SERMON XII.

THE PROFANENESS OF ESAU A WARNING TO

CHRISTIANS.

SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT.

S. MARK viii. 36, 36.

"What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

AWEFUL questions indeed, whoever might ask them of us, how much more aweful, when we consider that He asks them, Who alone of all beings can know the entire value of a soul. He alone knows what eternity is, what heaven, and what hell. What unspeakable heights of glory He hath prepared for the bodies which He Himself formed out of the dust of the earth, and for the living souls which He Himself breathed into them; and what deeps of misery. He Who made your souls and mine, and every living soul of man, He also made heaven and earth, and He knows how to weigh one against another; and He distinctly tells you here-O my brethren will you not believe Him? that the price of the whole earth is nothing to set against the loss of one soul; and that once lost there is nothing which man can give whereby it may be redeemed. His words contain a kind of parable taken from our

notions of loss and gain. He supposes a kind of commercial transaction; a man has set his heart on something or other, and he has to consider whether the cost is too great; he is invited to join in some speculation or adventure, and he has to compare the profit with the risk; the possible future advantage with the immediate and certain hazard. What would a sensible man, but unskilful, do in such a case? would he not, if he could, seek out some one of knowledge and experience, some one also who dearly loved him and would be sure to advise him for his good? and having found such an one would he not do well to abide by his counsel, whatever his own fancy or that of others might say against it? Well here is an Adviser who loves you so well as to have given His life for you, One Who knoweth the end from the beginning, what will be good for you, and what evil, for ever; how all your works will turn out; and He speaks plainly and says, this is good and this is evil; this is life and this is death; this is blessing and this is cursing. I have set them before you; therefore choose life. And besides this

plain truth He has set you a plain example. It was but last Sunday that He invited you to go up with Him in spirit into a high mountain whence could be seen all the kingdoms of the earth, and the glory of them. What He did when the devil offered Him all, if He would only fall down and worship him, He invites you and me to do, as often as the like question comes before us. You may say perhaps, "Nay, but that never takes place; my temptations are in little every day matters; I have nothing to do with the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of

them." Well my brother: but have you never met with something which seemed, for the time, as if it were the whole world to you; some profit, or pleasure, or companion, or life-long habit, which you felt as if you could not do without? And on the other hand were you not aware of the plain voice of God in His word and in your own conscience, telling you that you must do without it, or lose your own soul? I beseech you, put your mind to this: think well of it is it not the plain truth? Aye indeed, it is so plain and simple, that we have most of us heard it over and over, and gone away thinking of it as a mere matter of course. But what if each time an Angel was at hand listening, and putting down in the un-erring book what was then read or said to you, and how you took it? what if it should prove hereafter that every time you have had this choice, and chosen amiss, you were doing that very thing which our Saviour here and always, did so earnestly warn His disciples against: preferring this world, or something in it to your own soul? What would have become of you if you had died that moment?

To make this thought the more serious, observe another most aweful truth, plainly implied in the first of our Lord's two questions, "what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" If you heard this for the first time, could you help saying to yourself "a soul then may be lost, after all that has been done for us?" And when you came to read or hear afterwards of one unhappy person, concerning whom our Lord said, "good were it for that man if he had never been born," could you help feeling that such loss would be for ever? O

my brethren fix these sayings in your heart, for they are the sayings of love unutterable, to keep you from casting yourselves away, now that He has died and liveth to save you. Lend no ear to the cruel tempter when he would flatter you that after all there may be repentance and forgiveness in hell. Believe your good Saviour when He warns you, and love Him the better for warning you so plainly.

And you may take it as an additional token of His loving care, that we are taught these same lessons to-day, by way of type or parable, in the story of Jacob and Esau. That history was no doubt meant as a help to us, towards fixing in our poor weak unstable minds, how precious our souls are, and how incurable their loss.

It consists of two parts, first, Esau selling his birth right to Jacob in a kind of jest, then God Almighty confirming the sale in very sad earnest, in the matter of Isaac's blessing. The first of these, Esau selling his birthright is meant to be a type and pattern to us of what Christian persons really do, when for any temptation whatever they commit such sin as God has told them will be the death of their souls. The other Esau seeking vainly his father's blessing, of which you heard in the first lesson just now, is the type and pattern of what will befall wicked Christians when the day of grace shall be past, and they shall find too late, that never again may they hope to be accounted children of God.

The beginning of the mischief, the loss of the birthright, seems not to us, perhaps as we read it, so very shocking. That a person coming in hungry from hunting, should part with his privileges as the

elder son, to his younger brother, for a little broth or pottage; wild and foolish, and over childish it may well appear, but why should it be so grave a sin in the sight of God? The reason is this: the birthright in that family was a great religious privilege. It carried with it not only a claim to the larger and better portion of the father's property, but also a great blessing from God; the very blessing of Abraham and of Isaac: God's promise, to be their God; a God unto them and to their seed after them. Selling this birthright, then, was in a manner selling God: it was as if one of us should in some way sell his own baptismal privilege, as if according to some ancient stories, a wicked spirit should invite a man to sign a paper parting for ever with his portion in Jesus Christ, and the man should accept the invitation. And the manner of selling it proved but too clearly how little Esau cared for holy things. For what was the seeming consideration which induced him so to part with that which was indeed his all ? Just a little pottage, a little broth, which seemed to him particularly good when he came in faint and weary from the field. "Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I am faint." Jacob, moved no doubt by a secret instinct from the Lord, said to him, "Sell me now thy birthright." Instead

of being shocked at such a thing, Esau said to himself, "Behold, I am at the point to die :"-not surely that he would have died for want of all food, had he missed that which he just then had a fancy for no, as faithless persons do, he thought only of the short time of his own life, and said to himself, f Gen. xxv. 30.