No man can serve two masters.
—St. Matthew vi. 24.
Who is your master? Perhaps you think you are your own master. You may say, "I am a free man in a free country." But think a moment. Is your soul really free? Surely not; for you cannot hinder your thoughts from running backward and forward. Sometimes you think of the past in spite of yourself; you enjoy its sinful pleasures over again in your memory, or you again suffer pain at the bare recollection of past sorrows and trials. Nor can you hinder your soul from rushing into the future. You dream of success; you enjoy in anticipation the pleasures of gratified ambition. Now, why does your soul thus cling to the dead past; why does it strive to fly to the unborn future? Because your soul is a servant. And who is its master? Pleasure. Yes, and pleasure is so powerful a master that we obey and serve even its remembrance, its shadow. Indeed, I might say that we are slaves of pleasure rather than servants.
But this master takes different shapes. Sometimes he calls himself Fashion. Very many otherwise intelligent persons are servants of Fashion. Did you ever spend an hour looking at the drives in Central Park on a pleasant afternoon? There you can see men and women whirled along in carriages fit for kings to ride in, drawn by horses worth thousands of dollars—beasts whose trappings are fastened with gold-plated buckles—and coachmen and footmen dressed in showy livery. And why is all this parade? Because those who ride out in that style are servants. The name of their master and lord is Fashion; he demands all this extravagance of them, and they obey him. Follow them home, and you will see them again at his service, spending many thousand dollars in adorning their houses with the costliest furniture and decking their bodies, for Fashion's sake, with rich silks and gold: everything offered up on the altar of Fashion, though the poor of Christ are starving all around them.
And many of the poor are servants. Who is the master of the poor? He is a devil, and his name is Drink. This devil of Drink must have a good share of a poor man's wages of a Saturday night. And as soon as a poor man loses work and loses courage this devil of Drink comes and whispers in his ear: "Be my servant and I will make you happy." And by this lie he entices the poor fellow into one of his dens, and there he makes him drunk, and from the bar-room he sends him home to be a scandal to his little children, and may be to beat his wretched wife. Others this master sends from that liquor-store to steal, and so to prison and hopeless ruin; others he sends to brothels; many a one he afflicts with frightful diseases and sudden accidents, and so brings them to hell. Sometimes, too, this demon of Drink gathers his slaves together into a mob to murder and plunder, and then to be shot down by soldiers. O brethren! is it not strange that any one should be a servant of this devil. Drink? Yet he has countless slaves, and not only among the poor but in every station in life.
But the strangest thing of all is that the foolish servants of sin and Satan fancy that they can at the same time be servants of Almighty God. They call themselves by Christ's name—Christians. They go to his church now and then: and although they have served Mammon all their days, they yet hope to enjoy God and his happiness for all eternity. Hence Jesus Christ in to-day's Gospel cries out in warning: "You cannot serve two masters." Hence in another place he says: "Amen, amen I say unto you, that whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." So we have got to choose. We must be either servants of God or servants of Mammon; we cannot be both at once.
Therefore, brethren, instead of giving our time, and money, and health, and heart, and soul to sinful pleasures, to lust and intemperance, and fashion and avarice—all cruel tyrants—let us have the good sense to enter the service of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord and Master who made us, and who redeemed us, and who will judge us; whose yoke is sweet and whose burden is light; whose servants are innocent and happy in this life, and who shall enter with him into everlasting dwellings in the kingdom of heaven.
Rev. Algernon A. Brown.