IX. MORAL INSANITY.
"The heart of the sons
of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they
live."-Eccl. ix. 3.
THE Bible often ascribes to unconverted men one common heart or
disposition. It always makes two classes, and only two, of our race -- saints
and sinners; the one class converted from their sin and become God's real
friends; the other remaining His unconverted enemies. According to the Bible,
therefore, the heart, in all unrenewed men, is the same in its general
character. In the days of Noah, God testified "that the wickedness of man
was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thought of his heart
was only evil continually." Observe, He speaks of the thought of their
heart, as if they had one common heart -- all alike in moral character. So
by Paul, God testifies that "the carnal mind is enmity against God,"
testifying thus, not of one man, or of a few men, but of all men of carnal
mind. So in our text, the phraseology is expressive: "the heart of the
sons of men is full of evil" -- as if the sons of men had but one heart --
all in common -- and this one heart were "full of evil." You will
notice this affirmation is not made of one or two men, nor of some men,
merely; but "of the sons of men:" as if of them all.
1. But what is intends by affirming that "madness is in
their heart while they live?"
This is not the madness of anger, but of insanity. True,
sometimes people are mad with anger; but this is not the sense of our text. The
Bible, as well as customary speech, employs this term, "madness" --
to express insanity. This we understand to be its sense here.
Insanity is of two kinds. One of the head; the other of the
heart. In the former, the intellect is disordered, latter, the will and
voluntary powers. Intellectual insanity destroys moral agency. The man,
intellectually insane, is not, for the time, a moral agent; moral
responsibility is suspended because he can not know his duty, and can
not choose responsibly as to doing or not doing it. True, when a man makes
himself temporarily insane, as by drunkenness, the courts are obliged to hold
him responsible for his acts committed in that state; but the guilt really
attaches to the voluntary act which creates the insanity. A man who gets
intoxicated by intelligently drinking what he knows is intoxicating, must be
held responsible for his acts during the ensuing intoxication. The reason of
this is, that he can foresee the danger, and can easily avoid it.
The general law is that, while the intellect retains its usual
power, so long moral obligation remains unimpaired.
Moral insanity, on the other hand, is will-madness. The man
retains his intellectual powers unimpaired. but he sets his heart fully to He
refuses to yield to the demands of his conscience. He practically discards the
obligations of moral responsibility. He has the powers of free moral agency,
but persistently abuses them. He has a reason which affirms obligation, but he
refuses obedience to its affirmations.
In this form of insanity, the reason remains unimpaired; but the
heart deliberately disobeys.
The insanity spoken of in the text is moral. that of the heart.
By the heart here, is meant the will -- the voluntary power. While the man
is intellectually sane, he yet acts as if he were intellectually insane.
It is important to point
out some of the manifestations of this state of mind. Since the Bible affirms
it to be a fact that sinners are mad in heart, we may naturally expect to see
some manifestations of it. It is often striking to see how perfectly the Bible
daguerreotypes human character; has it done so in reference to this point? Let
us see.
Who are the morally insane?
Those who, not being intellectually insane, yet ACT as
if they were.
For example, those who are intellectually insane, treat fiction
as if it were reality, and reality as if it were fiction. They act as if truth
were not truth, and as if falsehood were truth. Every man knows that insane
people actually follow the wild dreams of their own fancy, as if they were the
most stem reality, and can scarcely be made to feel the force of anything truly
real.
So men, in their sins, treat the realities of the spiritual
world as if they were not real, but follow the most empty phantoms of this
world, as if they were stern realities.
They also act as if self were of supreme importance, and
everything else of relatively no importance. Suppose you were to see a man
acting this out in common life. He goes round, day after day, assuming that he
is the Supreme God, and practically insisting that everybody ought to have a supreme
regard to his rights, and comparatively little or no regard for other
people's rights. Now, if you were to see a man saying this and acting it out,
would you not account him either a blasphemer or insane?
Observe, now, the wonderful fact, that while wicked men talk so
sensibly as to show that they know better, yet they act as if all this were
true -- as if they supposed their own self-interest to be more important than
everything else in the universe, and that God's interests, and rights even, are
nothing in comparison. Practically, every sinner does this.
It is an essential
element in all sin. Selfish men never regard the rights of anybody else, unless
they are in some way linked with their own.
If wicked men really believed their own rights and interests to
be supreme in the universe, it would prove them intellectually insane, and we
should hasten to shut them up in the nearest mad-house; but when they show that
they know better, yet act on this groundless assumption, in the face of their
better knowledge, we say, with the Bible, that "madness is in their hearts
while they live."
Again, see this madness manifested in his relative estimate of
time and of eternity. His whole life declares that, in his view, it is by far
more important to secure the good of time than the good of eternity. Yet, if a
man should reason thus should, argue to prove it, and should soberly
assert it -- you would know him to be insane, and would help him to the
mad-house. But, suppose he does not say this -- dares not say it --
knows it is not true; yet constantly acts it out, and lives on the assumption
of its truth, what then? Simply this -- he is morally mad. Madness is in his heart.
Now precisely this is the practice of every one of you who is
living in sin. You give the preference to time over eternity, You practically
say -- O give me the joys of time: why should I trouble myself yet about the
trivial matters of eternity?
In the same spirit you assume that the body is more than the
soul. But if a man were to affirm this and go round trying to prove it, you
would know him to be insane. O, if he were a friend of yours, how your heart
would break for his sad misfortune reason lost! But if he knows better, yet
practically lives as if it were even so, you only say, he is morally insane --
that is all!
Suppose you see a man destroying his own property, not by
accident or mistake, but deliberately; injuring his own health, also, as if he
had no care for his own interests; you might bring his case before a judge and
sue out a commission of lunacy against him; under which the man's goods should
be taken out of his own control, and he be no longer suffered to squander them.
Yet, in spiritual things, wicked men will deliberately act against their own
dearest interests; having a price put into their hands to get wisdom, they will
not use it; having the treasures of heaven placed within their reach, they do
not try to secure them; with an infinite wealth of blessedness proffered for
the mere acceptance, they will not take it as a gift. Indeed! How plain it is
that, if men were to act in temporal things as they do in spiritual, they would
be pronounced by everybody insane. Any man would take his oath of it.
They would say -- Only see; the man acts against his own interests in everything!
Who can deny that he is insane? Certainly sane men never do this!
But, in moral questions, wicked men seem to take the utmost
pains to subvert their own interests, and make themselves insolvent forever! O,
how they beggar their souls, when they might have the riches of heaven.
Again, they endeavor to realize manifest impossibilities. For
example, they try to make themselves happy in their sins and their selfishness,
Yet they know they can not do it. Ask them, and they will admit the thing is
utterly impossible; and yet, despite of this conviction, they keep up the
effort perpetually to try -- as if they expected by and by to realize a
manifest impossibility. Now, in moral things, it may not strike you as
specially strange, for it is exceedingly common; but suppose, in matters of the
world, you were to see a man doing the same sort of thing, what would you think
of him? For example, you see him working hard to build a very long ladder, and
you ask him what for. He says, "I am going to scale the moon." You
see him ex. pending his labor and his money, with the toil of a life, to get up
a mammoth ladder with which to scale the moon I Would you not say -- He is
certainly insane? For unless he were really insane, he would know it to be an
utter impossibility. But, in spiritual things, men are all the time trying to
realize a result at least equally impossible -- that of being happy in sin --
happy with a mutiny among their own constitutional powers, the heart at war
against reason and conscience. The pursuit of happiness in sin is as if a man
were seeking to bless himself by mangling his own flesh, digging out his own
eyes, knocking in his teeth. Yet men as really know that they can not obtain
happiness in sin and selfishness, as they know they can not ensure health and
comfort by mutilating their own flesh and tearing their own nerves in sunder.
Doing thus madly what they know will always defeat and never ensure real
happiness, they show themselves to be morally insane.
Another manifestation of intellectual insanity is loss of
confidence in one's best friends. Often this is one of the first and most
painful evidences of insanity -- the poor man will have it that his dearest
friends are set to ruin him. By no amount of evidence can he be persuaded to
think they are his real friends.
Just so sinners in their madness treat God. While they inwardly
know He is their real friend, yet they practically treat Him as their worst
enemy. By no motives can they be persuaded to confide in Him as their friend.
In fact, they treat Him as if He were the greatest liar in the universe.
Wonderful to tell, they practically reverse the regard due respectively to God
and to Satan -- treating Satan as if he were God, and God as if He were Satan.
Satan they believe and obey; God they disown, dishonor, and disobey. How
strangely would they reverse the order of things! They would fain enthrone
Satan over the universe, giving him the highest seat in heaven; the Almighty
and holy God they would send to hell. They do not hesitate to surrender to
Satan the place of power over their own hearts which is due to God only.
I have already noticed the fact that insane people treat their
best friends as if they were their worst enemies, and that this is often the
first proof of insanity, If a husband, he will have it that his dear wife is
trying to poison him. I have a case in my recollection -- the first case of
real insanity I ever saw, and, for that reason perhaps, it made a strong
impression on my mind. I was riding on horseback, and, coming near a house, I
noticed a chamber window up and heard a most unearthly cry. As soon as I came
near enough to catch the words, I heard a most wild, imploring voice,
"Stranger, stranger, come here -- here is the great whore of Babylon; they
are trying to kill me, they will kill me." I dismounted; came up to the
house, and there I found a man shut up in a cage, and complaining most bitterly
of his wife. As I turned towards her I saw she looked sad, as if a load of
grief lay heavy on her heart. A tear trembled in her eye. Alas, her dear
husband was a maniac! Then I first learned how the insane are wont to regard
their best friends.
Now, sinners know better of God and of their other real friends;
and yet they very commonly treat them in precisely this way. Just as if they
were to go into the places of public resort, and lift up their voices to all
bystanders -- Hallo, there, all ye -- be it known to you, "the Great God
is an almighty tyrant! He is not fit to be trusted or loved!"
Now, everybody knows they treat God thus practically. They
regard the service of God -- religion -- as if it were inconsistent with their
real and highest happiness. I have often met with sinners who seemed to think
that every attempt to make them Christians is a scheme to take them in and sell
them into slavery. They by no means estimate religion as if it came forth from
a God of love. Practically, they treat religion as if embraced it would be
their ruin. Yet, in all this, they act utterly against their own convictions.
They know better. If they did not, their guilt would be exceedingly
small compared with what it is.
Another remarkable
manifestation of insanity is, to be greatly excited about trifles, and
apathetic about the most important matters in the universe. Suppose you see a
man excited about straws and pebbles -- taking unwearied pains to gather them
into heaps, and store them away as treasures; yet, when a fire breaks out
around his dwelling and the village is in flames, he takes no notice of it, and
feels no interest; or people may die on every side with the plague, but he
heeds it not; would you not say, he must be insane? But this is precisely true
of sinners. They are almost infinitely excited about worldly good -- straws and
pebbles, compared with God's proffered treasures; but O, how apathetic about
the most momentous events in the universe! The vast concerns of their souls
scarcely stir up one earnest thought. If they did not know better, you would
say -- Certainly, their reason is dethroned; but since they do know better, you
can not say less than that they are morally insane, "madness is in their
heart while they live."
The conduct of impenitent men is the perfection of
irrationality. When you see it as it is, you will get a more just and vivid
idea of irrationality than you can get from any other source. You see this in
the ends to which they devote themselves, and in the means which
they employ to secure them. All is utterly unreasonable. An end madly chosen --
sought by means madly devised; this is the life-history of the masses who
reject God. If this were the result of wrong intellectual judgments, we should
say at once that the race have gone mad.
Bedlam itself affords no higher evidence of intellectual
insanity than every sinner does of moral. You may go to Columbus, and visit
every room occupied by the inmates of the Lunatic Asylum; you can not find one
insane person who gives higher evidence of intellectual insanity than every
sinner does of moral. If bedlam itself furnishes evidence that its bedlamites
are crazy, intellectually; so does every sinner that he is mad, morally.
Sinners act as if they were afraid they should be saved. Often
they seem to be trying to make their salvation as difficult as possible. For
example, they all know what Christ has said about the danger of riches and the
difficulty of saving rich men. They have read from His lips, "How hardly
shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God." "It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter into the kingdom of God." This they know, and yet how many of them
are in mad haste to be rich! For this end, some are ready to sacrifice their
conscience -- some their health -- all seem ready, deliberately, to sacrifice
their souls! How could they more certainly ensure their own damnation!
Thus they regard damnation as if it were salvation, and
salvation as if it were damnation. They rush upon damnation as if it were
heaven, and flee salvation as if it were hell.
Is this exaggeration? No; this is only the simple truth. Sinners
press down the way to hell as if it were the chief good of their existence, and
shun the way to heaven as if it were the consummation of evil. Sinner, this is
your own moral state. The picture gives only the naked facts of the case,
without exaggeration.
3. This moral insanity is a state of unmingled wickedness. The
special feature of it which makes it a guilty state, is that it is altogether voluntary.
It results not from the less of reason, but from the abuse of
reason. The will persists in acting against reason and conscience. Despite of
the affirmations of reason, and reckless of the admonitions of conscience, the
sinner presses on in his career of rebellion against God and goodness. In such
voluntary wickedness, must there not be intrinsic guilt?
Besides, this action is oftentimes deliberate, The man
sins in his cool, deliberate moments, as well as in his excited moments. If he
sins most overtly and boldly in his excited moments he does not repent and
change his position towards God in his deliberate moments, but virtually
endorses then the hasty purposes of his more excited hours. This heightens his
guilt.
Again, his purposes of sin are obstinate and unyielding. In ten
thousand ways, God is bringing influences to bear on his mind to change his
purposes; but usually in vain. This career of sin is in violation of all his
obligations. Who does not know this? The sinner never acts from right motives
-- never yields to the sway of a sense of obligation -- never Practically
recognizes his obligation to love his neighbor as himself, or to honor the Lord
his God.
It is a total rejection of both God's law and Gospel. The law he
will not obey; the Gospel of pardon he will not accept. He seems determined to
brave the Omnipotence of Jehovah, and dare His vengeance. Is he not mad upon
his idols? Is it saying too much when the Bible affirms, "Madness is in
their heart while they live?"
REMARKS.
1. Sinners strangely accuse saints of being mad and crazy. Just
as soon as Christian people begin to act as if the truth they believe is a
reality, then wicked men cry out, "See, they are getting crazy." Yet
those very sinners admit the Bible to be true, and admit those things which
Christians believe as true to be really so; and, further still, they admit that
those Christians are doing only what they ought to do, and only as themselves
ought to act; still, they charge them with insanity. It is curious that even
those sinners themselves know these Christians to be the only rational men on
the earth. I can well recollect that I saw this plainly before my conversion. I
knew then that Christians were the only people in all the world who had any
valid claim to be deemed sane.
2. If intellectual insanity be a shocking fact, how much more so
is moral? I have referred to my first impressions at the sight of one who was
intellectually insane, but a case of moral insanity ought to be deemed far more
afflictive and astounding. Suppose the case of a Webster. His brain becomes
softened; he is An idiot! There is not a man in all the land but would feel
solemn. What! Daniel Webster -- that great man, an idiot! How have the mighty
fallen! What a horrible sight!
But how much more horrible to see him become a moral idiot -- to
see a selfish heart run riot with the clear decisions of his gigantic intellect
-- to see his moral principles fading away before the demands of selfish
ambition -- to see such a man become a drunkard, a debauchee, a loafer; if this
were to occur in a Daniel Webster, how inexpressively shocking! Intellectual
idiocy is not to be named in the comparison!
3. Although some sinners may be externally fair, and may seem to
be amiable in temper and character, yet every real sinner is actually insane.
In view of all these solemnities of eternity, he insists on being
controlled only by the things of time. With the powers of an angel, he aims not
above the low pursuits of a selfish heart. How must angels look on such a case!
Eternity so vast, and its issues so dreadful, yet this sinner drives furiously
to hell as if he were on the high-road to heaven! And all this only because he
is infatuated with the pleasures of sin for a season. At first view, Le seems
to have really made the mistake of hell for heaven; but, on a closer
examination, you see it is no real mistake of the intellect; he knows very well
the difference between hell and heaven; but he is practically deluding himself
under the impulses of his mad heart! The mournful fact is, he loves sin,
and after that he will go! Alas, alas! so insane, he rushes greedily on his own
damnation, just as if he were in pursuit of heaven!
We shudder at the thought that any of our friends are be. coming
idiotic or lunatic; but this is not half so bad as to have one of them become
wicked. Better have a whole family become idiotic than one of them become a
hardened sinner. Indeed, the former, compared with the latter, is as nothing.
For the idiot shall not always be so. When this mortal is laid away in the
grave, the soul may look out again in the free air of liberty, as if it had
never been immured in a dark prison; and the body, raised again, may bloom in
eternal vigor and beauty; but, alas, moral insanity only waxes worse and worse
forever! The root of this being not in a diseased brain, but in a diseased
heart and soul, death can not cure it; the resurrection will only raise him to
shame and everlasting contempt; and the eternal world will only give scope to
his madness to rage on with augmented vigor and wider sweep forever.
Some persons are more afraid of being called insane than of
being called wicked. Surely they show the fatal delusion that is on their
hearts.
Intellectual insanity is only pitiable, not disgraceful; but
moral insanity is unspeakably disgraceful. None need wonder that God should
say, "Some shall arise to shame and everlasting contempt."
Conversion to God is becoming morally sane. It consists in
restoring the will and the affections to the just control of the intelligence,
the reason, and the conscience, so as to put the man once more in harmony with
himself -- all his faculties adjusted to their true positions and proper
functions.
Sometimes persons who have become converted, but not well
established, backslide into moral insanity. Just as persons sometimes relapse
into intellectual insanity, after being apparently quite restored. This is a
sad case, and brings sorrow upon the hearts of friends. Yet, in no case can it
be so sad as a case of backsliding into moral insanity.
An intellectual bedlam is a mournful place. How can the heart of
any human sensibility contemplate such a scene without intense grief? Mark, as
you pass through those halls, the traces of intellectual ruin; there is a
noble-looking woman, perfectly insane; there is a man of splendid mien and
bearing -- all in ruins! How awful! Then, if this be so, what a place is hell!
These, intellectual bedlams are awful; how much more the moral bedlam!
Suppose we go to Columbus and visit its Lunatic Ayslum; go round
to all its wards and study the case of each inmate; then we will go to Indiana;
then to New York, and so through all the Asylums of each several State. Then we
will visit London and its Asylum, where we may find as many insane as in all
our Union. Would not this be a mournful scene? Would not you cry out long
before we had finished -- Enough! Enough! How can I bear these sights of mad
men! How can I endure to behold such desolation!
Suppose, then, we go next to the great moral bedlam of the
universe -- the hell of lost souls; for if men will make themselves mad, God
must shut them up in one vast bedlam cell. Why should not He? The weal of His
empire demands that all the moral insanity of His kingdom should be withdrawn
from the society of the holy, and shut up alone and apart. There are those
whose intellects are right, but whose hearts are all wrong. Ah, what a place
must that be in which to spend one's eternity! The great mad-house of the
universe!
Sometimes sinners here, aware of their own insanity, set
glimpses of this fearful state. I recollect that, at one time, I got this idea
that Christians are the only persons who can claim to be rational, and then I
asked myself -- Why should I not so? Would it hurt me to obey God? Would it
ruin my peace, or damage my prospects for either this life or the next? Why do
I go on so?
I said to myself -- I can give no account of it, only that I am
mad. All that I can say is that my heart is set on iniquity, and will not turn.
Alas, poor maniac! Not unfortunate, but wicked! How many of you
know that this is your real case? O, young man, did your father think you were
sane when he sent you here? Ah, you were so intellectually, perhaps, but not
morally. As to your moral nature and functions, all was utterly deranged. My
dear young friend, does your own moral course commend itself to your conscience
and your reason? If not, what are you but a moral maniac? Young man, young
woman, must you in truth write yourselves down moral maniacs?
Finally, the subject shows the importance of not quenching
the Spirit. This is God's agency for the cure of moral maniacs. O, if you put
out His light from your souls, there remains to you only the blackness of
darkness forever! Said a young man in Lane Seminary, just dying in his sins --
Why did you not tell me there is such a thing as eternal damnation? Weld, why
did not you tell me? I did. Oh, I am going there -- how can I die so?
It's growing dark; bring in a light! And so he passed away from this world of
light and hope!
O sinner, take care that you put not out the light which God has
cast into your dark heart, lest, when you pass away it shall grow dark to your
soul at midday -- the opening into the blackness of darkness forever.