A Mighty Famine
And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.” — Luke xv, 14.
HK WKXl’ AND JOINKI) HIMSELF TO A CITIZEN OE THAT COUN’JRV, A’SV HE I!LM INTO HIS EIELDS TO REED SWINE.
God has given us rules, and guarantees that if we keep them all will go well. These rules are very plain, and it is no small recommendation that they can be understood and carried out by ordinary common-place people.
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. In all thy ways acknowledge God, and He will direct thy steps. Your heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Keep thy heart with all diligence. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. Let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay. Owe no man anything. Be pitiful, be courteous. To do good and to communicate forget not. Bear one another’s burdens. Be thou in the fear of God all the day long. Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God; and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus.”
There are great differences. There are small natures, and small gospels. There are men whose mind has not much more than one faculty, and whose creed is contained in a single saying; and there are others to whom the whole manifestation of God comes welcome, and who in the sixty-six books of the Bible, and in the long annals of our human history, as well as n the large panorama of creation, recognising the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the light of God’s countenance pursue their daily task, and fill up with numberless pursuits and experiences an existence all the more comprehensive because it is all redeemed, and all the more susceptible because none of it is remote from God.
However, spring’s homely harbinger, with its two notes, sings as sincerely as the nightingale revelling through the diapason; and cheered by that love which is too abundant for the soul of an angel, the most limited nature will be made loyal, obedient, and filial. Such a nature will go by God’s rules, and keeping these it cannot miss the way to welfare in either world.
Nay, so good are God’s rules, that provided none of the others are transgressed, a single rule faithfully followed will conduct to some delightful or desirable landing-place. “Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost” made the fortune of Lafiitte the banker. “Well, old fellow, how did you get together all this tin?” said the brusque youth to the wealthy Quaker. ‘’ By one article alone, in which thou also mayest deal if thou pleasest — civility,” was the reply. And just as, by adhering to God’s rules of frugality and courtesy, these men made their fortune, so it was, by his possessing a monopoly of another virtue that Schwartz the missionary saved the garrison of Tanjore. The soldiers were dying of starvation, but the peasantry would not bring supplies, for they did not know the Europeans, and could not trust the rajah; but when the promises to pay were signed by Schwartz, the rice came pouring in, followed by nearly a thousand bullocks. In such a case the one pound gains many pounds, and the single excellence elevates all the character.
On the other hand, all may be lost by one transgression. The heart of this young man died away from his home. That home ceased to be sacred; his Father was no longer paramount. He felt as if he could do without either: nay, with his new notions and purposes, he would rather forget them; so he “took a journey,” and did not stop till he reached ‘’ a far country,” and found everything around him strange and novel. The branch had not only ceased to abide in the vine, but, “cast forth” — fairly over the wall and out of sight, — it speedily withered. Grace was gone. Prayer was given up. Good feelings faded, and now that temptation and combustible corruption came together, he was soon set on fire of hell. Lust and passion flamed forth, and he and his substance were quickly consumed with riotous living.
The home of the branch is the vine: the home of the heart is God. That, dear reader, is the place for you. Honour thy Father in heaven. Love the Lord with all thy soul. Morning by morning go forth in His blessing: and evening by evening, as you return with your finished task, your tribute of love and obedience, in child-like tenderness tell over the faults of the day, its sins and its errors, and for the sake of that dear Son who pleaseth the Father alway, ask and obtain forgiveness.
But if from the tree of redeemed humanity you have cut yourself off — if from that Saviour into whom your “engrafting was signified and sealed” when parental piety placed the lamb in the arms of the Good Shepherd, and prayed that you might be more vitally and more entirely His than theirs — if from that “gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” whose hands upheld your first feeble goings, and towards whom you once felt such simple and pure affection, you have now gone away, it is not for us to predict what shall be the first spark to fall into your withered heart; but, dissevered from the Tree of Life, we know too well that you are a brand prepared for the burning. Perchance the fire is already kindled. Lasciviousness, excess of wine, the slow fire of covetousness or the frenzy of gambling, worthless companionships and hollow ostentation, may already have possession of that mind from which ingenuousness, and faith, and loving-kindness, have fled away; but unless God in His mercy snatch the brand from the burning, the soul and its substance are sure to be wasted by this sinful propensity.
In the figurative language of the parable, there arose in the far country “a mighty famine.” Extravagance soon brings the noble to ninepence,’’’ and In the far country it is not far that ninepence will go. But there may be so mighty a famine and so great, that even the noble will not buy the loaf of bread.
One of the most pitiful incidents in the history of British genius is the death of Chatterton. We by no means quote it as a case of riotous living; but it will illustrate the “want” which comes over the spirit when other resources fail, and the Father s house is far away. — When a mere boy of seventeen he had passed off, in the name of an ancient English monk, poems of his own, with the archaic style so admirably simulated, and the historical allusions so adroitly managed, that for a time many clever men were taken In, and surmised no forgery. Elated by the success of this imposture, and conscious of no common powers, from Bristol he came up to London. There he promised himself a career of fame and fortune; and as he visited the theatres, and watched the grand equipages floating past, he saw in no distant vision the day when his verses should be In the mouths of men, and when the doors of the lordliest saloons would open to the poet. But the fame was slow In coming, and meanwhile
* Describing the separation of Mr. Badman and his bad wife, Bunyan says, “They had sinned all away, and parted as poor as howlets. And, in reason, how could it be otherwise? He would have his way, and she would have hers ‘, he among his companions, and she among hers: and so they brought their noble to ninepence.” — Life of Mr. Badman, chap, xviii. The noble was six shillings and eightpence.
the money failed. Hampered by no restraints of conscience, he made up his mind to pass himself off for a surgeon, and get appointed to a ship; but before he could carry his unprincipled scheme into execution, he found himself quite penniless. ‘* Heaven send you the comforts of Christianity,” he wrote to a correspondent; “I request them not, for I am no Christian.” Bitterly boasting his disdain of Christianity, and his independence of it, he fell back on his own resources, and a fortnight after, a jury brought in a verdict of felo de se on a strange self-willed youth found dead in his little room in Brook Street, Holborn.
He cared not for “the comforts of Christianity,” and so when the mighty famine arose — when editors no longer cared for his effusions, and when the frauds and figments of years began to collapse — with hunger in the cupboard, and with heartless Muses staring at him so hard and stony — the trials which in a Christian bring out the mettle and make the man, In the case of poor Chatterton left no resource save arsenic and impotent anathemas on human kind.’’’
*” Quiet, plain scholars have lived, before now, in German or Scotch university towns, on boiled peascods for months, or a single guinea a quarter, earned by teaching, without saying much about it. Had youths of this type been in Chatterton’s place in London, in August 1770, they would most probably have survived the crisis. They would have availed themselves gratefully, and yet honestly, of such small immediate aid as those aunts and others that we hear of so slightly in Chatterton’s letters might perhaps, though poor, have willingly offered at the sharpest
Reverting to the riotous living: not only does it exhaust the woridly substance, but by exhausting health and spirits, it destroys the power of enjoyment. Poor as are the joys of sense, it is a stupid policy which would distil into a single cup every pleasure, and in one frantic moment drain it dry. Where life and reason have survived the wild experiment, the zest of existence is gone, and waking up to a flat and colourless world, fastidious and fretful, blasted and blase, in a frequent loathing of life and a general contempt of mankind, the voluptuary carries to the grave the sins of his youth.
There is an instructive parable, not so much dwelt on as it ought to be. “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, it* walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and hndeth none. Then it saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when it is come it findeth the house empty, swept, and garnished. Then it goeth and taketh with itself seven other spirits more wicked than itself; and they enter in, and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”! And although primarily pointed against that Jewish ‘’ generamoment of the emergency; and, even failing that, they would have conquered by sheer patience.” — Masson’s Essays, Biographical and Critical, p. 316.
* The authorised version has “he,” making it appear as if it were the man; who walked. The original is neuter ifyroxiv, l&h), referring throughout to the unclean spirit.
t Matt. xii. 43-5. Luke xi. 24-26.
tlon,” the parable is deep in meaning and is widely applicable.
As has been remarked, “There are the fiend-like and the brute-like sins. The one leads frequently to the other; and the most hideous of all conceivable horrors is that combination of the two in mingled cruelty and lust, of whose possibility many a page of history bears witness. But in their origin, and most commonly in their development, the two are widely apart. There are the sins which men commit under the influence of the animal passions — sins of unchastity, drunkenness, gluttony — and these rob them of their manhood’s crown, of moral self-control, and sink them for a time to the level of the brutes; and there are the sins which men commit under the influence of self-interest, hatred, and all the antisocial passions — sins of cruelty, perfidy, envy — and these do more than sink men to the level of the unmoral brutes; they degrade them to the likeness of devils. As God is love, so is His antithesis hatred; and as man rises to the God-like through love, so he falls to the fiend-like by hatred.”*
Now it will happen that at some period of life — perhaps quite early — a man is possessed by coarse passion. ‘’ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;” and he flourishes the wine-cup, and gives himself over to the wildest jollity. But somehow or other he is led to reform.
* “Christian Ethics,” extracted from Theological Review, Sept. 1864.
His health gives way, or he gets a great fright, and there is a marked change in his habits. It is not that the Spirit of God has come in, but for the present at least the unclean spirit is gone out, and without becoming a Christian, it is so far well that he seems effectually cured of his revelry.
Wearied, however, of wandering in dry places, the old demon returns, and the house is empty. There is no strong principle pre-occupying the heart, no good angel to guard the gate, and, familiar with all the avenues, the foul spirit enters the vacant domain. But this time he is not alone. He has brought with him seven spirits worse than himself. Is it possible? Is he not an “unclean spirit,” and can anything be worse than lewdness, debauchery, drunkenness? Yes, indeed. Bad as is the beastly, it can be exceeded by the devilish; and in order to fathom the lowest depths of abasement, to drunkenness, revelling, and such like, must be added hatred, variance, revenge, misanthropy, murder, and the nature already embruted shall be dragged downward and yet downward by the fiend.
Of this transmutation of the coarse into the cruel — of this eventual merging of the beastly in the diabolical — we have countless examples, and on every scale, from the Herods and Neros of other days down to the Rushes and Palmers of our modern time. Nor is it only the individual who blunts his sensibilities by vice who is likely to end in blood and violence, but the sottish nation soon ‘je A MIGHTY FAMINE.
grows sanguinary. Rome became voluptuous, then shouted for gladiatorial games; and by the unspeakable orgies of the Pare-aux-Cerfs France was prepared for the stream of slaughter which poured for months along the Place Louis Quinze.
Of the two things — the Impossibility of appeasing heart-hunger without going home to God, and the danger that the unclean spirit. If not effectually expelled, will introduce others worse than himself — we know not that we can adduce an example more conclusive than Lord Byron.
It was the curse of this gifted man to inherit wealth without the grace to guide it, and so he obeyed the impulse of a strong and wayward nature, and wasted it on wassail. But in the land of Revelry there arose a mighty famine. It was not merely that funds ran short and farms were coming into the market, but there was something in his nature too lofty to be long content with pleasures so poor and low. Like generous wine, we might have hoped that it would rectify Itself, and, having thrown down Its feculence, would come out mellow, rich, and clear as the purple amethyst; when, alas! the thunder got Into It, and turned it all to vinegar.
The sensual was transformed into the malignant. “I have been looking into a dreadful book,” says Dr. James Alexander, ‘’ Moore’s Life of Byron — the life of one debauchee written by another. It is the most Instructive comment I ever read on the divine word — ‘The way of transgressors is hard, Voluptuary as he was, ever sighing after some new pleasure, and drinking to its depth the cup of worldly and sensual enjoyment, Byron seems to have experienced little less than a hell upon earth. Here I read In awful colours the tormenting power of uncontrolled selfishness. Remorse without repentance, and self-contempt without amendment, are dreadful scourges. From country to country he fled, but he carried the scorpions with him. His later works are only a disgorging of tumultuous thoughts and cruel passions — lust, mortified pride, and malignity — as if he would outrage the world even at the expense of every pang in his own bosom. Happy the poorest, weakest sufferer that believes in Christ”*
There Is a frightful fiendlshness In scattering firebrands, in sowing thistle-down. In systematically spreading contagion and death. But such were the last literary toils of Lord Byron. Before he took leave of society and song, he launched his final venture, and freighted it with blasphemy, impurity, and all sorts of devilry, and then sent it drifting towards his native shore. A poor apology for the wickedness Is the poetry. The contagion may be carried about in a goodly garment — the tares, the thistle-down, may be dealt forth from an embroidered bag — the incendiary coals may be scattered from a golden censer; but the propagandist Is none the less a miscreant — the crime is none the less a treason against humanity.
* Thoughts, by Dr. J. Alexander, p. 420.
Was he happy? Take the last lines he wrote — the lines on his last birthday: —
“My days are in the yellow leaf j
The flowers and fruits of love are gone j
The worm, the canker, and the grief, ‘•
Are mine alone.
“The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze,
A funeral pile!”
Was he happy? On the night before Bellingham was hanged, he went to see the sight. “Seeing an unfortunate woman lying on the steps of a door, with some expression of compassion he offered her a few shillings; but, instead of accepting them, she violently pushed away his hand, and starting up with a yell of laughter, began to mimic the lameness of his gait. He did not utter a word; but,” says Mr. Bailey, who tells the story, “I could feel his arm trembling within mine as he left her.“”’ Can any man be happy, who, himself the victim of vile passions, has strewn his path through life with the wrecks of virtue? who not only carries live coals in his bosom, but those cockatrice eggs which, even here, as they leap into life, and begin to exert their fiery fangs, give terrible presage of coming shame and everlasting contempt?
No, reader, the Most High has so constituted the * Moore’s Life of Byron, 4to, vol. i. p. 357.
mind of man that the indulgence of the malevolent affections itself is misery; and of all the paths which at life’s outset invite the inexperienced traveller, the surest to pierce through with many sorrows is the path of sensual indulgence. It is a vain attempt
“With things of earthly sort, with aught but God, With aught but moral excellence, and truth, and love, To fill and satisfy the immortal soul.”
But you are not mocked by your Maker. Those great and glorious objects exist for which he has given you an affinity, and towards which, in their most exalted intervals, the highest powers in your nature aspire. There is truth, there is goodness, there is God. There is the life of Jesus recorded in the Book; there is the Spirit of God now working in the world. Ponder that life till, associated with a living Redeemer, it shines around your path a purifying protecting presence. And pray for that Spirit, till under his kindly teaching you “taste and see that the Lord is good” — till expanded affections find an infinite object — till He who has thus strengthened your heart is become your portion for ever.