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Sermon 84: The Important Question

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon084

03:181 An Introductory Comment

In August and September 1775 Wesley was itinerating through Wales, Cornwall, and Somerset. On Wednesday, August 30, he ‘preached in the great Presbyterian meeting-house at Taunton’, and in the same place on Monday, September 11, when he ‘pressed that important question, “What is a man profited if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”’ (See the Journal for those dates and note the discrepancy between the date given in the Journal for the oral sermon and the date on the title-page for the published sermon.)

The occasion for the Taunton sermon was ‘for the benefit of a public charity’ (i.e., ad aulam); this may account for the noticeable increase in rhetorical ornamentation and length over what we have seen in most of his sermons ad populum. It was written out in Bristol, September 30, 1775, and then printed in London as a separate pamphlet before the end of the year. It proceeded to go through six further separate editions in Wesley’s lifetime in addition to being included in SOSO, VII.67-91. For further details as to its publishing history and a list of variant readings in its successive editions, see Appendix, Vol. 4, and Bibliog, No. 355.

This sermon is unusual in yet another interesting way that helps illuminate the relationship between Wesley’s oral preaching and his published sermons. Of all the texts for his published sermons, Matt. 16:26 is the one he had used most often in his oral preaching and by a fairly wide margin (one hundred seventeen times between 1747 and 1790). This in itself would seem to be a sufficient comment on the familiar but misleading generalization that Wesley was less interested in eschatology than in soteriology. There is a sense in which this is true; but the much more crucial fact is that, for Wesley, soteriology and eschatology were actually two sides of the same mystery of God’s proffered grace to man.

03:182 The Important Question

Matthew 16:26

What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

11. There is a celebrated remark to this effect (I think in the works of Mr. Pascal), that if a man of low estate would speak of high things, as of what relates to kings or kingdoms, it is not easy for him to find suitable expressions, as he is so little acquainted with things of this nature. But if one of royal parentage speaks of royal things, of what concerns his own or his father’s kingdom, his language will be free and easy, as these things are familiar to his thoughts.

This would seem to be a recollection from a Pascalian fragment preserved in Basil Kennett’s Preface to his translation of Thoughts on Religion (1727), p. xxiv: ‘A mechanic speaking of riches [speaks incompetently]; a solicitor speaking of war or of a regal state [does likewise]. But the rich discourse well of riches; a king speaks coldly of a vast present which he is about to make; and God discourseth well of God.’ The same idea recurs in the first of ‘Three Discourses by Pascal on the Station of Noblemen’, in Great Shorter Works of Pascal, translated by Emile Cailliet and John C. Blankennagel (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1948), pp. 211-13. Cf. Robert South, Sermons on Several Occasions (Oxford, 1823), 138: ‘It is difficult for a peasant…to fancy in his mind the unseen splendours of a court.’ See also Seneca, Epistles, xciv.14.

In like manner, if a mere inhabitant of this lower world speaks concerning the great things of the kingdom of God, hardly is he able to find expressions suitable to the greatness of the subject. But when the Son of God speaks of the highest things, which concern his heavenly kingdom, all his language is easy and unlaboured, his words natural and unaffected: inasmuch as known unto him are all these things from all eternity.

22. How strongly is this remark exemplified in the passage now before us! The Son of God, the great King of heaven and earth, here uses the plainest and easiest words; but how high and deep are the things which he expresses therein! None of the children of men can fully conceive them till, emerging out of the darkness of the present world, he commences an inhabitant of eternity.

33. But we may conceive a little of these deep things if we consider, first, what is implied in that expression, a man’s ‘gaining the whole world’; secondly, what is implied in ‘losing his own soul’; we shall then, thirdly, see in the strongest light ‘what he is profited who gains the whole world, and loses his own soul’.

103:183I. 1. We are, first, to consider what is implied in a man’s ‘gaining the whole world’. Perhaps at the first hearing this may seem to some equivalent with conquering the whole world. But it has no relation thereto at all; and indeed that expression involves a plain absurdity;

For Wesley’s rule that the literal sense of Scripture is to be preferred unless it ‘involves a plain absurdity’, see No. 21, ‘Sermon on the Mount, I’, §6 and n.

for it is impossible, any that is born of a woman should ever conquer the whole world, were it only because the short life of man could not suffice for so wild an undertaking. Accordingly no man ever did conquer the half, no, nor the tenth part of the world. But whatever others might do, there was no danger that any of our Lord’s hearers should have any thought of this. Among all the sins of the Jewish nation the desire of universal empire was not found. Even in their most flourishing times they never sought to extend their conquests beyond the river Euphrates. And in our Lord’s time all their ambition was at an end—‘the sceptre was departed from Judah’

Cf. Gen. 49:10.

—and Judea was governed by a Roman procurator, as a branch of the Roman empire.

22. Leaving this, we may find a far more easy and natural sense of the expression. To gain the whole world may properly enough imply, to gain all the pleasures which the world can give.

A somewhat different nuance for the term ‘world’ than above in Nos. 80, ‘On Friendship with the World’; and 81, ‘In What Sense we are to Leave the World’.

The man we speak of may therefore be supposed to have gained all that will gratify his senses. In particular, all that can increase his pleasure of tasting,

Cf. William Law, as in No. 50, ‘The Use of Money’, II.2 and n.

all the elegancies of meat and drink. Likewise, whatever can gratify his smell, or touch—all that he can enjoy in common with his fellow-brutes. He may have all the plenty and all the variety of these objects which the world can afford.

33. We may farther suppose him to have gained all that gratifies ‘the desire of the eyes’;

1 John 2:16 (Notes). The concupiscientia triplex again; see No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.2 and n. See also, below, III.10.

whatever (by means of the eye chiefly) conveys any pleasure to the imagination.

Cf. No. 44, Original Sin, II.10 and n.

The pleasures of imagination arise from three sources: grandeur, beauty, and novelty. Accordingly we find by experience our own imagination 03:184is gratified by surveying either grand, or beautiful, or uncommon objects. Let him be encompassed then with the most grand, the most beautiful, and the newest things that can anywhere be found. For all this is manifestly implied in a man’s gaining the whole world.

44. But there is also another thing implied herein, which men of the most elevated spirits have preferred before all the pleasures of sense and of imagination put together; that is, honour, glory, renown:

“ Virum volitare per ora.

Virgil, Georgics, iii.9: ‘[To have one’s fame] flying about on the lips of men’.

”

It seems that hardly any principle in the human mind is of greater force than this. It triumphs over the strongest propensities of nature, over all our appetites and affections. If Brutus sheds the blood of his own children;

Lucus Junius Brutus, nephew of Tarquinius Superbus (last of the Roman kings) and one of the first two consuls of the new Republic. He sentenced his own two sons to death for treason; cf. Livy, Annals, I.59, II.3; see also Voltaire, Le Brutus (1731).

if we see another Brutus, in spite of every possible obligation, in defiance of all justice and gratitude,

“Cringing while he stabs his friend;

Samuel Wesley, Jun, ‘On Mr. Hobbes’, ver. 1, ll. 5-6, in Poems (1736), p. 102:

’Twill task a Cowley’s genius to commend

False Brutus cringing while he stabs his friend.

Cf. also John Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), III.66. The reference here is to ‘another Brutus’, Marcus Junius, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar. Note the casual playing off here of two like and unlike classical references.

”

if a far greater man than either of these, Paschal Paoli,

Pasquale Paoli (1725-1807), a Corsican liberator who after his defeat by the French (1769) fled to England and was still living there as a popular hero at the time of this sermon. Wesley records two visits with him during 1784 (JWJ, Feb. 19 and Nov. 6): ‘…the modern Hannibal, …probably the most accomplished general that is now in the world…’. A fulsome plaque in his honour in Westminster Abbey stands directly opposite the more modest memorial there to the brothers Wesley. There are numerous admiring references to Paoli in Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

gave up ease, pleasure, everything, for a life of constant toil, pain, and alarms; what principle could support them? They might talk of amor patriae, the love of their country; but this would never have carried them through had there not been also the

“Laudum immensa cupido

Virgil, Aeneid, vi.823: laudumque immensa cupido, a familiar theme in Latin literature. Cf. ibid., v.138; Georgics, iii.112; Tacitus, Histories, IV.vi, etc. Cf. also Nos. 62,‘The End of Christ’s Coming’, §2; and 14, The Repentance of Believers, I.7 and n.

—”

03:185the immense thirst of praise. Now the man we speak of has gained abundance of this; he is praised, if not admired, by all that are round about him. Nay, his name is gone forth into distant lands, as it were to the ends of the earth.

See Ps. 48:10 (AV).

55. Add to this that he has gained abundance of wealth; that there is no end of his treasures; that he has laid up silver as the dust, and gold as the sand of the sea.

See Job 27:16; Zech. 9:3.

Now when a man has obtained all these pleasures, all that will gratify either the senses or the imagination; when he has gained an honourable name, and also laid up much treasure for many years; then he may be said, in an easy, natural sense of the word, to have ‘gained the whole world’.

1II. 1. The next point we have to consider is what is implied in a man’s ‘losing his own soul’. And here we draw a deeper scene, and have need of a more steady attention. For it is easy to sum up all that is implied in a man’s ‘gaining the whole world’. But it is not so easy to understand all that is implied in his ‘losing his own soul’. Indeed none can fully conceive this until he has passed through time into eternity.

22. The first thing which it undeniably implies is the losing all the present pleasures of religion; all those which it affords to truly religious men, even in the present life. ‘If there be any consolation in Christ; if any comfort of love’,

Phil. 2:1.

in the love of God, and of all mankind; if any ‘joy in the Holy Ghost’;

Rom. 14:17.

if there be a peace of God, a peace that passeth all understanding;

Phil. 4:7.

if there be any rejoicing in the testimony of a good conscience toward God;

See Acts 23:1.

it is manifest, all this is totally lost by the man that loses his own soul.

33. But the present life will soon be at an end: we know it passes away like a shadow.

See Ps. 144:4 (BCP). Cf. also Wisd. 5:9-13, and Wesley’s Preface (1746), §5.

The hour is at hand when the spirit will be summoned to return to God that gave it.

See Eccles. 12:7.

In that awful moment,

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,

Who stand upon the threshold of the new.

Cf. the last two lines of Edmund Waller’s ‘On the Foregoing Divine Poems’, Works (1729), p. 317.

03:186And whether he looks backward or forward, how pleasing is the prospect to him that saves his soul! If he looks back, he has ‘the calm remembrance of the life well spent’.

Cf. Samuel Wesley Jun., ‘To the Memory of the Right Reverend Francis Gastrell’, l. 106, in Poems (1736), p. 130; see also John Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), III.81. Cf. ‘Dr. Arbuthnot’s Character Versified’, in AM (1783), VI.448, for a similar line. As a motto for his Guardian, No. 18 (June 13, 1713), Richard Steele quotes Cicero for this basic human aspiration: ‘Quiete et pure atque eleganter actae aetatis placida ac lenis recordatio’ (‘Placid and soothing is the remembrance of a life passed in quiet, innocence and elegance’). Cf. De Senectute, v.13; see also iii.9.

If he looks forward, there is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away,

1 Pet. 1:4.

and he sees the convoy of angels ready to carry him into Abraham’s bosom.

See Luke 16:22.

But how is it in that solemn hour with the man that loses his soul? Does he look back? What comfort is there in this? He sees nothing but scenes of horror, matter of shame, remorse, and self-condemnation, a foretaste of ‘the worm that never dieth’.

Cf. Mark 9:44, 46, 48.

If he looks forward, what does he see? No joy, no peace! No gleam of hope from any point of heaven! Some years since, one who turned back as a dog to his vomit

See Prov. 26:11; 2 Pet. 2:22.

was struck down in his mid-career of sin. A friend visiting him prayed, ‘Lord, have mercy upon those who are just stepping out of the body, and know not which shall meet them at their entrance into the other world, an angel or a fiend.’ The sick man shrieked out with a piercing cry, ‘A fiend! a fiend!’ and died. Just such an end, unless he die like an ox, may any man expect who loses his own soul.

44. But in what situation is the spirit of a good man at his entrance into eternity? See,

The convoy attends,

The minist’ring host of invisible friends.

Cf. Charles Wesley, Funeral Hymns (1746), No. 15 (Poet. Wks., VI.211); cf. also No. 71, ‘Of Good Angels’, II.7 and n.

They receive the new-born spirit, and conduct him safe into Abraham’s bosom, into the delights of paradise, the garden of God,

Ezek. 28:13; 31:8, 9.

where the light of his countenance perpetually shines. It is but one of a thousand commendations of this antechamber of heaven

Cf. No. 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, I.3 and n.

that ‘there the wicked cease from troubling, there the weary are at rest.’

Cf. Job 3:17.

For there they have numberless sources of 03:187happiness which they could not have upon earth. There they meet with ‘the glorious dead of ancient days’.

Is this a misremembrance of Isaac Watts’s line, ‘Thy glorious deeds of ancient date’ (Works, IV.137)? See also No. 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’ §8; and cf. Wesley’s variant in No. 132, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:1’, §11: ‘the illustrious dead of ancient days’.

They converse with Adam, first of men; with Noah, first of the new world; with Abraham, ‘the friend of God’;

Jas. 2:23.

with Moses and the prophets; with the apostles of the Lamb; with the saints of all ages; and above all, they ‘are with Christ’.

55. How different, alas! is the case with him who loses his own soul! The moment he steps into eternity he meets with the devil and his angels. Sad convoy into the world of spirits! Sad earnest of what is to come! And either he is bound with chains of darkness, and reserved unto the judgment of the great day;

Jude 6.

or at best he wanders up and down, seeking rest, but finding none.

See Luke 11:24.

Perhaps he may seek it (like the ‘unclean spirit cast out of the man’) in dry, dreary, desolate places;

Ibid.

perhaps

Where nature all in ruins lies,

And owns her sovereign, death!

Cf. Watts, ‘Death and Eternity’, st. 1, ll. 3-4, Horae Lyricae, Bk. I (Works, IV.343). Cf. also John Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), I.194. See also No. 82, ‘On Temptation’, I.4.

And little comfort can he find here, seeing everything contributes to increase, not remove, the fearful expectation of fiery indignation which will devour the ungodly!

See Heb. 10:27.

66. For even this is to him but the beginning of sorrows.

Matt. 24:8.

Yet a little while, and he will see ‘the great white throne coming down from heaven, and him that sitteth thereon, from whose face the heavens and the earth flee away, and there is found no place for them’. And ‘the dead, small and great, stand before God, and are judged, everyone according to his works.’

Cf. Rev. 20:11-12.

‘Then shall the King say to them on his right hand’ (God grant he may say so to you!): ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’

Matt. 25:34.

And the angels shall tune their harps and sing, ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, that the heirs of glory may come in.’

Cf. Ps. 24:7.

And then shall they ‘shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever.’

Dan. 12:3.

703:1887. How different will be the lot of him that loses his own soul! No joyful sentence will be pronounced on him, but one that will pierce him through with unutterable horror (God forbid that ever it should be pronounced on any of you that are here before God!): ‘Depart ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels!’

Matt. 25:41.

And who can doubt but those infernal spirits will immediately execute the sentence, will instantly drag those forsaken of God into their own place of torment!

Luke 16:28.

Into those

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades; where joy,

Where peace can never come! Hope never comes,

That comes to all!

Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, i.65-69; see also Nos. 73,‘Of Hell’, III.3; and 124,‘Human Life a Dream’, §12.

—

all the children of men who are on this side eternity. But not to them: the gulf is now fixed, over which they cannot pass.

See Luke 16:26; cf. above, I.4 and n.

From the moment wherein they are once plunged into the lake of fire, burning with brimstone,

See Rev. 19:20.

their torments are not only without intermission, but likewise without end. For ‘they have no rest, day or night, but the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.’

Cf. Rev. 14:11.

III. Upon ever so cursory a view of these things would not anyone be astonished that a man, that a creature endued with reason, should voluntarily choose (I say choose; for God forces no man into inevitable damnation: he never yet

Consigned one unborn soul to hell,

Or damned him from his mother’s womb)

Cf. John and Charles Wesley, ‘Universal Redemption’, Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740), p. 133 (Poet. Wks., III.33). See No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §14, where Wesley quotes the entire stanza; and cf. his letter to James Hervey, Oct. 15, 1756.

—

should choose thus to lose his own soul, though it were to gain the whole world! For what shall a man be profited thereby upon the whole of the account?

But a little to abate our astonishment at this, let us observe the suppositions which a man generally makes before he can reconcile himself to this fatal choice.

103:1891. He supposes, first, that a life of religion is a life of misery. That religion is misery! How is it possible that anyone should entertain so strange a thought! Do any of you imagine this? If you do, the reason is plain; you know not what religion is. ‘No! But I do, as well as you.’ What is it then? ‘Why, the doing no harm.’ Not so; many birds and beasts do no harm, yet they are not capable of religion. ‘Then it is going to church and sacrament.’ Indeed it is not. This may be an excellent help to religion; and everyone who desires to save his soul should attend them at all opportunities; yet it is possible you may attend them all your days, and still have no religion at all. Religion is an higher and deeper thing than any outward ordinance whatever.

22. ‘What is religion, then?’ It is easy to answer if we consult the oracles of God. According to these it lies in one single point: it is neither more nor less than love—it is love which ‘is the fulfilling of the law’,

Rom. 13:10.

‘the end of the commandment’.

1 Tim. 15.

Religion is the love of God and our neighbour—that is, every man under heaven.

An oft-repeated definition; cf. No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, I.8 and n.; for ‘inward holiness’ (love of God) and ‘outward holiness’ (love of neighbour), cf. ibid., I.10 and n.

This love, ruling the whole life, animating all our tempers and passions, directing all our thoughts, words, and actions, is ‘pure religion and undefiled’.

Jas. 1:27.

33. Now will anyone be so hardy as to say that love is misery? Is it misery to love God? To give him my heart who alone is worthy of it? Nay, it is the truest happiness, indeed the only true happiness which is to be found under the sun. So does all experience prove the justness of that reflection which was made long ago: ‘Thou hast made us for thyself; and our heart cannot rest until it resteth in thee.’

Augustine, Confessions, I.i; see No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’, II.5 and n.

Or does anyone imagine the love of our neighbour is misery, even the loving every man as our own soul? So far from it that next to the love of God this affords the greatest happiness of which we are capable. Therefore,

Let not the stoic boast his mind unmoved,

The brute-philosopher, who ne’er has proved

The joy of loving, or of being loved.

OED (‘brute’), on Johnson’s authority, cites this as from Alexander Pope. Actually, it is a nearly exact quotation from Nicholas Rowe’s first play, The Ambitious Step-Mother (1701), Prologue, ll. 6-8. Cf. Wesley’s earlier reference to ‘brute philosophers’, in No. 22, ‘Sermon on the Mount, II’, I.2.

403:1904. So much every reasonable man must allow. But he may object: ‘There is more than this implied in religion. It implies not only the love of God and man (against which I have no objection) but also a great deal of doing and suffering. And how can this be consistent with happiness?’

There is certainly some truth in this objection. Religion does imply both doing and suffering. Let us then calmly consider whether this impairs or heightens our happiness.

Religion implies, first, the doing many things. For the love of God will naturally lead us at all opportunities to converse with him we love; to speak to him in (public or private) prayer, and to hear the words of his mouth, which ‘are dearer to us than thousands of gold and silver’.

Ps. 119:72 (BCP).

It will incline us to lose no opportunity of receiving

“The dear memorials of his dying love;

Cf. John and Charles Wesley, Hymn 54, Hymns on the Lord’s Supper (1745, Poet. Wks., III.253), beginning:

Why did my dying Lord ordain

This dear memorial of his love?

In SOSO (1788), VII.79, the quotation is altered to ‘The dear memorials of our dying Lord.’ The Wesleys may be indebted to Isaac Watts in this instance. Cf. his ‘Our Lord Jesus at His Own Table’, st. 1, l. 1, in Bk. III, Hymn XV (Works, IV.263): ‘The mem’ry of our dying Lord’. See also Watts, ‘To the Memory of T. Gunston, Esq.’, l. 88 (ibid., p. 440), ‘That dear memorial of the best-loved name!’ See also, Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, I.i-ii:

But on his breast a bloody cross he bore,

The dear remembrance of his dying Lord.

”

to continue instant in thanksgiving; at morning, evening, and noonday to praise him. But suppose we do all this, will it lessen our happiness? Just the reverse. It is plain, all these fruits of love are means of increasing the love from which they spring; and of consequence they increase our happiness in the same proportion. Who then would not join in that wish:

Rising to sing my Saviour’s praise,

Thee may I publish all day long,

And let thy precious word of grace

Flow from my heart, and fill my tongue;

Fill all my life with purest love,

And join me to thy church above!

Charles Wesley, ‘Hymn on Deut. 6:7’, in Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures (1762), I.93 (Poet. Wks., IX.95).

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503:1915. It must also be allowed that as the love of God naturally leads to works of piety, so the love of our neighbour naturally leads all that feel it to works of mercy. It inclines us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit them that are sick or in prison;

See Matt 25:35-36, 38.

to be as eyes to the blind and feet to the lame;

Job 29:15.

an husband to the widow, a father to the fatherless.

See Ps. 68:5.

But can you suppose that the doing this will prevent or lessen your happiness? Yea, though you did so much as to be like a guardian angel to all that are round about you? On the contrary, it is an infallible truth that

All worldly joys are less

Than that one joy of doing kindnesses.

Cf. George Herbert, The Temple, ‘The Church Porch’, st. 55, ll. 5-6; see No. 59, ‘God’s Love to Fallen Man’, I.9 and n.

A man of pleasure was asked some years ago, ‘Captain, what was the greatest pleasure you ever had?’ After a little pause he replied: ‘When we were upon our march in Ireland, in a very hot day, I called at a cabin on the road, and desired a little water. The woman brought me a cup of milk. I gave her a piece of silver; and the joy that poor creature expressed gave me the greatest pleasure I ever had in my life.’

Would this have belonged to an oral tradition? No literary source has yet been located.

Now if the doing good gave so much pleasure to one who acted merely from natural generosity, how much more must it give to one who does it on a nobler principle, the joint love of God and his neighbour? It remains, that the doing all which religion requires will not lessen, but immensely increase our happiness.

66. ‘Perhaps this also may be allowed. But religion implies, according to the Christian account, not only doing but suffering. And how can suffering be consistent with happiness?’ Perfectly well. Many centuries ago it was remarked by St. Chrysostom: ‘The Christian has his sorrows as well as his joys; but his sorrow is sweeter than joy.’

Cf. Chrysostom, Homily XVIII, §8 (NPNF, II, IX.461). See also, Kempis, Imitation, III.xxx.

He may accidentally suffer loss, poverty, pain; but in all these things he is more than conqueror:

See Rom. 8:37.

he can testify,

Labour is rest, and pain is sweet,

While thou, my God, art here.

Cf. John and Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740), p. 127 (Poet. Wks., I.304). See No. 52, The Reformation of Manners, III.7 and n.

03:192He can say: ‘The Lord gave; the Lord taketh away: blessed be the name of the Lord!’

Cf. Job 1:21.

He must suffer more or less reproach; for ‘the servant is not above his master;’

Cf. Matt. 10:24.

but so much the more does the Spirit of glory and of Christ rest upon him.

See 1 Pet. 4:14.

Yea, love itself will on several occasions be the source of suffering: the love of God will frequently produce

... the pleasing smart,

The meltings of a broken heart.

Charles Wesley, ‘The Invitation’, in Hymns on the Great Festivals (1746), p. 46 (Poet. Wks., V.64). For other lines from this hymn, cf. Nos. 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’, §12; and 123, ‘On Knowing Christ after the Flesh’, §12.

And the love of our neighbour will give rise to sympathizing sorrow: it will lead us to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction,

Jas. 1:27.

to be tenderly concerned for the distressed, and ‘to mix our pitying tear with those that weep’.

π; but cf. Pope, ‘Eloise to Abelard’, l. 22 (‘And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep’) and a line from ‘The Rape of the Lock’, Canto V.1 (‘…the pitying audience melt in tears’).

But may we not well say, these are ‘tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heaven’?

Pope, ‘Eloise to Abelard’, l. 214.

So far then are all these sufferings from either preventing or lessening our happiness, that they greatly contribute thereto, and indeed constitute no inconsiderable part of it. So that upon the whole there cannot be a more false supposition than that a life of religion is a life of misery; seeing true religion, whether considered in its nature or its fruits, is true and solid happiness.

7. The man who chooses to gain the world by the loss of his soul supposes, secondly, that a life of wickedness is a life of happiness! That wickedness is happiness! Even an old heathen poet could have taught him better. Even Juvenal discovered,

“Nemo malus felix

Juvenal, Satires, iv.8; see No. 45, ‘The New Birth’, III.3 and n.

—”

no wicked man is happy! And how expressly does God himself declare, ‘There is no peace to the wicked’

Isa. 57:21.

—no peace of mind; and without this there can be no happiness.

But not to avail ourselves of authority, let us weigh the thing in 03:193the balance of reason.

The obverse of ‘the balance of the sanctuary’; cf. No. 10, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’, II.8 and n. See also No. 147, ‘Wiser than the Children of Light’, III.2.

I ask, ‘What can make a wicked man happy?’ You answer, ‘He has “gained the whole world”.’ We allow it; and what does this imply? He has gained all that gratifies the senses: in particular, all that can please the taste, all the delicacies of meat and drink. True; but can eating and drinking make a man happy? They never did yet; and certain it is they never will. This is too coarse food for an immortal spirit. But suppose it did give him a poor kind of happiness during those moments wherein he was swallowing, what will he do with the residue of his time?

Cf. No. 50, ‘The Use of Money’, I.7 and n.

Will it not hang heavy upon his hands? Will he not groan under many a tedious hour, and think swift-winged time flies too slow? If he is not fully employed, will he not frequently complain of lowness of spirits?—an unmeaning expression, which the miserable physician usually no more understands than his miserable patient. We know there are such things as nervous disorders. But we know likewise that what is commonly called ‘nervous lowness’ is a secret reproof from God, a kind of consciousness that we are not in our place; that we are not as God would have us to be; we are unhinged from our proper centre.

Cf. No. 79, ‘On Dissipation’, §6 and n.

88. To remove, or at least soothe, this strange uneasiness, let him add the pleasures of imagination.

Cf. No. 44, Original Sin, II.10 and n.

Let him bedaub himself with silver and gold, and adorn himself with all the colours of the rainbow. Let him build splendid palaces, and furnish them in the most elegant as well as costly manner. Let him lay out walks and gardens, beautified with all that nature and art can afford. And how long will these give him pleasure? Only as long as they are new. As soon as ever the novelty is gone, the pleasure is gone also. After he has surveyed them a few months, or years, they give him no more satisfaction. The man who is saving his soul has the advantage of him in this very respect. For he can say:

In the pleasures the rich man’s possessions display,

Unenvied I challenge my part;

While every fair object my eye can survey,

Contributes to gladden my heart.

Cf. Thomas Fitzgerald, ‘An Ode’, st. 4, Poems (1733), pp. 12-13; see also John Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), II.142.

903:1949. ‘However, he has yet another resource: applause, glory. And will not this make him happy?’ It will not; for he cannot be applauded by all men; no man ever was. Some will praise; perhaps many, but not all. It is certain some will blame; and he that is fond of applause will feel more pain from the censure of one than pleasure from the praise of many. So that whoever seeks happiness in applause will infallibly be disappointed, and will find, upon the whole of the account, abundantly more pain than pleasure.

1010. But to bring the matter to a short issue. Let us take an instance of one who had gained more of this world than probably any man alive, unless he be a sovereign prince. But did all he had gained make him happy? Answer for thyself. Then said Haman, ‘Yet all this profiteth me nothing, while I see Mordecai sitting in the gate.’

Cf. Esther 5:13.

Poor Haman! One unholy temper, whether pride, envy, jealousy, or revenge, gave him more pain, more vexation of spirit, than all the world could give pleasure. And so it must be in the nature of things; for all unholy tempers are unhappy tempers. Ambition, covetousness, vanity, inordinate affection, malice, revengefulness, carry their own punishment with them, and avenge themselves on the soul wherein they dwell. Indeed what are these, more especially when they are combined with an awakened conscience, but the dogs of hell

Cf. No. 15, The Great Assize, III.1 and n.

already gnawing the soul, forbidding happiness to approach! Did not even the heathens see this? What else means their fable of Tityus, chained to a rock with a vulture continually tearing up his breast and feeding upon his liver?

Homer, Odyssey, xi.576-81; cf. No. 73, ‘Of Hell’, II.2 and n.

Quid rides? Why do you smile? Says the poet:

Mutate nomine, de te

Fabula narratur.

Cf. Horace, Satires, I.i.68-70: ‘Tantalus, racked by thirst, reaches for the streams flowing by his lips. But why do you laugh at this? Change but the name and this tale can be told of you.’ Cf. No. 87, ‘The Danger of Riches’, I.6.

It is another name: but thou art the man! Lust, foolish desire, envy, malice, or anger, is now tearing thy breast: love of money, or of praise, hatred, or revenge, is now feeding on thy poor spirit. Such happiness is in vice! So vain is the supposition that a life of wickedness is a life of happiness!

A negative of Wesley’s correlation of holiness and happiness; cf. I.3 above, and No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.2 and n.

1103:19511. But he makes a third supposition, that he shall certainly live forty or fifty or threescore years. Do you depend upon this? On living threescore years? Who told you that you should? It is no other than the enemy of God and man: it is the murderer of souls. Believe him not: he was a liar from the beginning;

See John 8:44.

from the beginning of his rebellion against God. He is eminently a liar in this; for he would not give you life if he could. Would God permit, he would make sure work, and just now hurry you to his own place. And he cannot give you life if he would: the breath of man is not in his hands. He is not the disposer of life and death—that power belongs to the Most High. It is possible, indeed, God may, on some occasions, permit him to inflict death. I do not know but it was an evil angel who smote an hundred fourscore and five thousand Assyrians in one night;

See 2 Kgs. 19:35; Isa. 37:36.

and the fine lines of our poet are as applicable to an evil as to a good spirit:

So when an angel, by divine command,

Hurls death and terror o’er a guilty land—

He, pleased th’ Almighty’s order to perform,

Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

Cf. Addison, ‘The Campaign’, 286-91:

So when an angel, by divine command

With rising tempests shakes the guilty land,

Such as of late o’er pale Britannia passed,

Calm and serene he drives the furious blasts;

And, pleased th’ Almighty’s order to perform,

Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

This was written as part of the celebration of the Duke of Marlborough’s triumphal return to London (Dec. 21, 1704) after his victory at Blenheim (Aug. 13, 1704).

But though Satan may sometimes inflict death, I know not that he could ever give life. It was one of his most faithful servants that shrieked out some years ago: ‘A week’s life! A week’s life! Thirty thousand pounds for a week’s life!’

Was this an oral tradition about someone such as Lord Chesterfield (d. 1773)? Later, Wesley tells a similar story about Voltaire’s death (cf. JWJ, Sept. 13, 1778); see also his letter of Jan. 4, 1779, to an unidentified man. In AM (1783), VI.645, Wesley printed the account of Voltaire’s death which he had recently read in the Gent’s Mag. (Nov. 1782), LII.529.

But he could not purchase a day’s life. That night God required his soul of him! And how soon may he require it of you? Are you sure of living threescore years? 03:196Are you sure of living one year? One month? One week? One day? O make haste to live! Surely the man that may die tonight, should live today.

1212. So absurd are all the suppositions made by him who gains the world and loses his soul! But let us for a moment imagine that religion is misery, that wickedness is happiness, and that he shall certainly live threescore years; and still I would ask, ‘What is he profited if he gain the whole world for threescore years, and then lose his soul eternally?’

Can such a choice be made by any that considers what eternity is? Philip Melanchthon, the most learned of all the German reformers, gives the following relation. (I pass no judgment upon it, but set it down nearly in his own words.) ‘When I was at Würtemberg, as I was walking out one summer evening with several of my fellow-students, we heard an uncommon singing, and following the sound saw a bird of an uncommon figure. One stepping up asked, “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what art thou?” It answered, “I am a damned spirit;” and in vanishing away pronounced these words: “O eternity, eternity! Who can tell the length of eternity!”’

Wesley’s misattribution of this story to Melanchthon himself is interesting. Actually, it was one of Melanchthon’s published anecdotes about a reported incident from the Council of Basel (not Würtemberg) concerning a group of learned members strolling together one evening and being astonished by the sound of a speaking bird. One of the bolder men (animosior) accosted the bird with the demand: ‘I adjure you, by the Son of God…, tell me who you are?’ Whereupon the bird responded in Latin: ‘I am a damned spirit, and I have been stationed here as my destiny until the last days.’ Then he flew away, calling out, in German, ‘Eternity, eternity, eternity! How long is eternity.’ The original appears in Melanchthon’s Historiae Quaedam Recitatae Inter Publicas Lectiones, CXLIII, in Opera (Brunsvigae, 1854), Corpus Reformatorum, 20:554-55: ‘In concilia Basiliensi quidam docti viri (cum nunc ibi essent) deambulationis gratia exiverunt in proximum nemus; audiunt ibi suavissime canentem aviculam et inusitatos sonos edentem; mirantur, quid sit. Ibi unus inter illos animosior, qui suspicatus est non esse veram avem, accessit et alloquitur: Adiuro te, inquit, per filium Dei, Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, ut dicas mihi, qui sis. Respondit: Ego sum damnatus spiritus, et est mihi hos domicilium destinatum usque ad novissimum diem. Postea avolavit et clamavit: EWIG EWIG EWIG WIE LANG IST DAS! Isti perterrefacti domini iverunt et coeperunt aegrotare ex consternatione, et aliqui etiam mortui sunt.’

And how soon will this be the language of him who sold his soul for threescore years’ pleasure!

Cf. No. 142, ‘The Wisdom of Winning Souls’, II.

How soon will he cry out, ‘O eternity, eternity! Who can tell the length of eternity!’

1313. In how striking a manner is this illustrated by one of the ancient fathers! ‘Supposing there were a ball of sand as big as the whole earth. Suppose a grain of this to be annihilated in a thousand years. Which would be more eligible, to be happy while 03:197this ball was wasting away at the rate of one grain in a thousand years, and miserable ever after? Or to be miserable while it was wasting away at that proportion, and happy ever after?’

Cyprian: see No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §10 and n.

A wise man, it is certain, could not pause one moment upon the choice; seeing all the time wherein this ball would be wasting away bears infinitely less proportion to eternity than a drop of water to the whole ocean, or a grain of sand to the whole mass. Allowing then that a life of religion were a life of misery, that a life of wickedness were a life of happiness, and that a man were assured of enjoying that happiness for the term of threescore years; yet what would he be profited if he were then to be miserable to all eternity?

1414. But it has been proved that the case is quite otherwise, that religion is happiness, that wickedness is misery, and that no man is assured of living threescore days: and if so, is there any fool, any madman

No. 4, Scriptural Christianity, IV.2 and n.

under heaven, who can be compared to him that casts away his own soul, though it were to gain the whole world? For what is the real state of the case? What is the choice which God proposes to his creatures? It is not: ‘Will you be happy threescore years, and then miserable for ever; or, will you be miserable threescore years, and then happy for ever?’ It is not: ‘Will you have first a temporary heaven, and then hell eternal; or, will you have first a temporary hell, and then heaven eternal?’ But it is simply this: Will you be miserable threescore years, and miserable ever after; or, will you be happy threescore years, and happy ever after? Will you have a foretaste of heaven now, and then heaven for ever; or will you have a foretaste of hell now and then hell for ever? Will you have two hells, or two heavens?

1515. One would think there needed no great sagacity to answer this question. And this is the very question which I now propose to you in the name of God. Will you be happy here and hereafter—in the world that now is, and in that which is to come? Or will you be miserable here and hereafter, in time and in eternity? What is your choice? Let there be no delay: now take one or the other. I take heaven and earth to record this day that I set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. O choose life!

See Deut. 30:19.

The life of peace and love now; the life of glory for ever. By the grace of God now choose that better part, which shall never be taken from you.

See Luke 10:42.

And having once fixed your choice, never draw 03:198back; adhere to it at all events. Go on in the name of the Lord whom ye have chosen, and in the power of his might!

Eph. 6:10.

In spite of all opposition, from nature, from the world, from all the powers of darkness, still fight the good fight of faith, and lay hold on eternal life!

1 Tim. 6:12.

And then there is laid up for you a crown, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give you at that day!

See 2 Tim. 4:8.

Bristol, Sept. 30, 1775

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