Arthur Mursell, March 10, 1872, at the East London Tabernacle
"This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all impurity with greediness!" Ephesians 4:17-19
This sentence forms part of a fearful description of the state of the Gentile population in the midst of which the Ephesian Church was planted. And we feel that, terrible as the sentence is, these two words form the most terrible sentence in it. They brand the stamp of hopelessness upon the picture--they close the shutter on the window, draw down the blind, and mark the whole scene as one of hopeless death!
"Past feeling!" We read in this description of "blindness of heart," and we feel that it describes a very critical and fearful moral condition. But we have also read of a finger which touched blind eyes, and made them see; so we fondle the hope that this finger may yet open and unscale the closed eye of the blind heart that it may greet the light. We will not despair of one concerning whom we must each say, "of such were some of us."
But once it is truly said of a man that he is "past feeling," the spar to which we cling seems to drift out of our hand in the dash of that sad sentence; the shutter seems to fall over the window with a sudden slam; the red sun sinks in the sullen west with an angry dip, and our heart tells us that to be past feeling must truly be to be past hope. No more dreary sentence could possibly be passed upon any man, than that which these two words involve, "past feeling."
But dreary as the picture is, brethren, do not let us evade its contemplation, or look at it as a scene afar off. There is a tendency among us to shift the incidence of such descriptions as these to a distance, and to transfer them to some other quarter.
"Past feeling!" It may apply perhaps to the heathen of a long past age; to such people as those Gentiles in Ephesus to whom the apostle applies it in the text. If it has any possible application now, it must surely refer to the idolaters of distant lands, or at worst, to just a very few of the lowest and most debased among the dregs of society here among ourselves. So we talk about it. As when we are warned of an epidemic we say, "O it is only in Russia, or Persia, or some place a long way off--we need not take precaution here." Then when it comes a little nearer we say, "It is only an imported case, and is not likely to spread; a good system of quarantine will keep it from our country." And when it comes among us we say, "It is only in the neglected neighborhoods, and among intemperate people; abstinence and disinfectants will keep us all right." Thus we trifle with a great grim fact, and will not look it in the face.
Brethren, don't treat this description in this way. If it applies to anyone, however far away, it is bad enough. But if its application were so contingent and remote, it would be as useless, as it is thankless and forbidding, to descant upon it here.But it hints at nothing so remote. It indicates a numbness which may chill our spirituality; it touches a paralysis which may strike the moral vitals of any one of us, pestilence which may spread its death among the spirit-fibers of our neighbors or ourselves. It is not a distant and unreal danger, having nothing to do with you.
"Past feeling." It does not wait for the recklessness of the embruted bacchanalian, the coarse blasphemer, or the impure harlot--to bring this about. It may come upon the prim religionist, the constant chapel-goer, and the strict church professor. It does not fall only on the brawler in the barroom, the loafer at the casino, or the intriguer in the brothel; but it may fall upon the pew, it may fall upon the pulpit; and fall alike on those who hear the truth and him who speaks it--it may perhaps be said that they too are "past feeling."
Seeing that this is a condition which may beset us all, it becomes a practical question for us to consider. It is a state which steals over the spirit, creeping unawares over the powers and capacities.There is a process known in chemistry which I think is called annealing, which consists in so hardening a surface as to make it impervious to pressure or to blows. The process is performed by means of extremes of heat or cold. And by similar extremes, the human heart may be made impervious by the fire of passion, succeeded by the chill of indifference to all holy impression.
I. At first, it trembles at the sin--but soon it becomes indifferent. And if anything were to rouse it from that stoicism, the first feeling is one of deep, sharp pain, the arrow rankling, before the peace and calm can settle on the soul. But if the heart and conscience grow so deaf and blind and hard as to be quite "past feeling," then there seems no recall--but only death and judgment. Now, brethren, this process of spiritual numbness may go on in you or me. It is not a disease peculiar to the heathen, to the idolater, or to the open profligate. There is a liability in you and me to be infected. Some forms of it especially beset the stated hearers of the gospel. It is just possible that some may have well-near reached it. If you can hear the mention of such a possibility without a spasm of anxiety, that is a sad sign of at least an approach towards this deadly moral ebb.
When that fearful home-thrust came from the Master's mouth while sitting at the table with the chosen twelve, "one of you--even of you, my long companions, the waiters on my ministry, the comrades of my daily converse, and the witnesses of my miracles--one of you is a devil"--the anxious question fired every eye, and moved every tongue, "Lord, is it I?"
And surely, in presence of the possibility that any who has been trained in a Christian home, who has lisped at the altar of a mother's knee the forms of prayer, who for years has come into the house of God, and heard of Christ, and of his life of love and light, and his death of sacrifice; who is familiar with each moving incident of the story of the cross, and to whom the language of the gospel story is an oft-told tale--that such a one may be "past feeling," or at least may become so, should thrill each one of us with the question of solicitude and concern, "Lord, is it I?"
If none of us has reached this stage, those who are conscious of sinning without compunction, who know that they do guilty things without sorrow or regret, and return again and again to the wrong, easily stifling the conscience which would willingly arrest us, may be sure that we are very fast approaching the condition which is described as "past feeling." Any one of us may bring ourselves to this plight--and anyone of us may, if we will, obtain the grace of God, which alone can save us from it. It is not, then, as a theory or a speculation--but as a personal, practical home-question that we urge the solemn heed of all to the language and meaning of this text, "past feeling."And as the most practical way of treating this practical question, we would consider for a moment a few of the ways or meansthrough which it is possible to fall into this condition--and possibly the easiest and most dangerous way of all is by yielding to and indulging in wicked and depraving habits. This is the connection in which the words of the text are used. The Gentiles to whom reference is made, had thrown the rein upon the neck of passion, and had given themselves up to work all immorality with greediness. We have a picture of an utter and complete abandonment to the dominion and influence of vice. When we see a man thus captive to his passions, the animal completely ascendant over the intellectual and the moral, and the flesh bloated to a degree which overlays and stifles the movement of the mind--it is a certain and a melancholy symptom of the strides of that moral malady which ultimately leaves its victim "past feeling."
This is a condition which is reached by degrees; it cannot be plunged into all at once. Obstacle after obstacle has to be broken down, voice after voice must be stifled, prayer after prayer despised, memory after memory banished. All these are feelings which have to be passed by: passed by an effort, a wicked effort against conscience, until the striving Spirit has been grieved and grieved again, and at last quenched outright. Alas, the history is too common to be astonishing. It is terrible to think of the realities to which custom may accustom us.
We can read of the havoc of war, and the chapter of accident, and the story of poverty, and all the acts in life's rehearsing tragedy; of how man murders brother man, and calls it glory; of how economy neglects precaution until travelers are mangled, or work-people are worked to death, and call it accident; of how Dives leaves Lazarus to perish at his gate, and call it misfortune. But there are tragedies enacting in the moral and spiritual world, murders and suicides in the world of souls which are ten thousand times more terrible--and yet to which we are still more insensible than these.
There are those around us whose lives are one incessant sacrifice to vice, to the flesh, and to the devil--and who touch the unclean thing with an unfaltering hand, and confront the carnal altar with an unshrinking heart--brave in the foolhardiness of wrong, and cowardly in the moral nerve which alone truly makes the man. These brawlers who disturb us with their orgies, and the prostitutes who flaunt their shameless vices in our streets, were not always as they are. They were not born to this--there was a time when the dew hung pearl-like on youth's tendril, and the unwithered blush was flamboyant on the cheek; the morning of the manhood and womanhood was fair with morning's promise. And it was not blighted all at once--the dew drop did not dry up in a moment; the vermilion blush did not fade in a day.
The mildew crept over it stealthily. It began in some secret yielding to a weakness--the petting of some frail folly. The first weak yielding was followed by a strong remorse--but the second lapse was stronger, and the remorse was weaker; and sin and conscience strove in inverse ratio until the effort at resistance died away, the flame of relenting was quenched by drops, a drop at a time--until impunity left nothing but blackened embers on the hearth. The reluctant slave became a willing captive.
