DIFFERENT FUTURE CONDITIONS. APRIL 13. 111 Who will reward every man according to his deeds, whether they be good or whether they be evil. THE bad man cannot be happy and the good man cannot be wretched, because the different issues of virtue and vice are fixed in the eternal nature of things. The ground of difference in the condition to which the dead shall arise, has been implied, if not directly stated, in all which has been advanced in the scriptures upon the subject. It is no other than a correspondent difference of character during the present life. They who have done good are they who shall rise to the resurrection of life; while they who have done evil shall rise to the resurrection of condemnation. It is not in consequence of any secret, arbitrary decree of the Deity, that this awful distinction will be made; it is in consequence, and only in consequence, of those qualities of the mind and those actions of the life, which are included in doing good or evil, and which conspire to form the moral or religious character. God regards no man's person, nor any of those distinctions which we too often consider as being of high importance. And I will venture to add, neither does he regard any man's opinions, except as they have been embraced upon good or evil principles, or as they have had a good or evil influence upon his heart and conduct. In the day of moral retribution, there will be no causeless dislike of one, nor any unreasonable partiality to another. No person will be accepted or rejected, because he has been of this or that particular age, nation, or church; but character, and nothing but character, genuine character, will determine the sentence. Every man will be judged according to the law or dispensation under which he lived; and every man's voluntary principles and actions will form the subject of inquiry. No man shall suffer for the faults of another; no man be rewarded for another's obedience. Sin and holiness are both of them personal. Every one shall give account for himself; with nothing to fear from the guilt in which he has not been a partaker, and with nothing to hope from that moral and religious excellence of which he is destitute. If there be any passage in the whole book of God, so unambiguous, so clear, so simple in its form, and absolute in its meaning, as to preclude the possibility of misapprehension, it is that of this text. They that have done good, shall rise to the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation." There is a beautiful progression in the powers of man. Before birth he lives a vegetative life, after birth an animal life, and after the new birth, that is, after the principles of religion are rooted and growing within him, a spiritual life. His future condition will depend upon his new birth, which is his advancement in piety and beneficence. He who has lived only the animal life, cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. The bars against his entrance are those of the eternal differences of species, and the immutable nature of things. Each class and mode of being must be kept distinct, nor is it possible that one should enter into the precincts of the other. To-day, then, while it is called to-day, while the opportunity and means of self-discipline are continued, let us hear the voice of the Son of Man, in the blessed assurance and the awful admonition we have been considering, so that when his voice shall awake us from the sleep of death, we may rise to the resurrection of life. 112 CONSOLATIONS IN VIRTUOUS OLD AGE. APRIL 14. I have finished my course: I have kept the faith. IN whatever way any one has been able to signalize himself, the remembrance of the excellence, to which he attained, continues to sustain his sense of honour, when his infirmities forbid him any longer to excel. The drooping pride of declining nature is continually returning to past superiority for support, when it can find no more stay in present eminence. The aged rustic, when the annual sports of his village come round, is contented to be but a spectator of those feats of strength, or sleights of art, for which, he has to recollect, that he was once renowned, though he is now disabled; and in which he can recount, though he can no more renew, his triumphs. The hoary soldier, when no longer able to go out to battle, fights on by his fireside; and, as long as any one will listen to him, repeats his exploits, and "slays the slain," and wins over again the victories, which he and his comrades have won. The decayed artist consoles himself, under the idea that his hand has forgotten its cunning, when he remembers the monuments of it which he has produced. The retiring statesman illumines the shades of privacy, and the glooms of age, with the recollected beams of his past political glory. And the writer, when able to instruct, or entertain the public no more, sooths the sense of his incapacity, by throwing back his thought upon the pages, for which the literary world is indebted to his pen. At this season of human life, when the memory of former honour is the food, upon which human sensibility to it is reduced to subsist, poor is the sustenance which he is able to procure for it, who has merely to remember, that he was eloquent in the senate, or valiant in the field; that he has written what all have read with rapture, or painted what every eye has praised; compared with the richer food, which it is in his power to bring it, who can say, upon sitting down after the action of life, "I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him :-the blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy :" or who, if his situation in the world have not permitted him to raise such monuments of his virtue, is capable of saying to himself, under the humiliating consciousness of decay, "I have fought a good fight ;" I have resisted temptation, and triumphed over it; I have communicated to my fellow creatures all the benefit I have been empowered to impart; I have given to misery all I had to give it; and my conscience testifies, that "in simplicity and godly sincerity I have had my conversation in the world." None of the narratives of veteran valour, or of hoary experience, or of travelled observation, can furnish such pleasing occupation to the tongue of memory, or such entertainment to the ear of curiosity, as this silent relation of conscience affords to the secret soul of aged goodness! : He whose excellence is confined to the energies of genius, when those energies are no more, is nothing but he that shines with a moral splendour, retains that splendour to the last. The scholar's head may lose its clearness, and the artist's hand its skill; but the good man's heart retains its integrity for ever. Time has no tooth that can penetrate into virtue. DIVINE PROOF OF CHRISTIANITY. APRIL 15. The works that I do, they bear witness of me. 113 MIRACULOUS facts are not to be ranked with impossibilities. There was a time when the matter that composes my body was as void of life, as it will be when it shall have lain twenty years in the grave; when the elementary particles whereof my eye is made up, could no more enable a percipient being to see, than they can now enable one to speak; and when that which forms the substance of this hand was as inert as a stone. Yet now, by the goodness of the Creator, the first lives, the last moves, and by means of the second, I perceive light and colours. And if Almighty power can bring about all this gradually, by one particular succession of causes and effects, may not the same power perform it in an instant, and by the operation of other causes to us unknown? Or will the atheist say, (and none who believes in God can doubt the possibility of miracles) that he himself knows every possible cause that can operate in the production of any effect? Or is he certain that there is no such thing in the universe as Almighty power ? To raise a dead man to life; to cure blindness with a touch; to remove lameness, or any other bodily imperfection, by speaking a word, are all miracles; but must all be as easy to the Author of nature, or to any person commissioned by him for that purpose, as to give life to an embryo, make the eye an organ of sight, or cause vegetables to revive in the spring. And therefore, if a person declaring himself to be sent of God, or invested with divine power, and saying and doing what is worthy of such a commission, should perform miracles like these, mankind would have the best reason to believe that his authority was really from heaven. There are certain men, who, calling themselves wise men, pretend to have discovered the imposture of our most holy faith. The Bible, with them, is mere fiction, and the tendency of its belief, to fasten the yoke of ignorance and superstition around the necks of their fellow men. With a generosity quite worthy of their cause, they propose to emancipate us from our debasing thraldom! From what thraldom ? From the thraldom of that faith which works by love, purifies the heart, and overcomes the world? from the thraldom of that holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord; from the thraldom of the peace of God, which passeth understanding ? from the thraldom of a hope of immortality that maketh not ashamed? from the thraldom of a joy unspeakable, and full of glory? From such a thraldom do we wish to be at liberty? No; we are determined, by the grace of God, to glory in the cross of Christ, and to rejoice in his service as the most honourable freedom. Infidelity, like the bird of night, seldom ventures abroad in full day, but chooses rather to pursue its course among its native shades. Christianity teaches men to live soberly, righteously, and godly, by the precepts which it enjoins,-by the examples which it exhibits,by the motives which it suggests by the grace which it communicates, by the aid which it promises, and the hope which it inspires. 'This is my well-beloved Son,' Proclaimed the voice divine; 'Hear him,' his heavenly Father said, The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. CHRISTIANITY breathes nothing of the malignity of national prejudice, or of the exclusive spirit of a rancorous bigotry. Its spirit is that of unlimited benevolence, and its employment is to do good to all. O that those who are disgusted with it as disfigured by the trappings of superstition, and breathing the fury of intolerance, would turn their eyes to it as it appears over the plains of Bethlehem; pure and benign as the angel who proclaimed it, and announcing peace on earth, and good will to men. Religion has never promised to remove calamity from the world; but so to overrule it, that it shall be calamity no longer. It engages to turn the curse into a blessing. In proportion to its influence on the heart, is the peace and the happiness of the individual secured. In proportion to its prevalence in the world, the harmony and stability of society shall be promoted. Christianity provides for the present and for the future offers what the page of science could not unfold; contentment for this life, and a hope full of immortality beyond the grave. "This is the record, that God hath given to us, eternal life; and this life is in his Son." It is not a feeble and uncertain emanation, but a light shining more and more to the perfect day. In the hour of darkness, the Christian turns his eyes to this quarter, and it is always light. Nothing but inveterate prejudice can oppose the testimony of this record; nothing but wilful obstinancy resist its evidences; nothing but fatal blindness be insensible of the truth and glory of its doctrines, when it represents death disarmed, human dignity restored, immortality dawning, sorrow and sighing fleeing for ever away-and a permanent, immutable rest succeeding the present fluctuating, turbulent, transient state of existence. And perhaps some hear it with indifference! O blessed Jesus, it cost thee thy life to ratify this record! God has suspended the ravages of time, and counteracted its devouring influence to preserve it! Ye saints and martyrs, ye died for this testimony and sealed it with your blood! Spirits, glorified spirits of our forefathers, ye wandered miles to listen to this record, by stealth! By some river's brink or in the midst of some remote wilderness, while the wind pierced you, and the sword of persecution hung over your head, you heard this testimony with rapture and delight; you took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, and suffered imprisonment without murmuring, for this cause. But we, sitting under our vine and under our fig tree, none daring to make us afraid-defended by the sword of the magistrate, and protected by the laws of our country-we slumber over our privileges! David meditated day and night upon an imperfect transcript of the divine will; and we scarcely open a finished revelation. Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ afar off; and we sit unmoved at the very foot of the cross. "Awake, Awake, O arm of the Lord; put on thy strength !" Descend, O Spirit of the living God, descend-and plead the cause of neglected truth. By influence of the light divine, Let thine own light to others shine; FOLLY OF DEFAMING THE BIBLE. APRIL 17. The word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. 115 AND is it possible that you can, as a reflecting man, wish to destroy the sacred authority of the Bible? Do you have recourse to a sneer, because you believe a sneer cannot be answered, and because argument can? The Bible is a book so ancient that many circumstances which it relates appear singular in our day. But is it generous to call these blemishes? Is it philosophick to deny the value of the sun, because it has spots on its disk? The scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the safest way of dying. They shed light on the relations of time, and exhibit them in their solemn connexion with eternity. God has given us four books-the book of grace-the book of nature-the book of the world—and the book of providence. Every occurrence is a leaf in one of these books. It does not become us to be negligent in the use of any of them. Do you, then, contemner of divine truth! do you think so highly of ridicule, as to believe that you can thereby demolish the authority of the Bible, a book, which Newton himself esteemed the most authentic of all histories; which, by its celestial light, illumines the darkest ages of antiquity; which is the the touchstone whereby we are enabled to distinguish between true and fabulous theology, between the God of Israel, holy, just, and good, and the impure rabble of heathen Baalim ;-which has been thought, by competent judges, to have afforded matter for the laws of Solon, and a foundation for the philosophy of Plato ;-which has been illustrated by the labour of learning, in all ages and countries; -and been admired and venerated for its piety, its sublimity, its veracity, by all who were able to read and understand it? No, sir; you have gone, indeed, through the wood, with the intention to cut it down; but you have merely busied yourself in exposing to vulgar contempt a few unsightly shrubs which good men had wisely concealed from public view; you have entangled yourself in thickets of thorns and briars; you have lost your way on the mountains of Lebanon; the goodly cedar trees whereof, lamenting the madness, and pitying the blindness of your rage against them, have scorned the blunt edge, and the base temper of your axe, and laughed unhurt, at the feebleness of your stroke. The Bible has withstood the learning of Porphyry, and the power of Julian; to say nothing of the Manichean Faustus. It has resisted the genius of Bolingbroke, and the wit of Voltaire; to say nothing of a numerous herd of inferior assailants; and it will not fall by your force. You have barbed anew the blunted arrows of former adversaries; you have feathered them with blasphemy and ridicule; dipped them in your deadliest poison; aimed them with your utmost skill; shot them against the shield of faith with your utmost vigour ; but, like the feeble javelin of aged Priam, they will scarcely reach the mark-will fall to the ground without a stroke. He who obeys the Bible will believe it. Almighty God! thine aid impart To fix conviction on the heart : |