LUST -- THE SLAVERY OF SIN
“The wages of sin is death.” — Rom.
6: 23.
From the beginning of the world, sin and Satan have made wretched, helpless slaves of innumerable members of the human
family. Bound in the chains of
guilt, unable to move to work out their glorious destiny, blind and deaf
to the true beauties of God’s
world and serving him whose servants they have made themselves in a hundred degrading offices; bound perhaps in the bonds of evil habits;
bound sometimes forever in the dungeon of hell, where all hope is left behind, where no order but eternal horror abides.
If
this be true, as it undoubtedly is, of all sin, it is especially true of sins
of lust. No sin among the long category which are the links
that chain men to death, binds them more firmly, is more difficult to cast off
by repentance. None becomes more strong as it is worn longer, none sinks the wretched body and soul more deep in degradation, none is a more probable cause of eternal death. No sin in the long
record of man’s crimes has left such a history of shame
and sorrow, of degradation and disgrace, of rack and ruin, of death
and probable damnation, as the sins of the flesh.
Wars have been waged,
nations been wiped from the face of the earth, schisms have arisen and heresies taken
their origin in it. Treachery in
its most revolting forms, even pestilence and other natural calamities
have been the consequences of
the indulgence of this passion. Commentators
hold, and Holy Writ seems to imply, that it was through the
lustful loves of the sons of God with the daughters of men that “all
flesh had corrupted its way” in the time of Noah. Wherefore God said: “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face
of the earth, from man even to the beasts, from the creeping
thing even to the fowls of the
air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” The fearful punishment of the deluge was therefore a mark of God’s resentment against lust. (Gen. 6.)
The
lascivious
conduct common among the men of
Sodom and Gomorrha was the cause of the visitation of God’s
wrath in a rain of fire
and brimstone, which has left the very sites of those cities undistinguishable even to the searching eye of modern
research. (Gen. 19.) The unnatural lust of the men of Gabaa, of the tribe of Benjamin,
caused a war in which all the men
of that tribe were slain. (Judg. 20). The sons of Juda were struck
dead (Gen. 9), Joseph was cast into prison (Gen. 39), Samson was betrayed to
his enemies (Judg. 16), Ammon, the son of David, was killed (2 Kings 13), and all in consequence of unbridled
lust. David himself became guilty of adultery and
murder and brought pestilence upon a whole people, and all through an immodest
glance. Solomon departed from the service of God and prepared the way
for the division of his
people, when he loved strange women. (3 Kings II.)
Profane history teaches
the same lesson. The sinful
desires of Paris brought about the Trojan war and the destruction
of “proud
Ilium.” Those of Cleopatra set the Roman world of her day in arms. The mistresses of French kings kept Europe in a
deluge of blood for many years. It is a familiar
saying that heresy and schism usually end like comedies in
a marriage, and it might be added in the marriage
of someone, prince or priest, who had no right to marry. Instances in point
are well known. Woes incalculable have afflicted the human
family either in the natural course of events or as the avenging
act of the Almighty upon this vice.
The
injury
it works to individuals is not less fearfully striking; injury to body and
soul, to intellect and will, and worst of all,
eternal death. The unclean spirit when, through the habit of this sin, he is permitted to return again and again to the soul, brings with him many other spirits more wicked
than himself and, entering in, they dwell there.
They take possession, forcible and complete, of the temple
of the Holy Ghost which has been given up to them
by its unfaithful guardian. The poets have imagined,
and ruder ages may perhaps have seen, torture by binding the body of the culprit to a decomposing
corpse. No torment
could be more horrible. And no figure could be more apt to represent the soul which is chained for life
and for eternity to a body consumed with the fires of lust, corrupt with the rottenness of this most degrading of vices.
The
body does not escape punishment even in
this world. Physicians know, hospitals could testify, our
very newspapers bear daily witness to the misery,
the desperation of
the victims of its
horrors. So revolting are the details
of this retribution, that
while the contemplation of
this living death may be salutary even as the
meditations of holy
Job as he sat upon his dunghill and thought upon death, to speak of
them at length would be unbecoming. Let us not, however,
neglect to make for ourselves a covenant as holy Job did, not to yield the
slightest way to these temptations. The
mind also is enchained and the
glorious power of thought,
by which man is distinguished from the beasts,
becomes enfeebled, bestialized. Bound to a body of
death it can scarcely be said to reason, but is guided like
the beasts by the
lowest instincts. It becomes blinded to the
teachings of faith.
The holy Fathers, accurate
observers of all things in
the spiritual life of
man, unanimously attest that loss of
faith is the usual
result of this vice.
The
intellect becomes incapable of
fulfilling any of its
duties properly. Its products (witness some modern erotic writers) are more
like the wailings of
the unclean spirit within them than the
coherent utterances of a
self-respecting, thinking being. At last it sinks altogether under the
weight of its
servitude, madness ensues, such madness as might not unreasonably be supposed
to be obsession by an impure spirit, and the intellect
is, to all intents, dead. The will,
too, becomes enfeebled. It loses all relish for what is good. Modesty, purity,
justice, charity, hope, faith itself, are crushed out by the
python folds of the master
of the sinner. The
will becomes no longer
able to resist temptation. It is allured instead of
repelled, as it should be, by all that is corrupt, sinful,
and death-dealing. The eyes of
the old serpent fascinate it, and in
becoming his willing slave it embraces its death. And then
comes the parting of
soul and body.
When
the body is debilitated and
the powers of
the soul reduced to their lowest, dissolution
cannot be far off. And oh, the terrors
of the death-bed—if, indeed,
he be allowed a bed to die upon–of the victim
of lust. Of
all the vices,
there is none which produces more or greater varieties of
despair. From the hard,
dull unconsciousness of danger, which seems to
court rather than fear the eternal
abode with sin, suffering and Satan, to
the raving terror of
him who knows and dreads his fate, without hope of
escaping it. And after death—judgment; and then eternal
death, the wages of
sin. Death unending, death to God, death to all
happiness, death living like the vulture
of Prometheus upon the
sinner's misery. A dead soul chained to a body of
death, confined with all the
horrors of entombment
with hundreds of other corpses.
O, may He Who rose from the dead
deliver us from the body of this
death. May Mary Immaculate, and John the Pure, may
all the holy choir of virgins,
and that bright band who follow the Lamb
wheresoever He goeth, intercede for us and keep us from this death. May they
obtain for us from the Most Pure the strength to resist temptation; to suffer, as the holy martyrs Agatha, Agnes, and Lucy suffered, rather
than yield to the tempter; to resist by violence,
even to blood, as many holy monks and hermits resisted, rather than yield even in thought. May Magdalen, Augustine, and all the holy penitents who have felt the
sting of the flesh, and, having yielded,
gained grace to rise against their tyrant, and casting off their bonds, found
safety in the wounds of Christ,
obtain of Him for those who have unhappily fallen
into this slavery the rending of
the chains of the captive, and restoration
from that service whose wage is death to the liberty
of the children of God.
~~The American Ecclesiastical Review, Vol. 30(3), 1904.
~~The American Ecclesiastical Review, Vol. 30(3), 1904.
