The Sin Of Neglect

“How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation.”—Hebrews 2:3

If I were to be asked by many a man, “What do you think about America’s sins?” I would answer, “Well, I think one great sin of America is the saloon.”

I think the saloon has never paid a penny, and always taken millions. I think the saloon is not a sign of civilization, but of demoralization. I think that the saloon is not a builder of homes, but a wrecker of families. I think the saloon is not an honor to the flag, but a disgrace to the flag. I think the saloon was hell originated, is hell populating, is hell perpetuated, is hell deserving, but I do not think that the great sin of America is the saloon.

If I were asked what I thought was the great sin of America in these crucial times—should we put our hands on our pulse as a nation and say, “Now it is up to us to make good. Where is our weakness, where is our danger?” I would answer, “Well, one of the great sins of America is gambling.”

A gambler is a man who wants something for nothing, and he makes a poor citizen, and therefore the state legislates against gambling. One of the greatest disgraces in America since I remember, occurred during the last national election in this country, when the newspapers everywhere advertised betting on the election as I never knew it to be advertised in our history. But the great sin of America is not gambling.

If I were asked again, I would say, “Well, one of the great sins of America is lust.” One of the outstanding religious denominiations advertised authoritatively, that one city in America alone made a money profit of three millions of dollars in one year through lust. It has broken up the homes, it has broken up the physical health, it has destroyed the moral vigor, it has damned the millions—lust. But I do not think that either gambling, or lust, or the saloon are the great outstanding danger symptoms in American life.

I think that the great sin of the American people is religious neglect. If you could cure religious neglect probably you would abolish the saloon, you would stop the gambling, you would stop the lust, you would stop the swearing, you would stop the titles of iniquity that ruin both young men, young women, and people of more mature years. You would stop it short if you could cure religious neglect in this land.

Now there is an attitude which many men seem to think is very worthwhile in their speeches, and their writing, and their acting and their singing, which has in it this, “Why you religionists, you only have the frills of things. We have the real garment of how to make things go. You become emotional and overwrought; we have the stable thought, the substantial way of doing things.”

Not true! There is no asset for this country today, nor has there been in any former time, like the asset found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which saves a man out of his sins and keeps him for two worlds. The hearing from the Highest until a man actually gets the message home to himself, the answer to the thirst of the Spirit with the water of life—that is the hope, after all, for our great people, if we are to be a free people, and we are beginning to answer back to God for the liberties for which I am sure any of us would be willing to cut down our food a little bit and have twenty-five percent mixture of any kind of stuff with our wheat.

This is all right if we put the emphasis where it belongs, but it does not belong on mere reform, it belongs on the ground of religion, and the ground of religion set forth by the cross—a real Savior for real sinners, doing a real saving work and perpetuating it in the life of the person forever.

I am going to establish in your thought, with God’s help, that a man is responsible for something he never did. I am going to have you believe within the next five minutes that you are responsible for a thing you never did. You see the Bible not only talks about a sinner, but it talks about an “ungodly man,” ungodly, not godly. No suggestion there primarily of a man doing some overt thing, committing a bad deed, but ungodly.

In establishing that a man is responsible for a thing he never did, we will see what the epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament means when it says, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation” (Hebrews 2:3).

Suppose a man owes you five hundred dollars and the debt should have been paid the first day of February and is not paid tonight, the 17^th of February, and he meets you cordially, courteously? You hold him responsible for the thing he never did—he never paid you the five hundred. He may say that you own a good car; he may say that you studied at a good school; he may say that you would take a good photograph; he may say that you own a good dog; he may say that the pictures on your walls are appropriate pictures; but you hold him responsible for a thing he never did—never paid the five hundred.

In the courts of this country, men have been divorced from their wives on the plea of the woman of non-support. I think there must have been at least two of those in Chicago in the last hundred years. It was not claimed that the man threatened to whip his wife; it was not claimed that the man locked the door and kept her out in the cold on a winter’s night; it was not claimed that he called her names or swore at her—non-support.

What is “support”? Flour, cornmeal, cotton, flannel, fish, shoes—support. You see the court holds that a man is responsible for the thing he never did. He never brought home linen, cotton, shoes, cornmeal, flour, fish—non-support.

Here is a boy that falls into the lake. A man comes along and says, “He was drowned.”

We say to him, “Did you throw a plank? There was one where you stood right by the end of that street. Did you throw a plank?”

“No, sir, I didn’t do it. The boy was drowned. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“There was a rope there by that pile of planks. Did you throw it out?”

“No, the boy went down. He went down once, he went down twice, he went down the third time but it was his own ‘down’ and he drowned.”

Everyone who hears me will hold that man responsible for that boy drowning if he could have rescued him. You will say, “You are a man. You are not a piece of building block or granite, you are a conscious man, you are responsible for doing the thing you ought to do. The boy was drowning. Why didn’t you throw the plank, throw the rope, or why did you not call for help? Why did you not save the boy at the risk of your own life? Why didn’t you do it?” You hold him responsible for the thing he never did. He did not throw the plank, he did not throw the rope, he did not call for help.

“I did not tell the boy to go in the water; I did not try to scare him,” the man protests.

“You did not try to save him.”

It is plain that the Word of God mentioned in that second chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews has to be accepted. If there were no pulpit, no hymns sung, no prayer offered, no Sunday night congregation—everybody in this company is responsible for the thing that he never did that he ought to have done. There is a sin of neglect.

It is not enough for us to say, “We will rise now, and do better. We are coming into a religious campaign shortly in Chicago—let us all gird ourselves and get out and at it.” Repent, sin is on us! It is not enough for us to say. “Now let us rally and see what we can say to the world about our great and marvelous prowess and fidelity.” Repent, sin is upon us, the sin of religious neglect.

Nobody can feel the force and the depth of the sin of religious neglect, sitting in this comfortable house saying, “Rather a pleasant evening and we are going to listen through and see what the service shall bring us.” You cannot get at it that way. Nobody can do it in a kind of revery after having had a fine dinner and coming to the Tabernacle to rest a little while and enjoy the hour. You will have to come to the place where you begin to consider how much a person may want to do anything, before you can measure how much a person is neglecting.

Just think what people can do when they really want to do things. When they went to the Klondike they went on leaky boats, they went to sleep in the open, where they could get sufficient warmth of climate to keep from freezing, as at Sitka the proper time of the year. They coaxed people’s dogs away, they braved the scurvy and endured anything that could be endured. What for? They wanted gold, gold.

I met a man in California and said, “You went to the Klondike, how long were you there when your family did not hear from you?”

“I was there ten months one time, and my family did not hear a word from me, nor I from my family.”

“What if you had died?”

“Well, I didn’t, but (using the California expression for gold) I got the dust. I went the second time and got some more dust, and I went the third time and got some more, and I bought this mine I am developing out here, and it is paying me well. Oh, I got the dust.”

“Were you not afraid of getting the scurvy up there with all the conditions you had to meet?”

“Well, I didn’t get the scurvy, but I got the dust.”

A Cincinnati newspaper said that a man went out on a cold day into his wood shed. He had a great block of ice brought by the iceman, and he had a bucket of ice water. He sat own on the block of ice, took off his shoes and put his feet into the ice water, and sat there drinking ice water before breakfast, so as to get tough enough to go to the Klondike.

You know people did just as ridiculous things to go to the Klondike to get gold. I am talking to men who did as ridiculous things last week to get gold—not the same things, but like them. When a man gets where he wants to get right with God like a man wants to go to the Klondike and get gold, like you wanted to get gold last week in your business enterprise, he is pretty near going to stop this preaching and come up here to these steps and say, “Show me how it is done. I want to break up my neglect and see if I cannot get right with God.”

While we were up in the Northwest one year, when they had the distribution of land, men stood in line for seventy-six hours to register for land. If they could afford it they had a carpenter come and build a kind of rough box or coffin over them. The man at the front would register, and the second man would step in and take his place, then the third man would take his place, and the fourth man, with the “coffin” over him would get nearer. Seventy-six hours registering for land!

You say to the man, “You don’t lie down in bed. You will get very tired.”

He will answer, “I can sleep when this is done.”

“Suppose somebody turns a camera on that box you are living in? You would be the laughing stock of your children and grandchildren.”

“I don’t care, I want land.”

“The wind will blow through those cracks and give you pneumonia.”

“I don’t want pneumonia, I want land,” he would say, and stands in line and slides up nearer in that awkward coffin, and sticks to the job until he gets the registration that brings him land.”

A woman in Idaho, the wife of a medical doctor, told me her husband took a revolver in his pocket, and they made a rule that a man could send for a chair and put it in his place, and that the chair would hold the place when he had to leave the line temporarily until he got back after so many minutes.

The same man will come to religious meeting, and he does not like the Gospel enough to reject his sin and come to Christ Jesus and be saved. The same man will come to a religious meeting, and cannot understand why you will preach so long, or sing so long, or wait so long about this Gospel. Why? He doesn’t want it like he wants land. He does not neglect the land, he neglects the Gospel, and he sins when he neglects to want the Gospel while he wants other things.

Up in Wisconsin, they were finding pearls in the river, and the women went pearl fishing. The club women, and the “sissiety” women, as Sam Jones used to call them, went pearl fishing, and they put their hands down and pulled up a shell and looked into it, and someone questioned them, “Don’t you feel abashed to have your arms covered with that black soil when you put your arms down into the mud that way?”

“Oh, it will wash off,” they answered, “if we only get the pearls!”

I met a young woman and her husband going through the University of Wisconsin, and they had fished twelve tons of clam shells out of the Wisconsin river. I said, “Did you open all those clam shells?”

She tossed her saucy little head and said, “Of course I did. If I had not, I might have missed the clam shell that had the most valuable pearl in it. Look at those fingers. Look at the scars on them. The blood doesn’t run any more, they are healed over. I cut those fingers opening clam shells.”

“Twelve tons?” I asked.

“Twelve tons. And we boiled the shells and got something for them. They make buttons out of them, I believe, and my husband and I are going on in the state university the beginning of the fall semester, and we have done it on clam shell fishing for pearls.”

Now you let a man want to find out the reality of God’s covenant in His Word like that boy and girl wanted to get on in the university, and it won’t be five minutes until he knows more about God than I can tell in five centuries. The trouble is, men do not go after religion like they go after pearls, nor women either. Guilty of the thing they never did.

I was out in one of our suburbs some fifteen years ago. You had a judge, whose office was in this town. One day, a young man said, “I wish you could get Judge So-and-So to come right out and be a Christian. He is one of the finest men in our community, goes to church twice on Sunday, takes an interest in the Sunday school. A mighty fine fellow with a fine father and mother; but we never can get him to come out and confess Christ and join the church. He is coming out to the day meetings as well as the night meetings.”

“Introduce me to him,” I said.

When they did, I said, “Judge, they tell me you are one of these fine, moral, honorable men, but you have never accepted Jesus as your Savior. Never have come right out squarely, frankly confessing Him and being true to Him. They tell me you are coming out in the afternoon from your Chicago office to these meetings, and are coming here every evening. Now I want to introduce you to Christ, and I want to do it right away.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said, “I am interested in all that is being done, but I am waiting for the psychological moment. If it ever comes I will start.”

“Psychological moment?” I said, “What’s that? Psychological moment? Oh, I understand, Judge.”

It was back in the old days when railroading was new, that a young fellow took his old aunty, who was a Quakeress, to the railroad station, gave her a ticket and said, “Now, Aunty, this is for your train. You take your train. I will have to run along.”

He left her in the railroad station. Coming back an hour later he thorugh he would ask the ticket agent if his aunt got away all right, for she wasn’t used to traveling. Coming in, he saw his old aunt seated in the depot, and said, “Why, Aunty, you didn’t take your train! Why, what is the matter, Aunty?”

“Take it?” She said “take it” like she might have taken a pill. “Take it?”

“Why, Aunty, your train is gone. It has been gone an hour or more.”

“Why,” said the old lady, “I thought the whole thing went.”

Here the old Quakeress was sitting in the station expecting the station to slide down the track and take her to her destination.

“Judge,” I said, “I reckon that waiting for the psychological moment means that you are waiting for the whole thing to go. Now you have heard sermons enough to have saved you a million times; you have probably read the Bible enough to have saved you a million times more; you have heard Christian hymns enough to have saved you another million times; you have heard prayers enough to have saved you another million times; you have had enough good influence to have saved you a million times more than that, and you say you are waiting for the psychological moment? I believe, Judge, that it is ‘psychological rot’.”

He put his hand out and grasped mine, and said, “That ends it. I see it.”

Here is a man that runs a dairy. It is time to milk the cows. He says he is waiting for the psychological moment. I pity the cows!

Here is a man who drives mules. The mules ought to be fed and curried. He is waiting for the psychological moment. May the price of mules go up, or he will go bankrupt.

Here is a woman whose baby needs food, is crying for food. She is waiting for the psychological moment. God pity her and make her more like my precious old mother.

Psychological moment! The shame of men. It has lasted so long, and gone so far, we hardly realize the awfulness of it. It is on us as a people. I hear it everywhere—indifference, indifference—what is that? Neglect.

You know a man that likes to box, would even box with a dummy that had springs in it; but who would hit at a person after he had fainted away? When a man gets so on religion he has fainted away, then pity the person who tries to appeal to him until he can “bring him to.”

Don’t you see that the great need of the hour, all over our country, right in the midst of the war, and going on back into the time of peace, the great need is that people give attention to Christianity, the grace of Christ, as they give attention to business affairs, amusement affairs, physical health, eating, drinking, bathing, making a living. “How shall we escape if we neglect?”

If you do not want to go up to Madison, Wisconsin, or down to St. Louis, you do not need to break up the valves on the locomotives, or capture the engineers, and firemen, and conductors and lock them up with barred windows and go off with the key. If you do not want to go to Madison or St. Louis, just do what you are now doing. Just stay where you are. This Tabernacle don’t go down to St. Louis, or up to Madison. You don’t need to lock up anybody. You don’t need to break any valves. If you don’t want to be right with God now or ever, you don’t need to swear at the preacher or stamp on the Bible, or curse the memory of a godly mother, or go off and get drunk or debase yourself with vicious living. All you need to do is to do what you have done for the last years, neglect, neglect.

The Gospel train makes for everlasting glory. You can feel the varnish smooth on the car as it passes you, but that won’t take you anywhere. You can go out and say a kind thing about this meeting tonight. It won’t take you anywhere. Get on board. Your ticket’s free. “Whosoever will, let him come,” and do it now. Cut short the sin. “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?”

I heard it when I was ten years old. I heard it in a country church where I used to laugh at the preacher, fool that I was! “How shall we escape if we neglect?” You have heard it. It may be like a cog wheel with the cogs worn smooth. I pray God by His Spirit, that He will file them down deep until they mash well, and you will find yourself belted on to God within the next moment.

They say that a man was playing a game of cards. He was the keeper of a bridge. He heard the whistle of a steamer, set the machinery going, and opened the bridge, and turned to play some more. There was money at stake, and he was interested in the game. Time stole by like the silent footfall of a shadow, until he heard a locomotive whistle. The train came thundering onto the bridge, locomotive in the open draw, baggage car in the open draw, three passenger cars well loaded in the open draw.

They say that the man threw his hands over his head, and ran down the street of the city, yelling at the top of his voice, “If I only had! If I only had!”

They had him arrested and examined as to his sanity. He was pronounced insane. They put him in the insane ward in a hospital, and with all the breath he seemed able to command during his waking hours, he would yell, “If I only had! If I only had!” They thought he wanted to say, “If I only had shut that bridge and left that game of cards.” “If I only had done the thing I ought to have done.”

He did not burn the bridge; he did not wreck the bridge—he neglected to close the bridge. It was the thing he ought to have done, and he did not do it. “If I only had!”

I tell you now, repent of the sin of religious neglect, and of the sins of the past, give yourself to Christ with all your sins, ready for the best He can make of you for time and for eternity.

They tell about Governor Paterson, that he was talking to some of his officials, saying, “That young fellow is so young, and of such good parents. It is a pity I cannot get him pardoned.”

They persuaded him that it could not be done, that the boy must be given the penalty of the law, and his life forfeited in payment for his crime.

“We can at least go down and get him ready to die if he has to die,” Paterson said. He went down on Sunday afternoon and came to the cell, looked at the young fellow, read a portion of the holy Word, offered prayer, and then bade the young man to be ready to meet God.

He moved along, and the guard approached and the young men said, “Who was that man who came in here and read the Bible, and prayed, do you know him?”

“That was the Governor,” the guard answered.

“That was the Governor!” the young man cried, “the Governor?”

“Yes, that was the Governor.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

“That was the Governor, the man who read the Bible and prayed with you!”

The young fellow threw himself down in the cell and threw his hands up to his head and began to writhe and cry out, “The Governor was here and I didn’t know it. If I had known it I would have asked for my pardon, and I could have been pardoned if I could have told the Governor myself and explained to him. The Governor was here and I did not get my pardon.”

He kept saying it until he seemed to wear himself out, crying, “The Governor was here and I did not get my pardon.”

Now there is hardly a man in the house, and hardly a woman here, but what some day you were aroused by the Spirit of God on the question of your religious duty toward God. You felt that you ought to give yourself to God, you ought to be acquainted with God, you ought to get out of sin and right with God, you ought to have the peace of God.

I want to make it impossible for any man or woman to go out of this house and ever say, “That night the Lord was very near. I saw my duty, I did not see all, but I saw the door and the way in. I did not see all of God’s mercy, but I saw the way in, and I did not take it. Why didn’t you let me know that I must take it then and there?”

I call on you to turn from the sin of religious neglect, I ask you, just live up to as much as you know can be reasonably accepted about Jesus Christ. You will get enough to make you rich for the rest of your life, and for eternity, if you do. I just ask you to give as much attention to the things of Christ as you do to taking a bath; give as much attention to the things of Christ as you do to getting your tooth pulled when it needs to be extracted; give as much attention to the grace of God as to a surgical operation when you have to have one.

You have stood with the villagers on the corner of a little country town until twelve o’clock, twelve-thirty, one o’clock, and then one-thirty. What for? To see a circus parade come by. Stayed there without even a little bit of old-fashioned ginger-bread, mostly holes and air; stood there without colored popcorn or lemonade. What for? To see the circus procession pass by through the country village.

I ask you tonight, will you stand for Jesus Christ? Do the best you know to accept Him? Will you say, “That’s it, that’s it—that’s what that Book says to do, stand for Jesus Christ.”

You say, “I don’t see why a man has to stand for Jesus Christ.”

If you get as earnest about being right with God Almighty as you are earnest about seeing the circus pass by in the country village, you will stand or walk anywhere within reason for Jesus Christ.

I hope I would not ask a man to do an unreasonable thing to declare himself for Christ. Now listen to me sister, you are a splendid woman, you know a lot of fine things, and have a noble influence; now listen to me, sir, you are a successful business man, bright and studious, listen to me—when you get where you say, “I am as earnest about being right in my soul as I am about general affairs, like eating and drinking, bathing, surgery when needed, making money, and the like,” instead of your saying, “I know I ought to do something definite, but I haven’t been accustomed to doing it,” you will almost stop me and ask for an opportunity.

Get on your feet and declare yourself for Christ. Start right out, meaning business, and when you do, you will break with the sin of neglect.

I ask you to start by God’s grace, and break up that sin, and may the peace of God answer back in your soul, as it has answered back in my unworthy soul, as I have given a more diligent, thoroughgoing study to his precious Word.

 

(Stenographically reported at the Moody Tabernacle)