I. There are two instincts implanted by God in the soul as seeds out of which our spiritual life is to grow; one of these is the instinct of duty, the other is the instinct of love. Throughout the New Testament we are taught that of these two the instinct of love is the greater. The instinct of duty, when it conies to its full strength, thinks first of that great law which governs all the universe, the law of holiness and justice. The instinct of love ever turns its eyes not so much on the law as on the Lawgiver, not on holiness but on God. We constantly make all sorts of allowances for those who show underneath their faults a heart susceptible of real love, the love of God and of Christ. For we know that there are a life and a genial heat in the instinct of love which can work miracles on the soul, and change the man into a new creature.
II. All this is plain enough. But the text, so far from saying that the commandments are of no consequence in comparison with the spirit which rules our life so far from telling us that if we give our hearts to God all faults and neglects of duty are trifles hardly to be thought of declares that neglect of even the least commandment lowers a man's rank in the kingdom of heaven. Whatever may be the value of love, duty has still its place, and must not be lightly thrust aside. The fact is, that if duty be not so holy a power as love, yet as long as we remain here we need the strength of duty as much as we do the fire of love. If we compare our characters to our bodies, duty corresponds to the bones, love to the veins, and nerves, and vital organs. Without duty our character becomes weak, loose, inconsistent, and soon degenerates or even perishes for want of orderliness and self-control. Without love our character is a dead skeleton with all the framework of a living creature, but without the life.
III. Love is higher than duty, just as it is more excellent to worship God than to hold fast by a rule, however excellent that rule may be. But the reason is that love in reality contains duty in itself. Love is duty and something more. If the instinct of love is ever to reach its true perfection, it must absorb the instinct of duty into itself, and make the sense of duty stronger and deeper and keener, and the obedience more careful and more inflexible.
Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons,1st series, p. 35.
The Perilous Harmfulness of Little Sins.
I. Consider the minor violations of the moral law, as they are considered in relation to the Lawgiver Himself. It seems no paradox to say that little sins are peculiarly offending in the sight of God because they are little; in other words, because we run the risk of offending Him for what, upon our own showing, we care very little about, or which we only expect to yield us a very small and insignificant return. Your little sin sets God at defiance as much as a great one, ignores His authority as much, contradicts His will as much as any violation of the prohibition to murder or to blaspheme; in fact, says, in regard to this one commandment, "God shall not reign over me." We reason so in other things. It would aggravate the venality of a judge that the bribe was so very paltry for which he sullied the purity of his ermine; and we feel that we could more easily have excused the profaneness of Esau, if it had not been that for one morsel of meat he was willing to sell his birthright.
II. Notice next the awful danger of little sins in regard to ourselves; the pernicious effect they must have upon religious character, and the certainty that the least of them, if not renounced, will be large enough to bar us out from the kingdom of heaven. Thus, one effect of the practice we are condemning is, that it maintains and keeps up a habit of sinning, making us so awfully familiar with moral disobedience that all our moral perceptions become blinded, and we forget what an infinite evil sin is. Little ones are sure to draw greater ones after them. With little sins Satan has not much to do, but as the habit of yielding to them gets forward, and a bias towards evil is found to be taking deeper root, he finds something to work upon, and then his advances are cautious, stealthy, alluring us on to greater encroachments upon the law of God by little and little, carefully concealing from us at the beginning what he proposes our end shall be. The yoke of sin must fit itself to the shoulder gradually; conscience must accustom itself to use a sliding and shifting scale of evil; the beginning of sin is "as when one letteth out water."
D. Moore, Penny Pulpit,No. 3,107.
Reference: Matthew 5:19. Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons,1st series, p. 145.