The devil makes us think it harder by telling us, when we feel the sharpness of the first struggle, "You can't bear it this way, for life." You can if God wills it and gives you the grace. And most people, almost all Christian souls, do not have it "this way, for life." Those who keep up the struggle get stronger day by day. In them the flesh and the movements of sin grow less day by day. The devil, however, wishes us to believe the lie he tells, to make us give up the struggle. Do not listen to the lie and it cannot hurt you. Remember always, it is a lie, and the mind will not take hold of it.
We can make it all the easier by trusting God, who will always help us in the struggle. Pray more. Go to confession often. The confessor will then help us and remove much of the burden by good advice. Go to Communion often, and God himself will make it easier for us than we imagine by giving his own strength to the soul at that time. Only begin earnestly to control the flesh, continue perseveringly to use confession and Communion. This, with daily morning and evening prayer, will take away very many difficulties. Soon we shall find we have truly mortified the deeds of the flesh, and then indeed we shall live, for the flesh will then be dead or dying fast and too weak to hurt the soul. Keep, then, in the mind the text from the Epistle of to-day: "For if you live according to the flesh you shall die. But if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh you shall live."
Sermon CIII.
The Business Of The Soul.
The Lord commended the unjust steward,
forasmuch as he had done wisely.
—Words Taken From To-day's Gospel.
One of the things which strikes us most forcibly in reading the instructions of our Blessed Lord as we have them in the holy Gospels is the matter-of-fact, common-sense, business-like manner in which he sets before us the way we must act in order to save our souls. We find no sentimentalism, no rhetoric, no fine-sounding flights of eloquence which delight the imagination and please the fancy indeed, but which are too fleeting and flimsy to serve as a basis of every-day action. No; with our Lord this matter of the salvation of our souls is a matter of infinite business, a question of eternal profit and loss. Let me recall a few examples: "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking good pearls, who, when he had found one of great price, went his way and sold all he had and bought it." Here the way in which we are to act in order to get the kingdom of heaven is compared to the way in which the man of business acts who finds a good article—something worth his money. What does he do? Why, if it is really worth it—and the kingdom of heaven, the salvation of our souls is worth it—he sells all that he has and buys it. And yet again our Lord places before us the salvation of our souls as based upon a calculation of what is the more profitable course to take in those words the realization of which has called forth the highest heroism of the greatest of the saints: "If thy eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee." Why? Because "it is better for thee with one eye to enter the kingdom of God than, having two eyes, to be cast into the hell of fire." Here again it is a calculation of loss and gain—the loss of an eye in this world as against that of the whole body in the next. Shall I, on the principle that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, keep my two eyes; or shall I, for the sake of saving the whole body, pluck out the eye, cut off the foot or hand? But of all the places where this way of looking at things and of acting is inculcated and enforced, the most striking is in the parable read in to-day's Gospel. Here our Lord, in order to lead us to take a practical, hard-headed way of acting with reference to the salvation of our souls, brings before us the conduct of the unjust steward, and, strange to say, actually praises it. And how did this unjust steward act? The unjust steward was a dishonest man. He had been placed in a position of trust, but had wasted his master's goods—perhaps speculated with his money, made false entries in his books, or something else of that kind. Well, the truth came out at last, as it generally does sooner or later, and he was at his wits end what to do. No thought of repentance enters into his head; he has got on a wrong road, and he found it, as we all find it, very hard to get out of it. And so, knowing the men with whom he has to deal, he sends for some of his master's debtors, and, in order to make them his friends and to establish a claim on them for help and assistance when he gets into trouble, he alters their bills and makes them less. "And the Lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely." Our Lord does not commend, of course, the dishonesty of his conduct; this we all understand. But he commends his clearness of sight as to what was for his worldly interest, and his promptitude in taking wise and suitable means to further that interest. What our Lord wants to teach us is that we must act for our highest interest in the same clear-sighted, determined, wise, and prudent way in which this specimen of a worldly man acted for the sordid and selfish and foolish ends of men of this world. Well, my brethren, take these thoughts home with you, and ask yourselves, each and every one of you, how you are acting. Have you an intelligent view of the end you have to attain, of its value and importance, and of the means by which it is to be attained, and are you acting earnestly in order to attain that end?
Sermon CIV.
The Judgments Of God.
Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity;
that when you shall fail
they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.
—Gospel of the Day.