OUR LAY SERMON FOR SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1263, 14 May 1896, Page 41

OUR LAY SERMON FOR SUNDAY READING.

VIRTUE IS CONTAGIOUS. " Let him do likewise."—Luke Hi., 11. Someone has said that if ho were able to create a world, ho would make virtue contagious instead of vice. A small degree of observation will show that his efforts in this direction would not bo necessary, for the Lord has already do:io so.

It is not as bad a world as the pessimist would have us think, for the general trend of thing 3 is toward the good, and not toward the evil, and if you look into the matter carefully you will find that what you call contagion inheres in the pure and noble quite as much as in the impure and ignoble. If it bo true that flaunted and successful vice allures a great many, it is also true that an honest and knightly life does the same thing. The career of a business man who brushes aside the restraints of moral principle, who is little more than a highwayman at heart, and who boldly robs under cover of law, until ho counts his millions, is certainly very demoralising. No one may measure the extent of its unhappy influence. It is startling and dazzling and enticing. A proportion of our youth become bewildered as they look upon it, and, forgetting that there is a moral law which forces a man to pay his debts either before death or after, they pursue the tactics of their idol. There is undoubtedly an appealing inspiration in the life of even the wildest adventurer, who defies fate, challenges the world, and by dint of audacity, if not of courage, achieves what ho calls success. I have no inclination, therefore, to ignore the fact that there is contagion in a life which is brilliant, even though it be at the- same time criminal. But I insist that there is just as much contagion in a good deed as in a bad one—that the holiness of one life conveys itself into another life and produces the same results there.

In physical experiences the agent of communication is a germ or a microbe; in spiritual experienco it is an idea. I have heard physicians say that tho contagiousness of a disease depends largely on circumstances. If you are in a thoroughly healthy condition your system closes every door and tho germ cannot enter. You enjoy absoluto immunity from danger. If, on the contrary, you are susceptible, or predisposed to the malady, then tho germ takes root and you become ill. Whether or not you catch the disease is determined by the weakness or strength of your own body. Nurses may watch over tho dying and never feel tho effects of the ailment which saps the life of the sufferer. It is the same in tho moral world. Contagion thero depends on yourself also, and to a far greater extent. If you lack spiritual strength and ambition, if your seuso of honour is only slightly developed, if your self-respect is at a low ebb, then tho example of tho man who wins a fortune by nefarious means—like the microbe of typhoid—finds a lodgment in your soul, is cherished and multiplied by its environment, until at last immorality has the resistless sweep of a blizzard and tears up by tho roots every heavenly and every manly aspiration. If you had impregnable uprightness of character, if nefarious methods wero abhorrent to you, thor would bo no attractiveness in viciou deeds and they would have no more alluring power than the fire has that may coax you to thrust your hand into it, but which coaxts in vain.

Thero is contagion in goodness, provided you aro in a condition to receive it. A grand and glorious lifo rouses you to imitation. Tho reputation achieved by honest methods so affects us that we build a monument to tho man who possesses it, and toll our boys to go and do likewise. I don't believe that the iniluenco of a pure lifo can bo reckoned, so far-reaching, so inspiring is it. It is said that the pregnant wives of the Athenians used to spend hours gazing at some beautiful statue in the belief that something of its beauty would be transferred to the child that was coming into the world. Beauty was contagious, and the little one, slumbering amid tho mysteries of a new life, caught it. When Father Damien died among tho lepers of tl.o Sandwich Islands, his heroism and self-sacrifice v.ere so contagious that scores of applicants prayed for the privilege of continuing his work, with the certainly of death as the result, Such was the influence of his lonely, saintly and Godlike mission that it was considered a boon to ho immured within those leprous walls and to fill at last a leper's grave. It is a mistake to talk of the contagiousness of vice and to ignore that of virtue. This would be a queer world if one could catch tho impulse to evil, tut not the impulse to good, It may servo the purpose of tho orator, who seeks a telling period, to tell us this, if ho is willing to sacrifice truth to rhetoric; but the stern and glorious facts give an emphatic denial to tho statement. Mankind aro nobler and truer and more moral than ever before. Public opinion is more generous and more just. Wo have a larger faith than our fathers ami more true religion than has heretofore been found on the planet. Why is this ? Simply and only because truth and honesty and purity and all the nobler qualities of character arc contagious and because the contagion of vice is growing leas dangerous year by year. It is safe to conclude that, after all, this is God's world. For that reason the tide of righteousness should be on the flood, while the tide of vice should be on the ebb, and a little observation will show that this js true,