SERMON XVII.
ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION.
"I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord." — John i. 23.
It is that he may enter into our hearts, that Jesus Christ announces, by John the Baptist, that we have the way to make straight for him, by removing all those obstacles, which, like a wall of separation, rise up between his mercy and our wretchedness. Now, these obstacles are the crimes with which we so often stain ourselves, which always subsist because it would be necessary to expiate them by penitence, and we expiate them not: these obstacles are the passions by which our heart foolishly allows itself to be carried away, which are always living, because, in order to destroy, it would be necessary to conquer them: and we never conquer them: these obstacles are the occasions against which our innocence hath so often split, and which are still every day the rock fatal to all our resolutions, because, in place of yielding to that inward inclination which leads us toward them, it would be necessary to shun them; and we shun them not: in a word, the true and only manner of making straight the way of our hearts for Jesus Christ, is that of changing our life, and of being sincerely converted.
But though the business of our conversion be the most important with which we can be entrusted here below, seeing that through it alone we can draw Jesus Christ into our hearts; though it be the only one truly interesting to us, since on it depends our eternal happiness; yet, O deplorable blindness! it is never considered by us as a matter either of urgency or of importance; it is continually put off to some other time, as if times and seasons were at our disposal. What wait you, Christians, my brethren? Jesus Christ ceaseth nor to forewarn you, by his ministers, of the evil which threaten your impenitence, and the delay of your conversion $ he hath long announced to you, through our mouth, that, unless you repent, you most assuredly shall perish.
Nor is he satisfied with publicly warning you through the voice of his ministers; he speaks to you in the bottom of your hearts, and continually whispers to you, Is it not time now to withdraw yourself from that guilt in which, for so many years, you have been plunged, and from which almost nothing but a miracle can now extricate you? Is it not time to restore peace to your heart, to banish from it that chaos of passions which has occasioned all the misfortunes of your life, to prepare for yourself at least some few happy and tranquil days, and, after having lived so long for a world which hath always left you empty and uneasy, at last to live for a God who alone can give peace and tranquillity to your heart? Will you not at last bestow a thought upon your eternal interests, and, after a life wholly frivolous, return to the true one; and, in serving God, adopt the only wise plan which man can pursue upon the earth? Are you not wearied out with struggling against those remorses which tear you, that sadness of guilt which weighs you down, that emptiness of the world which every where pursues you? And do you not wish to finish at last your misfortunes and your disquietudes, by finishing your crimes?
What shall we reply to that inward monitor which hath so long spoken in the bottom of our hearts? What pretext shall we oppose? First, that we are not, as yet, furnished by God with the succours necessary to enable us to quit the unhappy state in which we live. Secondly, that we are at present too much engaged by the passions to think of a new life. That is to say, that we start two pretexts for delaying our conversion: the first drawn from the part of God; the second from within ourselves. The first which justifies us, by accusing God of being wanting to us; the second which comforts us, by alleging to ourselves our inability of, as yet, returning to him. Thus we delay our conversion, under the belief that grace is wanting, and that, as yet, God desireth us not; we delay our conversion, because we flatter ourselves that some future day we shall be less attached to the world and to the passions, and more in a situation to begin a Christian and an orderly life: — two pretexts which are continually in the mouth of sinners, and which I now mean to overthrow.
Part I. — It is not of to-day that men have dared to accuse even God himself for their transgressions, and have tried to render his wisdom and his goodness responsible for their iniquitous weaknesses. It may be said, that this blindness entered with sin into the world: the first man sought not elsewhere an excuse for his guilt; and, far from appeasing the Lord whom he had so lately disobeyed, by an humble confession of his wretchedness, he accused him of having been himself the cause of his disobedience, in associating with him the woman.
And such, my brethren, is the illusion of almost all souls living in guilt, and who delay to a future day that conversion required of them by God. They are continually repeating, that conversion does not depend upon us; that it is the Lord who must change their heart, and bestow upon them that faith and grace which they, as yet, have not. Thus they are not satisfied with provoking his anger, by delaying their conversion; they even insult him, by laying upon him the blame of their obstinacy and of the delay of their penitence. Let us now overthrow the error and the impiety of this disposition; and, in order to render the criminal soul more inexcusable in his impenitence, let us deprive him at least of the pretext.
You tell us, then, first, that if you had faith, and were thoroughly convinced of the truth of religion, you would be converted; but that faith is a gift of God which you expect from him alone, and that as soon as he shall have given it to you, you will easily and heartily begin to adopt your party. — First pretext; the want of faith, and it is God alone who can give it.
But I ought first to ask you, how have you then lost that faith so precious? You have received it in your baptism; a Christian education hath cherished it in your heart; it had grown up with you; it was an inestimable talent which the Lord had intrusted to you in discerning you from so many infidel nation s, and in marking you, from the moment you quitted your mother's womb, with the seal of salvation. What have you then done with the gift of God? Who hath effaced from your forehead that sign of eternal election? Is it not the corruptions of the passions, and that blindness which has been their just punishment? Did you suspect the faith of your fathers before you became dissolute and abandoned? Is it not yourself who hath extinguished in the dirt that celestial torch, which the church, in regenerating you, had placed in your hand, to enlighten your way through the obscurities and the dangers of this life? Why then accuse God of that waste which you have made of his favours? He has the right of reclaiming his own gift; to him it belongs to make you accountable for the talento which he had entrusted to your care; to say to you, "Wicked and ungrateful servant, what had I done for others that I had not done for thee? I had embellished thy soul with the gift of faith, and with the mark of my children: thou hast cast that precious jewel before unclean animals; thou hast extinguished faith, and the light that I had placed within thee. I have long, in spite of thyself, preserved it in thy heart: I have caused it to outlive all the impious efforts which, because it was become troublesome to thy debaucheries, thou hast made to extinguish it: thou knowest how much it hath cost thee to throw off the yoke of faith, and to be what thou now art; and this dreadful state, which is the justest punishment of thy crimes, should now become their only excuse? And thou sayest that the want of faith is no fault of thine, seeing it depends not on man, — thou, who hast had such difficulty in tearing it from the bottom of thy soul? And thou pretendest that it is I who ought to give it to thee, if I wish thee to serve me, — I, who reclaim it from thee, and who so justly complain that thou hast lost it?" Enter into judgment with your Lord, and justify yourself, if you have any reply to make to him.
And to make you, my dear hearer, more sensible of all the weakness of this pretext; you complain that you want faith; you say that you would wish to have it; that happy are those who are feelingly convinced, and that, in that state, no suffering can affect them. But, if you wish for faith, if you believe that nothing is so fortunate as that of being truly convinced of the truths of salvation, and of the illusion of all that passeth away; if you envy the lot of those souls who have attained to that desirable state; if this be, behold then that faith which you await, and which you thought to have lost. What more do you require to know, in order to terminate a criminal life, than the happiness of those who have forsaken it, to labour toward their salvation? You say that you would wish faith; but you have it from the moment that you think it worthy of a wish; at least you have enough of it to know, that the greatest happiness of man is that of sacrificing all his promises. Now, the souls whom we daily see returning to their God, are not led by other lights: the righteous, who bear his yoke, are not sustained or animated by other truths;. we ourselves, who serve him, know nothing more of it.
Cease, then, to deceive yourself, and to await what you already have. Ah! it is not faith that is wanting to you, it is the inclination to fulfil the duties it imposes on you: it is not your doubts, but your passions which stop you. You know not yourself; you willingly persuade yourself that you want faith, because that pretext which you oppose to grace is less humiliating to self-love than that of the shameful vices which retain you. But mount to the source; your doubts have sprung solely from your irregular mode of living: regulate, then, your manners, and you will see nothing in faith but what is certain and consoling: be chaste, modest, and temperate, and I answer for that faith which you believe to have lost: live uprightly, and you will find little difficulty in believing.
And a proof of the truth of what I tell you is, that if, in order to be converted, nothing more were to be required than to bend your reason to mysteries which exceed our comprehension; if a Christian life were accompanied with no other difficulties than certain apparent contradictions which it is necessary to believe without being able to comprehend them; if faith proposed the fulfilment of no irksome duties; if, in order to change your life, it were not necessary to renounce passions the most lively, and attachments the most dear to your heart; if the matter in question were merely a point of opinion and of belief, without either the heart or the passions being interested in it, you would no longer have the smallest difficulty in yielding to it; you would view in the light of madmen those, who, for a moment, could hesitate between difficulties of pure speculation, of which the belief can be followed by no injury and an eternity of misery, which, after all, may be the lot of unbelievers. Faith appears difficult to you, therefore, not because it holds out mysteries, but because it regulates the passions: it is the sanctity of its maxims which shocks, and not the incomprehensibility of its secrets: you are therefore corrupted, but not an unbeliever.
And, in effect, notwithstanding all your pretended doubts upon faith, you feel that avowed unbelief is a horrible course to adopt; you dare not determine upon it. It is a quicksand, under which you have a glimpse of a thousand gulfs which fill you with horror, in which you find no consistency, and on which you could not venture to tread with a firm and confident foot. You continually say to yourself, that there is no risk in devoting one's self to God, that, after all, and even admitting the uncertainty of any thing after this life, the alternative is too horrible not to require precautions, and that, even in an actual uncertainty of the truths of faith, the party of the godly would always be the wisest and the safest. Your state, therefore, is rather the vague determination of an agitated heart, which dreads to break its chains, than a real and actual suspicion of faith, and a fear lest, in sacrificing to it all your iniquitous pleasures, your pains and time should be lost: your uncertainties are efforts which you make to defend yourself against a remnant of faith, which still inwardly enlightens you, rather than a proof that you have already lost it. Seek no longer, then, to convince yourself; rather endeavour to oppose no more that internal conviction which enlightens and condemns you. Follow the dictates of your own heart; be reconciled to yourself; allow a conscience to speak, which never fails to plead within you for faith, against your own excesses; in a word, hearken to yourself, and you will be a believer.
But it is admitted, you will say, that if nothing more were to be required than to believe, that would easily be subscribed to. This is the second pretext of the sinners who delay; it is the want of grace, and they await it: conversion is not the work of man, and it belongs to God alone to change the heart.
Now, I say, that this pretext, so vulgar, so often repeated in the world, and so continually in the mouth of almost all those who live in guilt; if we consider the sinner who alleges it, it is unjust; if we view it on the part of God, on whom he lays the blame, it is rash and ungrateful; if we examine it in itself, it is foolish and unwarrantable.
In the first place, if we consider the sinner who alleges it, it is unjust; for you complain that God hath not yet touched you, that you feel no relish for devotion, and that you must wait the coming of that relish before you can think of changing your life. But, full of passions as you are, can you reasonably expect or exact of God that he shall ever make you to feel a decided inclination for piety? Would you that your heart, still plunged in debauchery, feel the pure delights and the chaste attractions of virtue? You are similar to a man who, nourishing himself with gall and wormwood, should afterward complain that every thing feels bitter to his palate. You say, that if God wish you to serve him, in his power alone it is to give you a relish for his service; you, who every day defile your heart by the meanest excesses; you who every moment place a fresh chaos between God and you; you, in a word, who, by new debaucheries, finally extinguish in your soul even those sentiments of natural virtue, those happy impressions of innocence and of regularity born with you, which might have been the means of recalling you to virtue and to righteousness. O man! art thou then unjust only when there is question of accusing the wisdom and the justice of thy God?
But I say farther, that were God even to operate in your heart that relish for, and those feelings of, salvation, which you await, dissolute and corrupted as you are, would you even feel the operation of his grace? Were he to call upon you, plunged as you now are in the pleasures of a life altogether worldly, would you even hear his voice? Were he to touch your heart, would that feeling of grace have any consequence for your conversion, extinguished as it would immediately be by the ardour and the frenzy of profane passions? And, after all, this God of longanimity and of patience still operateth in your heart; he still poureth out within you the riches of his goodness and of his mercy. Ah! it is not his grace which fails you, but you receive it into a heart so full of corruption and wretchedness, that it is ineffectual; it excites no feeling there of contrition; it is a spark which, falling into a sink of filth and of nastiness, is extinguished the moment it falls.
Reflect, then, my dear hearer, and comprehend all the injustice of your pretexts. You complain that God is wanting to you, and that you wait his grace to be converted; but is there a sinner in whose mouth that complaint would be more unjust than from your lips? Recall here the whole course of your life; follow it from the earliest period down to this day. The Lord had anticipated you from your birth with his blessings; he had placed in you a happy disposition, a noble spirit, and all the inclinations most favourable to virtue; he had even provided for you, in the bosom of a family, domestic succours and pious and godly examples. The mercies of the Lord went still farther; he hath preserved you from a thousand dangers; through his goodness you have outlived occasions where your friends, and perhaps the accomplices of your debaucheries, have fallen a sacrifice to the scourge of war. To recall you to him, he hath spared neither afflictions, disgusts, nor disgraces; he hath torn from you the criminal objects of your passions, even at the moment when your heart was most strongly attached to them; he hath so mercifully conducted your destiny, that a thousand obstacles have continually thwarted your passions, that you have never been able to arrive at the accomplishment of all your criminal wishes, and that something has always been wanting to your iniquitous happiness; he has formed for you serious engagements and duties, which, in spite of yourself, have imposed the obligation of a prudent and regular life in the eyes of men; he has not permitted your conscience to become hardened in iniquity, and you have never been able to succeed in calming your remorses, or in living tranquilly in guilt; not a day hath past in which you have not felt the emptiness of the world and the horror of your situation; amidst all your pleasures and excesses, conscience hath awoke, and you have never succeeded in lulling your secret disquiets but by promising to yourself a future change. A just and a merciful God urges and pursues you every where: ever since you have forsaken him, he has fixed himself to you, said a prophet, like a worm which burrows in the vestment, continually to gnaw your heart, and to render the importunity of his biting a wholesome remedy to your soul. Even while I am now speaking to you, he worketh within you, filleth my mouth with these holy truths, and placeth me here to proclaim them to you, for the sole purpose of recalling perhaps you alone. What, then, is your whole life but one continued succession of favours? Who are you yourself but a child of dilection and the work of God^s mercies? Unjust that thou art! And thou darest, after this, to complain that his grace is wanting; thou, on whom alone on the earth the Lord seemeth to cast his regards; thou, in whose heart he so continually operateth, as though, of all men, he had only thee to save; thou, in a word, whose every moment is a fresh grace, and whose greatest guilt shall one day be, that of having received too many, and of having constantly abused them.
But, to finish your overthrow, upon what grounds do you say that you want grace? You doubtless say so, because you feel that in your present state conversion would require too many sacrifices; but you then believe that, with grace, you are converted without any sacrifice on your part, without any self-denial, and almost without being sensible of it yourself? You believe, then, that to have grace is to have no more passions to conquer, no more charms to break, no more temptations to overcome; that it is to be regenerated through penitence, without tears, pain, or sorrow? Ah! I assure you that on this footing you will never possess that chimerical grace, for conversion must always require many sacrifices; be the grace what it may, you will always be required to make heroical efforts to repress your passions, to tear yourself from the most beloved objects, and to sacrifice every thing which may yet captivate you. Look around, and see if no sacrifices are required of those who are daily returning to their God; yet they are favoured with grace, since it is it which delivers them and changes their heart. Inquire of them, if grace render every thing easy and smooth; if it leave nothing more for self-love to undergo. Ask them if they have not had a thousand struggles to sustain, a thousand obstacles to overcome, a thousand passions to moderate, and you will know if to have grace is to be converted without any exertion on your part. Conversion is, therefore, a painful sacrifice, a laborious baptism, a grievous delivery, a victory which supposes combats and fatigues. Grace, I confess, softens them all; but it by no means operates so as to leave nothing more to overcome; and if, in order to change your life, you await a grace of that nature, I declare to you, that such never existed, and that so absurdly to await your salvation and deliverance, is to be absolutely bent upon perishing.
But, if the pretext of the default of grace be unjust on the side of the sinner who alleges it, it is not less rash and ungrateful with regard to God, on whom he pretends to fix the blame.
For you say that God is the master, and that, when he shall want you, he will perfectly know how to find you; that is to say, that you have only to leave him solely to act, and that, without giving yourself any trouble with respect to your salvation, he, when so inclined, will know how to change your heart; that is to say, that you have only to pass your life in pleasures and in guilt, and that, without any interference on your part, without your bestowing even a thought upon it, without bringing to that conversion, which you expect, other preparation than a whole life of debauchery and constant opposition to his grace, he will know how to obtain you, when his moment shall be come; that is to say, that your salvation, that grand, that only business which you have upon the earth, is no longer a concern of yours; and that the Lord, who hath given you that alone to manage, who hath commanded you to give it the preference over all others, and even to neglect every other in order to devote yourself to it alone, has, nevertheless, absolutely discharged you from the trust, in order to take it wholly upon himself. Show us, then, this promise in some new Gospel, for you well know that it is no where to be found in that of Jesus Christ. " The sinner," says the prophet Isaiah, " hath nothing but foolish things wherewith to justify himself; and his heart worketh iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord."
Lastly. This pretext is foolish in itself, for you say that you want grace: I have already replied that you deceive yourself; that, if candid, you will acknowledge that grace has never been wanting to you; that you have more than once felt its salutary impressions; that, had so obstinate a resistance not been opposed by your hardness of heart and impenitence, it would have triumphed over your passions; that God, who wishes all men to be saved, who out of nothing has drawn reasonable beings, solely to praise, to bless, and to glorify him; in a word, who has only made us for himself, has opened to you, my dear hearer, as well as to so many other sinners, a thousand ways of conversion, which would have infallibly recalled you ere now to the right path, had you not obstinately shut your ears against his voice. You want grace, you say: well, what do you thereby pretend? Would it be to have it understood that God, who is our Father, and of whom we are the children, who has an affection for us infinitely surpassing that of the tenderest mother for an only son, that a God so good leaves us, through want of assistance, in the actual impossibility of well-doing? But do you reflect that such language would be a blasphemy against the wisdom of God, and the justification of every crime? Are you then ignorant, that whatever be the blow given to our liberty by the fall of our first parent, it is still however left to us; that neither law nor duties would longer be imposed upon man, had he not the real and actual power of fulfilling them; that religion, far from being an aid and a consolation, would consequently be no longer but a vexation and a snare; that if, notwithstanding all the cares which God has for our salvation, we perish, it is always the fault of our own will, and not the default of grace; that we are individually the authors of our misery and destruction; that it has depended upon ourselves to have avoided them; and that a thousand sinners, with neither more grace nor succours than we, have broken their chains, and have rendered glory to God and to his mercies by a life altogether new?
But, granting that these truths were less certain, and that, in reality, you, my dear hearer, want grace, it would equally be true then that God hath altogether forsaken you; that you are marked with a character of reprobation, and that your state cannot be worse. For, to be without grace, is surely the most terrible of all situations, and the most certain presage of eternal condemnation. And it is that horrible thought, however, which comforts you, which justifies in your eyes your tranquillity in guilt, which makes you, without trouble or remorse, to delay your conversion, and which even serves as an excuse for all your excesses: that is to say, that you are delighted in the want of this precious grace; that you continually say, with satisfaction to yourself, God wishes me not as yet; I have only to live, in the meanwhile, tranquilly in guilt; his grace will not come yet awhile: that is to say, that you wish it not, and that you would even be sorry were it to come to break those chains which you still love. To you, the want of grace ought to be the most fearful and the most powerful inducement to extricate yourself from your deplorable state, and it is the only one which quiets and stops you.
Besides, the more you delay, the less will you have of grace; for the more you delay, the more do your crimes increase, the more does God estrange himself from you; his mercies wear out, his moments of indulgence slip away, your measure becomes full, and the dreadful term of his wrath approaches; and if it be true, that you have not at present sufficient grace to be converted, you will not, in a little time, have wherewithal even to comprehend that you have occasion either for penitence or conversion.
It is not grace, then, that you have to accuse, it is yourself. Did Augustine, during his feeble desires of conversion, tax the Lord with the delay of his penitence? Ah! he went no farther for the reason of it than in the weakness and licentiousness of his own heart. " I dragged on," said he, " a heart diseased and torn with remorse, accusing myself alone for all my evils, and for all the delays which I started against a new life. I turned me in my chains, as though they should break off themselves, without any effort on my part. For thee, Lord, never hast thou ceased to chastise my heart with inward sorrows, continually operating there, through a merciful severity, the most pungent remorses, which embittered every comfort of my life. Nevertheless, the amusements of the world, which I had always and still loved, withheld me; they secretly whispered to me, Thou meanest, then, to renounce every pleasure? From this moment, then, thou biddest an eternal farewell to all that hath hitherto rendered life agreeable to thee? What! shall it no more be permitted to thee to see those persons who have been so dear to thee? Thou shalt henceforth be separated from thy companions in pleasure, be banished from their assemblies, and be obliged to deny thyself the most innocent delights, and all the comforts of society. And is it possible that thou canst believe thyself capable of supporting the sad weariness of a life so gloomy, so void, so uniform, and so different from the one thou hast hitherto led?"
Behold, where this half-contrite sinner found the reasons of his delays and of his resistance; it was the dread of having to renounce his passions, and of being unable to support the step of a new life, and not any default of grace: and such is precisely the situation in which you are, and what you say every day to yourself.
For, after all, supposing that grace is wanting to you, what do you thence conclude? That the crimes into which you continually plunge yourself will not condemn you, should death surprise you in that deplorable state? You would not dare to say so. That you have only to live tranquil in your debaucheries till God shall touch you, and till grace shall be given to you? But it is the height of folly to expect grace while you render yourself every day more and more unworthy of it. That you are not guilty before God of the delay of your conversion, seeing it depends not on you? But all delaying sinners who die impenitent would then be justified, and hell would no longer be but for the just who are converted. That you ought no more to concern yourself with your salvation, but to leave it to chance, without giving yourself any uneasiness or trouble with regard to it? But that is the resolution of impiety and despair. That the moment of your conversion is marked, and that a little more or less of debauchery will neither advance nor retard it an instant? But, according to that doctrine, you have only to pierce your heart or plunge yourself into the waves, under the pretext that the moment of your death is determined, and that such madness will neither hasten nor retard it a single instant. " O man!" cries the apostle, in replying to the folly and impiety of this pretext, " is it thus that thou contemnest the riches of the goodness of thy God? Art thou ignorant, that his patience in suffering thy debaucheries, far from authorizing them, ought to recall thee to penitence; and, nevertheless, it is his long forbearance itself which hardens thee in guilt; and through thine obstinacy of heart thou amassest an overwhelming treasure of wrath for that terrible day which shall surprise thee, and on which shall be rendered to every one according to his works?"
The only rational consequence, therefore, that you could be permitted to draw, supposing that grace is wanting to you, is, that you, more earnest than any other, ought to pray to obtain it; to neglect nothing to soften an irritated God, who has withdrawn himself from your heart; to overcome by your importunities his resistance; to remove, in the meanwhile, whatever removes his grace from your heart; to make straight the way for him; to throw aside all the obstacles which have hitherto rendered it ineffectual to you; to deny yourself every opportunity in which your innocence almost always finds new rocks, and which completely shut your heart against the holy inspirations: such is the Christian and prudent manner of rendering glory to God, of confessing that he alone is the master of hearts, and that every blessing and gift proceed from him. But to say, as you continually do, without changing in any respect your disorderly manners, " When God shall want me, he knoweth how to find me," is to say, P I wish him not as yet; I have no occasion for him; I live happy and contented; when he shall force me, and I can no longer avoid him, then I will yield; but, in the mean time, I will enjoy my prosperity, and the privilege which he granteth to me of delaying my conversion ." What a shocking preparation for that precious grace which changeth the heart! Such is, however, all that an impenitent soul can adduce for confidently awaiting it.
Such are the pretexts which the sinner who delays his conversion draws from the part of God. Let us now examine those which he takes from within himself.
Part II. — It is astonishing, my brethren, that, life being so short, the moment of death so uncertain, every instant so precious, conversions so rare, the examples of those who are taken unawares so frequent, and futurity so awful, so many frivolous pretexts can be urged for delaying a change of life. In all other dangers which threaten either our life, our honour, or our property, the precautions are prompt and ready, the danger alone is dubious and distant; here the danger is certain and present, and the precautions are always uncertain and remote. It seems either that salvation is an arbitrarything, or that our life is in our own hands, or that the time for our penitence hath been promised to us, or that to die impenitent is no great misfortune, — so strongly do all sinners lull themselves in this hope of being one day converted, without ever attempting a change of life. And what is still more incomprehensible in the delay of their penitence, is, that they all admit of the necessity of their conversion, of the bad state of their conscience, and that they all consider as the worst of evils, that of dying in that fatal state; and, nevertheless, that they all defer withdrawing from it, under pretexts so childish, that even the gravity of the Christian pulpit suffers in refuting and overthrowing them.
Age, the passions, the consequences of a change of life, which they dread the being able to support, — such are the vain pretexts inwardly alleged for delaying that conversion which God demands of us.
I say, in the first place, the age. They wish to allow the years of youth to pass away, to which a consideration so important as piety seems little suited; they wait a certain season of life, when, the bloom of youth effaced, the manners become more sedate, the attention more exact, the world less watchful upon us, even the mind riper and more capable of supporting that grand undertaking; they promise themselves to labour at it, and that they will not then allow any thing to divert them from it.
But, it would be natural to ask you first, who hath told you that you shall arrive at the term which you mark to yourself; that death shall not surprise you in the course of those years which you still allot to the world and to the passions; and that the Lord, whom you do not expect till the evening, shall not arrive in the morning, and when you least think of it? Is youth a certain safeguard against death? See, without mentioning here what happens every day to the rest of men, if, even in confining yourself to the small number of your friends and of your relations, you shall find none for whom the justice of God hath dug a grave in the first years of their course, who, like the flower of the field, blooming to the morn, have withered before the close of day, and have left you only the melancholy regret of seeing so speedily blasted, a life of which the blossoms had promised so fair. Fool! Thy soul is to be re-demanded perhaps at the opening of thy race; and those projects of conversion which thou deferrest to a future period, what shall they avail thee? And those grand resolutions which thou promisest to thyself to put in execution one day, what shall they change in thine eternal misery, should death anticipate them, as it every day doth in a thousand instances, and leave thee only the unavailing regret of having vainly formed them?
But, even granting that death shall not take you unawares, and I ask you, upon what foundation do you promise yourself, that age shall change your heart, and incline you more than you are at present to a new life? Did age change the heart of Solomon? Ah! it was then that his passions rose to the highest, and that his shameful frailty no longer knew any bounds. Did age prepare Saul for his conversion? Ah! it was then that, to his past errors, he added superstition, impiety, hardness of heart, and despair. Perhaps in advancing in age, you shall leave off certain loose manners, because the disgust alone which follows them shall have withdrawn you from them; but you will not thereby be converted: you will no longer live in debachery; but you will not repent, you will not do penance, your heart will not be changed; you will still be worldly, ambitious, voluptuous, and sensual: you will live tranquil in that state, because you will no longer have but all the dispositions of these vices without giving yourself up to their excesses. Years, examples, long habit of the world, shall have served only to harden your conscience, to substitute indolence and a worldly wisdom in the room of the passions, and to efface that sense of religion which, in the youthful period of life, is left in the soul as yet fearful and timorous; you will die impenitent.
And if you suppose this to be merely a movement of zeal, and not a truth founded on experience, examine what passes every day before you; view all the souls who have grown old in the world, and who, through age alone, have withdrawn from its pleasures. The love of the world is extinguished only with them under different exteriors, and which are changed solely through decency: you see the same relish for the world, the same inclinations, the same ardour for pleasures, a youthful heart in a changed and worn out body. The delights of our younger years are recalled with satisfaction; the imagination dwells upon, and delights in reviving all that time and age have wrested from us; a blooming youth, and all its attendant amusements, are regarded with envy; all of them are entered into, which can be thought in any degree compatible with the sedateness proper to advanced age; pretexts are formed for still mingling in certain pleasures with decency, and without being exposed to the public ridicule. Lastly, in proportion as the world flies from, and deserts us, it is pursued with more relish than ever: the long habit of it hath served only to render it more necessary to us, and to render us incapable of doing without it; and age hath never as yet been the cause of conversion.
But, even admitting that this misfortune were not to be dreaded, the Lord, is he not the God of all times, and of all ages? Is there a single one of our days which belongs not to him, and which he hath left to us for the world and for vanity? Is he not even jealous of the first-fruits of our heart and of our life, figured by those first-fruits of the earth, which were commanded by the law to be offered up to him? Why then would you retrench from him the fairest portion of your years, to consecrate it to Satan and to his works? Is life too long to be wholly employed for the glory of the Lord who hath given it to us, and who promiseth to us an eternal one? Is youth too precious to be consecrated toward becoming worthy of the eternal possession of the Supreme Being? You reserve, then, for him, only the remains and the dregs of your passions and life! And it precisely is, as if you said to him, Lord, so long as I shall be fit for the world and its pleasures, think not that I shall turn toward or seek thee; so long as the world shall be pleased with me, I can never think of devoting myself to thee; afterward, indeed, when it shall begin to neglect and to forsake me, then I will turn me toward thee; I will say to thee, Lo, I am here! I will pray thee to accept a heart which the world hath rejected, and which reluctantly finds itself under the hard necessity of bestowing itself on thee; but, till then, expect nothing from me but perfect indifference, and a thorough neglect. After all, thou art only entitled to our services when we ourselves are good for nothing else; we are always sure, at least, of finding thee; all times are the same to thee; but, after a certain season of life, we are unfitted for the world, and, while yet time, it is proper to enjoy it before it deserts us. Soul, unworthy of ever confessing the mercies of a God whom you treat with such insult! and do you believe that he will then accept of a homage so forced, and so disgraceful to his glory, he, who taketh no delight but in voluntary sacrifices, he, who hath no need of man, and who favoureth him when he deigneth to accept even his purest vows and his sincerest homages?
The prophet Isaiah formerly mocked, in these terms, those who worshipped vain idols: " You take/' said he to them, " a cedar from Lebanon; you set apart the best and handsomest parts of it for your occasions, your pleasures, the luxury and ornament of your palaces; and when you know not how to employ otherwise the remnant, you carve it into a vain idol, and offer up to it ridiculous vows and homages." And I, in my turn, might say to you, you set apart from your life the fairest and the most flourishing of your years, to indulge your fancies and your iniquitous passions; and when you know not to what purpose to devote the remainder, and it becomes useless to the world and to pleasures, then you make an idol of it; you make it serve for religion; you form to yourself of it a false, a superficial, and inanimate virtue, to which you reluctantly consecrate the wretched remains of your passions and of your debaucheries. O my God! is this then regarding thee as a jealous God, whom the slightest stain in the purest offerings wounds and offends, or as a vain idol, which feels not the indignity and the hypocrisy of the homages offered up to it?
Yes, my brethren, nothing can be reaped in an advanced age but what has been sown in the younger years of life. If you sow in corruption said the apostle, you will cut down in corruption. You are continually saying, yourselves, that we always die as we have lived; that the character and disposition change not; that we bear within us in old age all the defects and all the tendencies of our younger years; and that nothing is so fortunate for us as to have formed laudable inclinations from an early period, and, as the prophet said, to have accustomed ourselves from the tenderest youth to bear the yoke of the Lord.
And, in effect, when we should attend solely to the quiet of our life, when we should have no other interest in view than that of securing peaceful and happy days to ourselves here below, what happiness to anticipate, and to stifle in their birth, by bending from the first toward virtue, so many violent passions which afterward tear the heart, and occasion all the sorrows and misery of our life! What happiness to have grafted in ourselves only gentle and innocent ideas, to spare ourselves the fatal experience of so many criminal pleasures, which for ever corrupt the heart, defile the imagination, engender a thousand shameful and unruly fancies, which accompany us even in virtue, outlive our crimes, and frequently become new ones themselves! What happiness to have created innocent and tranquil pleasures for ourselves in these younger years, to have accustomed the heart to be contented with them, not to have contracted the sad necessity of being unable to do without violent and criminal gratifications, and not to have rendered insupportable, by a long habit of warm and tumultuous passions, the gentleness and the tranquillity of virtue and innocence! How these younger years, passed in modesty and in horror at vice, attract blessings on the remainder of life! How attentive to all our ways do they render the Lord! And how much do they render us the well-beloved object of his cares and of his paternal kindness!
But nobody denies, you will say, the happiness of being early devoted to God, and of having been able to resist all the temptations of youth and of pleasure. But that such is not your case; you have followed the common track; the torment of the world and of the passions has swept all before it; you find yourselves, even still, under engagements too intimate and powerful to think of breaking them; you wait a more favourable situation; and you promise yourselves that, when the passion which now enslaves you shall be extinguished, you will never again enter into new bonds, but will heartily range yourselves on the side of duty and of virtue. Second pretext; the passions and the engagements, from which it is impossible as yet to withdraw.
But, in the first place, are you quite certain that this more favourable situation which you await, in order to return to God, shall arrive? Who has revealed to you the course and the duration of the passions which at present retain you? Who has marked limits to them, and said, like the Lord to the troubled waters, " Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther?" When shall they have an end, do you know? Can you take upon you to say that they shall one day be terminated, — that they shall be ended at least before yourself? Would you be the first sinner surprised in his deplorable passions? Do not almost all around you die in that melancholy state? Do the ministers, called in to the assistance of the dying, find many sinners on the bed of death, who, for a length of time, have quitted their former habits in order to prepare themselves for that last moment? What do we find there but souls still bound with a thousand chains, which death alone shall break asunder; — but inexplicable consciences, if I may venture to say so, and still enveloped in the chaos of a life wholly dissolute? What indeed do we expect on these occasions, but unavailing regrets on that dreadful surprisal, and vain protestations of the different measures they would have adopted had they been able to have foreseen it? What are the usual offices of our ministry in these last moments? To enlighten consciences which ought then to need only consolation; to assist them in recalling crimes which we should then have only to exhort them to forget; to make the dying sinner sensible of his debaucheries, we who should then have to support and to animate him with the remembrance of his virtues; in a word, to open the dark concealments of his heart, we who should then have to open only the bosom of Abraham, and the treasures of an immortal glory, for the soul on the point of disengaging itself from the body. Such are the melancholy offices which we shall one day perhaps have to render to you; you, in your turn, will call upon us, and, in place of a soothing conversation with you on the advantages which a holy death promises to the believer, we shall then be solely employed in receiving the narration of the crimes of your life.
But, should your passions not extend even to that last hour, the more you delay, the deeper do you allow the roots of guilt to become, the more do your chains form new folds round your heart, the more does that leaven of corruption which you carry within you spread itself, ferment, and corrupt all the capacity of your soul. Judge of this by the progress which the passion has hitherto made in your heart. At first it was only timid liberties, and, to quiet yourself in which, you still sought some shadow of innocence; afterward it was only dubious actions, in which it was still difficult to distinguish guilt from a venial trespass; licentiousness closely followed, but striking excesses were still rare; you reproached yourself in the very moment of commission; you were unable to bear them long upon a conscience still alarmed at its state: the backslidings are insensibly multiplied; licentiousness is become a fixed and habitual state; conscience has no longer but feebly cried out against the empire of the passion; guilt is become necessary to you; it has no longer excited remorse; you have swallowed it like water, which passes unfelt, and without tickling the palate by any particular flavour. The more you advance, the more does the venom gain; the weaker does any residue of strength, which modesty, reason, and grace had placed in you, become, the more what was yet wholesome in your soul becomes infected and defiled. What folly, then, to allow wounds to become old and corrupted, under pretence that they will afterward be more easily cured! And what do you, in delaying, but render your evils more incurable, and take away from the hope of your conversion every resource which might still be left to you?
You perhaps flatter yourself that there are no lasting passions, and that, sooner or later, time and disgust shall withdraw you from them.
To this I answer, first, that, in all probability, you shall indeed become tired of the objects which at present enslave you, but that your passions shall not be consequently ended. You will doubtless form new ties, but you will not form to yourself a new heart. There are no eternal passions, I confess, but corruption and licentiousness are almost always so; the passions which are terminated solely by disgust, always leave the heart open for the reception of some other, and it is commonly a new fire which expels and extinguishes the first. Call to your remembrance what has hitherto happened to you. You firmly thought that, were such an engagement once at an end, you should then be free, and wholly at liberty to return to your God; you fixed upon that happy moment as the term for your penitence: that engagement has been terminated; death, inconstancy, disgust, or some other accident, has broken it, and nevertheless you are not converted; new opportunities have offered, you have formed new ties, you have forgotten your former resolutions, and your last state is become worse than the first. The passions which are not extinguished by grace serve merely to light up and to prepare the heart for new ones.
I answer, secondly, when all your criminal engagements should even be ended, and that no particular object should interest your heart, if time and disgust alone have effected this, yet will not your conversion be more advanced. You will still hold to all, in no longer holding to any thing; you will find yourself in a certain vague state of indolence and of insensibility, more removed from the kingdom of God than even the ardour of mad passions; your heart, free from any particular passion, will be as if filled with a universal passion; if I may speak in this manner, with an immense void which will wholly occupy it. It will even be so much the more difficult for you to quit this state, as you will have nothing sufficiently striking to catch at. You will find yourself without vigour, taste, or inclination for salvation; it is a calm from which you will find it more difficult to extricate yourself than even from the tempest, for the same winds which cause the storm may sometimes drive us fortunately into port; but the greater the calm is, the more certainly it leads to destruction.
But, lastly, you say, We would willingly change and adopt the party of a more reasonable and more Christian life; we feel the utter emptiness of the world and of all its pleasures; we enter into amusements, and into a certain dissipation, without relish, and as if with regret; we would wish to renounce them, and seriously to labour toward our salvation; but this first step startles us. It is a matter of notoriety which engages us toward the public, and which we have many doubts of being able to support; we are of a rank which renders the smallest change conspicuous; and we are afraid lest, like so many others, we act a part that will not be lasting, and consequently will leave us only the ridicule without the merit of devotion.
You dread, my dear hearer, the being able to go through with it? What! in delaying your conversion, you promise yourself that God shall one day touch you; and, in being converted at present, you dare not promise yourself that he will sustain you? You depend upon his mercies while insulting him, and you dare not trust them when glorifying him? You believe that you have nothing to risk, on his part, in continuing to offend him, and you have no confidence in him when beginning to serve him? O man! where is here that reason and that rectitude of judgment which thou vauntest so much? And must it be, that in the business of thy salvation alone thou art a sink of contradiction and an incomprehensible paradox?
Besides, might we not with reason say to you, Make a beginning at least; try if, in effect, you shall be unable to sustain yourself in the service of God? Is it not worth the trouble of being tried? Does a man, precipitated by the tempest into the sea, and who finds himself on the point of drowning, not strain every nerve, in the first place, to gain the shore by swimming, before he resigns himself to the mercy of the waves? Would he say to himself, as an excuse for making no effort to save himself, " I shall perhaps be unable to go through with it; my strength will most likely fail me by the way? " Ah! he tries, he makes every effort, he struggles against the danger, he labours to the last moment of his strength, and only gives way at last when, overpowered by the violence of the waves, he is forced to yield to the evil of his destiny. You perish, my dear hearer, the waves gain upon you, the torrent sweeps you away, and you hesitate whether you shall try to extricate yourself from the danger; you waste, in calculating your strength, the only moments left to provide for your safety; and you sacrifice, in deliberating, the little time that is left to you for the sole purpose of disengaging yourself from the (peril, which is imminent, and in which so many others are continually perishing before your eyes!
But, lastly, even granting that in the end the various hardships of virtue tire out your weakness, and that you find yourself under the necessity of retreating; at any rate, you will always have passed some little time without offending your God; you will always have made some efforts toward appeasing him; you will always have devoted some days to the praise of his holy name; at any rate, it will be a portion cut off from your criminal life, and from that treasure of iniquity which you amass for the terrible day of vengeance; you will have acquired, at least, the right of representing your weakness to God, and of saying to him, "Lord, thou beholdest my desires and my weakness; why, O my God I have I not a heart more constant to thee, more determined in the cause of truth, more callous to the world, and more difficult to be led astray? Put an end, O Lord, to mine uncertainties and to mine inconstancy; take from the world that dominion which it hath over my heart; resume thine ancient rights over it, and no longer imperfectly attract me, lest I again fly off from thee. I am covered with shame at the eternal variations of my life, and they make me that I am afraid to raise up mine eyes to thee, or to promise a constant fidelity. I have so often broken my promises after swearing to thee an eternal love; my weakness hath so often led me to forget the happiness of that engagement, that I have no longer the courage to answer for myself. My heart betrays me every instant; and a thousand times on rising from my feet, and with mine eyes still bathed in tears of sorrow for having offended thee, an opportunity hath seduced me; and the very same infidelities, of which I had so lately expressed my abhorrence, have found me, as formerly, weak and unfaithful: with a heart so light and so uncertain, what assurance, O my God! can I give to thee? And what, indeed, could I presume to promise to myself? I have so often thought that my resolutions would now at last be constant; I have found myself in moments so lively and so affecting of grace and of compunction, and which seem for ever to fix the durability of my fidelity, that I now see nothing which can either be capable of fixing me, or of affording me a hope of that stability in virtue which I have hitherto been unable to attain. Let the danger of my situation touch thee, O my God! The character of my heart discourages and alarms me; I know that inconstancy in thy ways is a presage of perdition, and that the versatile and changeable soul is cursed in thy holy books. But, while yet sensible of the holy inspirations of thy grace, I will once more endeavour to enter into thy ways; and, if I must perish, I prefer being lost while exerting myself to return to thee, O my God! who permittest not the soul who sincerely seeketh thee to perish, and who art the only Lord worthy of being served, to the shocking tranquillity of an avowed and determined rebellion, and to the melancholy idea of renouncing all hope of those eternal riches which thou preparest for those who shall have loved and served thee."