Moth-Eaten Garments
H. W. Beecher. James 5:1-6 Go to now, you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come on you.… In early days, besides silver and gold, which always and everywhere have been considered wealth, garments were stored up, and were regarded as an evidence of riches. Against these things time has a grudge. They wear out if you use them, and waste more if you do not. If you store them away, mildew and damp searches for them to rot them. If you too incautiously expose them to the cleansing air, you give knowledge of your treasure, excite cupidity, anti draw the thief to your dwelling. And while men covet, and the elements enviously consume your garments and your fabrics, there are insects created, it would seem, expressly to feed upon them. First is the moth miller. It is most fair, silent, harmless. And yet every housewife springs after it with electric haste. It is a dreaded pest — not for what it is, but for what it becomes. It is the mother of moths. And there are ten thousand moral moths just like them — soft, satiny, silent, harmless in themselves; but they lay eggs, and the eggs are not as harmless as the insects. There are sins that have teeth, and there are sins that have children with teeth. Could there, then, have been selected a figure more striking in its analogies than this? Could anything more clearly show to us the power of the sins of neglect? of the sins of indolence and of carelessness? of sins of a soft and gentle presence, that in themselves are not very harmful, but that are the breeders of others that are? of the silent mischiefs of the unused faculties or rooms of the soul, that are not ventilated, nor searched with the broom and the brush? men do well to watch and fight against obvious and sounding sins. They are numerous. They are armed and are desperate. They swarm the ways of life. Not one vice, not one temptation of which the Word of God warns us, is to be lightly esteemed. But these are not our only dangers. Tens of thousands of men perish, not by the lion-like stroke of temptation, but by the insidious bite of the hidden serpent; not with roar and strength, but with subtle poison. More men are moth-eaten than lion eaten in this life; and it behoves us in time to give heed to these dangers of invisible and insidious little enemies. The real strength of man is in his character. Now character is not a massive unit; it is a fabric, rather. It is an artificial whole made up by the interply of ten thousand threads. Every faculty is a spinner, spinning every day its threads, and almost every day threads of a different colour. Myriads and myriads of webbed products proceed from the many active faculties of the human soul, and character is made up by the weaving together of all these innumerable threads of daily life. Its strength is not merely in the strength of some simple unit, but in the strength of numerous elements. There are crimes that, like frost on flowers, in one single night accomplish their work of destruction. There are vices that, like freshets, sweep everything before them. Men may be destroyed in character and reputation, utterly and sudden. But there are other instruments of destruction besides these. We do well to mark them, and to watch against them; but we also do well to remember that a man may be preserved from crimes and from great vices, and yet have his character moth-eaten. Watch against little sins and little faults. First, aside from great vices and crimes, there are the moths of indolence. Indolence may be supposed to be morally wrong; but it is thought to be wrong rather in a negative way than otherwise. No, no! The mischief of water is not that it does not run, but that, not running, it corrupts, and corrupting breeds poisonous miasma, so that they who live in the neighbourhood inhale disease at every breath. The mischief of indolence is, not that it neglects the use of powers and the improvement of the opportunities of life, but that it breeds morbid conditions in every part of the soul. There is health in activity, but there is disease in indolence. There are moths also in things unsuspected. All men agree that a glutton and a drunkard are opprobrious and ignominous. But there are excesses from over-eating on this side of gluttony, and excesses from over-drinking this side of drunkenness. There are moths of appetite. There are many men who eat beyond the necessities of nature. They obscure their minds. There are many who, by taking too much food, twice or thrice a day repeated, keep all their feelings upon an edge, so that they are quick and irritable, or stupid and slow. There are many who, by mere over-eating, take from sleep its refreshment, and from their waking hours their peace, by the gnawing of the worm of appetite. This is a little thing. Your physician does not say much about it. Your parents hardly ever speak of it. It is a thing for every man to consider for himself. But it is a serious fact that two-thirds of the men who live a sedentary life impair their strength by the simple act of injudicious feeding — over-eating. And that which is true of food is still more true of stimuli: not alone of spirituous liquors, with regard to which you are warned abundantly, but also of domestic stimuli. I do not mean to be understood as saying that every man who employs tobacco is moth-eaten; that every man who indulges himself moderately in the use of tea and coffee is injured thereby. I do not mean to go so far as to say that every man who uses unfrequently and in small quantities, wines and liquors, is himself physically injured by them. But I do mean to say, comprehensively — and you know it is true — that in this sphere lie a multitude of mischiefs and of temptations, each of which is minute, but the sum of which is exceedingly dangerous. The carriage of our affections also develops a class of tendencies which are fitly included in this subject. There are many men who never give way to wrath on a great and sounding scale. It is wholesome to be mad thoroughly. It does a man good to subsoil him by stirring him up down to the bottom. I would that men were fretful less and angry more. For it is these little petty moths of perpetual fretfulness, moroseness, sourness; these little fribbles of temper that cut the thread of life — it is these that destroy men, inside and out. We read about some of the passions of which we see traces, but of the nature, and progress, and power of which we scarcely ever form an adequate conviction, either in others or in ourselves. Some of them are such as these: greediness, envy, jealousy. Youth is seldom afflicted with them. They are latent. They lie concealed. There is a sphere in men's lives into which they are accustomed to sweep a whole multitude of petty faults without judging them, without condemning them, and without attempting to correct them. There is a realm of moral moths for almost all of us. We all hold ourselves accountable for major morals, but there is a realm of minor morals where we scarcely suppose ethics to enter. There are thousands and thousands of little untruths, that hum and buzz and sting in society, which are too small to be brushed or driven away. They are in the looks; they are in the inflections and tones of the voice; they are in the actions; they are in reflections rather than in direct images that are presented. They are methods of producing impressions that are false, though every means by which they are produced is strictly true. There are little unfairnesses between man and man, and companion and companion, that are said to be minor matters, and that are small things; there are little unjust judgments and detractions; there are slight indulgences of the appetites; there are petty violations of conscience; there are ten thousand of these plays of the passions in men, which are called foibles or weaknesses, but which eat like moths. They take away the temper, they take away magnanimity and generosity, they take from the soul its enamel and its polish. Men palliate and excuse them, but that has nothing to do with their natural effect upon us. They waste and destroy us, and that, too, in the soul's silent and hidden parts. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. WEB: Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming on you.