away from it now, and you yield all the more because of this
misleading hope that some day you will be touched by a supernatural hand,
and will rise up to a regenerate life. And yet our reason tells us that
all this is the very essence of self-deceit, and that such dreams and
hopes are the devil's most subtle temptation. This kind of vain hope is
based on a complete misconception of the nature of our conflict with sin,
and the way to escape from it. To think thus of spiritual gifts and the
growth of the spiritual life, is to follow a very dangerous delusion. It
was just such a misunderstanding that is expressed in the hope of Dives
about his brethren: "If one went unto them from the dead, they will
repent." Their ordinary daily teachings, he seems to say, the voice of
Moses and of the prophets, the examples of good men around them, the
warnings, the exhortations, these, being so familiar, may not have
startled them out of their sin; but if only one were to go to them from
the dead, some messenger of strange voice and aspect, who had seen hell,
and could paint its horrors, then surely the course of their life would
be checked and changed, and their spirit would wake up in them, and they
would sin no more. But to all this comes back the stern warning of the
Divine answer: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will
they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

And we may profitably consider what this means in its application to our
own life. Such a warning is evidently meant to remind us that the
mystery of sin in human life is not to be got rid of by any such reliance
on vague hopes. This mystery of sin in the heart and life, misleading,
weakening, dragging us down, means in fact the subtle, poisonous,
creeping power which evil inclinations exercise over a weak and depraved
will. Are we, then, to trust to some sudden visitation from above, for
which we make no preparation, to break down or overthrow a power of this
kind? On the contrary, the words of this parable stand here to declare
to us that it is nothing less than perversity and folly in any man to go
on either defiling his nature, or degrading it, or even neglecting to
strengthen and support it, under this delusion that some day the breath
of Heaven will sweep it clean or give it new vigour. And your own
experience is in exact accordance with these parabolic warnings of the
Saviour. You know that your moral and spiritual nature is now at