Simplicity

Self-deceit is perhaps the most uncomfortable and disquieting subject in the whole of spiritual theology. Why then should we speak of it? For that very reason. The spiritual life is a reality, by far the most real of all realities, because it is our intercourse with God on the most momentous of all interests. It cannot help being real, real with a reality which must often be felt as an important and inopportune yoke upon our frivolous nature. Yet if we are in earnest about saving our souls, and it would be fearful indeed not to be in earnest about such a matter, we should not look about in the spiritual life for smooth things and easy sayings, but for true things and sincere sayings. Some people pride themselves on their principle of getting out of the way of frightening things, and consider it the height of discretion to keep such matters at arm s length, and to be very solemnly severe upon books and preachers that profess to deal in them. Such persons are simply in sincere, and we must make no account of them. They are worth very little in the sight of God, and therefore their example is worth nothing to us. They must be judged after they die, and it is greatly to be suspected that the judgment will throw a somewhat disconsolate light over this eccentric discretion of theirs. On the whole the judgment is an exceedingly awkward time for finding out mistakes, particularly indiscreet discre tions, for many reasons which it is not- of consequence for us to go into, because not holding the opinions of these persons we are not likely to fall into their mis takes, whatever other mistakes may befall us.

We are very much in earnest with God. We desire to advance in His ways. So we make up our minds to grapple with this ugly subject of self-deceit, and take a very close view of it, believing that the unpleasant ope ration will be of the greatest service to our souls. Many souls have unquestionably been lost altogether by self-deceit. Many more have fallen far short of the pur poses of God upon them. In the case of all of us, numbers of graces have been wasted through not meeting with correspondence, and most frequently that want of correspondence has been attributable to self-deceit. A disease, from which almost everybody suffers, and whose consequences may easily be so ruinous, claims an honest investigation from those who desire to be honest both with God and self.

Untruthfulness is a very odious thing. It is the most offensive and provoking charge we can make against another. Men of honour consider that it is an imputation Avhich can only be washed out with blood; though what sort of honour this is, is perhaps difficult to say, and more difficult still to discern how blood cleans it when it has been stained. Anyhow it is unpleasant to shed the blood of a fellowereature, and to most men considerably more unpleasant to shed their own; and hence the determination to run this double risk shows how odious the charge of untruthfulness is to the hearts of men. But this is part of the world s self-deceit, that is, of everybody s self-deceit. We would fain persuade ourselves that untruthfulness is very rare. Else why¹ should we murder our companion merely for attributing to us something very common? Either we have persuaded ourselves that it is not very common, or we are so bent on persuading ourselves of it, that we have made up our minds to shoot any man who raises the question in oar own case. Duelling however is manifestly not a counsel of perfection. So we want nothing more of it than this proof how odious the charge of untruthfulness is to the human heart.

But unfortunately this untruthfulness is not rare. It is the commonest of all miseries. It is as universal as the consequences of the fall. A. truthful man is the rarest of all phenomena. Perhaps hardly any of us have ever seen one. It is far from unlikely that we have not. Thorough truthfulness is undoubtedly the most infrequent of graces. The grace of terrific auste rities and bodily macerations, which has characterized some of the saints, the grace to love suffering, the grace of extasy, the grace of martyrdom, all these are commoner graces than that of thorough truthfulness. The fact is, we are all of us thoroughly untruthful, those of us most so who think ourselves least so, those of us least so who think oursalves most so. The first step towards being truthful is the knowledge that we are far from it; for out of that knowledge follows the hatred, the determination, and the aim, which bear us on towards truthfulness. We have no idea how untruthful we are, until we come to examine ourselves. We must not therefore be content with a general admission of guilt: but we must go into ourselves, and ferret out the whole of the misery and coiTuption. It is w^orth while spending two-thirds of our life in doing this work alone, trying to be less of liars than we are. Rude words! yet not un friendly ones, as the issue will show.

It is of little use to plunge into this repulsive subject of self-deceit, unless we are conscious -to ourselves of a manly determination to make a thorough work of it. Whoever has not got that, had better read no further, or else he will mistake what is said. A man always makes a mistake, if he applies to himself what is meant for another. It is to be feared there is a great deal of promiscuous physicking of ourselves, after our neigh bour s prescriptions, in the spiritual life. It is not less ruinous to the constitution of the soul, than a similar practice would be to the constitution of the body. Whatever is said here is meant only for honest people; to dishonest persons it will mean something quite different, and be by no means beneficial. Furthermore, it is of little use to plunge into this repulsive subject of self-deceit, unless we take up, as a standard or ideal, some notion, even though it be a negative one, of Christian simplicity. The acquisition then of this inadequate idea of Christian simplicity shall be our first occupation, and we will try to obtain it by an analysis of its impediments.

Christian simplicity, or holy truthfulness, consists in three things, each of which is a good deal rarer than a black swan is out of Australia. It requires, first, that we be truthful with ourselves, secondly, that we be truthful with others, and thirdly that we be truthful with God.

There are certain ways of becoming truthful with self, which are at once infallible and indispensable. We shall see if we have acquired the virtue by seeing if we have taken the means to acquire it. The whole inward corruption of our nature is neither more nor less than the raw material of self-deceit. The malignity of our corruption is in its falsehood; and the person we are most interested to deceive is self. "With what success we accomplish this, the whole world can testify. Xow, if we are in earnest in undeceiving ourselves, we must be taking real pains to acquire selfknowledge. Unless we know ourselves, and, as far as ma j be, the ins and outs of our very complicated and inconsistent nature, we are clearly in no position to act truly. But it is not easy to know ourselves. On the contrary it is the hardest thing in the world. Are we really then taking pains to acquire a knowledge of self? Are we honest in our examinations of conscience? Are we punctual in them? We may fairly suppose there are not many men trying to save their souls, of whose daily regularities a brief examination of conscience is not one.

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IS~ow what is our regularity in this respect, and our accuracy, and our diligence, and our real view of its importance? If we are not taking pains to know ourselves, we may be quite sure we are not truthful with self. We can hardly be taking pains without knowing it; for this unfortunately is a matter in which the pains are very unpleasant, and it is only wounded men in battle who are sometimes unconscious of unpleasant things.

It is of so much consequence to know ourselves, where religion is concerned, that if we not only do not take any pains after selfknowledge, but even rather get out of its way, we can hardly blind ourselves to the fact that we are not in earnest about our souls. But who gets out of the way of selfknowledge? It is plain enough that many take little pains about it. Idleness is the most natural thing in the world. But who gets out of the way of it, that is, takes pains to remain in ignorance about himself? Nearly every one. There is scarcely a man or woman on their way, as they think, to holiness, who does not habitually do this, and in more ways than one. Here is one way. People go on, -as if on purpose, in a dim, misty, confused manner. They, suspect, perhaps, that they do not prepare for confession as carefully as they ought to do. They have a vague feeling that there is neither enough examination, nor enough pains about contrition, and that the exuberant graces of the sacrament are certainly realized in the most partial way, and the sacrament itself perhaps risked. They are always intending to look into the matter, and never doing it. Sometime dr other they will, but somehow or other they never can do it today. They are not sure of the evil. The removal of it therefore is not a plain duty. For perhaps after all, on enquiry, it may be found there is nothing to remove. By shirking the self knowledge, they keep at arm s length the obviousness of the duty; so that they seem to gain by thus defrauding themselves. "Now almost every one has some such woful uncertainty resting on his conscience about some part of his conduct, most often those parts of his conduct which have to do with the practices and observances of the spiritual life, such as prayer, mortification, sacraments, and the like. Thus a man has a veiled muffled feeling, that he is neg lecting bodily mortification to such an extent as to be very unsafe for his soul. Yet he will not call this feeling to account, and unmuffle it, and see what it is worth. He could do this very easily. See how any one else could do it for him! Are you all right about bodily mortifications? " I do not feel quite sure about them." True! but it is not exactly a matter to have any doubt about. "Why! it is a long question! there is a great deal to be said." Certainly! there is a good deal to be said about most questions: but why not say it? " Not prepared just now." Well! but is it a matter which will wait? Either you are leading a mortified life or you are not. Five minutes honest self-inspection will tell you at once: and if not, why you can settle forth with as to the amount of change you must make in your present softness, and then go on. But no! this is a style of spiritual direction far too matter-of-fact for most of us. Indeed we are by no means clear that it is not rude and unfeeling. We cannot have the plasters pulled off our wounds in this way. There is a certain sort of comfort in a fog, especially for shy men. They are less visible. So we go on with half a dozen grave matters resting unsettled and misty and unargued, in a kind of unspeakably slow interior court of chancery. But how with all this, we can think ourselves true or manful it is not quite easy to see. It is a sad annoyance when others find us out; for it mostly lowers their opinion of us; but the saddest annoyance of all, to our poor nature, is to find ourselves out; for, if we lose self s good opinion, we are forlorn indeed! The worst of it is, that there is a time and a place when and where detection is inevitable. A wise option is that which chooses the less disagreeable rather than the more disagreeable.

Here is another way in which people are dishonest with themselves, either from the dislike of exertion, or from a suspicion that investigation will compel them to commit themselves to God, or definitely deny Him something, both of which they are equally anxious to avoid. It is quite common for men to persist in a course of action, without being sure of their motives, even with an indistinct suspicion that their motives are not adequate or trustworthy. This is peculiarly the case where charity may possibly be concerned. There are many instances, in which, from what we know of ourselves, it is probable beforehand that some amount of jealousy, dislike, rivalry, triumph, or other unworthiness may mingle with our motives, and thus not only vitiate a. whole series of actions, but even be superinducing a new habit of uncharitableness, or strengthening an old one, and also hindering all other growths of grace in the soul, so lonjr as this canker is allowed to remain. The same may be said of the works of mercy and charitable enterprises in which we engage. If we have the slightest reason to distrust our motives, the slightest reason to doubt whether the glory of God, if not unmingled, be at least uppermost in our hearts, we ought resolutely to scrutinize our motives, not merely because of the ruinous loss of merit which we are incurring, but also because of the positive damage done to our soul, and the destruction of works in it, which former operations of grace have constructed.

Do we make our faults a subject of sober and mature reflection? There are times certainly when it is not well to do this, times of temptation, discouragement, and scruple, when our spiritual guides would wisely prohibit our doing so. But on the whole must it not be a necessary part of every good man s religious occupa tions? If our great object is to save our souls, if our faults are the sole impediments to this, if moreover they are subtle, false-spoken, apt to disguise themselves, expert at putting on the semblance of good, if further more they come to life again when they have been killed, and that by the most clever and unexpected resurrections, and that they have such vitality that some of them, certain forms of selfwill to wit, can never be put to death even by the saints, if all these ifs are true, we shall surely be in bad case if the mature consideration of our faults is not one of the steadiest and most consistent businesses which we transact in the spiritual life. But is it not the fashion for it appears that now-a-days we may save our souls fashionably or the reverse to talk as if everybody was scrupulous, sensitive of conscience, delicately self-suspicious, and distressingly susceptible of divine inspirations, and therefore entitled to the utmost lax limits, which the old theologians, with a kind of edifying and grave illhumour, hardly consented to allow to souls miserably diseased with an exaggerated scrupulosity? Thus ladies, who go to balls, theatres, gay watering-places, and the like, who deny themselves none of the personal luxuries and comforts of the nineteenth century, who find piety very much squeezed in the pressure of a London season, and yet do not very well see how to make more room for it, these forsooth are to be supposed to be so many incipient Gertrudes or Teresas! "We must not set them to examine their consciences too carefully, because of the extreme sensitiveness they exhibit to their own faults, nor to mortify themselves, because of their already inordinate appetite for dis comforts and macerations. Their voluntary social arrangements are the tyranny of indispensable cir cumstances, claiming our tendevest pity, and to be managed like the work of a Xavier or a. Vincent of Paul, which hardly left those saints time to pray! Their sheer worldliness is to be regarded as an interior trial, with all manner of cloudy grand things to be said about it! They must avoid all uneasiness; for such great graces as theirs can only grow in calmness and tranquillity! It is lucky we may still make a poor drunken Irishman uneasy; for thus we have a chance of savin o- some souls at least,

O w though of a truth not these London souls. There were old saints in the middle ages, that St. Bernard for ii example, surnamed the Mellifluous, lie of the honied tongue, who, if he had in a leisurely way contemplated some of these moderns on their path to perfection, would hare given them a taste of his honey after this fashion: Sir or Madam, strain every nerve to keep out of hell, which methinks you will not do in this manner; and do use your common sense for a moment to re member that you are dealing with God, who is not " mocked "! A speech, apostolic, and perhaps brutal, which would cause fainting fits, followed by a most reasonable disgust, and be generally condemned in the present day. The fidget is, whether, after all, our modern way is the right way; for if the road should end, and heaven s gate be found not to be at the end, the condition of these sensitive susceptible souls, which have required so much smoothing and calming, would be undeniably awkward, and, it is to be feared, help less.

Once more: there is hardly a man or woman in the world, who has not got some corner of self into which he or she fear to venture with a light. The reasons for this may be various, as various as the individual souls. Nevertheless, in spite of the variety of reasons, the fact is universal. For the most part we hardly know our own reasons. It is an instinct, one of the quick instincts of corrupt nature. We prophecy to ourselves that, if we penetrate into that corner of self, somethino; will have to be done which either our laziness or our immortification would shrink from doing. If we enter that sanctuary, some charm of easy devotion or smooth living will be broken. "We shall find ourselves face to face with something unpleasant, some thing which will perhaps constrain us to all the trouble and annoyance of a complete interior revolution, or else leave us very uncomfortable in conscience. We may perhaps be committed to something higher than our present way of life, and that is out of the question. Eeligion is yoke enough as it is. So we leave this corner of self curtained off, locked up like a room in a house with disagreeable associations attached to it, unvisited like a lumber closet where we are conscious that disorder and dirt are accumulating, which we have not just now the vigour to grapple with. But do we think that G-od cannot enter there, except by our un locking the door, or see anything when He is there, unless we hold Him a light?

This is one branch of Christian simplicity, to be truthful and earnest and real with ourselves. The second is to be truthful and earnest and real with others. Now in order to attain to this; we must, first of all, act as little as may be with reference to the opinions of others. There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character. All imitation of others is more or less an untruth. "We are ourselves, and we must act as ourselves, and be like ourselves, and consistent with ourselves, and this is hardly what any of us ever are. We go about like weathercocks, ascertaining for ourselves and indicating to others the outlying quarters from which the wind comes. We have no ascer tained principles of our own. This leads us into endless petty untruthfulnesses. It makes us seem hypocrites when we are not so; because weakness is apt to look like hypocrisy. No one acts naturally, who imitates others; and no one in the long run is truthful to others who is not natural with others. A discernible self, even if it be an unsatisfactory self, is a grand, genuine, vigorous, and wholesome truth, with a strange and gracious propensity to be very humble, as truths always are.

In tho second place, if we wish to be truthful with others, we must avoid explaining and common ting on our own actions in conversation. For, either we must make our conversation like a regular confession, or we must convey an untrue idea of ourselves. Let us take one instance. What is more common for us to say than, " I assure you I did such and such a- tiling entirely because so and so." Now we know very well that never since we were born, have we ever done any one single action entirely for any one single motive. So that here, quite unconsciously, we may be laying claim to a very high and rare grace, to which only a few even of the canonized saints have attained. A man hardly ever comments on his own actions or ex plains his own motives without being false. The mere omission of his bad makes the enunciation of his good an untruth. He puts himself into a position from which it is scarcely possible for him to extricate himself with out damage to his genuineness and simplicity. Yet no one called him into that position. It is only once in a thousand times, at least in the common affairs of life, that a man is called upon to comment on himself. Kobody wants his comment. People care much less for him either way than he likes to suppose. In truth it is egregious vanity, pompous self-importance, the itch of self-defence, the identifying of personal feeling with the glory of God, or some other similar absurdity of human littleness, w r hich leads him into it. Avoid therefore all such comments and explanations. Least said soonest mended is never more true than in conversations which turn on self. "VVhy is it that reserved men are so peculiarly given to self-defence? Because close men are hardly ever simple men, and self-defence or self-commentation are growths inseparable from unsimplicity.

Indeed, in the third place, we ought to make self as little as possible the subject of conversation, even in the less dangerous form of straightforward narration.

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Falsehood comes of ib somehow, and the sense of having forfeited grace, and gone down in our own estimation as well as that of others, and, which is more serious, of having grieved the Holy Grhost. This is so undeniably everybody s experience, that it need not be dwelt upon.

In the fourth place, in order to be truthful with others, we should avoid having secrets, and still more avoid becoming the depository of the secrets of others. Nobody will ever be persuaded of this as long as the world lasts. However, truth has to be said, even when the saying of it is too plainly useless. Secrets are nearly the most mischievous things in the world, and almost the most unnecessary. A secret once set upon its course through the world gathers venial sin to itself, as the rolling snowball takes up snow. How few things are there which really need be secrets! How much fewer which, being secrets, need be confided to others! Unless clear duty is there to sanctify it, he who confides a secret to another has laid a burden on him, led him into temptation, fettered his childlike liberty of spirit, and impaired the presence of God in his soul. This is a serious indictment. But secrets are the garments, which of all others self-importance most affects. To be told a secret is the delicatest of flatteries. The teller and listener both grow in their own esteem and in each other s. They become, like Pau-Puk-Iveewis, " larger than the other beavers,"

which is always a pleasant operation to vain nature, though sometimes, as in Hiawatha, entailing uncomfortable consequences. Bat now, look at your own past life, have not secrets, especially the secrets of others, made you petty, narrow, pusillanimous, conceited, untruthful, unsimple, and out of God s presence? Depend upon it, there is nothing in the world that will more effectually entangle you in unreality than an unnecessary secret. Great-minded men have few secrets.

We must remember also, that the want of truthfulness with others reacts upon ourselves, in the way of blinding us with regard to our own motives and cha racters. Those who deceive others always end in deceiving themselves. Thus we shall never be truthful with ourselves, unless we are also truthful with others.

Thirdly, and lastly, simplicity requires that we should be truthful with God. It is almost startling to speak of such a thing, because of the horror of supposing an opposite line of conduct possible. Yet alas! it is not only possible, but common. We know how God sees through and through us. We know how bare and odiously intelligible to Him are all the subterfuges of our deceit and misery. We know how His eye rests upon us incessantly, and takes us all in, and searches us out, and as it were burns us with His holy gaze. His perfections environ us with the most awful nearness, flooding us with insupportable light. To His eye there is not only no concealment, there is not even a softening shade, or a distance to subdue the harshness and veil the unworthiness. Yet, for all this, to be straight forward with God is neither an easy nor common grace. with what unutterable faith must we believe in our own falsehood, when we can feel it to be anything like a shelter in the presence of the all-seeing God!

We take liberties with Him, for want of a holy fear. In unprepared petitions, in slovenly sacraments, in cursory self- examinations, in distracted meditations, in outward posture, in inward recollection, in the way in which we postpone Him to other things, we make free with His immense majesty. We try to hide from Him our want of filial confidence. We know how stupid the attempt is. We are well aware that we cannot hide from Him; but we keep our knowledge within us, and will not let it come up to the surface in the shape of practice. We are determined not to realize His terrific greatness, His overwhelming sanctity, or His tingling nearness; and so in numerous little deceitful ways we do not treat Him as the God in whom our understanding believes. It is a shocking thought, to be unreal with God; yet we all of us are so to a most frightening extent. God help us! We are livino- in a world of the most bewildering and com-

Cj O plicated un truthfulness: but it is to be our eternal joy to stand revealed in the blaze of unutterable Truth, and revel in our want of concealment for ever!

Footnotes

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