'For, what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and
end of this world, and then to all eternity, where they cease not saying,
To Him who loved us, Amen!
Chapter 13 - MR. PENNY-WISE-AND-POUND-FOOLISH, AND MR. GET-
I'-THE-HUNDRED-AND-LOSE-I'-THE-SHIRE
'For, what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and
lose his own soul?' - Our Lord.
This whole world is the penny, and our own souls are the pound.
This whole world is the hundred, while heaven itself is the shire. And
the question this evening is, Are we wise in the penny and foolish in
the pound? And, are we getting in the hundred and losing in the shire?
Well, then, to begin at the beginning, we are already begun to be
penny-wise and pound-foolish with our children when we are so
particular with them about their saying their little prayers night and
morning, while all the time we are so inattentive and so indolent to
explain to them how they are to pray, what they are to pray for, and
how they are to wait and how long they are to wait for the things they
pray for. Then, again, we are penny-wise and pound-foolish with our
children when we train them up into all the proprieties and etiquettes
of family and social life, and at the same time pay so little attention to
their inward life of opening thought and quickening desire and
awakening passion. When we are so eager also for our children to be
great with great people, without much regard to the moral and
religious character of those great people, then again we are like a man
who may be wise for a penny, but is certainly a fool for a pound. When
we prefer the gay and the fashionable world to the intellectual, the
religious, and the philanthropical world for our children, then we lose
both the penny and the pound as well.
Almost as much as we do when we accept the penny of wealth
and station and so-called connection for a son or a daughter, in room
of the pound of character, and intelligence, and personal religion.
Then, again, even in our own religious life we are ourselves often and
notoriously wise in the penny and foolish in the pound. As, for
instance, when we are so scrupulous and so conscientious about
forms and ceremonies, about times and places, and so on. In short, the
whole ritual that has risen up around spiritual religion in all our
churches, from that of the Pope himself out to that of George Fox - it is
all the penny rather than the pound. This rite and that ceremony; this
habit and that tradition; this ancient and long-established usage, as
well as that new departure and that threatened innovation; - it is all,
at its best, always the penny and never the pound. Satan busied me about the lesser matters of religion, says James Fraser of Brea, and
made me neglect the more substantial points. He made me tithe to
God my mint, and my anise and my cummin, and many other of my
herbs, to my all but complete neglect of justice and mercy and faith
and love. Whether there are any of the things that Brea would call
mint and anise and cummin that are taking up too much of the time of
our controversially-minded men in all our churches, highland and
lowland, to-day is a matter for humbling thought. Labour, my
brethren, for yourselves, at any rate, to get yourselves into that sane
and sober habit of mind that instantly and instinctively puts all mint
and all cummin of all kinds into the second place, and all the weightier
matters, both of law and of gospel, into the first place. I wasted myself
on too nice points, laments Brea in his deep, honest, clear-eyed
autobiography. I did not proportion my religious things aright. The
laird of Brea does not say in as many words that he was wise in the
penny and foolish in the pound, but that is exactly what he means.
Then, again, the narrowness, the partiality, the sickliness, and the
squeamishness of our consciences, - all that makes us to be too often
penny-wise and pound-foolish in our religious life. A well-instructed,
thoroughly wise, and well-balanced conscience is an immense
blessing to that man who has purchased such a conscience for himself.
There is an immense and a criminal waste of conscience that goes on
among some of our best Christian people through the want of light
and space, room, and breadth, and balance in their consciences. We
are all pestered with people every day who are full of all manner of
childish scrupulosity and sickly squeamishness in their ill-nourished,
ill-exercised consciences.
As long as a man's conscience is ignorant and weak and sickly it
will, it must, spend and waste itself on the pennyworths of religion
and' morals instead of the pounds. It will occupy and torture itself
with points and punctilios, jots and tittles, to the all but total oblivion,
and to the all but complete neglect, of the substance and the essence
of the Christian mind, the Christian heart, and the Christian character.
The washing of hands, of cups, and of pots, was all the conscience that
multitudes had in our Lord's day; and multitudes in our day scatter
and waste their consciences on the same things. A good man, an
otherwise good and admirable man, will absolutely ruin and destroy his conscience by points and scruples and traditions of men as fatally
as another will by a life of debauchery. Some old and decayed
ecclesiastical rubric; some absolutely indifferent form in public
worship; some small casuistical question about a creed or a
catechism; some too nice point of confessional interpretation; the
mint and anise and cummin of such matters will fill and inflame and
poison a man's mind and heart and conscience for months and for
years, to the total destruction of all that for which churches and creeds
exist; to the total suspense, if not the total and lasting destruction, of
sobriety of mind, balance and breadth of judgment, humility, charity,
and a hidden and a holy life. The penny of a perverted, partial, and
fanaticised conscience has swallowed up the pound of instruction, and
truth, and justice, and brotherly love.
'Nor is the man with the long name at all inferior to the other,'
said Lucifer, in laying his infernal plot against the peace and
prosperity of Mansoul. Now, the man with the long name was just Mr.
Get-i'-the-hundred-and-lose-i'-the-shire. A hundred in the old county
geography of England was a political subdivision of a shire, in which
five score freemen lived with their freeborn families. A county or a
shire was described and enumerated by the poll-sheriff of that day as
containing so many enfranchised hundreds; and the total number of
hundreds made up the political unity of the shire. To this day we still
hear from time to time of the 'Chiltern Hundreds,' which is a division
of Buckinghamshire that belongs, along with its political franchise, to
the Crown, and which is utilised for Crown purposes at certain
political emergencies. This proverb, then, to get i' the hundred and
lose i' the shire, is now quite plain to us. You might canvass so as to get
a hundred, several hundreds, many hundreds on your side, and yet
you might lose when it came to counting up the whole shire. You
might possess yourself of a hundred or two and yet be poor compared
with him who possessed the whole shire. And then the proverb has
been preserved out of the old political life of England, and has been
moralised and spiritualised to us in the Holy War. And thus after to-
night we shall always call this shrewd proverb to mind when we are
tempted to take a part at the risk of the whole; to receive this world at
the loss of the next world; or, as our Lord has it, to gain the whole
world and to lose our own soul. Lot's choice of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Esau's purchase of the mess of pottage in the Old Testament; and
then Judas's thirty pieces of silver, and Ananias and Sapphira's part of
the price in the New Testament, are all so many well-known instances
of getting in the hundred and losing in the shire. And not Esau's and
Lot's only, but our own lives also have been full up to to-day of the
same fatal transaction.
This house, as our Lord again has it, this farm, this merchandise,
this shop, this office, this salary, this honour, this home - all this on the
one hand, and then our Lord Himself, His call, His cause, His Church,
with everlasting life in the other - when it is set down before us in
black and white in that way, the transaction, the proposal, the choice is
preposterous, is insane, is absolutely impossible. But preposterous,
insane, absolutely impossible, and all, there it is, in our own lives, in
the lives of our sons and daughters, and in the lives of multitudes of
other men and other men's sons and daughters besides ours. Every
day you will be taken in, and you will stand by and see other men
taken in with the present penny for the future pound: and with the
poor pelting hundred under your eye for the full, far-extending, and
ever-enriching shire. Lucifer is always abroad pressing on us in his
malice the penny on the spot, for the pound which he keeps out of
sight; he dazzles our eyes with the gain of the hundred till we gnash
our teeth at the loss of the shire.
'He hath in sooth good cause for endless grief,
Who, for the love of thing that lasteth not,
Despoils himself for ever of THAT LOVE.'
'What also if we join with those two another two of ours, Mr.
Sweet-world and Mr. Present-good, namely, for they are two men full
of civility and cunning. Let these engage in this business for us, and let
Mansoul be taken up with much business, and if possible with much
pleasure, and this is the way to get ground of them. Let us but cumber
and occupy and amuse Mansoul sufficiently, and they will make their
castle a warehouse for goods instead of a garrison for men of war.'
This diabolical advice was highly applauded all through hell till all the
lesser devils, while setting themselves to carry it out, gnashed their
teeth with envy and malice at Lucifer for having thought of this
masterpiece and for having had it received with such loud
acclamation. 'Only get them,' so went on that so able, so well-envied, and so well-hated devil, 'let us only get those fribble sinners for a
night at a time to forget their misery. And it will not cost us much to
do that. Only let us offer them in one another's houses a supper, a
dance, a pipe, a newspaper full of their own shame, a tale full of their
own folly, a silly song, and He who loved them with an everlasting love
will soon see of the travail of His soul in them!' Yes, my fellow-sinners,
Lucifer and his infernal crew know us and despise us and entrap us at
very little trouble, till He who travailed for us on the tree covers His
face in heaven and weeps over us. As long as we remember our
misery, all the mind, and all the malice, and all the sleeplessness in
hell cannot touch a hair of our head. But when by any emissary and
opportunity either from earth around us or from hell beneath us we
for another night forget our misery, it is all over with us. And yet, to
tell the truth, we never can quite forget our misery. We are too
miserable ever to forget our misery. In the full steam of Lucifer's best-
spread supper, amid the shouts of laughter and the clapping of hands,
and all the outward appearance of a complete forgetfulness of our
misery, yet it is not so. It is far from being so. Our misery is far too
deep-seated for all the devil's drugs. Only, to give Lucifer his due, we
do sometimes, under him, so get out of touch with the true
consolation for our misery that, night after night, through cumber,
through pursuit of pleasure, through the time being taken up with
these and other like things, we do so far forget our misery as to lie
down without dealing with it; but only to have it awaken us, and take
our arm as its own for another miserable day. Yes; though never
completely successful, yet this masterpiece of hell is sufficiently
successful for Satan's subtlest purposes; which are, not to make us
forget our misery, but to make us put it away from us at the natural
and proper hour for facing it and for dealing with it in the only proper
and successful way. But, wholly, any night, or even partially for a few
nights at a time, to forget our misery - no, with all thy subtlety of
intellect and with all thy hell-filled heart, O Lucifer, that is to us
impossible! Forget our misery! O devil of devils, no! Bless God, that
can never be with us! Our misery is too deep, too dreadful, too acute,
too all-consuming ever to be forgotten by us even for an hour. Our
misery is too terrible for thee, with all thy overthrown intellect and all
thy malice-filled heart, ever to understand! Didst thou for one
midnight hour taste it, and so understand it, then there would be the
same hope for thee that, I bless God, there still is for me!
Let us bend all our strength and all our wit to this, went on
Lucifer, to make their castle a warehouse instead of a garrison. Let us
set ourselves and all our allies, he explained to the duller-witted
among the devils, to make their hearts a shop, - some of them, you
know, are shopkeepers; a bank, - some of them are bankers; a farm, -
some of them are farmers; a study, - some of them are students; a
pulpit, - some of them like to preach; a table, - some of them are
gluttons; a drawing-room, - some of them are busybodies who forget
their own misery in retailing other people's misery from house to
house. Be wise as serpents, said the old serpent; attend, each several
fallen angel of you, to his own special charge. Study your man. Get to
the bottom of your man. Follow him about; never let him out of your
sight; be sure before you begin, be sure you have the joint in his
harness, the spot in his heel, the chink in his wall full in your eye. I do
not surely need to tell you not to scatter our snares for souls at
random, he went on. Give the minister his study Bible, the student his
classic, the merchant his ledger, the glutton his well-dressed dish and
his elect year of wine, the gossip her sweet secret, and the flirt her
fool. Study them till they are all naked and open to your sharp eyes.
Find out what best makes them forget even for one night their misery
and ply them with that. If I ever see that soul I have set thee over on
his knees on account of his misery I shall fling thee on the spot into
the bottomless pit. And if any of you shall anywhere discover a man -
and there are such men - a man who forgets his misery through
always thinking and speaking about it, only keep him in his pulpit, and