Quinquagesima Sunday
February 14, 1858
“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil.”—1 Thessalonians v. 21, 22.
The last clause of this verse is very commonly taken to mean, “Abstain from everything which looks like evil, from everything which a bystander would suspect to be evil.” You may hear, not laymen only, but clergymen, alter the sentence into “Abstain from the very appearance of evil,” or “even from the appearance of evil”; and probably not a few readers have a vague notion in their minds that such a text exists somewhere in the Bible. I do not think that our translators at all intended to convey this impression of St. Paul’s words to their countrymen. Every evil appearance, or every appearance of evil, may denote naturally enough every shape or form which evil puts on. In that sense “appearance” would be a fairly accurate translation of εἶδος. Some may prefer it to the word “form,” or “kind,” which would be the more natural and obvious rendering. But since (like the word “species” in the Vulgate) it is ambiguous, one may wish that it had never been adopted.
That St. Paul can never have meant his exhortation to bear the sense which we have forced upon it, a moment’s thought will convince you. “Judge not,” says our Lord, “according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” That passage cannot affect the construing of our text, for the word in St. John is ὄψις, not εἶδος. But it directly affects the question, whether we are to judge of evil by the mere look or semblance; for remember the occasion which called forth the precept of Christ. He had healed a sick man on the Sabbath-day. This act had the appearance of evil. It appeared evil, not only to the accidental bystanders, but to the religious guides of the Jewish people. They decided at once and peremptorily that Jesus had broken the Law: they had evidently a plausible ground for their decision. And this is one of a series of cases. To the same head belongs His receiving sinners and eating with them; the acts and omissions which led to the charge, “He is a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber”; His endurance of the erring woman who washed His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head. How carefully these parts of His conduct are recorded by the Evangelists! How evidently they think that, if they were blotted out of His life, He would not have perfectly revealed His Father, or been a complete pattern to His disciples! How entirely the conscience of mankind has responded to that opinion! Devout men have felt and do feel that if these features were taken from the Divine Image, the whole would be changed. Do you believe that St. Paul thought otherwise? Do you suppose he would have taught his Thessalonian disciples that these conspicuous lines in the character of Christ were not to be copied, but to be treated as dangerous?
How far does his own example justify this suspicion? You will remind me, perhaps, that he told the Corinthians that he would eat no meat so long as the world stood, rather than cause his brother to offend. You may tell me that he warned them that if they acted upon their knowledge that all meats are equally innocent, they might destroy the weak brother for whom Christ died. Was not this avoiding an appearance of evil when there was no real evil? Certainly not. The highest principle of Christian morality, the law of fellowship, the law of love, might be violated for the sake of an animal gratification, for the sake of a petty display of intellectual superiority. He discarded a superficial rule—one that was apparently sound—to get at a solid and real principle.
But did not St. Paul follow most strictly the steps of his Master, did he not depart altogether from the maxim which has been ascribed to himself, when he appeared in the eyes of Jews, converted and unconverted, perhaps of Apostles, to be violating sacred customs, and trampling upon the Covenant of his fathers? To which doctrine did he conform, when he openly ate with Gentiles in the presence of Peter and Barnabas, who were striving to keep up what every Jew must have considered a graceful, if not a necessary, recognition of the difference between the Chosen People and all others? How did he avoid the mere look of evil, when he left the impression upon the minds of his countrymen that he was overthrowing the righteousness of the Law, by preaching the righteousness of Faith? His life was one long fight against appearances; one continual proof that, in order to assert any great and precious truth, the chances of appearing evil to bad men and to good men must be deliberately encountered.
But we need not seek for evidence at a distance. The passage before us is as decisive on the point as any we could find in Scripture. The three clauses, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good; abstain from all appearance of evil,” are not associated by accident. They do not follow each other merely as one sentence at the close of a letter may follow another. Every person who has paid the least attention to St. Paul’s style will perceive how clearly the relation between them is indicated by the antithetical words κατέχετε, ἀπέχεσθε. “Hold on to the good, hold off from every form of evil.” And it is clear that the thought which determines the force of both these clauses—the thought which is uppermost in the writer’s mind—is that which is expressed by the word “prove,”—δοκιμάζετε. Now that word and its cognate substantive, whether it refers to things or to persons, to the soundness of money, or to the qualifications for citizenship, always denotes a process of testing. St. Paul had applied it in that sense in the second chapter of this Epistle. “So we speak, not as pleasing men, but God that trieth the hearts.” That one instance shows that when we are bidden to prove anything, it is meant that we should look below the outside—the appearance—of it, to ascertain its real worth, its essential nature. So, then, according to the popular interpretation of the text, St. Paul would say, in the first clause: “Be not content with the mere semblance of anything which you have to do with. Look into it; find out the good of it, hold to that.” And he would say in the second and corresponding clause: “Be always afraid of semblances. The moment anything looks like evil, fly from it. Throw away your tests and proofs; simply hold off from that which seems evil to you or to the people about you.” This is not an antithesis, but a contradiction; such a one as it is not very reverent to impute to an inspired man, such as would be discreditable in an honest man. In St. Paul’s case it would make his life a greater contradiction even than his words. I trust we shall be ready to examine the language of the text, that we may see whether it does not offer us some safer and more helpful guidance than this.
I. He tells us first, to prove or test all things. This text has often been taken to express the peculiar character and virtue of Protestant Divinity, while the words, “Charity believeth all things,” or “Blessed are they which have not seen and yet have believed,” have been claimed as mottoes by its opponents. I do not know a more honourable watchword to inscribe upon our banners than this of prove all things, if only we know what it signifies, and how St. Paul used it. Assuredly he did not understand it, as some of us do, “Bring all things to the standard of your private judgment; see whether they accord with that; only hold fast that which does.” Nor, I apprehend, would any man of science, who speaks of testing, proving, subjecting facts to experiment, tolerate such an interpretation of his language. He would exclaim, “Why, this habit of reducing all that I see to a rule, a standard, an anticipation in our own mind, is just the one from which Bacon sought to deliver us. He told us that we were continually liable to do this; that as long as we did it we never arrived at truth; that there was a method of investigation, by which we could escape from the necessity of doing it.” If there is not that which is true absolutely,—true for all men,—search and inquiry are very fruitless; we had better lay them aside. If my judgment is to be the measure of all things that I see and converse with, if I am at liberty to use it as such a measure, if there is no higher measure to which I can bring it, that it may be deepened and expanded, it is certain to become narrower and feebler every day. Whereas, if I continually acknowledge the presence of a Light which is greater than any organ of mine can take in, but yet with which I am intended to hold communion, I shall desire that that Light may enter more and more into me, to purify my vision and enlarge its capacities. I shall desire to see all things in this Light. And it will so distinguish between what is fantastic and what is real, between the shows of things and their substance, that it will not be possible for me to accept one for the other, either in obedience to my own natural taste and inclination, or at the bidding of any earthly guides and authorities whatsoever. This process of proving or testing the phenomena of the moral and spiritual world is not exercised as much in schools by learned men—though they have great need of it, and should use all the aids they have for conducting it—as on sick-beds, by men and women who are fighting with sore temptations, and are asking God’s help against them. They acquire the faculty of distinguishing that which will last and will stand the fire, from that which must be burnt up, as none acquire it who are not tried in the fire themselves. And therefore, instead of admitting that the charity which believeth all things is of an opposite nature and quality to this wisdom or judgment which proveth all things, I should think they are closely akin, and that one can never flourish without the other. The Love which seeks to find God, Who is Perfect Love, cannot be content with counterfeits of Him, with mere phantoms that represent Him. The Judgment which is impatient of what is false, has no pleasure in mere rejection; it only wishes to discover that which it can embrace and hold fast. The Protestant who felt a strong necessity to prove all things, claimed the Bible as his great help and teacher in that work. Nor did it ever disappoint him, till he forgot what the work was; till he sought its help in merely building up his own notions and confuting his adversaries, instead of asking it to assist him in discerning the right from the wrong, in his own heart and in his dealings with his fellows. The Romanist, feeling the need of something given him, of a truth revealed, rejoiced in his Catholic Creeds. Nor did they disappoint him, till he ceased to treat them as Catholic; till he built over them and about them a huge edifice of individual notions, the aggregation of centuries of teaching and speculation, which have hidden from men the Truth that is with them and belongs to them all; which have led hundreds of thousands who dared not test them, to disbelieve them and the truth together; which have made the blessing upon those who have believed, in the midst of the thick darkness which they have created, a great and divine blessing indeed.
II. Next, St. Paul tells us to prove all things. He does not say, “Prove or test certain doctrines which are submitted to you;” though those are of course not excluded. He assumes that everything whatsoever with which we come into contact,—the ordinary notions and maxims of society, the habits and traditions of the literary, or philosophical, or professional, or religious circle in which we are moving, the words we speak, the common every-day experiences of life—all need sifting and testing, that we may know what there is of good in them. He fully acknowledges that there is a good in them all; they would not be worth proving if there were not; there would be no way of proving them. The search for this good is your business. You are not to sit down in a carping, faultfinding spirit, to ascertain how much your fathers or kinsfolk or neighbours have misled you; how much worse your profession, or trade, or country is than all others. You are to set before you an object the most unlike possible to this. When there is much about you which you feel and know is evil, you are still to pursue the good, and to believe that it is there, and that you shall be rewarded by discovering it, and that the discovery will be the means of emancipating you and your brethren from that which is hurting and enslaving you and them. Yes, believe that the good is in all things, in those that you have made little account of, in those that you have been taught by others to hate, in those which you have learnt to hate yourself. Do not shrink from confessing that there is and must be a goodness, a beauty, at the bottom of them all, else they would not have continued to exist. Do not be afraid of inquiring for it lest you should fall in love with the evil and ugliness which are also in them. Be sure that you will not know them fully, detest them heartily, till you have perceived that which is opposed to them and have done it homage. Numbers in our days have plunged headlong into a false system, because they and their teachers were not observant of this rule. They heard mere denunciations of the evil; they found they had been deceived, that there was a good which they had not been apprised of; and partly to revenge their first mistake, partly from loss of confidence in those who had practised a pious fraud upon them, partly from being deprived of all power of distinguishing, they accept the whole compound together.
III. St. Paul goes on, “Hold fast the good.” When you have perceived it, detected it, anywhere, then cleave to it, hug it, swear that you will not let it go. Be sure that what you want, is the substantial good; the beauty in which is no flaw. Having that, you are sure you have what God in His infinite love desires that you should have; you have what the Son of God took your nature and died upon the cross that you might have; you have what the Spirit of God is stirring you and all creatures to sigh and groan that you may have. Not that it is yours, in any sense which can enable you to say to a neighbour, “It is not thine.” Not that it is yours in any sense which can enable you to say, “It belongs to me; I cannot lose it. I may take my ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” It is yours by faith; it is yours because it is God’s, and He invites you to believe Him and trust Him, and so to inherit His own Righteousness and Truth and Blessedness. It is yours because it is not in your own keeping, because you are lifted out of yourself that you may enjoy it.
IV. And so we come at last to the word with which I began, “Abstain,” or “keep yourselves, from every form or appearance that is evil.” You have seen the good; you have grasped it; now have nothing to do with whatever is not that, with whatever counterfeits it. There will be every variety of evil shapes, forms, appearances; but if you have learnt to look below, to try and test the heart of things, you will not be misled by this variety. You will detect the evil, the lie, under each new disguise, and you will be able to stand aloof from it; to shun the contact of it. Just so far as the truth has become precious and familiar to you, this likeness, this double, this mockery, will be loathed and kept at a distance. This precept never becomes obsolete or unnecessary,—nay, becomes more necessary each day, as the final struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, truth and falsehood, draws nearer. For the shapes are becoming ever more complicated, and the mimicry of that which is most adverse to them more complete. They must impose upon us if we trust to our knowledge of the past, or our sagacity in detecting the errors and wrong of others; or our skill in applying rules which we have received from the precept of men. Everything will fail us, but a love of the good, an utter distrust of ourselves, a continual sense of the presence of evil, a continual assurance that Christ is also present with us and has overcome it.
But I conceive, brethren, that the peril of our being vanquished by some of its manifold forms will be infinitely increased, if we adopt that opinion which has gained such strength from the supposed authority of St. Paul. To believe that we must fly from that which people think evil, from everything which seems evil to ourselves at the first glance, is to become a prey of evil in its worst sense. All reformation, in every age, has been retarded by this doctrine, all corruptions have been sanctified by it. And yet it has not restrained a single rash reformer; it has not preserved a single truth from outrage. The conscience of men cannot be bound by a rule, which must be transgressed before a single brave act can be done, a single right principle asserted. And therefore the only effect of proclaiming it is to render earnest men doubtful whether the Apostle’s authority is to be heeded, and to deprive them of the direction and warnings which his wisdom would supply. You tell a man who is betaking himself to foolish eccentricities of practice, that there is nothing really blamable in what he is doing, but that he ought to avoid the appearance of evil. He knows that in a thousand cases he ought not to avoid that, and therefore his silly innovations become canonized in his mind as if they were the result of some manly effort to resist the opinion of the world. Why did not you tell him that God has given him a work to do, that his influence over others is a trust which is to fit him for this work; that all affectations, as they impair his influence, are violations of this trust, imply a low estimate of his work, and that therefore they should be cast aside, not as apparent evil, but as real evil? You tell a man who clings to some course of action which he has adopted not from mere self-will, but believing it to be the best, that others are grieved by it, and that he should avoid the appearance of evil. You rouse his conscience; that trifle immediately becomes serious to him; he dares not lay it aside; he will fight for it, die for it. Why did not you solemnly bid him prove and test that which he was doing; hold fast that which was the real good and sense of it; and discard the rest, not as apparently evil, but as really evil, inasmuch as it was a self-indulgence, and was not offered up on the shrine of that Christian Unity, from which Christian Truth cannot long be separated? These are instances—your own experience may supply a hundred similar—where this maxim proves utterly ineffectual to accomplish its own ends. For every vulgar worldly argument which puts on a religious dress, and affects an authority that does not belong to it, must prove feeble and worthless. The only consequence of resorting to it is, that you benumb the moral sense, that you degrade the hearts of those whom you bring under its influence. They will plead it for deserting a friend, for refusing to maintain an unpopular cause; they will forget it the moment it interferes with any passion or propensity of their own. Oh, brethren, let us ask the help of God, that we may be less moved by that which merely looks good or looks evil! Let us ask that, in all the common work of life, we may seek the substantial and reject the semblance. So, in the highest region of all, we shall enter into fellowship with Him Who is the Truth, and be delivered from the Spirit of Lies, who is His adversary; so, when He, Whose face was marred more than any man’s, Who appeared to men an evil-doer, Who was crucified in weakness, shall be revealed in the glory of His Father and the holy angels, we shall not be ashamed before Him at His coming.