Furthermore, I must be permitted to say that the popular religions of the day are manifestations of man’s lustful character, in the moral and religious plane; and that it is more difficult to reform a man in his moral and religious lusts than it is in his animal lusts. It was for this reason that Jesus pronounced his severest woes upon the Scribes and Pharisees, who thought they were righteous and who despised others. Hence he said to them, “Ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against yourselves.” Also, “The publicans and harlots do pass into the kingdom of heaven before you.”
The proposition reduced to its simplest form is this: True religion can not dwell with lust. “Ye can not serve God and mammon.” But the religion of the Pharisee of every age is lust in its highest and most impregnable plane. Hence the more of such proposed religion they have, the farther are they from true religion. Jesus was condemning lust in the moral or charitable plane when he directed that alms should be done in secret. The impulse to charitable deeds which looks to self-gain or self-gratification, brings no reward to the soul of the giver. If he is prompted by a desire after fame, or from a hope of inward satisfaction, he does not act from the true impulse. He who sounds the trumpet in the world or in his soul, to call attention to his charities, can have no reward of his Father in heaven. He who acts from the true divine impulse acts spontaneously, acts as it were involuntarily; that is, he is not aware that he wills. His left hand knows not what his right hand doeth. He meets with a case of need. He stops not to argue the question and determine probabilities and uses. The steel and the flint are in contact, and the spark, comes forth.
In the domestic relation of husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, there is much of this moral lust which is mistaken for love. Many professing to be husbands, and really thinking themselves to be so, love the use of their wives better than the wife, just as the lustful in religion love the use of God better than God.
It is this mistaking lust for love which begets so many unhappy marriages. The considerations leading to the union are not unfrequently of a lustful character altogether. Thus the young man seeking a wife is constantly trying the question of use. She will administer to his comfort in this way and that, and upon the whole she will be the means of making him very happy. It will not be denied that in a vast majority of cases the man, in seeking a wife, is seeking after his own happiness, and he will cherish her while she conduces to that end. But if he finds himself disappointed—finds that she fails to fulfill his expectation—the ardor of his love begins to abate; and just in proportion as he is disappointed in his expectations will he grow cold and neglectful. So common is this that it has arrested the attention of universal man. The difference between the fondness manifested while yet the newly-wedded pair have met with no disappointments, and that which is manifested a few weeks or months later, has given rise to the expression "the honey-moon," meaning that the age of a single moon is usually sufficient to reveal the imperfections of the loving pair, and consequently to cause the ardor of their love to abate. The husband does not find in the wife all that he anticipated. She is not so perfectly adapted to making him happy as he had hoped. Consequently he is disappointed. And as his happiness was the object of his pursuit when he was seeking a wife, and he mistook that lust for self-gratification for love for the wife, being disappointed in his lust, he finds little or nothing of love left.
It is thus, by mistaking lust for love, that so many disappointments take place, and so many unhappy unions are formed; and while the individuals are under this lust for self-gratification, there is little hope of their doing better a second time. It was in reference to this lustful and selfish love that Jesus said unless a man loved him or his doctrines with a better and purer love than that with which he loved wife, children, parents, etc., he could not become his disciple. The simple truth of the expression was, that man’s love, or the love of the world, was lustful; and unless man loved God and truth with a purer love than that lustful love, he could not be a true disciple.
The same lustful impulse is found in the parental and fraternal relation. Man is so naturally selfish and lustful, that it is found in every relation, leading him into the broad road to disobedience and sin. And herein is manifested the deep excellence of the morality of Jesus, that it aimed a fatal blow at the lust itself, and thus “laid the axe at the root of the tree.” “His fan was in his hand, and he thoroughly purged his floor,” “gathering the wheat into the garner, and burning the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
In man’s social relations the same lust after self-gratification is found. The friendships of the world have this lustful basis, and herein are they distinguished from true friendship. The selfish man or woman seeks social and friendly intercourse for the pleasure or gratification it affords. They cultivate social and friendly relations solely with respect to the pleasures thereof. Consequently their love of friends is only in their use to them. They love their own gratification supremely, and they love the use of that which will administer thereto—consequently their attachments turn upon the question of gratification. They do nothing, they love nothing in forgetfulness of separate self.
This distinction between true love and lust is to be made in every plane. The true impulse in every plane is the manifestation of the present God in that plane. The obeying that impulse is obeying God. The harmonizing with it is harmonizing with God; and the individual who in all things walks in accordance with its principles is walking with God, and is in the straight and narrow path which leadeth unto life; while he who, on the contrary, is led by his desire after self-gratification, in whatever plane, is in the broad road which leads to antagonism and death. “His lusts, when they conceive, bring forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
There is no middle ground between love and lust; and unless the distinction be taken where I have taken it, it can not be taken at all. Excuse the principle of seeking after gratification as a true incentive to action, and you have destroyed the distinction between purity and impurity—between truth and falsehood—between holiness and sin. If action in respect to use and the gratification of self be the highest, then, indeed, there is no God—no virtue—no right. Such is the ultimate conclusion of those who know of no higher rule of action than pertains to the sphere of use and gratification. They know of no intrinsic virtue, goodness, purity, etc. They affirm of existence the qualities of good or bad from results. They say that a thing is right or wrong because the result is wrong, and not that the result was wrong because the thing itself was intrinsically bad.
This is a very common error with the world. They are apt to trace the evil in the result and overlook it in the cause. The reason that lustful action is pernicious is not because its results are bad, but because the condition itself is intrinsically false, and can not produce other than false fruit.