The Danger of Trifling Things

“Turn ye not aside, for then should ye go after vain things.’* — I Sam. XII. 21.

There is a strange sense of anti-climax in these words. Samuel tells the people not to turn aside from God. This advice is very natural. But the reason on which he bases it is rather startling. He says that if men deviate from God they will ‘* go after vain things.” It seems a most lame and impotent conclusion. Why does he fear emptiness so much? The departure from God is ever to be deplored; but surely it is not to be most deplored when it makes men shallow, frivolous, vacant-minded! Are not these simple things, harmless things, innocent things — things to which we attribute the word “silly “rather than sinful “? Yet I think the prophet is right. Who is the man furthest away from God — in other words, who is the man whom it would take longest to bring home? Is it he who has been led astray by passion? Is it he who has fallen into enmity? Is it he who has outraged his conscience by a deed of evil? Not so; all these have come back within a few days. Magdalene has turned her own passion into the Lord’s Passion; Saul has changed his fire of enmity into a fire of love; Peter has made his conscious guilt his consciousness of glory — all these have come home. But the great difficulty is to bring back the unthoughtful — the men taken up with the breadth of their phylacteries and the enlarging of their garments. Simon the Pharisee is farther off than Magdalene, for he is more vacant. What is the extreme opposite of the calm sea? Is it the stormy sea? No; any moment the storm may become a calm. The extreme opposite of the calm sea is the stagnant pool. Why so? Because it lacks something which is possessed both by the sea in its calm and the sea in its roughness — life. There is no deterrent from God like the worship of trifles, because that is an idolatry unaccompanied by a sense of sin. Trifles do not trouble the conscience; and, where the pool of conscience is untroubled, Bethesda has no healing spring.

Lord, save me from lifting up my soul unto vanity! There is a pride which brings its own fall. When I aim at impossible things I am taught my presumption by stern experience. But when I aim at things beneath me, I never learn

my need; my pride gets no fall. The lowness of my aim lulls me into a false rest. I lose my longings; I crush my cravings; I drop my desire for higher things. I mistake my passiveness for peace, my deadness for decorum, my lethargy for life. If I aspired to a Tower of Babel, my failure would confound me and perhaps redeem me; but I am satisfied with a house upon the sand, and my soul is unconvicted of sin. When Thou passest through my Galilee, I do not come to Thee. Greater sinners come — Zacchgeus comes, Mary comes — but not I. Why is this, O Lord? It is because my infinite selfishness lies in so small a vessel. I have done no harm as Zacchaeus has, as Mary has; it seems a small thing that I have done no good. I have placed my treasure in a trifle, and the trifle veils Thee from me. Rend that veil, O Lord 1 Show me the virulence of the poison in the tiny box! Break the box! Trample on the trifles! Cause the vain things to evaporate! Banish the baubles that keep me from school! Take away the toys thai divert me from thought! Put aside the playthings that tempt me from reflection! Teach me to know my need of Thee!