Jekyll and Hyde – Coffman Union 

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Have you ever heard of Treasure Island?  You know, it’s the story of doubloons, and pirates, and peg legs, and sea captains with one eye and parrots on their shoulders, and desert islands and buried treasure.  And it was written by Robert Louis Stevenson who was really a Scotsman who left Scotland and eventually lived in a South Sea Island called Samoa.  And he wrote that story, Treasure Island.  And he’s written all kinds of other novels that are very famous.  He wrote the new Arabian Nights and wrote Kidnapped and several other stories that most of us have read. 

And one in particular has become a classic.  It’s become a classic in the sense that almost every human being in the Western world owes some of their understanding of human nature to this novel.  And almost every human being in the western world knows the names that form the title of this novel.  And it’s a novel of course, that has become a classic the way all things become classics because, it deals with a basic problem in human nature that is common to everybody that has ever lived in the world.  And this novel is a classic because it gives expression to that in such a vivid way that all of us say, “Yeah, yeah, that’s right I understand that.”  And Stevenson called the novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.  And the story is so true to human nature that all of us automatically know Jekyll & Hyde, yeah I know what that means.  

The story you remember, starts in London and it starts like this, “Well, it was this way,” and the man says who was telling the story, “I was coming home from someplace at the end of the world about three o’clock of a black winter morning on my way lay through a part of town where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps.  Street after street and all the folks asleep.  Street after street all lighted up as if for a procession and all empty.  Till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman.  All at once I saw two figures.  One a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk and the other a girl of maybe eight or 10 who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street.  Well sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner.”  And then came the horrible part of the thing, “For the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground.  It sounds nothing to hear but it was hellish to see.  It wasn’t like a man it was like some juggernaut.  I gave a loud shout, took to my heels, collared by gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child.  He was perfectly cool and made no resistance but gave me one look so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like rum.” 

What happened was this creature, because that’s all you could call him, he had been so brutal to the little child, this creature agreed to pay a 100 pounds damages to the girl’s family.  And of course, they were filled with disgust at him and filled with distrust of him so they said, “Where are you going to get it?”  And he said, “I’ll be back in a moment.”  And he went in through a door in a nearby building and came out and handed them a check for 100 pounds.  And they looked at the signature and the signature was that of one of the most respected philanthropic figures in the city, a Dr. Jekyll.  And of course they all knew that that wasn’t Dr. Jekyll.  They knew Dr. Jekyll and this man was nothing like him so they concluded, “Well, this man must have some hold, some kind of blackmail over Jekyll because Jekyll wouldn’t have anything to do with a brutal creature like this.” 

Now in the ensuing months this withered hunchback, brutal, animal like creature became the terror of London because he preyed on all the people who walk in the streets of a large city in the poorer areas in the early morning hours.  He attacked them, he assaulted them.  In several instances he actually committed murder so that the police were all looking for this creature.  But before he had committed the murder he had been forced to tell them who he was and at last he had become known as Mr. Hyde and everybody was in fear of this Mr. Hyde. 

It’s interesting but at the end of Stevenson’s novel, Dr. Jekyll wrote a note just before he committed suicide and he described how he was connected with Mr. Hyde.  He says, “I was born into a good family with a good character and good qualities and a good intellect.  And I was very anxious to do all I could for suffering humanity and anxious to go into medicine and so that’s what I did.  But there were moments in my life when I would discover other feelings within me besides a pity and a sympathy for suffering humanity.  Yes, there were moments,” he says, “when I found deep within passions of hatred and lust that I could not believe were within me at all.  Outwardly I was the respected, kindly Dr. Jekyll but at times I would find within me anger and resentment rising up that I could not control.  It was like another person was inside me.” 

And he says, “This duplicity of my life continued to develop as the years past.  But of course this other creature within me seemed to be so strong at times that I felt even my good deeds were shot through with a lot of the resentment of the anger, and the jealousy that he had.”  Then he says an interesting thing, he says, “You know, you couldn’t call me a hypocrite because a hypocrite is one who pretends to be what he isn’t but I wasn’t that.  I was really the good, kind, elderly Dr. Jekyll.  I was.  But at other times I was really this insane maniac who wanted to trample over people and destroy them and wanted to please himself rather than to please others, and wanted to have his own way rather than others have their way.  I was really that creature.  I was really the creature that was filled with lust, and anger, and resentment.  So actually, I was both of those people.  And in that sense you couldn’t call me a normal hypocrite.”

Well of course these two sets of feelings within him warred so strongly that it began to make him almost incapable of action.  And he in fact, came to this conclusion “If each I told myself,” that is each personality, “Could but be housed in separate identities life would be relived of all that was unbearable.  The unjust might go his way delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path doing the good things in which he found his pleasure and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.  It was the curse of mankind that these two parts were bound together that in the agonized womb of consciousness these polar twins should be continuously struggling.  How then were they to be separated?” 

And he began to experiment.  And one evening in his laboratory he devised a drug that was designed to separate his two personalities.  And you may remember, if you read the story, how he took that drug and swallowed it and then he says, you remember, he hadn’t a mirror that night but he can remember from future nights what must have happened.  He says, “That then I began to feel my features change and the mild kindly features of Dr. Jekyll faded away and the contorted, hate filled, perverted, cruel features of Mr. Hyde began to appear,” and he said, “I was a tall elderly man but well-built because I had developed that side of my character for years.  But when this Mr. Hyde appeared after I took the drug he was a little shrunken character because in fact I hadn’t given him much expression over the years.” 

And then you remember what happened?  And here’s where Stevenson is so true to life as opposed to the dear counselors, you know, who feed us with that lie.  They say, “Express anger and it will disappear.”  That’s a new heresy you know.  Nobody has ever believed that down through all the centuries of humanity.  Stevenson knew it wasn’t true.  What in fact happens is when you express a thing it grows stronger and that’s what happened.  First of all Jekyll would take the drug once a week but Hyde demanded that he take it more and then he’d take it twice a week, and then Hyde demanded more and then he’d take it three times a week, and then every night he would take this drug and he would go out into the streets of London and roam them as this brutal cruel Hyde destroying the very people that the mild mannered kindly generous Dr. Jekyll was always trying to help.

And in fact, the more he expressed that character the stronger it became and actually ceased to be a shrunken withered character and grew strong, and grew as strong as Jekyll himself.  Until he got to the point of that hideous evening, you might remember it in the story, where he was simply sitting in his drawing room, had no intention of taking the drug at all and he felt the twitching at his face and he looked in the mirror and the Hyde was beginning to form.  The features of Hyde were beginning to form without the use of the drug.  And he had gone so far now that the evil part of his nature took over from the good.  He no longer had to take a drug to try to set this evil part of his nature free, now it was taking the dominate role in his life and it was beginning to take over and he no longer could control it, and he no longer could hold it back.

And then of course, the agony of his situation became clear to him and he knew then that there was only one thing he could do and he describes it.  “This then, at all hours of the day and night I would be taken with the premonitory shudder.  Above all, if I slept, or even dosed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened.  Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself I, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became in my own person a creature eaten up and empty by fever languidly weak both in body and mind and solely occupied by one thought, the horror of my other self.”

And then the story ends like this, “This then is the last time, short of a miracle that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts or see his own face, now sadly altered in the glass.  Will Hyde die upon the scaffold or will he find the courage to release himself at the last moment?  God knows.  I am careless, I don’t care anymore.  This is my true hour of death and what is to follow concerns another but myself.  Here then as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.”  

And of course why it touches us is which of you do not know that experience?  Which of us do not know that?  Which of us have not been in the same position that’s described by Paul when he says, “I don’t understand my own actions because I don’t do the good I want but the evil that I hate is the very thing that I do.”  I mean, which of you has not gone home determined, “I am going to be kind to my mum and my dad.  I am going to be understanding to them.  I do not care what they say, I am going to be a help to them this night when I go home.”  Which of us has not gone home at quarter break and said, “I am going to be the kind of son or daughter they want me to be.”  Which of us have no lain in our bed at night and said, “I am going to be pure this night.  I am.”  Which of us has not gone to spend an evening with someone, or a day with someone and said, “I am going to be gentle with this person.”  And we have found ourselves lashing out with sarcasm, and anger, and irritability from depths of evil that we did not believe we possessed.  And all our pure resolutions and our determination to be pure in our thoughts and our actions have gone by the board as some kind of animal of lust has risen up from underneath us and the will has not been able to stem the tide, has not been able to hold it back.  The stuff has just burst out and it’s almost as if it’s somebody other than us.

That’s why we can understand Jekyll.  Yeah, we could almost call it another person.  Which of us have not found ourselves in that situation where we determined we will get our work done, we will.  We will do it.  We will get the assignment done, we will get the yard cleaned up, we will.  We will act and be active.  We will take hold in our jobs and do it vigorously and enthusiastically.  And there seems to be a monster of indolence and lethargy and laziness that governs us from within that we cannot control.  Well you know if you’re like me you have to be saying, “Yeah, that’s right.  That’s right.  That’s right I don’t understand my own actions because I don’t do the good I want but I do the very thing I hate.  And it seems that when I want to do something good, evil lies right there.  It’s as if there’s something coming up from inside me that I cannot control.” 

Loved ones that is the basic problem of human nature.  The guilt thing, we make a big thing of the guilt but the guilt comes because this other thing can’t be controlled.  The problem of human nature is that very problem of the evil that seems to be within us that we cannot keep down or control and that bursts out.  What are you to do?  I say this will all seriousness, you do see why he chose suicide don’t you?  Because, Hyde had become so entangled with Jekyll that to kill one he had to kill both.  You do see why loved ones are driven to that.  It’s important to see that.  That’s not just the action of somebody who is unbalanced, you can see why a person thinks suicide that’s the only thing.  And of course, we all know it’s no answer to anything.  It’s the cessation of the only thing we know of life here on earth.  It’s not at all what we should do.  It’s not even sensible let alone godly or right.  But you can see why people do that. 

What else?  Well, the drugs.  I mean, some of us do try the drugs.  That’s really what we’re trying with the tranquilizers.  Don’t you understand that?  I mean, we are, it’s just a mild form of it.  We’re trying to calm the part of us that won’t rest.  You can do it with the drugs.  Of course, you run into the same problem as Hyde did, that eventually you lose control.  You lose control, the drugs take control or you become immune to the drugs, or you become enslaved to them.  But above all, your good part does not have control.  The shock treatment, those of you who have had that, you know what it does it just temporarily dislocates your conscience from your actions.  It dislocates your personality, throws everything apart, fragments you for a moment so that you live in limbo for a while.  But if you’ve been like many of the loved ones I have seen, you come back after being a vegetable for weeks, or months, and the last state is worse than the first.

Power of positive thinking, it’s kind of almost laughable to any of us who have really faced this.  The power of positive thinking it’s like trying to stop a tidal wave with a picket fence.  It’s just impossible.  It’s just impossible.  The power of positive thinking, it maybe does for the little problems you have in your life, it doesn’t do a thing for this.  The power of positive thinking, self-discipline, all kinds of mental control, behavior modification, it’s like trying to tame a lion with chocolate chip cookies.  The thing is so massive, it’s so complex, it’s so deep, it’s so powerful, it has so many avenues, hasn’t it?  I mean, you kill it there, it gets around there.  You think you’ve got it under control and suddenly it’s leaping through one of the things that is virtuous in your life and it’s filling it with selfishness and misery.  Sometime you’re about to do some good act and you’re suddenly filled with all kinds of ridiculous unclean thoughts that you never envisioned at all. 

So when you deal with positive thinking techniques, or behavioral modification, or psychological tricks, all of them deal only with the symptoms, none of them deal with the underlying cause that there is something within you that depends on another power other than yourself and that is always going out looking for people’s approval when you want to do the right thing whatever they think.  Suddenly this thing inside you is going out trying to get people’s approval and it’s what of course, makes you fearful to be yourself.  How do you get rid of it? 

Well loved ones, it’s true if you don’t get rid of it it’ll eventually get rid of you.  It will.  I mean, that’s the truth in that suicide situation.  Stevenson was so right if you don’t get rid of it it’ll get rid of you.  It’ll shoot through all the good things in your life with selfishness, with uncleanness, with evil, however nice you look on the outside, however respectable, however successful you look on the outside, you’ll know in your heart this stuff is still coming up from inside and it’s shooting through everything you do.  And it will eventually take over, it will.  It’ll eventually take over. 

If you say to me, “Oh now brother, there are people that have,” – no they look on the outside as if they’re not taken over but it’s a bluff thing inside they’re really basically self-centered, and filled with evil, and have the appearance of good on the outside.  No, either one or the other has to go and it is false to say that normal life is the battle of these two.  It isn’t.  Normal life is freedom.  Normal life is liberty to be what your Creator made you to be. 

What’s the answer?  Oh, God has done something about it.  God, your Creator, has done something.  Maybe you’d look at it loved ones it’s a famous verse that many of us know by heart.  It’s Romans 6:6.  Romans 6:6, the kind of verse that you can memorize and then spend a lifetime thinking about it.  Romans 6:6, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.”  That old self is the name for Hyde, that’s it.  That old self, that Mr. Hyde in you was crucified with Christ. 

In other words there are silos round this country that have interceptor missiles in them and those interceptor missiles have computers built in so that they are heat seeking devices that can actually launch and find a Russian ICBM before it gets to its target.  Even we men can do that, we human beings.  We are able to do that so God did that.  He foresaw the monster that you would create within yourself by your distrust of him.  He is able to do that.  He sees all of time in one great eternal now and he was able to foresee the monster that you would create inside yourself.  That monster of greed and avarice, that monster of hatred and evil, and resentment, and anger, and jealousy that you cannot control, he was able to foresee that and he sent up his interceptor missile in Christ, in a miracle that he wrought outside time. 

Do you realize that?  That H. G. Wells was right, it is possible, a time machine is actually true.  You can in a moment step outside time and into timelessness.  See, there is a timeless area where everything is happening at this moment.  And in that timeless area, God put all that old self of yours into his Son and destroyed it and killed it so that it is really dead.  If you say to me, “Why then do I still experience the power of it in my life?”  That’s very simple, you believe that it is not destroyed.  You believe that it still is alive.

You want an example of it?  Look at a star at night.  Many of those stars died millions of years ago, all you see is the light coming towards you.  But if you believe that that light is not just the light but it’s the star, and the star is coming towards you, you’ll take evasive action and you’ll direct your life by the lie that you believe and your life will be affected by it.  You ask anybody who has plunged over a cliff late at night.  I know don’t how Jessica Savage died but there are many of us who have friends who drove over a cliff late at night or drove into a wall because they misunderstood the beacons, or the lights that were around a construction area.  It doesn’t matter what the reality is, you will be affected by the lie that you believe and your life will be destroyed by that.  That’s why.

If you continue to believe that this thing inside you has never been dealt with by your Creator in Christ then you will continue to feel its power daily.  You will continue to feel the lust rising up within you, the anger, the jealousy, the envy, the hatred, and you’ll never be clear of it.  But you are free to believe the truth.  You are. 

No, the psychologists are wrong you and I aren’t pure innocent little creatures.  We aren’t.  We’re born of a long line of human beings that have done their best to live in this world without their God and in the course of it they’ve made themselves selfish monsters.  That’s what we are.  But God has removed that in his Son Jesus and it will be unto you according to your faith.  That’s it.  If you say to me, “How do I overcome this?”  By faith, by believing that your old self has been crucified with Christ and by living in the light of that a pure, and a clean, and a beautiful life.  And as you continue to set your actions and your will that way, you will find a new power coming into you, the power of – God called it a Holy Spirit because it’s so different from this unholy spirit, you will find a Holy Spirit coming into you and beginning to move in your life.  And instead of automatically experiencing uncleanness surging up in your imagination, you’ll begin to experience cleanness and beauty, and you’ll begin to be like God because you feel like God on the inside because God is able to manifest that miracle in your life today.  And that’s the only way.  That’s the only way.  And wherever you see people who have not taken this way, you see people who have defeat in the back of their eyes, strain and hypocrisy running through their life, whatever church they go to, or whatever profession they make. 

Loved ones, Stevenson is right, it’s either Jekyll’s solution or it’s God’s solution.  I would encourage you, I would encourage you by saying that it happened to me and it changed my life and if it can happen to me, who was such a skeptic about the whole deal, then it can happen to you this morning.  You simply choose to believe that what God has said to you is done, with that Mr. Hyde in you he has done.  Even if you can’t understand all the Einsteinium beliefs about time and timelessness, if you simply believe God – you don’t need to understand God, you just need to believe him, if you can believe him and believe this morning, and begin to live in the light of that, you’ll find a new power, a new Holy Spirit that will deliver you from the Hyde in your life and integrate your life at last and end the schizophrenia.

Let us pray.  Dear Father, this is so real for each of us that Lord, we want this and we need this, we know.  So dear God, you have said there in your word that our old self was crucified with Christ.  Now Lord, up to this moment it seemed anything but crucified.  It seemed so powerful that at times we felt it was almost going to overcome whatever good there was in us.  So Lord God, we know we have to do something about it because it seems the schizophrenia gets worse and worse as the years go by.  So Father, we don’t think you would mock us and we don’t think you would put something in your word that would deceive us.  We believe that you do love us otherwise you wouldn’t have given this life to us and given this world to us. 

So Lord God, we have the power of will to think what we want to think and to choose what we want to choose.  Dear God, we choose to believe that what you have said is true, that this Hyde inside us, this old self, this old nature that we cannot control, this self-centeredness, this desire for self-gratification and self-exaltation that spoils so many good moments in our lives, Father we believe that was destroyed by you in timelessness in Jesus.  And Lord, we now reject this lie that we have been feeding ourselves for so many years that this old self is still strongly in existence.  Lord, we reject that lie.  And now Father, we believe that that has been destroyed in Jesus and we intend to live as free spirits from this day forward as new people for whom the old has passed away and the new has come.  And we intend to do what your Holy Spirit guides us to do for your glory. 

And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now and evermore.  Amen.