The severity of spiritual discipline.
Cutting off a right hand and plucking out a right eye are extreme measures, types of the severest dealing with one's self. They bring into thought those cases of disease in which signs of mortification are shown, and the limb must be promptly surrendered or the life will be lost. Our Lord's counsel rests upon the recognized fact that bodily organs are the agents of sin. The palate is the agency of drunkenness and gluttony, the eye of sensuality, and the hand of dishonesty. We do not really cure a moral evil by merely removing the agency through which, it gains expression, but resolute dealing with the organ that is the agent shows that we are dealing with the inner evil, weakening it by taking away its food and exercise. See some of the things which account for spiritual discipline taking such severe forms.
I. BIAS TO SPECIAL EVILS IN NATURAL DISPOSITIONS. This bias belongs to the mystery of hereditary influences. Through a deteriorated bodily organization, a man is born with a bias in favour of drink, cheating, pride, sensuality. The members of one royal family are all born gluttons. Possibly, some bias to evil is found in every disposition, and the life problem is—What will the man do with just that tendency influencing all relations? Acquired evils may be effectually dealt with. Evils that belong to our bodily constitution make the moral struggle of a whole life.
II. WEAKNESS OF WILL IN NATURAL DISPOSITIONS. This is the real cause of the necessary severity of spiritual discipline. The man is not strong enough to get and to hold the mastery over his evil self, and so he is worried and worn by a struggle which has to be continually kept up, because he is not strong enough to make any victory decisive. The hardest moral lives are lived by the weak willed.
III. INDULGENCE OF THE EVIL BIAS UNTIL IT GROWS MASTERFUL. This may be illustrated by the difference in the tone of the moral struggle in the case of a man converted in youth, and of a man converted in advanced life. In the one case the bias is a mere tendency, and can be easily checked; in the other it has become a fixed habit, and must be dug out. When a man in middle life has vigorously taken in hand his conduct and relations, and wisely reshaped them, he often has the bitter lesson to learn that the evil in him remains untouched.—R.T.