Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

³ For He does not so reproach as to insult her; but He would bring her to confusion of face to heal her. Vehement are the exclamations of Scripture, nor does it deal softly by flattery with those whom it would by healing recover. “You adulterers, do you not know that the friend of this world is constituted the enemy of God?” The love of the world makes the soul adulterous, the love of the Framer of the world makes the soul chaste; but unless she blush for her corruption, she has no desire to return to that chaste embrace.

Be she confounded that she may return, who was vaunting herself that she should not return. It was pride then that hindered the soul's return. But whoso reproaches does not cause the sin, but shows the sin. What the soul was loth to see, is placed before her eyes; and what she desired to have behind her back, is brought before her face. See yourself in yourself. “Why do you see the mote in your brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam in your own eye?” The soul which went away from herself, is recalled to herself.

As she had gone away from herself, so went she away from her Lord. For she had respect to herself, and pleased herself, and became enamoured of her own power. She withdrew from him, and abode not in herself; and from her own self she is repelled, and from herself shut out, and she falls away unto things without her. She loves the world, loves the things of time, loves earthly things; who if she but loved herself to the neglect of Him by whom she was made, would at once be less, at once fail by loving that which is less.

For she is less than God; yea less by far, and by so much less as the thing made is less than the Maker. It was God then That ought to have been loved, yea in such wise ought God to be loved, that if it might be so, we should forget ourselves. What then is this change? The soul has forgotten herself but by loving the world; let her now forget herself but by loving the world's Maker. Driven away even from herself, I say, she has in a manner lost herself, and has not skilled to see her own actions, she justifies her iniquities; she is puffed up, and prides herself in insolence, in voluptuousness, in honours, in posts of authority, in riches, in the power of vanity.

She is reproved, rebuked, is shown to herself, mislikes herself, confesses her deformity, longs for her first beauty, and she who went away in profusion returns in confusion.