ENVY, GLUTTONY, SLOTH
6. ENVY, GLUTTONY, SLOTH
"Let him who does wrong, continue to do wrong;
let him who is vile, continue to be vile;
let him who does right, continue to do right;
and let him who is holy, continue to be holy."
Revelation 22:11
In announcing as the subject of these conferences, "The Seven Deadly Sins," it was in the mind of the preacher that there would not be opportunity at this time to discuss them all. We have considered four: Pride, Anger, Covetousness, and Lust. Three more remain to complete the execrable syndicate — Envy, Gluttony, and Sloth — to each of which an hour's reflection might profitably be dedicated. But I must close this course tonight, and shall have to dismiss, with a very few words, this final group of the enemies of our peace.
Of GLUTTONY , it may be said that it is rather a private than a public sin; it is not committed in full view of the world; the glutton is known as such to those who see him devouring his meal and distending himself with his foods and drinks, to the shame of his manhood.
Nor yet does the SLUGGARD make any show among us; and the trouble with him is, that his indolence and laziness prevent him from doing anything worthy of note. This is the man who hides his talent in the earth; who, yielding to an inert disposition — idles his life away; who has no business, no profession, or, if he has one, neglects his duty and leaves his trust unfulfilled. This, also, is to live in deadly sin; to be an inhabitant of a grand, busy, working world like this — and yet stand all the day idle, or make it one's chief business to avoid exertion . Of these dull and low-class animals, it were well to draw and study the pictures, did the time permit; but it does not.
I must, however, speak somewhat more at length upon the sin of ENVY ; and, having done so, let us then seek a tranquil, if not a cheerful, exit from the somber and polluting places through which we have been walking together.
Envy stands last in the catalogue of the mortal sins. The wages of sin is death; and in this sin of envy, we reach the black and bitter end. In other sins, some transitory pleasure compensates for the loss of light and grace: but envy brings torment, and torment only — it is a mere anticipation of the pains of Hell. All sins begin in pride and self-will. All sin ends, after death, the judgment, and the final separation between the evil and the good, in envy, which burns and gnaws, a fire that cannot be quenched and a worm that never can die.
These are the generations of sin , from the height to the depth, ever downward, robbing men little by little of peace, and leaving them at last in the shadow of despair. In all the mortal sins but this, the transgressor finds some gratification while the time for sinning lasts: he has, as the Scripture expresses it, "the pleasure of sin for a season."
The proud man enjoys the sense of superiority to others.
The angry man finds relief in the outburst of his rage.
The covetous man may count his securities and weigh his gold.
The voluptuary thinks no sensations so exquisite as those which he, in his lustfulness, enjoys.
The glutton and the sluggard ask nothing better than the pleasures of the table, and the comfort of luxurious repose.
Envy alone brings no comfort and no satisfaction .
That spirit of . . .
unrest and discontent;
irritation at the sight of another's prosperity;
uneasiness and unhappiness because other men are rich and comfortable and better off;
morbid temper of jealousy and ill-will which inspires the wish to pull down other men from their places, and level social distinctions;
miserable sentiment, part grief, part spite, part rage, induced by comparison of one's own lot with that of someone else who is more popular, more influential, more successful in his life — that is Envy, the hopeless sin, the cheerless sin, the sin which brings no ray of light to the soul. And well may we recoil from the entrance into that deadly sin, for it is disclosed in this age, in vast proportions, as the ruling demon of the lower classes of society .
Demagogue and false prophet are everywhere at work stirring up the minds of the poor and those who labor with their hands, and filling them with the spirit of envy, until it comes to a general hatred of everyone above them, and a desire to abolish all distinctions, and reduce the entire community to a uniform level of social equality. Mark well this devilish work. It is not that of the poor man's advocate and friend. If the poor suffer — may God bless and speed those who, in love, espouse their cause, those who seek to better their condition, and make them happier and more secure.
But no man makes any other man happy, who sows the seed of envy in his heart; and that is the work of the professional agitators of the day — to stir up the poor, to make them jealous, ambitious, envious of wealth and rank, to set them on thinking by what revolutionary steps they may upset what now exists and bring some new system into being in which they shall be the rulers and the kings.
Social agitation , as now carried on, is a mighty engine for the propagation and efficient action of the last and worst of the deadly sins. It is a movement on the line of that one sin which kills spiritual life and eradicates the joy of existence. It is a furious crusade against the one and only principle of happiness and peace. Envy and love cannot dwell together; one must destroy the other — if love cannot thrust out envy — then envy will asphyxiate and suffocate love. And where envy rules the soul — there has already commenced the torment of the damned which has begun on earth, which must continue beyond the grave.
For what but envy and eternal torture can possess the souls of the lost? To look, from their place, upon the blessed repose of the saints; to see the gladness of God's elect, to catch the distant shining of Heaven's gate, and perhaps some ray of the glory of the King in His beauty — and yet to lie there in despair, cursing men, angels, and God, and yet unable to die — what else can be the death-in-life , the second death?
Here ends the course of sin; to this conclusion it comes in the kingdom of the vices. From pride, proud anger, and ambition, through ease and luxury, through profligacy and intemperance, through things unchaste, immodest, and impure; through covetousness which is idolatry, down to that dark place where bitter envy only survives — the perpetual torment of spirits capable of no emotion but that of hatred of the good which they threw away, of lost souls, of whom the Lord declared, describing their eternal state, "their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched."
Who that has read the immortal poem can forget the line with which the first book of the "Divine Comedy" ends? Dante and his guide had passed through the "Inferno; "they had traversed its horrible circles, to the very end; and at last they ascended to the bright world again; they saw those beautiful things which Heaven discloses, and they came forth to re-behold the stars.
Let it be so with us. We have passed through that Hell-on-Earth, the House of Sin; we have seen what crime and woe are there. Let us emerge from these depressing meditations, and look up to see the stars of God, shining in their clear light above this troubled world that lies in wickedness. For, all the while, though men continue in sin, and say that it is not sin, and riot in ungodliness, and wander and stumble on the dark mountains — there are above them those celestial stars which God has set in the firmament to give light on the earth; the signs of a holy truth and righteousness, of purity and honesty, of simplicity and sincerity, of humility and love — cheering the faithful, presenting the ideal of a noble life, telling where peace may be found and pardon may be sought. Toward these clear stars, let us direct our eyes as we come up from the sight of unholy and godless living — and let them show us henceforth the road which leads men forth from the Kingdom of Darkness, Night, and Everlasting Death.
It may be difficult, it might be rash, to try to classify the Beatitudes so as to set each against someone Mortal Sin; but the general bearing on our subject is clear. The blessing is for the humble, the godly, the merciful, the mourners, the pure, the gentle, and those on whom the world looks down. There is no blessing, no word of comfort here for men who walk not thus with God. And these sweet words, the first official utterances of the Savior, are helps to everyone who flies the face of sin.
Look next at the prayer which Jesus taught us, and which bears His Name. It has seven petitions, and here also is a strange correspondence with the Seven Deadly Sins. "Hallowed be Your Name." That strikes at the monster of pride-for pride dies away when man prostrates himself and adores the Sacred Name.
"Your Kingdom come:" it is the petition of those who seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and not like the covetous, the treasures which fade away.
Sloth is next transfixed by the prayer, "May Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven" — with promptness, alacrity, and eagerness, with a zeal like that of the Angels above us, our examples of a perfect service.
"Give us this day our daily bread;" what suffices , and not a surfeit like that in which the glutton would rejoice.
"And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us;" and how must anger, hatred, and malice have died out, when a man thus prays!
"And lead us not into temptation" those temptations which are in the world through lust: "but deliver us from evil;" and what greater evil than that spirit of envy , which poisons every joy? And who is the Evil One from whom we would gladly be delivered but the Devil, of whom we read that "through his envy of God, sin and death came into the world?"
So spoke the Lord to us, and after this manner did He teach us to pray. And when He went up on high, leading captivity captive, He gave gifts to man. Notable among them are the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit , "the spirit," or spiritual gift, "of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and spiritual strength, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness, the spirit of holy fear." Each of those gifts is a corrective to some mortal sin. The spirit of wisdom secures the submission of the intellect to mysteries revealed by God; for in the Church "we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of men, nor the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come to naught," which divine wisdom whoever receives will lay aside his pride and become as a little child before the teacher.
The spirit of understanding gives that quiet tone to the character which is seen where men, deeply versed in human science and learning and knowing what they know in God, are indifferent to strife and contention and the tumult about them, and wait the hour when we shall know even as we are known.
Wisdom is that gift which helps us to weigh the world and see what it comes to, to choose the good and refuse the evil; and those who have it neither covet nor desire the prizes of a system which they have learned to despise.
Spiritual strength protects from the insidious approach of inordinate desire and carnal passion, enabling a man to keep the body under control, and bring it into subjection.
By knowledge we comprehend God's loving purposes toward us, and get an insight into His providential government of the world; after which we fret not ourselves because of the ungodly, neither are envious against the evil-doers, because all shall at last be well.
True godliness makes pure and clean living; and holy fear casts out idleness and sloth. For we know that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and that they alone who endure to the end shall be saved. And it is holy fear which arouses the careless, and wakens the sleeper, and fills with beneficial dread, lest one himself might be a castaway!
And, finally, in the rule of personal devotion, that same sacred numeral is traced. There are Seven Psalms of Penitence , for instance, to be recited against the Seven Capital Sins.
And there were Seven Effusions of Christ's precious Blood , which flowed as the all-sufficient price for sin: in the Circumcision, the Agony in the Garden, the Scourging, the Coronation with thorns, the stripping off the garments, the nailing on the cross, the piercing with the speak after death.
Seven utterances went forth from His lips while He hung on Calvary . To Magdalene did He first appear in His resurrection; to her out of whom He had cast seven devils. To seven disciples did He show Himself that beautiful morning on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. Let strength and help come to us in these divine mysteries of the gospel; and since we also are liable to temptation to those seven forms of dreadful sin, let us recall, in the hour of need, these sevens of wonders and graces , of prayers , and wounds , and utterances , which have been to many a soul the means of extrication when the fatal net was spread, and when the Enemy stood ready to overpower and destroy.
My work is finished. It remains only to add some concluding words.
Powerless, helpless, are the intellect, the logical faculty, the skill of man, before the overwhelming fact of sin. Sin cannot be denied, it cannot be reasoned out of existence; by no art can it be removed from the factors of our life. There it stands, a very present trouble, from one generation to another. Well has this been observed, that human nature has never changed for the better, in the slightest degree, excepting in so far as the grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ has entered there to work a cure in its radical defects.
"The heart of man, though instructed by the sublimest dogmas, illumined by the brightest lights of science, guided by pure philosophical research, and surrounded by the refinements of civilization, today as ever preserves its instincts for ferocity, brutality, and sensuality!" It is still the same bubbling fountain of passion; not even Christianity has been able to purify it, save in those separate instances in which, one by one, souls have been converted to Christ, and transformed into His likeness by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit.
But as for those brutal, ferocious, and sensual instincts, those selfish, sordid, and ignoble desires and appetites, which still constitute, as they ever have constituted, the curse and shame of humanity — no earthly art, no finite power, nor science, nor knowledge, nor learning of this world, can subdue them — much less eradicate them. Helpless and hopeless shall man stand, as he has stood, before the enemies of his honor and his repose; perhaps regarding them with the loathing which their aspect is calculated to inspire; perhaps overpowered by a sense of his inability to cope with them, until, alas! he abandons the thought of doing so, and ends in the delirious conclusion that, after all, sin is but an empty word, and that there is no such thing.
Like the foe at midnight, who first applies chloroform to the face of the sleeper, and having thus stupefied him, proceeds to ransack the house — so sin often stupefies its victim until he is no longer conscious of its presence, and makes no further effort to resist. Man, alone, can do nothing against sin. Its destruction, and the taking away of the horrible thing, in its present effects and its future consequences, is a superhuman work — it calls for the interposition of a God. The strong man armed keeps his palace, until a stronger than he comes, and takes away his armor wherein he trusts, and divides the spoils. That was the work of Him who came and redeemed sinners. For "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." "Without shedding of blood is no remission." But in the Blood of Jesus Christ, whoever will may wash and be clean. That is and shall be the one remedy for Sin , while the world shall stand, and until the times of the restitution of all things, when the earth and the heavens that now are shall be destroyed, and God shall bring in the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwells righteousness.
"But in keeping with His promise, we are looking forward to a new Heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness!" 2 Peter 3:13