that the saint is all saint, and the sinner all sinner, are blindly and pitiably ignorant of human nature. God has made no man without putting some little bit of the Divine image in him. The worst has some lingering trace or ruin of it. And the best is not so entirely the temple of the Holy Ghost that no fouler spirits ever obtain entrance there. You may say that you do not believe in a devil. Well, that may be; but there is something like a devil in all of us at certain times, and I would rather believe that it comes from the outside than that it is born and bred and originates within. At any rate, there are in all of us the strange oppositions, the darkness and the light overlapping each other, the evil and the good ever contending, like Esau and Jacob, in the birth hour. The awful and the blessed possibilities are there, and which shall get the uppermost depends first on God, and then upon ourselves.
I.
Remember first, then, that we have all a lower side.
There is in us what I may call a lurking, crouching, slumbering devil, which needs constant watching and holding down with the strong hand of self-mastery and prayer. "Praying always with all prayer, and watching thereunto," says the apostle. In every one of us there is the possibility of falling, however high we stand and however near God we walk. Bunyan says, in his immortal story, "Then I saw in my dream that by the very gate of heaven there was a way that led down to hell." No man, however ripe in goodness, however firmly rooted and grounded in faith, love, and Christian qualities, ever gets beyond the need of vigilant sentinel work—watching himself. He must always be buffeting himself, and keeping under his body, as Paul did, lest he himself should be a castaway. Let him grow careless, presumptuous, neglectful of prayer, and all the old tempers and passions slowly steal in, and bit by bit obtain the mastery, and the Christian disgraces his profession, and the saint becomes a sinner again. Every Christian knows this. He knows the evil powers that are in him.
It is the man who has never fought with his temptation, never prayed, who especially needs to be reminded of it; young men and women who have been well brought up, who have kept themselves moderately straight so far, and who are full of good resolutions. I hear them say, "Oh I am strong enough. I am not such a fool as to throw myself away in the stupid game of the prodigal, in drunkenness, and gambling, and unclean living. I can hold myself in. I can go just as far as I please. I can indulge to a certain extent, and pull myself up just at the moment I please; and as for prayer and seeking God's help, thank my stars I can clear a safe course without all that. I shall not overstep the line you may depend upon it." "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this?"
And I answer, yes—there is quite enough of the dog in you, or of the devil, if you like the word better, to do this and to do worse things—if you play with the dog and let it loose, and let it have a free run now and then. In my time I have heard scores of young men talk in this way. I have heard them laugh scornfully when danger was mentioned to them, and I have seen a few of them fortunate enough to grow up to manhood with a fairly unspotted character; a few, but not many—the greater part have gone wrong, and some deplorably wrong. There is hardly one of us can keep that dog fastened up and chained down always, unless we rely upon a stronger power than our own. It gets loose at times with the best of us—it runs wild and plays dreadful havoc with those who are not the best; there is always in you the baser self—always the dry torches of evil passions which a spark may kindle—always the moral weaknesses and lusts, half-sleeping, which some stronger blast of temptation may awaken and bring out; and if you wish to escape the evil and hold fast to the good, you will commit your way unto the Lord, and put on the Christian armour, and strengthen yourselves by prayer. Do not presume too much—better men than you have fallen every day. God only can save you from yourselves.
II.
It is just as needful to remember the other side—the side of better possibilities.
Some of you are tempted to say at times with Hazael, "Thy servant is but a dog; how can he do these great things?" You are disposed to underrate your gifts, your opportunities, your happy chances in life—in a word, your possibilities. You despair of finding any opening; you are sure that you will never hear a call to come up higher; you think your lives must always be ill-paid drudgery, with no promotion. It is sad to work with a conviction of that kind. You never work well if there is nothing to look forward to, and it is cowardly to give way to a conviction of that kind. Perhaps you are not specially clever—no, but there are better things than cleverness in the world, and things which have more to do with life's real successes.