The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1914, Page 2

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2 Yhe Tutheran Pioneer.

The Cure of a Hopeless Case.

You have seen people who; though mortally ill,
were strangely unconscious of the seriousness and
hopelessness of their condition. If you inquired as
to the state of their health, they quite cheerfully
informed you that they felt “a little weak,” but on
the whole pretty well. They were glad to state that
they suffered no pain, and they hoped and confi-
dently expected to be up and about again after the
weakness, which, they were sure, was only a tem-
porary indisposition, had left them.

But you knew better. You heard the wheezing
cough, the labored breathing; you saw the ghastly
pallor, the hectic spot in each sunken cheek, the
unnatural glitter of the eyes; and you sadly won-
dered how anybody with the certainty of an early
death so clearly showing in his features could be
so indifferent to his desperate state and so confident
of a recovéry that was plainly out of the question.
You were sure that the very hopefulness of the
patient was the surest evidence of his swiftly ap-
proaching end. You sadly reflected, if only the
poor patient could be made to realize the real state
of affairs, there might still be some hope for him.
But as the matter stood, the case was hopeless
indeed. :

This observation, so common in life, aptly illus-
trates the moral condition of nian as he is by nature.
He is thoroughly diseased. He is “dead in tres-
passes and sins.” Left to himself, he is hopelessly
lost here and hereafter. He is utterly powerless to
work out his own reformation. Salvation is a goal
he can never reach by his own efforts. His body is

- the seat of unceasing decay. The “sting of death”
is in his conscience.. His end in despair and eter-
nal darkness is at best only a matter of a few brief
years. The brand of perdition is plainly stamped
on his brow. Try as he may, he cannot hide the
true nature of his condition. The incessant sinful

_ eravings and lustful desires, the ingrown selfishness
of his heart, the blasphemous and obscene words
that issue from his lips, the ways of. sin that he
seeks, the places of worldly amusements that he
frequents, the evil company that he keeps, and the
irritable temper that he shows when his attention
has been called to the error of his ways, — all these
and many more are plain symptoms indicating that
he is a victim of eternal death. eeinhaey

‘But the most alarming evidence of this state of

_ affairs in the condition of natural man is his almost
total ignorance of the seriousness of his plight, his

brutelike indifference toward the inevitable conse-
quence of his condition.

He will usually admit in a general way that he
is a sinner. But he is seldom honest in this ad-
mission. He will angrily resent it if you call him
a sinner. He considers sin only a passing indispo-
sition. He ridicules the diagnosis which stamps him
as a prey of temporal and eternal death. He is full
of glib evasions and ready excuses. He deceives
himself, he tries to deceive others, and he thinks
he can deceive even God. He makes the cheerful
claim that not all is sin which is commonly said
to be such. To his notion it is not wrong to love
mammon, to excite his mind with sinful lusts and
desires, to neglect hearing and reading the Word
of God, to hate his enemy, to repay evil with evil,
to keep bad compnay, to be “unequally yoked to-
gether with unbelievers” in the lodge, to be unclean
in thought, word, and deed, to refuse help. to the
needy, to “get the best out of life,” and to look to
his own interests first, last, and all the time.

Often you will hear him blame others for the
faults that he has, for he assumes that thus his own
responsibility is lessened. Also he boldly asserts
that, though he may not always say and do as he
should, his heart is good, always keeping a few
seemingly good things that he has done ready in his
memory to prove it. If these are lacking, he will
seek comfort in the observation that apparently
others are worse than he is. Least of all will he
admit that sin is subject to the burning and con-
suming wrath of God, and that even a single un-
clean thought makes him a transgressor of the whole
Law, renders him unfit for salvation, and brands
him a victim of the eternal curse.

At best his consolation is, “I’ll do the best I
can, and everything will come out right in the end.”

Many who have suffered an untimely death
might have been cured if they had been willing to
admit the seriousness of their ills and had in time
taken the proper treatment. Millions of sinners
awaking at the last day to face an eternity of un-
speakable torment will realize that their own indif-
ference during their mortal lives is responsible for
the fact that they are now cut off forever. But it
will be too late. “

A patient who cannot be induced to realize his
desperate physical condition is usually given up by
his doctor as a hopeless case. But God does no
such thing with the sinner. If He did, there would

be no cure for any of us, for we are all born hope- -

less cases. God has no pleasure in the death of the