Isaiah 1:16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil;… The call is made to the class that are usually given up. Two questions come up in connection with this subject. 1. When a man is wrong in his life, is wicked on account of the strength of constitutional peculiarities, and is organised with such passion, such will, such temper, such pride and avarice, that that organisation compels as well as controls him, is it possible for him to change that organisation and its fruits? 2. Whatever may have been the proportions in which a man's faculties are given to him, if he has been cast in the midst of temptations, is it in his power, if he be an average man, to break away, to assert his own sovereignty, and recover himself? Can a man control, first, himself inwardly, and second, himself outwardly? Did not Peter wrestle success. fully with his constitutional organisation? There is an example which is still more remarkable in some respects. The account which Paul gives of himself is most striking. Here we have a precisionist, a narrow and intense bigot, a man whose conscience was logical, and who therefore followed his conscience without scruple and without the restraint of any meliorating principle. Not only was he man of the most malign feeling in the service of religion, but he was a man of the utmost firmness of purpose. Nothing could stop him on sea or on land. He was a man of the most sensitive pride. Now, turn to the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and see what the fruit of Paul's change was. It may be said to be a record of his experience. Then, as to the other question, Can men control their circumstances? If a man can overrule a constitutional peculiarity, how much easier can he control that which is not of himself, but is exterior to himself! The experiences of the Gospel for thousands of years show that men can be reclaimed from all forms of vice. Men can break through and rescue themselves from the power of wickedness when it takes on an external and social form. That is the voice of the Old Testament. Is it a false proclamation, based upon a false view of life and possibility? Preeminently it is the voice of the New Testament. The invisible things of God are more and mightier than the visible. If a man treats himself simply as a physical organisation, and believes in nothing but what he can see and handle, it may seem to him as though this world were simply a gigantic crushing machine, irresistible in its impulses, and as though the best way for him were to submit himself to it, and let it take him whither it will; but we are taught, and we believe that the whole heaven is full of powers which are mightier than any which are seen. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; |
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