“They have healed the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” Jer. viii. 11.
There will ever be persons who take a favourable view of human nature, as it actually is found in the world, and of the spiritual condition and the prospects of mankind. And certainly the face of things is so fair, and contains so much that is interesting and lofty, that the spectator may be pardoned if, on the first sight, he is disposed to believe them to be as cheerful and as happy as they appear,—the evils of life as light and transitory, and its issue as satisfactory. Such easy confidence is natural in youth; nay, it is even commendable at a time of life in which suspicion and incredulity are unbecoming; that is, it would be commendable, did not Scripture acquaint us from the very first (by way of warning, previous to our actual experience) with the deceitfulness of the world’s promises and teaching; telling us of the opposition between Sight and Faith, of that strait gate and that narrow way, the thought of which is to calm us in youth, that it may enliven and invigorate us in old age.
2. Yet, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that even the information of Scripture results in a cheerful view of human affairs, and condemns gloom and sadness as a sin, as well as a mistake; and thus, in fact, altogether sanctions the conclusions gathered from the first sight of the course of the world. But here is an instance, such as not unfrequently is found, of an opinion being abstractedly true, and yet the person who holds it wrong in his mode of holding it; so that while the terms in which he conveys it approach indefinitely near to those in which the true view is contained, nevertheless men who maintain the very reverse may be nearer the truth than he is. It often happens that, in pursuing the successive stages of an investigation, the mind continually reverses its judgment to and fro, according as the weight of argument passes over and back again from the one alternative of the question to the other; and in such a case the ultimate utility of the inquiry does not consist in the conclusion finally adopted, which may be no other than that with which the inquiry was commenced; but in the position in which we have learned to view it, and the circumstances with which we have associated it. It is plain, too, that the man who has gone through many of these progressive alternations of opinion, but has for some cause or other stopped short of the true view legitimately terminating the inquiry, would be farther from it in the mere enunciation of his sentiments, but in the state of his mind far nearer to it, than he who has not examined the subject at all, and is right by accident. Thus it happens, men are cheerful and secure from ignorance of the evils of life; and they are secure, again, from seeing the remedy of the evils; and, on the other hand, they are desponding from seeing the evils without the remedy: so that we must never say that an individual is right, merely on the ground of his holding an opinion which happens to be true, unless he holds it in a particular manner; that is, under those conditions, and with that particular association of thought and feeling, which in fact is the interpretation of it.
3. That superficial judgment, which happens to be right without deserving to be so, is condemned in the text. The error of the prophets and priests there spoken of consisted, not in promising a cure for the wounded soul, but in healing the hurt of the daughter of God’s people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, before they had ascertained either the evil or the remedy. The Gospel is in its very name a message of peace, but it must never be separated from the bad tidings of our fallen nature, which it reverses; and he who speaks of the state of the world in a sanguine way, may indeed be an advanced Christian, but he may also be much less even than a proselyte of the gate; and if his security and peace of mind be merely the calm of ignorance, surely the men whom he looks down upon as narrow-minded and superstitious, whose religion consists in fear not in love, shall go into the kingdom of heaven before him. We are reminded of this important truth by the order of our ecclesiastical year. Easter Day, our chief Festival, is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they, and they only, who sow in tears, shall reap in joy.
4. Remarks such as these are scarcely necessary, as far as we of this place are concerned, who, through God’s blessing, are teachers of His truth, and “by reason of use have our senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” Yet it is impossible not to observe, and it is useful to bear in mind, that mankind at large is not wiser or better than heretofore; rather, that it is an especial fault of the present day, to mistake the false security of the man of the world for the composure, cheerfulness, and benevolence of the true Christian; while all the varying shades of character between these two, though indefinitely more deserving of our respect than the former of them—I mean the superstitious, the bigot, the intolerant, and the fanatic—are thrust out of the way as inhuman and offensive, merely because their knowledge of themselves is more exact than their apprehension of the Gospel, and their zeal for God’s honour more energetic than their love of mankind.