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SEEMONS, 
 
 BT 
 
 Ret. EPHEAIM PEABODY, D.D., 
 
 MINISTEK OF KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON. 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY. 
 18 5 7. . 
 
- V 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1857, by 
 
 Crosby, NicHqls, and Compant, , 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusct 
 
 cambeidge: 
 metcalf and company, peihters to the usivkustty. 
 
CONTE NTS. 
 
 PaG£ 
 
 MEMOIR ix 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 CHBIST OHE LIFE 1 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 WOKIDLINESS 16 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 MIKACULOtJS INTERPOSITION KOT 0NNATURAI, ... 33 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 A TOICB BEHIND THEE 56 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 * STAND IN THY LOT 72 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 THE TKANSEIGUKAIION 90 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 V THY STATUTES, CUE SONGS 
 
 103 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 SEEMON VIII. 
 
 NATtTEE WITH AND WITHOUT A EEVELATION OF* IMMOR- 
 TALITY 118 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 PROVIDENCE 131 
 
 SERMON X 
 
 ETBRNAL LIFE 144 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 WATCHING WITH CHRIST 159 
 
 SEEMON XII. ^ - 
 
 REALITIES 170 
 
 SEEMON XIII. 
 
 THE WEARY AND HEAVY LADEN 185 
 
 SEEMON XIV. 
 
 PERSONALITY I97 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 
 UNRESERVED OBEDIENCE 210 
 
 SEEMQN XVI. 
 
 A PASSING WORLD LEAVES PERMANENT IMPRESSIONS . 226 
 
 SEEMON XVII. 
 
 AUTHORITY 240 
 
 SEEMON XVIII. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION OV CHRIST 254 
 
CONTENTS. V 
 
 SERMON XIX. 
 
 THE RAISING OF LAZABtTS 268 
 
 SEEMON XX. 
 
 ON WHICH SIDE ■? 282 
 
 SERMON XXI. 
 
 CHAMBERS OF IMAGEET 296 
 
 SERMON XXII. 
 
 THE MEMORIAL OF VIETt7E 310 
 
 SERMON XXIII. 
 
 STILLNESS OF MIND 327 
 
 SERMON XXIV. 
 
 OPPORTONITT AND PREPARATION 340 
 
 SERMON XXV. 
 
 IDLE WORDS 354 
 
 SERMON XXVI. 
 
 THE PRESSURE OP DUTIES 367 
 
 SERMON XXVII. 
 
 CONFIDENCE IN GOD 378 
 
 a' 
 
MEMOIR. 
 
MEMOIR. 
 
 When a man is removed from among us by 
 death, who was remarkable for the clearness and 
 strength of his mind, the delicacy of his percep- 
 tions, and the warmth of his heart, we feel the im- 
 pulse to perpetuate the memory of these attractive 
 qualities among those who knew him, notwithstand- 
 ing the impossibility of conveying to others any 
 exact idea.of the charm of his manners, the impres- 
 siveness of his discourse, or the persuasive power of 
 his example. Such a man was Ephraim Peabody ; 
 and it is with such an instinctive desire that we sit 
 down, not to write a memoir of him, in the com- 
 mon sense of the word, but to record the sentiments 
 he excited, the affection he inspired, the unfading 
 brightness which surrounds his memory; to speak 
 of his character, and the deeds and habits which ex- 
 emplified it ; and to testify to a new proof of the 
 power of goodness guided by wisdom and inspired 
 by affection. His was always the same character, 
 developed in different degrees according to his ad- 
 vance in life ; but there was no period, from the be- 
 ginning to the end, when he was not remarkably 
 
X MEMOIE. 
 
 intelligent, amiable, modest, and conscientious. His 
 organization, both internal and external, mental and 
 corporeal, was large, strong, and, at the same time, 
 delicate to a remarkable degree. He does not seem 
 to have been subjected so much to the painful task 
 of correcting even early faults, as to the pleasanter 
 process of the gradual unfolding of the instinctive 
 right tendencies of childhood and youth. Born in 
 picturesque New Hampshire, he always exhibited 
 that fondness for natural beauty which is a mark of 
 fine perceptions and purity of taste, and which led 
 him, in later years, to the development and cultiva- 
 tion of a power of imagination that exhibited itself 
 in the forms of poetry. His education was con- 
 ducted not merely in schools and colleges, but also 
 in the fields and woods, while he was engaged in 
 the enjoyment of the beauties of external nature, be- 
 fore he could understand the modes in which they 
 were produced. 
 
 One of the earliest anecdotes related of him is 
 that his instructor found him one day gazing at the 
 sunset sky, so peculiarly splendid in our atmosphere, 
 with such attention, that he seemed not to hear a 
 question that was asked him-, or at least did not 
 reply at once. Presently he said he was " looking 
 to see an angel peep over," — almost the idea which 
 was expressed afterwards, or, it may be, at the very 
 time, on occasion of the same sunset, by another 
 finely touched mind : — 
 
 " 'Mid yon rich cloud's voluptuous pile, 
 Methinks some spirit of the ail- 
 Might rest to gaze below awhile, 
 Then turn to bathe and revel there." 
 
MEMOIR. XI 
 
 In the retirement of Wilton he passed the opening 
 years of life, enjoying the privileges of early educa- 
 tion which are the birthright of every New England 
 child, till he was removed first to Byfield, and then 
 to Exeter Academy, which was under the charge of 
 his uncle. There were no peculiar advantages for 
 him, of course, but he used those which were com- 
 mon to all the pupils in such a manner that he reaped, 
 from his first studies, those habits of diligence and 
 observation which are the best fruits of early train- 
 ing. The interest and influence of his Uncle Abbot 
 were kindly and constantly exerted in his early edu- 
 cation, in the formation of those habits of attention 
 and application which never fail to result in the.best 
 development of natural gifts. In college he pursued 
 the same steady course, and became known for the 
 equanimity and gentleness of disposition, and the 
 intellectual ability, that were characteristic of him 
 from his earliest to his latest days. He was distin- 
 guished, too, for the poetic talent, which showed it- 
 self in his intellectual character as well as in his verse. 
 
 Upon graduating at Bowdoin College, where he 
 won the regard of such men as Professors Cleveland, 
 Packard, and Newman, he removed to Cambridge, 
 for the purpose of pursuing theological studies, and 
 completing the necessary preparation for the profes- 
 sion he had chosen. There he had an opportunity 
 of forming and cultivating an acquaintance with 
 some of those sympathetic minds to whom his at- 
 tachment lasted as long as his life. If not exactly 
 college friendships, they were friendships of youth, 
 and it is no common happiness when such affections 
 
Xll MEMOIR. 
 
 remain, as in this instance, through the trials and 
 changes of life, to its maturity and its close. He 
 had early formed those opinions which led him 
 to the choice of Cambridge as the place for his 
 theological preparation ; or rather he determined to 
 think and judge for himself, in matters of opinion, 
 without being biassed by mere authority, so far as 
 this independence is really practicable without de- 
 generating -into disregard of those who are entitled 
 to respect. It is not always easy to decide what 
 would be submission to despotism, and what would 
 be rebellion against lawful influence, in matters of 
 intellectual cultivation ; but few men have deter- 
 mined for themselves more conscientiously, or more 
 wisely, than Mr. Peabody. He always spoke with 
 gratitude of the influence of Mr. Norton, in inculcat- 
 ing the independence of mind, and thoroughness of 
 research upon every important subject, which were 
 characteristic of his instructor, and which have left 
 their impress not only upon Cambridge, but upon 
 the community of which Cambridge is a part. At 
 the same time, he perceived and sympathized with 
 the deep reverence with which Mr. Norton regarded 
 the great problems of life; and no feeling of either 
 was stronger than dislike of everything approaching 
 to levity in connection with subjects of such intense 
 interest. 
 
 With his theological studies at Cambridge ended 
 his preparation for entering on that scene of sever- 
 er discipline and more anxious toil, the advanced 
 school of the world for children of a larger growth, 
 who are responsible to no human teacher, and 
 
MEMOIR. xiii 
 
 who must learn for themselves the hard lessons of 
 experience. But he came to it with a mind and 
 heart as well prepared as they could be by diligence, 
 by a peculiar talent for observation, and by habitual 
 faithfulness to a conscience, not only void of offence, 
 but jealously watchful over his own conduct aijd ten- 
 dencies. This may be said with confidence by those 
 not familiar with him at that period, because it is 
 clearly impossible to possess such delicacy in that 
 infallible guide as he exhibited in all his later life, 
 if it had not been carefully cultivated from his very 
 first consciousness of responsibility. At the same 
 time, sensitive and delicate as it was, his conscience 
 had nothing morbid in it. It was quick to' perceive 
 the nioral bearing of actions, not because it was dis- 
 ordered, but because it was sound, and because he 
 chose to be under its guidance. 
 
 He passed some time — nearly a year — at Mead- 
 ville in Pennsylvania, where he began to preach, and 
 to exercise those powers of observation, of judgment, 
 and of expression, which he cultivated with assiduity 
 ever after. Nothing was more remarkable in him 
 than the diligence and faithfulness with which he 
 sought to improve the faculties intrusted to him, 
 unless it were the singular modesty with which he 
 declined accepting situations which were offered to 
 him, but for which he thought himself not sufficiently 
 prepared. He was fondly and highly appreciated, 
 not merely by the more cultivated members of so- 
 ciety there, but by the rural population as well, to 
 whom his services were sometimes rendered in the 
 fields or the quiet grove. 
 b 
 
XIV MEMOIK. 
 
 From Meadville he went to Cincinnati in 1831, 
 not then the great city and mart that it has since 
 become, but comparatively an outpost of civilization, 
 with only a portion of the wealth and cultivation 
 which now make it conspicuous among the great 
 centres of movement in the world. A small Unitari- 
 an congregation found themselves there, surrounded 
 by the various sects which are called Orthodox, and 
 who agree in few things so entirely, as in considering 
 Unitarianism a dangerous heresy. 
 
 The peculiar diiiiculties which often suiTound a 
 congregation, entertaining diiferent opinions from 
 those of the mass of the population about them, 
 were by no means so great in Cincinnati as has 
 often happened elsewhere. There was no embit- 
 tered controversy, nor unamiable personality. Dif- 
 ferent sects treated each other with respect, and 
 exchanged mutual good offices ; and Mr. Peabody's 
 influence and character were not adapted to dimin- 
 ish a state of feeling so mutually honorable. He 
 lived on terms of the pleasantest nature with the 
 principal Orthodox clergymen, and especially with 
 the now venerable Dr. Beecher. The greatest 
 difficulty of his situation was the impossibility of 
 procuring exchanges, rendering the care of a parish 
 a matter of vast and wearing labor ; though still 
 not enough to prevent Mr. Peabody from superin- 
 tending the publication of a religious magazine, and 
 engaging in a literary association of the young men 
 with whom he was intimately acquainted. 
 
 His congregation was small, his compensation 
 moderate, his toil and his success were great. He 
 
-MEMOIR. XV 
 
 improved himself not merely by his more serious 
 studies, and his professional labors, which, in his 
 position, must have been incessant and wearing, 
 but by cultivating those important arts of elocution 
 and composition which have so much influence on 
 the usefulness of a minister. His poetical tenden- 
 cies would show themselves in occasional pieces for 
 the magazines, and in the illustrations he felt at lib- 
 erty to use in the pulpit ; and though he kept them 
 under restraint, his people would have been quite 
 willing he should have given them the reins a little 
 more freely. 
 
 His residence at Cincinnati was an eventful period 
 of his life. There he began the real, toilsome service 
 of a parish minister; there he was married;* there he 
 was exposed to the terrors of the Asiatic cholera, a 
 new, strange, and uncontrollable malady ; and there 
 he labored with such assiduity, in writing both for 
 the pulpit and the magazines, as to forget the claims 
 of nature to moderation and care, and to sow the 
 seeds of that delicacy which soon developed itself in 
 serious disorder of the physical frame. 
 
 He is remembered in Cincinnati with all the af- 
 fectionate interest which can be won by faithfulness 
 to duty, by cheerfulness in difficulty and toil, by sub- 
 mission in affliction, by kindness to all about him, 
 and by the interchange of affection with the few with 
 whom he could be intimately associated. His preach- 
 
 * To Miss Derby, of Salem, at that time visiting Cincinnati ; — a 
 union productive of all the happiness which can follow from affection, 
 sympathy, mutual griefs and joys, and from the common care of chil- 
 dren who repay all anxieties by the promise of futurity. 
 
XVI MEMOIR. 
 
 ing there was always, from the very beginning, 
 . impressive from his discernment and truthfulness, 
 and attractive from the simplicity of his style, the 
 poetic beauty of his illustrations, and the unaffected 
 earnestness with which he persuaded many. 
 
 In the summer of 1835 he came to Boston with his 
 wife and child, and was to have delivered the poem 
 at the annual celebration of the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
 ciety at Cambridge. But his severe labors had worn 
 so much upon him, that, a few days previous to the 
 festivity, he was suddenly attacked with bleeding 
 from the lungs ; and of course all speaking in public 
 was at once to be given up, and nothing was to be 
 done but to pay the strictest attention to the care of 
 his precarious health. Dr. Putnam, his most intimate 
 friend, delivered the poem which he had prepared 
 for the highest literary occasion of our College ; but 
 all the charm of his verse only served to make his 
 friends feel more painfully the danger which threat- 
 ened him. 
 
 During this visit to New England, he was called 
 to undergo, in his weakness of body, an afflic- 
 tion than which few can be more difficult to bear, 
 even with all the strength which can be acquired 
 from religious principle and vigor of mind. His 
 first-born child, a son, was removed from the care 
 of its earthly parents ; and thus bereavement and 
 sickness were combined to distress a spirit of un- 
 common strength and elasticity. He recovered suffi- 
 ciently to return to Cincinnati before winter, but 
 could not, in his sorrow and weakness, continue 
 the life of hard labor to which he had devoted him- 
 
MEMOIR. xvii 
 
 self before. He went during the winter of 1835 to 
 New Orleans, and thence to Mobile. There, too, the 
 charm of his life and character was speedily felt and 
 appreciated, and at a subsequent visit he was urged, 
 with no little earnestness, to establish himself in that 
 delightful and safe climate. But the attractions 
 of home could not be balanced in his mind by 
 the external advantages of another situation. He 
 returned to Cincinnati in the summer of 1836, and 
 passed the season partly in Dayton, with the hope 
 of regaining the strength he had lost. The ex- 
 perience of the year, however, convinced him of the 
 necessity of going again to the South, and resign- 
 ing his situation at Cincinnati, which he accordingly 
 did ; and after passing a second winter at the South, 
 he came to Boston in the summer of 1837. Here 
 he was engaged for a time in preaching at the Fed- 
 eral Street Church, in conjunction with Dr. Chan- 
 ning, during Dr. Ganriett's absence in Europe. A 
 more permanent situation was offered to him at New 
 Bedford; and the active exertions of some of the 
 prominent members of the Unitarian church in that 
 town secured a peculiar, but remarkably successful, 
 arrangement. Two clergymen, Mr. Peabody and 
 Mr. Morison, were induced to take joint charge of 
 the parish ; and they were to divide the labors in 
 such a way as might be found at once agreeable to 
 them and satisfactory to their people. 
 
 An arrangement like this could not have been 
 
 made between men of ordinary qualities, and still 
 
 less could it have been carried out faithfully and 
 
 kindly for several years, without understanding each 
 
 b* 
 
XVlll MEMOIR. 
 
 other's gifts, or without a disposition, on each side, 
 "in honor to prefer one another," — to be "not sloth- 
 ful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." 
 
 His residence at New Bedford was marked by af- 
 flictions of no ordinary kind, in the loss of two chil- 
 dren ; a discipline of which, if human faculties cannot 
 discern the necessity, they may at least perceive the 
 effects on the heart and the improvement of the char- 
 acter. His mode of life there, as at every other place 
 where he had resided, endeared him to his people 
 with a strength of affection which is rare, even in 
 the relation of congregation and minister, and even 
 in the country where that relation is of more impor- 
 tance than anywhere else on the globe. The uni- 
 versality with which he excited, in minds of the 
 most differing, almost opposite structure, the com- 
 mon feeling of respectful affection, is a phenomenon 
 which can be accounted for only by his quick and 
 clear perception of character, mingled with a just 
 appreciation of the excellences of others, and a ready 
 sympathy with their feelings. It is often thought, 
 and often said, that this sympathy is a proof of 
 goodness, though not of mind, — of kindness, but 
 not of sagacity. On the contrary, there is hardly 
 an evidence which can be given of greater power of 
 judgment, than to discover, promptly, not merely 
 what is a stranger's habitual or occasional feeling, 
 but also to what extent it may be justified, or so far 
 approved, that one may properly allow a similar feel- 
 ing in his own breast, — and when it must be con- 
 demned and avoided. Much that seems selfish cold- 
 ness, in this world, is merely obtuseness in under- 
 
MEMOIR. xix 
 
 standing the feelings of others, and is therefore 
 rather a fault or defect of the understanding than 
 of the heart. But however that may be,' the sym- 
 pathy which Mr, Peabody felt and expressed for a 
 vast variety of character, arose from the readiness 
 with which he understood their position, and. was 
 able to explain to himself the origin and probable 
 cause of the sentiments they expressed. This fac- 
 ulty is one of those acknowledged and unenvied 
 powers which give wide influence and unsuspected 
 effect to all the other faculties a man "may possess. 
 It is a power which is not liable to envy, for it can 
 hardly be known till time has proved its existence ; 
 and then its influence and charm are felt, and all 
 unite in loving him who appreciates all, and sympa- 
 thizes with all. 
 
 Thus it was that he acquired and preserved the 
 affection of his people at New Bedford, as he had 
 done at Cincinnati. They respected his wisdom, 
 they admired his sagacity, they loved his gentleness, 
 they delighted in his genial humor, his constant 
 cheerfulness and kindness. In the many difiiculties 
 which had surrounded his life, it could not have 
 been easy to preserve the possession of these quali- 
 ties. In many, perhaps in most men, they would 
 have been crushed out by poverty, sickness, and do- 
 mestic losses. His first-born child had died in its 
 infancy ; he had himself suffered from a disorder 
 frequently fatal ; he had been obliged to quit his 
 parish, and parish duties and consolations, and to 
 give up his visible means of support. In fact, he 
 had parted with bis very books, and his wife's wed- 
 
XX MEMOIK. 
 
 ding presents, to procure the necessaries of life. 
 Thus, when he began his New Bedford ministry, he 
 had no books to refer to ; he had a little pine table 
 to write on ; and that, with a few chairs, constituted 
 the whole furniture of his study. But, on the other 
 hand, he had no debts, and he had no wants beyond 
 his means of supply ; and he was therefore as inde- 
 pendent, as fully in the possession, and in the habit 
 of exercise, of the faculties which were wealth to 
 him, as he could have been under any circum- 
 stances. With what success he used his powers, 
 and improved his opportunities, is told emphatically 
 by the affection and respect in which he was held in 
 New Bedford, and with which his memory will be 
 regarded as long as any who listened to him shall 
 survive. 
 
 His life in that beautiful city was uneventful, but 
 progressive. He was always diligent in cultivating 
 the powers he possessed, and in acquiring the knowl- 
 edge, in every department of mind, which could not 
 fail to be useful to himself and others. Every ora- 
 tion, or lecture, which he was called on to deliver, 
 and they were not few, gave him a new topic and a 
 new stimulus for attaining the appropriate informa- 
 tion ; and his mind was thus incidentally enriched 
 upon a vast variety of subjects, which it is rarely 
 the privilege of one man to master. Thus he was 
 perpetually educating himself, and was educated by 
 circumstances, of which he perseveringly availed 
 himself to increase his stores of knowledge. He 
 was at that time in the full maturity of life. He 
 had gone through a long and varied course of edu- 
 
MEMOIR. XXI 
 
 cation, of preparation of mind and character, valua- 
 ble alike for the life that now is, and for that which 
 is to come. 
 
 Various incidents combined to make another 
 change of situation probable and advisable. Two 
 parishes in Boston were vacant, both of which de- 
 sired to secure him as their pastor, and showed by 
 their competition the reputation he had acquired as 
 an able and faithful minister. Of course it would 
 be presumptuous to say, that, if his decision between 
 the two churches had been different from what it 
 eventually was, the result would not have been 
 equally fortunate for him ; but it may be said with 
 truth that the parish of King's Chapel were not 
 merely attracted to him at first by the merit of his 
 preaching,, the unpretending modesty of his de- 
 meanor, the cheerful seriousness of his manners, the 
 strength of his character, and the beauty of his life, 
 but that their feeling towards him, and opinion of 
 him, grew stronger and higher every day of the 
 eleven years that he was permitted to remain in 
 connection with them. No complaint was heard of 
 his neglecting this or that duty, this or the other 
 person. He neglected nothing proper for him to do ; 
 he neglected no one to whom he should have at- 
 tended. This may seem an extravagant assertion 
 at first ; but the more it is considered, the less ex- 
 travagant will it appear, and the more firm will be 
 the conviction of its truth, and the higher the esti- 
 mation of him of whom it can be said. 
 
 He came to Boston with no exaggerated reputa- 
 tion as an eloquent preacher, or a brilliant writer or 
 
XXll MBMOIK. 
 
 speaker. Indeed, his audience soon learned that he 
 merited more commendation than he had received, 
 in these respects ; and it is not difficult to explain 
 this fact, if it need any explanation. His mind had 
 been growing by cultivation, and by its own inhe- 
 rent vigor, from his youth until now ; and when it 
 had reached its greatest development, from experi- 
 ence and maturity, he was placed in just the situa- 
 tion to stimulate him to the best exertions he could 
 make, without anything forced or unnatural in the 
 process. To a careful observer he showed,, not by 
 spasmodic effort, but by faithful and calm endeavor, 
 the richness' of his accumulated thoughts and stud- 
 ies, his experienceof the influence of events upon the 
 character, and of emotion on the heart. He knew, 
 not merely the effect which passing circumstances, 
 whether of joy or sorrow, would produce upon indi- 
 viduals, but what would be the effect of the joy or 
 the sorrow itself, in its subsequent working on the 
 character ; and his intuitive quickness of judgment 
 was aided by the accuracy of his discernment.* 
 Preaching has become a very different thing from 
 
 * The following remarks are made by a friend, wlio had unusual 
 opportunities for observation, as well as rare power of discernment of 
 the peculiarities of Mr. Peabody's character. "In one respect," says 
 Mr. Chandler in a note to the writer, " he was the most remarljable 
 man it has been my fortune to meet ; and that was in the union of a 
 childlike simplicity with a singular knowledge of men. His judg- 
 ments on the characters of those with whom he came in contact, were 
 really wonderful. All shams, all pretence, all mere outside coverings, 
 seemed to fall at once before his mild eye; and although his opinions 
 were invariably announced with great caution, and he always took 
 the most lenient view possible, yet it was clear he understood per- 
 fectly well the real character of those whom he knew.'' 
 
MEMOIR. XXUl 
 
 what it once was. In this our day, no easy gener- 
 alities or worn-out commonplaces will do anything 
 more than put people to sleep. That which is 
 meant for all alike must necessarily be a very loose 
 garment, while the coat which an individual will 
 wear must, of course, be adapted to his figure. At 
 the same time, the greatest adroitness is requisite, to 
 draw an outline with just so much of distinctness as 
 shall suffice to make one see himself, without point- 
 ing him out to the observation of others. When 
 this is done, the hearer preaches to himself; at least, 
 if he does not, it is in vain for the speaker to hold 
 forth with the fervent exhortation, or the sharp re- 
 buke. However keen the weapon, and well aimed 
 the blow, its force is turned aside, and its edge 
 blunted, by the defensive armor of practised insensi- 
 bility. When a man has observed himself, he knows 
 if others have observed him or not. Who that has 
 listened to Mr. Peabody cannot bear witness to his 
 having been touched, sometimes to the quick, by 
 observations which the hearer only could properly 
 apply, — which were general, perhaps, in their form, 
 but very particular in their relation to the individual 
 whose consciousness and whose conscience they 
 reached. Of course, this cannot happen on every 
 occasion, nor can every sermon apply with this par- 
 ticularity to the character of each listener ; a fact 
 which tends greatly to account for the different judg- 
 ments we hear about the same discourse. He who 
 has perceived that his own secret fault has been 
 drawn, as if it were known to the preacher, feels 
 the power that has penetrated beneath the surface, 
 
XXIV MEMOIR. 
 
 while others have been unmoved in their calm satis- 
 faction ; and it is not till the whole ground of hu- 
 man nature has been gone over, that all hearers can 
 unite in testimony to the speaker's power. 
 
 The wide range of subjects allowed, and not only 
 ' allowed, but required, of the pulpit in "this age, and 
 particularly in this city, gives an opportunity for a 
 great variety of subjects, and of manner of treat- 
 ment of them, without stepping aside from the more 
 important and appropriate purposes of pulpit dis- 
 courses to treat of the temporary public interests of 
 the day. A mind like Mr. Peabody's, endowed with 
 delicate original perceptions, carefully cultivated, 
 and furnished with a remarkably varied experience, 
 was uncommonly well prepared to meet the differ- 
 ent calls for sympathy and instruction by the very 
 different minds and circumstances of individuals in 
 the parish. He did this, not merely by his preach- 
 ing, but by cultivating a personal knowledge of the 
 particular character of each member of the congre- 
 gation ; and the natural consequence of this free and 
 constant intercourse was at once a better and more 
 intimate mutual acquaintance, and a growing at- 
 tachment to him on the part of those to whom he 
 so faithfully attended, which never ceased to in- 
 crease. The excellent judgment which guided him, 
 and the kind feeling which impelled him, were seen 
 and acknowledged by all ; and it is safe to say, that 
 the affection thus awakened in his people cannot be 
 surpassed ; and happy is it for any parish and any 
 minister that exhibit an equally well-founded, cor- 
 dial, and unwavering reciprocal attachment. 
 
MEMOIR. XXV 
 
 All his powers and sympathies, however, were 
 not expended upon his parish alone. He felt that 
 he could do something more, without danger of 
 neglecting what must be considered as the first duty 
 of a settled minister ; and he was encouraged to 
 undertake an enterprise in which he could count 
 upon the sympathy and co-operation of many of his 
 church. He established, in conjunction with the late 
 Rev. F. T. Gray, a school for adults whose educa- 
 tion had been neglected, and obtained the active 
 services of individuals of his parish, especially of 
 ladies, for the elementary instruction of the female 
 portion of the foreign and poorer population particu- 
 larly, though it was not confined to them in prac- 
 tice. Those who needed further education than 
 they had been able to procure, from the public means 
 at their command, were invited, and he speedily col- 
 lected a numerous school of children and adults, 
 who were eager for the advantages afforded to 
 them, and who repaid unexpected kindness by un- 
 claimed gratitude. The school remains to this 
 day, conducted by others, but on the plan which he 
 devised, and doing the good he conternplated. 
 
 In another department his efforts were eminently 
 wise and successful. He observed the great abuses 
 to which the charitable impulses of this communi- 
 ty"" are exposed ; and the singular interference, or 
 rather overlapping, of different institutions for be- 
 nevolent purposes ; and the danger there is that 
 the spirit of sectarianism should mix itself up with 
 the spirit of beneyolence, and thus, instead of en- 
 larging the heart and the understanding, should con- 
 
XXVI MEMOIR. 
 
 tract them within narrower limits than even a sharp- 
 sighted selfishness might do. He saw that the 
 means of the city, "in its corporate capacity, and- of 
 the numerous associations who profess to care for 
 this or that class of destitute persons, were very 
 large, and nearly sufficient, probably, if properly dis- 
 tributed, to meet all just claims for relief; but that 
 they were scattered, or piled upon one another in 
 aid of the same persons, without the knowledge of 
 each other's action, and without that co-operation 
 which would have made the labors of all more ef- 
 fective and judicious. Vast numbers of the poor, 
 strangers and foreigners, were hot included among 
 the beneficiaries of any of the societies, and were in 
 the habit of perambulating the streets, and visiting 
 the houses in certain parts of the city, quite sure of 
 making a good day's work of it, with the aid of a 
 piteous story and a plausible air. Thus mischief of 
 various sorts was done. The one party acquired a 
 facility of telling pity-moving tales, which easily be- 
 came adroit falsehoods, and the other was wearied, 
 and in danger of becoming hard-hearted, from the 
 frequent discovery of attempted imposition, and the 
 impossibility of answering all the calls of even the 
 deserving poor. Mr. Peabody took judicious and 
 unwearied pains to introduce into this city a plan, 
 which had already been adopted in New York with 
 good success, of dividing the entire city into small 
 districts, the supervision of each one of which was 
 intrusted to an individual, who should J)ersonally 
 examine, in that limited district, into every case to 
 which he was requested to attend by any contdb- 
 
MEMOIR. XXvii 
 
 utor. The scheme was simple and effective. It 
 grows in the favor of the public as it continues its 
 useful operations, and whether with or without the 
 co-operation of more limited associations, it neces- 
 sarily acts as a sort of balance-wheel upon the 
 whole ; and, without increasing the actual expendi- 
 ture of the more favored classes, distributes their 
 contributions far more judiciously than they could 
 be disposed of on any other plan. Those among 
 the idle and the poor whose resources, of beggary 
 were at once curtailed, were loud in their complaints 
 of the operation^ of this association ; but these com- 
 plaints, if examined, will prove the best eulogy of 
 the institution. 
 
 Mr. Peabody's residence in Boston was not, how- 
 ever, a mere addition to the labors of his life. He 
 had enjoyments and relaxations which were particu- 
 larly well suited to his temperament. The society 
 of his friends, both in and out of his parish, was of 
 a kind well adapted to a delicate and discerning 
 mind ; and he enjoyed it with the full consciousness 
 that there was sympathy of feeling and coincidence 
 of judgment with him, in the hearts and understand- 
 ings of those about him. Not that these were ever 
 wanting to him before ; but of course they more 
 abounded in the larger society he could find here. 
 In whatej^er circles he moved, he was sure to gain the 
 respect and the affection of all whose esteem was 
 most desirable ; and if any were indifferent to him, 
 no man ever exhibited hostility. After he had been 
 in Boston about three years, he had an opportunity 
 to visit his old friends in Cincinnati ; and while it 
 
XXVm MEMOIK. 
 
 was pleasant to see the good effect of travelling 
 upon his health and spirits, it was most interesting 
 to observe the cordiality with which he was greeted 
 in the place of his early responsible labors, how 
 truly he was appreciated, and with how much care 
 his welfare was sought. Nothing could have been 
 more appropriate, or more kind, than his reception 
 in the scene of his youthful and unassisted efforts. 
 It was a welcome such as no man receives who has 
 not earned it, — a spontaneous outpouring of respect 
 and affection, than which there is nothing in this life 
 more delightful to give or to receive. 
 
 Three or four years after this, he made another 
 tour, of more extended character, — one by which 
 he was likely to be benefited, both physically and 
 intellectually, as much as any one who ever made 
 the voyage of Europe. He passed six months of 
 the year 1853 in travelling over as much of the 
 Continent as he could profitably do in that space of 
 time, and returned with a clear perception of the 
 diversities of modes of life, manners, cultivation, 
 and, to include the whole in one word, of civiliza- 
 tion, in which we Americans have much to learn, 
 as well as those in which we may have something 
 to teach, in the great school of mutual instruction. 
 It was in the maturity of his powers that he made 
 this tour, when he was capable of deriving all the 
 benefit from it which its nature could eive : and un- 
 questionably his views were enlarged and corrected 
 upon a variety of subjects, — as well upon what is 
 deficient there as upon what is wanting here, upon 
 what abounds on the one side and is defective on 
 
MEMOIR. Xxix 
 
 the other. He went with all the impressible vivacity 
 of a boy, and with all the maturity of what he was, 
 a highly cultivated man ; and while he discriminated 
 in the latter capacity, he enjoyed with all the free- 
 dom and. hilarity of the former. Can any higher 
 proof be given of the improvement of character 
 which results from constant self-discipline, than the 
 retaining of ardor, and the disposition to be pleased, 
 with increasing knowledge and experience ? To the 
 really wise man the enjoyments of life are not mere 
 vanity and vexation of spirit; and to the pure in 
 heart there is much to reward the labor which is 
 itself a pleasure. Mr. Peabody found enough in the 
 novelty, the arts, and the natural beauties of Europe, 
 greatly to interest him ; and in the relaxation from 
 wear and tear of the heart and the intellect, there 
 was not only present health, but, he hoped, future 
 strength. His tour through Italy, especially, gave 
 him a rich enjoyment at the time, and a fund of 
 recollections, which were perpetually abounding, af- 
 terwards, with a pleasure hardly eclipsed by even 
 the present reality.* 
 
 * Mr. Chandler accompanied Mr. Peabody through a great part of 
 this tour, and the following passage describes in a few words the ef- 
 fect which travelling with him produced upon a sympathizing mind. 
 
 " To visit these scenes with him, to listen to his criticisms, to bo 
 guided by his excellent taste, to be enlightened by his extensive 
 knowledge, but, more than all, to be affected by nearness to a charac- 
 ter so refined, so simple, and so true, I regard as among the most 
 fortunate events of my life. He never talked for effect. He never 
 dealt in epigrammatic sayings. Everything that he said was so sim- 
 ple, and natural, and almost always suggested by surrounding circum- 
 stances, that it cannot be repeated without the accompanying inci- 
 dents." 
 
 C* 
 
XXX MEMOIR. 
 
 He was accustomed to spend a portion of every 
 summer, for several years, with Mr. Swain, at the 
 pleasant island, Naushori, where he and his family 
 had all the enjoyments of cultivated and cheerful 
 minds, which can arise from the contemplation of 
 the beauty and sublimity of ocean and land, in the 
 society of sympathizing friends. This must have 
 been, indeed it obviously was, a gratification sin- 
 gularly well adapted to his peculiar capacities of 
 mind and heart, to his delicate imagination and 
 his quick sympathies. It was here almost exclu- 
 sively, of late years, that he felt at liberty to in- 
 dulge in those poetical expressions of feeling, which 
 he had compelled himself, and which the more se- 
 rious business of his life had compelled him, in great' 
 measure, to forego, since his establishment in Bos- 
 ton ; and he poured forth, from season to season, 
 the frolicsome humor, the refined sentiment, and the 
 elevated impulses which adorned and completed his 
 character. In 1852, he delivered a Commencement 
 poem at Brunswick College, which was received 
 with great applause, and even enthusiasm, by an 
 audience favorably disposed, of course, but well able 
 to judge of the merit of a performance charmingly 
 adapted to the occasion. 
 
 During his whole professional career, however, he 
 gave his time and thoughts gradually less and less 
 to the imagination, and more to the realities of life 
 and duty. With his growing experience, and his 
 care to learn every lesson it could teach, his weekly 
 discourses improved in a manner so marked as to be 
 obvious to habitual hearers. Of course, some of his 
 
MEMOIR. xxxi 
 
 sermons were more highly thought of than others, 
 for it is impossible either that any man should write 
 equally well on every occasion, in all conditions of 
 body and mind, or that all hearers should be equally 
 affected by the same discourse. In order to judge 
 fairly, therefore, of the powers of a minister, it is 
 necessary to form, so far as is possible, an average 
 opinion ; and if decided in this way, there can be but 
 few — very few — preachers who would be deemed 
 more able or more successful than Mr. Peabody. 
 Certain it is, that, though he never gave his sermons 
 the advantage of a skilful rhetorical delivery, — an 
 accomplishment the want of which arose, in part, 
 from a deficiency of flexibility of voice, and in 
 part from the delightful grace of modest distrust 
 of his own powers, — few men have been more 
 impressive, either in thought or in the appropriate 
 expression of it, and no one has been, for many 
 years, a more general favorite in this city and vicin- 
 ity. He had that within him which gives a man 
 the ability to speak as well as write with effect, 
 — the quick perception of the feelings of others, 
 which, if not genius, produces some of the best re- 
 sults of genius, and, at the same time that it com- 
 mands respect, attracts also that love which nothing 
 but tenderness for others' infirmities can inspire. It 
 was this feeling, made up of delicacy and strength, 
 which was apparent in all his intercourse with those 
 around him, from the loved members of his own 
 household to the acquaintance only occasionally 
 seen; and every one whom he knew at all was 
 sure of being justly appreciated, and of receiving 
 
XXXU MEMOIR. 
 
 from him more respect and kindness than he was 
 conscious of deserving. No wonder that such a man 
 was loved and respected. The most unobserving 
 and careless could not fail to see his disinterested- 
 ness, his universal, because conscientious, kindness ; 
 while the keenest observer of human faults and 
 weakness perceived that he understood all that too, 
 ajid was still kindly, and sympathizing, and gen- 
 erous. His life was his best preaching. His ser- 
 mons were but the explanation and enforcing to 
 others of the rules exemplified in his daily inter- 
 course with those around him. It was plain he 
 thought that a sermon should not be merely a dis- 
 sertation to instruct, nor an oration to surprise and 
 excite, but an earnest, thoughtful, and moving ex- 
 hortation, addressed to those who, by self-examina- 
 tion, as well as by observation of others, were capa- 
 ble of being stimulated to improvement. If the place 
 of minister to an intelligent parish is one of respon- 
 sibility, and even anxiety, so too is that of a parish 
 to an able and conscientious minister. They are 
 called to exhibit, in their lives and conversation, the 
 effect of his constant labors ; and if, in the ten years 
 of Mr. Peabody's ministry, any member of his con- 
 gregation cannot perceive in himself some tendency 
 to improvement from his labors and example, there 
 is reason to struggle for it with new, and greater, 
 and more anxious effort. 
 
 Whatever "might be the subject of his discourse, 
 there was always a practical lesson to be learned - 
 from it. His theology was not contented with pro- 
 ducing a conviction, nor even a habit of mind, with- 
 
MEMOIE. xxxiii 
 
 out a corresponding habit of action ; and as the 
 latter is the more difficult part of a virtuous life, 
 it was upon this he most urged and stimulated 
 his hearers. The discourses in this volume are a 
 fair specimen of his habitual style of writing, and 
 bear witness to the strength of his intellect, the fer- 
 vency of his love of all that was good, and the ear- 
 nestness of his desire to produce in his hearers the 
 habit of devotion to the right, which they could not 
 but see characterized every tendency of his own 
 mind. There is no exaggeration, and no deficiency 
 of warmth; but a careful statement of truths and 
 facts which is confirmed by the experience of every 
 thoughtful person. It would scarcely be wise to 
 overstate their claims to attention, and it is certainly 
 better to leave every reader to form his opinion of 
 their merits, unbiassed by any preliminary criticism. 
 An object in which he was almost as much inter- 
 ested as in preaching was the Sunday school. He 
 was zealous in procuring the attendance of teachers 
 for the children, and of children for the teachers, and 
 superintended the whole, while he was able to do so, 
 with an interest which never failed in himself, and 
 which he endeavored to inspire in the instructors. 
 He formed, also, in the earlier part of his ministry in 
 Boston, a class of older pupils, to be instructed by 
 himself, in a course of lectures delivered in his own 
 house, on interesting questions of morals, theology, 
 sacred history, and kindred subjects. For these he 
 prepared himself with great care ; and they were in- 
 teresting and useful to those who could attend. 
 They were continued for about four years ; as long, 
 
XXXIV MEMOIR. 
 
 indeed, as there were young persons in the parish 
 who needed precisely that sort of aid. 
 
 Nothing is more impressive than the remarkable 
 industry by which he was enabled, from the begin- 
 ning of life to its close, to accomplish labors of a 
 great variety of intellectual character. To many 
 men, the necessary preparation for the Sabbath would 
 be enough of effort of this kind ; but to this Mr. 
 Peabody added lectures, for which he always pre- 
 pared himself with great care ; numerous reviews 
 and literary articles of various descriptions for peri- 
 odicals ; poetry of many very different kinds ; and 
 occasional discourses, on such occurrences as ordina- 
 tions, and centennial or other celebrations. He never 
 declined any labor of this sort, merely because it 
 was labor, but undertook it with cheerfulness when- 
 ever he could see that it was possible for him to ac- 
 complish it without interference with the imperative 
 calls of duty. At Cincinnati he edited a magazine ; 
 in Boston he was joint editor, with Dr. A. P. Pea- 
 body and Mr. Morison, of the Christian Register, for 
 two years ; and his lighter and more labored articles 
 were numerous, to a very extraordinary amount. 
 
 The last year of Mr. Peabody's life was one of a 
 totally different character from any of a previous 
 period. Instead of ministering to others, he was to 
 be ministered unto himself; and if any lesson be 
 hard to learn, it is for the active man to be reduced to 
 inactivity, and for the diligent and generous man to 
 make himself the principal object of his own care 
 and labor. In the summer of 1855 he was exposed 
 to anxiety and loss of rest, especially upon the nights 
 
MEMOIR. XXXV 
 
 preceding and following the Fourth of July ; and al- 
 most as early as that date there were symptoms 
 of incipient cough. There was no sufficient cause 
 for anxiety, however, till after a somewhat sudden 
 change of weather, which took place one Sunday 
 when he was preaching at Nahant. He was stay- 
 ing with friends and parishioners, who devoted them- 
 selves to him with all the assiduity that aifectionate 
 kindness only can inspire. After preaching at the 
 little chapel, he was seized mth a violent chill and 
 cough. From the former he soon recovered ; from 
 the latter never. The irritation in the throat which 
 produced it could not be soothed ; and it soon be- 
 came manifest to his friends, that the question of his 
 life or death was not long to remain doubtful. He 
 was compelled to give up preaching, and never spoke 
 in public after the interesting tribute he paid to the 
 memory of one who, in a different sphere, might be 
 compared with himself, for the Christian graces and 
 virtues of gentleness, firmness, and rectitude. His 
 sermon on the death and character of Judge Jackson 
 was his last public discourse. It was preached on 
 the last Sunday of the year, and was remarkable for 
 the applicability of many of the observations, not 
 merely to the subject of it, but unconsciously to him- 
 self. It was a farewell discourse in more than one 
 sense.* 
 
 Late in the winter of 1855 - 6 he went South, 
 with Mrs. Peabody, to avoid our chilling spring cli- 
 mate ; but wherever he went, his cough went with him, 
 
 * It is the sermon numbered XXII. in this volume. 
 
XXXVl MEMOIR. 
 
 and he returned to his home and his children, ia the 
 summer, weaker, and with less prospect of relief, than 
 when he went away. He passed the warm season 
 with his family, at a delightful residence in Milton, 
 which was leased to him for the summer ; and there 
 he had every advantage of care, both of friends and 
 physicians, of as much intercourse with them as his 
 condition would permit, of the kindest assiduities, 
 and the sympathy which, at aU times desirable, is a 
 cordial which the generous most require in the dis- 
 appointments and trials of failing health. Gradu- 
 ally growing weaker, from the unchecked progress of 
 his disease, he returned to his home in October, un- 
 dergoing the process of incurable decay of the body, 
 but with a mind and heart capable of all the ener- 
 getic activity of ■jvhich they ever had the power, 
 and developing from day to day, and from hour to 
 hour, the mature judgment, the delicate sensibil- 
 ity, the pure taste, and the noble forgetfulness of 
 self, which constituted his character, and made it 
 such an attractive example of faithfulness and con^ 
 stancy. 
 
 The gradual and regular progress of his disease 
 was visible to every eye accustomed to observe, 
 such cases ; but it is probable he continued to hope 
 for amendment till about the period of his return to 
 the city. From that time he began to make the 
 final arrangements he thought necessary for his de- 
 parture. It is a severe test of character to see the 
 slow approach of death, to perceive that it moves 
 quicker as it draws nearer, and consciously to give 
 the last look on all that is dear upon earth. This 
 
MEMOIR. XXXVli 
 
 trial was his, and from the first moment he became 
 aware that his life was soon to draw to a close, he 
 advanced along the dark valley with an unfaltering 
 step and a steady eye. He ceased to suffer on the 
 28th day of November, 1856, at the age of forty-nine; 
 and there remains to us the memory of his delight- 
 ful qualities, his cultivated powers, his universal, 
 genial kindness. Can such an example as his ever 
 cease to be attractive and powerful? We may 
 safely say, that, so long as the memory of him is re- 
 tained, it will be for the good of him who remembers 
 so rare a combination of virtues and talents. These 
 few pages have not answered their purpose, if they 
 have not delineated one who was given us for an 
 example of the effect that can be produced, by well 
 directed and constant effort, in the formation and im- 
 provement of character. He came from the hands 
 of his Maker with high capacities, and he seems to 
 have pursued life with the resolve to improve every 
 talent, and of his five to gain other five. The pro- 
 cess by which he did this, and in which he was 
 trained by the providence of God, guiding his course 
 through successive trials, as he was successively pre- 
 pared for them by outward events and by inward 
 reflection, seems very striking to one who looks at 
 his life with that idea. His progress from Cam- 
 bridge to Meadville, Cincinnati, Mobile, New Bed- 
 ford, and Boston, was adjusted to the degree of de- 
 velopment of his powers, in proportion to the field 
 on which they were to be exercised ; while the rare 
 and endearing qualities of his heart elicited a sym- 
 pathetic affection in very widely different spheres of 
 d 
 
XXXVm MEMOIK. 
 
 life. His example of diligence, energy, tenderness, 
 fidelity to the truth, and indeed of all the virtues and 
 qualities adapted to make human nature attractive, 
 vsras singularly complete. "What has been said of 
 him may appear, to those who did not know him, 
 exaggerated ; but the appeal may be made with con- 
 fidence to every one who was familiar with hitn, if 
 there has been anything said in these pages beyond 
 what the very law of truth requires. Certainly the 
 conviction of its justice, in the secret consciousness 
 of every one who knew him, will serve to raise our 
 standard of possible virtue, and stimulate our efforts 
 to attain a degree of excellence which we might 
 have thought impossible without such an example. 
 If it be wrong to present a delineation without an 
 important blemish, it would be still more so to sug- 
 gest a fault for the mere purpose of avoiding a cavil; 
 and whatever be the suspicion of blindness or fa- 
 voritism, the truth, and the truth only, must be re- 
 corded. 
 
 In the desk his manner was of that serious and 
 earnest character which left nothing to be added 
 without danger of comprqmising the gentleness and 
 directness which gave a charm to every sentiment 
 and every warning he uttered. He was not impas- 
 sioned ; he did not excite the indifferent, or stimu- 
 late the lukewarm, by strength of language, or 
 vehemence of manner. His object was to persuade 
 and convince, and to treat of those trials of virtue 
 and principle which are met with every day, and 
 which are to be resisted with that calm preparation 
 which alone can enable a man to withstand evil vie- 
 
MEMOIR. XXXIX 
 
 toriously. He knew that the great battle was not 
 fought and won in a brief conflict ; that it is the em- 
 ployment of life, — the whole of it ; and that, if we 
 ■ are to come off conquerors, it must be by means of 
 constant, earnest, unrelaxing effort. The topics of 
 his discourses were various enough to excite a con- 
 stant interest in his hearers, without going into those 
 subjects of temporary excitement, politics, or con- 
 troversy of any> sort, which did not seem to him prof- 
 itable or suitable to the time and place. In this 
 practice he had the entire sympathy and support of 
 his parish. In the house of mourning, or the house 
 of joy, no man had a happier manner of instilling 
 the appropriate lesson of the hour, to calm the over- 
 whelming grief, or moderate the engrossing happi- 
 ness, by a kindly sympathy, an appropriate demean- 
 or, and the gentle suggestion of duty. His fervent 
 prayers on such occasions must have often availed 
 much to soothe and to calm hearts agitated by the 
 strongest emotions of grief, or the high excitements 
 of happy emotion. 
 
 In private life h^had that quiet way of showing 
 interest in what was passing, and in the individual 
 with whom he was associating, which is always at- 
 tractive, and which, combined with the slight air of 
 embarrassment that disappeared almost immediately, 
 gave a wonderful charm to the conversatiori, to which 
 he always contributed a liberal share of thought and 
 of sympathy. The extent to which he put himself 
 mentally in the place of others, and thought their 
 thoughts, and felt their feelings, can be appreciated 
 oflly by those who have enjoyed the satisfaction of 
 
Xl MEMOIR. 
 
 familiar intercourse with him ; while the delicate 
 humor and vivacity, approaching to wit, which 
 abounded in his temperament, showed itself to 
 those who would appreciate it at its true value, 
 with a geniality that was irresistibly winning. So 
 marked, and so attractive, were the distinguishing 
 features of his face and of his character, that they 
 impressed themselves on the memory with a power 
 and a charm that cannot be forgotten ; and the rec- 
 ollection of him will be, as his presence was, ' a 
 cheering stimulus, a frequent protection, a perpetual 
 blessing through all the future. If our life be as 
 " a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then 
 vanisheth away," his course resembled, in its mild 
 beauty, the sunset cloud he so early loved, which 
 casts no shadow, and adds a charm even to the 
 light of heaven. 
 
SEEMONS. 
 
In the last weeks of his life, and after he had relinquished all 
 thought of ever being able to preach again, Mr. Peabody, at the 
 suggestion of friends, formed the plan of preparing a volume of 
 Sermons to leave behind him. He made some progress in desig- 
 nating the discourses that should be printed ; and the greater part 
 of those which constitute this volume were selected by himself. 
 But his strength failed fast, and he was obliged to leave the work 
 of preparation for publication to others. The following letter of 
 Dedication and Farewell, which he intended should accompany 
 the contemplated volume, was dictated a few days before his 
 death, and, excepting one or two brief notes to afflicted friends, 
 was his last effort of composition. 
 
TO 
 
 THE MEMBERS OP 
 
 THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY 
 IN CINCINNATI AND IN NEW BEDFOED, 
 
 AND TO THOSE OP 
 
 KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON. 
 
 With all of you I have been connected as your 
 regularly chosen and settled minister. We were 
 separated for no reason that I am aware of, except 
 that frail health which now separates me from you 
 all. The great interests, and no small part of the 
 dearest friendships of life, are associated with you. 
 I want you to believe that every word I have 
 uttered to you, urging on you the importance of 
 a religious life, has been spoken with the most 
 intense conviction that the only permanent hap- 
 piness of this life, the only true hope for the life 
 to come, are to be drawn from a religious conse- 
 cration of one's self to God, and to the perform- 
 ance of the duties which he, in his love, appoints. 
 
xliv DEDICATION. 
 
 I would impress this on you if it were possible 
 with my last words. Now that I stand on the 
 brink of that river (not always dark), I wish that 
 my farewell words may be those that I have ex- 
 pressed in preceding years, when that could be no 
 more than an object of faith which is now fast 
 becoming a reality. 
 
 May God bless, forgive, 'and help us all, is the 
 prayer of one who cannot cease to feel an affec- 
 tion for you so long as memory remains and his 
 nature is unchanged, 
 
 E. PEABODY. 
 
 NOTEMBEB 17, 1856. 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 CHRIST OUR LIFE. 
 
 CHRIST, WHO IS OUK LlVt. — Col. iii. 4. 
 
 The emphatic manner in which the dependence 
 of man on Christ for spiritual life is affirmed, is very 
 remarkable. He is the way, the truth, and the life. 
 He is the bread of life which cometh down from 
 heaven, of which if a man eat, he shall live for ever. 
 " As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by 
 the Father, so he that eateth me shall live by me." 
 The constant teaching of the Gospels is, that Al- 
 mighty God sent the Saviour into the world to be the 
 centre and source of a higher spiritual life ; and that 
 the degree in which any one of us receives this life 
 depends very much on the nearness which, through 
 faith and reverence and love, we maintain to him. 
 This doctrine, on which such stress is laid, 1 fear we 
 do not appreciate. We overlook it, or look on it as 
 a mystical, unintelligible statement, or more likely 
 regard what is said of CRrist as meant, in reality 
 and only, of his religion, and in so doing separate 
 ourselves from a divinely appointed source of life. 
 On the contrary, I- wish to show its fundamental 
 
i CHBIST OUR LIFE. 
 
 and practical importance, — that it is gronnded in 
 the laws of human nature, and that it meets the 
 actual wants of the soul. 
 
 In doing this, I may ask your attention to a more 
 lengthened and abstract discussion than I could wish. 
 But if I should be able to lead any one who is sin- 
 cerely desirous of improvement in the Christian life 
 to a clearer understanding of its dependence on the 
 personal relations he sustains to the Saviour, I shall 
 think the time not spent in vain. I approach the 
 subject with the conviction, that, if we desire to be 
 Christians, there is no practical doctrine of the New 
 Testament more needful for us to take to our hearts. 
 
 I pause, in the first place, on some general consid- 
 erations which bear immediately on the particular 
 doctrine. 
 
 The growth of the spiritual life is the result of 
 two methods, each essential, one the complement of 
 the other, and each requiring the co-operation of the 
 other. In part the spiritual life is self-developed 
 from within, through a right exercise of the will, as 
 manifested in righteous aims faithfully kept, in re- 
 pentance of wrong, in religious self-government ; 
 and in part the spiritual life is derived from without, 
 through a right exercise of faith and the aflfections. 
 
 The tendency with us is to place an exaggerated 
 and sometimes an exclusive value on the first source. 
 We view a right character as if it were the exclusive 
 product of the individual will. We scarcely recog- 
 nize as virtues those qualities which are not the re- 
 sult of struggle and conquest. This way of think- 
 ing is fostered by much of our theology and our 
 
CHRIST OUR LIFE. 3 
 
 philosophy. It is seen in the theories of individual 
 self-dependence. We are Protestants. And Protes- 
 tantism tends steadily towards a self-dependent in- 
 dividualism, by which is , meant, in general, that 
 theory of man which supposes him, under God, suf- 
 ficient unto himself, which magnifies his self-de- 
 pendence and independence, which makes the reason 
 the sufiicient source of truth, and the will the sole 
 source of virtue. Its tendency is to lead men to put 
 a lower estimate on all external helps, on aU tradi- 
 tional revelation, on aU outward institutions, on the 
 
 Christian Church, and on the influence of Christ 
 
 • 
 
 himself. 
 
 But certainly this theory infinitely exaggerates 
 man's isolated self-dependence. Admit it to the 
 fuUest extent in which it can be claimed, and stiU 
 no one who looks at facts will deny that the moral 
 life of man is derived externally from others, not less 
 than firom an internal force in himself. The little 
 child is as dependent for the development of its 
 moral life on the parent, as it is for the support and 
 development of its natural life. External moral in- 
 fluences enter at once into its moral growth, and 
 become a substantive part of its character. Infuse 
 into the ascending sap of a tree some coloring fluid, 
 and the very leaves are speedily tinged; introduce 
 a poisonous fluid, and they are blighted. So with 
 the child, the moral influences which it receives 
 from parents, associates, playmates, from the gen- 
 eral spirit of those around, enter into the circulations 
 of its moral nature to become its life or its death. 
 K that support of its moral life which is derived from 
 
4 CHRIST OUR LIFE. 
 
 others were withdrawn, if irom infancy it could be 
 shut up in a moral solitude, it would scarcely rise 
 above the condition of the animal or the idiot. 
 
 The theory of man's self-dependence is confronted 
 by aU the facts in human experierice. So far from 
 its being well founded, the first view of human soci- 
 ety presents a fact so universal, undeniable, and fear- 
 ful too, that it has often, created the sentiment, if 
 not the faith, of fatalism, — the fact that man is 
 what he is, very much because those around him 
 are what they are. Throughout the world, the in- 
 dividual is marked all over, like the mystic scroll 
 of the Prophet, written within and without by the 
 characteristics of the civilization in whose atmos- 
 phere he lives. The Tartar child grows up into the 
 tastes and passions of his tribe ; and the Hindoo 
 bears with him, ineffaceable on the soul as on the 
 body, the features of his race. Place the infant 
 in an intelligent, affectionate. Christian home, and 
 within certain limits it will grow up with the ideas, 
 tastes, views of life, predominant beliefs, and convic- 
 tions of duty, which prevail in that home. Should 
 he be unfaithful in after life, his vices even will bear 
 the marks of the civilization to which he belongs. 
 The child breathes in the moral elements around it 
 by almost the same necessity as he does the natural 
 air. For good and wise reasons, it is the way in 
 which Providence has appointed that the moral na- 
 ture of man shall grow. 
 
 y Nay, in this law is found the strongest, the most 
 sacred, and also the most fearful bond of human so- 
 ciety. By it men are united, not merely in neigh- 
 
CHRIST OUR LIFE. 5 
 
 borhoods of convenience and pleasure, but they draw 
 from each other their moral life. The bonds which 
 unite them are vital. We live as it were in one 
 another, — each man's life diffusing itself abroad, 
 blending itself with, and becoming a component 
 part of, the life of those around him. 
 
 Nor is this influence confined to the living. Could 
 we decompose the moral history of any man, how 
 wide and various would be his spiritual relations. 
 Call to mind those whom you knew in childhood ; 
 and how large a part of your tastes, views, and pur- 
 poses in life, your very manners and language, are 
 derived from them. They are gone, but they live 
 still in you, — in the moral tendencies communi- 
 cated to you. Nor these alone. Your intellectual 
 life has derived nutriment from men who lived 
 centuries ago, — from those whose very languages, 
 though we term them dead, are stiU to us the 
 sources of mental inspiration. Had they been dif- 
 ferent, you would not have been the same. Your 
 soul has been quickened by the adoring thoughts of 
 David and Isaiah, and by the touching reverence 
 and tender humanity of John. Those from whom 
 we have most largely derived spiritual life may be 
 separated from us by the gulf of ages. And yet in 
 another world we may meet them and say, To you 
 we owe it that we had devout thoughts of God, or 
 humane thoughts towards man.J*^ Nor are they dis- 
 tant from us now. He who touches my soul is 
 nearest to me of all men. Our measures of time 
 and space do not here apply. I am most with those 
 whose spiritual power I most feel. They may be 
 1* 
 
" CHRIST OUR LIFE. 
 
 scattered over different lands and ages, but they are 
 present to me. Others, though I look on them and 
 touch them and traverse the same streets with them, ' 
 are strangers and distant. 
 
 I present these general considerations for the pur- 
 pose of illustrating the dependence of the world for 
 spiritual life on the Saviour. A common theory is 
 that the whole power of Christianity lies in its 
 truths, and that, had they come to us stated in 
 formal propositions, their source being unknown, 
 the power of the religion would have ■ remained ; 
 that it matters little what we think of Christ, pro- 
 vided we accept the principles of his religion. 
 
 But this is contrary alike to the teachings of the 
 New Testament and the facts of history. In the 
 Gospels the greatest stress is laid, not on faith in 
 Christianity merely, but on faith in Christ himself, 
 . in the personal Christ. He that believeth on the 
 Son hath everlasting life. The personality of Christ 
 always stands forward in front as the embodiment 
 of his religion. Faith in him is faith in his religion. 
 We can separate the truths which Plato taught 
 from Plato himself, because the philosopher was 
 less than his system. But you cannot separate 
 Christ from his religion ; and for the reason that 
 the religion was, above all, revealed in his personal 
 character. Christ is Christianity. It is a remarka- 
 ble fact, that the four accounts of Christianity which 
 we have are all of them, not philosophical statements 
 of a system, but biographies of Christ. The life 
 was more than the words. His teachings are con- 
 stantly interpreted by what he did. Subtract from 
 
CHRIST OUR LIFE. 7 
 
 the Gospels the life of Christ himself, and it would 
 take the soul out of the body. The religion would 
 dwindle and vanish into a few vague, powerless 
 aphorisms. 
 
 This is a point which I apprehend is too much 
 overlooked. We compare Christianity and its Au- 
 thor with philosophers and their systems. In this 
 material point they are to be, not compared, but con- 
 trasted. When Almighty Gtod saw fit to make a 
 revelation to man, he made it chiefly through the 
 visible life of his Son. He saw fit that the high- 
 est truth, the holiest aim, should be communicated 
 through Jesus Christ, the mediator between God 
 and man, making him to stand between, the centre 
 of spiritual help to man, as the sun is the centre 
 from which streams the light that bathes the earth 
 on which- man dwells. 
 
 Viewed historically, the life of Christ gave a new, 
 immense, and mysterious impulse to the moral life 
 of the world. His life is the great epoch in the 
 moral history of man. The human race advances 
 morally by elevating the type of virtue, by raising 
 the idea of excellence, by the addition of some new 
 moral element, and the modification through it of 
 preceding ideas of human excellence. Now, what 
 strikes one in the history of man before Christ is not 
 only the low level of human excellence, but that 
 throughout the world the ideas of excellence were 
 on much the same level. One state was more pol- 
 ished than another, and yet between the moral ideas 
 of the civilized and barbarian worlds there was less 
 difference than one might at first think. But the 
 
8 
 
 CHRIST OUR LIFE. 
 
 life of Christ presented before the world, not only 
 a higher, but an essentially different type of excel- 
 lence. Not only this, he added to the elements which 
 composed that excellence. It was not a recomposi- 
 tion of former ideas, but the addition of new ones. 
 For example, in Greece the Christian idea of the 
 love of man, as something reaching beyond the 
 limits of friendship, ■ or what was but an enlarged 
 self, the city, had scarcely an existence. In the list 
 of virtues set forth by the wisest of the philosophers, 
 the Christian idea of charity, mercy, and their kin- 
 dred virtues, will, I think, be found to have no place ; 
 or if any, one of entire insignificance. The Greek 
 was as polished, as graceful, and as hard as one of 
 his own marble statues. He had not added to, but 
 only polished and refined, and freed from their gross 
 associations, the virtues of the barbarian. Viewed 
 historically, the life of Christ presented before the 
 world a new, a more enlarged, a higher type of char- 
 acter, as the one which God a.pproved and required. 
 In him was a divine revelation of perfect humanity. 
 And that perfect life thus revealed became hence- 
 forth, as he declared it should be, the life of man. 
 You cannot trace a river more distinctly from its 
 mountain springs, than you can the higher ideas of 
 excellence in the world from their manifestation in 
 the life of Christ. 
 
 This personal influence of the Saviour appears 
 from the beginning. A mysterious expectation at- 
 tended his steps. His 'early followers did not waver 
 in their fidelity,, though he disappointed all their 
 fondest Jewish hopes, and though he promised no 
 
CHRIST OUR Lli'E. 9 
 
 earthly reward but persecution like tha!t which he 
 himself endured. Under his influence, their whole 
 moral being underwent a transformation, the greatest 
 conceivable. Behold his disciples seated with their 
 Master around the table of the Last Supper. A 
 few years ago these men aU possessed the Jewish 
 mind and heart, — were shut up within their Jewish 
 prejudices and passions. Already they are greatly 
 changed. New thoughts, new beliefs, new hopes, 
 new ideas of duty, of man, and of God, are dawning 
 on their minds. In a brief time more, still greater 
 changes are seen. The Hard, reluctant heart is gone. 
 They are dedicated not to the Jewish law, but to 
 human good. The Jew's contempt of the Gentile 
 gone, they are the first missionaries of truth to the 
 heathen world, and give themselves for the salvation 
 of those who are ready to persecute and slay them. 
 All selfish ends are cast out by an abounding, self- 
 sacrificing love ; while faith and trust in God lift 
 them above the power of the world and the fear of 
 death. These humble fishermen from the Galilean 
 lake are filling the great places of history. These 
 ignorant men are the teachers of sages. From Gaul 
 to the Euphrates, they are revolutionizing religions. 
 They have caught some of the radiance which fell 
 from their Master. They are divine men ; and when 
 the -reverence of subsequent ages surrounded the 
 Saviour's head with a sacred halo, the Apostles' 
 heads were fitly encircled with a like, though fee- 
 bler glory. 
 
 What has ^wrought this change? They them- 
 selves explain the problem. The love of Christ 
 
10 CHRIST OUR LIFE. 
 
 constrained them. Theix faith, love, reverence, made 
 them think his thoughts, made them rejoice to carry 
 out his purposes, made them judge the world and 
 duty and themselves by his judgments. His mem- 
 ory was in their hearts, their labors were in his 
 cause, and when their brief ministry should be fin- 
 ished, they knew they should again be with their 
 ascended Lord. Through the assimilating power of 
 faith, love, reverence, obedience, they daily grew 
 into a likeness of him. And ever since then, wher- 
 ever the power of his character has been most felt, it 
 has revealed itself in a higher order of virtues, just 
 as the hidden stream that flows through the valley 
 reveals itself in the richer vegetation along its banks. 
 I come ndw to that point to which the preceding 
 remarks tend. We confess that in Christ we have 
 disclosed to us a perfect example of that character 
 which God most approves and requires. He was 
 the well-beloved Son of God, and God would have 
 us all to be his children. We are not called to be 
 like him in his miraculous powers, in his supernatu- 
 ral attributes, but in that which, after all, is of more 
 moment than these, — in that character which is the 
 symbol of heaven, and the peace, the order, and the 
 blessedness of the heavenly world. In him were 
 combined in their perfection those qualities which 
 make the perfection of all moral beings ; — the gen- 
 tleness that won the heart of the child, a courage 
 that was tranquil when confronted by a condemning 
 world and by the terrors of a lingering death, a mag- 
 nanimity that rose above outrage, a benevolence 
 that forgot wrong and thought only of the salvation 
 
CHRIST OUR LIFE. 11 
 
 of the wrong-doer, a tenderness that wept at the 
 grave of Lazarus and over the foreseen sorrows of 
 Jerusalem, and a rectitude by which he was the fit- 
 ting judge of the world. 
 
 Now, however we may describe it, that is the 
 character around which gather all immortal hopes. 
 Compared with the attainment of this in the least 
 degree, aU other attainments are cheap and poor. 
 We wear out life in collecting some handfuls of 
 golden dust. And yet one ray of that spiritual 
 brightness in our" souls is worth more than all 
 human treasures. In a few years the gold drops 
 from our withered and death-stricken hands, but the 
 spiritual excellence is for the eternal world. ^It is 
 mysterious what, one might almost say, is the wil- 
 fully opposite estimate placed on the ends of life by 
 our indulged desires and by our necessary convic- 
 tions. Were we by some horrible judgment on our 
 sins sentenced to be successful in aU worldly ends, 
 — were it said, Thou shalt be rich, loved, powerful, 
 famous, but shalt be shut out from gaining justice, 
 mercy, piety, the love of right, the love of truth, — we 
 should recoil in horror from the doom. It would be 
 the realizing of the fable of selling one's soul to the 
 Evil One. We should implore God to send on us 
 toil, disappointment, sickness, trial, only permit us 
 to gain the virtues of a righteous soul. Why shall 
 we not have that truthfulness with ourselves which 
 shall cause us to see things as they are ? Why not 
 have the manliness to say, — I can bear Want, mis- 
 apprehension, hardship, obscurity, but these virtues, 
 the light of earth, thff order of heaven, I must have. 
 
12 CHRIST OUR LIFE. 
 
 I will not live without them. They may lie at the 
 bottom of the sea, but though I seek them through 
 storms and billows, these pearls of great price I 
 must have. Though I traverse the world with 
 bleeding feet and the cross on my heart, I must 
 find them. 
 
 Now, to meet this reasonable craving of a reason- 
 able soul, God has set forth his Son to be the source 
 of life to man. It is no arbitrary appointment of 
 Providence, but to meet the actual laws of the spir- 
 itual beings whom he created, I have before shown 
 how spiritual growth is, in part, the product of the 
 individual will ; but also how we derive it from 
 without through the affections, and how the latter is 
 the holiest bond between all spiritual beings, from 
 man upward to God. What then is the predse 
 law? It is that we become morally like what we 
 love. The excellence that we distinctly understand 
 and love for its own sake, the heart in some degree 
 appropriates to itself. It is the method of spiritual 
 appropriation. X^e cannot escape from this law. 
 Debar one from knowing anything of human virtue, 
 shut him up as in a dungeon with the hard-hearted, 
 the sensual, the depraved, and we know that his 
 character will take a coloring from the moral climate 
 in which he is imprisoned. 
 
 But behold still further the wisdom and goodness 
 of Providence. It is hard to understand and love 
 mere abstractions. Therefore God has revealed these 
 spiritual excellences, not in abstract phrases, but in 
 the visible life of his Son ; in a being whom we can 
 approach through sympathy, love, and reverence ; 
 
CHRIST OUR LIFE. 13, 
 
 and by understanding, loving, revering, obeying him, 
 grow in some, however imperfect degree, into his 
 likeness. The soul's growth in goodness depends 
 mainly on the spiritual sphere in which it dwells. 
 And thus, in no words of course or of form, it is the 
 highest human privilege to dwell with Christ ; to be 
 near him through faith and meditation ; to come 
 under the power of his presence ; and so to have 
 our poor thoughts lifted up, our unworthy motives 
 shamed away, our better dispositions aroused, by the 
 inspiring sense of his excellences. It is the divinely 
 appointed method by which those who are weak in 
 will may become spiritually strong through the af- 
 fections ; — by which we who so stumble and fall 
 when we attempt to stand in our own strength, by 
 surrendering ourselves trustingly to the guidance of 
 Christ, by touching the hem of his garment, receive 
 something of the strength and life which were in him. 
 The Apostles, who may represent the will, fled from 
 the judgment-hall ; the women, strong in love, were 
 faithful to the cross. 
 
 But, above all, it is to be remembered that the feel- 
 ing awakened in us by the character of Christ de- 
 pends on what we do and leave undone, — depends 
 on the reverential attention with which we regard it. 
 It would be true were he visibly present. If our 
 minds were entirely engrossed by other things, and 
 heedless of him, it would be with us, as with those 
 in JudsBa who saw the outward form, but whose 
 eyes were not open to recognize the Lord of life. 
 He becomes present to us just as far as we under- 
 stand him ; as we contemplate his character ; as we 
 
 2 
 
14 CHEIST OUR LIFE. 
 
 meditate on his excellences ; as we try ourselves, by 
 his words ; as we seek to approach him in our obe- 
 dience. Let this be done, and the open eye can no 
 more fail to receive the light, than the open heart to 
 receive influences from him. It is the recognition of 
 this truth which has caused the Avisest men, when 
 seriously intent on gaining the Christian spirit, to 
 cherish all mental habits and to use all outward 
 forms suited to keep his divine presence before the 
 mind. They have set the cross up in their cham- 
 bers ; they have given to themselves seasons of re- 
 tired meditation ; they have daily consecrated some 
 moments to the reading of the words of Christ ; they 
 have set the highest value on Christian institutions ; 
 and all, that the character of the Saviour might be- 
 come more and more the object of a believing love 
 and reverence. How much the importance of this 
 is felt is seen in the fact that the bookwhich, except 
 the Bible, has passed through more editions than 
 any other in the world, is that entitled, " The Imita- 
 tion of Christ." And this in spite of its ascetic and 
 fragmentary views, because the reading of it has re- 
 ally brought men into the presence of the Saviour. 
 
 I present this subject not on any mystical, inex- 
 plicable, arbitrary grounds, but for the purpose of 
 urging on your attention, and my own, one of the 
 chief methods of Christian growth. We shall not 
 become' Christians and remain thoughtless of Christ. 
 It is God who has appointed that he shall hold this 
 peculiar relation to our minds. He approaches us. 
 " Behold, I stand at the door and knock." And the 
 promise is, " If any man hear my voice and open 
 
CHRIST OUR LIFE. 15 
 
 the door, I ^vlU come in unto him and abide with 
 him." Open your hearts to the entrance of this ce- 
 lestial guest. What other presence and what other 
 society shall be like his, who is the soul's guide to 
 the immortal life ? 
 
 This day," while we commemorate him, it shall not 
 be a formal service, beginning and ending in the 
 form. In our spiritual need we would humbly draw 
 near to him whom God has appointed to be for us 
 a perennial source of life. "We would gaze on his 
 divine character with reverential eyes, would study 
 its divine lineaments, endeajor to comprehend its 
 harmonious beauty, and would devoutly hope to 
 feel something of its attraction. Our senses and 
 the cares of life draw us to the earth. May our 
 thoughts here come under that celestial influence 
 which -raises them heavenward. We will hope that 
 we are not quite incapable of loving him who was 
 love itself. And if our hearts are callous, and if in 
 our darkness we fail to see, like the blind man who 
 followed him, we will cry. Son of David, have mercy 
 on us! Blessed above all other hours shall that hour 
 be whose contemplations give us a clearer view, and 
 awaken in us a more profound sense, of the divine 
 life that was in Jesus Christ. When all earthly sup- 
 ports fail, and the light fades out of the eye in death, 
 and the ear hears no more the praise or blame of 
 human voices, may that divine voice assign to us a 
 place, however humble, among those who, having 
 followed him in life, are permitted to follow him in 
 the resurrection. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 WORLDLINESS. 
 
 BBT TOUK AFFECTIONS ON THINGS ABOVE, NOT ON THINGS ON 
 THE EARTH. — Col. iu. 2. 
 
 The law of God respecting the objects and direc- 
 tion of the affections is fundamental. It goes to the 
 foundation ; for the direction of the affections — that 
 is, what a man approves and love^tjlesires and wills 
 — determines whSt he now is, and is-prophetic of his 
 destiny. - > 
 
 There is lodged in every human heart Heaven's 
 dower to the child, — an immense capacity for affec- 
 tion, by which I mean, for desire, approval, interest, 
 love, hope, enthusiasm, — an interior force, without 
 which man were but wood or stone, — a perennial 
 force, impelling him this way or that, and the centre 
 of all life and energy. At the outset these affections, 
 like the waters of a fountain on a mountain's sum- 
 mit, may easily flow in any direction. But some 
 way, east or west, or north or south, they must flow. 
 Thus two primary facts present themselves. First, 
 man is so constituted that he must take interest in 
 something ; that is, using the word in, the large sense 
 of the text, his affections must be set on some corre- 
 
WORLDMNESS. 17 
 
 spending objects, while attachment to one class of 
 objects implies a comparative exclusion of other ob- 
 jects. And secondly, what the man is, morally 
 speaking, depends on the character and direction of 
 these affections. 
 
 Thus a man's hopes, fears, troubles, anxieties, 
 thoughts, desires, may be confined chiefly to what 
 relates to his personal gratification. And because of 
 this direction of the affections, we call him a selfish 
 man. On the contrary, a man's prevailing thoughts 
 and interests may be occupied with the well-being 
 of others, — so occupied that his own interests shall 
 drop into a secondary plac§ ; and from this fact we 
 call him a benevolent, a generous, or public-spirited 
 man. The same man might have been either. The 
 difference is not., in the original constitutional affec- 
 tions, so much as in their direction. The same 
 capacity of being interested which, fixed exclusively 
 on a man's self, makes him narrow and sordid, fixed 
 on other objects would have made him the world's 
 benefactor. 
 
 This necessity of being interested in something 
 may exhibit itself in the most various ways. The 
 aflections may be condensed into one strong desire 
 to build up a fortune, or into a craving to be known, 
 and noticed, and distinguished, or for popular honors 
 and applause. Again, they may be fixed on objects 
 remote as well as near, invisible and intangible as 
 well as those palpable to sense ; they may be en- 
 grossed by some pursuit, by objects of taste, by ob- 
 jects unseen, or on the other side of the globe. The 
 ideal beauty and grandeur to which the artist gives 
 
 2 * 
 
18 WOELDLINESS. 
 
 his heart is no clearly defined thing, butiloats, a 
 vague glory, between the earth and the heavens. 
 What a devotion of the affections in the man of 
 science; and yet that devotion relates to laws and 
 relations which lie back of material phenomena, and 
 are visible only to the eye of reason. And in the 
 same way, a man's controlling interest and desire 
 may be to do God's will and to live so as to have 
 his approval. Certainly it is as possible for man to 
 have this for the controlling object of life, as it is to 
 do the world's will and to have the world's approval. 
 What I would have observed from these remarks 
 is this : that man is so constituted that he must take 
 interest in something ; and that the moral difference 
 between men finally is determined by the different 
 directions given or permitted to the affections. I 
 come now to another consideration. These objects, 
 various as they are, may be divided into two great 
 classes ; classes so unlike, that only one can be su- 
 preme, and the other must be subordinate in their 
 relation to human affections, — supreme and subor- 
 dinate. The most religious man is, and ought to 
 be, interested in the affairs of a world where God 
 has placed him to live and to labor ; and on the 
 other hand, the most irreligious man, in spite of 
 himself, feels the attraction and the power of the 
 religious ideas which float in the moral atmosphere 
 around him. But notwithstanding this, the objects 
 of the affections may be divided into two great 
 classes, which, even when running harmoniously and 
 parallel with each other, are so distinct in their es- 
 sential characteristics, that we must practically so far 
 
WOELDLINESS. 19 
 
 choose between them, that in any conflict of motives 
 one class will be subordinate and the other have a 
 preponderating and controlling weight and influence. 
 
 One class belongs to the earth. If this life in- 
 cluded the whole of man's existence, — if all the 
 prizes we can gain wither as we enter the sick- 
 chamber, and drop altogether from our grasp when 
 the hand moulders in the grave, — still the affections 
 would exist in the heart, and they would still de- 
 mand their objects ; but the only objects on which 
 they could rest, because they would be the only 
 ones which would have a real existence to the mind, 
 would be such as could be possessed and enjoyed on 
 the earth. There would stiU be innumerable objects 
 to engross them ; but this great fact that all must 
 end at death would determine not only the direction 
 of the affections, but the character resulting from 
 that direction. There is thus one great class of ob- 
 jects for the affections which belong to this world, 
 and which have this startling peculiarity about them, 
 that, be interested in them as much as we may, we 
 leave them behind at the grave's mouth. 
 
 I do not say that all these objects do not deserve, 
 and were not intended by Providence, under certain 
 restrictions, to attract the strong, though certainly 
 not the controlling, interest of the human heart. But 
 are there no objects in which a human being can be 
 interested except those from which death must di- 
 vorce him ? 
 
 No, all does not end with death. And the most 
 important characteristic of this life is, that it is a 
 probation and discipline for a continued existence 
 
20 WOELBLINESS. 
 
 wliich reaches beyond the grave. No doubt man is 
 placed in relations to objects on the earth which de- 
 mand interest ; and they will always have quite as 
 much as they can rightfully demand. But there are 
 other objects to which, if he be an immortal and 
 accountable creature, he stancis in quite as intimate, 
 and infinitely more important relations. 
 
 As we look forward, there rise before us, — no de- 
 ceptive mirage on the horizon, but as absolute reali- 
 ties, the most important things that can interest a 
 reasonable being, — salvation, perdition, accountabil- 
 ity, death, immortality, retribution, and the incom- 
 municable name of God ! In a few years our des- 
 tiny is to depend on the nature of our relations to 
 these realities. We approach daily nearer to them, 
 and in a brief time, when all that we now look upon 
 is faded and perished from us, these will remain. 
 This fact changes the whole aspect of the' present 
 life, making all those objects which before were 
 ends mere means to a higher end, — not less impor- 
 tant on that account, but means and not the end. 
 And the teaching of the Apostle is, that we should 
 live with a primary reference to these spiritual reali- 
 ties, and that among our conflicting motives and 
 interests these should possess a controlling and su- 
 preme authority. I have thus dwelt on .the explana- 
 tion of the text, hoping to bring out the distinction 
 which the Apostle makes between the worldly and 
 the religious life. A supreme devotion to the inter- 
 ests of this life constitutes the worldly man. The 
 religious man is one, not who flies, like the anchor- 
 ites of old, from that scene of duty and labor where 
 
WORLDLINBSS. 21 
 
 God has placed him, but over -jv^hose conduct, amidst 
 the duties and trials and pleasures of the earth, these 
 realities of the spiritual world exert a controlling in- 
 fluence. 
 
 But is it possible to feel that interest in what is 
 spiritual and invisible, which we feel in what presses 
 upon the senses ? Is it possible ? Let the martyrs 
 who have died, and thought it triumph to die for 
 their faith, answer. Let the multitudes of the ob- 
 scure and unknown who have found strength in 
 temptation, undying hope for the affections, the best 
 comfort of want and sorrow and trial, the best shel- 
 ter from the storms of life, in their faith in these in- 
 visible realities, give the answer. Nay, I will not 
 speak of its possibility, when the best virtue of the 
 world finds its only stable and permanent support in 
 a faith which connects the soul with God, with the 
 moral order of the world, and with the prospects of 
 eternity. 
 
 Nay, suppose some being, from another sphere, ig- 
 norant respecting the actual character of mankind, 
 knowing only the general fact that men are placed 
 on the earth for a few years only, but are immortal, 
 accountable, dependent on the Almighty, and des- 
 tined to a spiritual life beyond the grave for which 
 this life is but a school of preparation, — suppose 
 such a being should visit us, what might he expect 
 of men as the natural result of this their condition ? 
 Assuredly, a prevailing universal devotion to this 
 preparation. He would expect that the world would 
 exhibit a scene parallel in some respects to that wit- 
 nessed among the inhabitants of a country whose 
 
22 WORLDLINESS. 
 
 population is stirred and roused to the idea of emi- 
 gration to some foreign shore. Their foreseen de- 
 parture gives a softened interest to the scenes which 
 they are to leave, and awakens a greater kindness 
 and consideration towards the friends from whom 
 they depart. While they remain, they must still 
 perform the ordinary duties which belong to their 
 lot. But the subject of removal overtops aU others, 
 while anticipations and schemes and plans and prep- 
 arations for the new country to which they go fur- 
 nish an absorbing subject for interest to aU minds. 
 So might this higher being expect that we, pilgrims 
 whose staves are already in our hands, colonists so 
 soon to depart for another country, should make 
 whatever bears on that future condition the great 
 subject of interest. 
 
 But what is it that this being of a higher sphere 
 would perceive to be the actual state of man ? 
 What objects of interest stand first and foremost? 
 Are they not, to a startling extent, objects which 
 have not the highest value even here, but which are 
 also in their nature of the most transient descrip- 
 tion ? We build houses, which we scarcely enter 
 and occupy, before a silent company meets to bear 
 us out of their open doors to the grave. We hoard 
 up gains beyond the needs of ourselves or our chil- 
 dren, as if the end of human existence were accu- 
 mulation, and yet in a brief time it is all to be left, 
 very likely to be the means of temptation to those 
 who are dearest to us. We are engrossed by the 
 shows and ambitions and rivalries of life, though 
 knowing that in a few years all is to be laid aside 
 
WOELDLINBSS. 23 
 
 for the winding-sheet and the tomb. Nay, not all ! 
 — for then we enter within the circle of those spirit- 
 ual realities for which we have been preparing or 
 neglecting to prepare. 
 
 But after all, it is said, there is much delusion 
 here. Why not enjoy life, and make the most of it ? 
 There is a vast deal of priestly cant about this idea 
 of worldliness, about its perils and its mischiefs. It 
 is very well for these dull commonplaces to be reit- 
 erated from the pulpit ; they do no harm, provided 
 they are not taken for more than they are worth; 
 at any rate, it is easy not to listen. 
 
 But is this the true view ? Is all that religion has 
 taught respecting a worldly life a mere matter of 
 cant and delusion ? If so, let the pulpit be disa- 
 bused of 'this foUy, and come to something that is 
 real. Suppose that, convinced of its correctness, 
 and desirous not to trifle with himself or with you, 
 the preacher were to put this worldly view of life 
 into the form of an exhortation. If the worldly view 
 is the true one, let us adopt it and abide by it. Sup- 
 pose from this place I were to exhort you thus : — 
 Set your affections on things of the earth. Let 
 worldly success be the main thing. These things 
 of which religion speaks are but shadows, while here 
 around us are substantial realities, — power, wealth, 
 social prominence, — in these there is something real. 
 Cherish first, then, the ambition to rise in the world, 
 cherish an aspiring ambition ; crowd, supplant, seek 
 the chief place so long as you can do it in a defensi- 
 ble way, only be careful somehow to rise ; or let the 
 great object be to accumulate wealth, which repre- 
 
24 
 
 WORLDLINBSS. 
 
 sents and commands so many forms of earthly good ; 
 or give yourself up to the shows of life ; or let the 
 main thing be to enjoy yourself, fill your home with 
 luxuries and pleasures, rear up your children to think 
 much of self-indulgence, of dress, of social distinc- 
 tion ; make the most of this brief life, be rid of these 
 disturbing fancies about the future, and enjoy your- 
 self while you can, for death and darkness hasten, 
 and the time will soon be passed ! Were I to speak 
 such words, you would think that I was mad, or 
 mocking you. Away with these impious falsehoods, 
 you would say, and away with him who dares to 
 utter them I Let us, once in the week at least, hear 
 the truth, though we only hear to neglect it ! And 
 why would such an exhortation here shock the most 
 hardened and corrupt man on earth ? Because every 
 man in his heart knows that it is a blasphemous 
 falsehood. And yet this lesson, this mocking lesson, 
 is the one which the world is all the time teaching, 
 and, what is more, baptizes it with the name of 
 worldly wisdom. Alas ! in how many homes on the 
 earth, in how many homes of the Christian world, 
 in how many homes which call themselves Chris- 
 tian, is it the ever-repeated lesson,' taught from 
 morning till night, not in words perhaps, but in 
 pursuits and tastes and example ! In how many 
 hearts is it the only lesson ever heeded or heard, 
 except as one hears a dirge, to enjoy its mel- 
 ancholy music, and to repel its prophetic omens ! 
 To what point does the prevailing spirit of world- 
 ly culture tend, but to this very point of world- 
 liness ? 
 
WOELDLINESS. 25 
 
 I deny not, I fully recognize, the many virtues 
 consistent with all this. An atKeist, as a matter of 
 worldly wisdom, will be honest up to a certain 
 point ; generous, just, forbearing, and discreet, up to 
 a certain point ; and will "be careful to avoid the 
 vices which put in jeopardy health and respectabil- 
 ity. Who does not know that all this may coexist 
 with an essential worldliness of spirit, without one 
 real thought of God, or futurity, or the actual des- 
 tiny of man ? I know not that he whose barns were 
 full, and who said, " Soul, thou hast much goods 
 laid up for many years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, 
 and enjoy," — was a vicious man, but rather a self- 
 indulgent man, who had labored hard and meant to 
 enjoy the fruit. It did not occur to him that there 
 was any use to be made of these- accumulations ex- 
 cept for his own pleasure. When his barns were 
 full, it did not occur to him, in the words of one of 
 the Fathers, to make " storehouses of the poor and 
 needy," nor to use his means as God's servant to 
 promote man's welfare. All ended with earthly and 
 personal gratification. But a voice came : " This 
 night thy soul shall be required of thee ! " Where 
 was the terror of that voice? Not in the voice 
 itself, which came to him in the night, so low that 
 none else could hear ; not in any threatenings, but 
 in the realities to which it awoke him. Terrible, be- 
 cause it was all over ; because his treasures were laid 
 up on earth and he must leave them ; because there 
 was nothing beyond but darkness ; because, as " the 
 fabled mandrake is said to be torn from the earth 
 shrieking and with bleeding roots," he is torn from 
 
26 
 
 ■WORLDLINESS. 
 
 the world where alone are his affections, his interests, 
 and his pleasures. 
 
 Surely it is a pleasant sight to see prosperous 
 fortunes, and pleasant homes, and the young enter- 
 ing upon their careers with- ever opening and en- 
 larging prospects of success. All these things are 
 good, are God's gifts and opportunities, to be en- 
 joyed with thankfulness, and used with liberality. 
 But we cannot enter this place without acknowledg- 
 ing that worldly success is but one of the secondary 
 things in human life. At least let the words that 
 we here read, the confessions that we make, the 
 prayers that we utter, awaken us to the realities of 
 our condition. 
 
 And in these matters the preacher shall not take it 
 on himself to speak as a prophet who passes through 
 the fire unharmed, but as one who from his own 
 infirmities is compelled to understand the infirmities 
 that press upon us all. But because we are guilty 
 and unworthy, shall we acquiesce in this poor and 
 miserable state ? Nay ; let the sins which reproach 
 us incite us to something better. 
 
 What is our great moral danger? From what 
 direction does temptation come to us, — not to the 
 world at large, but to us? We are not tempted, 
 like the starving pauper, to steal ; we are not tempted 
 to lie, as they are who find in falsehood the only 
 refuge from oppression. So far as sins are discred- 
 itable, we are to a great extent protected even from 
 1;he temptation. Who of us would venture to take 
 much credit to himself for a degree of honesty which, 
 in one whose family were starving, and who repelled 
 
WORLDLINBSS. 27 
 
 the thought of immoral gain, would imply a kind 
 of moral heroism ? Here is not our danger. Where 
 does it lie ? It may be summed up in this one 
 word, — worldliness. 
 
 Worldliness takes different forms. There is the 
 worldliness of want. The man pinched for bread, 
 able to find work only at intervals and uncertainly, 
 easily sinks into a kind of haggard worldliness, full 
 of bitterness and jealousy, tempting him to drown 
 in the riot of to-day the anxious forethought for to-, 
 morrow. Such a man can hardly occupy a middle 
 ground. He must triumph over his lot by rising 
 above it on a strong, ever-present, all-controlling 
 religious faith, or he will sink under it into a world- 
 liness the most terrible and intense, though by no 
 means the most guilty. 
 
 Then there is the worldliness of prosperity, wMeh 
 is of a different sort. Comfortable, decorous, and 
 well conditioned, it wears what looks almost like the 
 garb of an angel of light. One of its great offices 
 is to cultivate the manners and the graces, to live by 
 those prudential and amiable rules which, if they 
 cannot quite turn earth into an Eden, would in the 
 outward show create a feeble imitation of it. The 
 worldliness of prosperity is so unexceptionable, has 
 in it so little to offend, that it seems hard to make 
 objection to it. We are hardly conscious of it, but 
 — must we not all confess it ? — it is very hard for 
 prosperity not to be worldly. We touch the earth 
 at so many points, and at all so pleasantly, — we 
 have on all sides so many points of attraction, and 
 all so agreeable, — that we are held down to the 
 
28 WOKLDLINESS. 
 
 earth and the world, not by one coarse and hard 
 iron chain, like the poor man, but by a thousand 
 almost invisible silken cords, while the cords are 
 themselves covered with garlands. They are fastened 
 lightly around us, as if they were ornaments ; we 
 are scarce conscious of them ; but somehow, when 
 we would rise, we find them, not rudely, but gently, 
 drawing us back to the earth. We have so many 
 enjoyments, such means to enjoy, that we hardly 
 wish for more. The multiplicity of our cares, our 
 interests, our pleasures, fills and occupies the mind, 
 and excludes the thought of God and heaven. These 
 prosperities of life are like the mists which rise from' 
 the earth, of a summer twilight. Before we are 
 aware, they are condensed into clouds which shut 
 out the sky ; and yet for a time those clouds are 
 golden, and we are content to lose the vision of the 
 heavens while we gaze on their lustrous and ever- 
 changing glories. But at length the light fades, the 
 glory vanishes, and nothing is left but cloud and 
 night. So these prosperities rise above us, and 
 while we look on their brilliant hues, we are scarce 
 conscious that they are excluding the heavens, until 
 at length, as the sunset of life comes, we find that 
 their splendor is gone, and only the chill and the 
 darkness remain. 
 
 But where is the difficulty with this worldliness ? 
 In the very fact that it is worldliness. Because it 
 turns a man into a creature of the earth, when his 
 true destiny is to-be a creature of heaven. Were 
 there nothing beyond the grave, it might perhaps be 
 the wise method of living. But it is the wise method 
 
WORLDLINBSS. 29 
 
 on this condition alone, — while in fact (shall we 
 say, alas !) there is something beyond this life. The 
 evil is, that it shuts out God from the world, as the 
 present Sovereign and Ruler of heart and life ; forgets 
 that the present state is one of probation, and makes 
 it an end, and in so doing lowers the whole tone of 
 feeling down to an earthly level. 
 
 But what is the opposite of this state ? Let me 
 describe it, through an example. A few days since, 
 I saw an old man, certain to die soon, and warned 
 that death might come at any moment, — an old 
 man, after threescore and ten years of toil, left in 
 penury to depend on the chance charities of stran- 
 gers. Among other things I, said to him, " Do you 
 ever grow weary of life ? do you wish to die or to 
 live ? " Said he, " I have no wiU to live _nor will 
 to die ; my wiU is to do God's will." Said I, " You 
 have been poor, but you have had many blessings." 
 " Yes," said he, " always.. The poor have hardships 
 no doubt, but they also have great blessings." 
 " How so ? " I answered. " Why," said he, " one 
 thing the poor have, — the poor .have the promises." 
 I said, " Even if you have had trials, you have been 
 taken care of." " Yes," said he, " the Lord has 
 always taken care of me, and I have never doubted 
 his goodness." Said I, " How long have you felt in 
 this way ? " Said he, " Forty years ago I gave my- 
 self to the Lord, and he has nevef deserted me ; and, 
 thank God, I have never deserted him." It was the 
 language, very simple doubtless, of a man who 
 stood inside the porch of death, and, knowing what 
 death was, was prepared to meet it, — not in hot 
 
 3* 
 
30 WORLDLINBSS. 
 
 blood, not dragged with opiates, but in the calmness 
 of hope. Here was a man living by faith ; — in the 
 world, and laboring to his fall strength in his lot, but 
 governed, uplifted, inspired, by motives and hopes 
 above the world. But, you ask, were these words 
 all sincere? Were they not the commonplace 
 phrases of a sect, and, half unconsciously perhaps, 
 uttered to practise on my credulity? I had no rea- 
 , son to doubt they were sincere ; but suppose they 
 were not, what then? It might be the worse for 
 him, but what then ? The words' might not be true 
 to him, but they were true to the truth of things. 
 True or not to him, they were the expression of the 
 highest and holiest sentiments of which the human 
 heart is capable. It described a state of mind whicli 
 we might cheaply give the world to gain. Tell me, 
 young man, were the choice given to you for the 
 next forty years, — unbounded prosperity, success 
 and enjoyment, and in the end to be without this 
 trust in God ; or, without any of this success, to be 
 able to say. For forty years I have endeavored to 
 serve God, — which would you choose? I should 
 mock you, if I supposed that any except one choice 
 were possible. And yet, though without the ex- 
 tremes of fortune, that moral choice you are making. 
 Hereafter one or the other you are to say, — I have 
 served the world ; or, I have served God. 
 
 It becomes us to understand the serious conditions 
 and destinies of this mortal life. Our peril is, not 
 from gross vices nor from any well-considered relig- 
 ious scepticism, but that we should sink into worldly 
 insensibility, — awake to all on the earth and insensi- 
 
WORLDLINBSS. 31 
 
 ble to all above it. We are so well off that there 
 seems to be no need of anything more. Religion 
 tends, in such a state, to sink down into a mere 
 matter of philosophical speculation, or to the poorer 
 level of one of the fine arts. Let us — such is the 
 language of this state — have no over-zeal; let us 
 have that tolerance, or rather indifference, which 
 holds all religious opinions of equal value, because 
 it holds them in no value at all. Let us be zealous 
 in the work of accumulation, vehement in political 
 strife, anxious to gain the world's favor, but no over- 
 zeal about religion. Observe its forms, so far as is 
 convenient; let the church stand open one day in 
 the week, — and yet perhaps better imitate the cus- 
 toms of lands which turn the Sabbath into a day 
 of amusement. Educate the young for worldly suc- 
 cess, but do not disturb their minds with supersti- 
 tious ideas about duty and prayer, about useful 
 labors among men, and the desire of God's approval. 
 I do not say that this is a description of society. If 
 all mankind had sunk thus below the level of relig- 
 ious convictions, it would perish from its own de- 
 generacy. But the tendency of the worldly spirit is 
 towards this state. 
 
 Is this a tr^e view of life? Nay; not so. It 
 is time for us to awake out of sleep, and to know 
 where we stand. If there be no God, if Revelation 
 be a fiction, if the omens of the heart, instead of 
 being its prophecies, are its superstitions, if those 
 faiths which have been the world's life, which have 
 fed its virtue and inspired its heroism, are fictions, 
 then let them be treated as such. But if they are 
 
32 
 
 WORLDLINESS. 
 
 realities, let them be throned as such above the 
 mind. If the world be God, then act out the idol- 
 atrous maxim,* We must do what the world bids. 
 ' But if the Lord be God, then, with no coward heart, 
 take for your guiding words those words which so 
 many heroic and saintly men have lived by, — As 
 for me, I stand on the side of the Lord. Say it, and 
 be not ashamed to say it, — In this battle of life, I 
 stand upon the Lord's side ! 
 
SEEMON III, 
 
 MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 BUT JESUS ANSWERED THEM, MT FATHER WOKKETH HITHERTO, 
 
 AND I WORK. — John V. 17. 
 
 Our faith in the teachings of Christ, as possessing 
 any peculiar authority different from and above that 
 of any good and wise man, depends on our belief in 
 the reality of his miraculous character. The subject 
 of miracles becomes thus one of the greatest prac- 
 tical moment, for the view we take of it decides 
 whether we are to regard Christianity as a mere 
 philosophical system, or a divine and authoritative 
 religion. 
 
 It is obvious, that, during the last quarter of a cen- 
 tury, scepticism has very much changed its ground. 
 The fundamental idea which underlies nearly every 
 sceptical argument of any note in our day, is the 
 absolute incredibility of anything miraculous. It is 
 so aside from the ordinary course of nature that the 
 mind, it is said, refuses to admit it as a reality. It 
 may be doubted if men often rejfect the Gospel mira- 
 cles because of any deficiency in the historical evi- 
 dence or in the essential trustworthiness of the Gos- 
 
34 MIRACULOUS INTEKPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 pel narratives. It would, we suppose, be generally 
 admitted that there is an accumulation of proof, 
 such as sustains our belief in no other history of dis- 
 tant events, — an amount of proof such as every day 
 in our courts of justice is regarded as overwhelming 
 and decisive, in cases where not only property, but 
 even life, is at stake. Those who doubt would gen- 
 erally say, There is proof enough of the reality of the 
 Gospel miracles, if the thing were provable. The 
 difficulty goes back of this to a supposed intrinsic 
 incredibility in regard to everything miraculous, not 
 to be overcome by any evidence. Thus such a 
 writer as Strauss — and the same might be said 
 of nearly every other sceptical author — at the out- 
 set assumes the absurdity of a miracle, and through- 
 out his work takes it for granted that any narrative 
 of what is miraculous is for that reason certeiinly 
 and necessarily false; while the famous argument 
 of Hume, the strongest statement of the difficulty 
 ever made, that a miracle cannot be believed be- 
 cause it is a violation of our experience, derives its 
 force, not from its soundness, for it is a manifest 
 sophism, assuming the very point in dispute, but 
 from its being an appeal to the vague feeling that a 
 miracle is essentially incredible, and so incapable of 
 being proved. 
 
 The subject of miracles divides itself into two 
 parts, which I am careful to distinguish because the 
 remarks which I have to make apply to one part 
 alone. The first question, in treating of the general 
 subject of miracles, relates to their credibility or in- 
 credibility as such. Are they essentially so incredi- 
 
MIRACULO-US INTKEPOSITION WOT tlNWATTJEAL. 35 
 
 ble as to lie beyond the reach of evidence, or do they 
 lie within the circle of possibility and of proof? 
 This is one question. But admitting their possi- 
 bility, the second question is, whether those recorded 
 in the Gospels are sustained by sufficient evidence ? 
 This is a question of historical facts, and the proper 
 mode of treating it is that pursued by the various 
 writers on Christian evidences, such as Lardner and 
 Paley and Norton. With this second question I 
 have now nothing to do. I shall confine myself to 
 the previous, and in our day more important ques- 
 tion, which relates to the alleged incredibility of 
 miracles as such, and universally. 
 
 The precise point to which I would direct your 
 thoughts is this. I wish to show that a miracle has 
 in it no such intrinsic incredibility as to exile it 
 from the circle of things capable of being proved by 
 evidence. I wish to show that, so far from its being 
 incredible, it enters as one of the moSt prominent 
 facts into the frame of the universe and the order of 
 Providence. Whether any particular miracle has 
 taken place is to be determined by the evidence 
 appropriate to each particular case. What I pro- 
 pose to show is, that miracle as such is no excres- 
 cence on the order of nature, not something excep- 
 tional, to be apologized for, to be accounted for, but 
 an essential part of that order, and therefore just as 
 susceptible of proof as any other facts transpiring 
 under the general order and law of Providence. 
 
 Before entering upon the proof of this main point, 
 however, it is needful that we should form to our- 
 selves some just idea of the nature of miraculous 
 
36 MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 interference. What, then, is a miracle ? To un- 
 derstand what' it really is, we must consider the ex- 
 tent to which the Divine energy is all the time put 
 forth in creation. I suppose it may be said, without 
 qualification, that every originating cause is spirit- 
 ual. Matter propagates power, transmits it onward 
 from the original source, exhibits it to the senses, is a 
 secondary and transition cause, but never the origi- 
 nal cause. I raise my hand; the originating cause 
 is in the will. The spirit wills, and nerve and mus^ 
 cle obey. And so in the universe. When we look 
 for originating causes, we never stop in matter. Of 
 the series of causes and effects, each link is formed 
 to depend on a preceding one. And yet there must 
 have been a first link, and that first link does not 
 hang self-suspended in the air. 
 
 The series of causes and effects carries us back to 
 mind. The first link of this mighty chain hangs 
 suspended to the throne of God, and it is his power 
 which, vibrating through its inert lengths, appears in 
 the last link of the series not less than in the first. 
 And thus it is not more the teaching of Scripture 
 than it is of philosophy, that in all, acting through 
 all, presiding over all the laws of the universe, is the 
 universal present power of God. 
 
 But in acknowledging the existence of a God, we 
 admit the possibility of miracle. For he who con- 
 trols all the laws of the universe may at his wOl 
 modify the action of any particular law. A miracle 
 supposes the introduction of no new power. It is 
 wrought by the selfsame power that is all the time 
 working - through the myriad ministries of nature.. 
 
MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 37 
 
 It is the same God who gives life at first, and again 
 raises the dead to life. A miracle does not imply- 
 that God is not acting all the time, does not imply- 
 that he is acting more at one time than another. 
 Essentially- it is no more than a ne-w mode of Divine 
 manifestation. And that it is so, appears from the 
 fact that the continued repetition of the miracle 
 would take from it its miraculous character, and 
 transform it into law. 
 
 We confuse ourselves by considering that essen- 
 -tial to miracle which in reality is the result only of 
 the point of view from which we regard it. Stand- 
 ing below the cloud on our human side, accustomed 
 to a limited circle of laws, and ignorant of the Divine 
 purposes, a miracle must seem altogether different 
 from what it does to those who stand on the Divine 
 side, and who are witnesses of the purposes of God 
 and of the forth-issuing of his power. Standing on 
 our human side, and witnessing immediate effects 
 alone, a miracle seems a violation of the order of 
 Providence, or, if the term is preferred, the order of 
 nature ; while to superior beings, standing on the 
 Divine side and beholding the Divine purpose, it 
 might appear only a more complete carrying out of 
 the real order and ends of Providence. From our 
 human point of view, miracles may appear like the 
 crossing tracks of planets, which, seen from the earth, 
 seem to be entangled in inextricable derangements, 
 but which, viewed from the sun, appear moving in 
 their circles in a divine harmony. 
 
 It is from the neglect of this obvious distinction 
 that the chief difficulties of the subject arise. We 
 
38 MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 first impose on ourselves by a false definition of the 
 word law, as if it had a substantial existence in 
 itself, independent of God, — as if it were a sort of 
 central Fate, to whose behests the Almighty himself 
 must submit. And when it is seen that such an 
 idea is inadmissible, it is tacitly assumed that we 
 are acquainted with aU the laws which relate to this 
 world, and that they not only are unchangeable, but 
 that God has done all that he purposes to do. And 
 assuming this, scepticism loves to stigmatize miracle 
 as an afterthought on the part of the Deity. As if 
 the admission of miracle were a confession of over- 
 sight in the origin of things, a contrivance to remedy 
 unforeseen defect, and therefore incredible. But the 
 charge is utterly groundless. He who believes in 
 miracle does not imagine it to be something unfore- 
 seen, nor an expedient to remedy an unforeseen diffi- 
 culty, but a foreseen event in the general order, and 
 an essential part of that order. He does not sup- 
 pose miracle a violation of law, except in the sec- 
 ondary sense in which there is always a violation of 
 law when a superior force bends and controls an in- 
 ferior one, — any more than when the lifted arm, or 
 the arrow shot into the air, resists the power of grav- 
 itation. It is a variation of so much of the order of 
 nature as we are in the habit of seeing, but a varia- 
 tion produced by a competent cause ; and no viola- 
 tion of law, because in harmony with the great end 
 for which all laws exist. Nay, the miracle, we may 
 better believe, is a foreseen and intended part of the 
 general order, and none the less foreseen or intended 
 by Providence because startling to us. A mariner 
 
MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 39 
 
 drifts, day after day, on the ocean's stream in the 
 midst of a summer calm, along a shore with which 
 he is unfamiliar. The night sinks down over tran- 
 quil waters, and the level rays of the morning sun 
 glance in fire over the smooth surface of the deep. 
 No sound comes over the sea, and he seems sep- 
 arated from the universe of living things.- But at 
 
 "night the winds break forth, the waters begin to 
 heave and swell, the mountainous waves chase each 
 other towards the rocky coast, when suddenly the 
 stroke of a bell is heard, — scarce heard at first, but 
 louder and ever louder, — tolling, pausing, tolfing, 
 ringing, — its strange chimes blending like a fearful 
 
 ' dirge with the storm, and heard, now low, now loud, 
 amidst the varying fury of the gale. The established 
 order which the mariner had observed was silence. 
 He knew not that a wise foresight had hung by the 
 coast of peril this voice, silent when all was peace- 
 ful, but which, when the storm beat, and the waves 
 rose, and danger threatened, should be ready to 
 clang forth its warnings. Would this be a violation 
 of law ? No, only a variation of the accustomed 
 order, produced by sufiicient causes, but causes not 
 coming forth into action until the appointed moment 
 had arrived. Long beforehand it had been arranged 
 and prepared, so that the very violation of the ac- 
 customed order was an essential part of the real 
 order. 
 
 A better illustration still of the manner in which 
 a variation from the accustomed order may be but a 
 part of a more extended order. A story is told of a 
 clock on one of the high cathedral-towers of the 
 
40 MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 older world, so constructed that at the close of a 
 century it strikes the years as it ordinarily strikes 
 the hours. As a hundred years come to a close, sud- 
 denly, in the immense mass of complicated mech- 
 anism, a little wheel turns, a pin slides 'into the 
 appointed place, and in the shadows of the night 
 the bell tolls a requiem over the generations which 
 during a century have lived and labored and been 
 buried around it. One of these generations might 
 live and die, and witness nothing peculiar. The 
 clock would have what we call an established order 
 of its own ; but what should we say when, at the 
 midnight which brought the century to a close, it 
 sounded over the sleeping city, rousing all to listen to 
 the world's age ? Would it be a violation of law ? 
 No, only a variation of the accustomed order, pro- 
 duced by the intervention of a force always existing, 
 but never appearing in this way tiU the appointed 
 moment had arrived. The toUing of the century 
 would be a variation from the observed order of the 
 clock; but to an artist in constructing it, it would 
 have formed a part of that order. So a miracle is a 
 variation of the order of nature as it has appeared to 
 us ; but to the Author of nature it was a part of that 
 predestined order^ — a part of that order of which he 
 is at all times the immediate Author and Sustainer, 
 — miraculous to us, seen from our human point of 
 view, but no miracle to God ; — to our circumscribed 
 vision a violation of law, but to God only a part 
 in the great plan and progress of the law of the 
 universe. 
 
 The incredibility of miracle does not arise from 
 
MIEACTJLOUS INTERPOSITION NOT XINNATUEAL. 41 
 
 any want of power on the part of the Creator to 
 change the accustomed order of things ; to suppose 
 this would be atheism. On the other hand, the 
 peculiarity of a miracle is not that it is an effect 
 without a cause, a phenomenon of which there is no 
 sufficient account to be given, but that it is an effect 
 which under the circumstances we are compelled to 
 refer, not to any secondaj-y cause, but to the great 
 First Cause of all things, — a phenomenon which is 
 to be referred, not to any secondary law, but to that 
 Power in which all the laws of the world originate. 
 
 Leaving these general considerations, I proceed 
 now to another and main point which I have in 
 view. The proposition which I hope to show to be 
 well founded is this, that miracle, instead of being a 
 violation of law, exists as an essential part of the 
 great order of things. In doing this, I shall take 
 you from revelation to nature, from the declarations 
 of religion to the discoveries of science. I do it the 
 more readily, because it is very evident that for re- 
 ligious faith few things are more essential than that 
 the harmony between God's providence in nature 
 and God's providence in revelation should be clearly 
 perceived. Here, it is claimed, are two manifesta- 
 tions of God, the book of nature and the book of 
 revelation. Do they agree together ? Science dis- 
 covers in the natural world new classes of facts. 
 Formerly theologians, if those facts were inconsist- 
 ent with their theories, denied them, and imprisoned 
 or burnt the teachers of them as heretics. This did 
 not answer then, and still less does it answer now. 
 There is but one way, and that is, when science has 
 
42 MIRACrLOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 clearly made out a fact, for theology to show its re- 
 lations to faith. We must come to the truth, and 
 be content to stand on the truth. The great exten- 
 sion of modern science makes this now the most 
 essential question of theology, namely, whether na- 
 ture is to furnish reasons for religious doubt or relig- 
 ious faith. And this view I dwell upon, because it 
 is the vital point, and because, as I believe, it shows 
 the harmony between the order of nature as revealed 
 by modern science and the order of providence in 
 revelation. 
 
 Do not, however, let it be supposed that science, 
 when it has reached the position of science, has ever 
 been the enemy of faith. There is a common way 
 of speaking which implies that it wiU not do to ex- 
 amine theology too carefully by the lights of science ; 
 that, after all. Christian faith has to contend for ex- 
 istence with science. There could not be a greater 
 misapprehension of facts. Doubtless there was a 
 time, while science was in its rude, chaotic begin- 
 ning, when its tendencies were sceptical. The sud- 
 den, startling blaze of new discoveries drew off atten- 
 tion from the great illumination of the world, — the 
 torchhght put out the sunlight. Science, intoxicated 
 with success, grew daring, self-confident, and unbe- 
 lieving. There have been times when it was athe- 
 istic. The rude, vague science of earlier days was 
 enough for doubt, but not enough for faith ; as it 
 has advanced, and learned to read more clearly thp 
 works of God, it has grown believing. Thus many 
 departments which once were thought subversive of 
 all religious belief, now furnish the most impressive 
 
MIEACULOTJS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 43 
 
 analogies and proofs to the believer. Once theolo- 
 gians were alarmed at the study of anatomy and 
 physiology, and now they regard them as an arsenal 
 from which to draw effective weapons for the de- 
 fence of faith. Less than two hundred and fifty 
 years ago, theology in its alarm imprisoned Galileo ; 
 and now the theologian derives from the laws of 
 astronomy the sublimest illustrations of spiritual 
 truth. Geology was thought at first to be under- 
 mining faith ; but it is now seen to have been only 
 deepening and confirming the foundations. 
 
 Thus scepticism deserts one field of science after 
 another, as fast as they are really explored, whilst it 
 clings only to those about which least is known. I 
 do not say that all men of science are believing 
 men ; a man may have investigated all th,e physical 
 facts, "and have thought less than a child of its bear- 
 ings on spiritual truth, and thus never have felt the 
 force of evidence which he has himself collected, just 
 as he may not have used for its true end the wealth 
 he has accumulated ; but I say this, — that the ten- 
 dencies of "modern science are towards faith, and so 
 decidedly, that every thinking believer has learned to 
 feel sure that, when a new department of science 4s 
 fairly laid open, he will find in it new supports of 
 religious faith. At present, physical science, so far 
 as its tendencies are concerned, is turning over its 
 scepticism to metaphysics; while itself scouts and 
 repudiates and disproves, by what it declares to 
 ,be incontestable facts, assertions and arguments on 
 which disbelief was so much accustomed to rely. 
 The objections to miracles most felt arise, I have 
 
44 MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 said, from the obse'rvation of the universal preva- 
 lence of law. Everything seems to proceed by in- 
 evitable law ; everywhere there is law, and only law, 
 and no place for miracle. Here lies the whole sub- 
 stance of the difficulty, as it is ordinarily presented. 
 
 I answer, in general, that the difficulty has no real 
 foundation, that it is not sustained by- the facts, that 
 its whole force depends on an unwarranted limita- 
 tion of the definition of law, and that the explora- 
 tions of modern science — in the inferior sense in 
 which we are accustomed to use the word, restrict- 
 ing it to the more obvious phenomena of nature — 
 do not meet the facts in the case. These explora- 
 tions have shown that beyond this there is a higher 
 and larger law, which includes miracle within its 
 sweep as, an essential part of the great order. 
 
 In these revelations Science furnishes the means 
 of correcting the very doubts which in a less mature 
 and advanced state she herself had done something 
 to create. And shall we not believe that there is 
 something providential in the fact, that, when scepti- 
 cism had reached the point of denying the possibil- 
 ity of miracles, a higher Science should have reached 
 the same point, coming round through the circle of 
 her own explorations, and bearing in her hands the 
 irrefragable evidence of the credibility of miracles ? 
 It is a remarkable fact, that he who now rejects 
 miracle on the ground of its intrinsic incredibility 
 finds himself confronted not so much by theology as 
 by physical science. Changing places, science be., 
 gins to teach theology a lesson of faith. He who 
 would be rid of miracle must first be rid of modern 
 physical science. 
 
MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 45 
 
 "What I wish to urge is this, — not only that there 
 may have been miracle, but that it enters into the 
 very constitution and order of the world, — that it 
 enters into aU the analogies of nature, and is thus as 
 susceptible of proof as any other facts in the natural 
 order of things. And in showing this, there are 
 three important and' decisive facts which demand 
 attention. 
 
 1. The first, to use a phrase of Butler's, is, that 
 the scheme of things to which we belong " is not a 
 fixed, but a progressive one." The word progress, as 
 commonly used, includes more or less of the idea of 
 improvement. And doubtless in this case this might 
 be a just use of the word. But it is not necessary 
 to the argument, "and I will not contest the point as 
 to whether the progress is or is not towards a higher 
 condition of things. I use the word progress in this 
 sense. The scheme of things to which we imme- 
 diately belong is a progressive one in the sense of 
 there being a movement onward, a succession of 
 events, a fluid, flowing, and not a fixed state. This 
 cannot be said to be a discovery of modern science, 
 but science has established the truth of it by new 
 and overwhelming evidence. Why, we are incom- 
 petent to say, but it is abundantly evident that the 
 fundamental law of the universe is progress. It is 
 recognized in our ordinary speech, when we speak 
 of eras and epochs, of causes and results. Astron- 
 omy fancies that it discovers some indications of it 
 in the starry worlds. Geology finds it in the pro- 
 gress of our globe from chaos and desolation up to 
 that condition in which it became a fit abode for 
 
46 MIRACULOUS INTBRPOSmON NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 man. Science affirms that this law of progress has 
 controlled the fortunes of the material universe ; the 
 historian traces it in the annals of the human race ; 
 and religion, looking forward, as history does back- 
 ward, assures us that the same law reaches into the 
 future, as it has reached over the past. 
 
 2. The second fact which scfence has in a meas- 
 ure discovered, and entirely established, is, that this 
 progress of the world, so far as it can be traced, has 
 been carried on in part by what, for the lack of a 
 better name, we call general laws or laws of nature. 
 Thus, go back to the earliest geological epoch, aiid 
 it is found that the same laws were in force which 
 are in existence now ; from the, beginning the same 
 laws have wrought in and through each succeeding 
 change. . For example, gravitation, chemical attrac- 
 tion, and laws like these, through aU the successive 
 stages of our globe's history, we are told, can be 
 proved to have existed and operated and remained 
 the same as they are found at this day. The same 
 essential laws controlled the growth of vegetable 
 and animal life. So unchanged have these laws 
 been, that the naturalist, from a single fossil scale of 
 , an extinct race of fishes, can divine its size and form 
 and habits, or from a single bone, dug out of the 
 earth, from its tomb of ages, can reconstruct the 
 whole animal, determine its. food, its modes of life, 
 and the general character of the region and climate 
 where it lived. 
 
 But while these laws have remained unchanged, 
 science affirms that it has discovered a new fact, 
 namely : — 
 
MIEACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT •UNNATURAL. 47 
 
 3. That the progress of the world has not been 
 carried on by these laws alone. It shows, by what it 
 treats as equally undoubted and unquestionable evi- 
 dence, that this progress has also, in part, been car- 
 ried on by successive interpositions of the Creative 
 Power. It is not Theology, it is Science, which 
 affirms that 'race after race of plants and animals 
 has lived on the earth and then perished, and their 
 place been supplied by new races. She computes 
 the species now extinct, of which nothing is left but 
 their fossil remains, disinterred from the successive 
 strata of the globe, by thousands. She affirms that 
 the different species of animals now alive on the 
 earth for the most part date back in geological his- 
 tory but a little way. Their existence is but a re- 
 cent thing, while man belongs to the most recent 
 period of aU. Independent of revelation. Science 
 affirms, on evidence of her own, that there is every 
 reason to beheve that man's existence on earth 
 reaches back over only a few thousands of years. 
 To such an extent have these discoveries been car- 
 ried, that Science points her finger to the place 
 in the world's progress where one race ended and 
 another began. 
 
 And while Science does this, on evidence of her 
 own, she asserts that the more, recent race is not a 
 development of one that went before, but that with 
 it began a new order of existence ; that is, with 
 each new race has been a beginning of organized 
 life, evoked from dust and nothingness, by that 
 Power which speaks and it is done, which com- 
 mands and it stands fast. 
 
48 MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 This, adopting theological instead of scientific 
 language, is the very idea of miracle ; namely, that 
 it is a phenomenon which we are obUged from the 
 nature of the case to refer back to no subordinate 
 agencies permanently at work in the world, but to 
 .the originating cause of what we look on. 
 
 But still comes up the feeling whicTi is the main 
 source of all the difficulty, and which to all evidence 
 still replies : A miracle is incredible. God cannot 
 have interposed but in the ordinary way; that is to 
 say, God is excluded from manifesting himself, ex- 
 cept in the few ways with which we personally, in 
 our little round of daily life, are familiar. God not 
 only has no.t, but cannot, manifest himself in any 
 other way. — This is a somewhat confident assump- 
 tion on the part of man ! 
 
 Miracles incredible ! impossible ! not even suscep- 
 tible of proof! Too bold words these for man, grop- 
 ing about on his little ant-hill in an obscure corner 
 of the tiniverse. Too bold words these, which under-* 
 take to set metes and bounds for the action of Al- 
 mighty God. 
 
 " I cannot believe a miracle ; it is incredible, it 
 violates all experience, and saps the foundation of all 
 evidence." Ah ! is it so ? If you cannot trust the 
 religion of Heaven, put, at least, some confidence in 
 the science of man. Retreat back in time through 
 ages that are gone, and from some empyrean height 
 behold, as science discloses it, the progress of the 
 world's histpry which we inhabit. Go back to the 
 time when the solid granite settled and hardened, 
 the bed of the visible world ; when naught appeared 
 
MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 49 
 
 but winds and waters lashing the rocky shores, and 
 volcanaes lighting up the dreary breadth of night, — a 
 waste as yet without sign of life, — nothing but a vast 
 desolation where yet warred the half-subdued forces 
 of chaos. But wait. Move on the ages in which 
 Omnipotence acts. And behold, you know not how, 
 the surface of continents is changed ; they are cov- 
 ered by a strange vegetation. The dead world is 
 fresh and blooming with vegetable life. Who sowed 
 these continents of rock ? Who introduced these 
 new forms of organized matter, impressed on them 
 their laws, endued them with a perennial and repro- 
 ductive energy? And more than this. The lakes 
 and seas are filled with a higher kind of life, the 
 reeds and ferns are crushed and the palms bent by 
 the enormous bulk of animals, the air is burdened 
 with the wings of birds, the world is peopled with 
 life. Yesterday it was not, to-day it is. Between 
 that yesterday and to-day there has been creation, 
 interposition, miracle, God ! Though it wrought 
 silently as light, invisibly as gravitation, the power of 
 God has intervened. But pause not yet. Move on 
 ages that divide the great circle of eternity. Like 
 shadows in a dream, change upon change comes on 
 the surface of the globe. New races of animals 
 and of plants appear, and ancient races are seen no 
 more. In fairer forms, clothed with a different vege- 
 tation, islands and continents spread out surrounded 
 by summer seas. And lo! the manifest lord and 
 head of this new creation appears, a new creation 
 still, — man, — with form erect and eyes that can 
 look upward to the heavens. Thus far Nature has 
 
50 MIRACULOUS INTEKPOSITION NOT UNHTATUEAL. 
 
 been inarticulate ; those that were nourished on her 
 bosom understood her not. But here is a new uni- 
 verse, a step upward to a higher level ; here is a cre- 
 ation of Mind. The last inhabitant has reason to 
 understand, has a voice to utter, the indistinct teach- 
 ings of nature. Over the new-formed world he be- 
 holds a God, and his newly awakened reason re- 
 peats : — 
 
 " These are thy glorious works, Parent of good ! 
 Almighty ! thine this universal frame 
 Thus wondroas fair ; Thyself how wondrous then ! " 
 
 I have thus far spoken of miracle only as it has 
 appeared a constituent part in the order of the ma- 
 terial world. I now ask, Is it reasonable to suppose 
 that the system prevailing up to this moment, ac- 
 cording to which the progress of the world was 
 carried on by a union of general laws and succes- 
 sive interpositions, two diflferent modes to our eyes 
 through which the same power acts, — is it reason- 
 able to suppose that this system would be changed, 
 or, till there was evidence of change, that it would 
 still prevail ? Is it unreasonable to suppose, or in- 
 credible, that the analogy of nature should be main- 
 tained ? Was the Divine energy exhausted and 
 spent when it had thus just reached the threshold of 
 a reasonable and moral creation, all further exertion 
 of it forbidden and incredible ? 
 
 The point of the analogy lies here. It is conceded 
 that the progress of the material world has been car- 
 ried on by the double method of what in common 
 language is termed general laws and the direct inter- 
 vention of the Creator. At length we reach, in this 
 
MIRACULOUS INTBRPOSITIOK NOT UNNATURAL. 51 
 
 order of progress, a Moral creation on the earth, the 
 creation of Man. He has peculiar relations to the 
 Creator, The material world could know nothing 
 of God. Man is capablq.of knowing something of 
 God, and, so far as moral results are concerned, it 
 transcends all other knowledge in importance. And 
 nothing is so fitted to impress the limited faculties 
 of man with a sense of the reality of the existence 
 and present providence of God, as these direct acts 
 of intervention, which startle our attention and which 
 we are obliged to refer to him. If God then has in- 
 terposed miraculously to carry forward the progress 
 of the unconscious material world, how much more 
 urgent and impressive are the reasons for supposing 
 that he would thus interpose to promote the progress 
 of the moral world. 
 
 Certainly the sceptic who appeals to science can- 
 not object to such a conclusion.- Indeed, this form 
 of scepticism exhibits the very absurdity of incon- 
 sistency. The sceptic appeals to science, — he affects 
 rather to be its special devotee, and claims peculiarly 
 to respect its laws. As he goes forth into nature 
 and penetrates into the secrets of the earth, the geol- 
 ogist points out to him the successive formations 
 which in the lapse of ages have been deposited. He 
 directs his attention to the various species of plants 
 and of animal life which belonged to successive 
 epochs. He shows him how »aces of animated life 
 gradually became extinct. He points his finger to a 
 particular layer, one of the latest perhaps, in which 
 some plant or fish or animal first made its appear- 
 ance. Here, he says, just here, in the later ages of 
 
52 MIRACULOUS INTBEPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 the globe, this species was introduced ; and the scep- 
 tic looks on with believing wonder. Is it possible, 
 he says, that this species was created after so many 
 others had perished ? Do we here see the direct 
 work of the creative hand ? Here he does not ques- 
 tion the reality of miracle. It is only when he 
 comes to the soul's progress that he thinks miracle 
 impossible. He has no hesitation about believing 
 that God interposed to create a species of plants or 
 fishes, in order that the gfobe may be fitly furnished 
 for its inhabitants, but he cannot believe that God 
 should interpose to give needed moral light to the 
 soul of man in its progress. He hastens to believe 
 the geologist when he speaks of miracle, but he can- 
 not believe Matthew or John, or Christ. He can 
 admit a miracle where it is of least imjiortance, but 
 denies its possibility where it is most important. Of 
 all men he is mosfinconsistent. 
 
 Is it impossible that He who has carried on the 
 progress of the material world, in part by successive 
 miraculous interpositions, suited to the exigencies of 
 that progress, should carry on the progress of this 
 new moral world, not only by general laws, through 
 which he always acts, but also through those suc- 
 cessive interpositions suited to the exigencies of its 
 progress, — so suited to give new jmpulses to the 
 race, and to awaken man to a consciousness of the 
 Divine Presence ? Shall we not rather say, the mode 
 of interference changing to meet the new condition 
 of things, the wisdom and power of God shall still 
 be revealed as of old, according as he sees that the 
 needs of his creatures require ? May we not expect 
 
MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 53 
 
 that He who created new and successive forms of 
 animal life, as the world was prepared for it, should, 
 in the progress of this new moral creation, as its exi- 
 gencies required, interfere to give it new light and 
 life? 
 
 Miracle incredible ! What is the history of the 
 globe but the history of miracle ? As we pierce 
 through its crust, we dig through layer after layer of 
 miracle. As if God had foreseen that we should 
 some time have need of proof that he is not shut up 
 to one mode of action, and that what we call law is 
 but the order of his will, he has committed the evi- 
 dence of his perpetual interposition to the keeping 
 of the rocks, — turned the solid strata of the globe 
 into archives to hold for ever the unimpeachable evi- 
 dence of Divine interference. 
 
 In these remarks I have not even presented the 
 question as to whether the Christian miracles are or 
 are not sustained by sufficient evidence. The argu- 
 ment I have offered has nothing directly to do with 
 those particular miracles, though indirectly it has a 
 most important bearing on them. It proves this, — 
 that miraculous interposition has entered as a part 
 into the great plan of Providence. It proves that 
 miracle in the real and great order of the universe as 
 explored" by science is nothing anomalous and mon- 
 strous. It shows that the order of the world has 
 been carried on by the united co-operating agency 
 of general laws and miraculous interposition. Thus, 
 when we come to the examination of the Christian 
 miracles, we find that science has already removed 
 and scattered to the winds all objections arising 
 
54 MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATURAL. 
 
 from the idea that miracles as such are incredible. 
 It removes from them all antecedent improbability, 
 and brings them within the circle of historical evi- 
 dence. It leaves them open to be proved, as any 
 other facts of history are proved. Nay, more, the 
 discoveries of science lead us, whenever a sufficient 
 occasion arises, to expect miraculous interposition, 
 — to expect it because this has been the order of 
 things. It presents the most urgent and impressive 
 analogies to awaken this expectation. Throwing 
 aside all other considerations, if the progress bf the 
 material world has been carried on both by general 
 laws and miraculous interference suited to it, we 
 have reason to expect, when man, a spiritual crea- 
 tion, is introduced upon the globe, that his progress 
 shall in a similar way come under the influence of 
 general laws and miraculous interposition, as Chris- 
 tianity declares to have been the case. 
 
 This view shows that there is the strictest har- 
 mony between what is revealed in the works of 
 God and what is narrated injpeword of God. The 
 Divine interpositions winv%hich we become ac- 
 quainted in the lattei; are but the carrying out and 
 completion of those Divine interpositions of which 
 the record is co^ntained in the former ; in one case 
 the record comnittted to the pag^fcf a book and the 
 mind of man, and- in the other, *o the successive 
 strata of the earth. There is nothing to my mind 
 incredible in the earlier interpositions, and still less 
 incredible are the later ones made for the benefit of 
 the soul. I find nothing incredible in the statement 
 of science, that from time to time God has inter- 
 
MIEACUIOTIS INTERPOSITION NOT UNNATUEAL. 55 
 
 posed to raise to life new orders of being on the 
 earth ; nor, in accordance with the statement of re- 
 ligion, do I find it any more incredible that God 
 should, at suitable times and in fitting ways, in- 
 terpose to promote the welfare of his spiritual crea- 
 tion. 
 
SEHMON IV. 
 
 A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 
 
 AND THINE EAKS SHALL HEAR A WORD BEHIND THEE, SAYING, 
 THIS IS THE WAY, WALK YE IN IT, WHEN YE TURN TO THE 
 RIGHT HAND, AND WHEN YE TURN TO THE LEFT. — Isa'xXX. 21. 
 
 Man, as one of his chief characteristics, has the 
 power of self-improvement. He not only can ac- 
 cumulate and possess a knowledge of the past, but 
 can apply it to future use. The animal is created 
 with an instinct which enables it to accomplish all 
 that it was intended it should accomplish, — an in- 
 stinct which gains nothing from experience, which 
 is as unerring at the earliest* period of life as at the 
 latest, and which directs it to food and shelter, and 
 how to guard against its peculiar dangers. With the 
 animal, instinct is everything, reason nothing. With 
 man it is instinct which is nothing, apd reason every- 
 thing. What the animal does, impelled by instinct, 
 man must learn how to do by reason. Until his rea- 
 sonable nature is developed, and he has learned 
 something from experience, man is utterly defence- 
 less and incapable of even self-preservation. It iijs 
 this reasonable nature which raises man above the 
 
A VOICE BEHINB THEE. 57 
 
 brute, and this nature is developed only by learning 
 and applying the lessons derived from one's own or 
 other's experience. 
 
 The power of improving on the past, of learning 
 from past experience, — the importance of gaining 
 wisdom from past experience, — this is the lesson of 
 the text. 
 
 That which gives value to experience is the fact 
 that the laws of God under which we live are per- 
 manent and unchanging. We speak of the uni- 
 formity of the laws of nature or of God which gov- 
 ern the material- world. These we know do not 
 change. But the laws under which man, as a moral 
 being, lives, are precisely as uniform. Not more 
 surely must the stone thrown into the air fall to the 
 earth, than wiU the violated conscience avenge itself, 
 unused affections decay, habitual indulgence of ap- 
 petites and passions imbrute the soul and destroy 
 the body. The affections, the passions, the whole 
 inner and outer life of man, are ag much under law 
 as the growth of plants or the motion of stars. 
 
 These laws are uniform. The same jealous and 
 envious heart that made a rnan miserable yesterday, 
 will make him so to-morrow. If unkindness and ill- 
 temper made the home miserable last year, they will, 
 if indulged, contiisue to make it miserable next year. 
 If fidelity to conscience has heretofore given you 
 peace of mind, the same fidelity will stili bear the 
 same fruit. In the spiritual as in the material world, 
 the same causes will go on producing the same 
 effects. 
 
 It is the great business of man's life, as distinct 
 
58 
 
 A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 
 
 from the animal, to learn this truth, and to apply it 
 to practice, — to convert the experience of the past 
 into wisdom for the future. And the great differ- 
 ence between men consists in the different degrees 
 in which they practically apply this past experience. 
 It is as in other things. One man sees daily before 
 him the whole expanse of heaven and earth, and 
 they suggest , nothing to him. Newton but sees an 
 apple fall, and to his considerate and prepared mind 
 is suggested the great law that holds the universe 
 together. So with experience. All the sorrows and 
 joys and trials and penalties of life teach some men 
 nothing. It seems as if they had not in them the 
 power to learn. While others never make the same 
 mistake twice, and never fall from a truth when once 
 found. With one, all the years he has lived, with 
 their multiplied experiences, are a blank, — for any 
 moral purpose he might as well not have lived at all, 
 — while to another they are present helps on every 
 side, aiding him upward in the way to heaven. 
 
 The laws of life under which we live are uniform. 
 Hence it is that in all the results of our course in 
 past time we read what must be the result of the 
 same courses in future. The past is thus made, by 
 the mercy of God, a perpetual prophet, warning, 
 guiding, encouraging man in the future. There is 
 not a sorrow or joy, — not a possession or bereave- 
 ment, — iipt a virtuous effort or folly or sin, — which 
 does, not utter its voice of encouragement or warn- 
 ing to the soul, and teach it, if it will but hear, a les- 
 son of heaven. It is the great superiority of the man 
 over the animal, that he can thus learn from the 
 
A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 59 
 
 past ; and when he does not do this, he sinks, as far 
 as his greater power will let him, to the level of the 
 animal. What degradation in one who will not 
 learn ! How does he impoverish himself who casts 
 away all the years of the past ! who lives now as if 
 he had never lived before ! who practises the same 
 follies and sins, as if he had never tasted their bitter 
 fruits ! who rejects all the years he has lived, and 
 throws them away, and walks as blindly and as stu- 
 pidly as if there were no light to guide him ! But to 
 him who will learn, the past ever speaks. From its 
 shades as irom the recesses of some sacred temple 
 comes a voice to guide him. Through all the laws 
 which God has established, and of whose authority 
 experience assures us, God himself speaks in no un- 
 intelligible language. Continually behind lis, in all . 
 the changing events of life, there is a voice that 
 whispers in our ear, not harshly, but kindly, saying, 
 This is the way, walk ye in it. Not bitterly like 
 an enemy, not sternly like the judge, but tenderly 
 and solemnly, as one's best friend^ it says, Let not 
 past mistakes lead you to despair, but to wisdom 
 and improvement. Lament not the past, but gain 
 wisdom from it. Hear the voice which directs to a 
 better road, and says, This is the way, walk ye in it. 
 
 We ask for warnings as to our duties and dan- 
 gers. And we have them every day and hour. Con- 
 stantly, in the language of the text, there is a voice 
 behind us, warning us of the way in which we 
 should go. 
 
 In some cases we acknowledge this. Especially 
 we are ready to do it where others are concerned, 
 
60 
 
 A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 
 
 and wonder that men learn nothing from the bitter 
 lessons of experience. A man falls into habits of 
 intemperance, his worldly prospects grow dim, his 
 body becomes diseased, the hand trembles, the limbs 
 totter, the mind wavers on its throne, and all the 
 faculties of the soul are degraded. A voice from 
 behind this man, we know, — a voice from all these 
 bitter experiences, — warns him that the same course 
 continued must produce the same effects, till they 
 issue in ruin and death. We wonder at him when 
 he shuts his ear and will not hear the voice behind 
 him which directs to a better way, aiid says. This is 
 the way, walk ye in it. 
 
 But it is not from gross vices only and their re- 
 sults that the voice of warning comes. Let us listen 
 for a moment to this voice that issues from the grave 
 of past experience. 
 
 It teaches us what we all need to learn, — what 
 are our peculiar weaknesses of character, and our 
 moral dangers. It is only by looking back on the 
 past that we can learn our weak points. Looking 
 on ourselves at the present moment, when unassailed 
 and untried, we seem to stand strong in those points 
 even where a single breath of temptation would at 
 once overwhelm us. Thus does many a one, untried, 
 while he is utterly weak, seem to himself to stand 
 firm and steadfast, — as certain kinds of forest trees, 
 while outwardly their trunks soar up strong as if they 
 were the pillars of the sky, and are crowned with 
 the leafy glories of the ^ spring, are decayed through- 
 out in the centre, and wait but the feeblest gust of 
 the storm to be overthrown. To know our weak- 
 
A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 61 
 
 nesses, we must look back to where we have been 
 tried and where we have fallen. If temptation has 
 led you astray, if yqu have indulged bad passions or 
 have violated conscience, if in any place or scene 
 you have found yourself invariably or commonly led 
 away by the peculiar temptations of the occasion, a 
 voice from behind you that cannot deceive, the voice 
 of your own past life, whispers. Here, — however you 
 may feign or wish yourself to be, — still here you are 
 weak. Beware of this moral exposure, or, if you 
 must meet it, meet it with humility and fear and 
 prayer. ■ 
 
 It is the voice that comes from past experience 
 which gives us full assurance of that truth which, 
 above all others, it is most essential for us to under- 
 stand and receive, — of the supreme worth of virtue. 
 When we look forward to the future, we may doubt 
 about doing right, may think duty costs too much. 
 But look back on the past, and you have no such 
 doubts. Look back on the past, and, no matter what 
 you gained by it at the moment, there is not a wrong 
 you have done, not a duty you have intentionally 
 omitted to do, not one, which you do now remember 
 with satisfaction. No matter what the gain or en- 
 joyment at the time, there is not one wrong indul- 
 gence, not one act of sin, which you can look back 
 upon without misgiving and self-reproach. You do 
 not boast of that misdeed. You may like the pleas- 
 ure or advantage, but would be glad to be rid of the 
 guilt. Nor is there a virtuous act or effort or self- 
 sacrifice which you ever made, no matter how pain- 
 ful, which you do not remember with joy. You may 
 
62 A VOICE BEHIND THEB. 
 
 regret mistakes of judgment, but never the purpose 
 of duty. There is not one such act for which you 
 do not now think the better of ^yourself, and which 
 you do not feel to be one of the true treasures of the 
 past. Whatever you may be now, you thank God 
 that there was a time when you could make sacrifices 
 to duty. You might be willing to have all the rest 
 of your past life blotted out, but that never. Thus 
 in every temptation does all your past life rise up as 
 if from the grave to warn ypu against sin. 
 
 That voice behind us gives us just notions of the 
 actual value of the great objects of worldly pursuit 
 and ambition. As we stand in health and strength, 
 brightly before us glow the prizes of the world. We 
 would be rich, we would be conspicuous, we would 
 have the praise of men, we would share in the suc- 
 cess of life ; and in our eager struggle for these prizes 
 we forget the value of other things. We lose our 
 sense of the relative magnitude of objects. But does 
 experience teach us to set this inordinate supreme 
 value on the advantages of this world? Rate them 
 at as high a value as we will, still they are not all. 
 They cannot do everything which we wish done. 
 The costly and more luxurious home has not always 
 made you either a happier or a better man. Accu- 
 mulating gains have not always made you a happier 
 or a better man. Social distinctions have not always 
 made you a happier man. Who will say that the 
 greatest successes he has known, the successes {oo 
 which he has been ready to risk life, to win, have 
 made, him happier in his home, in his heart, in his 
 hopes of heaven, in any proportion to the earnestness 
 
A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 63 
 
 with which those successes have been sought ? How 
 many of the most fortunate will say, that, though they 
 shone brightly in the prospect, and hung on the tree 
 of life like apples of gold, when they have been able 
 to reach and pluck them, they have found them to 
 the taste turn to ashes, bitterness, and death! Look 
 again on past experience, and see how few are suc- 
 cessful according to their desires, and how desires 
 themselves expand inimitably. See the disappointed 
 hopes, the broken plans and prospects, toil without 
 profit, and anxiety without^reward, — poverty in age 
 shutting like night over the prosperity of manhood, 
 bereavement robbing us of those for whom we la- 
 bored, or death coming in and striking down the 
 man when his hopes were full-blown and his pros- 
 pects the brightest, — and what can tell you more 
 impressively that these, however good in their place, 
 must not he — must not be, unless we are mad, the 
 chief objects of human pursuit ? 
 
 Take another case where our judgment is less par- 
 tial. When as a spectator you look back over those 
 whom in the past you have known, or have read 
 of, whom would you select, on whom does the 
 mind instinctively fasten, as the men whose lives 
 have been most worth the living? Whose would 
 you, if you could, adopt for your own? Whom 
 would you be glad to resemble ? They are not ne- 
 cessarily those whom you may admire the most. 
 There are those whom you have admired, whom you 
 would not resemble for the round world. Not the 
 most prosperous or popular or powerful, — certainly 
 not for this ; but they are those, humble or high, to 
 
64 
 
 A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 
 
 whom the heart may pay its moral homage. Or in 
 that case which more than any other tests the worth 
 of the ends of life, what is it that secures to parents 
 the most affectionate memory of children ? Parents 
 spend a life of toil in order to leave their children 
 wealth, to secure them social position or other worldly 
 advantages. I do not underrate the worth of these 
 things. Had they not been valuable, there would 
 not have been so many providential arrangements 
 impelling men to seek them. I would only show 
 that there is something of infinitely greater value, not 
 only to the parent, but to be transmitted to the child. 
 What does the child most love to remember? I 
 never heard a child express any gratification or pride 
 that a parent had been too fond of accumulating 
 money, though the child at that moment was enjoy- 
 ing that accumulation. But I have heard children, 
 though their inheritance had been crippled and cut 
 down by it, say, with a glow of satisfaction on their 
 features, that a parent had been too kind-hearted, 
 too hospitable, too liberal and public-spirited, to be 
 a very prosperous man. A parent who leaves noth- 
 ing but wealth, or similar social advantages, to his 
 children, is apt to be speedily forgotten. However 
 it ought to be, parents are not particularly held in 
 honor by children because of the worldly advantages 
 they leave them. These are received as a matter of 
 course. There is comparatively little gratitude for 
 this. The heir of an empire hardly thanks him who 
 bequeathed it. He more often endeavors before his 
 time to thrust him from his throne. But let a child 
 be able to say, My father was a just man, he was 
 
A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 65 
 
 affectionate in his home, he was tender-hearted, he 
 was useful in the community and loved to do good 
 in society, he was a helper of the young, the poor, 
 the unfortunate, he was a- man of principle, liberal, 
 upright, devout, — and the child's memory cleaves to 
 that parent. He honors him, reveres him, treasures 
 his name and his memory, thinks himself blest in 
 having had such a parent, and the older he grows, 
 instead of forgetting, only reveres and honors and 
 remembers him the more. Here is experience and 
 affection sitting in judgment on human attainments. 
 It shows what is most worth the seeking. It is the 
 past warning you what to be and do, — a voice 
 behind you, pointing out the right way, and saying. 
 This is the way, walk ye in it. 
 
 How differently should we live did we listen to 
 the voice of the past, — did we turn the experiences 
 of the years we have lived to the profit of to-day. 
 Sometimes the tried and tempted heart demands 
 greater encouragement to duty, greater warnings 
 against moral danger, and feels as if God had left 
 it to struggle alone and without light against and 
 through the evils of the world. And yet if we con- 
 sider, even if a voice spake perpetually from the 
 dome of the sky, how could we have more constant 
 and more impressive moral lessons than we now 
 have? 
 
 In some parts of the country the ancient custom 
 still remains, when any one dies, immediately to 
 strike the bell for the purpose of calling attention, 
 and then to toll it as many strokes as the deceased 
 had lived years. I chanced to be alone among the 
 
 6* ' 
 
66 
 
 A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 
 
 hills. It was a lovely, day of early summer. The 
 earth was clothed with a peculiarly rich vegetation 
 for even that country region ; the trees were full of 
 the notes and flitting wings of the birds ; below 
 a small river ran shining amid the green meadows 
 or eddying around the rocks, or plunging, sparkling 
 and bright, over the frequent rapids, as if its waters 
 had caught something of the life that pervaded na- 
 ture, — while above the gray mountain summits rose 
 up, mingling with the silent calmness of the skies. 
 As far as the eye could reach, but a few scattered 
 dwellings could be seen, yet all was full of life and 
 peace and silent joy. Whfen suddenly in this uni- 
 versal stillness, startling the air with its suddenness, 
 the sound of a church-beU came swelling up from 
 the distant valley in which the church itself was hid,, 
 and booming over all the hills. A knell of death in 
 the midst of universal life! A knell warning the 
 living that they too must die ! A knell speaking to 
 all the dwellers round about of that which all in the 
 midst of life are so apt to forget! And I knew that 
 a thousand hearts there in the solitary homes around 
 were awed and beating like my own, — that the hus- 
 bandman was pausing behind his plough on the hill- 
 side, and that the mother hushed the voice of the 
 babe in her home, to listen to that solemn sound, 
 which was speaking to us all of a living soul over 
 which in our midst the change of death had passed, 
 and which even then from the warm affections of 
 life was ascending above us into the skies. A knell 
 solemn, but not altogether sad, which said. Fair as 
 this world is and full of life, there is above a fairer 
 
A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 67 
 
 world even than this, and a higher life, to which the 
 soul belongs. Blessed sound, I thought, which not 
 only warns us of death, but can also thus awaken 
 us from our dreams of earth to the higher thoughts 
 and hopes of heaven ! Happy were we, if such a 
 voice, warning us of death and heaven, could come 
 to us every hour! And yet it was an ungrateful 
 thought ; for if I reflected, I could not but remember 
 that, in the merciful providence of God, warnings 
 more solemn than this death-knell were sounding 
 into our ears with every moment, did we but listen. 
 Not an hour passes in which we are not warned, by 
 some of the thousand modes in which God com- 
 municates his will to man, of the necessity of good- 
 ness, the sure penalties of sin, the certainty of death. 
 AU the years we have lived, in their changes, the 
 renewal of spring, the fallen leaves of autumn, warn 
 us of a change and a mortality that belongs to us not 
 less than to them. The hymns and prayers of child- 
 hood are voices behind us speaking to our manhood. 
 The hoary head of the sinner and the death-beds of 
 the good warn us. The Bible, though it lie un- 
 opened on our table, every time we look at it from 
 its closed lids warns us of righteousness, temper- 
 ance, and judgment to come. The open doors of 
 churches, and Sabbath bells, and funeral hymns, and 
 chambers of grief, have warned and still warn us. 
 Every law of God we have broken or obeyed, — 
 every sin of which we have repented, in the peace 
 that has followed repentance, and every sin of 
 which we have not repented,* in its upbraidings, — 
 they are all as voices behind us with all the authority 
 
68 A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 
 
 of experience, whispering in our ears, Behold the 
 ,way of God, — this is the way, walk ye in it. 
 
 In how many nameless, numberless forms is God, 
 through the experience of aU the past, warning us of 
 our highest good, — of duty and the great end of life! 
 What then are we who live as if there were no voice 
 behind us warning us of the way in which w.e should 
 go ? It is the very distinction of man's reasonable 
 nature, that he can learn of the past. What shall 
 we say of him who lives as if he had no past to 
 remember or improve upon, — with whom to-day is 
 no better than yesterday, — who repeats day after 
 day, and year after year, the same wearisome follies, 
 goes round in the same circle of worldliness, yields 
 to the same passions, commits the same sins, and 
 takes not one step forward in the road of virtue 
 and piety and God? Miserable man! What loss 
 like his whose whole life has been waste, who has 
 travelled on through the journey of years, has had 
 pleasures, and toiled amidst anxieties, and been 
 smitten with griefs, and suffered the penalties of his 
 sins, and yet learned nothing of the great lesson to 
 be learned from them ! 
 
 No one can take a view of his past life without 
 awe and humility. The great o"bject for which all 
 the discipline of the past has been arranged by 
 Providence, has been to train up the soul for virtue 
 and heaven. And all that we have brought out of 
 the past which is permanent, is what is contained in 
 the soul. All else that we have done or cherished 
 must soon be left behind. And to which of us is it 
 not a startling thought, that we have lived so many 
 
A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 69 
 
 years, passed through so many changes, been schooled 
 in the discipline of so many trials, and come out of 
 them all no wiser or better than we are ! 
 
 And this view of the past becomes doubly solemn 
 when we remember that it cannot be changed. A 
 little while ago, and we might have made it what we 
 pleased. - It is now too late ! All remains, and must 
 remain, as it is. Virtues and sins, self-sacrifices and 
 self-indulgences, the wrong we have done to others 
 and the wrong in our hearts, — all remains, and must 
 remain, written down and sealed up for eternity. 
 The days that are gone have gone on " into the rec- 
 ord of Heaven, into the memory of God." Fixed 
 and irrevocable, the past is no longer the subject of 
 human choice, but of Divine judgment ! All that it 
 can now do for us, is to direct us more wisely in 
 time to come. 
 
 "What the interior shades of the future, as we 
 move on from arch to arch, may reveal, we know 
 not. But if we live, the future is now in our power, 
 to make it, so far as its great moral ends are con- 
 cerned, very much what we will. What shall it be ? 
 "We shall, as a matter of fact, whether consciously or 
 unconsciously, choose. What then shall it be ? Sup- 
 pose it were revealed to you that you should live a 
 certain number of years; but that at the end you 
 should be no better — not any worse, only no better 
 — than at the beginning, no good qualities strength- 
 ened, no bad ones changed for the better ; — if this 
 doom were pronounced over you, who would not 
 shrink from a continuance of life which only accu- 
 mulated unmet responsibilities, — who would dare 
 
70 A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 
 
 encounter such a doom ? We regard death as a sol- 
 emn and fearful event, and it is. But life is still 
 more serious. If it be a serious thing to die, it is 
 still more serious to live on in such a way that every 
 day adds to our unworthiness. 
 
 Unless our lives are absolutely negative and indif- 
 ferent, which is impossible, we are in the sticcessive 
 days to come to do much either of evil or good. And 
 which, is to depend on our prevailing purposes and 
 efforts each day. You *are to do much for the hap- 
 piness or unhappiness of homes, of parents, children, 
 brothers, sisters, and friends. Each day has its ap- 
 propriate duties, and as they arrive you wiU choose 
 to perform them, or you will choose to be unfaithful 
 to them. On the road before you stand waiting for 
 you to come up the ignorant, the poor, the miserable, 
 who as you come up to them will be helped by you, or 
 be passed by on the other side. In each case, one you 
 will do, and the other you will not do. There are good 
 customs, institutions, and enterprises which you are 
 to aid, or to neglect to aid. You will choose Qne 
 course, and the opposite course you will not choose. 
 There will be a thousand opportunities for kind and 
 friendly offices, opportunities for adding to the amount 
 of human happiness ; in each case there is a selfish 
 course, and a friendly, generous course, and you will 
 choose one and reject the other. During every day of 
 coming life God will visit you and yours with bless- 
 ings, and you will receive them with thankful and 
 obedient hearts, or you will receive them thanklessly. 
 As you go on, you will think of your course as Chris- 
 tian men and women, or you will neglect to do it. 
 
A VOICE BEHIND THEE. 71 
 
 Now it is a matter of choice. Every step of the way- 
 will involve a moral choice, — either high or low, — 
 worthy or unworthy. But once passed, it stands ! 
 Choice ceases, and the act remains. What now is 
 yours passes out of your hands under the eternal law 
 of a righteous retribution. 
 
 Our great concern is with the future. Let it not 
 be such that at life's end you shall say, I had better 
 "not have lived, than to live thus. Let not this be 
 the epitaph which must be written on your grave. 
 Fill up each day with good deeds and the offices of 
 a kind heart. Do something to make the wretched 
 happier and the erring better. See to it that the ad- 
 vantages you possess are the source of good to those 
 around you. Pay to God the homage of just, liber- 
 al, and humane lives. Pay to God the homage of a 
 filial and obedient heart. Let the brevity and uncer- 
 tainty of life and its momentous issues give solem- 
 nity to your purposes. Let the past warn and coun- 
 sel you. Hear and obey that voice which, issuing 
 from the portals of the past, warns you that the 
 paths of virtue are the paths of peace, and, pointing 
 upward, whispers behind you, like a messenger from 
 God, This is the way, walk ye in it. 
 
SEEMON V, 
 
 STAND IN THY LOT. 
 
 THO0 SHALT BEST, AND STAND IN THY LOT AT THE END Or THE 
 
 DATS. — Daniel xii, 13. 
 
 The phraseology of the text has reference to the 
 Jewish custom of deciding doubtful matters by lot. 
 Thus, when the chosen people entered Canaan, it 
 was by lot that the Promised Land was divided be- 
 tween the tribes. So, in some important offices, the 
 different duties were assigned to different persons by 
 lot; and this method of assigning to individuals 
 their jespective places was supposed to have the 
 sanction of religion. Each man entered on the 
 duties allotted to him with the feeling that they were 
 allotted by Providence. He stood in his lot as in a 
 place providentially appointed for him in which to 
 serve God. In the text, the Prophet " should stand 
 in his lot, and rest." The words may have a uni- 
 versal application. The infinite variety of human 
 duties cannot all be discharged by the same person. 
 For different duties there must be different men. 
 Thus it is, in the order of Providence, that to differ- 
 ent men different lots are assigned, not necessarily 
 
STAND IN THY LOT. 73 
 
 better or worse one than another, but different. And 
 in his own lot, and not in another man's, must each 
 one accomplish the true purposes of his existence. 
 He must not dream of'some impossible condition, 
 but with a manly heart be content to labor in his 
 appointed lot, -^ content to find in that, so long as it 
 is his,, his usefulness, his happiness, and his virtue. 
 Do not crave what is another's and not yours, but 
 stand in your own lot, be grateful for its privileges, 
 and faithful to its obligations. 
 
 The lesson has not lost its significance for our 
 restless, impatient, grasping age. It points to a view 
 of life and duty which it greatly concerns us to con- 
 sider. There are two principal things for which life 
 is worth living, — personal growth in goodness, and 
 social usefulness. For both these things there is a 
 constant tendency to look beyond the means and 
 opportunities furnished in our, appointed walk in life. 
 We rely for goodness and usefulness on opportuni- 
 ties which are rare and exceptional, but neglect as 
 valueless those which come within our actual lot. 
 
 Thus in theology we hear of common grace, and 
 special grace, of ordinary and extraordinary means 
 of grace ; and yet while it is on the ordinary means 
 of grace that the moral life of man mainly depends, 
 they are neglected and forgotten in the anxiety for 
 those that are extraordinary. And certainly the ten- 
 dency to overvalue what is unusual is quite natural. 
 That which is extraordinary, though comparatively 
 of inferior moment, strikes the imagination, and for 
 the time makes a great place for itself iij the mind. 
 A miracle preserves the life of one man, and the 
 
74 STAND IN THY LOT. 
 
 world turns in wonder and reverence to view it, and 
 acknowledges the hand of God ; and it is right and 
 well. Yet at the same moment the ordinary provi- 
 dence of God, moving calrftly as the stars, lights up 
 the heavens, gives fertility to the earth, and spreads 
 the table at which the human race sits down, and 
 by which it lives ; and it is not well for us to forget 
 that this ordinary providence of God is a more stu- 
 pendous manifestation of his glory and goodness 
 than any single miracle can possibly be. A whole 
 country collects to see an illuminated city, and yet 
 the glare of the torchlight which blinds us to the 
 stars hides and tnakes us forget the more wondrous 
 illumination of the heavens. The throng traverses 
 with unsated gaze the illuminated street, because the 
 spectacle is rare. As it withdraws into the open 
 country, and morning breaks in splendor above the 
 seas, its beams kindling from cloud to cloud till 
 earth and sky are flooded with light, the weary mul- 
 titude is scarcely conscious of standing under an il- 
 luminated universe. This spectacle for the angels is 
 unheeded because it is common. 
 
 Just so in morals and religion. Men would do 
 good, and think that the means must lie outside the 
 common course of life. The need of a more relig- 
 ious spirit is felt, and it is sought from extraordinary 
 and ever- varying means of excitement. And cer- 
 tainly we will not undervalue these means. Through 
 them deep invasions and permanent conquests have 
 been made in the realms of ignorance and sin ; but 
 they mark the tendency to rely on the novel and the 
 extraordinary. We see the same tendency in the 
 
STAND m THY LOT. 75 
 
 low estimate which men place on the moral oppor- 
 tunities of that sphere of life in which their daily- 
 lot is cast. The merchant says, " I have peculiar 
 temptations : it is very difficult for me to be a Chris- 
 tian " ; and he thinks if he is to become one, it must 
 be in some changed condition of life. The sailor 
 says, " I have peculiar temptations : it is very hard 
 for one in my place to be a Christian." And 
 every man thinks that his lot is peculiarly exposed 
 and difficult and destitute of moral opportunity. 
 For the attainment of the Christian character, and 
 the practice of Christian usefulness, he thinks he 
 must look beyond his common sphere of labor and 
 duty to exceptional and extraordinary opportunities. 
 And yet the daily lesson of Providence is to rely on 
 what is common, — made common, indeed, because 
 the most valuable. Thus Almighty God does not 
 rely for lighting the world on the momentary glare 
 of an occasional meteor, but on the perpetual and 
 equal illumination of the sun. And man, while 
 thankful for every extraordinary aid, must look for 
 his goodness and usefulness chiefly to his use of the 
 common means and opportunities which belong to 
 his special lot. 
 
 The point which I would urge on your reflections 
 is, the value of the opportunities for attaining the 
 two great ends of life — Christian growth and Chris- 
 tian usefulness — furnished in the ordinary round of 
 each one's daUy cares and duties. There is infinite 
 moral opportunity in every lot, there is a general 
 moral equality in the different lots of mankind. 
 Through these considerations I would enforce the 
 
76 STAND IN THY LOT. 
 
 duty of meeting heartily, cheerfully, and faithfully 
 the requirements of your lot, so long as it is yours. 
 " Stand in your lot " ; while it is yours, be content 
 with it. Set a just value on its opportunities for 
 improvement and usefulness. Look not chiefly to 
 extraordinary means, but to those arising in your 
 daily walk, out of the daily duties of your calling, 
 both for doing good and being good. 
 
 A man is dissatisfied with his religious state. He 
 desires more religious life. Where shall he look for 
 it? — I answer, from Christian fidelity in the circle 
 of his daily cares and duties. A Christian principle 
 is established in the soul by being obeyed in prac- 
 tice, and his place of obedience is of course where 
 his duties and temptations lie. He may derive from 
 other sources occasional impulse and instruction, but 
 the obedience must be along the daily path of life. 
 The husbandman goes abroad sometimes to gain in- 
 formation, he tries experiments ; but he depends for 
 his harvest on his steady labor. 
 
 And where there is fidelity, so far as they are con- 
 cerned with whom we are likely to compare ourselves 
 in a moral point of view, there is great equality 
 among the various lots of life. There is not a call- 
 ing which does not supply incipient opportunities for 
 the attainment of Christian excellences. These op- 
 portunities are not to be found solely nor chiefly in 
 the church, in the religious meeting, nor on religious 
 occasions. In them one may be quickened or in- 
 structed ; but that practical application of religious 
 truths which alone establishes them in the heart 
 must be made in the midst of the daily cares of life. 
 
STAND IN THY LOT. 77 
 
 There is not a man, whatever his calling, who be- 
 fore to-morrow night will not be placed where he 
 must obey or disobey every Christian principle. 
 His sense of justice and disinterestedness, his truth- 
 fulness and kindness, his self-control and patience, 
 his faith in goodness, his reverence and fidelity to 
 God, — not one of us but will, before to-morrow's 
 sun sets, have a trial of all these qualities. And 
 it is not by previous feeling and speculation, not 
 through day-dreams of what we might do on ex- 
 traordinary occasions, but by our fidelity in the 
 actual trials of the common life, that these excel- 
 lences will grow. And because all places furriish 
 these trials and opportunities, there is moral equality 
 among those lots which socially are most unequal, — 
 so that the lowliest cabin among the hills is as near 
 to heaven as are the august palaces which overlook 
 the capitals of empires. 
 
 So with regard to usefulness. Men are apt to 
 think that usefulness requires extraordinary oppor- 
 tunities, — conspicuous exertions, — something pe- 
 culiar, — some great thing, — something aside from 
 and beyond the common sphere of life. We wUl not 
 undervalue these more extraordinary means of use- 
 fulness. But still the progress of the world in good 
 does not depend chiefly on these conspicuous and 
 exceptional efforts. They are but bubbles that show 
 the direction in which the common private Chris- 
 tian fidelity and thought and sympathy and effort 
 are setting. Without this private fidelity in private 
 spheres, the public enterprise and all engaged in it 
 would be but a feather in a tempest. 
 7* 
 
78 
 
 STAND IN THY LOT. 
 
 The great instrument by which a moral influence 
 is exerted is personal character. He that communi- 
 cates knowledge may do it by words, by writing, by 
 loud and conspicuous means. But he who would 
 make men good must do it by being good himself. 
 And leaving out some peculiar cases,' too few to be 
 regarded, it is surprising what equality there is 
 among men in their power of doing good. A man's 
 character has influence only so far as it is under- 
 stood, and it can be understood and felt only by 
 the little world in which he lives. Now, every man's 
 world, that in which he lives, is of very much the 
 same size with that of every other man. It is com- 
 posed of the ten or twenty or hundred individuals 
 or families with whom he is brought into close con- 
 nection in the relations of business or friendship. 
 This constitutes his world. In the crowded city it 
 will rarely be large, in the retirement of the country 
 it will hardly be smaller. The moral influence which 
 a man exerts on the world at large depends on the 
 moral influence he exerts on this circle with which 
 he is thus connected. It is so with the greatest 
 man. It seems, at first, as if he stamped himself 
 on the age. But it is rarely so. By sympathy he 
 communicates his character, his views of duty, his 
 moral feelings and aims, to a few friends, and they, 
 in turn, each to his own little circle ; and thus it 
 spreads in ever-enlarging circles, — lamp kindled 
 from lamp, the light is finally spread over the earth. 
 And it scarcely matters where the influence begins. 
 Wesley's influence, rising at first from the common 
 people, is as great now as that of the great con- 
 
STAND IN THY LOT. 79 
 
 queror, descending down through princes and mar- 
 shals and state;smen. With the humblest man it 
 is the same. There is a circle in which there are 
 young persons to whom his character is a standard 
 to which they appeal, and older persons too, all 
 whose views of life and duty are influenced by him. 
 And through them his influence extends to others. 
 This is the way in which the world is morally im- 
 proved. It seems as if Almighty God had deter- 
 mined that the moral good of the world should 
 depend on the fidelity of individuals in the little 
 spheres in which they are placed, in order that for 
 this great work men should have almost equal 
 opportunities. 
 
 A man must not look, for his means of doing good 
 to others, to making a few addresses on this or that 
 great reform, — to entering great organizations, — to 
 great, conspicuous, and exceptional acts, — nor to 
 occasional acts of generosity. These are indeed 
 necessary in their place, but the great good which 
 he may wish to do must be done by his habitual 
 life spent amidst its common cares. A man pro- 
 motes by word and act some great moral enterprise, 
 and yet, after all, to how little will it amount. But 
 behold him in his daily walk. Here, every day, he 
 comes in contact, in his business, with various per- 
 sons, in a way which shows the real principles on 
 which he acts, — children, young persons, or those 
 of mature years, like himself. He may say nothing, 
 but it is seen that he will not do a questionable act 
 for the sake of personal gain. He will practise on 
 no man's ignorance. He will take no advantage of 
 
80 STAND IN THY LOT. 
 
 men's necessities. Where it is to his loss, he is seen 
 to be as strictly just and true and faithful as when 
 it is for his gain. In all his dealings he is governed 
 by Christian principle. Perhaps he does not at all 
 attempt directly to make others better : he is only a 
 good man himself. And yet, were he to devote 
 himself to some great and extraordinary moral or 
 religious enterprise, he probably would not do so 
 much to raise the moral condition of man as he 
 will by this practice of Christian principle amidst 
 those common duties and temptations where the 
 characters of men are tried. The little child sees 
 his course, and involuntarily respects it, and it be- 
 comes a standard by which he will judge of the 
 propriety of actions. The young man, whose prin- 
 ciples were not bad, but unsettled, takes courage for 
 the right. Those that do business with him, if for 
 nothing else except that he may respect them, will 
 more or less adopt his principles. Unjust and hard 
 and discreditable customs are shamed away, and grow 
 obsolete. Thus, often, the silent lives of individuals 
 in time raise the character of a whole community. 
 
 Trace the influence of a really good man, J&rst in 
 his family, then among his friends, then spreading 
 on every side and descending from one generation 
 to another, and who shall declare the sum of it? 
 It is to this that we are to look chiefly for the 
 world's regeneration. The progress of the world 
 in good is dependent chiefly, not on great public 
 efforts, but on this individual fidelity in the common 
 walk of life. 
 
 Let no one say that he has no opportunities or 
 
STAND IN THY LOT. 81 
 
 means of usefulness. He may not be able to give 
 money, or by his eloquence sway the feelings and 
 passions of crowds, or control great organizations, 
 and yet he has in his reach those means which God 
 has made to be the greatest with which he intrusts 
 the children of men. 
 
 K one thinks that the great object of life is to 
 ' gratify ambition, vanity, the love of power, he may 
 naturally pine for exalted and conspicuous spheres 
 of action. But if he really believe, as we all profess 
 to believe, that the only great objects for which life is 
 worth living are the establishing of one's own soul in 
 Christian excellence, and the doing of good to man, 
 he will not greatly trouble himself about the sphere 
 of duty in which his lot is cast. For these objects, 
 the most conspicuous sphere is not always the most 
 favorable. For the growth of good in ourselves, 
 and for the promotion of moral good in others, ob- 
 scurity and shade are sometimes the most propi- 
 tious. It is in obscure caverns and hidden clefts and 
 dark recesses of the earth that the diamond slowly 
 kindles its spark of fire. 
 
 " Stand in your lot"; recognize that lot which 
 in the way of duty has come to be yours, as one 
 providentially appointed, and be content to stand 
 and labor there. The lesson deserves to be con- 
 sidered not more perhaps by man than by woman. 
 She too often pines for a more favorable sphere in 
 which mind and soul may be under more propitious 
 influences, and where she may find greater oppor- 
 tunities and aids for self-improvement. In the 
 midst of wearing details, it is said, day after day 
 
82 STAND IN THY LOT. 
 
 goes by without fruit, mind and heart are squan- 
 dered, time runs to waste, and nothing is done for 
 one's self or for others. Petty cares, petty trials, eat 
 out the life and choke the soul. 
 
 But is it not the same mistake, the undervaluing 
 of the ordinary lot, the overvaluing of that which is 
 extraordinary ? Here I do not ask whether society 
 might not be organized on a better model. Doubt- 
 less it might be, and ought to be. But at the 
 present time, as a matter of fact, woman as well as 
 man finds herself in a certain position. It may not, 
 in all respects, be what it ought to be ; but no one will 
 deny that the sphere which she occupies is an im- 
 portant one. She has long occupied it, and for the 
 present she will doubtless continue to occupy it ; and 
 while she does so, it is of vital moment to her that 
 she should estimate its opportunities and duties 
 aright. To her the lesson comes, " Stand in your 
 lot," — trust in Providence, and " stand in your lot" ; 
 be satisfied, while there, to labor in it; serve God 
 by fidelity in its duties ; believe that, while it is your 
 lot, there are your best opportunities both for good- 
 ness and usefulness. Look not abroad for extraor- 
 dinary opportunities : the best, God has also made 
 the most common. Just as with men, — if she 
 would be good or do good, she will most certainly 
 attain her end by fidelity in tlie common walk of 
 life. Nay, it is by fidelity in the common duties 
 that she best opens the way to the larger and higher 
 ones for which she pines. 
 
 She thinks that there is some sphere more pro- 
 pitious to the growth of mind and heart. But is 
 
STAND IN THY LOT. 83 
 
 it SO? Is there any more favorable discipline for 
 personal improvement in the highest sense, than 
 that furnished in the common routine of daily 
 duties ? The duties and responsibilities of the hum- 
 blest home, ranging from the most trifling cares to 
 the nurture of the souls of children, — are they not 
 sufficient to task every faculty? When are fore- 
 thought and self-control called forth, if not here ? 
 When are self-denying affections more needed ? Or 
 can there be motive for virtue wanting to those 
 whose virtues become so speedily the life of their 
 offspring? Or does Religion ever speak in more 
 . tender and winning tones, than when from among 
 the joys and hopes of home she calls on you for 
 gratitude to Him who guards and blesses it and 
 you ? Has virtue any greater helps than are to be 
 found in the mental sympathy and aid and prayers 
 of those most dear to you ? Or with what more 
 touching words can piety raise the thoughts to 
 heaven, than with those that come from the death- 
 beds of children, when with the last fond smile, the 
 last lingering look, they seem to say, " I go before 
 thee, but cannot, O mother, forget thee, or cease 
 to watch and wait for thy coming ! " She who 
 connot amid such scenes, such duties, such respon- 
 sibilities, find motive and aids for personal improve- 
 ment, where will she be likely to find them? 
 
 Or you would be useful to others, and feel your- 
 self cramped and hindered and fettered by daily 
 cares. May not these cares be the very avenues 
 to the highest usefulness ? Certain it is that much 
 depends on them, — much more than the supply of 
 
84 
 
 STAND IN THY LOT. 
 
 the mere bodily wants of those that meet around the 
 same table. These daily cares, these unnoticed and 
 obscure duties and labors, — if nothing else, this 
 much depends on them : fidelity and a right spirit 
 here make the comfort and happiness of home, and 
 determine nearly all its influences. They make all 
 the difference between a home without peace, — ;-to 
 which its members return without joy, and which 
 they leave without regret, where they merely live, 
 where the joy of life is sought in vain, — and that 
 home which its members leave with regret, and to 
 which they return from the storms of the world, as 
 to a haven of peace, — a home which is the centre 
 of affection and happiness and hope. 
 
 And what a difference is this! A happy and 
 Christian home! How much of all that is good 
 in life is bound up in these words. Out of the 
 happy and Christian home rises the light of the 
 world. What is it that gives cheerfulness to the 
 mighty toil by which the business of the world is 
 carried on, — that toil which builds cities and culti- 
 vates the fields and explores the seas ? What but 
 this, — that each one of this toiling multitude is la- 
 boring for a home, where affectionate hands prepare 
 for his coming, and eyes full of love shall greet his 
 return ? Patriots have encountered every peril, — 
 on the bloody deck, in midnight camps, in besieged 
 cities, in the deadly front of battle, — because they 
 knew that the prayers of wives and children fol- 
 lowed them, and the memory of happy homes threat- 
 ened by unholy feet was in their hearts. Great men, 
 the heroes of great contests, reformers and saints 
 
STAND IN THY LOT. 85 
 
 that have blest the world, have brought back their 
 crowns of honor, and fitly laid them at the feet of 
 mothers who had trained them to lygh thought and 
 heroic enterprise. Dying men in their prayers have 
 given God thanks for those who taught their infant 
 lips to pray. And the youth, amidst strangers, 
 weak within, tempted without, is held back from 
 ruin by the thought of the bitter tears, the breaking 
 hearts, which his vices would bring to that never-for- 
 gotten home of childhood. 
 
 A happy, affectionate Christian home ! From its 
 blessed retreat go forth with cheerful feet useful 
 labor and philanthropic enterprise ; go forth the ,. 
 humanizing influences that save men from the tyr- 
 anny of selfish and savage passions ; go forth the 
 motives of virtue that take hold of all that is most 
 generous and self-forgetting in man ; go forth the 
 guardian memories which protect the youth, and 
 rest like a halo around old age ; go forth the spirit, 
 that, reappearing in other spheres in humble places, 
 and in high, uttered in words made manifest in 
 deeds, becomes the virtue arrd hope of the world. 
 
 Such is the difference between the happy and un- 
 happy home, that I believe, if by "some terrible sor- 
 cery these homes that dot the earth, these centres of 
 affection, these green islets of peace and shade and 
 calm in the great desert of life, were broken up, or 
 if the happiness in them were extinguished, scarcely 
 a generation would pass away before the most civil- 
 ized state would sink into barbarism. Men would 
 cease to labor, or labor only for means to indulge the 
 appetites and passions ;' the charities of life would 
 
 8 
 
86 STAND IN THY LOT. 
 
 no longer soften the intercourse of the world ; disin- 
 terestedness and virtue, robbed of many of their pur- 
 est motives, would disappear; Religion, whose holiest 
 altar of worship and most impressive instructions 
 are at the domestic hearth. Would mourn her sceptre 
 broken and her power departed. Children born into 
 a homeless world, orphaned of the holiest influences, 
 would grow up without natural affection, and die 
 without hope. 
 
 It is hard for us to appreciate the importance of 
 happy and Christian homes. We see the current of 
 virtuous motive, and disinterested enterprise, which 
 .is the life of the social world, and forget its source. 
 As with the ancient Egyptians, though no rains fell 
 during the whole year on their thirsting plains^ yet 
 every year the Nile rose and swelled and overflowed 
 its banks and covered them with fertility, and the 
 multitude looked, and, forgetting the Source of all 
 this, worshipped the rich and abounding river as a 
 god. Yet for their swelling river and fruitful shores 
 they were indebted to sources far distant and to them 
 unknown. Far away under an equatorial sky, across 
 unknown tribes, amid unexplored mountains, the 
 clouds gathered, the rains fell, the fountains gushed 
 out of the earth's heart, and the rills trickled in silver 
 threads down the sides of the mountains and collected 
 in streams, till, reuniting, they formed the river that 
 washed the base of the Pyramid, and on whose banks 
 mighty cities and dynasties rose and flourished. Dry 
 up the mountain showers, dry up those distant, unno- 
 ticed fountains, and the valley of Egypt were a des- 
 ert. Yet the negro panting under a tropic sun, as he 
 sat down beneath a palm that overhung one of those 
 
STAND IN THY LOT. 87 
 
 mountain springs, the fainting caravan that encamped 
 by the side of the narrow stream, dreamed not that 
 here were the sources of the harvests of Egypt, and 
 were they to disappear millions must famish for bread. 
 Just so, out of unnoticed homes flows nearly all the 
 good that blesses the world. Blot out. the home, those 
 fountains of gentle affections, those springs whence 
 flow so many streams of moral influence and relig- 
 ious faith ; and the sands of the desert would be but 
 a feeble type of the moral waste that would envelope 
 the world. 
 
 Yet the existence of these happy Christian homes 
 
 — their very existence — depends mainly on woman, 
 
 — on her fidelity to the common duties of home, on 
 the spirit with which she meets its daily cares and 
 bears its daily trials, on affections that make sunshine 
 in a shady place, on her faith and piety breathed in- 
 sensibly into those around her. Is not this a useful- 
 ness to which one may worthily devote a life ? 
 
 Say not then, those whose lot is cast in this sphere, 
 that life runs to waste amidst petty cares, that mind 
 and heart are squandered on trifling duties : " Stand 
 in thy lot," and be content to stand in it. Recognize 
 its dignity. Look at the result of thy fidelity in it. 
 See it as it is. See how much the highest good of 
 those dearest to thee depends on these very things. 
 See how these little things of the home are the great 
 things of life. See how a pure and Christian and 
 affectionate purpose dignifies the lowliest acts and 
 cares, how thy fidelity in these common duties 
 becomes the source and the primal fountain of the 
 best part of the holiest influences that bless the world. 
 You need not seek extraordinary means and oppor- 
 
88 STAND IN THY LOT. 
 
 tunities of influence. Where could you, though you 
 sought them over the world, find greater than those 
 which come to you in this common walk of life ? 
 The best and highest are already in your hands. 
 She who does her part in making one Christian and 
 happy home, has done her part in a work which, were 
 all to do it, would make earth an Eden. Nor this 
 alone. In making the home happy, she, reaches out 
 over the whole domain of life. The influence ex- 
 erted at the centre spreads out like rays of light to 
 the circumference. Almost without a figure, through 
 the -natural influence of such homes woman may 
 build up the prosperity of cities, and the virtues of 
 citizens ; her voice speaks through the lips of patriots 
 and reformers; her heart gives its life-pulse to the 
 hearts of martyrs and saints. 
 
 Let us be persuaded, then, that the common and 
 daily walk of life furnishes the best opportunities and 
 means for the growth of goodness in the individual 
 heart, and for the promotion of good among others. 
 He who seeks them, need not go far to seek them. 
 They are near him, even at the door. Extraordinary 
 means can be profitable only for extraordinary occa- 
 sions. Be governed by Christian principle in the per- 
 formance of your daily duties, at home and abroad, 
 be. faithful to these, and though you never step be- 
 yond the sphere in which your lot is cast, your souls 
 shall daily grow in goodness and your life be a per- 
 ennial fountain of usefulness. 
 
 Be content to stand in your lot. Whatever it 
 may be, there is work in it enough for one to perform. 
 It is your work, and if done in a Christian spirit 
 there is ample opportunity to build up faith and 
 
STAND IN THY LOT. 89 
 
 piety in your own soul, and to bless your fellow-men. 
 If you aspire to vhat you think a better lot, the way 
 to reach it is by being faithful where you are. But 
 be sure, that no lot to which duty calls you can in its 
 essential nature be excluded from the highest good. 
 A noble spirit ennobles the humblest condition, and 
 a mean spirit alone makes the lot mean. A wonder- 
 ful fact ! It seems as if it had been to disabuse the 
 world, and to exorcise it of its false views of human 
 conditions, that the Saviour of man was born in a 
 manger ; that his ministry was in the obscure land 
 of Judaea ; that by the way-side, along the lake-shore, 
 among humble men, he subjected himself to poverty ; 
 that he washed his disciples' feet ; that he died on 
 a cross; and in all places lost not his own divinity, 
 but made the event divine. "' 
 
 Whatever then your lot may be, so that it come to 
 you in the simple way of duty, do not contemn it, 
 but honor it, and by your fidelity in it make it honor- 
 able. All real duties come in the order of a provi- 
 dential appointment, and take their character, not 
 from the measurements of human vanity, but from 
 God who appoints them. He can be worshipped as 
 devoutly in the humble way-side church, as in the 
 great cathedral; and so also he may be served as 
 truly in the obcurest duty as in that whose perform- 
 ance wins the plaudits of the world. Leave to others 
 to labor in their lot, and for yourself be satisfied to 
 stand in your own ; fulfilling its duties ; enlarging it 
 by your fidelity ; contented to stand there while it 
 is your lot ; there to serve God, and to be useful 
 
 among men. 
 
 8* 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
 AND AS HE PRATED, THE PASpiON OF HIS COTOTEITANCE WAS AL- 
 TERED, AND Hi's RAIMENT WAS WHITE AND GLISTERING. AND 
 BEHOLD THERE TALKED WITH HIM TWO MEN, WHICH WERE 
 MOSES AND ELIAS, WHO APPEARED IN GLORY, AND SPA^E OP 
 HIS DECEASE WHICH HE SHOULD ACCOMPLISH AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 Luke ix. 29-31. 
 
 The remarkable event of the Transfiguration, here 
 referred to, is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 
 and again particular mention is made of it by Peter 
 in his First Epistle. It was the Saviour's custom to 
 teach great principles through individual cases ; and 
 in harmony with this, the Transfiguration appears to 
 have had a double purpose, — one pariicular, belong- 
 ing to the time, the other more general and uni- 
 versal. We may consider separately these two as- 
 pects of the event. 
 
 The immediate purpose of the Transfiguration, as 
 we may gather from the narrative, was twofold. 
 
 1. The disciples were Jews, and, like all the Jews, 
 while they expected the Messiah to reign over the 
 world, they expected him to do it as a Jew, in sub- 
 ordination to the law of Moses. They did not ex- 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 91 
 
 pect larger and brighter revelations of truth, in which 
 Judaism should grow pale and fade ; but only that 
 Judaism itself should be invigorated and made tri- 
 umphant. The extreme difficulty of overcoming this 
 mistaken, narrow, and local idea is seen in the Epis- 
 tles of Paul, of which so large a part is devoted to 
 proving that Christianity is not subordinate to Juda- 
 ism, but an infinite advance upon it ; as the full day 
 is an advance on the morning twilight. This mis- 
 conception, had it been universal, would have made 
 Christians a mere sect of the Jews. It would have 
 been fatal to the religion at its very outset. Its fun- 
 damental idea was, that it was a religion for all 
 mankind. But simply to have taught the disciples 
 this truth, so outside the range of their common 
 thoughts, in general phrases, would probably have 
 availed fittle. It was therefore taught through a 
 particular, but most intelligible and impressive event. 
 The Apostles beheld the Saviour transfigured and 
 in familiar converse with Moses and Elias, one the 
 giver of the law, and the other the chief of the 
 prophets ; while from the cloud of glory which over- 
 shadowed them came the voice, " This is my well- 
 beloved Son, hear ye him." It was a most impres- 
 sive attestation to the religious authority of Christ. 
 Christ is hencefoi?th to be obeyed as the great teach- 
 er. Moses and Elias had prepared the -way for his 
 coming ; they had shone as stars, but here was the 
 rising of the sun. We do not appreciate the impor- 
 tance and influence of the event, because this, and 
 others like it, accomplished the liberation of Chris- 
 tianity from Judaism. To understand it, we must 
 
92 THE TRANSFIGtmATION. 
 
 understand what the fate of Christian truth and of 
 the Christian world would have been, had the first 
 teachers of the religion not been emancipated from 
 their Jewish prejudices. Thus far the transfigura- 
 tion was intended to impress the Apostles with a 
 just idea of the Saviour's place and dignity. This 
 we learn from the declaration of Peter in his Epistle. 
 
 2. The narrative suggests a second purpose which 
 had reference to the Saviour himself. Without at- 
 tempting to explain why or wherefore, we know that 
 the Saviour from the beginning of his ministry felt 
 the need of divine succor. He prayed, not only for 
 others, but for himself. He spent whole nights in 
 solitary prayer. He strengthened himself for the 
 hour of his death by prayer. ' 
 
 For what may we suppose that he prayed ? I do 
 not forget that on such subjects we speculate but 
 blindly. But in the lonely and dolorous way from 
 the baptism to the cross, it seems as if nothing could 
 have been more needed than a constant assurance 
 that he was fulfilling the work of God. We speak 
 of miracles as if their sole purpose was to convince 
 us. They may have been as essential to himself as 
 a present testimony of God's approval. We forget 
 his moral isolation, and how the whole world was 
 against him. Yet we read of his sadness and de- 
 spondency : he was a man of sorrows and acquaint- 
 ed with grief. At one time he prayed, IVIy God ! 
 my God ! why hast thou forsaken me ? May not the 
 same feeling have darkened his soul at other hours ? 
 May not these visible manifestations have been need- 
 ful to himself? At any rate, they were granted in 
 
THE TEANSEIGURATION. 93 
 
 such a way as to become a perpetual assurance that 
 in this great ministry he was under no personal illu- 
 sion. A voice at his baptism proclaimed him the 
 chosen and appointed one who was to come. At 
 the close of the fasting and temptation of the wilder- 
 ness, when his ministry began, came a heavenly at- 
 testation. Miracles followed his words. Angels 
 strengthened him in Gethsemane. Thus, from the 
 beginning of his mission, he was attended by those 
 visible displays of the Divine presence, which, what- 
 ever else they did, gave assurance to himself that he 
 was a teacher from God. At this time, it is said 
 that he talked with Moses and Elias of his decease 
 which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. Consider 
 how much is implied in this. His death was not to 
 come unexpectedly. Step by step, and day by day, 
 he moved on into the deepening shadow and to that 
 sacrifice which was to be for the world's salvation. 
 And while deserted by men, deserted by his own 
 disciples, he was attended by those divine attesta- 
 tions which could give him assurance that, when cast 
 out by men and departing farthest from their most 
 settled faiths, he was st'ill proceeding in God's chosen 
 .way, though that way led to the cross. I do not 
 venture to say what the reasons of the event were, 
 but we know that he prayed for strength, and we 
 can see at least an adaptation in these visible dis- 
 plays to give him assurance that in this strange, 
 lonely pilgrimage, terminating in death, he had the 
 presence and favor and guidance bf God. 
 
 Let us turn now to the more general bearings of 
 this event, viewed as a part of the^ historic revelation 
 of Christian truth. 
 
94 THE TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
 1. The Transfiguration is one of the events which 
 impart a character of reality to the spiritual life. I 
 do not mean to say that anything was directly 
 taught, but the nature of the event was such as to 
 throw some light on problems Which have ever dis- 
 turbed the human heart. Do the departed lose all 
 interest in the world they have left behind ? In this 
 narrative Moses and Blias appear conversing , with 
 Jesus. They converse with him on the event which 
 most deeply concerned the welfare of mankind. But 
 they were the representative men of the Hebrew 
 race ; and thus it was a visible exhibition of the 
 interest taken by the inhabitants of heaven in the 
 welfare of the earth. Again, the circumstances at- 
 tending the event suggest an answer to the question. 
 Where are the departed ? May we not be warrant- 
 ed in believing that the spiritual world is around u^, 
 and hid from us only by the veil of the senses ? The 
 appearance to the three disciples was miraculous. 
 But wherein consisted the miracle ? Not in awak- 
 ening the dead from their graves, not in calling them 
 down from some remote and isolated sphere, but in 
 opening the eyes of the disciples. The disciples 
 themselves were the subjects of the miracle. It was< 
 their eyes which were opened ; and being opened, 
 they beheld what was already there. Like the young 
 man whose opened eyes beheld the hills around 
 Mount Sion filled with the chariots and the hosts 
 of the Lord. When death comes with its miracu- 
 lous awakening, when it couches these eyes of sense, 
 we shall behold, as I believe, not Moses and Blias 
 only, but the innumerable company of the departed. 
 
THE TRANSFiaURATIWiT. 95 
 
 the inhabitants of the spiritual world, hid from us 
 now by the very senses which reveal the world of 
 matter. And in the fact that Moses and Elias, the 
 lawgiver and the prophet, retained their interest in 
 this world, that they felt a heavenly sympathy in 
 Christ's great sacrifice for the world's salvation, I 
 would see the illustration of a, universal fact, — of 
 the fact that they who advance onward into higher 
 and fairer worlds lose neither the memory nor the 
 affections which united them to those whom they 
 have left behind. 
 
 2. It seems to me a most instructive circumstance 
 that the great manifestations of God came to the 
 Saviour under very peculiar circumstances, — at the 
 times when, on one side, his soul was most tried, and 
 when, on the other, there was the most devout dedi- 
 cation of himself to that office to which God had 
 appointed him. For example, at the decisive hour 
 of his baptism, when he was publicly separated from 
 the world for his great work, a voice from heaven 
 responded to the visible sign. After the forty days 
 of preparation in the wilderness, when he was about 
 to take the final step from retirement into the world ; 
 — when the time approached for his death, and he 
 was called upon to go up to the last Passover at Je- 
 rusalem ; — and in Gethsemane, when looking for- 
 ward to the agonies to which he was surrendering 
 himself; — such were the occasions on which visible 
 aid and support were given. 
 
 In this connection the striking fact which de- 
 mands attention is this ; — these divine interposi- 
 tions were not fortuitous, but in all cases were in 
 
96 
 
 THE TEANSFIGUKATION. 
 
 response to acts of self-consecration to God and hu- 
 man good. It was when his soul was lifted up in 
 prayer, and when prayer became an act of self-con- 
 secration, — in these holiest and loftiest moments, 
 when he drew near to God, saying. Not my will, but 
 thine, be done, — that the Divine help came to him. 
 It seems like a proclamation to mankind, that, if we 
 but have a holy purpose in our hearts, God will draw 
 near to us, and will help us. When we surrender 
 ourselves to the appetites and passions, when we 
 consecrate ourselves to selfish ends and the world's 
 favor, we must look for help only to the sovereign 
 which we serve. If we serve Mammon, we must 
 look for that aid only which Mammon gives to his 
 servants. We withdraw ourselves from God and 
 from his influences. But when in holy purposes we 
 draw near to him, we have the assurance of Scrip- 
 ture that he will work within us both to will and to 
 do. It is one of the most blessed convictions, that 
 God is nearest to us in our best moments. A holy 
 purpose opens the heart to divine influences. Like 
 the prophet of old, when, we lay our offering on the 
 altar, fire descends on it from heaven. 
 
 3. Again, the narrative of the Transfiguration 
 suggests what may serve to correct our worldly esti- 
 mate of things, and give us more just views of the 
 events most interesting in Heaven's sight. It was 
 not in the season of triumph, but in the hour of 
 mental struggle and agony, that divine manifesta- 
 tions were vouchsafed to Christ. At that time, great 
 events were transacting in the world, but the heav- 
 enly visitants passed over cities and palaces, passed 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 97 
 
 over banded legions and ambitious leaders, to pause 
 here, where one, on a solitary hill-top of Judssa, was 
 dedicating himself to death. Judaea itself was hard- 
 ly to be recognized on the map of the world. The 
 spectacle of the wearied pilgrim who knelt under 
 the stars and prayed, while three wearied follow- 
 ers slept, was riot one to attract the gaze of man- 
 kind. And yeit to that scene came the inhabitants 
 of heaven. On that spot, unobserved of man, cen- 
 tred the interest of the higher world. The Divine 
 presence revealed itself, not to the mighty and the 
 triumphant, but to one whose dreary journey should 
 end at Calvary. God's help was given to the very 
 one who was despised and rejected of men. To 
 human eyes, nothing could have seemed less impor- 
 tant than what took place in the soul of him who 
 bowed before God in the night dews of that lonely 
 hill. But to Him who sees the beginning and the 
 end, there was the turning-point of the world's his- 
 tory. And such it has proved. The glory of the 
 Caesars has crumbled, but the self-consecration of 
 Tabor and Gethsemane has been the regeneration 
 and hope of mankind. 
 
 -The most remarkable commentary on this scene 
 is that of the great artist who, in picturing it, has 
 united with it the event which, during the Saviour's 
 absence, was transpiring at the foot of the mountain. 
 A maniac is there, brought to the disciples to be 
 healed. The worst form of human misery, the an- 
 guish of the affections, the imploring cry for help, the 
 ineffectual efforts to give relief, are all blended in that 
 scene, which represents the struggles, the sorrows, the 
 
 9 
 
98 
 
 THE TBANSFIflXJBATION. 
 
 darkness, the weakness of the earth ; while above, in 
 the serene heavens, the glorified form of the Saviour 
 appears with his celestial companions. It is the art- 
 ist's commentary on the event, — making it speak to 
 the eye of earthly trial finding its consummation in 
 heavenly peace. It is his explanation of the dark 
 problem of human suffering. He would carry the 
 thought onward to the end. The darkest mysteries 
 of this life are such because we confine our view to 
 this life alone. This present life is a fragment, and 
 disjoined from that which is to come, every phenom- 
 enon is unintelligible because we do not see the con- 
 clusion. It is like the fragment of a marble slab 
 whiph the antiquary discovers written over by some 
 baffling inscription. Broken across, the half-lines 
 ^re unintelligible ; but let the other fragment be found 
 and annexed, and at once the record is as clear to 
 those who now read as to those who first wrote it. 
 This idea, the troubles of earth finding a solution in 
 the peace of heaven, seems to be the artist's inter- 
 pretation of the transfiguration. There might be 
 added to it the fact, that it is in the discipline of 
 these mortal troubles those virtues are formed which 
 prepare one for an immortal peace, and in this view 
 the transfiguration becomes an emblem of the order 
 and purpose of Providence, which in every present 
 event looks forward to a completion in the future. 
 Christ's sacrifice was not only the world's salvation, 
 but he himself became perfect through' suffering, and 
 from the cross should enter into his glory. His way 
 was through mockings and scourgings, through be- 
 trayal and death, but it ended in the eternal man- 
 
THE TRANSFIGTIRATION'. 99 
 
 sions. He was first the prince of sufferers, before he 
 sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. 
 
 As the Saviour passes up from the dark woes of 
 earth into the holy communion of the Mount of 
 Transfiguration, we behold an emblem of what shall 
 t)e the case with every righteous purpose faithfully 
 kept. Trial is the discipline of virtue, and thus the 
 preparation for its blessedness. First the toil and 
 then the harvest. Heroism is not the growth of self- 
 indulgence, but comes forth radiant from scenes of 
 struggle and pain. Where there is fidelity, life shall 
 be a continued transfiguration. Self-sacrifice passes 
 through the cloud, and in its heavenly state appears 
 transfigured into disinterestedness. Conflict with 
 temptation is transformed into strength of soul. Bod- 
 ily pain becomes spiritual fortitude ; and sorrow is 
 transformed into trust and faith ; and earth is the 
 school of heaven. When we stand on the other side 
 of the veU, what transformations shall we behold ! 
 Here we witnessed those whose lives seemed blight- 
 ed' by trial, but who maintained a Christian fidelity. 
 There the sicknesses, the burdens, the limitations, aU 
 dropped, the graces only remaining, they appear as 
 the angels. Old age, worn and wasted, stoops and 
 drinks what seemed the waters of death, and there 
 transfigured finds it was the fountain of perpetuaL 
 youth. The miracle of the transfiguration become 
 universal, the deaf hear, the blind see, and every 
 righteous purpose, though it seem to fail on earth, is 
 seen to have been ever tending to its full accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 There is one other point which more than any 
 
100 THE TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
 other, perhaps, has applications to our practical life. 
 It furnishes the Christian answer to the repinings, 
 the questions, and the difficulties which grow out of 
 the troubles encountered in the performance of duty. 
 For what did the heavenly visitants appear? It 
 was not to save Christ from suffering ; it was not tcT 
 suggest the possibility of avoiding it; but, on the con- 
 trary, to express the sympathy of Heaven as he went 
 forward to meet it. Their communion was of the 
 death he should accomplish at Jerusalem. And so 
 with all the other heavenly manifestations. In no 
 case were they to deliver him from trial and death. . 
 No angels came down with flaming swords when he 
 was betrayed ; no Elias descended to bear him un- 
 harmed from the cross, but these manifestations were 
 to give him strength, to fortify the purpose of self-sac- 
 rifice ; and finally it was after the decisive act, after 
 Judas had gone forth, and . after he said, " Thy will 
 be done," the angels came to strengthen him. It 
 seems to me, that we have here a most instructive 
 lesson. You have trials and sorrows to bear, and 
 what renders it most dark, it is very likely that your 
 severest trials are encountered in performing your 
 most sacred duties. Many of the trials might be 
 avoided, by quietly neglecting the duty, and it seems 
 hard to you that your right efforts should be the very 
 ones which involve you in trouble. There are those 
 to whom the whole course of life, through a consci- 
 entious endeavor to discharge faithfully its duties, is 
 one of deprivation, trial, and self-sacrifice. They 
 would fain be faithful, but the burden is heavy, the 
 way is long, the night is dark, and their hearts grow 
 
THE TRANSHaimATlON. 101 
 
 despondent within them, till they not only doubt 
 themselves, but doubt whether fidelity is not itself 
 the great delusion. Here comes up the greatest of 
 practical questions, Is one warranted, in order to es- 
 cape the trouble, to evade the duty ? What is one 
 to seek first in life, — happiness, or the will of God ? 
 Are we to murmur and repine at the trials encoun- 
 tered in the loyal service of our Maker, or are we to 
 regard such wounds and scars as honorable witnesses 
 to our fidelity ? And the whole life of Christ, not less 
 than Tabor and Gethsemane, teaches us to think only 
 of the duty. Come what may between, our purpose 
 is to accomplish God's will ; and every trial borne 
 in this cause shall hereafter be our rejoicing. Look 
 at these trials, which must be met, if the duties of 
 life are done, in no ignoble spirit. See them as they 
 are. You need not make believe that trial is not 
 trial; or pain, pain; but say to yourself. If I would 
 accomplish the work which God has evidently given 
 me to do, if I would be faithful in my place, here are 
 tiials which I must meet. I can avoid the trial only 
 by avoiding the duty; here God calls upon me to 
 make some sacrifice, and in his name I will strive to 
 do it. Following the Saviour, I will pray, not. Save 
 me from this hour! but, Help me to do thy will! 
 And I will not degrade this service of God by weak 
 and selfish repinings that in his service in this great 
 conflict of life there are efforts to be made, self-deni- 
 als to be practised, and pains to be endured. The 
 martyrs of old were said, in a striking figure, to be 
 washed in the blood of the Lamb. They were bap- 
 tized into his death. They followed his standard and 
 
 9* 
 
102 THE TBANSFIGUEATION. 
 
 shared in his sufferings, and entered with him into 
 his glory. 
 
 Have this spirit, and there shall come seasons of 
 renewal and strength from on high, — seasons when 
 to you the world is transfigured ; — brief and few per- 
 haps, but seasons when God shall seem to draw near 
 to you. But these seasons, when the soul is lifted 
 above the earth and its fears, will be those when there 
 is the truest consecration of yourself to God's service. 
 And those seasons, the highest and holiest of life, 
 will not suggest methods of escape from trial, but en- 
 courage you with a brave and cheerful fortitude to 
 go on through the trial to the accomplishment of the 
 duty. Your worldly and baser hours may teach a 
 poorer lesson, but these say. Come what may, be faith- 
 ful unto the end. They say, Give heed to the duty 
 intrusted to you, and leave the result to the truth and 
 justice of the Almighty. Fear not for a while to 
 travel a rocky and a thorny road, if it be the one 
 which Heaven has appointed. As it regards the pass- 
 ing time, think only of being faithful to the duty, 
 and as to the future, trust in God. 
 
SERMON VII. 
 
 THY STATUTES, OUR SONGS. 
 
 THT STATUTES HAVE BEEN MT SONGS IN THE HOUSE OP MT PlI,- 
 GKIMASE. — Psalm cxix. 54. 
 
 It may be uncertain whether this Psalm was 
 written by David, or at some subsequent period. 
 The sentiment, however, which is expressed, per- 
 vades all the Psalms, and, especially, it imparts a 
 sublime and victorious tone to those of the minstrel 
 king. 
 
 The character of David was inconsistent and im- 
 perfect; but one characteristic everywhere appears, 
 uttered in words, imparting energy to his deeds, — 
 an unbounded, triumphant trust in God, and in the 
 excellence of his laws. He does not merely submit 
 to the will of God when he can no longer resist. He 
 does not merely, in some vague and general way, 
 trust in his goodness ; but the laws of God are the 
 subjects of ceaseless wonder, adoration, and praise. 
 We sometimes fancy that the grand conception of 
 universal law and orderly arrangement in the uni- 
 verse is comparatively modern ; and the great athe- 
 istic work of the time assumes that the discovery of 
 
104 THY STATUTES, OUR SONaS. 
 
 law, to the same extent, displaces and annuls relig- 
 ion, — that, in the progress of science, religion is 
 naturally left behind, as the worn-out garb of a 
 primitive and unenlightened age. Newton indeed, 
 in the concluding chapter of his great work, derives 
 from his calculations respecting the laws which rule 
 the planetary orbs an evidence of the immediate 
 providence of God; and most writers on science 
 have recognized the hand of the Creator in the crea- 
 tion. But David, though unskilled in science, saw 
 enough to disclose the universal Order. Perhaps he 
 was all the more impressed by it, because his mind, 
 instead of dwelling on microscopic views, was fa- 
 miliar only with the grandest laws of nature. But 
 certainly the science of three thousand years has 
 enabled no one to understand better the moral 
 meaning embraced in this word Law, — has raised 
 the mind of no one nearer to the height of this 
 great argument. This idea of universal law, moral 
 and natural, — the manifestation of the one great 
 Lawgiver, — seemed to possess his mind ; and never 
 to be present without awakening the profoundest 
 emotions of awe and reverence. " My delight," he 
 sung, " shall be in thy statutes." " The law of the 
 Lord is perfect, converting the soul." " Great peace," 
 he says, " have they who love thy law." " Let the" 
 floods clap their hands, and let the hills be joyful 
 together before the Lord, for he cometh to judge 
 the earth. With righteousness shall he judge the 
 world, and the people with equity." Even in the 
 fifty-first Psalm, in which are poured forth express 
 sions of a more profound self-condemning remorse 
 
THY STATUTES, OUR SONGS. 105 
 
 than are to be found in the world beside, there is 
 nothing mean or abject. He does not cease to rec- 
 ognize the excellence of that divine law which con- 
 demns him. It is no purpose of his to lie down 
 passively in his degradation. From the darkness 
 he looks up, and sees the steady lights of God's 
 truth more clearly than ever. He sees the goodness 
 of God in the works of nature. His language is, 
 " I wiU trust in the Lord ; though he slay me, I will 
 put my trust in him." And when he sees that there 
 is nothing uncertain in this goodness, that the heav- 
 ens and the earth are governed by laws, so that 
 seed-time and harvest unfailingly return, and above 
 aU, when he looks at the moral laws by which right- 
 eousness is sustained and enforced, his heart breaks 
 forth into its sublimest strains. These laws of the 
 Most High are the safety and glory of the world. 
 It is the supreme good of man to know and obey 
 them. David does not refer to what may be gained 
 by obedience in a future life, but here and- to-day 
 " Blessed is the man who walks in the law of the 
 Lord." It is no mere poetical sentiment, nor that 
 which is beautiful and agreeable merely, which 
 stirs his soul the most; but " Thy statutes are my 
 songs in the house of my pilgrimage." Thus was 
 it that the Hebrew Psalmist, a man, judged by our 
 standards, half Bedouin of the desert, half Oriental 
 despot, looked on the laws of the Creator. The 
 laws of God, the noblest manifestations of his wis- 
 dom and love and justice ; obedience to these laws, 
 the happiness, the privilege, and glory of man ; re- 
 ligion, not merely an escape from future ruin, but 
 
106 THY STATUTES, OXJE SONSS. 
 
 the blessed sunshine of to-day; — in this way did he 
 look on the government of God. And when we 
 would celebrate in worthiest strains the majesty of 
 the Almighty, we go back to the Hebrew Psalmist 
 and take his words as the sublimest expressions of 
 adoration which poet or sage has given, to chant in 
 our anthems and songs of praise. When the heart 
 is most moved with trust and devotion, be it in pros- 
 perity or in instant peril, in the lonely sick-chamber 
 or the great crises of the world, in the way-side 
 chapel or beneath the arches of the cathedral, we 
 involuntarily find ourselves repeating his words as 
 the sublimest expression of our sublimest emotions. 
 There are those who would underrate the Old Tes- 
 tament, as if somehow we had got beyond it. And 
 doubtless the revelations of Christ have showered 
 new and clearer light on the world. But though we 
 may know much more, is it quite certain that there 
 has been any corresponding elevation in what is still 
 more important to us, the religious sentiment ? On 
 the contrary, what are we more wanting in, than in 
 a just sense of the grandeur and excellence of the 
 Divine government ? I fear that we might well re- 
 coil from uttering as our own the words of David, — 
 so far and so high do they go beyond our ordinary 
 feelings and cenceptions. Is it not too often the 
 case that religion presents itself, not as the noble 
 service which it appeared to the Psalmist, but merely 
 as a melancholy method of escape from everlasting 
 woe ? He who thus views it, — and is it not a too 
 common view ? — were it not for a future world, 
 would be glad never to think of Religion. She 
 
THY STATUTES, OTIR SONGS. 107 
 
 comes clad in sackcloth ; dirge-notes prevail over 
 and drown her cheerful strains ; and whenever her 
 shadow passes, it leaves a chillness in the air. To 
 such a man the laws of God hang over the world 
 like a black cloud, in whose folds slumber, not re- 
 freshing showers, but the lightnings of his wrath. 
 He submits, not because it is his choice, but because 
 he dares not defy the irresistible power of the Al- 
 mighty. It is the feeling of the slave who takes no 
 pleasure in his task-work, but does reluctantly what 
 he is bidden, because he dares not disobey. 
 
 Not such was the feeling of the Psalmist. In an 
 age of imperfect revelation, his mind rose boldly 
 and clearly, as the angel towards the sun, to the 
 crowning truth of the righteous government of God. 
 No consciousness of sin made him wish to bring the 
 Divine requirements down to the level of his prac- 
 tice ; and in the midst of surrounding peril and 
 trouble he could say, " Thy statutes are my songs 
 in the house of my pilgrimage." In this mortal 
 journey, beset by fears and foes, I will look up and 
 rejoice in the Lord, and his laws shall be my song. 
 
 Time and again we find David giving thanks for 
 single blessings, — for some special deliverance, — for 
 some felicity in his lot. In this he did no more than 
 is done by most men. But what is peculiar is, the 
 manner in which his mind rose to the larger concep- 
 tion of law, while he found in the laws of God, 
 rather than in isolated cases of providential care, the 
 most wondrous exhibitions of the Divine goodness. 
 That which is termed the particular providence might 
 be confined to an individual ; the law carried bless- 
 
108 
 
 ings to the whole race of man, and perpetuated them 
 from generation to generation. And thus regarding 
 the government of God, seeing in it the orderly rule 
 of law, and not the fluctuations of a capricious will, 
 he fitly sang of the " statutes " of the Almighty. In 
 them was the true sublimity. The flower that per- 
 ished with the autumn spoke of God's goodness, — 
 how much more those eternal laws by which the 
 heavens revolve, and clouds and sunshine are bal- 
 anced, and spring blossoms, and summer ripens, and 
 the race is fed on the bounty of the year ! There is 
 something sublime in the mere idea of law; but 
 what were those moral laws to which the Psalmist 
 refers ? More beneficently than those of the natu- 
 ral world, they surround the infant and unfold its 
 early powers. They would guide the youth through 
 dark ways and tempting scenes. . Turning 6very 
 way their flaming sword, they would protect the 
 right against the invasion of wrong. They would 
 guard the soul against the degradation of sin. They 
 guide man in life, — they unlock the portals of eter- 
 nity, and all his true interests are cared for, not occa- 
 sionally, but by laws constant as the sun. 
 
 The Psalmist had often sung in strains of devout 
 gratitude the natural laws of that Being who had 
 established the pillars of the heavens, who gavfe the 
 seas their bounds, and whose benignant hand led 
 round the seasons. When he contemplated the laws 
 of the moral world and their beneficent ministra- 
 tions, — saw them a curb on the oppressor, and the 
 shield of the humble, — saw how they were the hope 
 of the penitent, and the solace of the wretched, — 
 
THY STATUTES, OUR SONGS. 109 
 
 saw in them the support of virtue and the ever-pres- 
 ent evidence of God's love, — well might the " stat- 
 utes" of the Lord change themselves into sublime 
 and cheerful hymns. Once the spheres in their 
 courses were supposed to sing the honor of the Cre- 
 ator. To the ear of the Psalmist, the moral order 
 of the universe uttered a more glorious anthem of 
 praise. 
 
 " Thy statutes shall be my songs in the house of 
 my pilgrimage." " In the house of my pilgrimage," 
 not something remote as the stars of which the poet 
 sings, but those -statutes which teach me how to 
 live on this mortal journey, — the statutes which pre- 
 scribe my duty from day to day, which determine 
 the labors and the sacrifices of my pilgrimage, — 
 these laws shall be my song. 
 
 It is difiicult for us, whose religion half the time 
 is just enough to reproach our consciences and to 
 disturb us as a sick man is disturbed by uneasy 
 dreams, and not enough to brace the soul to right- 
 eous purposes, — it is difficult for us to sympathize 
 with these words. Had he spoken of sin, and the 
 dread of God's judgments, we should better under- 
 stand him. And yet what view of life is more 
 essential than the one expressed in these words ? 
 
 Whef;her we rebel against them or not, the duties 
 of life remain ever the same. And though some- 
 times hard, sometimes painful, they are always the 
 wise and good requirements of Him who is infinitely 
 good. How then shall we view them ? Let us take 
 a lesson from common life. When the young man 
 is trained in some vocation, we understand how es- 
 
 10 
 
110 THY STATUTES, OTJB SONGS. 
 
 sential it is that he should love it. If he grows up 
 thinking its duties are arbitrary exactions to which 
 he submits because he must, rebelling against them, 
 seeking his pleasure somewhere else, and returning 
 to them with a gloomy and reluctant heart, we know 
 how mean and cheap and base his career will be. 
 But life is a vocation whose duties God appoints. 
 Whether we accept them cheerfully or rebelliously, 
 there they are, — our duties, — to be performed by us. 
 If we look on them as hard exactions, if we persist 
 in regarding the duties of life as its task-work, we 
 serve God in the spirit of a slave, — annulling the 
 moral worth of what we do by the slavish spirit in 
 which we do it. There is not a more important les- 
 son for life than this, — to make the duties of life its 
 pleasures; never to be satisfied with ourselves till 
 we are able to feel and say : " These duties furnish 
 the highest occupation to me for mind and hand 
 and heart. I will honor them : they are of God's 
 appointment, and take their character from Him. I 
 will rejoice to do them. If pleasure comes to me 
 from other sources, I will be thankful, but I will find 
 my happiness in the performance of these duties. I 
 will not live as a slave ; I will serve God as a free 
 man and as his child, — if often heedless, thankless, 
 and disobedient, still his child. I will proclaim 
 before men and angels what I know to be the truth, 
 that the highest privilege of man is to have this 
 heavenly guidance in duty." Is not this the true 
 view ? Then let our souls rise to it ; not bemoaning 
 our lot, but taking up his words who in darkest days 
 could say, " Thy statutes shall be my song in the 
 
THY STATUTES, ODE SONGS. Ill 
 
 house of my pilgrimage." I will sing not merely or 
 chiefly of mercies which bless the passive heart, not 
 interrupted enjoyments, but the "statutes" of the 
 Lord will I sing. 
 
 " In the house of my pilgrimage." In David's 
 view. Religion was for the daily life. The statutes 
 of which he sung guided him in his pilgrimage, and 
 the holiest office of religion was to hallow the com- 
 mon life. We sometimes hear Religion spoken of as 
 too refined, too sacred, to be brought into the dust 
 and defilement of our daily cares. It would rob her 
 of her sanctity and majesty. But let us put away 
 such misjudgments. Religion is not a fragile plant, 
 to be withered by the sun and broken by a breath. 
 Her place is not in some lonely hermitage or rarely 
 visited temple, — a lifeless statue set up merely for a 
 periodical homage; but in the soul, — there is its 
 dwelling-place and throne. There it whispers its 
 encouragements, and proclaims its laws, and keeps 
 before the mind divine motives for a just and pious 
 life. And where should Religion be with man, if not 
 in the place where he is tried and tempted, — where 
 he most needs her help, and where, oftentimes, she is 
 the only power that can help him ? 
 
 Sacred places! sacred seasons! fitted for relig- 
 ious thought and purpose, — where are they ? The 
 poetical mind answers, " Where devout men have 
 worshipped, and prophets have lived, and martyrs 
 have died." And such places should be sacred to 
 the memory and the heart ; but in the eye both of 
 reason and faith there are places clothed with a far 
 more solemn interest, — places where devout thoughts 
 
112 
 
 THY STATUTES, OUR SONGS. 
 
 should be more present, and God nearer the soul. 
 The place of most serious solemnity to any one of 
 us is that where we encounter our most serious 
 responsibilities, — where we are most tempted, — 
 and where our dangers and duties meet. No matter 
 where that place is, — in the church or in the home, 
 — in the workshop or the counting-room, — in the 
 court of justice or place of amusement, — that to 
 you is a place of solemn moment, and fidelity shall 
 make it sacred to you for ever. A frivolous mind 
 may fail to see what momentous interests are decided 
 there, but that alters not the reality. The duties of 
 that place connect it with God, the source of duty 
 Its temptations, responsibilities, and trials all pass 
 under the Omniscient eye. There goes on the fear- 
 ful struggle between the powers of good and evil, 
 and there the soul loads and clogs its wings, or pre- 
 pares itself for the skies. And more fearfully solemn 
 becomes the place, if the heedless mind forgets what 
 spiritual perils and duties converge upon it, if no 
 hallowing thoughts visit it, if no reference is there 
 made to the Divine Majesty, — and most fearful, 
 when God is there and we heed it not. On other 
 places we look as spectators ; but there is the battle- 
 field on which our fate is decided ; and from the 
 scenes and deeds which transpire there, that book is 
 fiUed which holds the record of our lives. 
 
 To such places the Psalmist refers when he speaks 
 of the " house of our •pilgrimage." It is in such 
 places and scenes, — amidst the common bewilder- 
 ments of passion, and the blinding interests and sct 
 ductions of the day, that we need a safe guidance. 
 
OUR SONGS, 113 
 
 Once fidelity was obliged to prove itself in the dun- 
 geon or at the stake. But those days have passed ; 
 and the test of fidelity is found in the way in which 
 the ordinary duties of life are performed. It is not 
 on a few great and exceptional occasions that we 
 need direction ; but still more in this daily " pilgrim- 
 age " which constitutes the substance of life. There- 
 fore will we give God thanks for a religion which, 
 like the sun, showers its light on our daily paths. 
 We will thank him that we have a safe chart for the 
 voyage of life. And these " statutes " which shine 
 from every headland, whose light breaks out of the 
 darkness, — these " statutes " of the Lord shall be 
 our " song." 
 
 Nor here alone. Seasons of anxiety and doubt 
 visit us, — every support seems to faU, — we despair 
 of ourselves and the world. Conscious of our weak- 
 ness, in the midst of confusion and disorder, when 
 human foresight is baffled, and the wisest plans of 
 men come to naught, what source of composure or 
 hope have we left ? , There is one, — and one alone. 
 It is the certainty that there is one Being who sees 
 the beginning and the end, — to whom this seeming 
 confusion is no disorder at all ; — a Being who over- 
 rules the actions of men, and, while he leaves man 
 free, brings good out of evil. Through these pertur- 
 bations of human affairs, as through those of the 
 heavenly bodies, runs a controlling and omnipotent 
 law. We know that there is no chance in the result, 
 — no capriciousness or forgetfulness in Him who 
 rules over all. And when we lose our faith in our- 
 
 10* 
 
114 THY STATUTES, OTJR SONGS. 
 
 selves and in man, we will still trust in him, and his 
 *' statutes shall be our song." 
 
 David could go even further than this. When per- 
 ils beset him, and it seemed as if all his plans and 
 hopes were to go down into night and the grave, even 
 then he could say, " Though I walk through the val- 
 ley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; thy rod 
 and thy staff they comfort me." He went on into 
 the deepening shadows, trusting in God. It was a 
 blessed trust, which every human being needs. There 
 are mystery and darkness always over the future. 
 What shall be on the morrow even, we know not, 
 and the full meaning of the dread words death, eter- 
 nity, retribution, who shall declare ? Our feet stum- 
 ble on the dark mountains. Thanks be unto God, 
 that in our weakness and ignorance we know that 
 God reigns, and that while we abide by his laws we 
 cannot go astray. " Come what may," then let the 
 heart say, " by them I will abide and fear no evil." 
 The stars may mislead us, but never the laws of 
 God. We will rejoice in the laws of the Lord. So 
 he could speak who lived amidst the dangers of a 
 dark age. Taught as we are by Christ of God's care, 
 it becomes us still more to say, " We will trust in the 
 Lord, and his statutes shall be our song." 
 
 When we have the privilege of knowing those 
 whose characters have been formed by this trust, we 
 can never doubt its divine worth. Twice during the 
 past week I have witnessed the last parting with 
 those who through fourscore years had exhibited in 
 their lives the power and the beauty of this senti- 
 ment of religious reliance. Amidst cares and sor- 
 
THY STATUTES, OUR SONGS. 115 
 
 rows and trials, they had maintained their hearts in 
 peace. The comforters of those who had known less 
 trouble than themselves, — a source of strength to 
 those who might have seemed stronger than they, — 
 and performing the duties of life with a tranquil and 
 cheerful mind, which might put to shame our anxious 
 and murmuring spirits, their cheerful trust seemed to 
 find its best expression in the words of the Psalmist, 
 — " Thy statutes are my songs in the house of my 
 pilgrimage." 
 
 One of these, venerable in her years, held pecu- 
 liar relations to those who meet in this place of wor- 
 ship; for the instructions of the son to whom so 
 many of you had the privilege of listening for so 
 many years' evidently caught their most remarkable 
 characteristics of wisdom and truthful directness, of 
 grace and cheerful piety, from the mother to whom 
 he was bound in most intimate and confidential re- 
 lations. It was one of those cases where the mod- 
 est and retiring excellences of the mother at length 
 unawares found utterance through the eloquent lips 
 of the child, and she, whose gentle voice was heard 
 only in her home, at length, through one whom she 
 loved, spoke to charmed and listening assemblies. 
 As has been tfuly said of her, her life extended over 
 fourscore years, and she fived them all. Mind and 
 heart lived. Age crippled the body, but did not touch 
 the mind, while her affections seemed only to grow 
 warmer and fresher with the passing years. The 
 honesty and disinterestedness and tranquil trust of 
 her heart lent a tranquil dignity to her features and 
 her manners. She was a centre of attraction, and 
 
116 THY STATUTES, OUR SONGS. 
 
 why, all knew except herself. Those who came near 
 her and under her influence thought better of the 
 world, and saw in her character an illustration and 
 evidence of the worth of religious trust. Children 
 loved her ; and no matter how many came, her heart 
 was large enough to take them all in. A perpetual 
 sunshine was around her, and for the moment the 
 world had a fairer look to those who left her. She 
 forgot no one but herself, and there was never a day 
 when some one was not happier because of her. 
 Her last acts, when the feeble hand could hardly do 
 the bidding of the heart, were kind offices of remem- 
 brance. It was a fair old age, such as men love and 
 God crowns with his favor. And death was like the 
 life, tranquil, the sun setting without a cloud, to rise 
 on another world. 
 
 The text speaks of life as a " pilgrimage." And 
 standing by the mortal remains of the departed, we 
 become more conscious of the meaning of the word. 
 This is not our " abiding-place." We are travellers 
 towards a better country. Let us not then speak of 
 death as the blight and end of life, but rather say : " I 
 expect to live, I hope to live hereafter with the good 
 in heaven. Heaven ! — the society and employments 
 of those whom the soul honors. There I hope to join 
 those whom I have loved; there I hope to behold 
 clearer manifestations of the Divine presence. And 
 on this 'pilgrimage,' — not for a few days, and end- 
 ing in the grave, but for the immortal life, — I will 
 trust in the Lord ! I will give thank's to him, that 
 at every crossway there is a guiding sign. I will re- 
 joice in his laws, I will endeavor to understand how 
 
THY STATUTES OUR SONGS, 117 
 
 truly they are the laws of peace and hope ; and as I 
 journey onward, it shall be not with a rebellious 
 heart ; but ' the statutes ' which God has given for 
 our guidance shall be 'the song of my pilgrim- 
 age.' " 
 
SERMON VIII, 
 
 NATURE WITH AND WITHOUT A REVELATION OF 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 OtTE SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, WHO HATH ABOLISHED DEATH, AND 
 HATH BROUGHT MPE AND IMMORTALITY TO LIGHT THROUGH 
 
 THE GOSPEL. — 2 Timothy i. 10. 
 
 The faith in immortality which we have, we owe 
 to the revelations of Jesus Christ. Not that others 
 who have derived nothing from the Christian revela- 
 tions have not had a belief in a future state of ex- 
 istence ; the longings of bereaved affection have led 
 men to hope, the reasonings of philosophy have 
 encouraged expectation ; but for all that is pecu- 
 liar to our faith, and for that which above all the 
 world has longed, its confident assurance, we are 
 indebted to Jesus Christ. 
 
 The Apostles constantly present this doctrine as 
 the first of all, excepting those which relate to the 
 character of God and authority of Christ. They 
 were so situated, — living in the midst of a world 
 which either did not receive it at all, or confined it 
 to the few great and wise, or received it distorted by 
 superstitions, — that they could appreciate its value. 
 We are so familiar with it, that we become insensi- 
 
NATUSB AND A REVELATION OE IMMORTALITT. 119 
 
 ble to the manner in which that one truth, taught 
 authoritatively, has like a sun lighted up the world. 
 
 Let us spend this morning in calling to mind how 
 extensively and how benignantly it has changed the 
 ideas of mankind on subjects of vital interest. 
 
 1. It revolutionizes all man's ideas of this world 
 in which we live. Without it, the world is covered 
 with gloom. Everything which the eye sees is as- 
 sociated with the saddest of all thoughts, decay and 
 death. The great fact that first meets the eye, is 
 not merely life, but limited life, — life terminating 
 in death. The mind is peculiarly susceptible of 
 these sad impressions. The fall of a tree which 
 overshadowed your childhood's home, the dilapida- 
 tion of the dwelling of your birth, the sinking or 
 mouldering of a mere monument over those whom 
 you loved, will over most minds throw a passing 
 shade. 
 
 But without the Christian revelations, this fact of 
 decay and death predominates and tyrannizes over 
 all others. The flower to-day is brilliant with hues 
 of heaven, but it will fade to-morrow. The forest 
 is covered with foliage, but the leaves must all 
 wither. Other flowers shall bloom in their place, 
 and the forests be clothed anew, but the leaves and 
 blossoms we look on perish and for ever. The 
 works of human art and skill and strength moulder, 
 are defaced, and crumble, and yet they often survive 
 the memory of their authors. What is true of na- 
 ture is true of man. A few years of infant weak- 
 ness and youthful hope, a few years of matured 
 strength, of swelling schemes and laborious efforts, 
 
120 NATURE WITH AND WITHOUT 
 
 and all at once the eye begins to grow dim, the 
 frame to lose its elasticity, and eplipse is drawn in 
 slow shadow over the brightness of the intellect. 
 Your friends are stricken with sickness, the golden 
 bowl of life is broken at the fountain, the wheel 
 at the cistern, and the beaming eye and speaking 
 countenance are frozen into the stony repose of 
 death. A family circle is united in closest bonds. 
 Spend a few years away and return, and that circle 
 is broken and scattered. Of the millions now on 
 the earth, so busy with schemes, so engrossed as if 
 they could not be spared, as if there were not time 
 to die, — a few years will pass, and not one will be 
 here. The broad circumference of our human pros- 
 pect has on every side its horizon bounded by graves. 
 For six thousand years men have lived on the earth, 
 but not the same; the thick ranks of generations 
 have gone down and disappeared like bubbles on the 
 sea of death, — and that sea, sluggish and dark and 
 encircling the narrow islet of life on which we stand 
 like the survivors of a vast shipwreck, is rising upon 
 us and ready to receive us into its bosom. In the 
 past are the dead; in the present, the dying. In 
 the disinterred sepulchres of Etruria, dating back to 
 the times of Moses and David, the sole relics of a 
 civilization which had reached its height before Rome 
 existed, are many pictures and sculptures revealing 
 the common life and tastes of the people. There 
 are races, and martial games, and feasts, and dances, 
 and men and women watching over the dying and 
 dead, and the procession of souls under good and 
 evil genii, — showing that the human heart was 
 
A REVELATION OF IMMORTALITY. 121 
 
 t 
 
 then agitated by the same hopes and fears, and 
 moved by the same passions and affections, as now. 
 But those beating hearts are still, and their very 
 dust has disappeared from their totnbs. In the walls 
 of one of the sepulchres is the picture of a funeral 
 festival. On luxurious couches, around festal tables, 
 the guests are met in honor of the dead. It is a fit 
 symbol of what this world is without the revelations 
 of Christ. The earth and sky above it are but the 
 floor and roof of a larger sepulchre. There is joy 
 within its gloomy enclosure, but it is the feverish 
 joy of those soon to be no more, — the revelry of the 
 tomb, pleasure at the side of death. 
 
 And this picture hardly begins to be shaded till we 
 reflect that with every death among these myriads 
 has been the breaking of human ties, the shedding 
 of human tears, and the bitter grief of human hearts. 
 The bosom of the earth is swelling with graves, and 
 yet to every one of those unnumbered graves afflic- 
 tion has followed, and the husband, the parent, the 
 wife, the child, has returned to a desolate home to 
 mourn for the departed. 
 
 Then there are the apprehensions which each in- 
 dividual feels at the approach of the inevitable hour. 
 I do not say that annihilation is a thing which all 
 fear. Doubtless there are those who would gladly 
 ileap into that dreary gulf, if by losing their con- 
 sciousness they might also lose their terror of the 
 future. But unless the fear of annihilation is lost in 
 a greater fear, a belief in it, or even a doubt about 
 it, is enough to fill the world with unmoving gloom. 
 Man is made to love life, and he recoils from death 
 11 
 
122 NATURE WITH AND WITHOUT 
 
 No lot of life is felt to be so dreadful as that of 
 death, if it be a cessation of existence. 
 
 When it was known that a modern people, in the 
 frenzy of the time, had inscribed over the burial- 
 place, " Death is an eternal sleep," it caused a 
 shudder to thriU through the heart of Christendom. 
 There had been multitudes who had speculated 
 and philosophized and played with scepticism, half 
 thinking, perhaps, that they accepted notions whose 
 want of foundation they would probably be con- 
 vinced of when their presence was no longer want- 
 ed ; but the knowledge that there were men who 
 were terribly in earnest in this docritne of de- 
 spair, — who believed, and intended to act on the 
 belief, that man was only a worm, to whom the life' 
 of a man was essentially no more precious than 
 that of the brute, — in whose minds the affections 
 and the conscience lost their sanctity by becoming 
 the transient qualities of a creature which to-morrow 
 should cease to be, — filled even these, doubtless, 
 with dismay. When they saw their own notions em- 
 braced in earnest, and in a way to have their true 
 character revealed, they started back aghast from 
 them, like the Israelitish king from the spectre 
 which he had himself caused to be evoked from 
 the grave. 
 
 Death an eternal sleep. There was another in-' 
 scription vsrritten almost at the same time, which 
 was truer to the realities of human nature. It 
 was determined about this time to remove the re- 
 mains of the dead from the burying-grounds within 
 the walls of Paris. The remains were deposited in 
 
A REVELATION OF IMMORTALITY.- 123 
 
 the catacombs, spreading to vast distances under 
 ground, from which the stones had been quarried of 
 which the city was built. Here were laid the relies 
 of ten generations, — a Paris of the dead many times 
 more populous than the Paris of the living. By the 
 light of tapers, the traveller descended ninety feet, to 
 a world of silence, over which rushed and rolled the 
 world of noise and confusion above. Following 
 down a narrow subterranean gallery, he at length 
 reached a massive iron gate, through which one 
 passed into the galleries and the halls within whose 
 sides were deposited the dead. And over this gate 
 was, not the inscription of despair, but one which 
 Christianity has taught the human heart. Trans- 
 lated, it read, " Resting in hope " ; — an inscription 
 which Grecian wisdom had never learned to write, 
 but which Christianity, from the burial of her first 
 dead, had put upon their gravestones. " Resting in 
 hope." The torches which revealed these words, 
 written over the vast sepulchre, brought back to the 
 mind a truth which has shed more light into the 
 world than the midday sun. 
 
 The common appearances of decay sadden the 
 mind. But could we embrace in one view this uni- 
 versal scene of dissolution, when life springs out of 
 death only again to sink into it, where the lamp is 
 lit only to begin to expire, — could all the tones of 
 fear and grief which rise from every corner of the 
 earth, all the wailings over the dying and the dead, 
 unite together and swell into one funeral dirge, — 
 every tone of joy would be drowned, and hope 
 would cease in this vain conflict against dissolution. 
 
124 
 
 NATURE WITH AND WITHOUT 
 
 Such is the first aspect of life. What shall re- 
 move this weight of eternal gloom from the earth ? 
 It is not nature, as it appears to the senses. It 
 has not been philosophy. It has been removed 
 from us ; and it is by light from heaven, — by the 
 revelations of Christ. 
 
 I have said that for our faith, with its peculiar- 
 ities and its assurance, we are indebted to Christian- 
 ity. It should be remembered that our faith includes 
 not only one, but several different points. It is not 
 mere existence, but a personal and conscious exist- 
 ence, — it is a personal existence to be continued 
 under a perfect moral law, and that law embodied 
 in a paternal providence. 
 
 If, with all the direct and indirect influences of 
 Christian nurture, and surrounded from childhood 
 by a Christian atmosphere, in addition to all the aid 
 derived from philosophy, there are those who still 
 find it hard to believe, how would it be if from the 
 moral universe the light of Christianity were struck 
 out ? As well expect men to see clearly by the stars, 
 whose glazed eyes do not admit the light even of the 
 sun. 
 
 When I consider how nature appears to the senses, 
 I feel as if for all that is bright and cheerful in life 
 we are indebted to Christianity, almost as much as 
 flowers and skies for their varied colors to the beams 
 of the sun. When I would form some conception 
 of what Christianity has done for man in this single 
 point, I am not satisfied with some general recogni- 
 tion of aid. Through the gloom of nature, I hear 
 not merely the sighing of a timid hope. But over 
 
A EEVELATION OP IMMOKTALITY. 125 
 
 these vast funeral mounds, heaped above the genera- 
 tions of the dead, I see the angel of the Lord de- 
 scend, and from mid-heaven proclaim, " They are 
 not here ; they are risen." And the world is lighted 
 up by that celestial presence, and the hearts of men 
 swell with immortal hope. 
 
 " I am the resurrection and the life." The doc- 
 trine of a future life changes the aspect of even in- 
 animate nature. The leaf may wither, the flower 
 may fade, the heavens roll up like a burning scroll, 
 and pass away ; but every pure feeling, every devout 
 and grateful thought, the more enlarged and trusting 
 faith in the Divine Providence which we have de- 
 rived from the natural world, survives for ever in the 
 soul, though that world itself perish. The forms of 
 nature may still decay, but they leave their best life 
 behind in the soul of man. 
 
 It removes the gloom and hopeless desolation from 
 the infirmities and decays that attend the life of man. 
 If this life be all, there is nothing more sad than its 
 last years. The few years of youth and manhood 
 have been spent laboriously in acquiring whatever 
 may seem worth possessing, when gradually the 
 power of exertion is felt to be diminished, — many 
 plans and purposes must be given up. Nor this 
 only. The circle of enjoyments is narrowed and the 
 capability of enjoying diminished. One friend after 
 another is taken away, sickness and infirmities begin 
 to thicken and press heavily, and soon all must end 
 in death. But in the light of Christian faith, these 
 infirmities, though they do not cease to be burdens, 
 lose their hopelessness. They are the stages and 
 II* 
 
126 NATURE WITH AND WITHOUT 
 
 processes by which the spirit looses itself from the 
 body, — the hard and rocky ascent to the summit 
 whence the spirit takes its flight. And death is the 
 relief and the release. We read of those who in 
 other days in laborious journeys sought the fountain 
 of immortal youth, counting pain and toil as noth- 
 ing, so they could reach its brink. That fountain, 
 in a higher sense, the Christian finds. Death is the 
 restorer of youth. The infirm and aged enter under 
 the gloomy arch, and drink of the dark and freezing 
 waters, and pass on from our sight, immortal. At 
 that boundary they leave what belongs to the earth. 
 The burden of the flesh is laid aside, the blind re- 
 ceive their sight, the lame walk ; that which is mortal 
 drops and perishes, that what is immortal may more 
 entirely live. Think not of them as they were here, 
 weighed down with sicknesses and infirmities, but 
 with affections alive, and all holy principles alive, 
 and clothed with an immortal body. 
 
 And that future world, instead of a boundless 
 abyss of darkness, is a region of life and light. Rev- 
 elation adds new worlds to that which is perceived 
 by the senses, — worlds none the less real because 
 hid behind the glare of that which presses on our 
 eyes. While the sun is above the horizon, the heav- 
 ens seem empty, and the earth alone seems looked 
 -on by that shining orb. But as the sun sinks and 
 the shadows fall across the hills, one by one the stars 
 are ushered into the sky, a glorious host, innumera- 
 ble worlds, showing forth the wisdom and power of 
 God. Then we perceive how much, all the time, has 
 been around us, and how infinitely more vast and 
 
A EEVELATION OF IMMORTALITY. 127 
 
 sublime was that which in the brightness of the day- 
 was unseen, than what was visible. So reTelation 
 draws aside from the eye of the spirit the veil be- 
 tween, and we behold the empty void filled with 
 those whom we called dead, alive again, — the mor- 
 tal become immortal, and those whom we mourned 
 joined with the ever-growing company in eternal 
 mansions of those dear to them ; and the earth itself 
 appears but the threshold of a vast abode, peopled 
 by the creatures and filled with the light of the Infi- 
 nite Love. 
 
 As we stand by the grave and look forward into 
 the future, and endeavor to form some just concep- 
 tions of the true destiny of man, we see more dis- 
 tinctly what should be the first objects of human 
 pursuit in this world. So long as a man lives here, 
 if we speak of his losses or his gains, we are apt to 
 include under these words only the possessions and 
 pleasures and honors of the earth. We sympathize 
 with him in his struggles for temporary advantages, 
 congratulate him on his success, and regret his fail- 
 ures. And in its true place and proportion all this 
 is right, and well. But stand by the grave and look 
 into the future, and our judgment of the value of 
 these prizes changes. Whether a man suffered or 
 enjoyed a little more or a little less, is hardly thought 
 of. Then we call to mind his affections, his love of 
 usefulness, the sweetness of his patience and forti- 
 tude, his integrity, his reverential trust in God. A 
 single virtue is worth more than all the honors man 
 can heap on man, and the humblest moral excellence 
 of more value than all the treasures of the world. 
 
128 NATUBE WITH AND WITHOUT 
 
 For there we love to remember them in the past, and 
 to think of them in the future. 
 
 May this faith in the immortal life be our guide in 
 living. We need to cherish this faith with habitual 
 care as the counterpoise to the temptations of the 
 present hour. Consider that life here but begins, 
 and squander not on the present the hopes of the 
 future. Let the examples of the good who have 
 left us teach you the worth of a virtuous and Chris- 
 tian life, — teach you how that, and that alone, can 
 finally avail you. Let the departure of those you 
 have loved or honored call your thoughts up to that 
 higher world to which they now belong. Let their 
 memory be cherished, not chiefly as a subject of 
 mourning, but that it may enforce the lessons of vir- 
 tue which they taught by word and example while 
 their voices were still heard in their earthly homes. 
 And remember that to you the inevitable hour ap- 
 proaches which shall try as by fire all earthly treas- 
 ures. In that dread hour, when the books of the 
 past are once more opened and the judgment of life 
 is pronounced, kind and beneficent and holy afiec- 
 tions will be the wings of the soul. Then will you 
 most value what you have done for others, while 
 what you have done for yourself in a selfish spirit 
 you will gladly forget. Then neither wisdom nor 
 strength will be your stay, but humble trust in the 
 mercy of God. And the only treasures which will 
 abide the scrutiny of that day will be the virtues of 
 a just and pious life. 
 
 This morning, throughout Christendom, there has 
 been a recognition of the great fact of Christ's res- 
 
A KEVBLATION OF IMMORTALITY. 129 
 
 urrection. The heart of mankind acknowledges it 
 as the symbol and the pledge that the hope is well 
 founded which dares to look up from this realm of 
 mortality to the realm of the immortal life. From 
 great cathedrals, towering over the cities of the older 
 world, from humble churches, hid in the obscurity of 
 a hundred lands, the emblems of sadness have been 
 removed to give place to those of joy and triumph. 
 The wailing dirges, slow chanted by ten thousand 
 choirs, have given place to the tones of an exultant 
 music. But among all the methods of celebration, 
 none better expresses the sentiment of the occasion 
 than that of the Moravians. At sunrise all the 
 brethren assemble in the churchyard, in solemn 
 commemoration of those who, during the preceding 
 year, have fallen asleep in the Lord. Over the 
 graves of their kindred, they offer to God the 
 thanksgivings of a trusting and an immortal hope, 
 and, their thoughts rising, from the grave to the 
 heavens, they join together in hymns of praise and 
 joy in honor of Him who is the " resurrection and 
 the life." 
 
 As we meet this day, and look around, and can 
 no longer behold those who were with us, but are 
 with us no more, — as we become conscious of the 
 places vacant at our sides, and empty in our homes, 
 — our thoughts shall not go back to the grave, but 
 shall ascend to those brighter realms whither they 
 have gone before us. The early Christians buried 
 their dead under the altar, that the memory of the 
 departed might mingle with all their thoughts of 
 God. So shall it be with us. We will give thanks 
 
130 NATUKB AND A EBVBLATION OF IMMOETALITY. 
 
 this morning, that, while we look on the grave, we 
 are permitted also to look upward to a world where 
 sorrow and death are no more known. We will 
 give thanks to God, that, as we go down the dark 
 valley, we are permitted with our mortal eyes to see 
 rising behind the horizon of the grave the first 
 beams of an immortal day. We will thank God in 
 grateful hymns, that there is comfort in sorrow, and 
 hope in death. We will commemorate with thanks- 
 givings Him who is the " resurrection and the life." 
 
SERMON IX, 
 
 PKOVIDENCE. 
 
 AEE HOT FITE SPAKBOWS SOLE FOK TWO FASTHIjrGS ? AND WOT 
 ONE OF THEM IS FOKGOTTEN EEFOBE GOD : BUT EVEN THE TBET 
 HAIKS OF TOUR HEAD ABE AI,I. NUMBESED. FEAR NOT, THERE- 
 FORE : TE ABE OF MOBE TALUE THAN MANY gPARBOWS. — Luke 
 
 xii. 6, 7. 
 
 Were it possible for one to grow up to matnre 
 years without any knowledge of God, and then to be 
 taught, in a manner which should convince him of its 
 truth, this doctrine of providential care which we find 
 in the text, it seems as if he must be overwhelmed 
 by its vastness, and by the reverential, adoring, and 
 grateful thoughts that must rush in and possess his ' 
 soul. This doctrine, not of an avenging, but of a pa- 
 ternal Providence, that God exercises an immediate 
 care over every creatupe that he has made, from him 
 that weareth purple and a crown unto him that is 
 humbled in earth and ashes, is peculiar to Christian- 
 ity. It is its foundation doctrine. And yet, strange- 
 ly enough, it is one which the minds of men often 
 but half and hesitatingly receive. I ask your atten- 
 tion to this subject as one of supreme moment, — of 
 far higher moment than those which we term prac- 
 
132 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 tical, — because all practical virtues derive vitality 
 from a prevailing sense of the being and providence 
 of God. We speak of a Providence as the consola- 
 tion of sorrow. We underrate it. It is the founda- 
 tion and life of all practical morals and religion;, 
 and whatever tends to give it a larger place in our 
 minds is promoting, not one, but all virtues. Our 
 moral weakness lies, not in wrong opinions about 
 this or that, but in thfe want of a prevailing and con- 
 trolling sense of the nearness and providence of God. 
 We cannot help believing in a God. We are per- 
 haps ready to admit, what heathen philosophy taught, 
 that he exercises a general providence over the for- 
 tunes of the world. We may adopt the modern 
 phrase, and speak of a Providence in history. But 
 when we come to the Christian doctrine, that God 
 cares for each human being, that, he is ready to hear 
 our prayers and help us in our needs, that each one 
 of us personally stands in this relation of dependence 
 to the All-merciful Creator, we hesitate, and pause, 
 and doubt. The gulf between seems too great to 
 be overpassed. And yet doubts on this point par- 
 alyze religion. For it is this doctrine which gives 
 meaning to prayer and to worship, which makes it 
 reasonable to look to God in. our sorrows and our 
 fears, nay, which gives significance to his manifesta- 
 tions of himself through Jesus Christ. For Chris- 
 tianity throughout assumes, not merely a general, but 
 , a personal relation between God and his creatures. 
 
 To avoid the difficulties which embarrass them, 
 men have tried to make a distinction between a gen- 
 eral and a particular Providence. But the difference 
 
PROVIDENCE. 133 
 
 is merely verbal, and not in the reality of things. In 
 being general it is also particular. Just as gravita- 
 tion attracts the earth and holds it in its place in gen- 
 eral, but does this by attracting each grain of sand 
 in particular, and by attracting it as much as if it 
 were alone in space ; so God, in caring for all man- 
 kind, cares for each individual in particular. 
 
 This is the doctrine of Providence, as our Saviour 
 teaches it. He never wearies of impressing on men 
 the great truth of the paternal care of God. Not a 
 sparrow, not a hair of the head, falls to the ground 
 without his knowledge. Call no man Father upon 
 earth, for one is your Father who is in heaven. So 
 near and tender is the care of God, that he alone 
 deserves the name of Father. 
 
 And yet we limit the doctrine, so as almost to 
 deny it. We are ready, as was the pagan world, to 
 refer a few important events in the lives of men or 
 nations to a Providence ; but the rest of human life 
 is as if it were spent away from the care and out of 
 the sight of God. But this is not Christ's doctrine. 
 His doctrine is that the providence of God is with 
 us like the sunshine, which aU the day, whether we 
 heed it or not, is around us, which shines across our 
 paths, and into our windows, and cannot be shut out 
 but by some voluntary act of our own. The care of 
 Providence is not anything exceptional, but the rule, 
 a beneficent and helping presence which is with man 
 from the cradle to the grave. Providence is not 
 another name for the sum of the laws of nature, but 
 the laws of nature constitute the method of Provi- 
 dence. One speculative objection often heard to this 
 
 12 
 
134 
 
 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 doctrine is, that it is inconsistent with that moral free- 
 dom which God, above all things, would protect and 
 preserve to man. But if one will consider, I think 
 he will perceive that it is not only not inconsistent 
 with man's freedom, but that, in the highest sense, 
 it promotes it, — promotes it by the strength which 
 it gives to those qualities of the soul which make men 
 reaUy free. It is' like the atmosphere, which, while 
 pressing on all sides, lays no fetter on the limbs, but 
 all the time is breathing a freer and fresher vigor 
 through the whole frame. Or rather it is like the in- 
 fluence of a parent. The parent does not enslave a 
 child, though all the time influencing its thoughts 
 and motives. On the contrary, by the encourage- 
 ment he gives, by the thoughts he suggests, by the 
 efforts he aids, he only raises the child to a more self- 
 subsistent, self-controlling freedom. The help of a 
 parent trains up a child to help itself, to help it to 
 be free and self-dependent. And so the help of God 
 awakens that moral strength and gives that moral 
 light which leads us to true freedom, — the service 
 which, in the language of our prayer, is perfect free- 
 dom. Providence does not interfere with the laws of 
 the mind, but acts in harmony with those laws, to 
 aid man in attaining the same end for which the 
 laws were themselves established. 
 
 There is one remarkable illustration of this general 
 truth of a Providence found in the manner in which 
 the seemingly disconnected, and often evil, deeds of 
 men are overruled to work out unintended and un- 
 expected good, far above the moral level of the deeds. 
 In such cases. Providence does not destroy human 
 
PROVIDENCE. 135 
 
 freedom ; men are left as they were created, moral 
 agents, and yet the results of actions are by no means 
 left within their choice. The law of Providence 
 seems to be, necessity in results, freedom and moral 
 responsibility in the actors. It is to this that philos- 
 ophers refer, when they speak of a providence in his- 
 tory ; — individuals free, the final result determined. 
 It is as if the drops of water in a river had the power 
 to revolve in little eddies, each of its own choosing, 
 while all are borne on unconsciously in the swelling 
 flood towards the sea. The result pre-deterrnined, 
 the actors free. In this way, the ultimate good of 
 the world is made to harmonize with the moral free- 
 dom of individuals, even when they are most un- 
 faithful. Thus the brethren of Joseph acted freely in 
 seizing and selling him into Egypt. The suffering 
 for their guilty act comes out in natural ways, and 
 the whole history proceeds on in a natural order of 
 events. And yet when sufficient time has elapsed 
 for the full result to appear, their evil deeds are so 
 overruled as to accomplish altogether unforeseen and 
 unintended good. No lot could have seemed darker, 
 than when he was sold as a slave to the wandering 
 Midianites. Yet through this act he was finally en- 
 abled to be the saviour of his family and the bene- 
 factor of Egypt. It made the guilt of his brethren 
 none the less, but Joseph saw in the course of events, 
 and gratefully saw, the hand of an overruling Provi- 
 dence. It was God, he says, who sent me before 
 you to preserve life. 
 
 This is an example of the order of Providence. 
 Men are left free. So far as their intentions are 
 
136 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 concerned, there is no interference with their moral 
 agency. But after they have acted, the results of 
 their actions are so conti'oUed as to produce good, 
 in spite of the evil designs of the original actors, — 
 their guilt none the less, Heaven's benefits only the 
 greater. Thus does a Providence reveal itself in 
 the whole history of the human race. No evil is 
 allowed to be perpetual. Evils are made to con- 
 sume themselves and their causes. Evil becomes 
 its own scourge and corrector, and in the end good 
 comes forth, sunlike, triumphant over the clouds. 
 Evil is suicidal, self-destructive. If it triumph to- 
 day, it is only to destroy itself to-morrow. And 
 more than this, we often see men in their follies and 
 sins promoting the very end they intended to defeat. 
 Thus, not only are the labors of the wicked brought 
 to naught, but, like evil spirits subdued by a better 
 power, they are compelled to become unwilling 
 agents in serving the good cause which they abhor. 
 But the real difficulty which interferes most with 
 our faith, in Providence arises from our low, im- 
 poverished human conceptions of God. We think 
 of him as if he were limited and restricted like one 
 of us, — as if his greatness consisted in doing what 
 is great to us, and avoiding what is common. We 
 forget that beings who were not too insignificant to 
 be created by him, are probably not too insignificant 
 for his care. There is a single phrase often on our 
 lips, which, if our minds were fully possessed of its 
 meaning, would make every doubt of a Providence 
 seem absurd. We call God the omniscient and 
 omnipresent Father ; do these words describe the 
 
PEOVIDENOE. 137 
 
 truth ? Is that being who created us, wRo uphold- 
 eth all things, near us ? Is it true that in Him we 
 live and move and have our being ? Is he a Father 
 who careth for our welfare ? Does he know our 
 weakness and our wants ? Is he nearer than our 
 dearest friends ? And of all beings in the universe, 
 is he the only one in regard to whom it is supersti- 
 tion to look for aid? The passing stranger enters 
 your dwelling ; your friend enters into the chambers 
 of your mind, gives a new direction to your thoughts, 
 confirms your faltering purposes, breathes courage 
 and strength into your soul. Are those doors which 
 are open to all else closed only to the presence of 
 the Father of our spirits ? Rather will I believe the 
 most unreasoning superstition of a trusting heart, 
 than this earthly notion which shuts out God from 
 the human soul! But it is no superstition, — it is 
 the great doctrine of Christ and Christianity! 
 
 By word and by example, our Saviour taught us 
 to look to God for present help, — yes, for help to 
 God ! Not that he will aid us in the way that we 
 wish and pray ; bot he teaches us to look to God, 
 with the certainty that aid and light, such as are 
 needed, are never withheld from those who are pre- 
 pared to receive them. And that which our Sav- 
 iour teaches is confirmed by the testimony of our 
 own hearts. There is this peculiarity about a be- 
 lief in a Providence. It is at discord only with our 
 lower and worldly and more earthly thoughts. It is 
 in harmony with our highest and best and purest 
 feehngs. When the affections are most tender and 
 pure, when our consciences are most alive, when we 
 
 12* 
 
138 PROVIDENCE, 
 
 most earnestly and truly desire to live righteous and 
 good and worthy lives, — then how natural, how 
 easy, to look up ! The idea of a God, who loveth 
 and helpeth his creatures in their weakness, comes 
 to us as a self-evident truth, and to doubt it seems 
 a violation of the highest instincts of our nature. 
 
 But we have little need of arguments to prove the 
 reality of a Providence. It is only necessary for 
 us to live. Youth may be sceptical. While health 
 and animal spirits and success continue, and all 
 things go smoothly, we are in danger of feeling so 
 self-sufficient that we shall be heedless of the Power 
 above us. Add but a few more years to life, — let 
 man find out by experience that his wisdom is folly, 
 and how unwise his cTioice would often be, in the 
 plainest cases even, — then let him remember how 
 he has been protected and restrained and guarded 
 and supported from childhood up, even when he 
 was unaware of danger or weakness, — how what 
 he has called trials, when God and not his own 
 sins sent them, have been for his good, — sickness 
 often better than health, the season of disappointed 
 hopes better than the season of success, —he wants 
 no argument, — his whole past life is luminous with 
 providential care. 
 
 Still the subject may be embarrassed by difScul- 
 ties. Yet there is one point, and it is the only one 
 about which we need this assurance, respecting 
 which there is no room left for doubt. The all- 
 important practical question is, not whether the 
 common son-ows of life may not have a good pur- 
 pose, but whether Providence is on the side of right. 
 
PROVIDENCE. 139 
 
 Is there such a moral government of the world that 
 it is always, whatever the present loss or suffering, 
 safe and well to do right. May this man, who is 
 tempted by earthly prizes, threatened by penalties, 
 before whom the path of rectitude seems filled with 
 evil, — may he be certain that that path, though there 
 seems this lion in the way, is the safe one, and that 
 it leads with certainty to light and peace ? And the 
 instincts of conscience, and the experience of life, 
 and the word of revelation, declare that God is on 
 the side of rectitude, — that it is better to give the 
 right hand than knowingly and wilfully to sin, — 
 that he who giveth his life for a righteous cause 
 enters into the everlasting life. 
 
 Of all the blessings which God grants, there is 
 none greater than the ability to rely with a confi- ' 
 dent assurance on Him. I will not speak of this 
 trust as a duty. When we consider what we are, 
 how limited in knowledge and in power, and what 
 evil consequences must follow a wrong course, it is 
 our highest privilege, and should be the subject of 
 our joy and daily thanksgiving, that we are not left 
 to ourselves, — that there is One over us wiser than 
 we, who gives laws to our lives and help to our 
 hearts, ^'^ho appoints the general order of our lot, 
 and without whose notice not a sparrow falls to 
 the ground. So far as the most important circum- 
 stances of life are concerned, what are we, that we 
 should dare, except in subjection to God's will, to 
 choose for ourselves. Have not our best concerted 
 schemes failed us often enough to teach us humility ? 
 Who will dare to say that health is better for him 
 
140 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 than sickness, or joy than sorrow, or worldly success 
 than failure ? It is a blessed boon, without which 
 all else would lose the character of a blessing, to 
 know that in this order of things, which includes 
 the trial as well as the success, we may see a 
 Providence. Nor is it needful for us to understand 
 the reason of every appointment. For how stands 
 the case ? I do not mean to say that there is a per- 
 petual and arbitrary interference ; but there is an 
 order of things, established and controlled by Provi- 
 dence, having in view the welfare of man. Under 
 that providential order, from infancy I have been 
 taken care of. Unless I have turned aside the 
 blessed purpose of Providence by my sins, I cannot 
 look back on anything of His appointment, where 
 there has been time to see the results, but I can now 
 see that it was ordered by wisdom and goodness. 
 What at the time were the greatest griefs and 
 calamities, have very likely proved the chief bless- 
 ings, — a dark archway leading into a lighted tem- 
 ple. No parent gives such daily and hourly proofs 
 of love and care to a child, as God does to man. 
 To doubt this beneficent care is to doubt the light 
 of the sun. And now I come to duties hard to be 
 done, or trials hard to be borne. I do not see the 
 reason. What shall I do? Wait unsatisfied and 
 untrusting till all is explained ? Perhaps my limited 
 faculties forbid this. At any rate, what room for 
 trust if it were ? If it were shown and proved that to 
 perform a painful duty or to bear a hard trial was 
 for my immediate worldly interest, and I should do 
 it only because I saw this, whatever else it might be, 
 
PROVIDENCE. 141 
 
 there would be no trust in God. This is but a sort 
 of atheism which trusts God just as far as he makes 
 a particular course appear profitable, and no farther. 
 May Heaven grant us a different state of mind, — 
 grant us that state which shall cause us to say, If 
 God clearly appoint or command anything, it is 
 well; whether we understand the reasons of it or 
 not, it is sufficient if he appoints it ; — a heart that 
 seeks God's will and bows with filial submission to 
 it because it is his will. 
 
 Were a being of a higher sphere, uninformed re- 
 specting the character of man, to look down upon 
 the earth, and to behold these creatures of a day in 
 their weakness and frailty and sorrow, knowing 
 that they were permitted to look to the Almighty 
 One for help and light, he would surely expect that 
 all eyes and all hearts would be looking upward for 
 Divine aid ! How would it appear to him, when he, 
 found them cavilling and questioning, as if the doc- 
 trine of a Providence were a mere matter of unim- 
 portant speculation, — ready to admit it perhaps, but 
 hesitatingly, and only to forget it ! Or worse than 
 this, allowing their sins to rise, a thick mist, between 
 them and heaven, and shutting out the very thought 
 of God. What monstrous insensibility and ingrati- 
 tude ! Man permitted to be a child of God, and 
 hesitating about it ! What a mockery would seem 
 to him that philosophy, and what worse than mock- 
 ery those sins, which separate the human soul from 
 God! We look into the heavens and study the 
 courses of the stars, — O that the higher light 
 which surrounds Him who is above the stars might 
 
142 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 break on our blinded liearts ! While we pause on 
 this idea of -providential care, and remember what 
 we are, and^what God is, it seems as if our very 
 discussions of the subject had in them something 
 profane. It seems as if the only thing left for us 
 was to bow down in adoration, and to implore 
 God's forgiveness for our unthankfulness. What 
 a terrible commentary upon our characters it is, 
 that the goodness of God has so little power over 
 us. In mortal peril, when the ship strikes on a tem- 
 pest-beaten shore, when our children lie sick, and as 
 we fear under the shadow of death, in the agonies 
 of the mind, we cry out to the God that we had for- 
 gotten for help. What are we to think of ourselves, 
 that amidst his daily mercies, amidst the unbounded 
 blessings of his love, our thoughts drop down to the 
 ground, and the heavens are to us as empty as if 
 they had been forsaken by the Almighty? May God 
 in his mercy save us from this guilty insensibility, 
 and, while be gives us aU else, awaken our dull, 
 lethargic hearts to some just sense of his paternal 
 
 ence 
 
 provid' 
 
 In the future there is much that is dark ; in the 
 present, many despondencies and anxieties ; but 
 in the greatest anxiety and doubt, there are always 
 two truths on which we can fall back, and on which 
 we can rest as on the solid rock. One relates to the 
 practice. And it is this, that he who walks in the 
 way of a Christian rectitude can never go astray. 
 We live under the government of a righteous Being, 
 and to do right must always be safe and well. No 
 permanent evil can befall a good man. 
 
pjioviujsjNtijJi. 143 
 
 The other great elemental truth on which our 
 peace and hope must rest is the power, wisdom, 
 and goodness of God. However dark the world 
 seems, I know it is governed by a Being' of infinite 
 wisdom and goodness. However much there is 
 which is dark in my own lot, provided I walk in 
 His way, I know that all must be well. I will trust 
 in the wisdom and goodness of God. After all our 
 theories and speculations and schemes of divinity, 
 it is to this we must come at last if we are to 
 have any hope. Nothing goes so deep or so high. 
 Let us, therefore, in our weakness and blindness, be 
 humbly thankful that we are able to trust to the 
 wisdom and mercy and power of the Almighty 
 Providence, — God, who sent his own Son to save 
 the world, and who has taught us to look to him 
 as a Father, 
 
SERMON X, 
 
 ETERNAL LIFE- 
 
 I AM COME THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE LIFE, AND THAT THEY MIGHT 
 HAVE IT MOEE ABUNDANTLY. — John X. 10. 
 
 Here is stated the great end of our Savictur's 
 mission. And yet one is tempted to say, that there 
 is no important subject of which the Gospel treats 
 to which a less heedful attention has been given, 
 than its doctrine of Life. 
 
 What was the life which Christ came to impart? 
 The common answer is, The assurance of existence 
 beyond the grave. And certainly he gave this assur- 
 ance ; and no words can overstate its importance. 
 And yet, though of infinite moment, it was the least 
 essential part of Christ's doctrine. 
 
 The misapprehensions respecting this subject have 
 arisen from neglecting the two entirely different 
 s'enses in which the word is used, — the distinction 
 between the life which Christ came to reveal and 
 the life he came to awaken. He revealed an unend- 
 ing life beyond the grave. But far more than this, 
 and what he dwells on as the chief thing, he came 
 to awaken the Eternal Life in the soul. The nature 
 
ETERNAL LIFE. 145 
 
 of this life, the mode in which it is awakened, its 
 relations of dependence on Christ and on God, con- 
 stitute the great theme of the Gospel. Let us, con- 
 fining ourselves to a single point, endeavor to gain 
 some definite idea of what our Saviour taught re- 
 specting its nature. 
 
 In the first place, the life which Christ came to 
 impart is a life which may be possessed and enjoyed 
 in this world : " I am come that men may have life, 
 and have it more abundantly." This describes some- 
 thing very different from the mere revelation of a 
 future state of existence. For his coming was in 
 no sense the cause of man's existence. Again, he 
 makes a distinction between the assurance of a fu- 
 ture state, and the life which he imparts, when he 
 says, " I am the resurrection and the life." The 
 resurrection may be unto death, whereas he who 
 believeth in me shall never die. " If a man keep my 
 sayings, he shall never taste of death." The wicked 
 share in the common resurrection to a future exist- 
 ence. But they are never spoken of as possessing 
 the eternal life. The murderer is to exist hereafter, 
 but the words are, " No murderer hath eternal life 
 abiding in him " ; thus showing, that by the phrase 
 "eternal life " something very different is meant from 
 simply eternal existence. In spite of that existence, 
 " the wages of sin is death," but the gift of God is 
 "eternal life." Or, among numberless other passages 
 bearing on the same point, take the single decisive 
 declaration, " He that heareth my word, and believ- 
 eth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and 
 shall not come into condemnation, but is passed 
 
 T3 
 
146 ETBENAL LIFE. 
 
 from death unto life." He already hath the ever- 
 lasting life. The phrase is remarkable. And, in or- 
 der to leave no room for misconception, he adds, 
 " And is passed from death unto life." The death 
 from v^fh^ch Christ' came to deliver man is one which 
 may thus fall on him while he lives in the body, and 
 the life which he came to impart, the eternal life, the 
 everlasting life, may begin this side the grave. 
 
 The next question is, What is this Life ? It is 
 more than the continued beating of the pulses in 
 these mortal bodies. In the Gospel sense of the 
 words, to be carnally-minded is death. He who is 
 drenched in the defilement of the senses and the 
 passions is dead while he lives, but to be spiritually- 
 minded is life. A man's life consisteth not in the 
 things which he possesseth. He may be dexterous, 
 far-sighted, and energetic, — may have gain and 
 fame and power, and yet no spark of that life of 
 which Christ speaks may glimmer within the ashes. 
 Nay, a man in saving his mortal life may be losing 
 the life which Christ would give. To convert a sin- 
 ner is to save a soul from death ; that is, the state of 
 life is the opposite from that state of death from 
 which the sinner is converted. The life of Jesus is 
 to be made manifest in our mortal flesh. In Christ 
 was life, and he that hath the Son hath life, that is, 
 he who shares in the spirit of Jesus shares in the 
 life of Jesus. " We know that we have passed from 
 death unto life, because we I'ove the brethren." " He 
 that loveth not, ahideth in death." He in whom 
 those affections are awakened which are classed un- 
 der the word Love, already lives, — lives as God 
 
ETERNAL LIFE. 147 
 
 lives, who is himself Love. " The kingdom of heav- 
 en is not meat and drink, but righteousness and 
 peace and joy in the Holy Ghost," and these Christ 
 would impart to man here and to-day. Thus the 
 life which Christ would impart is the spiritual life, — 
 the life of righteousness and faith and love, — the 
 life of the beatitudes, — the life that was in Christ 
 himself ; and this is the life that is eternal and ever- 
 lasting. It begins here, and is a fountain of blessed- 
 ness within the soul for ever. All else is death while 
 it seems to be alive. The sinner, in his trespasses 
 and sins, is dead. Only the awakened and righteous 
 soul lives. Only a divine life deserves the name of 
 life. In the original, the word Life and the name 
 of the Supreme Being are derived from the same 
 root. God lives. In him is the essential life. And 
 it is only as the human soul is brought into harmony 
 with him, as, to use the phrase of an elder theology, 
 there is the life of God in the soul of man, that he 
 is brought into the sphere of the eternal life. 
 
 The Gospel idea seems to be, that there are spheres 
 of life, — sphere within sphere, — each more interior 
 sphere more sacred than the preceding. First and 
 most outward is the life of the senses, into which 
 man is ushered at birth ; — a precious life, rich in 
 pleasurable sensations, and having for its abiding- 
 place a fair world, its skies lighted with golden fires, 
 its floor fresh and beautiful with the changing sea- 
 sons, and all made tributary to its wants or enjoy- 
 ments ; — a precious life, but temporary, and disap- 
 pearing as the senses themselves moulder into dust. 
 This has no immortality. We see its beginning and 
 
148 ETERNAL LIFE. 
 
 end. Within this — a more interior sphere — is the 
 life of the intellect, of thought, of memory, imagina- 
 tion, reason, — ^a nobler life than that of the senses, 
 one to which the senses minister. But Christ did 
 not come to be the awakener of the intellect. With- 
 in the intellect — an interior sphere — is the moral 
 being, Love, Hope, a righteous will, holy aspirations, 
 the principles and affections which raise man above 
 the instinctive animal life, which constitute him a 
 moral being, and make him capabtfe of sharing in 
 the happiness of all moral beings in the universe. 
 This is the sacred and immortal part of man. 
 
 Now, because a man's senses are alive, and his 
 intellect alive, it does not foUow that these spiritual 
 faculties are alive. A man may have no faith, no 
 trust in man or God, no love of right or truth. In 
 that case the soul, so far as its true life is concerned, 
 is like a seed which dies in the ground, and all the 
 life of the intellect and of the senses above it is 
 but the verdure which hides its grave. Or, after be- 
 ing awakened, it may be perverted and corrupted, 
 and thus in a manner be killed in the man. As 
 when a generous youth sinks into a selfish manhood, 
 or a pure youth into a corrupt manhood. In such 
 cases the soul just begins to live, and then its vital 
 action is destroyed, and we say of it, properly, that 
 the spul is dead,- just as we say that the body is 
 dead, when its special functions come to an end. 
 
 And this is the true death. One of the saddest 
 things in human history is the heedlessness of man 
 to that which constitutes his true life. We invert 
 the order of things, and dwell in superficial shows, 
 
ETERNAL LIFE. 149 
 
 and forget the substance. The house where a man 
 lies dying is overshadowed with gloom. The stran- 
 ger passes by it with sobered thoughts. Within, 
 voices are hushed, and feet move noiselessly, and 
 dear ones collect around the bedside, and prayers 
 will utter themselves in the heart, and tears fall that 
 cannot be choked down. The very air seems full of 
 a strange shadow. An invisible presence has en- 
 tered, against which, when the hour comes, no door 
 is shut. And as the murky darkness gathers closer 
 around the failing lamp of life, it seems as if the 
 light of the world were going out. This death, the 
 death of the body, the death of the soul's organs, — 
 death, which may be only a separation briefer than a 
 voyage or a journey, — death, which is but a mere 
 symbol of the soul's death, — weighs down all who 
 witness it with fear and awe. The visible parting 
 from this warm, sunshiny life, the mysterious shad- 
 ows, the loosening of the hold on the gains and 
 pleasures of the earth, and the opening eternity, sub- 
 due the most frivolous. So, too, when disease strikes 
 the intellect, and memory falters, and the imagina- 
 tion droops, and the judgment is enfeebled, it is a 
 mournful spectacle. How many millions have said. 
 Let me die in the body, before this death begins to 
 creep over the mind. 
 
 What, then, should be our feeling at witnessing 
 the decay, the paralysis, the death, of that which is 
 most essentially the man, — that which raises him 
 above the animal, and gives him a connection with 
 the spiritual world ? When a growing perversity or 
 selfishness or malignity supplants the affections, — 
 
 13* 
 
150 ETERNAL LIFE. 
 
 when corrupt habits deaden the purity of thought, — 
 when worldliness enslaves a man to the earth which 
 he must soon leave, — when faith in God, and the 
 love of what God loves, and the filial trust, die out, 
 — to the eye of reason, what a death is this ! Over 
 this death-bed of the soul, this death in the midst of 
 life, this spectacle, under the open heavens, of what 
 gives to man the hope of immortality sinking into 
 lethargy and death, — over this death the angels 
 weep. This is the defeat of existence. The terrible 
 nature of this death dawned on the wisest, even be- 
 fore the light of Christianity. The life of the sen- 
 sualist, to Socrates, seemed a protracted dying ; and, 
 observing how the noblest powers were extinguished, 
 he said, " Perhaps we are now dead, and the body is 
 a sepulchre in which the soul is buried." And it 
 was with a profound sense of the supreme worth of 
 the spiritual life, that he uttered the remarkable 
 prayer, " O thou beloved universal Power, and ye 
 other divinities, grant that I may become beautiful 
 within, and that whatever externals I may possess 
 may be all in harmony with my spiritual being. 
 May I regard the wise alone as rich, and have only 
 so much of gold as is consistent with virtue." 
 
 On the other hand, how impoverished are our con- 
 ceptions of the true life of man! What a world 
 were this, did all men train themselves to that ardor 
 and love of virtue, and discipline their children as 
 carefully for its attainment, as they train their facul- 
 ties for the attainment of the transient prizes of the 
 day ! What a fearful thought it is, that a large part 
 of the intended, as well as unconscious, discipline of 
 
ETERNAL LIFE. 151 
 
 the young, is of a kind mainly to stimulate a crav- 
 ing for a mere worldly success, which can scarcely 
 be gained before a cold blast out of the grave 
 sweeps over the blooming triumph, and withers -and 
 blights it all ! What germs of excellence, what ca- 
 pacities for a nobler existence, lie dormant or dead 
 in every soul ! The world preserves in the sanctuary 
 of the memory the men who, from time to time, 
 have exhibited a- little of this spiritual life, — heroic 
 men, who have sacrificed what the world holds dear, 
 to their country, — benevolent men, who have coined 
 their pleasures and their prosperities into help for 
 the miserable, — martyrs, that have loved truth 
 more than they feared death, — devout men, who 
 have lived for God's approval. All the heroism of 
 the world abides in such souls, and all the higher 
 poetry is but a celebration of the manifestations of 
 this inner life. But one perfect example of it has 
 been given, and it was seen in Him in whom dwelt 
 the eternal life. And yet the capacity for it, to a 
 greater or less extent, is in every human being. 
 That desire which we have for worldly success 
 might have been a desire for spiritual excellence. 
 Our anxiety for man's applause might have been an 
 anxiety for God's approval. We honor this higher 
 life in history, we give it our admiration and our 
 words of praise ; but they are barren words of hom- 
 age, while our sacrifices are laid on other altars. 
 
 Now it was to redeem man from this death of the 
 soul, and to awaken its higher life, that Christ came. 
 The purpose of his divine mission was not to raise 
 the perished body out of its tomb, not to train the 
 
152 ETERNAL LIFE. 
 
 intellect, but to quicken the soul and awaken within 
 it the true and immortal life. His coming is in vain 
 for us, except so far as that life is awakened. Thus, 
 if you will observe, there is not an assurance of for- 
 giveness, not a promise of heaven, which is not in 
 some way connected with the possession of the spir- 
 itual life. " I have no pleasure at all in the death of 
 him that dieth, saith the Lord God. Wherefore turn 
 from your sins and live." What is the very idea 
 which is given of heaven ? It is a world in which 
 the love of God is the all-pervading element. And 
 what is heaven to one who loves everything on earth 
 except righteousness and truth, and cares for noth- 
 ing in heaven except for its blessedness, which the 
 whole habit of his soul forbids him to enjoy. Heav- 
 en is not a mere escape from a material hell. The 
 outward heaven can be nothing to any one, until the 
 elements of heavenly life are awakened within the 
 soul. As well place the blind in a world of light. 
 It is the soul that enjoys heaven, and it must be a 
 living, and not a dead soul. And the life of the soul 
 is in the love of truth and good, as the life of the 
 body is in the healthful pulses of the blood. The 
 heaven promised is a heaven which consists in the 
 exercise of heavenly affections and principles. It is 
 only as we love justice and truth, as we love man 
 and God, that the word Heaven can have any mean- 
 ing to us. And it was to awaken this heavenly life 
 within the human soul, and in this way to conduct 
 it to an unending blessedness, that Christ came. 
 
 What spectacle on earth so fair as that of one who 
 possesses this life ! You have seen the aged, whose 
 
ETERNAL LII*. 153 
 
 hearts expanded with their years into even wider 
 and more unselfish affections, — whose passions 
 seemed to have been filtered away in life's disci- 
 pline, — over whom the floods of trial had swept 
 only to leave their richness behind, — who had passed 
 through struggle into peace, — whose serene virtues, 
 as the sun makes bright whatever it shines on, in- 
 spired all around with a higher justice and human- 
 ity, — whose hopeful faith loved to make excursions 
 into that world which they approached, — who lived 
 in an atmosphere of beneficent, trusting, and devout 
 thought, — going down that vaUey, often so dark, 
 but not dark to them, because there shone into it 
 from above a heavenly light, — and here was life. 
 The body might be dying, but the breaking up of 
 the senses only seemed to reveal more and more the 
 soul's light. I have seen such persons die, and laid 
 in the grave, and yet in a few days the remembrance 
 of that event seemed gone from the' mind. I could 
 never think of them except as alive. It seemed as 
 if you might meet them at every turn, so entirely 
 did the spiritual life in them overtop and embrace in 
 its radiance, and keep out of view, all the circum- 
 stances of mortality. This is life. And more of it 
 is often seen in the patience and submission and 
 cheerful trust of those who can only wait God's will, 
 than in those who with their grasping and struggling 
 energies shake the world. The true life is not in 
 length of days, — that is but an inferior life which 
 beats in the throbbing blood and flames in the whirl 
 and tempest of the passions. And so the poet 
 sings ; — 
 
154 EXTERNAL LIFE. 
 
 " We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
 We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 
 Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. 
 And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest, — 
 Lives in an hour more than in years do some 
 Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along the veins. 
 Life is but a means unto an end ; that end, 
 Beginning, mean, and end to all things, God ! " 
 
 Spiritual death is in other places of the Scriptures 
 described as the loss of the soul. And so fearful is 
 this, that we are taught that the gain of the world 
 is -jruin, if gained with the loss of the soul. But 
 what is the loss of the soul? Not any external 
 penalty. More terrible than all the woes which the 
 imagination has pictured as impending over a guilty 
 life is the simplest description of what the Saviour 
 means. To lose the soul, is to lose out of one's be- 
 ing the pure affections, and the love of truth and 
 right. It is to lose the love of goodness, and pious 
 trust, and the heavenly dower of immortal hope. 
 Multitudes walk the earth with souls already lost. 
 He that has lost his virtuous purposes, holy aspira- 
 tions, devout hopes, whose soul has abdicated its 
 high seat and become subject to the world, like the 
 sapless and verdureless tree, is already struck with 
 death. It bears no fruit, and waits only to be cut 
 down and cast into the fire. 
 
 Such are the life and "death of which the Gospel 
 treats. It is a life and a death whose processes are 
 going on within the soul this day. We are all liv- 
 ing a double life. The morning, as it breaks over 
 the hUls, rouses the tribes of men to their daily allot- 
 ment of toil and pleasure and sorrow. But all this 
 
ETERNAL LIFE. 155 
 
 comes to an end. The great procession of mortality 
 passes on, and its tumult dies away, and its glory 
 goes down into the grave. But there is that which 
 does not come to an end. Under all these labors, 
 hindered or helped by them, the soul is working out 
 its destiny. There are those who for earthly success 
 are sacrificing the generous heart of youth, — who 
 for the gold they receive in one hand are giving with 
 the other their integrity, their, disinterested affections, 
 their peace of mind, and their hope of heaven, — who 
 barter away the treasures of friendship, the calm 
 conscience, and honor, and faith, and trilth, and jus- 
 tice, sacrificing them all to their pride, their resent- 
 ments, their envy, their sordid cravings, — in win- 
 ing the outward good, fostering the interior death. 
 There are those who seem to triumph over the world, 
 who spend their day in rearing a mausoleum on 
 which must be written, " Beneath this rests one who 
 gained the world at the cost of the soul." Anrd 
 there are those, too, whom joy makes more grateful, 
 and sorrow more trusting, and temptation more faith- 
 ful, and trial more strong, whose souls have pros- 
 pered under every change of fortune, and who, fol- 
 lowing the Saviour with meek and obedient hearts, 
 with every step towards their graves have bee© 
 making progress toward the eternal life. 
 
 In these remarks I have spoken not of the method 
 of attaining the ■ spiritual life, but of its nature. At 
 first it might seem a superfluous task. Who doubts, 
 it is said, that this is the true and eternal life ? Oji 
 the other hand, one might almost reply by asking. 
 Who believes it ? It is just at this point that we 
 
156 ETBKNAL LIFE. 
 
 find the most fatal form of scepticism, — most fatal 
 because it goes to the foundations of moral distinc- 
 tions. Few doubt the existence of God. "We may 
 believe also, that, for some arbitrary reason, we must 
 obey God in order to secure his acceptance. . But 
 how deep in our hearts is the conviction, that in the 
 love of God itself, in a filial trust, in the sentiment, 
 is the highest life of the soul? We honor Christ 
 in traditional words and solemn" forms of homage. 
 We say that his life was perfect. But how far have 
 we the settled conviction, that the highest and holi- 
 est, most divine, and most desirable of all things on 
 earth, are precisely those spiritual qualities which 
 were revealed in him to mortal eyes ? Or to take 
 single elements of the- divine life. We understand 
 how men may love Mammon, may feed on human 
 applause and admiration, — have we the same con- 
 scious sense, that we may have precisely the same 
 self-devoted love of truth and right ? We honor the 
 just man ; but our prevailing language implies that 
 justice, honesty, truth, are little more than instru- 
 ments to some end beyond themselves, — not as if 
 they were in themselves the supreme good. How 
 little meaning have the Saviour's words, " Blessed 
 are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness." 
 Not they who act justly and righteously as a matter 
 of expediency, but they who love it for its perceived, 
 intrinsic excellence, — love it as the artist loves what 
 is beautiful, — love it as the sensualist loves his pleas- 
 ures, — hunger and thirst for it, and must have its 
 presence within them, or die. Instead of our having 
 any just sense of the Gospel doctrine of life, even the 
 
ETERNAL LIFE. 157 ■ 
 
 prevailing religious creeds of the world fix the atten- 
 tion on a life in a manner external to the soul, a 
 mere continued existence, and a bliss showered on 
 it from without. They treat of salvation ; but often 
 it seems as if it were a salvation of man in his sins, 
 rather than from his sins. As if, were it not for 
 future perdition, the attempt to attain the virtues of 
 the Gospel were an unbearable cross. How little 
 do they give the impression, that in these very spirit- 
 ual excellences, in this love of them, and in their ex- 
 ercise, in their selfrcdntroUing and inspiring presence, 
 is itself the eternal life ! That Christ came to impart 
 and awaken this life, and that his death becomes 
 our life only as it touches our hearts and awakens 
 in them a spirit like his own, — that then, and then 
 only, are we sharers in the life of Christ, — is this 
 believed ? Were it believed with anything like the 
 intelligent sincerity with which men believe in the 
 worth of intellectual education, of worldly success, 
 or of good repute among men, the millennium would 
 have come. And yet, if there be any meaning in 
 Christ's words, the first step in religion is the per- 
 ception of the nature of this spiritual life, — the life 
 described in the Bible as that of faith, — a regener- 
 ate and sanctified life. 
 
 The faith that we need is not this or that opinion 
 about some point of sectarian controversy, a wretched 
 heirloom of the Dark Ages come down to torment 
 the world after its time, but that the same spiritual 
 life of faith, afiection, and trust which was in Jesus 
 Christ is the supreme good of the soul. Except as 
 we have this conviction, and live by it, the very pur- 
 
158 ETERNAL LIFE. 
 
 pose of our existence on earth is defeated. If we 
 are growing more earthly, the nearer the time comes 
 for leaving the earth, — if our affections are set more 
 and more on things below, as the hand grows feebler 
 that grasps them, — if that spiritual life of which all 
 of us have the elements at least within us in child- 
 hood, be deteriorating, decaying, and dying out, — 
 then the sooner dissolution comes, fearful though it 
 be, the happier for the man who is turning the gift of 
 life into the means of a more fearful death. 
 
 In a word, to sum up what has been said, — the 
 essential characteristic of the eternal life in the soul 
 is the love of truth and good, and thus of God who 
 is the true and good, and of Christ in whom God is 
 manifest. This is the life of the angels which inspires 
 them in their ministries. It is the heavenly life. It 
 is the bond which unites all the hierarchies of the 
 celestial wotld. He who hath it has affinities with 
 aU the pursuits and pleasures of that sacred nature. 
 The pomps and passions of earth turn back from the 
 closed portals of heaven. No bribes gain admission 
 there. No forms or shows avail. But he who hath 
 in him the eternal life, though a beggar naked and 
 maimed and blind, before him heaven's gates open 
 of themselves. He is no stranger there, for the life 
 that is in him finds there its true sphere and com- 
 panionship. 
 
SERMON XI. 
 
 WATCHING WITH CHKIST. 
 
 AND HE COMETH UNTO THE DISCIPLES AND PINDETH THEM ASLEEP, 
 AND SAITH UNTO PETEJt, WHAT, COULD TE NOT WATCH WITH 
 ME ONE HOUR t WATCH, AND PEAT, THAT TE ENTER NOT INTO 
 TEMPTATION. — Matthew xxvi. 40,41. 
 
 The world was covered with darkness and sunk 
 in slumber. But there was one place, then unheeded, 
 where there was a watching and a conflict, on which 
 hung the destinies of the human race. Under the 
 trees of Gethsemane, dripping with dews, under the 
 chill, insensible heavens, in prayer and with God, the 
 Saviour watched. As the last scene in his great sac- 
 rifice approached, he prepared himself for it, not by- 
 steeling himself into insensibility, not by any new 
 determination of will, but by prayer, by communion 
 with God, and by submission to his will. Thus did 
 the Saviour watch against the trials and the agonies 
 of the coming day. And though his disciples did 
 not watch with him, he warns them, thus, to watch 
 for themselves, — for they too were to encounter the 
 power of an evil world, ■. — Watch and pray, lest ye 
 enter into temptation. To watch with Christ, and to 
 
160 WATCHING WITH CHRIST. 
 
 watch as he watched, was to strengthen the soul to 
 meet approaching trial, by communion with God. 
 
 The event recorded in the text occurred immedi- 
 ately after the Last Supper. Our Saviour had just 
 parted from the twelve disciples, a sadder parting 
 than they then knew, and, attended by three of their 
 number, had come to the garden of Gethsemane. 
 The disciples seem to have been, as it were, in a 
 dream. They saw how profoundly the Saviour was 
 moved, but they could understand neither the reason 
 nor the extent of his sadness. Even the three who 
 followed him to the garden, worn and exhausted, dur- 
 ing the bitter hours of his anguish at length sunk 
 Sown upon the ground in slumber, unconscious of 
 the dread events which were so soon to burst upon 
 them. As we look at them, we seem to be revealed 
 to ourselves. Not they alone were unaware and 
 slumbering on the threshold of splemn and unforeseen 
 events. With us, the turning-points of our destiny 
 come as unexpectedly as to them. The brightest 
 morning, rising without a cloud, may go down in 
 sickness, sorrow, sin, death. We are like those who 
 lie down in the sides of the ship, and who, as they 
 listen, hear, with only a frail partition between, the- 
 vast devouring surges, which heave, and rush, and 
 welter, and moan beneath the keel. The sheltered 
 and protected nooks of life where we dwell, border 
 upon unseen and mysterious destinies ; shut out by 
 the thinnest veil, life and death, and blessed angels, 
 and ministers of doom are close upon us. But though 
 sometimes we seem to hear the murmur that is in 
 the conscious air, though strange premonitions come 
 
WATCHINa WITH CHKIST. 161 
 
 to US, we understand them not, we heed them not, but 
 pitch our tents in the infinite surrounding mystery, 
 and, amidst the awakened universe, sink into sleep. 
 
 Sink into sleep! In a world full of peril, how 
 often do these words describe our real condition. 
 Entering step by step into new trials, as we traverse 
 the wilderness of life, we at length grow weary, and 
 cast aside our watchfulness, and plunge heedlessly 
 into the ambushed danger. On the brink of temp- 
 tation, we lie down to sleep, and, what is worse, the 
 moral sleep into which we fall is of a kind which 
 tempts the invasion of evil, and prepares us to be 
 its victims. 
 
 There are times when all good angels seem to de- 
 sert you ; your best purposes and dispositions seem 
 to lose their hold, and to slip feebly out of the mind ; 
 the intellect may be active, the passions awake, but 
 lethargy and sleep have crept over the best faculties 
 of the soul. Such seasons are the seasons of peril. 
 Then, while you heed it not, and because you heed 
 it not, the powers of the lower world are creep- 
 ing up into the throne of the mind. You are not 
 only unconscious of the approaching danger, but be- 
 cause of that unconsciousness are prepared- to be 
 overwhelmed by it. O that then the voice which 
 wakes the dead might arouse us to watchfulness! 
 At other times, when fear and penitence move the 
 heart, when conscience is alive, and the thought of 
 God is present, you may be safe. All holy beings 
 seem to keep watch with* you, and for you. But in 
 these hours, most dark because you are unconscious 
 of the darkness, when conscience sinks into a feeble 
 
 14* 
 
162 WATCHING WITH CHRIST. 
 
 whisper, and the idea of God floats off into the dis- 
 tance, and you are left alone, as if for the very trial 
 of your strength, then must you stand sentinel over 
 yourself. Though you know not how or whence, 
 then danger is approaching. It is the lull before the 
 storm. When there is but one watchman upon the 
 wall, while already the beleaguering hosts approach 
 under cover of the darkness, and their muffled tram- 
 plings begin to rise into the air, if the solitary watch- 
 man sleep, all is lost. You are then in all the more 
 danger, because, except interruptedly, it hardly occurs' 
 to you that you are not safe ; but be sure that in the 
 seasons when your better thoughts and purposes 
 grow sluggish, then the darker angels that pass above 
 your slumber are weighing your fate in uneven bal- 
 ances. In such states the words of Christ come to 
 us, " Could ye not watch with me one hour ? In the 
 season of your temptation, can you not rouse your- 
 self from your lethargy, and remember me and re- 
 member God? O thou that sleepest, and to whose 
 ear in this moral sleep all evil whisperings come, 
 awake, and for one hour watch with me ! " 
 
 There is an Oriental story of a contest between 
 two spirits, one of the upper and the other of the 
 lower world. So long as the confflct was main- 
 tained in the air, the evil genius lost his strength, and 
 was easily mastered ; but as soon as, in the various 
 fortunes of the fight, he touched the earth, his strength 
 returned, he rose to a gigantic size, and the heavens 
 grew dark with his power.' It is so with us in our 
 conflict with evil. We do not long resist temp- 
 tation, when we carry on the conflict on its own 
 
WATCHING WITH CHRIST. 163 
 
 ground ; our spasmodic efforts then soon yield to its 
 persistent pressure. It is by rising to a higher level 
 that we gain strength, while the temptation is weak- 
 ened. It is by living on this higher plane of thought, 
 and moral purpose, that we are prepared to encoun- 
 ter temptation. In the season when you are led 
 astray, had you been watching with Christ, had your 
 mind been occupied by better thoughts and purposes, 
 the temptation would hardly have risen up to that 
 higher region, to assail you. While the vivid ap- 
 prehension of God's presence is in the mind, we are 
 not likely to yield to the sin. Who is there, that 
 can consciously and deliberately step over that one 
 thought into a sin ? Before we commit the wrong, 
 that thought is put aside, and we descend to the 
 lower level, where the temptation has its home, its 
 associations, and its strength. 
 
 It is one of the great blessings of Christianity, that 
 it has filled this sphere of human life with higher 
 moral thoughts, has surrounded us by this' presence 
 of truth, has placed stars in the otherwise darkened 
 firmament. Over the abyss of human passion and 
 ignorance move not shapes of evil alone, but holy 
 beings, and Christ, and God, — a new class of ideas, 
 into which we may rise by faith, and which consti- 
 tute, as it were, a heavenly climate and sky for the 
 mind. Our power to resist temptation depends 
 mainly, not on mere strength of will, but on the hab- 
 it of dwelling amidst these higher truths and obey- 
 ing them. The closer the connection of our minds 
 with these ideas, the more intimate our companion- 
 ship with them, the greater our moral power. The 
 
164 WATCHING WITH CHRIST. 
 
 mind receives light and strength from a higher source, 
 The powers of evil may wait for us below, but they 
 dare not ascend into this holy mountain. And so 
 long as we retain this better spirit, temptation has 
 but little power. It is not the soul's privilege only, 
 but the soul's safety, to have its conversation in 
 heaven. 
 
 " Could ye not watch with me one hour ? " The 
 series of events with which these words are con- 
 nected illustrates — what is of infinite moment to 
 us — the manner in which Heaven regards the frail- 
 ties and sins of men. Through the whole of this 
 narrative of desertion by friends, and persecution 
 unto death by enemies, there is not one bitter or 
 denunciatory word, but only words of pity, forgive- 
 ness, and encouragement, of compassion when his 
 disciples failed, and of encouragement to their hesi- 
 tating yet returning fidelity. 
 
 It may be that in your conscious weakness you 
 have lost hope, — that in your failures it has seemed 
 as if you could no longer look for God's mercy or 
 help; and yet at that moment, could we but un- 
 derstand it, — and what shall we say of ourselves 
 when our minds are closed against this sublimest 
 truth ? — heaven is looking down upon us with ten- 
 der interest. The question there, with those who 
 rejoice over every sinner that is saved, is not whether 
 you have fallen, but whether you endeavor to rise 
 again. God cares for everything that he has cre- 
 ated ; but on the whole earth, nothing is so interest- 
 ing to heaven as the fidelity of the soul, the fidelity 
 of a weak heart and feeble will, endeavoring to over- 
 
WATCHING WITH CHRIST. 165 
 
 come temptation. All the glory of earth is pale and 
 faded beside the persevering struggles of such a soul. 
 The pleasure of heaven lies not in the chronicling 
 of human sins, but in encouraging and helping the 
 feeble heart which sincerely endeavors to get the 
 victory over its infirmities. 
 
 " Could ye not watch with me one hour ? " These 
 words show also the strong and tender desire with 
 which he wished for their confidence and love and 
 trust. He endeavored not only to unite his follow- 
 ers with each other, but equally to himself. He 
 desired their love, he wished them to serve him in 
 love, and made this love the organizing principle of 
 his Church. These -words were not more for the 
 Apostles than for us. The love of Christ reached 
 not to them alone. The Gospel proceeds on the 
 idea, that, though it may be an undefined, there is a 
 real and personal relation between Christ and every 
 believing heart. The electric, invisible thread of 
 love reaching down from heaven, and encircling 
 earth, connects all Christian souls with the Master. 
 He is still present with them in the midst of their 
 prayers, and still sends the Comforter to their hearts. 
 He holds not merely a far-oif, historical relation with 
 succeeding ages, but a far nearer and more intimate 
 one. WJio doubts that he at this moment feels as 
 deep an interest for those who now live upon the 
 earth, as he did for those upon whom he looked, and 
 over whom he wept, in Jerusalem ? Who doubts 
 that he is at this moment regarding with a divine 
 tenderness the course of those for whom he gave his 
 life ? Surely I do not doubt it, nor do any of us. 
 
166 WATCHING WIDH CHEIST. 
 
 And in a little time, when this brief pilgrimage is 
 over, which one of us does not expect to behold Him 
 who liveth in the heavens, who hath gone before to 
 prepare a place for his followers? Nay, the first 
 being whom we behold, on entering the higher 
 world, may be Him whose love was such that he 
 gave himself for us. "We trifle with ourselves, we 
 who are here but for a day, when we think of Christ 
 as only living in the past, and not much more living 
 now, — as one to be sought in the past, and not 
 much more to be looked forward to in the future. 
 He still speaks to us. And when in our worldliness 
 we forget him, and suffer ourselves to become in- 
 sensible to what he has been and is to us, and not 
 only insensible, but by our sins make what he has 
 done in vain, — when we thus fall asleep under the 
 shadow of his sufferings, surely it is with a most 
 tender meaning that the words come to us, " Could 
 ye not watch with me one hour ? " 
 
 He beholds you in your afflictions. The night is 
 dark around you, and your soul heavy with unut- 
 tered sorrows ; and to you the words are spoken : 
 " Come and watch one hour with me. Come, and, 
 with me, put your trust in the Almighty Providence. 
 Come and watch with me, and I wiU show you, 
 rising upon this darkness, the dawn of a brighter 
 day." Yes, watch with him, and learn how to bear 
 grief and loneliness and pain. Learn that lesson 
 of divine submission, which, in the act of surrender- 
 ing one's own wfll to God, is visited and strength- 
 ened by the angels of his mercy. To you the words 
 are said, " Come unto me, afl ye that are weary and 
 
WATCHING WITH CHRIST. 167 
 
 heavy laden, come and watch with me, and ye shall 
 find rest."- 
 
 - As he looks down, he beholds you in your hour of 
 weakness and moral peril ; he beholds you in the 
 place of temptation ; he' beholds your good purposes 
 one by one taking flight and leaving you, while 
 flocking like birds of ill omen, on dark wings, come 
 down the powers of evil. At this moment, and thus 
 far, you may be innocent, but another hour, and an- 
 other step in this way, and the sin tcf which you are 
 now only tempted will be a sin that is committed. 
 Now you may look forward to it and abstain ; but 
 go on, and soon you must look back and behold 
 what can neither be effaced nor forgotten. "What a 
 mournful change in the freedom of your conscience, 
 in the unembarrassed peace of hope and memory, 
 may take place in that one hour ! Is it wonderful 
 that He w^ho came to save us should look down 
 with compassionate interest on what may be the 
 turning-poinlT in the road of a human being's life, — 
 the very crisis of your mortal fate ? To you the 
 voice speaks, " Come and watch one hour with me." 
 O frail and tempted man ! wert thou to leave the 
 companionship of evil thoughts, and spend but one 
 hour with the Saviour, the powers of evil should flee 
 away, — the touch of his garment should give thee 
 strength, and the viper of temptation drop from thy 
 hand into the fire. Yes, here is the very method 
 both of danger and safety. The conflict and the 
 conquest are in the mind. We yield ourselves up to 
 evil thoughts and suggestions, take counsel of them, 
 listen, desirous of being convinced, to their sophis- 
 
168 WATCHING WITH CHRIST. 
 
 tries, and then wonder that we become their victims. 
 Our safety is not chiefly in strength of will, but in 
 cleaving to a holier companionship, which shall 
 arouse the better elements of the soul. Fly from 
 the circle of evil suggestions which hem you round" 
 about, not to the hermitage or the cell, where they 
 may still follow, but let the mind itself take refuge 
 in the thought and the presence of Christ and of 
 God. 
 
 When the Sisciples were separated from their 
 Master, as they thought, for ever, they at once grew 
 weak and hopeless ; but one hour with him again, 
 after his resurrection, restored their courage, and 
 their faith in his overseeing love became henceforth 
 their strength in life and death. Because, like them, 
 we are weak, blessed above all hours are those in 
 which we watch with the Master. Happy is it for 
 us sometimes to escape from the struggling world to 
 the contemplation of the works of God, and to gain 
 calmness from the vision of their calm and eternal 
 order. More blessed stUl, to rise above the creation 
 to the Creator. 
 
 Watch and pray ! The real perils of life are not 
 in its bodily dangers or its worldly losses, nor in the 
 guiltless sorrows which flesh is heir to, but in 
 its temptations to evil. And who can tell how or 
 whence he may be tempted an hour hence, — what 
 new weaknesses within, what new exposures from 
 without, an hour may reveal? We cannot fore- 
 see them. We cannot commonly guard ourselves 
 against special temptations as such. We must be 
 prepared beforehand to meet emergencies, and our 
 
WATCHING WITH CHRIST. 169 
 
 safety lies in maintaining the soul in such a state, 
 that it shall be prepared for whatever may come, — 
 ready to resist and repel and rise aHove the varied 
 temptations which, like successive breaking waves, 
 we must encounter on the voyage of life. It is not 
 given us to still the waves of the sea ; but to those 
 who seek, strength is given to pass safely over them. 
 The best source of safety is set forth in the words of 
 Christ, " Watch with me " ; watch and pray lest ye 
 enter into temptation. Watch the tendencies of 
 your own heart; and that you may watch, pray. 
 That you may have the company of good thoughts, 
 pray. That Heaven's help may guard you in earthly 
 dangers, watch and pray. 
 
 15 
 
SERMON XII. 
 
 REALITIES. 
 
 BUT NOW I GO MT WAT TO HIM THAT SENT ME ; AND NONE OF 
 Ton ASKETH ME, WHITHEK GOEST THOU ? BUT BECAUSE I HATE 
 SAID THESE THINGS UNTO TOU, SOKKOW HATH FILLED TOUR 
 HEART. — John xvi. 5, 6. 
 
 The morning lesson from the Gospel, and those 
 which precede and follow it, show the extreme difficul- 
 ty with which the Apostles of our Lord appreciated 
 the spirituality of his religion. They expected that 
 he would establish an earthly kingdom, and reign 
 visibly over the subject world. "When he seemed to 
 speak of dying, sorrow filled their hearts. It was 
 the defeat of all their expectations. Nevertheless, he 
 says, it is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I 
 go not away, the Comforter — immediately after 
 described as the Spirit of Truth — will not come 
 unto you. His death would break up their earthly 
 conceptions. With his death, their thoughts, faith, 
 and hopes would follow him to the heaven to which 
 he ascended, and his absence from them would 
 make real to their minds the spiritual world where 
 he would dwell. Doubtless, much more is suggested 
 in the passage. But here was their great difficulty. 
 
REALITIES. 171 
 
 They needed to be emancipated from the tyranny of 
 the senses, and to have their faith established that 
 the hopes which they cherished, the heaven to which 
 they looked, the interests of supreme value, belonged 
 to them, not as creatures of the earth, but as the 
 heirs of an immortal and spiritual life. In their case, 
 the teachings, death, resurrection, and ascension of 
 our Lord completely did away with their Jewish 
 and earthly conceptions of man's destiny, and of the 
 Messiah's kingdom ; but they awakened in their 
 minds such an intense and vivid sense of the realities 
 of the spiritual world, and such a sense of their be- 
 ing the great realities of existence, that henceforth 
 they lived by faith more than by sight, drew their 
 motives and hopes from above, and were ready to 
 die to this world because of their undoubting faith 
 in another, and in him who had gone before them 
 to its glories. With many modifications arising from 
 difference of circumstances, the fundamental religious 
 difficulty with us is the same as with them ; and our 
 great want is faith in the reality and supreme value 
 of spiritual interests. 
 
 What in this mortal life is real, and what imagi- 
 nary, what shadow, and what substance ? The real 
 difficulty which benumbs and paralyzes the influence 
 of religion over the minds of men is commonly, I 
 imagine, not a logical scepticism, nor the indiffer- 
 ence which comes from an indisposition to heed its 
 truths, but a vague feeling that it is unreal, a feeling 
 of unreality. The evidences of Christianity, many 
 would say, seem to me sufficient, but, after all, those 
 interests of which it treats seem to me to have no 
 
172 REALITIES. 
 
 substantial reality. They are remote, in the region 
 of shadows, and my feeling is, that they themselves 
 are shadows and illusions. I say not that they are 
 such, but so I feel. I enter into a church, and hear 
 the words faith, and penitence, and forgiveness, and 
 immortality, and men sleep under their monotonous 
 repetition, while the words drift by in the air, a mere 
 passing sound. I go into the street, and there, amidst 
 its struggles and competitions, and the visible prizes 
 of life, I am in the region of acknowledged and in- 
 disputable realities. All here is intensely real. If 
 we were honest .with ourselves, should ^we not dis- 
 miss from our minds these unrealities of the spiritual 
 world, and plant our feet firmly on what we know 
 is solid ground, and think only of this visible world, 
 where we know that all is real, and that there is no 
 illusion ? 
 
 Thus the fundamental question of religion is a 
 question of reality. Are these interests of religion 
 substantial and real, or are they the mere fancies of 
 a heated brain, the shadow of our emotions, and our 
 enthusiasm, projected, a dim penumbra, into the in- 
 finite void around us,. and mistaken for something 
 substantial and real ? 
 
 1. In endeavoring to answer this question, the 
 first consideration which presents itself is, that in 
 this world even, independent of their bearing on 
 religion, the most important realities are those which 
 are unseen, and are essentially spiritual. In ordi- 
 nary affairs, it is startling to think how that which 
 is most real is that which is least seen, how it is the 
 state of the soul which gives meaning and value to 
 
EBALITIES. 173 
 
 the most common outward labors. I see before me 
 a poor foreigner, ignorant, destitute, one of a thou- 
 sand others lilce himself, toiling from day to day on 
 some great public enterprise. The outward realities 
 of his lot are that he is poor and very ignorant and 
 very uninteresting, and that, through this monoto- 
 nous toil with his hands, he is earning his daily bread. 
 But suppose you could look into his rnind, and 
 should see that, while this toil goes on, his thoughts 
 are not there chiefly, but in his home, with a sick 
 child, over which he watched last night, and over 
 which he will watch again to-night; — suppose you 
 see that he is planning how to deny himself, so that, 
 with less food and more labor, he may purchase for 
 his wife and children the comforts which they need ; 
 or that in this wretched lot, tempted by the oppor- 
 tunity of unlawful gain, unseen by aU but God and 
 his own conscience, he rejects the temptation, and 
 silently keeps his rectitude and his penury ; — how at 
 once is the whole aspect of the man changed ! You 
 forget the coarse garments, and the mechanical toil, 
 and think only of the man. The self-denial, the af- 
 fections which prompt the labor, the rectitude of 
 soul, — these are the great realities of this man's lot. 
 They ray out from him, and hallow his toil, and 
 dignify his condition. That which is most real about 
 him is that which is transpiring in the invisible realm 
 of his soul. 
 
 Take this prosperous man. The world pours its 
 treasures into his lap. For him to touch an enter- 
 prise is to doom it to success. What was but sand 
 to others, transforms itself for him into gold. Here 
 
 15* 
 
174 REALITIES. 
 
 is something real, but there may be other realities 
 invisible, which are greater. Suppose you open this 
 man's mind, and find him sordid and timeserving, 
 the prey of small passions, jealous and envious, his 
 desires becoming more grasping as they are gratified, 
 with no thought beyond himself ; what are the real- 
 ities of this man's lot ? Not his we^alth.' The sor- 
 did soul makes the prosperity dust. Not his pleas- 
 ures, for the selfish soul blights them all. Better be 
 poor, and naked, and maimed, and blind, with that 
 wealth of the soul which the poorest may have, than 
 be as he is. The realities which shape this man's 
 fate are spiritual realities. I do not say that the 
 outward circumstances of penury and prosperity are 
 not realities,. but only that far greater and more in- 
 tensely real are those spiritual qualities which grow 
 up amid the helps and the influence of this outward 
 discipline. Simply as a matter of substantial real- 
 ity, who will doubt that a liberal, disinterested soul 
 is worth more to a man than the whole wealth of 
 California showered into his bosom without it ? 
 
 When the Pilgrims landed on this coast, the out- 
 ward realities were winter, and an unfriendly shore, 
 and the inhospitable forest, and the thousand-fold 
 anxieties of a forlorn exile. Their lot was a hard 
 one ; but in its outward circumstances there was 
 nothing so peculiar as to make it memorable. 
 Thousands of vessels have sought shores as bleak 
 and bristling with peril, for the simple purpose of 
 gain, yet the world keeps no record of them. The- 
 realities which lighted up the track of their vessel 
 across the deep, and which made the point and hour 
 
KEALITIES. 175 
 
 of their landing a centre of the world's history, and 
 the rock on which they first stood, and the bleak hill- 
 side on which were their graves, places of pilgrim- 
 age, were those which were invisible, — were spirit- 
 ual, — were the high purposes, the heroic, chosen 
 self-sacrifice of all visible to invisible realities, the 
 devout consecration of themselves to God and great 
 ends. 
 
 May I venture to refer to one scene more ? When 
 He who died for us all hung on the cross, well might 
 the daughters of Jerusalem mourn over the visible 
 agonies of that hour. But the spectacle of a cross 
 was not a new thing. What were the great reaUties 
 of that scene, — so great that they transformed the 
 cross itself, and so lifted it up that it seems to us the 
 point of meeting between earth and heaven ? Not 
 simply physical pain certainly. It was the Divine 
 self-sacrifice for a world heedless of the gift. It was 
 the Divine forgiveness that went up with the last 
 flutterings of the heart. It was God's love and mer- 
 cy towards the guilty, manifested through that dread 
 sacrifice. These spiritual realities made the scene 
 and the hour divine. Not what was seen, but what 
 was unseen, drew after the great Sufferer those who 
 were ready to die for him, and have drawn to him 
 ever since the reverential eyes of the world. 
 
 Thus, even in this world, when we would come to 
 what is most real, to the great realities of man's lot, 
 we must penetrate into the realm of the invisible. 
 The earth, and sky, and ships, and houses, and lands, 
 are less real to us, — are shadows and illusions, — 
 compared with the emotions, affections, and princi- 
 
176 
 
 REALITIES. 
 
 pies which lie hidden within the sanctities of the 
 mind. 
 
 2. But while all this is granted, still comes up 
 the difficulty, that the sentiments, which religion 
 awakens are the illusions of the mind; — by which 
 must be meant, that they have no solid foundation 
 in reason. We often hear what implies that he who 
 looks for his main happiness in the religious affec- 
 tions, and lives under the prevailing control of relig- 
 ious convictions, is living under a delusion, — a for- 
 tunate and happy one, perhaps, which no one would 
 willingly dissipate, — but still a delusion, to which a 
 practical man, who understands himself and the 
 world, will not yield. But is this the case ? I do 
 not believe it is well ever for man to be under a de- 
 lusion. Nothing is so good or safe as the truth. 
 But is there any delusion here ? One thing is cer- 
 tain, and that which is most essential and personal. 
 The religious feelings, in themselves, are realities. 
 There ce'rtainly is no illusion about- them. They 
 may be occasioned by what is not real, but they 
 themselves are realities. The penitence of a guUty 
 soul is a reality.. Remorse, which hides itself in the 
 monk's, cell, or in the blaze of the world broods over 
 its despair, is a reality. That reverence and trust 
 towards God, which, without the excitement and 
 the rushing throng of conflict, has made so many 
 martyrs faithful, even to death, are realities. That 
 ardor for truth, that desire to serve God and to be of 
 use to man, which have caused so many missionaries 
 to penetrate into sickly and barbarous climes, an 
 heroic, forlorn hope, — in advance of those in search 
 
REALITIES. 177 
 
 of gain, or in the career of conquest, — these feelings 
 are realities. Whether reasonable or not, I say that 
 at least their existence is a reality ; and what is 
 more, they have such power that at this moment in 
 myriads of homes and hearts, more than all things 
 else, they are determining the blessedness or the woe 
 of life. The cathedral, where in a rude age, amidst 
 the German forests, quarries of rock grew into a 
 temple of worship, was a reality, and yet but the 
 symbol of a reality more sublime, — of the general 
 and awful reverence for the Almighty, which from 
 corner to key-stone built up this wonder of ages. 
 Convictions of duty, the fear of God, remorse for 
 guilt, are such realities, that they have covered the 
 earth with altars, and loaded these altars with vic- 
 tims. They have made mountains populous, and 
 filled deserts with hermitages. They have stirred 
 the heart of nations, and revolutionized again and 
 again the face of the world. Wherever there is a 
 great religious awakening among a people, whatever 
 direction it takes, all things give way before it. 
 Kings, statesmen, armies, endeavor to stop it, but it 
 is as if they endeavored to stop a mighty stream 
 with a bank of snow which is itself melted by the 
 rushing waters, and only adds new force and volume 
 to the swelling flood. And so of multitudes now on 
 the earth, who this moment are confirmed in duty 
 by their reverence for the unseen God, or in their 
 great sorrows find a mysterious support in the senti- 
 ment of trust in his providence, or who, standing by 
 the grave of those dearest to them, repeat believing- 
 ly Christ's words, " I am the resurrection and the 
 
178 REALITIES. 
 
 life," — whether founded on reality or not, these 
 sentiments are not only real, but such potent reali- 
 ties that, when once awakened, all else which we 
 call real sinks into a subordinate place, while they 
 give a frail mortal a victory over life, and a victory 
 over death. 
 
 But who will venture to say that such sentiments,, 
 the highest and the purest, in" a manner the instincts 
 of the soul, have no foundation in realities greater 
 than themselves ? Think one moment of what man 
 is, — and then consider what such words mean as 
 holinefss and sin, as repentance and forgiveness, as 
 accountability, and immortality, and retribution. 
 Think what is implied in the one great name of 
 God. These feelings delusions ! Do you think 
 that our illusion is the cherishing too much rever- 
 ence for the Almighty Providence, or that we, who 
 value so highly each other's favor, are in danger of 
 thinking too much of God's approval? Do we 
 make more of death than God makes of it? Or 
 are we likely to think too much of Heaven, or of 
 living so as to find mercy from Him who is of top 
 pure eyes to behold iniquity? O thou wise man! 
 too wise and too practical to be taken in by shad- 
 ows, do you think that your danger or your delusion 
 is the thinking too little of this world and too much 
 of that which is to come ? 
 
 Realities, — what are the solid, substantive, per- 
 manent realities of the present life ? By a peculiar 
 and most benignant law, God is teaching us every 
 day that this world of visible realities is to us person- 
 ally but a passing shadow. It is by that mysterious 
 
KBALITIES. 179 
 
 law, that the most transient spiritual emotions en- 
 ter into our personal existence and become sharers 
 in its immortality, while all sensible objects, and 
 all physical sensations even, are kept apart from 
 our personality, and long before death are silently 
 disconnected from us. The home which a man 
 builds, he may leave, or it may decay. The affec- 
 tions cherished in that home enter into his perma- 
 nent personal existence. He gains wealth, and it 
 seems something solid and real, and yet, simply 
 through the decay of the senses, in a few years that 
 wealth to him is nothing. He must live as self 
 denyingly as if he feared a famine. The decora- 
 tions of art, the appliances of luxury, — he is sepa- 
 rated from them by the simple decay of sight and 
 health. His legal rights remain the same, but while 
 he yet lives, by the irresistible law of Providence he 
 silently b^t steadily loses his hold on all that he has 
 gained, while the realities which he brings out of 
 life are the affections, the sentiments, the principles 
 cherished amidst his earthly labors, but now con- 
 stituting the essential life of the soul. Physical 
 pain is real, but, once past, the sensation itself is 
 beyond recall, while the fortitude with which it was 
 borne remains a part of yourself. The pleasure dies 
 out with the failing midnight lamps, but the selfish 
 or disinterested feelings fostered by its enjoyment 
 remain with you .while the very memory of the 
 pleasure drifts away for ever under the shadows of 
 the past. 
 
 Realities, — illusions ! There can scarcely be an- 
 other case in which the true meaning of words is so 
 
180 
 
 REALITIES. 
 
 entirely reversed, and reversed the most entirely by 
 those who claim the most practical worldly wisdom. 
 While the most impressive experiences of life are 
 showing the imperishability of that which is spirit- 
 ual, the whole order of Providence seems to turn into 
 a mockery the prevailing trust in all WOTldly prizes. 
 
 The spiritual life, the man says, seems vague, 
 dreamy, unsubstantial. Better stand on the earth, 
 and cleave to the realities of the world in which we 
 live. Gain and fame and power and pleasure are 
 not shadows, but solid and real and permanent. 
 And are they so indeed ? There is one word in 
 whose frosty presence all their frail summer blos- 
 soms wither. A man labors till his hair is gray for 
 an independence. This is something to be relied 
 on, — something to retreat back upon ; and when 
 he has gained it, he will be at ease, and eat and 
 drink and enjoy. It promises well in the distance, 
 but it is hardly gained, when infirmity pushes the 
 cup of enjoyment from the lips, and soon — death 
 comes in ! He sees a family grow up around him, 
 — a fair spectacle; but if pure affections do not 
 exist, or if they cannot look beyond the present, al- 
 most as sad as fair, — for soon the goodly circle 
 must be broken' by death ! A man gains wisdom, 
 cultivates his taste, surrounds himself with pic- 
 tures and with books, and then — the eye grows 
 dim, and then — comes death ! In the distance, 
 closing the perspective, no matter how brilliant be- 
 tween, there is one word written which sends back 
 a disastrous shadow over all, — and that word is 
 death! The swelling dreams of ambition, the la- 
 
REALITIES. 181 
 
 bors for wealth or distinction, the appliances for a 
 comfortable .or pleasurable existence, all have one 
 end, and that is death ! In all the sparkling melo- 
 dies of life, through all its brilliant and triumphant 
 music, there runs a dirge-note, faint at the outset, 
 like the low wailing of a flute threading its way 
 through the resounding swell of instruments, but 
 deepening ever, till you hear the dull pulsations of 
 the muffled drum, and still swelling as it proceeds, 
 tiU in the final cadences it is a tolling bell, swinging, 
 solemnly and slowly after every other sound is 
 hushed. What words shaU measure the shadowy 
 and transient character of whatever belongs to this 
 world ! 
 
 Let those here present who have reached middle 
 life go in imagination through this town, — any 
 well-known district of this city, — over its hflls and 
 through its valleys. At first, it may seem that there 
 has been comparatively little change. And yet, as 
 you pause at house after house, of those which were 
 standing twenty-five years ago, you probably can- 
 not recall one out of whose doors a funeral has not 
 passed. From this house a chUd was buried ; from 
 this, one in maturer years. You might set up a 
 tombstone beside every dweUing. A little while 
 ago, so many of them were busy and active and 
 engrossed, and now their memory remains ; but they 
 have passed on to other scenes and to a higher tribu- 
 nal. In so few years such changes! of all which 
 then seemed so real to them in this visible world, 
 nothing remains but that which in some way had 
 hold on the everlasting life ! 
 
 16 
 
182 REALITIES. 
 
 Nay, though one lives on, in a few years a change 
 like death comes over his history. Your home is 
 not what it was a few years ago, — your interests 
 and pursuits are different, — your worldly expecta- 
 tions and hopes different, — your relations to the 
 world different. What a few years ago seemed so 
 substantial and real has faded, — has shrunk away 
 like the receding tide from the beach '; and that only 
 remains permanent which in some way shared in 
 .the permanence of the soul. 
 
 We talk of this world as real. We stand on it as 
 if its firm base could not be moved ; and yet while 
 we stand there so confidently, it crumbles away be- 
 neath us, and we become conscious of more august 
 and sublime, even eternal realities, in the midst of 
 which this solid globe is but as the bubble which 
 floats compassed about by the invisible agencies of 
 Nature and Providence, — realities to which the 
 bubble whose thin surface mocks the rainbow, and 
 the globe itself, are but as the wreath of smoke that 
 rises from a cottage on the hill-side, and hangs a 
 little on the morning air, and then vanishes for ever. 
 
 What are the realities of our existence ? When 
 the buds of spring were swelling, our friend fell sick. 
 The tree that overhung his window drooped down 
 its opening leaves as if to bid him have hope, and 
 the birds came and sang in the branches, a glad 
 morning song after the weary night-watches. With 
 failing strength he looked abroad and saw the fair 
 ripening summer, and the opening skies, and the 
 vision of cheerful, blessed life pervading nature. 
 " These shall remain," he said, " but I shall soon 
 
REALITIES. 183 
 
 be gone." We bore him with the autumn, to his 
 grave. The winds sighed bleakly along the hills, 
 and as we laid his body in its narrow home, the 
 passing gust scattered one and another of the with- 
 ered leaves that dropped from the tree above us 
 into his open grave. Summer had come and gone. 
 The grass was withered, the flower faded, and even 
 while we gazed, the first scattered snow-flakes of 
 winter drifted down to the ground, and melted and 
 disappeared. Nature lay dead. The realities of 
 spring and summer were gone, and yet at that 
 moment our friend — was he not already intro- 
 duced into sublime realities? The spiritual world, 
 the spirits of the departed, the immortal life, and 
 Christ the Saviour, and God the Father, — well 
 might he exchange for these the fairest show of our 
 earthly seasons, for these are realities which endure. 
 And when, as must be sooner or later, and latest 
 is soon, you enter your sick-chamber, and know that 
 you shall never pass out of it except to enter the 
 eternal world, tell me, what will be the realities on 
 which the soul can then safely rest? It may be 
 that then you may be indifferent, that disease may 
 prostrate mind as well as body ; but the reality of 
 your position will not be changed for that. Your 
 next step forward will be into the revelations of the 
 spiritual world. Then the great realities of exist- 
 ence are the ones which you are next to meet. 
 Accountability, death, judgment, God, — these are 
 no longer words, but realities. What angels shall 
 come to keep you company through the dark valley ? 
 They will be the angels, good or bad, who have sur- 
 
184 REALITIES. 
 
 rounded you here, — the evil angels tljat have 
 visited you in your worldly career, or the angels of 
 justice, and love, and trust, which are the angels of 
 God. In that dread hour, all else is separated from 
 us, and the realities which shall be our bliss or our 
 doom are those spiritual realities which have their 
 place and throne in the soul. 
 
SEEMON XIII. 
 
 THE WEARY AND HEAVY LADEN. 
 
 COME ITNIO ME ALL Tfi THAT LABOB AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND 
 I -fflJLL GIVE rOXt REST. — Matt. xi. 28. 
 
 There are in the world u^ounded means of en- 
 joyment, and in the human heart the capacities for 
 enjoying, and yet, in any degree corresponding to 
 God's gifts, the world is not a happy one. There 
 are prosperity, and sanguine spirits, and gratified 
 senses, and the appliances of wealth and culture and 
 power. The surface of life is tossed and whirled in 
 glittering eddies of excitement, across which stream 
 the sunbeams. But, deep beneath, the waters — 
 unreached by the sunbeams — lie cold and dark. 
 Underneath this busy and shining life there is some- 
 how a fatal want of peace. Make all the exceptions 
 and abatements which one pleases, and still the 
 world, as a whole, is not a happy world. It is the 
 dark mystery under the sun. Disease, toil with 
 nothing in prospect but toil, the presence or the fear 
 of want, tEe frost that blights childhood, the in- 
 firmities which weigh down old age, the perpetual 
 struggle against mortality, — these physical burdens 
 
 16* 
 
186 THE WEARY ANB HEAVY LADEN. 
 
 weigh heavily on the race. But they scarcely are 
 more than symbols of heavier ones within, which 
 pull down the strength that should bear them, — 
 anxieties that wake with the morning, and beset 
 one's dreams at night, despondencies, the failure of 
 good purposes, fears that are in the way, hopes baf- 
 fled, affections torn, bruised, and bleeding, and the 
 nameless agonies of the undisciplined, badly regu- 
 lated heart. And beyond this, that which is ever 
 taking down our swelling joys, which breaks in on 
 our pleasures and makes so many of them mock- 
 eries of their name, is the unsatisfied conscience, — 
 conscience, a blessed and benignant power when our 
 friend, but which is rEi^y more than half a friend, — 
 in most men awakened enough to affright them with 
 its warnings, but too little obeyed to bless them 
 with its peace. 
 
 But there are those, you say, exempt from these 
 troubles, whose sanguine strength knows neither 
 pain nor fear, whose affections are fortunate, who 
 have man's favor, and who traverse the plains of life 
 environed by the shining atmosphere of hope, — vic- 
 torious men, — the conquerors of life. Here is hap- 
 piness. Not always! Bring up this man who is 
 the world's envy, — have him up for trial, — enter 
 his closet and hear his confession, — and how often 
 shall you hear that he has all that God or man can 
 give but one thing, — and that is peace of soul. 
 Within him are the elements of a higher hfe, through 
 which he is allied with God and with heaven, and 
 he is conscious that to that which is highest and 
 holiest in him he has been unfaithful. He is not 
 
THE WEARY AND HEAVY LADEN. 187 
 
 what he ought to be, and the failure is at the vital 
 point. Because of this, there is misgiving and dis- 
 satisfaction in his heart. Sin, unsatisfied desires, a 
 clinging sense of unfaithfulness, take the light out 
 of life. 
 
 To such a world, unfaithful, ignorant, sinful, and 
 miserable in its sins, Christ came. He came to 
 meet this condition of sin and wretchedness, — a 
 wretchedness all the greater because the fruit of sin. 
 That the sin exists, who can deny ? That its un- 
 quiet heart needs rest, who can deny ? That we 
 need guidance and help, who shall deny ? And it 
 is to such a world Christ comes, and says : O 
 guilty, wretched, and wandering ones, most weary 
 and heavy laden, come and follow me, and I will 
 give you rest! In the wilderness of life, crossed by 
 a thousand paths, in which we go hopelessly astray, 
 at the parting of the ways Christ stands, a celestial 
 guide, and says : Follow me, and I will lead you to 
 the realm of peace. Follow me, and ye shall find 
 rest for your souls .'' This is the point of the prom-, 
 ise. He does not promise exemption from trial, — 
 that is needful for the discipline of virtue. He 
 would not deliver man from duty, but help him to 
 perform it; not save him from his mortal pilgrim- 
 age, but guide him through its perils ; not take off 
 all burdens, but awaken a strength within the soul 
 which shall make them easily jDorne. Life, peace, 
 strength, fidelity, immortal hope in the soul, — not 
 the smoothing of the waves, but strength to rise 
 above the -waves, — is what he promises. 
 
 And that which is promised is given. A way of 
 
188 THE WEAEY AND HEAVY LADEN. 
 
 speaking has grown up, which treats Christianity as 
 if it had proved a failure, and as if anything like 
 faith were in constant need of apology. It is to 
 mistake both the Saviour's mission and man's needs. 
 Christ did not bring sin and sorrow into the world. 
 He found them in it, — the sad product of its own 
 errors and vices. The great task of human wisdom 
 has been to solve and conquer these evils. And 
 what has been accomplishfed ? Take the common 
 lot. Comparing it with what man might be, who 
 shall deny it to be a melancholy one ? One single 
 fact sums up in itself alone evUs enough to eclipse 
 the sun. With the majority of mankind, the first 
 implacable question is, On how little can human life 
 be sustained ? It is not a question with them of 
 comfort, or culture, or prosperous careers. Life is a 
 ceaseless struggle for daily bread. And with this 
 are united the miseries of anarchy and despotism, of 
 war, of ignorance, and all the other evils which afflict 
 man, exasperated by the primary one. How much 
 has the wisdom of statesmen done beyond enforcing 
 order within this lot? How little to remedy it? 
 How much has philanthropy done, beyond soothing 
 for the hour, or covering over or hiding these ghastly 
 wounds ? What has philosophy done, except to tell 
 these millions to endure and toil and die ? The wis- 
 dom of the world recoils, paralyzed, from the prob- 
 lem of evil. Christ alone has really raised and light- 
 ened the common lot. Enter this hovel. Here is a 
 man who has lived in want, whose daily fireside 
 companions have been destitution, sickness, and un- 
 certain labor for scanty bread. It seems a night 
 
THE WEARY AND HEAVY LADEN. 189 
 
 without morning ; — and yet this man has caught 
 from some source a heroism of principle which 
 shames your tender summer virtues, — honesty, fidel- 
 ity, faith, piety, a cheerful hope, high as heaven. 
 Somehow this man knows that, for all the darkness, 
 God has not forsaken him. He has reared his chil- 
 dren in Christian rectitude. He has kept a loving 
 heart, and his prayers are prayers of thanksgiving. 
 And that man's Ufe — the life in his soul — has 
 come from Jesus Christ. He trusts Christ's words. 
 If his trust were in this world alone, he would be of 
 all men most miserable. But he looks beyond! A 
 few years more, when this hard discipline has fitly 
 tempered his soul, if they are but faithful, he and his 
 children shall meet in heaven. He confronts the ad- 
 vancing evils with a disciplined and victorious faith. 
 His strength is in Jesus Christ. Give uncounted 
 treasures to him, and they would be dross compared 
 with what the single assurance has been. Come unto 
 me ye that are weary arid heavy laden ; come and 
 trust in me, and I will give rest unto your souls. He 
 remembers that his Saviour was born in a manger, 
 that he had not where to lay his head, and that he 
 died on a cross, and he is travelling the same road 
 along which the Son of God went before him. His 
 outward lot remains indeed the same, but has Christ 
 done nothing for him ? He has lighted up the mis- 
 ery of his hard condition, has ennobled his lot by 
 revealing its end. He has put a heart into the man, 
 and inspired it with courage and faith and loyalty to 
 God. What neither statesman nor philosopher could 
 do, he has transformed hopelessness into the subHm- 
 
190 THE WBARY AND HEAVY LADEN. 
 
 est hope, has transformed earthly trials into a heav- 
 enly discipline, has built up his soul in virtue, and 
 given him the victory over life and death. A suffer- 
 ing Saviour has revealed in his own person how the 
 road to heaven may lead through all the miseries 
 of the earth. Millions of the poor, the humble, and 
 the wretched are this moment clinging to the words 
 of Christ, and finding — not worldly prosperity, but 
 what is better — strength and rest for their souls. 
 
 But your lot is a happy one. The world gives 
 you all you want. You need not seek and follow 
 in order to find rest. Is it so, — not weary and 
 heavy laden, no repinings, no jealousies, no un- 
 governed passions to torture, no fears to dajken, no 
 desires that torment, no life to live, no death to die, 
 no misgivings of conscience, no shadow on the 
 heart, no fears of God,' no dread of retribution? 
 Are all the miseries of man confined to bodily want 
 and pain ? Not weary and heavy laden ? — has the 
 world gone so smoothly that you have no wound of 
 the heart, — that you have no unsatisfied longings, 
 no need of a peace which the world does not give ? 
 Alas! if the heart could but utter itself, how many 
 would be found pining in success, miserable in 
 pleasure, dragging on through prosperity a defeated, 
 profitless life, without satisfaction and without hope, 
 their laugh hollow, leaving the halls of joy to sit 
 down at home amid haunting griefs, their happiest 
 hours when least with themselves, not daring to re- 
 member, and unable to forget, this life exhausted to 
 the dregs, and no joyful anticipation of another! 
 Are there not those who in their inmost hearts have 
 
THE WEARY AND HEAVY LADEN. 191 
 
 learned that there is no such thing as rest till it is 
 found in a soul at peace with God ? To you, weary 
 of paying homage to a world which breaks its prom- 
 ises the moment it has enslaved you, burdened with 
 the consciousness that life is not what it ought to 
 be, — to you Christ says : Come unto me, ye weary 
 and heavy laden ; come, and I will teach you how to 
 live, so that life shall no more be a failure ; I will 
 guide you to living fountains. Follow me, and ye 
 shall find rest for your souls. And who doubts that 
 promise ? Who does not know that the misery of 
 his life is in the disorder and anarchy of his soul, and 
 not in his outward lot ? Who does not know, that 
 redemption from human misery must begin in a re- 
 generation of the soul, in .the awakening of its true 
 life, and in the consecration of it to God ? Rest 
 and peace of soul, — not gain or fame or po'wer, 
 but peace, hope, eternal life, — who shall find that, 
 except in following Christ ? 
 
 The earth has other scenes. There is one gate 
 which is open for all, and it is that of the tomb. 
 There is one visitor that comes to our door, and 
 enters whether we will or no, and it is Death. 
 These earthly ties must be broken, and whatever 
 else may befall those we love, we must bear them 
 or be borne by them to the grave. The aged head 
 bows down, the little child sinks into the slumber 
 that knows no waking, and manhood, from the 
 midst of its cares, goes home from the sunshiny and 
 crowded streets and lies down to die. There may 
 or may not be joy in the world : it is certain there 
 will be sorrow. How shall the griefs of life be met ? 
 
192 
 
 THE WEARY AND HEAVY LADEN. 
 
 You strive in vain to steel yourself against them. 
 The dear faces that are gone startle you at every 
 turn. You would not be insensiblej and so lose the 
 blessed though painful memories of the treasures 
 you have lost. There is a better way than that 
 which turns grief into a hardness of heart. Christ 
 says : Come to me and I will give you rest. I will 
 teach you a trust which shall make memory a bless- 
 ing, because over against it is set an immortal hope. 
 I will teach you a submission which draws down 
 strength and comfort from above. Here again he 
 comes to the soul. He does not dry up human 
 tears, but he takes out of them their bitterness. He 
 makes death minister to faith in God and immortal- 
 ity. He teaches you how to dwell with the living 
 on earth, so that you may hope to dwell with them 
 hereafter. He would purify and exalt the affections. 
 He not only soothes grief, but would ennoble it; 
 he would make afHiction sacred and sanctifying ; 
 and no one ever followed him, dwelling with the 
 living as he teaches, mourning for the dead as he 
 teaches, in trust and faith, but has afterwards been 
 able to say. It is good for me to have been afflict- 
 ed. " Jle giveth his beloved sleep," we read. Ah, 
 more than this ! While they wake in these mortal 
 sorrows, he giveth his beloved rest ! 
 
 The text was immediately addressed to the sinful, 
 to those burdened with a consciousness of transgres- 
 sion, trembling at their danger and seeking deliver- 
 ance. For such there was relief. The wonder of, 
 Christianity is its interest for the sinfnl. Its divin- 
 ity is revealed in the fact, that the gteatest mani- 
 
THE WEAKY ANB HEAVY LADEN. 193 
 
 festation of God, and the greatest sacrifice, at which 
 the world grew dark, was for the ungrateful and the 
 guilty. Christ chose to be regarded as the friend of 
 sinners. This was a new language in the world, — 
 a language repeated then in scorn on the earth, but 
 which caught its accents from heaven. The pros- 
 perous easily have friends. The agreeable, the at- 
 tractive, the great, the powerful, those rich in other 
 gifts, have friends ; but Christ was the friend of the 
 sinner, — not of his sins, but of the man, — willing 
 even to die to deliver him from his sins. 
 
 But the force of the words is not understood till 
 we remember the kind of sinners of whom he was 
 said to be the friend. It was of those who, besides 
 being guilty before God, were held in contempt by 
 man. Not those only who prudently kept within 
 the bounds of permitted and reputable vices, but 
 those who by sins no greater, but more disreputable, 
 had sunk, often into wretchedness, always into con- 
 tempt, — the outcasts whom the prosperous world 
 passed by, as it did the lepers of the time, fearing 
 lest the hem of its garment should be contaminated 
 by their touch. Nothing could have shocked Juda- 
 ism more than to see the Messiah take an interest 
 in this class. The Pharisees might have borne our 
 Saviour's rebukes if confined to themselves, but not 
 the rebukes of one who sat at meat with pubHcans 
 and sinners. They assumed as a matter of course 
 that he would be their friend ; and such he was, 
 their true friend, and, if they would but heed him, 
 their Saviour. But they did not expect to be com- 
 prehended in the same circle of love with those 
 17 
 
194 THE WEAET AND HEAVY LADEN. 
 
 whom they stigmatized as sinners. This, therefore, 
 he insisted on with such emphasis. He did not 
 leave it to be tacitly understood, but loudly pro- 
 claimed, that of this wretched, despised, friendless 
 class, this class degraded in its own estimation and 
 held in scorn or hate by the rest of the world, he 
 was the friend ; — not less the friend of others, but 
 their friend and the friend of all. 
 
 I have sometimes tried to imagine what were the 
 feelings at that time of one of this contemned class 
 on coming to Jesus, — the feelings of her, for ex- 
 ample, who in her penitence knelt silently at his 
 feet, washing them with her tears. She spoke no 
 word. She knew with what scorn those around 
 regarded her. She knew that Jesus must condemn 
 her sins as none other did. But the eyes of the 
 crowd were stony and pitiless, — there was no 
 touch of mercy in them ; but Christ, while condemn- 
 ing her sin, knew also her weakness, her struggles, 
 her penitence. In his look was a pitying tender- 
 ness. This being to whom she looked up had faith 
 in her, had mercy for her, and because of this she 
 could have died for him. In this, to her, most lonely 
 world, he was her friend, and through him she still 
 had hold on heaven. She heard and obeyed, and 
 found the truth of the words, " Follow me, and ye 
 shall have rest in your souls." 
 
 He did not lead the sinner to think less lightly of 
 sin, but he aroused his lethargic and hopeless soul. 
 He made the poor, dispirited, friendless creature feel 
 that he was competent to something better than a 
 bad life, — made him feel that he was neither un- 
 noticed nor helplessly lost; and this divine confi- 
 
THE WEABT AND HEAVY LADEN. 195 
 
 dence and encouragement saved those whom human 
 scorn had only hardened in guilty ways. They who 
 defied the harsh and merciless judgment of man 
 were melted by the tenderness and patience and 
 confidence of Christ. And a strange spectacle it 
 was, that the guilty outcasts of the world, who had 
 ceased to look to a guilty fellow-creature for excuse 
 or help, felt a divine attraction to the holiest being 
 that had ever visited the earth. 
 
 The words of Christ still repeat themselves to the 
 sinful, but as of old in different tones, according to 
 the classes who are addressed. There are those to 
 whom sin is a burden. Penitent hearts there are, 
 which desire to forsake evil, but which fear God, 
 and which know so well that the next hour they may 
 faU and fall, that they hardly dare to pray for help 
 in their weakness, — whose good desires are palsied 
 by discouragement, who are ready to sink in the 
 waves, and need to support them that voice which 
 upheld the faint-hearted disciple, and which stiU says 
 to all who falter and fear, " I am with you ; be not 
 afraid." Such there are, and many such, fraU, timid, 
 self-reproachful, self-distrustful, with good desires 
 but infirm wills, who have lost heart and hope, and 
 are perishing for want of encouragement. To such 
 come the words of Christ as words of life. " Be not 
 fearful, but believing." " Come, follow me, and ye 
 shall find rest for your souls." 
 
 But to the heedless and the hardened the words 
 have another tone. Come and follow me, for so alone 
 can you find rest. The conscience may sleep, but 
 does not die. Heedlessness will not alter the laws 
 of God, whose chariot-wheels still roll on in bless- 
 
196 
 
 THE WBAEY AND HEAVY LADEN. 
 
 ings or retributions. Retribution may be delayed, 
 but is sure. The insensibility which now gives the 
 show of peace shall be waked by the last trump, ' 
 when the dead shEill be raised to life or to condem- 
 nation. Come and follow me in God's appointed 
 way, while life remains and the power of choice 
 remains. Follow me that you may find rest for 
 your souls. What are we when we dare to be, 
 when we can be, unmindful of this voice ? Guilty 
 we are at the best, and most unworthy ; but God 
 grant that there may yet be that in our hearts 
 which may respond to the appeal of Christ. We 
 profess to believe in him. Are we ready to follow 
 him ? Here is the question which it belongs to our 
 hearts to answer. Had you lived in the time of the 
 Saviour, and had he said to. you as he did to the 
 Apostles, Come and follow me, is there that in you 
 which would have impelled you, like them, to leave 
 all . and follow him ? That question we cannot an- 
 swer. But there is another that we can answer. 
 
 We are now called upon to follow him, not in his 
 sufferings in Judsea, but in the spirit of his life. 
 Not in giving up all in a persecuting world, but in 
 giving up our sins. Let the question be asked in 
 your heart, in a tempting world, — Am I willing to 
 follow Christ, — to take him for my guide in pur- 
 pose and in conduct? Am I willing to seek that 
 rest which he promises, in the way he appoints ? It 
 is the question of questions. God grant that we 
 may be able to say truly, as if the presence of the 
 Master were before us : " Thee will we follow. 
 Frail, sinful, needing forgiveness, needing help, still 
 it shall be our purpose to follow thee." 
 
SERMON XIV. 
 
 PERSONALITY. 
 
 AND GOD SAID UNTO MOSES, I AM THAT I AM J AND HE SAID, THUS 
 SHALT THOU SAT UNTO THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, I AM BATE 
 
 SENT MB UNTO Tou. — Exodus iii. 14. 
 
 I MAKE use of this text as implying and expressing 
 the personality of God and of man. I am that I am. 
 It is an expression of the immutable, essential ex- 
 istence of Jehovah, self-subsistent and independent. 
 And man, on his side, is addressed and aided as a 
 being also having a distinct personal existence. The 
 interest of the text, in this point of view, arises from 
 its contrast with many tendencies of thought and 
 speculation. I certainly shall not argue in a church 
 of Christian worshippers the fact of this personality ; 
 and yet, strange as it may seem, the tendency of 
 speculation over the world has, to an extent which 
 surprises one, been of a kind to throw doubt and 
 misgiving over the permanent p'ersonality of man, 
 and the real personality of God. It shapes that 
 religion of the East which embraces in its bounda- 
 ries more millions than any other on earth. In our 
 17* 
 
198 PERSONALITY. 
 
 own day there are modes of thought which take the 
 same direction. Indeed, in all lands where revela- 
 tion has not been received, or where it has been re- 
 jected, as soon as Philosophy has thrown off Poly- 
 theism, the pendulum swinging to the other side, no 
 tendency has been more common than that towards 
 Pantheism ; to the idea not only that God is in all, 
 but that the All constitutes God, the unconscious 
 fountain of aU being ; while the transient conscious- 
 ness of man seems an exception and an intrusion in 
 the. otherwise unconscious order of things, like the 
 separate particles of air in the bubble, after a brief 
 hour breaking and dissolving into the stream of uni- 
 versal but unconscious being. It is in contrast with 
 this tendency that the Scriptures are remarkable. 
 Whatever -else is uncertain, God, in them, is a per- 
 sonal being, man is a personal being, and such they 
 shall continue through eternity. In the Scriptures, 
 truth and righteousness and holiness are not God, 
 but the attributes of God. Light and electricity and 
 the blind forces of nature are not God, but the pro- 
 ducts of his conscious will. Law and order, and the 
 succession of cause and effect, are not God ; but over 
 aU, the living God, the Lord God Omnipotent, reign- 
 eth. It is this doctrine which gives us a religion ; 
 without it religion, in any proper sense of the word, 
 is impossible. We are accountable, not to uncon- 
 scious laws, but to a personal God, who is the source 
 of all law and the judge between right and wrong. 
 We trust not in that Nature which, though called 
 gentle and kindly, is still unconscious, but in a per-, 
 sonal being who is a Father. In reading the history 
 
PEESONALITT. 199 
 
 of speculation in different lands and ages, one of the 
 most striking points is the manner in which, through 
 all the mists and fogs of human dreaming, this great 
 truth of the personality of God, thus taught in the 
 Scriptures, towers up distinct and clear, an immov- 
 able column into the sun ; nor less remarkable the 
 truth associated with it, the essential, permanent 
 personality of man. 
 
 It is of this personality of man, which is recog- 
 nized in every conscious purpose, and in every deed, 
 that I would particularly speak, and would deduce 
 from it certain practical conclusions which show 
 how the great truths of religion are connected with 
 this primary fact of man's existence. 
 
 The idea of personality implies not merely sepa- 
 rate existence, but it implies conscious thought and 
 perception, and feeling and will. Matter is not con- 
 scious, the secondary forces of nature are not con- 
 scious ; but man is not only a creature possessing 
 intelligence and power, but it is conscious intelli- 
 gence and force ; and, as showing the relation of this 
 fundamental fact to other facts, I remark, that what- 
 ever goes to constitute personality is undergoing a 
 process of development from birth to death. Every- 
 thing is adapted to bring out this personality. The 
 infant has scarcely any conscious personal exist- 
 ence ; but a thousand arrangements and adaptations 
 of Providence at once begin to arouse the sleeping 
 germ. Every pain and every pleasure makes it con- 
 scious that it has an existence separate from the 
 moving panorama around it. The blind, instinctive 
 desire to obtain objects within its reach awakens 
 
200 PERSONALITY. 
 
 intelligence, and the awakened intelligence leads to 
 the conscious will ,and endeavor to attain the object. 
 Every struggle with what is without itself, makes it 
 conscious of a power in itself; every command or 
 restriction of the parent, every moral rule which is 
 given to it, in the very effort to obay, brings'out this 
 consciousness of a personal existence. The affec- 
 tions are personal, the conscience is personal, and 
 every step in the progress of life enlarges the sphere 
 of conscious personal activity, and wears deeper the 
 channel of this individual being. 
 
 I may seem to have dwelt too long on what needs 
 explanation as little as it does defence. But I do it 
 because the greatest truths of religion are not some- 
 thing remote and foreign to us, but rest on this pri- 
 mary fact of our personal existence. 
 
 The doctrine of immortality ; — it is declared to us 
 from above ; but the elements of the immortal life 
 are in man, and belong to his personal existence. Our 
 personality does not reside in the instruments we 
 use, it does not reside in the hand or the bodily or- 
 gans, which are mine and not myself, and which may 
 aU be destroyed, still leaving untouched this con- 
 scious personal existence. 
 
 Now there are two series of facts of the most 
 opposite character, which run parallel through life. 
 Whatever belongs to a human being which is not 
 personal performs its office, and decays, and its work 
 is obviously completed here upon the earth. For 
 example, the human body, which is so adapted to 
 the soul as to awaken its energies, goes on for a time 
 growing, reaches its maturity, begins to decay, and 
 
PERSONALITY. 201 
 
 when man is prepared, or ought to be prepared, for a 
 different condition of existence, dies. But it is not 
 so with anything which constitutes man's personal 
 being. Conscience, purpose, will, are unweakened 
 by age. The conscious personal existence grows 
 more distinct with years, as if it were gathering up 
 its energies at the last, that it may be able to pass 
 through the wreck of death unharmed. .On that 
 death-bed where the man lies feebly gasping forth 
 his breath, though the senses are dimmed, though 
 the bodily organs are enfeebled, it never entered your 
 thoughts that anything that constitutes his essential 
 personality has been touched by disease, more than 
 it had been by health. Perhaps he never exhibited 
 that which was essentially personal so much as in 
 the midst of the feebleness and the pains of sickness. 
 The instruments of expression and action are crip- 
 pled, but every glimpse that breaks out reveals the 
 same personal being, and, as far as your eyes can 
 follow him into the closing shadows, it is still the 
 same being, — the essential personality, more and 
 more intensified from birth to death. I am not ar- 
 guing here in defence of the Christian doctrine of 
 immortal life, but against the vague, floating, mysti- 
 cal idea, that, in some unknown, inexplicable way, 
 the personality of man so fades out that there shall 
 be but a dim and scarcely traceable connection be- 
 tween his future condition and the present. And to 
 this I reply, that the very thing in man which lives 
 and triumphs over death is that which constitutes 
 his conscious personality; that all the discipline of 
 life has been developing this personality, and that, 
 
202 PEESONALITT. 
 
 while everything else withers and fades, and is scat- 
 tered like the dust from funeral urns, the personal 
 being exists. If the dead live again, there is no 
 transformation which affects the personal existence. 
 He who lives here is the same conscious being who 
 shall live hereafter, and all that we hope, and all that 
 we fear, are connected with this conscious person- 
 ality. 
 
 This leads immediately to the question. What is 
 the Mnd of connection between this life and the 
 next ? How far, and in what way, may we ex- 
 pect the consequences of the present life to appear 
 in the life to come ? — the question of a righteous 
 retribution. 
 
 From the nature of the case, the human mind in 
 all ages has looked forward to the disclosures of the 
 future with terrible apprehensions. Doubtless faith 
 and trust may light the gloom, and multitudes have 
 had a tranquil or enthusiastic confidence that they 
 should leave their earthly trials to enter upon a heav- 
 enly peace. But this has not been a prevailing feel- 
 ing. The timid have hung trembling over the edge 
 of the clouded and unexplored abyss ; poetry has 
 peopled the realm of woe with the pale phantoms of 
 the imagination ; remorse has filled it with the sym- 
 bols of guilt and despair. The Scriptures reveal 
 little except the simple fact that there shall be a 
 retribution on evil and on good ; that the retribution 
 shall be a righteous one ; that, under the government 
 of God, sin can never lead to anything but evil and 
 sorrow, and righteousness to peace and the Divine 
 favor. We may not be able to lift the veil which 
 
PEESONALITT. 203 
 
 hangs over the mysteries of the future, but if we read 
 man's nature by the light of revelation, we may per- 
 haps find that which shall correct some of the worst 
 errors of superstition. What the form of retribution 
 may be, or its limits, no man will venture to say. 
 The best we can say is, that it is in the hands of 
 Godj and must therefore be just in the method and 
 beneficent in the purpose. 
 
 But the personality of man suggests what it would 
 seem must, in part at least, characterize this retribu- 
 tion. The man is the same being here, and hereafter. 
 And the retribution must connect itself with what 
 constitutes his conscious, personal existence. The 
 body falls by the way, — that is not the man. Much 
 may be forgotten, but so much of memory must re- 
 main as will vindicate, and give meaning to, the 
 righteous judgments of Heaven. The sense of right 
 and wrong must remain, and a consciousness of what 
 we have been and what we are. Whatever other 
 form retribution may take, one thing would seem 
 certain. If memory is not an accuser, if conscience 
 is clear, the affections generous and pure, and faith 
 transformed into devout trust, the soul must be in 
 harmony with the Divine order. Such a soul at 
 death has dropped the infirmities and hinderances 
 of the body. Death is no winter blight, but the 
 return of spring. It is the restoration of youth 
 without the loss of the experiences of age. The 
 soul has the kingdom of heaven within it, and is 
 prepared for the offices of heaven. But, on the 
 contrary, if the moral being and the spiritual affec- 
 tions are run down and debased, if the soul has 
 
204 
 
 PERSONALITY. 
 
 withered and died in its best faculties before the 
 body, the very capacity for heaven is wahting; the 
 man is shutout from heaven by no arbitrary decree, 
 but just as one who has spoiled and darkened ^the 
 eye is shut out from noonday light. Retribution 
 comes in and through the essential laws of the soul 
 itself. Its impoverishment is its misery. It has no 
 longer the senses for a shield, nor can it forget itself 
 amidst their turbulent excitements. The man is 
 thrown back on his essential self. He will have 
 the blessedness of just so much good as there is in 
 him, — no more and no less. He has come to the 
 truth. The day of shows has gone by, and it is 
 with a man as he is. K the widow's mite represent 
 a disinterested, self-sacrificing heart, not because of 
 the mite she gives, but for the heart that prompts it, 
 she shall sit with the saints ; and though we give all 
 our goods to feed the poor, without charity it profit- 
 eth nothing. What a revolution, in that day, from 
 the mere reducing of a man back to his personality ! 
 "Wealth and poverty have ceased to exist ; past trials 
 and joys are but the storms and calms which the 
 voyager remembers, after he has reached the haven. 
 AU that is great and all that is humble in the world 
 are subjected to new measurements. The mas- 
 querade of life is over, and out of life man has 
 brought nothing but himself. There is no more 
 terrible idea of retribution than this. We escape 
 from the description of superstition and fear, but 
 here we come to a retribution which is the out- 
 growth of man's essential and permanent nature. 
 Here is something from which there is no escape. 
 
PERSONALITY. 205 
 
 ■The penalty comes with the fact that the memory- 
 is loaded with reproaches, that the affections are 
 maimed and perverted, and that the moral being 
 is below the happiness of heaven. The molten 
 floor, the lurid vault, the myriads of defiant spirits 
 which the poet describes, and, on the other hand, the 
 pictures of a paradisiacal state, seem faint and mean- 
 ingless descriptions both of heaven and of hell, com- 
 pared with that idea of retribution which is con- 
 nected indissolubly with the spiritual nature of man. 
 This fact of personality connects us not only with 
 what is sad and fearful, but with all that is brightest 
 and most hopeful in existence. Our connection with 
 the spiritual universe is not accidental. We do not 
 leave the world of the senses to enter the world of 
 spirits as aliens. The senses are accidental and 
 transient ; but that spiritual consciousness which 
 constitutes man's essential personality includes those 
 spiritual attributes which create relationship between 
 him and all spiritual agents. Nay, the very min- 
 istiies which develop the individual personality are 
 creating vital and permanent relations between moral 
 beings. There may be infinite differences in degree, 
 but there are bonds of sympathy which run through 
 all orders of moral beings. But we are not connect- 
 ed alone with spiritual intelligences who have never 
 had a home on earth. It is this fact of a permanent 
 personality which bridges over the gulf of death, and 
 connects those who are departed with those who are 
 left behind on earth. As we foUow the dead to their 
 graves, what sad and despairing questions rise in the 
 mind! Are we not separated for ever ? The mother 
 
 18 ' 
 
206 PERSONALITY. 
 
 craves, with an inappeasable longing, again to see 
 her child. In her dreams she hears its voice, and 
 throws out her arms to clasp it to her heart. What 
 is this terrible mystery of death ? Does it leave un- 
 broken the bonds of affection ? Though we may 
 remember, may not the departed forget ? Can any 
 interest in the earth survive the passage of that 
 flood ? And when we go forward in that great 
 procession of humanity, whose forward ranks mo- 
 mently melt away and disappear in the shadows, 
 even if affection remain, can there be any recognition 
 by one of another ? I confine myself here to those 
 illustrations of the Christian doctrine of immortality 
 which are derived from the fact of man's personality. 
 We come at once to a decisive consideration. All 
 consciousness of right or wrong must be connected 
 with actual fidelity or unfaithfulness. The memory, 
 which can identify us with ourselves in the past, is a 
 memory of actual events. The affections, which are 
 a part of ourselves, have been developed by special 
 objects. The personality of man has been brought 
 out through its relations with what is external to 
 itself. My consciousness of a personal existence is 
 bound up inextricably with aflections and memories, 
 with hopes and fears and moral judgments, which 
 connect us with others. Because the departed retain 
 their personal existence, they carry forward with them 
 the memories and affections which unite them with 
 those who are left behind. Nay, the very progress 
 to a higher conditioH of being only adds wisdom and 
 tenderness and purity to these spiritual ties. The 
 promise of immortality is the promise of immortality 
 
PERSONALITY. 207 
 
 to the affections. Earthly bonds are subject to dis- 
 ruption, but all true bonds which unite us with those 
 who have gone before us, though they may often 
 fade and occupy a less prominent place, can never 
 be broken. So much is sure. Amidst the changes 
 of earth we have permanent relations with heaven. 
 
 Can it be supposed for a moment that they who 
 have left us have ceased to feel an interest in what 
 is here ? Does the parent who traverses all ■yie 
 oceans of the globe lose interest, amid new occu- 
 pations, in those he has left behind, or does he not 
 rather give them a place in every new scene ? Or, 
 to take the highest example, can we imagine that 
 the Saviour has lost his interest in the welfare of a 
 world which he came to redeem ? Can we imagine 
 that the saintly men who lived and died as his dis- 
 ciples can do otherwise than rejoice at the progress 
 of truth among those who are struggling now, as 
 they once struggled, amid' the trials of earth ? It is 
 in our nature to look with peculiar tenderness and 
 interest on those who are contending with the same 
 trials through which we have passed. The increase 
 of strength and wisdom only deepens the interest. 
 And I cannot deem it an idle fancy, that they who 
 have left us, because of the new light in which they 
 dwell, regard with an interest they never felt here 
 the welfare of those whom they loved. I can believe 
 that the parent follows every wandering, halting step 
 of a child with a love which heaven has only purified, 
 and that every virtue and every trial borne weU on 
 earth sends a ray of happiness upward into heaven. 
 
 From the side of these graves whose ranks cover 
 
208 PERSONALITY. 
 
 the earth, what myriads are looking up, through their 
 tears, to the silent skies, as if they were bereaved of 
 all that can make life precious to them. Can we 
 believe that no eyes look down into this realm of 
 trial and sorrow ? Shall we not rather believe that 
 the transient bereavement is an eternal possession, 
 that death is only purifying these earthly bonds that 
 they may be more lasting, and that, if we give heed 
 t(^the teachings of the past, and to what we know 
 must be the prayers for us of those who are now in 
 heaven, and if we cherish in ourselves that spirit 
 which creates and preserves aiEnities between us 
 and them, death, thotigh it bring them not back 
 to us, shall take us to them ? As we stand by the 
 death-bed, the room is full of gloom and sadness, 
 and dropping tears, because of the soul that departs. 
 A few years more, and you may lie on the same bed, 
 and around you shall be the same scene of grief and 
 gloom. Yet when your closing eyes of flesh have 
 looked their last farewell, the eyes of the spirit shall 
 behold another presence, and the one you mourned 
 may be the one to welcome and guide you into the 
 opening light. 
 
 I have dwelt on this fact of man's personality, of 
 course not for its own sake, but because it leads to 
 other facts, the most momentous and sublime. The 
 mere fact that we are to live, that this human soul 
 amidst all changes is to preserve its individual being, 
 introduces us into an immortal existence, and unites 
 us with all spiritual beings. It is this which makes 
 sin, which is the debasement of one's essential self, 
 the greatest of all woes, the only hopeless evil. It is 
 
PERSONALITY. 209 
 
 this which identifies righteousness and piety with 
 every reasonable hope that we can cherish. A 
 righteous, merciful, and Christian soul need fear no 
 evil. It may pass through trials, may be subjected 
 to needed discipline, but shall fear no evil. The 
 laws of the Almighty are on its side. Good beings 
 rejoice in its fidelity, and in life and in death it may 
 put unwavering trust in God. 
 
 18* 
 
SERMON XV. 
 
 UNKESERVED OBEDIENCE. 
 
 THERE WAS A MAN OF THE PHAKISEES, NAMED NICODEMUS, A KDL- 
 EK OF THE JEWS. THE SAME CAME TO JESUS BT NIGHT, AND 
 SAID UNTO HIM, BABBI, WE KNOW THAT THOU AHT A TEACHEK 
 SENT FROM GOD ; FOR NO MAN CAN DO THESE MIRACLES WHICH 
 THOU DOEST EXCEPT GOD BE WITH HIM. — John iu. 1, 2. 
 
 NicoDEMus is mentioned three times in the New 
 Testament. On each occasion he is spoken of as 
 one who came to Jesus by night. The first occasion 
 is the one referred to in the text. The second is 
 when the chief priests and rulers are endeavoring to 
 excite the people against Jesus, and to destroy him. 
 The third time is when, with others, he meets to em- 
 balm the body of the crucified Saviour. But in each 
 case, as something that in a word disclosed his char- 
 acter, he is described as " he who came to Jesus by 
 night." He believed that Jesus was the Messiah, 
 but dared not publicly avow that belief. JHe wished 
 to stand on that ground where he could secure all 
 the advantages of a follower of Christ, and, at the 
 same time, lose none of his favor with the people. 
 His better feelings and principles led him to the side 
 of the Saviour; but these were not sufficient to 
 
UNEESEKVBD OBEDIENCE. 211 
 
 make him take a decided stand. When Jesus is 
 pursued for his destruction by the chief priests and 
 rulers, he is too much of a timeserver to espouse an 
 unpopular cause. As far, indeed, as he can do it 
 without implicating himself, he endeavors to allay 
 the passions of the priests and rulers ; but he is 
 hushed by the first whispered suspicion, that he may 
 himself be one of these Galileans. He appears not 
 in the judgment haU of Pilate in defence of inno- 
 cence ; nor is he among those who stand at the foot 
 of the cross. But when the trial is past, the cruci- 
 fixion over, the multitude dispersed, he comes for- 
 ward from his retirement, to show a comparatively 
 safe reverence for the Saviour by aiding in his em- 
 balmment. He would gladly be a follower of Christ; 
 but he was still more anxious not to lose, the respect 
 of the people, his place in the Sanhedrim, his name 
 and standing in his nation. As far as was consist- 
 ent with retaining these, he would give up all to 
 Christ ; but these he could not give up. He had 
 neither the manliness nor the conscience to give up 
 all to the right. He was one of those who espouse 
 a good cause earnestly when the sun shines, but 
 when a cloud comes over, retreat and cannot be 
 heard of. 
 
 Such a character is deserving of the deepest com- 
 miseration. It is not all evil. There is much sen- 
 sitiveness of conscience, much love of truth and 
 right. But they are not sufiicient to lead him to 
 make many sacrifices to them. The world has 
 looked with contempt on such a character, not be- 
 cause it is altogether bad, — for a feeble conscience 
 
312 UNEESBKVED OBEDIENCE. 
 
 is better than none at aU, — but because it is weak 
 and unmanly. Nicodemus believed in Christ. How 
 much happier had he been, had he said, I will be 
 faithful to my convictions, I will give an entire and 
 unreserved obedience to what I believe to be right. 
 Then should he have stood before the world as a 
 Paul or a John, scarcely behind the first of the Apos- 
 tles, instead of being an example to all generations 
 of weakness and pusillanimity. 
 
 But this half obedience to God is not occasioned 
 solely by the fear of man. It has as many different 
 forms and causes as there are different passions and 
 objects of pursuit. One man will give an unreserved 
 obedience to God, as far as is consistent with his 
 good standing in the world. Another makes, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, a different reservation. 
 He will give an unreserved obedience, — he wiU only 
 except some single pagsion, appetite, or habit. Such 
 was the case with the young man who came to 
 Jesus and sought "what good thing he should do 
 that he might inherit eternal life." He had kept the 
 commandments; and Jesus beholding him — behold- 
 ing his many excellent qualities — loved him ; but 
 he saw also the real defect in him, his worldliness ; 
 and, to make it apparent to the young man, he 
 says, — referring to the persecuting spirit of the day, 
 which made it almost impossible to retain his world- 
 ly advantages and avow himself a Christian, — " One 
 thing thou lackest, — if thou wouldst be perfect, go 
 and sell all thou hast, and give to the poor, and come 
 and follow me." That is, it is as if he had said 
 generally, Can you, if usefulness, if duty require, 
 
UNEESBRVED OBBDIBIirCE. 213 
 
 give up all you possess ? Is your love of right as 
 strong as your love of worldly prosperity ? The 
 young man felt it was not. He could do everything 
 but this. This test-question had revealed to him 
 the weak part of his character. He could obey God 
 entirely, until it came to the sacrifice of his worldly 
 gains. And he went away sorrowing, for he had 
 great possessions. Then said Jesus, " How hardly 
 shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
 God." So insidiously and easily do they gain do- 
 minion over the soul. 
 
 The difficulty with this young man was in princi- 
 ple precisely the same as that of Nicodemus. Both, 
 to a certain extent, valued what was good and ex- 
 cellent. Both desired to obey God. " Almost were 
 they persuaded to be Christians." But between 
 that " almost " and entirely, how deep and wide 
 the gulf! 
 
 My discourse at this time is contained in these 
 narratives. I have brought them forward to show 
 the importance of taking a decided stand on Chris- 
 tian principle, — by that to live, by that to die ; 
 the importance of giving not a half obedience, — an 
 obedience limited by pleasure, or ease, or passion, or 
 worldly interest, — but an entire and imqaalified obe- 
 dience to duty, to conscience, or that which contains 
 all in itself, to the will of God. 
 
 The character of Nicodemus is not rare or excep- 
 tional. Now, and at all times, there are multitudes 
 who would probably describe themselves as halting 
 on this middle ground ; — half men of principle and 
 half not, — knowing and approving what is right, 
 
214 UNKESERVED OBEDIENCE. 
 
 but doing what is wrong, — wavering between wish 
 and will, between a religious and irreligious life, — 
 repenting to-day of that which they will be agair 
 guilty of to-morrow, — wishing that they might be 
 religious men, yet hesitating to become such, — lov- 
 ing what is right and good, and seeking it except 
 with the reseryation of some passion, or habit, or 
 interest, — standing where ^ the Jewish ruler did, 
 undecided and weak, needing to take but a single 
 decisive step forward to be almost perfect men, yet 
 hesitating to take it. Upon such, I would urge the 
 need of taking this decided step forward in the 
 Christian course. 
 
 It might seem sufficient to say, what all acknowl- 
 edge, that it is a duty. But it is not only the first 
 of all duties, — the fundamental one, — embracing all 
 others. It is a duty, the neglect of which is followed 
 by results which show the essential place it holds in 
 a rightly ordered life. It is necessary to any stable 
 peace of mind. K one of generally good desires 
 and purposes fails .to take this decided step, he 
 dooms himself, almost of necessity, to the loss of 
 all inward composure, and of that tranquillity which 
 comes from the consciousness of fidelity to one's 
 convictions. 
 
 The case of Nicodemus is but an example of all 
 who waver between good and evil. His convictions, 
 his better feelings, would make him a follower of the 
 Saviour. As night, with its obscurity and solitude, 
 comes, he seeks him out ; he listens to his teachings ; 
 he believes ; and very likely thinks that henceforth 
 he will no longer waver, — will espouse his cause. 
 
UNRESERVED OBEDIENCE. 215 
 
 But the morning returns, and all is changed. In its 
 light the honors of life glitter again, and the voices 
 of those he fears are around him. He meets in the 
 street the lordly Pharisee, the scorning Sadducee, — 
 he sits in the Sanhedrim with the wise and noble of 
 his nation. How shall he avow before them his 
 adoption of a faith which they all hold in contempt ? 
 How can he give up the respect he has toiled all his 
 life to gain, and take shame for honor, and infamy 
 for applause ? He will wait till the morrow. Some- 
 thing may occur which may render it safe to proclaim 
 himself a believer in the Galilean. He leaves the 
 crowd, and in retirement his better feelings gain once 
 more the ascendency. Thus is he tossed to arid fro, 
 — not daring to be a man, — not daring to appear as 
 he is, — not daring to think of himself lest he should 
 despise himself. Thus life goes on, and when its 
 last hours approach, and its prizes fade, there is one 
 thought which, above all other thoughts, presses on 
 his soul, — that he has feared man more than God, — 
 that he has sacrificed his best principles and convic- 
 tions to the distinctions which man can give. He 
 has had no peace in life, and in death he is full (5f 
 shame and self-reproach and fear. So with the 
 young man to whose history I refer. If the question 
 of the Saviour does not lead him to take a step for- 
 ward, — if he do not say with truth, " I will rejoice 
 to know ray duty, and if its performance should in- 
 volve the sacrifice of all those possessions which I 
 have so much prized, the sacrifice shall be cheer- 
 fully made," — there can henceforth be no peace 
 within him. The good and the evil principle will 
 
216 UNRESERVED OBEDIENCE. 
 
 carry on perpetual war "jn his soul, till one or the 
 other is annihilated. He may be useful and hon- 
 ored for his many virtues, and loved for his amiable 
 qualities ; but after aU, in the secret consciousness of 
 his own soul he feels that something is hollow and 
 unsound. After all, there is something which he 
 loves more than duty. The god that rules in his 
 soul is not the true God. And while this remains 
 so, just in proportion to his other good qualities, to 
 his love of what is right and holy, will be his inward 
 self-reproach and remorse and fear. 
 
 How these men would relieve themselves from 
 the misery of life, could they but bring themselves 
 to tak^ one more step forward, and say in truth, and 
 practically : " I stand no more on this middle ground, 
 compounding for sins I love by virtues which I am 
 not tempted to violate. I take the stand which con- 
 science requires. I will give an unreserved obedi- 
 ence to God." Let him take this ground practically 
 and faithfully, and he may be stripped of all his 
 honors, and be despised by those whose applause he 
 courted; he may be poorer than the poorest, and 
 have no place to lay his head ; but a glory from 
 heaven shall rest on him, and he shall stand erect 
 before men and angels. 
 
 Could we lay open human hearts, and trace out all 
 their hidden causes of uneasiness and unhappiness, 
 we should probably find that a vast proportion origi- 
 nates in this unfaithfulness. We should find that 
 the man had not taken this stand, that he did not 
 give an unreserved obedience to duty and to God. 
 "We should find, however the life might be in the 
 
UNRESERVEB OBEDIENCE. 217 
 
 man, that there was some passion, some habit, some 
 interest, some object of desire, and some sin, which 
 was not yet brought under the dominion of duty. 
 We should find the man, by specious, but even to 
 himself unsatisfactory sophisms, striving to recon- 
 cile the indulgence with the duty. But unable to 
 do this, he is filled with perpetual misgiving and 
 self'reproach. "Were you to charge him with wrong- 
 doing, he would deny it, and defend himself; but in 
 the silence of liis heart his conscience is mightier 
 than his logic, and scatters like chaff his sophisms, 
 and with unceasing voice says to him, " Thou art 
 faithless." And who can stand up before the con- 
 demnation of his own conscience ? 
 
 And through what can a man not go who has 
 surrendered himself, without one reserve or after- 
 thought, to do and bear the wiU of God? How 
 does the spirit of unreserved obedience exalt and 
 strengthen characters naturally weak and of quite 
 an ordinary quality! It has been the custom, not 
 to go beyond our Protestant history, to treat con- 
 temptuously the feeble and faltering courage of 
 Cranmer. And yet the final, though almost en- 
 forced, consecration of himself to his duty, has ffone 
 far in the estimation of mankind to cover over his 
 lifelong weakness. And in his own case, how, even 
 in the last extremity, his guilty hand in the flames, 
 — how did the simple, though too long-delayed, de- 
 termination to abide by truth and right, give him a 
 peace of mind which he had not known when bask- 
 ing in a monarch's favor ! I hear one of far nobler 
 stamp, Sir Thomas Moore, with death as the 
 
 19 
 
218 UNEESBRVED OBEDIENCE. 
 
 alternative of his choice, say, " It is not necessary 
 for me to live, bat it is necessary to speak the truth." 
 1 remember the faithful men who have thought the 
 soul's integrity better than life ; and I acknowledge 
 the nobleness of a character which has taken its stand 
 on the eternal laws of right and God. He stands 
 strong who keeps a pure conscience. He who has 
 cast out the last bosom sin, and said with truth, "I 
 will strive to give an unreserved obedience to God," 
 has little to fear in life, and nothing in death. Peace 
 attends him alike in palaces and in dungeons. The 
 only two powers that could greatly mar his peace 
 are his friends, — his conscience and his God. 
 
 I have said that the want of taking this decided 
 stand robs one of peace. But finally a stand must 
 be taken. In time, either duty on the one hand, or 
 interest, passion, habit, bosom sin, on the other, will 
 gain an undisturbed ascendency. Nicodemus will 
 overcome his undue anxiety about popular favor, or 
 will give up the ineffectual struggle ; and the young 
 man will conquer his controlling love of gain, or will 
 be conquered by it, — and wiU bow down, the sub- 
 ject of Mammon. Just so will it now be with one 
 likAihem. For a time, if there is any sensitiveness 
 of conscience, there will be great inward urieasiness 
 and unhappiness. But, by and by, the man takes a 
 step forward in the right way and places duty on the 
 throne, or the bosom sin or prevailing interest gradu- 
 ally acquires more and more authority. And then, 
 too often, follows a life of moral paralysis. It has 
 been remarked sometimes with surprise, how com- 
 mon it is for men whose general characters are good 
 
UNRESERVED OBEDIENCE. 219 
 
 to make no progress in goodness. Years pass, and 
 there is no perceptible advance. We know that 
 goodness is a living thing. If it really have domin- 
 ion in the heart, it must certainly, though it be 
 gradually, temper all the passions, give higher aims 
 to life, purify the affections, and constantly elevate 
 the whole man. Take ten, twenty years, and it 
 will be seen the man has been ascending morally. 
 His falls are less frequent, and his good feelings and 
 efforts more spontaneous and habitual. And yet are 
 there not many who keep on the same level ? What 
 is the reason ? I will not say that it is always so, 
 but let us ask ourselves, may it not be that, though 
 there be the general purpose of leading a Christian 
 life, there is some reserve made, consciously or un- 
 consciously, in favor of some interest, habit, or bosom 
 sin. If this be the case, it will account for the want 
 of all religious growth. It scarcely matters whether 
 the sin be small or great, — it may be some passion, 
 habit, interest, or indulgence which holds but a small 
 place in our lives, and may by the world be un- 
 marked. If it exist within us, and we know it, no 
 matter what otherwise may be our virtues, this one 
 bosom sin will finally poison our whole rrioral being. 
 That one loose plank may sink the mightiest ship 
 that ever floated on the seas. Such a man's first 
 step onward must be over this sin of which he is 
 conscious. It may be but taking a mote out of the 
 eye, — it may be cutting off the right hand, — but 
 that sin must be put away or he wiU stand still in 
 his Christian course. But worse than this, through 
 the implications of society and habit, through the 
 
220 -DNRESBEVBD OBEDIENCE. 
 
 love of consistency, one such sin retaining its mas- 
 tery may drag the whole character down to its own 
 level. If one who purposes generally to lead a 
 Christian life leaves one part of his character under 
 subjection to other principles, if he consciously lives 
 in the practice of one sin, it is to be feared that 
 gradually all his other virtues will decline. If one 
 purposes generally to be a good man, this sin will 
 constantly recur to him, and will bring perpetual 
 self-reproach. The thought of moral or religious 
 progress will come to be associated with conquests 
 over it. All else is easy. There must be the place 
 of struggle, — and if he fail there, he yields up, and 
 is dispirited and lost. 
 
 It is as in the siege of some fortified place. There 
 is always some point on which the main force of the 
 assault is made 'to bear. To the casual spectator 
 during peaceful days, it might seem altogether un- 
 conspicuous and unimportant, — a projecting angle 
 in a line ai wall, — a slight depression or elevation in 
 the chain of defences, — a low-lying embankment, 
 scarcely visible at a distance above the level field ; 
 but it. is discovered that there is the key of the 
 fortress. Towards that point, in closing circles, the 
 trenches mine their midnight approaches. Gn every 
 hill and ridge low mounds of earth spring up, behind 
 which are dragged forward and mounted the dread 
 artillery .of war. In the rear, column behind column 
 is prepared for the assault. At the appointed hour 
 the batteries of an empire pour on this devoted spot 
 their iron hail. Earth and air blaze with horrors ; 
 through the murky day and the black niidnight 
 
UNRESERVED OBEDIENCE. 221 
 
 rages and roars the tempest of fire ; all else is 
 neglected; every sentinel on the farthest outpost, 
 every wounded soldier who can drag himself to a 
 neighboring height, the awe-struck peasant on the 
 distant hills, watches how on that point" goes the 
 day. And when, under cover of smoke and fire and 
 the wildest fury of war, the columns of attack move 
 silently and swiftly on to plunge into the terrors that 
 gird and guard a few rods of the shattered wall, every 
 one knows that the hour of decision has come ; in 
 that narrow breach, choked with dead and dying, is 
 decided the fate of armies and of empires. Such a 
 contest must go on in the heart of every man who 
 desires to be a Christian, and yet has reserved some 
 bosom sin as an exception to his Christian life. That 
 is the key to his character. Against that weak point 
 will be directed the assault of all the powers of evil, 
 and there he contends for moral life or death. 
 
 Thus often it is true, almost in its fullest literal 
 sense, that which is asserted in the strong expression 
 of Scripture, — " Whosoever shall keep the whole 
 law, and yet ofl'end in one point, is guilty of all." 
 It is true in a double sense. He is guilty by allow- 
 ing the moral sense to be dragged down to the level 
 of the sin ; — and guilty, though he does not practi- 
 cally violate all duties, inasmuch as he shows that in 
 any moral conflict there is some passion, interest, or 
 habit stronger than his regard for duty, and whose 
 bidding, in spite of his fancied reverence for God, 
 he will ultimately obey. If he does not violate all 
 duties, it is because they do not interfere with the 
 exacting despotism of the presiding principle. They 
 
 19* 
 
222 TJNEBSERVBD OBEDIENCE. 
 
 exist on sufferance, not with authority of their own. 
 But oftentimes it will go farther, and vitiate the 
 whole practice of the man. To return to the cases 
 cited from the Gospel history. Both of these men 
 loved what was true and good, but there was some- 
 thing they loved more. And that governing princi- 
 ple was strong enough to cause them both to shrink 
 from adopting Christianity. And whatever else had 
 interfered with the governing principle would have 
 been sacrificed in the same way. How often do 
 we see some single sin, some passion indulged to 
 excess, some habit not under subjection to duty, 
 grow and swell till finally it envelops the whole 
 character and presses out its life ! 
 
 There is but one safe, one right course. It is for 
 us to do what .we feel that Nicodemus and the young 
 man needed to do, in order to complete their charac- 
 ters, — to say in truth, as the first thing, I will in 
 all cases seek what is right, and I will strive faith- 
 fully to give an unreserved and unqualified obedience 
 to the will of God. There shall be no reservation, 
 no sin hid away in my bosom, no false pretences to 
 myself; all, at least in purpose, shall be clear and 
 straightforward, and in the sunshine. 
 
 He that takes this stand in earnest has begun the 
 true Christian life. It is a course of progress and 
 growth. He has life in himself. His defects, his 
 habits, his affections, his passions, will be gradually 
 subdued, and his whole character be elevated. His 
 life will not be spent in miserable and torturing 
 calculations as to how far he may venture on ques- 
 tionable ground. He will not have to palter with 
 
UNKESEEVED OBEDIENCE. 223 
 
 his duty, and exhaust his intellect in framing de- 
 fences before the bar of his conscience for wrong- 
 doing. Whatever else he may have to sacrifice, 
 he has gained solid ground on which to stand, — 
 he has cast off the heaviest weights that oppressed 
 his conscience; before .him is an ascending road, 
 and above him the opening heavens. 
 
 The taking of this step of which I have spoken 
 is the most important event of life. Till it is taken, 
 life, for all its most important moral purposes, has 
 been nearly wasted. If you have not taken this 
 step, your years may be many or few, but you 
 have yourselves felt the necessity of it. In the 
 midst of weakness within, and temptations from 
 without, you have felt that it is not safe for you 
 to trust to accident or to your companions for your 
 virtue.. Something deeper and more fixed is wanting 
 than this, — some solid ground, — some principle on 
 which you can stand when all worldly calculations 
 and interests cease to sustain your virtue. Take 
 then that ground, — the ground alike of manliness 
 and Christian virtue, which your own conscience 
 requires, and which, if you would be a good man, 
 must be taken, — that firgt of all you will seek what 
 is right, and that, by the aid of Heaven, that shall be 
 done ; that neither ease nor passion nor the solici- 
 tations of companions shall make you swerve from it, 
 or desert your footing on this rock. You need not 
 do it loudly, nor with many professions. Only do it. 
 Do it with the silent determinations of your heart, 
 with meditation and prayer to God, and you shall 
 have begun on that course which ends in all that 
 
224 UNRESERVED OBEDIENCE. 
 
 is manly, virtuous, and noble in Christian character. 
 Do this, and all is safe which is of any permanent 
 vsrorth on earth, or in heaven. Do this, and you shall 
 not need, when years advance, and decay has already 
 begun, to repent of misspent years, and to drag out 
 your remaining days in despairing efforts to undo 
 all your tastes and habits and hopes and affections, 
 but you shall look back on a path bright from the 
 beginning. 
 
 To put the lesson of the text in a more practical 
 form. To the ambitious man I' would say. Can you, 
 if duty require, make a cheerful sacrifice of your 
 ambitious hopes ? Let him who is occupied with 
 business say. Am I ready to gain and use property 
 in entire subjection to Christian duty ? To those 
 with strong passions and appetites I would say, 
 Are you ready to deny them as soon as the law 
 of God requires ? To all I would say, Ask your 
 own hearts, have you no bosom sin that is loved 
 more than duty ? no passion stronger than your 
 purpose to obey the will of God? This question 
 is one which, if we have not asked it already, we 
 must soon, with most anxious hearts, ask ourselves. 
 How soon that time raay.be, we know not. But 
 the sickness of the young and the decay of age 
 warn us that it may be soon. The changes of life, 
 and death that strides in and lays his finger of ice 
 on the foreheads of the companions and friends at 
 our side, warn us, in the midst of so much which is 
 uncertain, to cleave to what will not fail. "When we 
 pause in our worldly careers, and dwell for a moment 
 on the changes that take place at our very side, and 
 
UNRESERVED OBEBIENCB. 225 
 
 remember that ■*ve too are mortal and accountable, 
 it seems as if the only question that could greatly 
 interest us must be as to how far our lives have been 
 in accordance with, and in subjection to, the will of 
 God. Here then, on the solid ground of Christian 
 principle, let us take our stand, resolving with the 
 help of Heaven to surrender our lives to the Divine 
 law, — no longer to waver between good and evil, 
 between earth and heaven, but to bind our hearts 
 to the perfect law of God. 
 
SERMON XVI, 
 
 A PASSING WORLD LEAVES PERMANENT 
 IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 rOK THE THINGS WHICH ABE SEEN ARE TBMPOKAt, BUT THE THINGS 
 WHICH ARE NOT SEEN ARE ETERNAL. — 2 Cor. iv. 18. 
 
 A STRIKING illustration of the way in which ex- 
 tremes may meet is seen in the common tendency 
 of religious men, and of irreligious and worldly men, 
 to disjoin the temporal and spiritual worlds. 
 
 The man of the world has said, These things of 
 the spiritual life are too vague and shadowy for me ; 
 it is only in this visible world that I find tangible 
 realities. He breaks the connecting link between 
 the world of business and the world of religion, by 
 viewing and treating the latter as a mere shadowy, 
 unsubstantial delusion. On the other hand, the 
 general tone of religious teaching has been : This 
 world is transient, its interests momentary, all must 
 soon pass away; disregard it, therefore, hold it 
 lightly, trample it under foot ; if it may be, divorce 
 yourself from its labors and interests. The promi- 
 nent idea which theologians have urged is, that the 
 things which are seen of this world are unimportant, 
 because they are transient. But suppose the world 
 
A PASSING WORLD, ETC. 227 
 
 does pass away, name and fame and gain, what 
 then ? If in its passage it leave indelible impres- 
 sions on the soul, if it determine lasting qualities of 
 character, its importance to man is almost infinite, 
 like the duration of its influence. The fire that con- 
 sumes a city goes out in a single night ; the hurricane 
 that dismantles and wrecks a fleet is lulled to rest, 
 like the sobbings of a child, with the coming of morn- 
 ing ; but though flame and storm pass away, who 
 measures their importance by their transitory charac- 
 ter ? Years will elapse, and still families will lan- 
 guish-in poverty, or mourn the loss of some one 
 buried in the sea, because of that brief night. 
 
 The real question respecting this world is not 
 whether it be or be not transient, but what are the re- 
 sults of its influences. This is the point on which 
 the Apostle dwells. Unlike the theologian, who would 
 treat this world as nothing, or the worldly man, who 
 would make it everything, the Apostle Paul goes at 
 once to the true point, and shows that, while this 
 world is transient, it is shaping the destinies of what 
 is eternal, and is of corresponding importance. Our 
 afflictions are but for a moment, but they may work 
 out an exceeding and eternal weight of glory. The 
 outward man may perish, and the inward man be 
 renewed day by day. " And we know," he says, 
 " that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dis- 
 solved, we have a building of God, an house not 
 made with hands, eternal in the heavens." That is, 
 this world, fleeting as it is, may help the soul to a 
 permanent, eternal, spiritual good. The lesson which 
 the Apostle inculcates then is, not merely that the 
 
228 A PASSING WOJILI) 
 
 world is or is not transitory, but that this passing 
 world leaves permanent ; impressions. This world 
 which fleets by as a cloud or stream, changing and 
 vanishing while we look, leaves impressions on the 
 soul that have the seal and stamp of immortality. 
 Here is a principle much more important for us to 
 consider than the transitory character of life. Tran- 
 sient as the world is, it is a school in which the soul 
 is taking lessons for etprjiity. , 
 
 The things that' are unseen are the things which 
 are eternal. That which lasts, is not that which the 
 eye sees. Hovel and palace alike crumble. Wealth, 
 though piled high as mountains, is in k few gen- 
 erations dissolved into dust. Works of genius, de- 
 cay consumes them, mould touches the canvas, fire 
 turns the marble into lime, and the glory of ages is 
 a mere legend. The human body dies, and its ashes 
 are scattered on the winds and streams. Nations 
 and languages and the firmest institutions of man 
 perish away. What is permanent? Nothing that 
 the eye looks upon. But hid by this veil of the 
 senses is what endures. Behind all, concealed by it 
 from our mortal eyes, is the spiritual world. The 
 works of God change and pass away, but God him- 
 self remains for ever. And he has made the soul to 
 be the sharer in his own immortality. And all its 
 qualities are permanent. Truth and justice and love 
 endure. Holiness will remain undimmed, when the 
 light of the stars shall expire. Nor less when the 
 soul has degraded itself does it exist for ever. The 
 things unseen only are eternal. All else passes 
 away, changes, and perishes. The real value of all 
 
LEAVES PERMANENT IMPRESSIONS. 229 
 
 we possess, then, must depend on its relations to the 
 soul, and the unseen things of the spiritual world. 
 And here we see how. 
 
 Again, this world may be of infinite importance 
 to us, however transitory in itself. While this world 
 passes away, it leaves permanent impressions on 
 what lasts for ever. This is the great law of God, — 
 that in a changing world, and by its aid, the soul is 
 trained for an immortal life. Take those who have 
 arrived at middle age, and all that was their world in 
 early life has gone Wke a dream. Their companions 
 are scattered, or are no more ; the scenes in which 
 they lived are changed ; death has broken the bond 
 of kindred ; parents are, perhaps, in their graves ; 
 their early homes are in the hands of strangers, or 
 fallen into decay till the very hearth-stones cannot 
 be found. The fields and trees and waters are no 
 longer the same, and the places that knew them 
 once know them no more. All is changed and 
 gone ; and yet not gone, but by a strange alchemy 
 transmuted into a spiritual form, and left imperish- 
 ably in the soul. All these things have left perma- 
 nent impressions behind them, which not even death 
 and a change of worlds can efiace. You are what 
 you are, because the transient influences of that 
 home were what they were. Those that there loved 
 you, though dead, yet speak. In the purer tastes of 
 your heart, the tastes nurtured in your home linger. 
 In the impulse to duty, your mother's voice is heard. 
 The just and generous purpose is not so much yours, 
 as the reviving in you of a father's liberality and 
 magnanimity. In the ear of memory, and mingling 
 
 20 
 
230 _ A PASSING WORLD 
 
 with its best thoughts, the leaves of the trees which 
 spread their arch over your childhood still whisper, 
 and the fire-light glows on the hearth, and the sky of 
 that early time, with its clouds and its stars, still 
 shines. The words of parents were lost in the air, 
 their lips have long been silent ; but the notions of 
 duty and the conceptions of providence taught by 
 those fleeting words have entered into the soul to 
 abide there for ever, — the perpetual miracle, — a 
 transient breath nurturing an eternal principle. 
 
 A changeable world makes permanent impres- 
 sions. The aged man relates the events of his early 
 manhood. He was prosperous, he met with reverses, 
 he endured hardships, he had competitions, and 
 struggles, and joys, and disappointments ; but all 
 have now gone. To him even they seem afar oflF, 
 and he speaks of them as the mariner in the home 
 of old age tells the events of some long-past voyage. 
 They have gone, and yet not one of these events 
 but has left a print on the soul. He is what he now 
 is, because of what he then did or forbore. The 
 way in which he met transient temptations, passing 
 duties, left a stamp, left a mark in his soul for ever. 
 Geologists have discovered in the rocks footprints 
 of a huge race of birds, which had perished from the 
 earth before the first roaming savage had passed 
 through the wilderness. The transient footprints 
 were made in a soil which yielded like clay, but the 
 soil hardened into stone, and stiU preserves, in what 
 is now the solid rock, the impressions. So joys and 
 sorrows, self-denials and self-indulgences, and trials 
 and labors, though they themselves pass away, all 
 
LEAVES PERMANENT IMPRESSIONS. 231 
 
 make their impressions on the yielding heart of man, 
 and the heart hardens, and retains them, and will re- 
 tain them for ever. 
 
 A passing world leaves permanent impressions. 
 You may have seen the dry bed of some river, whose 
 channel has been changed. The waters no longer 
 flow between their ancient banks. They have passed 
 away ; yet there are still the shelves of sand, hardly 
 covered by vegetation, and there are the rocks worn 
 smooth and round by the constant motion of the 
 waters, and there they will remain. The tide of 
 ocean rises and sinks ; the waves dash up against 
 the rock-bound coast, and are beat back, and disap- 
 pear in the mighty abyss of the seas. -It is inces- 
 sant change, the type and image of. the transient, 
 and yet their impressions are left on all the dark 
 length of the cliffs. Not only on the sandy shore 
 are they found, but in the sides of these rocky walls 
 
 ' the waves have worn fissures and caves, where the 
 waters dash and foam, and the echoes resound, and 
 the sea-birds scream for ever. ~So do the flowing 
 streams, the breaking seas of time, wear, into the 
 ever-during heart of man, and leave impressions for 
 eternity. 
 
 A changing world makes permanent impressions. 
 How much that at the time passes away and is for- 
 gotten as of no moment casts seeds of sorrow or 
 joy into the heart, which bear fruit as long as one's 
 being lasts ! The transient petulances and unkind- 
 nesses in a family may seem of little consequence ; 
 it may be but an unkind word, which passes away 
 
 ' on the wind, and is heard no more ; but it leaves its 
 
232 A PASSING WORLD 
 
 impression, and if often repeated leaves an indelible 
 impression, on the tempers both of those who speak 
 and those who hear. In time such words irritate 
 and alienate, and chill the affections, till the mem- 
 bers of the same household cease to look to each 
 other for sympathy, and, whUe they dwell together, 
 are no longer one. Whence does a child get its in- 
 delible respect for truth, and justice, and generosity, 
 and piety ? It is by seeing those around it, in com- 
 mon acts, in daily duties, just and kind and true and 
 reverential. Unawares, and unthought of, in this 
 common daylight of passing events, these immortal 
 qualities have been daguerreotyped on the heart. 
 There are many duties which belong to you to do, 
 but ease, convenience, self-indulgence, are in the 
 way, and you say. These dtities are of small account; 
 the world will go on without ray giving myself this 
 trouble. Yes, the world will go on, and none of us' 
 are so important but what both mankind and Provi- 
 dence could dispense with us altogether. But there 
 is something else also which wiU go on. This 
 yielding to a self-indulgent love of pleasure, or ease, 
 to the neglect of the most trifling thing that you 
 know to be a duty, will make you more selfish and 
 more self-indulgent. A debasing pleasure passes 
 away before the lamps which witnessed it burn out, 
 but it leaves behind on the soul a stain which does 
 not pass away. Perhaps it is a youth who says : 
 " These pleasures are not precisely right. I should 
 not like to have these things generally known of me. 
 I should not like a habit of the kind, but they will 
 do no great harm, if I indulge myself. Why should I 
 
LEAVES PERMANENT IMPRESSIONS. 233 
 
 not ? " I -will tell you why. It is not because you 
 will certainly form a corrupt habit. It is not be- 
 cause you will lose caste, nor be troubled by re- 
 morse, for many persons, unawares, get below the 
 level of remorse. He that can feel a true remorse is 
 not far from the kingdom of heaven. But the rea- 
 son is this. Vicious indulgences degrade the char- 
 acter ; they lower the tone of feeling, of thought, of 
 moral judgment. The heart is chilled down to the 
 temperature of that stream of vicious pleasure in 
 which it is bathed. The early dissipations may 
 come to an end and pass away, but they leave their 
 mark. Their influence is seen years after, in a 
 coarser and more self-indulgent tone of feeling, in 
 intolerant and suspicious judgments, in a general 
 lowering of the character. The vicious dissipations 
 may be left behind, but nothing but repentance and 
 Heaven's mercy can efface the debasing stains which 
 they have left. Why, according to your opportu- 
 nity, should you be generous, true, ready to do your 
 full part in all good works ? Because the not being 
 so will leave your character poor, and thin, and nar- 
 row, and sordid. Because, cover it up as much as 
 you can, that will be your doom, and because you 
 cannot afford to lose your one chance of being a 
 just, liberal, true-hearted man. You must be so, not 
 only because each act influences others, but because 
 it reacts on yourself to confirm the spirit which 
 prompted it. The revengeful act may or may not 
 harm another, but it wiil certainly sink that bad pas- 
 sion deeper into your own heart. A self-denying 
 labor or generous help may or may not fail of its 
 
 20* 
 
234 A PASSING WORLD 
 
 outward end, but it will strengthen the generous 
 sentiment within you. The trains of thought, the 
 merest day-dreams in which one indulges, though 
 transitory as dreams, like a healthful or sickly cli- 
 mate, leave behind the seeds of health or disease. 
 Useful labors, and generous self-denials, put vigor 
 and fortitude and generosity into the souk The 
 temptations of business faithfully met, leave behind 
 a higher rectitude. The days of trial in a home, the 
 watchings &nd anxieties and mutual cares and com- 
 mon griefs soon themselves pass away, but, faithfully 
 met, they leave behind, in the souls of all, stronger 
 affections and a holier and immortal faith. The 
 world passes away, but in passing nourishes what is 
 lasting, as the transient sunshine and shower nour- 
 ish the twig which shall outlive a century of such 
 changes, growing up into an oak, whose broad arms 
 hang out a shadow in the summer's heat, and defy 
 the tempests that beat upon the shore, and bear the 
 thunders and the power of a nation across the seas. 
 It is this view which gives dignity and purpose to 
 our mortal life. It were .a sufficient refutation of 
 the worldly and sceptical view of man's existence, 
 that it makes it frivolous and meaningless. It de- 
 bases and belittles this world, by making everything 
 of it. If here is the end, if after a few years all is 
 to be over, and we could be certain of it, if we labor 
 to-day only to get food on which to labor to-morrow, 
 if all aims and enterprises and hopes and attain- 
 ments go down into the grave, then he who will 
 look the facts in the face is almost compelled to 
 repeat the words of the wise man of old, " Vanity 
 
LEAVES PERMANENT IMPRESSIONS. 235 
 
 of vanities, all is vanity." It is only because we are 
 not quite sure that all ends here, that a certain awe 
 and mystery, and dignity, lilie the pillar of fire and 
 of cloud, attend this life-march through the wilder- 
 ness. And yet we live by the sceptical theory. 
 That is to say, we measure the success, prosperity, 
 welfare of life, by its outward results. How many 
 persons are made desponding by the gradual decay 
 of a generous or a devout spirit, compared with those 
 who despond because their fortunes decay? And 
 yet how superficial and transient the outward re- 
 sults of life to the individual, if these be all. In the 
 forum and senate-house men struggle for place and 
 power, and armies crush the earth with triumphant 
 chariot- wheels, and mighty fleets wait on the wants 
 of august cities ; but all that is greatest among men 
 soon fades away. Old age dries up the voice of 
 eloquence, and the chariots of triumph are broken, 
 and armies of power disappear like the sinking dust 
 on the road they travel, and the breath of God but 
 passes for a moment in anger over the seas, and 
 argosies freighted down with the treasures of the 
 earth, and with the richer freight of human hearts, 
 are swept like bubbles from the deep. History is 
 but a succession of epitaphs on the greatness that 
 has passed. Still sadder does it seem when we de- 
 scend to humble life. How vain it is without relig- 
 ious faith! To toil that we may live, and to live 
 that we may toil, — brief hours of joy broken up by 
 alternating trials, — to labor for the fruits of enjoy- 
 ment till the season of enjoyment is gone, — to sow 
 and reap, and buy and sell, to rack the mind, and 
 
236 A PASSING- WOULD 
 
 task the heart, till year after year glides by, and this 
 "fitful fever" is quieted in the grave, — this is life. 
 Worldliness complains that religion casts gloom 
 over this world. If so, what does worldliness do ? 
 To him who thinks only of the outward results, 
 these outward results even become paltry, so soon, 
 at farthest, do sickness and death come in to equal- 
 ize all. 
 
 But this is not all. Behind this transient scaffold- 
 ing, and through its aid, is rising an immortal fab- 
 ric. Parallel with the outward life goes on a corre- 
 sponding inward life ; and while the outward results 
 soon perish, the inward results belong to that which 
 is life everlasting. These illustrations explain the 
 stress which the Saviour lays on whatever helps or 
 hurts the spiritual life. They explain his idea of 
 retribution. The evil of sin is not that it darkens 
 one's earthly prospects, but that it darkens the soul. 
 Therefore better pluck out the right eye, or cut off 
 the right hand, than be led by them into sin. Bet- 
 ter lose the world, than gain it at the cost of the 
 soul. Better be Lazarus with a Christian spirit, 
 than the rich man without it. The most terrible 
 idea of retribution is, that it is the unfolding of evil 
 tastes and principles into their legitimate results. 
 The outward act recoils on the character, and strikes 
 in and establishes the retribution in the essential be- 
 ing of a man. 
 
 In every outward act, in every yielding or resist- 
 ance, we are giving strength to something good or 
 something bad within us. A new stroke is struck 
 on the marble, a new line drawn on the canvas. 
 
LEAVES PERMANENT IMPRESSIONS. 237 
 
 It is not one great act, but these incessant impres- 
 sions, that make us what we are. He who in the 
 great peril deserts his post, and he who sinks with 
 his ship, have all their lives before been preparing 
 themselves for that last act of treachery to manhood, 
 or triumph of loyalty. Each bad act blends in its re- 
 sults with the stream of our being to give it a darker 
 hue. Each good purpose faithfully kept is a thread 
 of gold in the texture of life. 
 
 We look on a man now, and compare him with 
 what he was years ago. He is changed, and yet so 
 gradually, that from month to month, and from year 
 to year, we have marked no change. He himself is 
 unconscious of change. It has been the slow result 
 of successive impressions, made day by day, by 
 pains and pleasures, by trials and labors, which, like 
 drifting clouds, have all passed away, while the im- 
 pressions they were permitted to make stUl remain, 
 ineffaceable in the character. Woe be to him who 
 yields to the evil influences that surround him. The 
 corrupt pleasure, the unjust profit, the acts which 
 minister to unholy passions, these may pass away, 
 but they have imprinte'd their own character on the 
 soul which is immortal; and in time they appear. 
 They manifest themselves in the general jcharacter. 
 They stamp the features, and look out of the eye, 
 and give its tones of emotion to the voice. They 
 enslave the man. They transform him, tiU he hardly 
 knows himself, and as dread accusers or witnesses go 
 forward before him to the judgment. 
 
 The story is told of an artist, who, meeting a child, \ 
 as he thought, the most beautiful he ever saw, wishedj 
 
238 A PASSING WORLD 
 
 to preserve its features, lest he might never look on its 
 like again. He painted it, and hung it on his vi^all, 
 and it became to him in his hours of trouble or pas- 
 sion a perpetual reminder of gentleness, and serenity, 
 and heavenly innocence. He said, " If I can find a 
 being that will answer for a perfect contrast to the 
 child, — one whose face expresses my worst concep- 
 tions of that which is vile, and brutal, and guilty, — 
 I will paint his portrait also, the companion of this, 
 the contrast of heaven and hell." 
 
 Years passed, and he saw no one sufficiently 
 hideous to answer his design. At length in a dis- 
 tant land, in a prison which he visited, stretched on 
 a floor of stone, he saw an object such as his fancy 
 had portrayed. A man whose soul ^was stained 
 with blood, with glaring eyes, and haggard face, 
 and demoniac rage, cursing man and blaspheming 
 God, lay chained, waiting for his execution. The 
 artist transferred his likeness to the canvas, and 
 placed it opposite the child's. The contrast was 
 complete. It was the angel and the fiend. His 
 fanciful dream of many years was thus fulfilled. 
 
 Curiosity led him to seek 'out the history of both, 
 and he was startled with the discovery that both 
 the portrE|,its he had made were of the same indi- 
 vidual being. Side by side, we are .told, those pic- 
 tures hang on the .walls of an ancient gallery in 
 Italy. 
 
 Need we cross the ocean to meet with their coun- 
 terpart, or to learn the lesson uttered from that 
 speechless canvas? Around us, step by step, and 
 day by day, how many neglected ones, and how 
 
LEAVES PERMANENT IMPEESSIONS. 239 
 
 many self-neglected, are going through the same 
 change, — the blooming youth preparing for a de- 
 based age, -^ the fair morning collecting the clouds 
 that shall darken the sunset! How many, exposed 
 to all the corrupting influences in the lanes and 
 alleys of penury and misery, are unawares losing 
 the angel and becoming the fiend ! Nay, not these 
 alone, but you, you yourself, in the duty, in the 
 pleasure, in the temptation that stands next before 
 you, are to strengthen a virtue which allies you with 
 heavenly beings, or to put in a dark line whose colors 
 are drawn from the abyss. The pleasure, the pain, 
 the outward act, and the outward result will pass 
 away ; to-morrow you may not remember it ; but 
 according as you meet it, it will make an impression 
 not to pass away. The outward world changes, the 
 inward impression remains. What is seen may be 
 temporal, but there is that within you, unseen, your- 
 self, which is eternal. 
 
SEEMON XVII. 
 
 AUTHORITY. 
 
 FOR HE TAUGHT THEM AS ONE HA VINO AUIHOHITY. — Matt. vii. 29. 
 
 Religious difRculties and the tendencies of re- 
 ligious speculation change with every generation. 
 Three quarters of a century ago, scepticism took the 
 direction of materialism, and atheism. It was full 
 of the spirit of denial and scoffing. It trampled on 
 Christianity, and strove to rid the world of it, as an 
 enemy to human peace and human good. The form 
 which doubt now takes is entirely changed. It does 
 not deny the truth of the great principles of Chris- 
 tianity, but only that they possess any peculiar or 
 supernatural authority. It comes in the shape of an 
 affirmative philosophy, which undertakes to estab- 
 lish on more legitimate grounds, to a considerable 
 extent, the same principles which the Christian be- 
 lieves on the authority of revelation. It takes its 
 stand under the shadow of the altar. It patronizes 
 Christianity, considers it the best religion the world 
 has seen. But it assumes that human intelligence 
 has reached a higher level of truth than Christianity 
 reached ; assumes that the higher intelligence of the 
 
AUTHORITY. 241 
 
 world has outgrown Christianity, and does not need 
 it, — is able to sit in judgment on it, to overlook it, 
 to measure its limitations, and map out its deficien- 
 cies, and to supply its place with that which includes 
 a larger amount of truth. It does not scoff, but sets 
 Christianity aside, as something which, though con- 
 taining much admirable truth, is comparatively obso- 
 lete and outgrown. 
 
 To meet this form of doubt, something different 
 is needed from what was needed fifty or a hundred 
 years ago. Such works as those of Paley and Lard- 
 ner and Butler may be conclusive as to the points 
 which they discuss, but they do not discuss the points 
 which now disturb the minds of men. It is not that 
 the difEculties of our time-are greater, but only that 
 they are different. The answers to Paine and Vol- 
 taire may be satisfactory in themselves, but they do 
 not meet the precise want of the day. 
 
 The Christian records claim for Christianity a 
 special and supernatural authority. I do not here 
 ask respecting" the historical evidence of this author- 
 ity, for I do not imagine that the religious difficulties 
 of many lie here. But what I would show is this : 
 that there is nothing inconsistent with the general 
 order of Providence in the fact that religious truth 
 should be taught authoritatively ; — that the most 
 cultivated age needs this authority as much as the 
 most ignorant ; — and that such a religion, taught in 
 this method, accords equally with man's wants and 
 God's providence. 
 
 Constituted as man is, the only way in which we 
 can have assurance of the fundamental truths of 
 
 21 
 
242 ATJTHOBITY. 
 
 religion is through revelation, and this must rest on 
 authority. I say, constituted as man is ; — for it is 
 asserted, on the contrary, that they are intuitive 
 truths, coming within the range of human conscious- 
 ness, and therefore that no revelation is needed. As 
 the whole question of authority turns very much on 
 this point, it deserves particular consideration. For 
 if the great truths of religion are not intuitive trftths, 
 that is, not depending on any arguments or facts 
 behind themselves, but necessarily seen to be true 
 the moment they are presented intelligibly to the 
 mind, and if they are the most important of all 
 truths, we have in these facts strong refison for ex- 
 pecting them to be taught by revelation. That they 
 do not belong to the facts of consciousness seems 
 evident from several reasons 
 
 These truths relate in no small part to what is ex 
 ternal to the mind. Take the most important, for 
 example the paternal character of God. Who will say 
 that we know intuitively what the Divine character 
 is ? Who will class it among facts of consciousness ? 
 I am conscious of what takes place in my own 
 mind, but certainly I am not conscious of what is 
 taking place in the mind of God. I do not say but 
 what man might have been so constituted that he 
 should have had an intuitive knowledge of this truth, 
 but certainly he is not so constituted. When the 
 question is raised, instead of thinking that the mere 
 statement of the truth, as must be the case if it were 
 intuitive, contains in itself the strongest evidence of 
 it, we look about for other evidence. We look at 
 those manifestations of the Divine character which 
 
AUTHORITY. 243 
 
 are to be found in the world, and in the general or- 
 der of Providence. It is . a question of evidence ; — 
 not an intuitive truth, but a matter of fact, deduced 
 from other truths. Except for the disclosures which 
 God has made of himgelf, through the natural world 
 or through the Scriptures, we should have no knowl- 
 edge of it Again, if it were a fact of consciousness, 
 it must have been generally recognized over the 
 world. There could be no great diversity of opinion 
 about an intuitive truth, any more than about a 
 mathematical axiom ; and yet the truth has scarcely 
 been recognized in the least, further than it has been 
 taught by Christianity. 
 
 Just so with the doctrine of a future state. That 
 I exist now is a fact of consciousness, but that I 
 shall exist beyond the grave is no more a fact of 
 consciousness, than that I shall be alive here next 
 week, or next year. Still less are the modes and 
 laws of that future existence, which give character 
 and value to it, facts of consciousness. 
 
 Again, that these are not truths of consciousness, 
 and that if we are to have any assurance respecting 
 them it must rest on authority, is evident from the 
 tested inability of the human mind to reach settled 
 and just convictions on these subjects. It is certain 
 that the ignorant have not had such convictions. If 
 intuition can help man to no better ideas of God 
 and a future life than it did the Scandinavian and 
 the Tartar, or than it does the African and Austra- 
 lian, it surely is insufficient for any practical end. 
 Nor has it led the cultivated nearer to the truth. 
 Even with Cicero, in spite of all he wrote on the 
 
244 ATJTHOBITY. 
 
 subject, it is uncertain whether he did or did not 
 believe in man's imraortality. The religion which 
 embraces more millions than any other is Panthe- 
 istic, and rejects the idea of individual existence 
 hereafter. There may be implanted in man's nature 
 those presentiments and tendencies which have ena- 
 bled him to hope the truth, but not enough to arrive 
 at just and settled convictions. 
 
 But it may be said, that it is because the intui- 
 tive faculty has been duU and blind ; that, had men 
 been morally pure, these truths would have been 
 instantly perceived. But men have not been thus 
 pure, and a knowledge of these truths has been es- 
 sential to raise them to that level from which they 
 could be independently perceived ; so that, admitting 
 the existence of this intuitive faculty, the practical 
 importance of revelation remains as great as ever. 
 
 And finally, as a matter of fact, the world owes 
 its faith in these- truths to the authoritative decla- 
 rations of Christianity. How many of us owe our - 
 faith to our intuitions, or our reasonings ? We be- 
 lieve, mainly, because we had the blessed privilege 
 of being taught in childhood on authority, by those 
 who themselves believed on the authority of Christ. 
 We may suppose that six thousand years have 
 tested the power of the human consciousness to 
 discover truth, and certainly the experience of six 
 thousand years proves that, if mankind at large are 
 to have any just faith in the great truths of religion, 
 they must be taught those truths, and taught them 
 on authority. 
 
 Man is so constituted, that certain great questions 
 
AUTHORITY. 245 
 
 are forced on him, have always been forced on him, 
 respecting God, futurity, death, retribution, destiny. 
 The great questions ; — Are we as a matter of fact, 
 without revelation, competent to answer them satis- 
 factorily ? Is philosophy competent to take the 
 place of Christianity? It is often assumed to be 
 more than competent. How far has it made good 
 its vaunting pretensions ? What have philosophers 
 done towards giving the world settled religious con- 
 victions? Their attempts to construct systems of 
 faith have been utter failures, one system crowding 
 out another, one wave plashing tip after another, 
 again to sink back inlfe the abyss. From Plato 
 down, philosophy has endeavored in vain to furnish 
 man with a satisfactory faith on these points. What 
 is more, it makes no progress towards this result. 
 The philosophers of modern Europe are no nearer 
 to it than Plato. There is as little agreement 
 among themselves, as few settled conclusions, as 
 among the sages of Greece. Were Christianity 
 done away, and a congress of philosophers called, to 
 determine what the settled truths relating to man 
 and God are, it would surely be no congress of 
 peace. There would be no points of agreement. 
 Any new religion which they would substitute must 
 leave, as open questions, the being of God and the 
 immortality of man. 
 
 And yet the craving for knowledge, and the ne- 
 cessity of it for a right life, remain the same as ever. 
 If this appetite of the soul, which must be supplied 
 in order that the soul may live, cannot be met by the 
 intuitions of the individual mind, nor by the reason- 
 
 21* 
 
246 AUTHORITY. 
 
 ings of philosophy, we almost instinctively look to 
 the only remaining source of light, an authoritative 
 revelation. 
 
 But it is said, that, though Christianity might be 
 essential to ruder and more ignorant times, the ad- 
 vancing intelligence of the world has reached a point 
 where it is no longer needed. I reply, that the power 
 to apprehend moral truth depends mainly on the 
 sensibility and activity of the moral faculties, and 
 that the mere increase of intelligence, — a knowledge 
 of the sciences, of the arts, of literature, — though it 
 may help to dispel illusions, by no means of neces- 
 sity makes one quick to apprehend the truths of 
 morals and religion. There have been periods of 
 high intellectual culture, when men seemed to have 
 lost all idea of anything above the senses. 
 
 But beyond this, advancing intelligence, instead 
 of supplying the place of revelation, only makes it 
 more essential. Just in the same degree as mind 
 and heart are developed, and man understands his 
 own nature, the great questions relating to God, to 
 futurity, and to the Divine government assume a 
 constantly increasing importance. The brute has no 
 foresight, even of death. The brutish man has little 
 forethought of it, and little thought of anything ex- 
 cept what may gratify his passions or appetites. 
 The Australian savage, prowling amidst his marsh- 
 es, is little disturbed by those questions which 
 take hold on the invisible ; but to Socrates, and to 
 Plato, these are the questions of supreme impor- 
 tance. Just as men rise above a mere animal life, 
 these questions of man's spiritual relations press 
 
ATJTHOEITY. 247 
 
 with a heavier burden, with more solemn and mys- 
 terious meanings, upon the soul. As the affections 
 are more developed, the terrible mystery of death 
 clouds over the world with darker gloom, and the 
 increasing sensitiveness of the conscience makes 
 the existence of a God, and the conditions of his 
 approval, of more momentous import ; while in the 
 same degree as the mind looks beyond the present, 
 the final destiny of man fills a larger space in the 
 circle ofthought. 
 
 And yet the progress of intelligence, which forces 
 men to ask these questions respecting God and fu- 
 turity, is utterly unable to answer them. It may be 
 sure that beyond human vision revolve undiscov- 
 ered orbs of truth, but it only knows enough to long 
 for a higher knowledge. And -thus in heathen lands, 
 ancient or modern, the men who devoted their lives 
 to searching for these truths, which they desired to see, 
 but saw not, — who sought" them from the oracles, 
 from the silent heavens, from the grave, and in sad 
 explorations of their own hearts, — have been men 
 of the largest and noblest natures. These questions 
 have not troubled the base and sordid, but the wise 
 and the good, the lovers of justice and the lovers 
 of their race. These have been the men who have 
 cried out for light, who have implored the heavens 
 that some voice might speak to the blind and strug- 
 gling heart of man; some voice with authority to 
 declare the truths of eternity, and of God. And 
 that voice has spoken, and the reason that we are 
 not tortured with the doubts that oppressed the an- 
 cient world is, that to us have come the words of the 
 Son of God. 
 
248 AUTHORITY. 
 
 But I go further, and say that this authoritative 
 communication of religious truth is in accordance 
 with the general method by which Providence carries 
 forward the progress of man. The child lives on au- 
 thority. The child, whose parents should leave it to 
 discover every truth by its own unaided exertions, 
 would be defrauded of the holiest privilege and right 
 of childhood. The order of Providence is, that chil- 
 dren shall be under the care of those who know more 
 than themselves, know more than they can compre- 
 hend, and whose affections shall make them anxious 
 to communicate this superior knowledge. Were 
 it not for this transmitted truth, handed down from 
 the aged to the young, and received in great part on 
 authority, the world would relapse into barbarism. 
 We see in that disposition to be prejudiced in favor 
 of the opinions of parents, and of the wise and good 
 generally, — in the ready facility with which the child 
 adopts, without appreciating them, the ideas of those 
 it loves and honors, — we see in human nature itself, 
 a preparation for this authoritative instruction. In- 
 deed, in our common life, how many of the truths 
 by which we live did we at first receive, except on 
 authority ? We do not expect to understand every- 
 thing ourselves, and rely on the authority of those 
 who, we think, have a better wisdom to guide us. 
 The sick man leans on the authority of the phy- 
 sician. Society exists through the authoritative de- 
 cisions of courts of justice. On board the myriad 
 barks which with white wings cross and recross 
 each other on the seas, and which steer through sun- 
 shine, and through nighty with certainty, each to its 
 
ATJTHOEITT. 249 
 
 haven, how many were competent to haye discov- 
 ered those laws and principles and rules by which 
 the ship is navigated ? Nay, how many are unable 
 to understand more than the simple rule itself, who 
 accepted it first on authority, and who, if they could 
 not have relied on authority, would never have dared 
 to leave the coast ? Once in an age, some gi-eat phil- 
 osophic mind appears, who discovers some new truth, 
 and from him, received by mankind at large on au- 
 thority, it becomes the property, of all men. In most 
 cases, before we act, we do not think it necessary 
 to understand all the reasons from which a truth is 
 deduced. We only require that some one, who 
 teaches it to us, shall give evidence that he under- 
 stands. In the same way, those religious truths 
 from all certainty respecting which we are excluded 
 by the limitation of our faculties. Almighty God 
 teaches by authority, teaches through his Son. And 
 this method is not only the order of Providence, but 
 it is the way in which the world is bound benig- 
 nantly together by kindly bonds of mutual need and 
 aid, — children to parents, the young to the aged, the 
 ignorant to the wise, the present to the past, and all 
 men to Him who is the Light and the Life of all. 
 Could we be rid of all authoritative teaching, and the 
 corresponding confidence which gives it value, we 
 should go far to break up the most humanizing re- 
 lations, and to insulate each individual in a little, 
 exclusive, repellent circle of egotism and selfishness. 
 Let us give God thanks, that he deals by us bet- 
 ter than we, in our narrow vanity, should deal by 
 ourselves. Give God thanks that you are able to 
 
250 AUTHORITY. 
 
 put confidence in others, that you can lean on au- 
 thority. For it is thus that, in our blindness, we 
 can use the eyes of those who see ; that we are able 
 to profit from the wisdom of sages, and to make the 
 accumulated experience of the past, as it were, our 
 own. And above all, let us thank God that those 
 great central truths of religion, equally essential to 
 all, but of which the wisest could give no certain 
 assurance, have been taught in such a way, that the 
 most ignorant may be guided in them, and that the 
 humblest child and the wisest man may walk safely 
 in their unfailing light. Blessed be God, that, in this 
 voyage over the sea of life, we have not merely our 
 earthly charts, but th6 stars of heaven, to guide 
 us! 
 
 Thus far I have attempted to show that this teach- 
 ing of religious truth by authority is in accordance 
 with the needs of man and the order of Providence. 
 The truth of all this is attested by historical results. 
 Hold up and unroll the map of the world, and there 
 dates from Christianity a new civilization. "With 
 Christ a new element was introduced into human so- 
 ciety, — an element of light, which has been steadily, 
 if slowly, wherever it has reached, changing the as- 
 pect of the world. The best and most hopeful ele- 
 ments of human progress come from the Christian 
 faith. But its power over the passions, the interests, 
 and the institutions of mankind has not come solely 
 from its truth, capable of being sustained by human 
 logic, but from the fact that the truth was supposed 
 to be taught under divine sanctions. Suppose that 
 Christ had spoken simply as a philosopher, a Jewish 
 
AUTHORITY. 251 
 
 Plato, or Socrates, or Epictetus. Who believes that 
 his religion would have held the place which it has 
 held in the world ? How much should we have 
 known of it ? No : it was received at first, because 
 He who taught it was understood to " speak with au- 
 thority." The early ages accepted it, because they 
 believed the teacher was the Son of God. Christ's 
 words have had influence over the wise and good, 
 and over the, depraved and the ignorant, because 
 they were thought to be divine words. You and I 
 respect the Bible as we do no other book, because 
 it is invested- with a mysterious and sacred charac- 
 ter, which no other book possesses. It is not a hu- 
 man philosophy which created a Sabbath to break 
 in on the career of the worldly and. sensual, which 
 has built churches over the earth, which has awak- 
 ened philanthropy from its sleep, which has put re- 
 straints on the strong, breathed courage into the 
 weak, and shed hope into the shadows of death. It 
 is not a human philosophy which has done this, but 
 a religion believed to be divine. Remove this divine 
 authority, and all the civilization which has been 
 built upon it must crumble away with the founda- 
 tion on which it has rested. It is not Christ, the 
 wise and good man, who has so changed the world, 
 but Christ revered as the Mediator between God 
 and man, — Christ, the Son of God ; not the human 
 liberator, but the Divine Redeemer. 
 " There is a picture in which, on the lower level, are 
 seen on the hills and in the valleys the representa- 
 tives of the great trials of the world. They are 
 looking up towards a central point of light. The 
 
252 ATJTHOKITY. 
 
 blind turn towards it their sightless eyeballs. The 
 mother kneeling over her dying child looks upward 
 "to it. The slave in his chain looks up to it. And 
 they who are setting forth on heroic enterprises for 
 human good look up to it. As you raise your eye, 
 you perceive that to which they look.- Over the 
 centre of the picture hangs a cross, from which the 
 picture is lighted. In the light which streams from 
 it, they who are below live. But that dark object is 
 not self-lighted. As you look still higher, you per- 
 ceive that beams from heaven centre upon it, and, 
 as it were a central sun, the rays are thence dis- 
 tributed over the world. It is not the cross merely, 
 but the cross connected with heaven, which enlight- 
 ens the earth. . And so it is that Christ, because he 
 speaks to us from God, is the " Way and the Truth 
 and the Life." He has transmitted to us no argu- 
 ments for particular truths. He only gave that evi- 
 dence which warrants us in relying upon his author- 
 ity to declare the truth. 
 
 There have been ages of scepticism, and there 
 have been ages of unreasoning faith. The great 
 lesson for us to learn is not how-to believe every- 
 thing, nor how to doubt, but where and how to put 
 a reasonable trust. The highest practical wisdom is 
 to find first where trust is deserved, and then with 
 an unfaltering heart to repose it there. The spirit 
 of scepticism is essentially narrow, and belittling. 
 A wise confidence puts us into relations with all the 
 wisdom and truth and excellence in the world. 
 And in whom shall we trust but in Christ, the Son 
 of Man, and the Son of God ? The experience of 
 
AUTHORITY, 253 
 
 eighteen hundred years has proved that it is safe to 
 trust in him. The guilty in their penalties, the self- 
 sacrificing in their martyrdoms, the child and the" 
 aged man, the tempted, the sick, and the dying, bear 
 witness that they have never been led astray in fol- 
 lowing Christ. His authority is attested by the best 
 virtues of earth, and it was borne witness to by mir- 
 acles from heaven. It finds a response in the indi- 
 vidual heart. Learn then to trust in Christ. You 
 do not believe that you can go wrong in following 
 him. Then give to him no halting, hesitating con- 
 fidence, but let the heart say, " In thee, O Son of 
 God, I will trust, and I will foUow thee." 
 
 22 
 
SERMON XVIII, 
 
 THE KESUREECTION OF CHRIST. 
 
 AND KILLED THE PRINCE OP LIFE, WHOM GOD HATH RAISED rROM 
 
 THE dead; whereof we are witnesses. — Acts iii. 15. 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus is the culminating and 
 crowning point of all Christian evidences. It holds 
 no second place in our religion. The first sermon of 
 Peter, on the day of Pentecost, puts forward as its 
 main point the great fact that Jesus, whom they had 
 crucified, God had raised from the dead. The last 
 words of revelation are an appeal to the risen Sav- 
 iour. The Sabbath became the Lord's day, and 
 was consecrated to the commemoration of Christ's 
 resurrection,. Wherever the Apostles preached, it was 
 in the name of him who died and rose again. With 
 the Apostles, it was not merely Jesus who died, but 
 Jesus now alive, raised from the grave, his mission 
 attested by this seal of heaven, Jesus how alive and 
 caring for his followers, that was a chief and'funda- 
 mental truth. It was his resurrection which, more 
 than any other fact, laid an immovable foundation 
 for their faith, and gave authority to his teachings, 
 while around the risen Saviour centred all their 
 
THE RESURRECTION OP CHRIST. 255 
 
 ideas of heaven. "We read the New Testament in 
 such a fragmentary way, that we lose sight of the 
 relative proportion of events. Of all the facts in 
 Christ's life, the resurrection is the one on which the 
 Apostles laid most stress after his death. It was 
 the great fact and the great doctrine. 
 
 Did they over-estimate its importance ? Do we 
 under-estimate its importance ? Have the results 
 which have flowed from it been such as we might 
 expect from its miraculous character, and the place 
 which*it holds in Christian history ? 
 
 I propose to trace some of those results as they 
 appear in the moral history of mankind, — and with 
 two objects : — 
 
 1. To show that the resurrection was, as it is pre- 
 sented by the Apostles, essential to the effectiveness 
 and success of the Christian dispensation. And 
 
 2. To show that in part these results are of such 
 a nature that they cannot be accounted for except 
 on the ground that the Apostles were perfectly con- 
 vinced of its reality. 
 
 I. In tracing the results of this great transform- 
 ing event in the moral history of the world, the first 
 and most important consideration is the influence 
 which it had on the Apostles and other primitive 
 Christians. Most important, because in the influ- 
 ence it had on them we see first an evidence of its 
 reality; and, secondly, a manifestation of its moral 
 power. Jesus had foretold both his death and his 
 resurrection. But the minds of the Apostles, not yet 
 dispossessed of their ideas of a temporal reign of the 
 Messiah, and occupied by the wonderful events then 
 
256 THE EESTJEEECTION OF CHRIST. 
 
 occurring, seem scarcely to have thought of these 
 predictions till their fulfilment recalled them. Their 
 conduct during the last days before the death of 
 Jesus is as natural as the narrative of it is artless. 
 In those conversations recorded in John, he prepares 
 them gradually for it ; he exhorts them to mutual 
 love, and to undoubting reUance on God ; he prays 
 with them, and for them, in words of such tenderness 
 as the ear till then had never heard. On the evening 
 of the Passover he partakes with them of the Last 
 Supper, — the last time, as he warns them, that they 
 shall break bread with him before his death. And 
 from that upper chamber he goes out to the garden 
 of Gethsemane, to the agony of its midnight hours, 
 to his betrayal and his crucifixion. Through all 
 these events the Apostles are as men that are 
 stunned, — walking in some strange and terrible 
 dream. And such we might expect to be the case. 
 For who were they ? A few ignorant, poor, obscure 
 men, not one of them possessing a commanding 
 spirit, who, following Jesus, had come from the bor- 
 ders of the Lake of Galilee up to the great city of 
 Jerusalem. There was all of which they stood most 
 in awe. There was the temple of Jewish worship ; 
 there the Jewish priesthood ; there the court of Her- 
 od and of Pilate ; there they beheld the Roman 
 legionaries defiling through the streets and garrison- 
 ing the strong-holds. They had followed Jesus, 
 expecting, as they themselves say, according to the 
 Jewish notion, that 'he would establish a temporal 
 kingdom: They were none of them men to take a 
 lead. It is singular how, throughout all their con- 
 
THE RESUKRECTION OF CHRIST. 257 
 
 versations with Jesus, however affectionate, his 
 words are always those of direction and command, 
 never those of one counselling with his friends. 
 
 And now a dark shadow comes across their hopes. 
 It begins to be evident that Jesus is not to be a 
 temporal prince. He is beleaguered by watching en- 
 emies. His own words grow more sadly affectionate. 
 One of his own disciples betrays him. And now he 
 whom they had expected, not to die, but to reign, 
 with farewell words of tenderest love yields himself 
 to his foes. He is seized by Roman oiHcers, and, 
 at the instigation of the Jewish priests and rulers, 
 dragged with every circumstance of contumely be- 
 fore the Roman tribunal. He is tried and con- 
 demned, and crucified by Roman soldiers, men not 
 accustomed to perform their work negligently, under 
 the supervision of the Jewish rulers and priests, who 
 were witnesses that it was done faithfully. At the 
 outset, the disciples forsook him and fled ; Peter de- 
 nied him in the judgment hall, into which he had 
 timidly ventured to enter; and John and a few 
 women alone followed him to the cross. 
 
 At his death, the bond that had united his fol- 
 lowers was dissolved. Strangers in a vast city, 
 timid, powerless, self-distrustful, like frightened 
 sheep without a shepherd, they are scattered in dis- 
 may. They are utterly dispersed, Jesus is buried, 
 and to all human seeming his religion is buried with 
 him in the grave. 
 
 In three days' time there is suddenly a wondrous 
 change. These ignorant men, lately so timid and 
 dependent and self-distrustful, leave their hiding- 
 
 22* 
 
258 TUB BBSTJKRBCTION OF CHRIST. 
 
 places and come boldly forward, — not one or two 
 leaders, but all of them, not one recreant, — men and 
 women alike, the impulsive Peter and loving John, — 
 unappalled by the power of the government or fury 
 of the mob, ready to devote themselves to the prop- 
 agation of the holiest truths, and to the salvation of 
 the world from sin, at every personal loss and hazard, 
 even that of death. Surely, of all miraculous days 
 -that was the most wonderful which saw so amazing 
 and instantaneous a change in so many persons, of 
 such various characters. How will you account for 
 it ? Their account is, that Jesus was risen from the 
 dead. The circumstances attending their seeing 
 him were such as to preclude their being deceived. 
 They saw him again and again, separately and to- 
 gether, in houses and abroad, by day and by night, 
 the disciples and the whole five hundred at once. 
 Th"ey sat with him, conversed with him, examined 
 his person. And this continued forty days, when he 
 disappeared, vanishing from before their eyes. If 
 such were the facts, they could not have been de- 
 ceived, — they must have known whether these 
 things did or did not occur before them. And that 
 they believed in the resurrection, I think no one can 
 doubt ; at any rate, they gave the highest evidence it 
 is possible for men to give. Their future lives — 
 lives so far as earth was concerned dedicated to his 
 unrewarded service, and, if need be, to suffering and 
 scorn and death — were determined by this one fact. 
 And the object to which they devoted themselves 
 was one which only the righteous live for, and which 
 it makes a martyr to. die for, ■■— the rescue of man 
 
THE EESTJREEOTION OF CHRIST. 259 
 
 from sin. "We do not always consider the over- 
 whelming impression the resurrection made on the 
 Apostles, nor the place which it occupied in their 
 minds as the central fact in the history of their Mas- 
 ter. The first discourse of Peter on the day of Pen- 
 tecost all turns on the fact of the resurrection of 
 Christ. Each of the Gospels narrates this event 
 with a minute particularity, which it gives to nothing 
 else. The one great predominant topic of apostolic 
 preaching is Jesus and the resurrection, — Jesus 
 whom God raised from the dead. The extent to 
 which the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead 
 is made the centre and main topic of apostolic dis- 
 course, can be appreciated only by reading the Acts 
 and the Epistles. Not only was this great fact never 
 doubted then, but of all that number who saw him, 
 not one was made to renounce his faith in Christ 
 by the terrors and pains of death. They were per- 
 secuted, imprisoned, crucified, and yet all held firm 
 to the declaration that he who was c-rucified, and 
 dead, and buried, they had afterwards seen alive. 
 'About some things there was disagreement among 
 the first Christians, but none here. And wherever 
 the Gospel was carried, the first great topic, which 
 embraced everything else, was the resurrection. Be- 
 fore the high-priest of the Jews, and on Mars' Hill 
 at Athens, the great doctrine insisted on was that of 
 the resurrection. Everything is rested on this point. 
 " If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, 
 and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found 
 false witnesses of God ; because we have testified of 
 God, that he raised up Christ. If Christ be not 
 
260 THE RBSITRRECTION OF CHEIST. 
 
 raised, your faith is vain, and they which are fallen 
 asleep in Christ are perished. But he is risen from 
 the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that 
 slept." 
 
 But we should very poorly appreciate the impor- 
 tance of this fact, if we regarded it merely as pro- 
 ducing a change in their speculative opinions. It 
 wrought the most wondrous moral change the 
 world has seen. Only remember what the Apos- 
 tles were before Christ's death, — their views bounded 
 apparently to the earthly reign of the Messiah. All 
 such expectations were of course dissipated by his 
 death. The resurrection of Christ, this one fact, 
 revolutionized their whole moral being. For it they 
 lived and suffered, and not a few of them died. It 
 revolutionized all the great motives which controlled 
 their lives. Henceforth the present life, its joys and 
 fears, are of comparatively small moment to them. 
 What an event that must' have been to them, which 
 could make them cheerfully toil and suffer, for some- 
 thing beyond the grave, more than most men are 
 wUling to toil and suffer for what is this side the 
 grave. The inward life is changed" even more than 
 the outward. The objects for which they labor are 
 on the other side of the grave. The joys for which 
 they look are on the other side of the grave. The 
 rewards of effort, save those that come from an ap- 
 proving conscience, the consolation of sorrow, the 
 unbounded compensation for all sacrifices, are all on 
 the other side of the grave. Nor was it any sensual 
 heaven to which they looked. The heathen poet 
 found admission to the realm of shades by bearing in 
 
THE EESTJEEECTION OF CHRIST. 261 
 
 his hand the branch of a sacred tree. The only road 
 which led up to the Christian heaven was the road 
 of justice and mercy and love and truth. And all 
 this change was wrought by their belief in the res- 
 urrection of Christ. What a tremendous fact must 
 that have been to them which could so revolutionize 
 their moral being ! Imagine their state who could 
 really triumph over all the fears of the heart, and the 
 pains of the body, and death itself, through their 
 belief in a glorious immortality. Some of the sub- 
 limest passages in the New Testament are those in 
 which this state of mind incidentally appears. Life, 
 said heathen philosophy, is like a lamp, lighted a lit- 
 tle while and then extinguished. Whatever was be- 
 fore death is also after ; we cease to be. " Mourn 
 not," said his friend to Solon, on the death of his son, 
 " for it is in vain." " Therefore do I mourn," said 
 the sage, " because it is in vain." Not so the Apostle 
 when he comforted the afflicted. " I would not have 
 you ignorant, brethren, concerning those that are 
 asleep, — that ye sorrow not as those who have no 
 hope. For. even as we believe that Jesus died and 
 rose from the dead, so also they who sleep in Jesus 
 will God bring with him." What words are those of 
 his in view of his own death : " I am now ready to 
 be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand ; 
 I have fought the good fight, I have finished my 
 course, I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid 
 up for me a crown of life, which the Lord, the right- 
 eous Judge, will give me at that day." These very 
 teachings have made *so familiar and universal our 
 faith in immortality, that we do not appreciate them. 
 
262 THE RESUERECTION OF CHRIST. 
 
 But take the concluding words of Paul's argument 
 for a future life, drawn from the resurrection of 
 Christ, and remember that they are not the words 
 of a rhetorician who in calm security speculates of 
 these things, but words expressing truths for which 
 he lived and for which he died, and thought it tri- 
 umph to die, and where will you find anything that 
 contains more of the moral sublime ? " Then this 
 corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal 
 must put on immortality. And when this corruptible 
 shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall 
 have put on immortality, then shall be brought to 
 pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed 
 up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O 
 grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, 
 who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye 
 steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the 
 work of the Lord, inasmuch as you labor not in 
 vain in the Lord." 
 
 And more than this. All their ideas of the nature 
 of heaven centred about their risen and ascended 
 Master. That heaven for which they hoped, — he 
 was the image of its spirit, — • a heaven of love and 
 purity and peace. They expected to join him there 
 and to be with him evermore. The dying Stephen, 
 as he looks up, implores him, " Lord Jesus, receive 
 my spirit!" One brief moment of agony more, and 
 he should be with his Master. The aged John, who 
 had seen aU his companions perish, who was left 
 alone of them to bear the ministry of reconciliation, 
 in the midst of his tender exhortations to bis follow- 
 
THE EESUBEECTION OP CHRIST. 263 
 
 ers talove one another, breathes for himself the touch- 
 ing prayer, " Come, Lord Jesus, come ! " And Paul, 
 looking to that house not made with hands, eternal 
 in the heavens, would be absent from the body, that 
 he may be present with the Lord. 
 
 The peculiar moral effect of the resurrection was 
 to give authority and vividness to their faith in a 
 future life. And it did this in two ways. First, 
 because it was a seal of Christ's authority. They 
 who believed in his resurrection, would have no 
 doubt that he knew whereof he spoke when he 
 declared that all the dead should live. And, sec- 
 ondly, his presence there, who had assured them that 
 he should go before them to provide a place for them, 
 gave them the feeling that they had a home where 
 their Master was. 
 
 II. The moral influence of this fact was not con- 
 fined to the disciples ; but no other event ever tran- 
 spired that has had such an influence on the moral 
 history of mankind. 
 
 The ancient world, as soon as it began to specu- 
 late, began to doubt. There was light enough to 
 lead men to ask questions, but not enough to solve 
 them. The primitive faith in a future state, whence- 
 soever it arose, whether from some forgotten and 
 afterwards perverted revelation, or from the natural 
 instincts of mankind, did not rest on a foundation 
 that would bear being questioned. What evidence, 
 they said, that man lives hereafter ? And • where 
 was the evidence ? Was it in the dim, vague long- 
 ings for immortality, or in the capacities of the soul ? 
 As we interpret them by the light of Christianity, we 
 
264 THE KESTJKRBCTION OF CHRIST. 
 
 find in them great confirmation of our faith ; but they 
 did not find in them a sufficient foundation. What 
 evidence ? No one had returned from that dread 
 shore. No one manifestly invested with divine au- 
 thority had spoken. No voice had come from heav- 
 en, none from the grave. Nature supplied evidence 
 for hope, not for faith. Thus over nearly the whole 
 of all ancient philosophy, as its last and highest and 
 only certain result, is written the word Doubt ! infin- 
 ite doubt I The oracles of religion gave only stam- 
 mering and uncertain answers. And from the rocky 
 walls of the mausoleums where the dead lay came 
 back the dreary echo to the despairing and imploring 
 cry of the human heart, Doubt ! The want of assur- 
 ance on this essential point affected all views of 
 Providence, of man, of duty, of the end and aim of 
 of life. Its effect is seen even in the arts. I have 
 already referred to some facts illustrative of the faith 
 of the ancient word. But far more than these, there 
 is nothing that so distinguishes ancient and modern 
 poetry as the absence in the one, and presence in the 
 other, not of specific declarations, but of the sentiment 
 of faith in immortality. Ancient religious poetry is 
 a dirge from which the organ tone of hope is left out. 
 Here elegiac -strains were written by the light of the 
 inverted torch. Arid even sculpture and painting 
 occupied themselves with forms of physical beauty 
 and strength and struggle, — the beauty and vigor 
 and passion that perish for ever in the grave. 
 
 To that heathen world the Apostles went, carrying 
 the doctrine of Jesus and the resurrection. I speak 
 here only of the influence on men's faith in a future 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 265 
 
 state. Over the world it put faith instead of doubt, 
 
 — the full-orbed sun, instead of its sickly, disastrous 
 eclipse. It carried immortal hope into millions of 
 the homes of the wretched and forsaken. It gave 
 them objects for life, immortal and immeasurable, of 
 which not the arm of the oppressor nor the tyranny 
 of the strong, nothing but their sins, could rob them. 
 Over the graves of myriad churchyards, where sor- 
 row had been none the less bitter because there 
 slept the children of the obscure, it was written, He 
 is risen ! Every Sabbath morn came, proclaiming. 
 He is risen ! Religious poetry became the poetry of 
 immortal hope. The greatest works of the painter's 
 art are those in which the eflFort is made to express 
 emotions that take hold on immortality. The flat- 
 tened roof, the horizontal lines, of the Grecian temple 
 
 — it is but a symbol of the universal change — gave 
 place, to the Christian spire that towered upward 
 toward the stars. It poured new motives and new 
 hopes into the soul, and so filled it with aspirations 
 that took hold of heaven that multitudes endured 
 more to win the crown of martyrdom than they had 
 done to secure a Roman triumph. 
 
 However you may account for it, I speak of his- 
 torical facts. It is the resurrection of Christ which 
 has given to Christendom its faith in immortality. 
 Blot out that event from the world's history, and the 
 sky is again but a vault of marble, and the earth an 
 unbroken grave. It is that event which has bridged 
 over the awful gulf between time and eternity. 
 
 May I venture to illustrate its effects by an event 
 which fails in nothing except that it does not sug- 
 
266 THE BBSURRECTION OF CHKIST. 
 
 gest the magnitude of the change? Before Colum- 
 bus, multitudes had speculated on the probability of 
 undiscovered realms in the Western main. Many 
 thought it probable they were there ; but no one 
 knew. No one had been there and returned. There 
 was doubt, not faith. And who on the strength of a 
 doubt should tempt the terrors of that unknown sea? 
 In the eyes of all men, the great discoverer was 
 little better than a madman. He sailed. Months 
 elapsed, and he returned, bringing with him the tale 
 of discovery. That one event, — it needed no more, 
 — the fact that one declared it who knew whereof he 
 affirmed, was enough. It revolutionized Europe. 
 From every harbor of her coast slender barks plunged 
 fearlessly into the darkness and storms of the Atlan- 
 tic. That event bridged over the ocean, dispelled 
 its mystery, gave a new continent to the elder world. 
 The fact of our Lord's resurrection, and those 
 words of his respecting the future which derive their 
 authority from this, have uncurtained the heavens. 
 Like the gazing Apostles, we look through the open- 
 ing clouds through which he ascended. We repeat 
 the words, He is risen ! and from the skies comes 
 the answer, " I am the resurrection and the life." O 
 blessed words of hope and of promise ! The dying 
 man, lying faint and spent, amidst pale and weeping 
 watchers, repeats. He is risen ! Parents who have 
 sat hour by hour through the night gazing on the 
 pale, insensible features of their child, and who lay 
 in the tomb that sweet form which never before 
 knew harder couch than the mother's bosom, write 
 over its sleep. It is risen ! He that despairs because • 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 267 
 
 of the wrongs and sins of earth still looks from this 
 wave-washed peninsula of life to heaven. Think 
 not this doctrine of the resurrection an unimportant 
 one. Still let the heart make its pilgrimages to that 
 broken tomb where the hope of man was buried and 
 rose again, the pledge and symbol of immortal life 
 to man. Thither let the soul go, and the closed and 
 clouded eye of faith be couched, that by the super- 
 natural light which streams from that scene we 
 may see how the ghastly ranks of tombs that cover 
 the earth are but the shadows and types of our mor- 
 tality, and.death but the dark valley through which 
 we enter into immortal life. 
 
 " When by a good man's grave I muse alone, 
 Methinks an angel sits upon the stone ; 
 Like those of old, on that thrice hallowed night. 
 Who sat and watched in raiment heavenly bright ; 
 And with a voice inspiring joy, not fear. 
 Says, pointing upward, that he is not here, — 
 That he is risen ! " 
 
SERMON XIX. 
 
 THE RAISING OP LAZARUS. 
 
 AND WHEN HE HAD THtJS SPOEEN, HE CKIED WITH A LOUD VOICE, 
 LAZARUS, COMB FORTH ! AND HE THAT WAS DEAD CAME FORTH. 
 — Johnxi. 43, 44. 
 
 The miracles were an evidence of the divine au- 
 thority of Christ ; but they had a purpose very much 
 beyond this. It is to this further purpose that I shall 
 ask your attention. They were not only an evi- 
 dence of truth, but through them the greatest truths 
 were taught, and in the most impressive way. The 
 extent to which this was the case is best seen by 
 examining a single miracle, and no one is better 
 suited to this than the one from the account of 
 which the text is taken, — the raising of Lazarus. 
 
 From the murderous crowd of Jerusalem, from its 
 treachery and violence, Jesus had come to the quiet 
 of Bethany, that in the home of friends his wearied 
 spirit might have rest. But in the mean time this 
 home had been broken in upon by death; and the 
 sisters in their great affliction looked to Jesus. How 
 strong his friendship was for this family appears 
 from the whole narrative. As soon as the sisters 
 
THE EAISING OF LAZARUS. - 269 
 
 hear of his approach, they go to meet him, and their 
 words are, " If thou hadst been here, our brother had 
 not died." They looked to him, not merely as the 
 Messiah, but as the nearest and dearest personal 
 friend, who will mourn with them for his loss and 
 their loss. As he stood by the grave of Lazarus 
 and beheld their sorrow, he himself wept, and the 
 Jews around said, " Behold how he loved him ! " 
 He showed, in his own character, how the strong- 
 est personal friendship may be united with a phi- 
 lanthropy which clasps the world, and links realm to 
 realm and race to race. And in the person of the 
 Son of God, coming thus to Bethany to relieve the 
 sorrow of a mourning family, we behold how heaven 
 stoops to the earth, how a beneficent Providence 
 reaches down with benignant hand to the wants of 
 the humblest home and heart. 
 
 This whole passage is illustrative and symbolic of 
 the regard which Christianity bestows on the affec- 
 tions. We are apt to forget how much of that light 
 which illuminates our commpn life we owe to Christ. 
 At first sight, it might seem that the affections must, 
 under all circumstances, be much the same. But no 
 conclusion could be less in accordance with facts. 
 So far as they are merely instinctive, they may re- 
 main unchanged from age to age; but so far as 
 they are associated with the general development 
 of the spiritual nature, they have been immeasurably 
 strengthened, elevated, and purified by Christianity. 
 It can hardly be doubted that those even which seem 
 most purely instinctive, such as the love of parents 
 for children, are far stronger than they were before 
 
 23* 
 
270 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 
 
 the coming of Christ, — partly because his religion 
 has quickened and enlarged the spiritual nature of 
 man, and partly for a special reason, namely, the 
 more confident faith his religion has given in man's 
 immortality. The heathen parent laid the child in 
 the grave as if consigning it to annihilation. The 
 common ideas of immortality scarcely embraced 
 within their circuit any expectation of the future 
 life of children.. The parent was compelled to re- 
 gard the bond as a temporary one, and the possi- 
 bility of its being broken, and for ever, checked and 
 chilled the natural outflow of affection. But Chris- 
 tianity, through its doctrines of the immortal life and 
 the paternal providence, not only infinitely enlarged 
 their sphere, but gave them a more spiritual charac- 
 ter, and fostered their growth by its holiest hopes. 
 The Christian felt no need of restraining them for 
 fear of their being broken and lost in annihilation. 
 Faith gave to love the wings of the morning to seek 
 its cherished objects beyond the starry worlds. The 
 affections might be baffled for a time, but were not 
 broken, by death, for they were bound up and blend- 
 ed with faith in an immortal life, and with trust in a 
 beneficent Providence. The common affections that 
 are the light and joy of our earthly homes have thus 
 been spiritualized, made stronger and illuminated 
 with hope by Jesus Christ. 
 
 When we remember these things, and that our 
 Saviour's life was but a manifestation of the Divine 
 love and the Divine will, his smallest acts become 
 full of meaning. When we behold him retiring 
 from Jerusalem, from his foes and his labors, for re- 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 271 
 
 freshment and peace, to this home of friendship in 
 Bethany, it seems as if we might hear the Divine 
 blessing pronounced over all friendly bonds. This 
 plant of earth was then visited with airs of heaven. 
 And when the afflicted sisters came to him, confi- 
 dent in his sympathy, and he said to them, Thy 
 brother shall rise again, — not this man, this human 
 being, but thy brother shall rise again, — it is as if 
 heaven had spoken to every mourner on earth. Thy 
 dead shall live again. God knoweth and hath com- 
 passion on thy sorrows. Fear not to love ; let thy 
 affections, so that they are pure, soar up to the heav- 
 ens and be injmortal as the stars, for thy dead live ! 
 
 Another purpose seems to have been to break up 
 the tyranny which the visible order of the world ex- 
 ercises over the mind. The atheistic idea is that 
 these material laws have a kind of separate existence 
 of their own, are irreversible and supreme. The 
 great question in all ages has been, whether there 
 is or is not anything above these laws of nature. 
 The tendency has always been to regard the laws of 
 nature as final. Carried out to its full results, this 
 idea, in excluding God from the control of the world, 
 is practically atheistic. The miracles of Christ were 
 a visible answer to this materialism and scepticism. 
 In them we behold Him who first framed the order 
 of the world still present and controlling that order. 
 The miracles were a kind of evidence open and in- 
 telligible to all men, that above the world there is a 
 God ; that the laws of nature are but the methods of 
 his providence; that he is not separated from the 
 world, but that over it the Lord God omnipotent 
 
272 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 
 
 reigneth. In accordance with this, at one time or 
 another, our Saviour exhibited this power over al- 
 most the whole natural world. The laws of nature 
 which seem most unchangeable were shown to be 
 subject to a higher and an invisible power. With a 
 word, he hushed the rage of the storm ; he supplied 
 the famished multitude with bread ; he opened the 
 eyes of the blind, and unstopped the ears of the deaf, 
 and loosened the tongues of the dumb. The rav- 
 ings of insanity were calmed at his bidding. Every 
 form of disease melted away before his voice, and 
 the sleep of death itself was broken when he spoke. 
 These miracles were an evidence to all ages that 
 over what we call the laws of nature there is a higher 
 law, a superior power, the power of the Framer and 
 the God of nature. 
 
 But beyond these general objects, this particular 
 miracle, the raising Of Lazarus not only discloses 
 the divine power with which Christ had been en- 
 dowed, but it seems to have had the special object 
 of impressing on the minds of his followers a more 
 profound sense of the reality of the spiritual world. 
 Tt was while standing by the grave of Lazarus, that 
 he uttered the memorable words, " I am the resur- 
 rection and the life. He that believeth in me, though 
 he were dead, yet shall he live. And he that liveth 
 and believeth in me shall never die." Those words 
 are proclaimed over the grave of every Christian be- 
 liever. It' is hard for faith to triumph over the decay 
 of mortality. In our speculations we fancy that we 
 have reached a settled faith ; but a friend dies ; 
 every sign of life vanishes ; we lay the body in the 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 273 
 
 tomb, and in a little whUe all that is left is a little 
 dust that may be gathered up in the hand. Is it 
 possible that he still lives ? Fg,ith is ever confronted 
 by this visible fact, and the heart longs for some as- 
 surance by means of which to overcome the scepti- 
 cism of the senses. Once for all He who understood 
 the needs of man met the fact of mortality in that 
 way which alone could give undoubting confidence 
 to faith. He gave, first, the assurance of words, de- 
 claring in the strongest terms the reality of the ever- 
 lasting life. And then, to meet the misgiving and 
 doubt which the senses suggest, he called back him 
 who was gone to reanimate the lifeless clay. If in 
 our desponding moments of doubt we were to ask 
 for evidence of the spiritual life, short of death itself 
 and the actual entrance into the spiritual world, I 
 think our minds could not conceive of any kind or 
 degree of evidence so fitted to meet the doubts which 
 press on mankind as that which our Saviour here 
 gives. We may fancy that our logic, or our cheap 
 phantasmal philosophy, is enough for us ; but it never 
 was enough for man, and it fails just where the strain 
 of the difficulty comes. We may thank God, that in 
 the midst of this world of graves he gives us an evi- 
 dence of the reality of another life, according to our 
 real wants. 
 
 I say that our Saviour met the precise fact in 
 which lies the whole strength of our materialistic 
 doubts. Nothing short of something of the kind 
 could meet them ; and precisely what was required, 
 that he did, and it is from the force and point which 
 the miracles of Christ, and finally his own resurrec- 
 
274 THE RAISING OF LAZAETJS. 
 
 tion, give, that our philosophical arguments seem to 
 us to have any substantial weight. Our reasonings 
 wind around these great facts like vines around the 
 trunk of a tree which they hide, but on which they 
 depend for support. 
 
 He took the extreme case. Lazarus had fallen 
 sick and had died. He had already been buried, 
 and, as was the custom with the Jews, the friends of 
 his sisters had met to mourn with them. Then 
 Jesus came. He would visit the grave, and they 
 attended him thither. He commanded that the 
 stone should be removed from the mouth of the 
 tomb. Martha would resist him, saying, " He hath 
 already been dead four days." The processes of 
 decay had already begun. -But "Jesus saith unto 
 her. Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest be- 
 lieve, thou shouldest see the glory of God ? Then 
 they took away the stone from the place where the 
 dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and 
 said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. 
 And I knew that thou hearest me always ; but be- 
 cause of the people which stand by I said it, that 
 they may believe that thou hast sent me. And 
 when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud 
 voice, Lazarus, coiiIe forth ! And he that was 
 dead came forth." The grave opened and the dead 
 lived ! What a word of power was that which had 
 dominion over the grave ! And where was the spirit 
 of the dead, that it could hear this word of the Son 
 of God and obey ? 
 
 Never were there words full of a more sublime 
 hope than the declaration, " I am the resurrection and 
 
THE EAISINa OF LAZABUS. ,275 
 
 the life." The truth which they contain, when stated 
 frpm some chair of philosophy, is one of the grandest 
 which can occupy the human mind. The argument 
 of Paul in defence of it is one of the sublimest por- 
 tions of the Bible. But here was something beyond 
 our philosophical reasonings. It was in front of the 
 tomb, in the presence of the dead, in the presence of 
 God to whom he looked up, that he said, " I am the 
 resurrection and the life." And having said this, it 
 was the. same immortal voice which, as he turned to 
 the dead, said, " Lazarus, come forth ! " And he that 
 was dead came forth. It was God's attestation to 
 the authority of his Son. It was a miracle wrought 
 for the sick, the mourning, and the dying generations 
 of mankind. 
 
 No one can read this passage without having 
 thoughts rise up in his mind to awe down the frivol- 
 ity of his worldliness. Where are the souls of the 
 dead ? A curtain is let down from heaven to earth 
 which separates the visible from the invisible. Be- 
 fore that curtain stood the friends and neighbors of 
 the departed. To their eyes nothing appeared but 
 death, and yet on the other side of that mysterious 
 screen the spirit of the departed heard that gentle but 
 potent voice and obeyed the call. Where are the 
 dead ? Are they separated from us only by the thin, 
 mysterious screen of the senses, which, in revealing 
 the world of sense, hides the spiritual world, as the 
 very light which discloses mountain and tower and 
 town hides the stars of heaven ? What is the seem- 
 ing void around us but the realm of departed spirits ? 
 May we not believe that the many mansions of our 
 
276 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 
 
 Father, those spiritual mansions of which our Sav- 
 iour ^oke, are around us, their bases resting on the 
 earth and their invisible domes swelling above the 
 clouds ? Who can believe that this universe is un- 
 peopled ? Who shall not rather believe, that, rising 
 in ascending ranks, from man to the seraphim, it is 
 filled with life which utters forth the praises of God 
 in language clearer than that of the stars ? May 
 we not believe that, as the dying man lies on his 
 couch, and with failing voice bids his friends fare- 
 well, on the other side others are waiting, not less 
 dear, to welcome him to the immortal life ? The 
 Scriptures describe this world of the senses as a 
 tabernacle. Can we have a more just idea of it, — 
 a tabernacle, a tent, the tent of the senses, — while 
 death is but the lifting of one of the sides for the 
 spirit to pass out and be consciously in the midst 
 of the myriads of spirits that invisibly surround us ? 
 It is easy to believe that our Saviour, his eyes 
 touched with supernatural light, looked into that 
 spiritual world and beheld the spirit of the dead 
 when he commanded Lazarus to return; and beheld 
 the legions of angels which he assured his disciples 
 he had but to ask, and they should be sent to rescue 
 him from his foes. The grave has sad lessons, but 
 since Christ stood by it, it is visited also by the 
 highest hopes. And, seen by the light of his words, 
 the earth itself is but a scaffolding which hides from 
 us a glorious spiritual temple. 
 
 But these miracles, it is said, are historical. They 
 were evidence for those who looked on them, but 
 not for us. With what awe, with what believing 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZAEUS. 277 
 
 and grateful hearts, we think, _we should have beheld 
 Christ's works of stupendous power ! O that I 
 might have witnessed, exclaims some doubting 
 Thomas of our own day, these displays of the Di- 
 vine presence! Why were miracles, exclaims the 
 sceptic, confined to a single age ? Let me behold 
 with mine own eyes, and I will believe. 
 
 Unto such I would say. Behold ! for the days of 
 miracles are not yet passed. The miracles of Judaea 
 did not terminate in themselves. They were the 
 introduction of a new order ; the fountain whose 
 stream was to flow down through successive ages ; 
 the roots of a tree which, though themselves hidden, 
 should bear fruit for all coming time. They mis- 
 take who regard the miracles as merely isolated 
 facts, wrought for their own day alone, then power- 
 less and lifeless, and preserved to us only in the his- 
 torical records of the past. They were the symbol 
 and preparation of still greater miracles ; not wrought 
 for their own sake, but for what was to follow from 
 them ; an introduction to the spiritual miracles of 
 the Christian faith ; the commencement of a series 
 of spiritual facts more important than themselves, 
 but connected with them, as the river that flows 
 laden with the wealth of a continent is connected 
 with its sources in the distant mountains of the in- 
 terior. 
 
 What I mean to urge is this. The original mira- 
 cles of Christ were intended to set in motion, and 
 did set in motion, a train of causes and effects which 
 lasts until this day. The original impulse which 
 they gave is still unspent, and "the influence they 
 
 24 
 
278 * EAISING OP LAZAEUS. 
 
 now exert is as much connected with the original 
 miracles, — constituting a part of one whole, — as 
 the striking of the clock in measuring the hour is 
 connected with the weight which sets in motion its 
 mechanism, — constituting a part of one whole. 
 The miracles introduced into the world a supernat- 
 ural — not unnatural, but supernatural — order of 
 events ; — over the original plane of nature a series 
 of events above that nature. The beginning of the 
 series was miraculous, just, as the original creation 
 of man on the earth was miraculous. And it ceases 
 to be such only by its continuance. It is scarcely 
 possible to separate what is natural from what is 
 supernatural. The revelations of Christ were super- 
 natural ; but they entered into the common order of 
 human thought and human life, and they reach our 
 minds through natural means. The original mira- 
 cle was supernatural ; but its eifects enter into the 
 natural order of our lives. Thus the supernatural 
 introduces a higher order, which we call natural as 
 soon as it becomes customary. 
 
 And yet, strictly speaking, and as viewed in rela- 
 tion to what preceded it, it is throughout a super- 
 natural order. And the intended spiritual results 
 which appear to-day in the world receive character 
 from the original miracle. When Christ ascended 
 into the heavens, he thus left behind a perennial 
 fountain of miracle. Under our own eyes, he works 
 miracles, his miracles because wrought by his words, 
 in the eye of reason more stupendous than those on 
 which the multitude of Judaea gazed, — spiritual mir- 
 acles, for which thorse in matter were only the prepa- 
 
THE RAISING OE LAZAKUS. 279 
 
 ration. It was a miracle, when with a power from 
 God he opened, with a word, the eyes of a single 
 blind man. What shall we call it, when with a word 
 of divine wisdom, repeated from age to age, — none 
 the less his because heard through intervening time, 
 than had it come through intervening space, — and 
 because of its first miraculous associations never 
 losing its power, he opens the eyes of millions, 
 through successive generations, to a new heavens 
 and a new earth ? This higher moral light which 
 broke forth from miracle, though to us natural in the 
 sense of being common, belongs to the supernatural 
 order in which it originated. With a divine word 
 our Saviour raised men from sickness to health. 
 What shall we call it, when with a divine word, re- 
 peated from age to age, and never losing its power, 
 he gives strength and health and hope, such as the 
 world is not able to give, to those sick in spirit, to 
 those pining in sorrow, or wasted by despair, or 
 crushed down by temptation ? He stopped the bier 
 at the gates of Nain, and restored to his widowed 
 mother her only son. Many a mother has mourned 
 a son as lost and dead in evil ways, and has not 
 despaired, only because despair would have been 
 death. Far away that son may have wandered. In 
 some more tender moment his attention has been 
 caught by gome appeal of Jesus. His heart is 
 touched ; feelings that have slept for years as in the 
 grave are awakened, and the man is rescued, re- 
 formed, regenerated. If he returns, when he enters 
 his mother's home, a changed man, redeemed from 
 moral death, and bows with her to render thanks to 
 
280 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 
 
 God, not even the widow of Nain had reason for 
 more grateful thanks to the Saviour than has this 
 Christian mother for her lost son, that he is found, 
 for the dead, that he lives again. They were words 
 of mighty power, when, as he said. Come forth ! he 
 that was in the grave came forth ; but no more in- 
 vested with supernatural might than those addressed 
 to the human soul, at whose bidding, affections 
 palsy-struck, consciences buried in the grave of sin, 
 are quickened and come forth. 
 
 Miracles in matter we indeed behold no more; they 
 are needed no more. They were not the end of the 
 Saviour's ministry, but the means which introduced 
 another form of miraculous agency, spiritual and 
 perpetual. They struck the rock from which flowed 
 out the fountain of life. They broke open the cloud 
 to let in a light which should not fade. They were 
 but as a bell in the sky, awakening an insensible 
 world to words which, because of their supernatural 
 authority, have power to redeem and raise it from 
 degradation and sin. Were our souls less bowed 
 and bound down to the material world, were our 
 thoughts as familiar with the laws and processes of 
 the spiritual life as with those of nature, we should 
 not ask for miracles. We should see those daily, by 
 the power and authority of the words of Christ, tak- 
 ing place, and none the less his because of the inter- 
 val of time between, as wondrous as those which 
 they witnessed who beheld in the temple the blind 
 restored to sight, or at the tomb of Bethany saw 
 Lazarus come forth. 
 
 I have thus dwelt on this event, in order to show 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZABtlS. 281 
 
 that the miracles of Christ are not simply traditions 
 of the past with which we have nothing to do ; but 
 that they were the mere beginning of a continual 
 series of events, — the first impression on an electric 
 chain which reaches down and reveals itself to us in 
 letters of light and life ; that they were the intro- 
 duction to a supernatural order of truths, convictions, 
 and influences, which has become natural only by 
 becoming incorporated with all our modes of thought 
 and moral judgment and life. Lazarus was raised 
 from the grave of earth ; but he was so raised that 
 we might be raised from the grave of sin. And 
 when our souls yield to the power of Christ's truth, 
 the words of Christ shall reveal themselves in us and 
 in a higher sense, — their highest and truest sense, — 
 " I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believ- 
 eth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; 
 and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
 never die." 
 
 24* 
 
SERMON XX, 
 
 ON WHICH SIDE? 
 
 IB ANT MAN WILL DO HI8 WILL, HE SHALL KNOW OF THE DOC- 
 TEINE WHBTHEK IT BE OP OOD. — John VU. 17. 
 
 On which side do you stand ? For on one side 
 or the other you must stand. ' Do you accept Chris- 
 tianity as the guide of life, or do you reject it? 
 Perhaps you say, I have not made up my mind. I 
 answer, that the permanent indecision which makes 
 no attempt to come to a conclusion is itself rejec- 
 tion. I do not mean to say that one embarrassed 
 by doubts should hastily decide ; and whatever the 
 conclusion, let no one deal dishonestly with his own 
 mind. But somewhere you stand. It becomes you 
 to know where you stand. If you stand on the side 
 of Christianity, it becomes you to pay the homage 
 due to her and her institutions, in heart and life. 
 Do you accept Christianity as the guide of life, or 
 reject it? or are you endeavoring to come to some 
 settled conclusion on one side or the other? The 
 worst state is that indifference which takes no inter- 
 est in this great question of life, and which sinks to 
 a level below even that of doubt and unbelief. 
 
ON WHICH SIDE? 283 
 
 On which side do you stand ? You may say, I 
 have misgivings and uncertainties, which prevent my 
 taking any positive ground ; I find difficulties on all 
 sides. This state of mind is so common and so im- 
 portant, and arises among honest-minded persons so 
 often from a complete misapprehension of the evi- 
 dence which belongs to the case, that I shall first ask 
 your, thoughts to that point. 
 
 What, then, is the question ? Not at all whether 
 you can demonstrate, beyond a doubt, the truth of 
 everything contained in the Bible, or demonstrate 
 even the truth of Christianity. The question for a 
 practical man is this : Is there sufficient evidence to 
 warrant a reasonable man in adopting heartily Chris- 
 tianity as the guide of his life, — sufficient evidence 
 to warrant a reasonable man in saying, I am willing 
 to trust my destiny to her guidance, to take my 
 stand on her side, and to identify my hopes with her 
 promises ? There is one element in this discussion, 
 the most essential of all, which is almost invariably 
 omitted ; the fact that we live, and must live, and 
 must reap the legitimate fruits of the way in which 
 we live. If we could escape living, it would be of 
 no consequence whether we came to a conclusion or 
 not. But we must live, and we must live by some 
 general plan or theory of life. The man who has 
 turned himself into an animal, and never thinks ex- 
 cept of what he eats and drinks, though he is heed- 
 less of it, has as decided a way of living as the phi- 
 losopher or the saint. If you consider this, you will 
 see at once that the question of accepting or reject- 
 ing Christianity takes a different form from that 
 
284 ON WHICH SIDE? 
 
 commonly given to it. We discuss it as though we 
 stood in the position of a spectator or judge, to 
 whom Christianity offers itself for trial; and as 
 though, if she does not furnish conclusive evidence 
 of trustworthiness, she is to be at once rejected, 
 while we fall back on certain reserved and settled 
 truths behind. But this is to invert the whole con- 
 dition of things. Here I am on the earth, a respon- 
 sible creature, with a life to live, with mysteries all 
 around me, and the unknown before me. In some 
 way I must live. We cannot furl the sails and cast 
 anchor in the harbor, but we must put forth and 
 cross the cloudy sea of life. What is the wise, judi- 
 cious, true course for me to take ? That and that 
 alone is the question. Have I the ability to con- 
 strucl;. a satisfactory theory of life ? It is certain 
 that I have not. I must look beyond myself. And 
 around me start up those who claim to be guides. 
 Twenty different systems of philosophy offer them- 
 selves ; a hundred different religions.. Atheism un- 
 dertakes to guide me. Mohammedanism undertakes 
 to guide me, Rationalism undertakes to guide me. 
 But am I satisfied with their authority ? Am I sat- 
 isfied with Atheism ? Is Atheism free from difficul- 
 ties ? Does Atheism prove that there is no God ? 
 And if no God, has it demonstrated that there is no 
 future life ? Has Rationalism, when it undertakes 
 to be anything but mere scepticism, no difficulties ? 
 On what authority does it speak ? Where are its 
 credentials? How does it account for the moral 
 phenomena of the world, and man, and Christianity ? 
 When it assumes the position of a positive system, 
 
ON WHICH SIDE? 285 
 
 it is embarrassed by diflBculties scarcely less than 
 those of Atheism. Has universal Scepticism no 
 difficulties ? It is the most untenable ground of all ; 
 for we know that there is something true, something 
 to be affirmed or denied. And the scepticism which 
 neither affirms nor denies is false to the whole nature 
 of things. Embarrassed, oppressed with these un- 
 certainties, Christianity offers to guide me. She 
 does not come, a dependent suppliant, to my feet. 
 She seems to come from heaven, and she offers to 
 guide me. I pause ; for though she be clad in gar- 
 ments of light, I may be mistaken. But whether I 
 will or no, among these various plans of life I must 
 choose, from the very fact that I live. The only 
 question is, whether Christianity is the safest and 
 best of these guides. If I am simply satisfied that 
 the best and wisest plan of life offered to us is the 
 Christian plan, as a reasonable person I must adopt 
 it. I believe that the evidence goes infinitely be- 
 yond this ; but all that we absolutely need is enough 
 to warrant our choosing the Christian plan of life as, 
 on the whole, the most wise and reasonable one. Is 
 there any better plan ? Can you suggest a better ? 
 I see that those who live by it advance and improve 
 in character. I see that it enlightens and strength- 
 ens conscience, softens the affections, and is the rec- 
 onciling, harmonizing, regenerating power of the 
 world. Is there any better system to live by ? If 
 not, and until you can propose a better, because you 
 must live somehdw, it is the one to be adopted ; 
 and it is to be adopted on the principle of the text. 
 In every undertaking we assume the truth of many 
 
286 ON WHICH SIDE? 
 
 things of whose truth we have no personal experi- 
 ence. We assume it, and then try the experiment. 
 So we assume the truth of Christianity; and they 
 who try it rarely doubt of its doctrines that they 
 come from God. In determining what side we 
 stand upon, we are governed by the same kind of 
 evidence by which all the important concerns of life 
 are determined. The man must come to some de- 
 cision ; and in all important matters he takes that 
 side which is most reasonable, where the danger is 
 least if he be mistaken, and the good results the 
 greatest if he decide correctly. The question, then, 
 is not whether the Christian evidences are demon- 
 strative, but the question for you is this : Inasmuch 
 as I must live in some way, what plan of life on the 
 whole commends itself as being the wisest, safest, 
 and most reasonable one? Who is there that doubts 
 it is the Christian plan of living ? And if you are 
 satisfied on that point, all the sceptical difficulties 
 beyond are the mere triflings of an after-dinner dis- 
 pute. I urge this point because I think that nearly 
 all the scepticism which embarrasses practical per- 
 sons results from a misconception of the true ques- 
 tion. 
 
 I come back now to the question with which I 
 started. On which side do you stand? Do you 
 accept Christianity as the authoritative guide of life, 
 or do you reject it ? This is the great religious 
 question of our day. The differences of Christian 
 sects with one another are in the comparison trifling. 
 The great dividing line — for who that chooses to 
 look at things as they are can doubt it ? — is between 
 
ON WHICH SIDE? 287 
 
 those who reject and those who admit the Divine 
 authority of the Christian religion. We may con- 
 fuse ourselves by words used in a double sense ; we 
 may refuse to look distinctly at the alternatives pre- 
 sented. But if Christianity be not what it claims 
 to be, then there is no such thing as an authoritative 
 religion. There is no other religion to take its place ; 
 and the only substitutes are the fancies of individual 
 minds. If the Gospels are not to be relied upon, 
 then Christianity is to find its place among the other 
 products of the hurrian mind, — a mixture of wise 
 teachings, of myth and fable, of honest purpose, 
 credulity, cunning, and fraud, but with no more au- 
 thority than Seneca or Socrates, or any man who 
 pretends to say what man is and is to be. The 
 question of the time is, whether we have or have 
 not a religion. To my mind this is a very serious 
 question. I hope that I am- enough in the habit of 
 avoiding exaggeration, and of trying to make honest 
 discriminations, to save me from the suspicion of 
 cant, or of any undue professional biases, in saying 
 that I believe it to be a question of infinite moment 
 to us. I believe it to be the fundamental social as 
 well as religious question. Certainly, in rejecting 
 Christianity, the world must practically, to a great 
 extent, surrender all assured religious faith; for apart 
 from Christianity what sufficient evidence have you 
 for the fundamental truths of religion relating even 
 to the character of God, and the immortal life ? 
 You say that this man and that, who reject Chris- 
 tianity, believe as much as the Christian. Very pos- 
 sibly ; but whence did they derive their faith ? The 
 
288 ON WHICH SIDE? 
 
 world never had it before Christianity. It has it in 
 no land to which Chri«tianity has not carried it. 
 These great doctrines have come from Christianity, 
 and from no other source. And these very men owe 
 the faiths of which they vaunt themselves to the 
 religion at which they scoff. I think the whole ex- 
 perience of the world shows that faith in a Paternal 
 Providence, faith in a Moral Ruler of the world, faith 
 that God desires only the moral goodness of his 
 creatures, faith that he forgives the penitent, and 
 faith in the moral doctrine of immortality as some- 
 thing different from a mere future existence, are de- 
 pendent on faith in the Divine authority of Chris- 
 tianity. There may be individual exceptions ; but 
 let the great mass of men come to the conviction 
 that Christianity is a fable, and how much religious 
 faith of any kind do you think will remain in the 
 world ? And what are to be the moral and social 
 results of this loosening of religious faith ? The 
 world- has seen its results in large communities. 
 But there are other cases which furnish still better 
 tests. Take the multitudes of young men poured 
 from the country into our cities, into the myriad 
 temptations of city life. Take those of their num- 
 ber who have been brought up in Christian homes 
 to believe in the Bible, to read Christ's teachings as 
 having authority, when under the penalties of God's 
 judgments he requires them to be just, honest, true, 
 to keep their thoughts pure, to restrain their malig- 
 nant passions, and to live righteously and usefully. 
 Suppose you could suddenly root out this faith ; that 
 they should fancy themselves to have been cheated 
 
OS WHICH SIDE? 289 
 
 by these ancient legends ; that the teachings of their 
 parents were the result of a sad credulity and want 
 of light ; that every man after all must be his own 
 religion ; that the only revelation is that which is in 
 a man's own heart ; that the only thing is for a man 
 to foUow his instincts ; — what influence do you 
 think this would have on the virtues of society? Or 
 take another case. Were you sending your child 
 away to school, would you desire your son or your 
 daughter to be taught these principles of unbelief? 
 If you found a teacher were inculcating the notion 
 that every one must make his own religion, that the 
 Christian story was the mere product of cunning 
 and credulity, and that even its moral truths were 
 but just up to the level of our enlightened age, 
 how long would you let your child remain under 
 that influence? Why would you be made miser- 
 able by finding that the believing heart of yom* child 
 had been robbed of the inspiration of faith? Be- 
 cause you know that the results can be only mis- 
 chievous ; and though you may care little about the 
 welfare of mankind, you have no desire to see your 
 child put in jeopardy. But you reply, You are mak- 
 ing too much of belief; it is of no consequence 
 what a man believes, provided he is honest. Of all 
 wretched sophisms with which the mind of the world 
 has been juggled and cheated, this seems to me the 
 most shallow. Doubtless a man will have the ad- 
 vantage of the honesty which he possesses, whether he 
 believes truth or not ; but he cannot have the advan- 
 tage of the truth which he does not possess. Who 
 does not know that every man's course is greatly 
 
 25 
 
290 ON WHICH SIDE? 
 
 influenced by what he believes ? His belief does not 
 turn error into truth. 'Belief will not make an in- 
 correct chart a correct one. If one steps over a pre- 
 cipice in the night, it will not alter the result that he 
 believed that he was walking on level ground. Our 
 religious belief relates to what are and what are not 
 the laws of God's providence. The fact that I am 
 honest in my error will not change a wrong belief 
 into a right one, nor alter the results of pursuing a 
 wrong course. 
 
 Instead of belief being, unimportant, it is belief, 
 more than anything else, which determines the con- 
 dition of man. To improve the condition of a peo- 
 ple, the first step is to bring its beliefs, its beliefs 
 about God and man and the interests of society, 
 into accordance with the truth. What makes the 
 people of Spain, or Turkey, or Hindostan, what they 
 are, but the prevailing ways of thinking, and the cus- 
 toms and laws that grow out of them 1 The changes 
 wrought by the Reformation originated in the change 
 of a few religious opinions. In undertaking a new 
 enterprise the first step is to convince men that it is 
 wise and right. If I believe revenge to be a virtue, I 
 should indulge the passion. • If a man believes that 
 there is no God, and no future state, and that there 
 is no greater happiness than the indulgence of the 
 appetites, he will probably be a different man fi:om 
 what he would have been, had he believed that the 
 true welfare of man depended on the right culture of 
 moral principles and spiritual affections. A young 
 man who believes that nothing is so bad and base 
 as dishonesty, will be different from what he would 
 
ON WHICH SIDE? 291 
 
 have been had he believed that the only guilt in dis- 
 honesty consists in being detected. To say that it 
 is of no consequence what one's religious belief is, 
 provided he is honest, — that in regard to that which 
 treats of the most important human relations, of 
 God, of man, of futurity, and whose special office is 
 to teach man how to live, it is of no consequence 
 what one believes, — is an absurdity almost beyond 
 conception. 
 
 But you say, there are good men who reject Chris- 
 tianity. Doubtless there are. I do not say that be- 
 lief is the sole thing that determines character. I 
 only say that, as a rule, it must have a most power- 
 ful effect upon it, — and that the moral state of any 
 people wiU depend very much on its moral beliefs. 
 And this we at once acknowledge, when we say that 
 a man's moral notions will differ essentially as he is 
 educated into the beliefs of Christendom, or of China, 
 or of Central Africa. But there are good men who 
 reject Christianity ? Doubtless there are. But prob- 
 ably they owe the best parts of their character to the 
 very religion which they abjure. They have breathed 
 in the higher moral sentiment which Christianity 
 produces in the community. They have been in- 
 directly benefited by her institutions, by her helps 
 and her restraints. Nay, more, you are very likely to 
 find, that, during childhood and youth, when habits 
 are formed, they grew up as believers under the train- 
 ing of Christian parents. Their characters were 
 formed by Christian influences, and their habits re- 
 main after their religious faith is lost, as light re- 
 mains in the sky after the sun has sunk below the 
 
292 ON WHICH SIDE? 
 
 horizon. They are no specimens of the result of un- 
 belief, but rather of the power of belief to benefit one 
 after the faith itself is gone. The true question is, 
 , What will be the character of their children, if they 
 are brought up on unbelief, — brought up to re- 
 gard Christianity as a fable, and to look no higher 
 than themselves for rules of living ? It is not till we 
 have a generation whose childhood is nurtured in 
 unbelief, — and may God avert that day of disaster 
 and eclipse ! — that we are to see the true fruits of 
 scepticism. To say that the rejection of Christianity, 
 treating as it does of the greatest subjects and inter- 
 ests, will have no results, is to speak childishly. For 
 good or evil, the spread of Christianity altered the 
 whole moral beliefs of the countries where it spread. 
 Christianity made the moral beliefs of Christendom 
 different from what they would have been had they 
 remained heathen. And to reject Christianity, to 
 blot out faith in it, is to return to the state of natu- 
 ral light in which the world was before Christianity. 
 It is to return to some form of heathen scepticism or 
 superstition. 
 
 In an age when so many minds are seriously la- 
 boring to bring about this change, — laboring to de- 
 stroy confidence in the authority of Christianity, and 
 to substitute in its place, as if it were something 
 novel, precisely that moral light which the heathen 
 world had before Christ's coming — neither more nor 
 less — and^which the whole heathen world has now, — 
 in such an age, if one believes that we owe anything 
 to Christ's revelations, it becomes him to say so. If 
 one believes that the world at large owes its best 
 
ON WHICH SIDE? 293 
 
 ideas of God and man, and human duty and destiny, 
 and all that is most exalting in faith, to Christianity, 
 and that to blot out this great light would be like 
 extinguishing the sun, it becomes him heartily to 
 acknowledge it. I do not ask one to be untrue to 
 himself, — never ! — nor to pretend to believe when 
 he does not believe, — never ! But this much is in- 
 cumbent on every one, that, when a matter of such 
 vital interest is in debate, a man should know where 
 he stands. On which side do you wish your children 
 to stand ? And if you believe that one side is false 
 and fraught with immeasurable mischiefs, and that 
 another side is true and identified with the best in- 
 terests of mankind, it becomes you, when your mind 
 is settled on this point, to stand there, — with all re- 
 spect for the free judgment of those who differ from 
 you, with all modesty in regard to your own convic- 
 tions, — but to take that side which you believe is 
 for the moral welfare of man. 
 
 If you have faith in Christianity, pay to the Eelig- 
 ion which has blessed the world that homage which 
 consists in ranging yourself under her banner, openly 
 and steadily, even though she condemn your own 
 guilty lives. Let there be no mistake about the fact 
 that you are on that side. She may rebuke and con- 
 demn you, and you may deserve it all ; but honor 
 her in her rebukes, and let it be seen that you will 
 sooner follow her who condemns your vices, than 
 follow the unbelief which gives swing and license to 
 your passions. On a subject of this great moment, 
 it becomes men to knpw on what side they stand, 
 
 25* 
 
294 ON WHICH SIDE? 
 
 and what guide they propose to take through the 
 mysteries of this mortal life. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken of some decisive posi- 
 tion in regard to faith. But that is important only 
 as a preparation for another step ; and that is the 
 adoption of Christianity as the practical guide of life. 
 In some way you are living. The Christian law is 
 something that you neglect or that you observe. It 
 is, or is not, of practical authority with you. The 
 whole worth of Christianity depends on its practical 
 application to life. If you believe that it is the re- 
 ligion to live by, it becomes you to consider whether 
 you are obeying its requirements. In any moral un- 
 certainty, do you in the last resort appeal to the 
 Christian law ? Is it your intention — for the moral 
 intention determines the character — to follow the 
 guidance of Christ ? 
 
 If there be any truth in Christianity, then the great 
 thing we are called upon to do is to come to some 
 moral decision on this subject. Let it be your de- 
 liberate purpose to live by the Christian law. If 
 you fail in your purpose to-day, let it be renewed to- 
 morrow. Let there be no doubt on what side you 
 stand. Do not try to cover and excuse your sins, 
 by half pretending that you abjure the law which 
 condemns you. It is not merely a duty to come to 
 this decision ; the mere making the decision invigo- 
 rates the whole moral nature. It clears up your 
 mind ; you are no longer the slave of petty, enfee- 
 bling indecisions ; you stand right before the world ; 
 — and it is for your good and for the good of others 
 that there should be no doubt on what side you 
 
ON WHICH SIDE? 295 
 
 stand. Come to this decision, and you judge your- 
 self by the Christian law. Every one knows that 
 you expect to be judged by it, and it is for your good 
 to have it understood that you expect so to be judged. 
 If you violate it, you acknowledge that you are prop- 
 erly condemned by it, and it is for your good that 
 you should be held to a law so high and pure ; and if 
 you obey it, your character has all the good influ- 
 ence which comes from an intended and purposed 
 obedience. There can be nothing in our lives of so 
 much moment as the coming to the deliberate and 
 permanent purpose of living under the authority of 
 the Christian law. May our hearts prompt us to 
 make this decision! May God grant us power to 
 say, in earnest sincerity, "We take our stand on the 
 side of Christianity, to follow her guidance and to 
 obey her laws. And may He of his mercy help us 
 to live by this decision ! 
 
SEEMON XXI. 
 
 CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. 
 
 THEN SAID HE UNTO ME, SON OF MAN, HAST THOU SEEN WHAT THE 
 ANCIENTS OE THE HOUSE OE ISRAEL DO IN THE DAKK, EVERT 
 MAN IN THE CHAMBERS OE BIS IMAGERY? — Ezekiel viii. 12. 
 
 In this passage the Prophet describes himself as 
 caught up and carried to Jerusalem, and set down 
 near the temple. And then in vision he beholds 
 " the idolatries of Judah." Under a series of em- 
 blems he describes the corruption, the degradation, 
 the idolatrous rites, into which the children of Israel 
 had fallen. Before the temple even was the statue 
 of a heathen god. He is commanded to dig into 
 the wall, where was a secret door, by means of 
 which he should gain access to the unholy rites 
 which they celebrate in secret. He entered, and 
 found every shape of creeping things and abomina- 
 ble beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, 
 portrayed on the waUs round about. And there, as- 
 sembled for unhallowed worship, were the ancients 
 of the house of Israel, with censers swinging in their 
 hands, and offering this midnight homage to the gods 
 of the heathen, i I quote the whole passage. " He 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. 297 
 
 said furthermore unto me, Son of man, seest thou 
 what they do ? even the great abominations that the 
 house of Israel committeth here, that I should go 
 far off from my sanctuary ? but turn thou yet again, 
 and thou shalt see greater abominations. And he 
 brought me to the door of the court; and when I 
 looked, behold a hole in the wall. Then said he 
 unto me. Son of man, dig now in the wall ; and 
 when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And 
 he said unto me. Go in, and behold the wicked abomi- 
 nations that they do here. So I went in and saw : 
 and, behold, every form of creeping things and abom- 
 inable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, 
 portrayed on the wall round about. And there 
 stood before them seventy men of the ancients of 
 the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood 
 Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his 
 censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense 
 went up. Then said he unto me. Son of man, hast 
 thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel 
 do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his 
 imagery ? for they say. The Lord seeth us not ; the 
 Lord hath forsaken the earth." 
 
 Though this was merely a vision, through which 
 it was intended to present the corrupted state of 
 Judah in the most impressive form, we may suppose 
 that the imagery of the vision was drawn from cus- 
 toms that then prevailed. These secret midnight 
 incantations were not unusual in heathen worship. 
 An ancient historian relates, that round the room in 
 African Thebes where the body of one of their 
 kings was supposed to be buried, a multitude of 
 
298 CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. 
 
 chambers were built, which had beautiful paintings 
 of all the beasts held sacred in Egypt. 
 
 But we need not regard this as merely a vision- 
 ary representation of the state of Judah. The mind 
 of man is a chamber of imagery in whose darkness 
 go on works hidden from the world, and sometimes, 
 we may fancy, hidden even from the eye' of God. 
 
 A hall of imagery! No phrase could better de- 
 scribe the mind of man, — and Memory the painter. 
 In colors bright or dark, in the very lineaments of 
 joy or shame or grief, she paints every deed, every 
 struggle of the soul ; — our very wishes and purposes, 
 though unacted, all are there. The world may be 
 ignorant of what is there, but we cannot forget. 
 The world may give mistaken praise or censure, but 
 in this place its mistakes are corrected. \ As we go 
 back through the solemn halls of life, and light up 
 the chambers of imagery, there we behold them all, 
 — all the scenes of the past, fixed immovably on the 
 walls, and silently smiling or frowning upon us. 
 And there, it may be, are darker deeds, sculptured 
 in- stone, standing aloft in their niches, from which 
 no strength of ours can pull them, — dread remind- 
 ers of the past, looking down with frozen, unmoving 
 eye upon the despair of the soul. Chambers they 
 are, to. multitudes, of shuddering and hopelessness, 
 and into which the best cannot enter and meditate 
 without deepest humility and sorrow because of the 
 scenes on which the eye, must there rest. 
 
 Come, then, and by that door to which all have 
 the key let us enter these halls of imagery within 
 the human soul. Light up the torches and raise 
 
CHAMBERS OP IMAGERY. 299 
 
 them aloft, that "we may see what is upon the wall. 
 These halls are as various as are the lives of men. 
 You have entered some great building prepared for 
 an assembly to which none have come. A few 
 lamps hung up showed only a dreary, naked breadth 
 of walls, with nothing on them to relieve the forlorn 
 air of destitution and desolation. Such sometimes 
 is the human mind. An idle and unprofitable life 
 has left only blank spaces where might have been 
 pictures of light, — blank and empty sjpaces to con- 
 demn our profitless days. There are more fearful 
 galleries than these. We have all read of the Cata- 
 combs that lie under one of the great European cap- 
 itals. They stretch under whole quarters of the city. 
 In terrible order, arranged in innumerable galleries, 
 are deposited the remains of more than ten genera- 
 tions, — a world of silence below, while heave and 
 swell in endless confusion the surges of life above. 
 You enter these gloomy abodes with torches, and on 
 every side are seen the mementos of death and de- 
 cay. More gloomy than this, sometimes, is the hu- 
 man mind. Portrayed on its walls are scenes of 
 decay and death. Here the innocence of childhood 
 — a fair, firail creature of the light — is slowly dy- 
 ing. There, on an altar whence once arose holy 
 aspirations to heaven, the fire is gone out. Vir- 
 tues once fresh and blooming sink and expire un- 
 der the assaults of the world. Here is seen one, 
 trembling and yet resolved, bartering away to the 
 Evil One his honesty for gain ; and there another 
 surrendering his conscience for pleasure. In another 
 space, the demolished temple, the trampled cross, 
 
300 CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. 
 
 are but symbols of a dead faith. And the angels 
 weep over another scene, not because sickness, and 
 death of the body are there, but because in the soul 
 the affections have withered into selfishness and 
 died. And the man, as he passes through this aw- 
 ful gallery, recognizes his own life. There is the 
 very place and scene where he sacrificed his integ- 
 rity, and ever since he has walked among men full 
 of guilty fears. There he sees revived before him 
 the slow decay of- youthful virtue and aspiration. 
 The scenes enacted in his own heart, the decay and 
 death there, are jjictured and sculptured on these 
 walls. 
 
 There are chambers of imagery in which we 
 might gladly linger. It is said that in the Old 
 "World is a gallery of paintings in which are col- 
 lected none but pictures of the Holy Family. The 
 Virgin Mother and the infant Jesus, images of in- 
 nocence and faith and heaven, smile on every side 
 from the canvas. Some pure souls there may be 
 who when they enter their chambers of imagery 
 may behold such scenes alone as these ; — a virtu- 
 ous youth, a devout age, a divine faith triumphing 
 over the powers of the world. 
 
 But at the best, the gallery of the mind can often 
 present only a mingled series of pictures. From the 
 earliest years man traces up his life. The soul en- 
 counters every form of evil. A thousand times it is 
 overborne, and rises with feeble steps, and in its 
 hard struggles learns at length that, if it would stand 
 erect, it must lean on God. There are the scenes of 
 bereavement, and the features of those hid in the 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. 301 
 
 grave reappear on these shadowy walls. There re- 
 morse has taken a form, and penitence too, and all 
 the struggles of the soul. The pilgrim travels on 
 through an ever-varying discipline, and at length, 
 only through much tribulation, enters the kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
 "■■* The chambers of imagery which the Prophet saw 
 were devoted to the dark rites of an idolatrous wor- 
 ship. Even in this we might follow out the same 
 analogy. Temples of wood and stone, and aU our 
 rites of worship, are but outward forms, — symbols 
 and shadows of spiritual things, — of no value ex- 
 cept as they give expression to a worship of the 
 soul. The soul is the real temple in which alone 
 God is served ; the heart, the only altar from which 
 can ascend an acceptable sacrifice. 
 
 We call ourselves Christians, and all unite in one 
 form of outward homage to the same Almighty Pow- 
 er, the Lord of heaven and earth. But each man has 
 his chamber of imagery, and, could we enter in, how 
 often should we find there the unhallowed rites of 
 another worship. Enter silently this dark and con- 
 cealed chamber. These are not the symbols of Je- 
 hovah's presence that we see. Here is an altar, and 
 the god that is reared over it is Manimon. And 
 here Power looks down from his throne ; and there 
 Pleasure stretches out her arms. The walls are 
 covered with emblems of the world and the pas- 
 sions. And the man in the secret chamber of his 
 imagery swings his censer, and bows down in adora^ 
 tion before the gods of his idolatry, x Here, in this 
 secret chamber, are those wishes uttered which are 
 
 26 
 
302 CHAMBEES OF IMAGERY. 
 
 his real prayers, and here that bowing Mown o£ the 
 soul which is the only true worship. 
 
 We are apt to feel as if what was done in these 
 halls of imagery was unmarked. So thought the 
 faithless ancients of the house of Judah. Darkness 
 and thick walls gave concealment to their midnight 
 conclave. Yet even there the angels, to whose spir- 
 itual vision these walls were transparent, were look- 
 ing in ; and to the Prophet, his eyes touched with 
 spiritual light, all became visible. Silent, unseen, 
 and mourning spectators they stood of these rites of 
 sin and darkness. 
 "^ And when we enter our chambers of imagery, 
 may there not be other witnesses than we think ? 
 Surely it is not a vain nor unreasonable thought, 
 that around us are spiritual beings, to whose spirit- 
 ual eyes the mind lies open, even as the scenes of 
 the visible world lie open to the bodily eye. Where 
 are the departed ones whom we have loved and who 
 have loved us? Who shall deem it an unreasonable 
 faith, th^ the mother looks down on the child and 
 watches his course? And if so, it is not merely 
 what he does that makes her follow him. with all the 
 anxiety of affection, but the thoughts and purposes 
 of the mind, the growing tastes, the struggles there 
 with temptation, the faithful endeavors to abide by 
 the right; not the prayers alone that he utters in 
 the church, but the gratitude and devotion of the 
 heart. In our career of worldliness, the thought 
 shall not harm us that unseen beings are witnesses 
 of our course, and that loved ones whom we do not 
 behold are near us. Happy is he who suffers to 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. 303 
 
 abide in his mind only those thoughts and purposes 
 which these spiritual beings may gladly look upon. 
 
 But if there be no other, there is one eye that 
 looks through all the veils of time and sense, — from 
 whom nothing is hid while doing, and by whom 
 nothing is forgotten when done, — before whom all 
 things lie open. 
 
 We are apt to regard as of no importance what 
 merely transpires in the mind. Yet, in the sight of 
 God, in the mind is the seat and source of all good 
 and ill. It is the purpose that clothes an act with 
 goodness or guilt. It is the purpose that gives its 
 criminality to the blow of the assassin, and its dig- 
 nity to the sufferings of the martyr. The act may 
 be the same, but the different purpose makes one 
 disinterested and another selfish. Thp forms of 
 worship may be the same; but to one mind they 
 are a mockery, and to another full of devotion. 
 Nay, the purpose which we attempt is in the sight 
 of God the same as if it were accomplished. It is 
 not an unimportant thing what occupies our minds, 
 and which way we suffer our wishes and inclinations 
 to tend. In these chambers of imagery is the real 
 life of man. Here, where are the secret counsels 
 and plans and resolves, where the passions conquer 
 or are subdued, where are the principles that we 
 obey and the will that resolves, — here is the life of 
 the man. All else is but outward show and mani- 
 festation. It is here that He looks who requires that 
 all true worshippers shall worship him in spirit and 
 in truth. 
 
 It is described as one of the marks of the folly and 
 
304 ■ CHAMBEKS OF IMAGERY. 
 
 impiety of the ancients of Judah, that, when met in 
 their chambers of imagery for their unhallowed rites, 
 they said, " The Lord seeth us not ; the Lord hath 
 forsaken the earth." Ah no ! Shut ourselves up in 
 the chambers of the soul,'and all lies exposed to him. 
 The imaginations that we 'indulge take form and 
 shape before him; and the hopes that we cherish 
 are audible prayers to the object of our worship; 
 and the thought is as the word, and the purpose as 
 the deed. 
 
 We enter now these halls of imagery at our 
 choice, to review the past for correction and im- 
 provement. The time comes when we must enter 
 them for judgment. In all that we are taught of a 
 retribution, we are taught not only thaf it is a right- 
 eous one, but that we shall be aware of its righteous- 
 ness. In that dread hour the memory must take a 
 conspicuous part. It is memory and conscience that 
 shall affirm the righteous judgments of God. j Again 
 must we stand within our chambers of imagery, — 
 not, as now, dark and closed against the world, but 
 thrown broadly open, — the light from heaven's 
 throne streaming through, and divine spectators 
 looking on. In the midst of the awful congrega- 
 tion of the risen dead, again must we pass through 
 the halls of life ; and there upon the walls shall live 
 again the hours that are past, the faded colors re- 
 viving under the supernatural light. There are the 
 very deeds of the hand and the purposes of the 
 heart ; they shall need no voice, — the silent walls, 
 — and memory and conscience, giving meaning to 
 all we behold upon them, shall approve or condemn. 
 
CHAMBERS OP IMAGERY. 305 
 
 If it be so melancholy to traverse the halls of the 
 past, because on every side are so many sad memen- 
 tos, because the music is silent and the garlands 
 faded and the hours are gone that shall never return, 
 how fearful shall that day be when all is reviewed 
 for judgment, — that day of revelation when all 
 shall be made known, when the heart shall give up 
 its secrets, when the graves shall give up their dead, 
 and all stand before God ! For that day, in which 
 the strong shall bow and the most devout tremble, 
 may God in his mercy aid us to be prepared ! 
 
 There is yet one other view of the subject. Our 
 life must be very much in the present and the past. 
 We have hopes, plans, speculations for the future ; 
 yet even these, so far as they are reasonable, depend 
 on foundations laid in the past. The future is un- 
 certain, but the past is fixed. It exerts a steady in- 
 fluence. Leaving out of view the effects of its dis- 
 cipline on the character, who can tell its power over 
 our present happiness ? By ten thousand links it 
 takes hold of aU the springs of joy or pain in the 
 soul. No one can make light of the past. There is 
 his childhood. There the friends to whom he has 
 been a burden or a blessing. There are days and 
 deeds which can never be recalled. There are the 
 struggles of the conscience ; there failures and falls 
 that must always be mourned ; there the affections 
 of the living and the tombs of the dead. J Behold an 
 aged man. By what myriad threads of associa- 
 tion which he cannot control is his mind carried 
 back ! He takes up a letter ; it was written years 
 ago by a friend of youth long gone. He takes up 
 
 26* 
 
306 CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. 
 
 another ; it was from one whose friendship was suc- 
 ceeded by alienation, and it tells of broken trust and 
 severed affections. He passes down the street ; the 
 signs of business recall those whose prosperity his 
 kindness has helped or his selfishness marred. He 
 opens a book ; it belonged to a child, to a brother, 
 a sister, whom he followed to an early grave. He 
 cannot escape the spell. It is ih vain to say he will 
 not look back. A word, a mere cadence of the voice, 
 the most familiar sight or sound, and in a moment 
 the panorama of years passes before his eyes, and at 
 once, and without warning, scenes flash upon him 
 that light up the features with smiles, or strike with 
 a sting to the heart. And every year we live, the 
 past becomes more important to us. The cloud en- 
 larges, which is full of the morning's light, and in 
 whose folds so often sleep the thunder and the 
 threatening storm. And|the past, what is it? It 
 is what memory makes it. We live in the midst of 
 the memories of the past. It is our very dwelling 
 and home which we build up around us day by day. 
 "We may leave our dwellings of wood and stone ; 
 may pull them down, repair them, remove from 
 them ; but not so this spiritual dwelling, this pres- 
 ence and audience chamber of the memory. We 
 build it once for aU ; it stands for ever, and is, ac- 
 cording to what we have made it, our home or our 
 prison. 
 
 This is the soul's hall of imagery. Let us give 
 heed to the significance of the words. We think it 
 desirable that the apartments in which we dwell 
 should not be deformed or unsightly; if in our 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. 307 
 
 power, we would have them ornamented with pic- 
 tures and works of art and taste. What then to 
 us is the soul's chamber of imagery ! It is crowded 
 with pictures ; each deed and thought, by a daguerre- 
 otype that asks no light of the sun or chemist's 
 skill, is at once' and silently transferred, and takes 
 its place immovably on the wall. Like the chamber 
 of the ancients of Judah, it may be covered with 
 every form of creeping things and beasts worshipped 
 as idols, which are but the symbols of our earthly 
 passions and appetites ; or on it may be portrayed 
 divine pictures of hope and faith. But once there, 
 there they remain, a perpetual presence before the 
 memory and conscience. Each new scene we pic- 
 ture on the walls must remain there for ever, to frown 
 or smile upon us. 
 
 Hang up in your halls of imagery what you will here- 
 after rejoice to see there. Suffer not to be there scenes 
 which shall af&ight and sting the soul. Each day, 
 let your deeds and your purposes be such that there 
 may take its place on the wall a new picture which 
 you shall be glad to look back upon. Happy is that 
 man who has so lived that he can go back and forth, 
 as he daily must, through the chambers of imagery, 
 with an untrembling soul, — who shall see on every 
 side pictures that shall awaken in his heart emotions 
 of peace, of pleasure, and hope. 
 
 I have said that the past is fixed. It is so. But 
 in the mercy of God there is one qualification, with- 
 out which, such is our unworthiness and guilt, the 
 only thing left us would be despair. We cannot 
 take down the pictures from the wall. But we may 
 
308 CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY, 
 
 add to them ; we may sometimes correct and alter. 
 God has granted to man the boon and the oppor- 
 tunity of repentance, and in his mercy granted to 
 repentance the promise of forgiveness. If the pic- 
 ture of the prodigal's departure is painted, there may 
 be added the prodigal's return and" the father's en- 
 during love. If there be the picture of one forgiven 
 much, let there be added to it that of one who loves 
 much. By the side of the wrong we have done, may 
 be set our efforts to repair the wrong. Over the 
 scenes of guilt and repentance, as over the retreating 
 waves of the deluge, there may be arched the rain- 
 bow of the Divine mercy. Repentance may not 
 efface the past. The rays of the setting sun do not 
 disperse the clouds *that gather along the western 
 horizon, but they fill the clouds with light, and make 
 them luminous with hues of beauty. So repentance, 
 though it cannot efface the past, transfigures it ; and 
 while it leaves enough of the dark cloud to make us 
 humble, it pours over it and around it a light from 
 heaven that fills the soul with serene hope. The 
 repented and forsaken sins, while they shall ever 
 remind us of our weakness, bring us nearer to 
 Him whose strength saves and whose mercy for- 
 gives. 
 
 Let each one enter the chambers of his imagery. 
 Let the transforming power of repentance alter and 
 correct, as far as may be, the dark and guilty scenes 
 of the past. And as, day by day and year by year, 
 new chambers are added, — the record of the soul's 
 life and experience, — let the walls grow ever bright- 
 er with scenes which shaU be the emblems of a 
 
CHAMBERS OP IMAGERY. 309 
 
 growing Christian life, on which a virtuous and 
 pious soul may gladly look, and which your dying 
 eyes may survey with peaceful memories and hum- 
 ble but happy expectation. 
 
SERMON XXII 
 
 THE MEMORIAL 01' VIRTUE. 
 
 THE MEMORIAL OF VIETTTB IS IMMOKTAL ; BECAUSE IT IS KNOWN 
 WITH GOD AND WITH MEN. WHEN IT IS PRESENT, MEN TAKE 
 EXAMPLE OF IT; AND WHEN IT IS GONE, THBT DESIRE IT; IT 
 WBAEBTH A CROWN AND TRIUMPHETH FOR EVER, HAVING GOTTEN 
 THE VICTORY, STRIVING FOR UNDEFILED REWARDS. — Wisdom of 
 
 Solomon iv. 2. 
 
 We are so made as to be deeply impressed by 
 external scenes and events. These outward influ- 
 ences, prearranged to stimulate- thought, to kindle 
 hope, to alarm the fears, to stir. the fountains of 
 joy and grief, constitute, in large part, the school of 
 life. What we are, or are to be, depends on our 
 fidelity in this school. It is therefore no superstition 
 which makes the closing year a period of religious 
 and serious thought. To arrive at another of those 
 milestones which mark the years between the cra- 
 dle and the grave ; to be made aware how swiftly 
 life flits by ; to be conscious that we are growing 
 older, and perhaps not better; to remember dear 
 friends who were with us, but are not now ; to hear 
 from bereaved homes and opened graves the warn- 
 
THE MEMORIAL OF VIRTUE. 311 
 
 ing that life is as uncertain as it is brief; — all this 
 is surely enough to sober the most frivolous mind. 
 We are brought, as it were, into the very presence of 
 the sublimest realities ; — life, so brief ; death, so cer- 
 tain ; judgment not to be evaded ; and God, the 
 sovereign of the living and the dead. 
 
 The last Sunday of the year seems set apart from 
 all other days of the year for memories and offices of 
 its own. On this day, as we meet here, besides the 
 living, there is a silent congregation present to the 
 memory which is not visible to the eye. There 
 are those who miss the children on whom they had 
 hoped in age to lean ; and others, the sister or 
 brother or husband or parent or friend ; and all 
 miss the venerable forms of those who constituted, 
 as it were, a part of the church itself, by their rev- 
 erence making us all revere more its offices. A 
 year since they were with us, they sat by your 
 side, they read from the same book, they uttered 
 the same prayers ; but their voices no longer join 
 with ours. It is the solemn funeral service of the 
 year. 
 
 The present Sunday has to me an additional in- 
 terest. It completes ten years since I first had the 
 privilege of occupying this place. For evil or good, 
 ten years of life have gone by. And how great the 
 changes ! In a congregation less subject to change 
 than almost any other, a sUent, gradual revolution 
 has been going on, until, in no inconsiderable part, 
 it is not the same that I first met. Children have 
 reached youth, those entering youth are now men 
 and women, husbands, wives, parents, presenting 
 
312 THE mb'moeial of virtue. 
 
 their children from day to day at the altar for Chris- 
 tian baptism. And from the ranks of the young 
 and the old aUke, many have disappeared. As I 
 look around, I am made conscious that there is 
 scarce a family which has not known the saddest, as 
 well as the joyful, experiences of life. In your homes 
 marriage lamps have been lit ; out of your doors 
 funeral trains have passed ; and in all hearts, what- 
 ever the outward fortune, have been going on the 
 moral conflicts from which no one is exempt. And 
 beside all these memories, when one who hoped to 
 be a Christian minister is compelled to think how 
 much he has fallen short of that high idea, who 
 sees how much ought to have been, and how little 
 has been, accomplished, and remembers that all the 
 harm done and the good not done must remain, that 
 opportunities are gone and years gone not to return, 
 it cannot be otherwise than a day of many sad and 
 many serious thoughts to him. Nor would I have 
 it otherwise to any of us. In this busy and seduc- 
 tive whirl of life, let us not lose these natural occa- 
 sions on which to pause and meditate. "We will, 
 at least, give this day to the supreme interests of the 
 soul. 
 
 During the past year the number of the departed 
 has not been large, but they have been so prominent 
 among us for position, or usefulness, or age, or the 
 close dependences of affection, or the peculiar and 
 touching circumstances of their loss, that a length- 
 ening shadow hangs on the parting year. 
 
 Within a few days, since the last time I addressed 
 you, this church, and society at large, have been be- 
 
THE MEMORIAL OF VIRTUE. 313 
 
 reaved pf one whom all loved to honor, — one vener- 
 able for his years, and more venerable -for his wis- 
 dom and his virtues.* It seems natural to speak of 
 him here ; for his stable character, his profound re- 
 spect for religion and her offices, his habitual pres- 
 ence here, entered into all our associations with the 
 church. Scarce a month has passed since he sat, a 
 childlike and devout worshipper, in his accustomed 
 . seat. 
 
 It is not for me to attempt to give an account of 
 his life, or to portray his character. This belongs to 
 those who knew him in the labors of manhood, and 
 in the preparation of earlier years. Most of us saw 
 only the fruits of the ripened autumn, — the fuU- 
 grown virtues of a long life of conscientious labor 
 and self-discipline. It was a character of which, 
 when present, men took example, and, now it is 
 gone, to be held in remembrance. 
 
 He has been described as eminently just, — as if 
 this were his characteristic quality. I think I should 
 have described the predominant feature of his char- 
 acter somewhat differently. It seemed to me that 
 he was characterized, not by any one quality, but 
 most remarkably by a combination of several, which 
 are often exhibited separately in a high degree, but 
 are rarely found united. He had a love of truth, as 
 well as a love of right, and he added to them a 
 humane heart, showing itself alike in a, large public 
 spirit, in private benevolence, and in a generous con- 
 sideration of others. He certainly was distinguished 
 
 * Judge Charles Jackson. 
 27 
 
314 THE MEMORIAL OF VIRTUE. 
 
 for an intellectual rectitude, — a desire .for truth, a 
 love of, not what truth will bring, but truth itself, 
 which in many exists as a sort of intellectual crav- 
 ing, but with little care about its moral applications. 
 So there are just men who are not humane, but are 
 hard and cold and severe ; and there are humane 
 men who are satisfied with the indulgence of the 
 sympathetic emotions, without troubling themselves 
 about the truth or right involved in the matter. In 
 him they were combined, — the moral decision, and 
 the act, preceded by a most scrupulous examination 
 into the truth of the facts or opinions on which they 
 were founded. He was never, like most of us, satis- 
 fied to feel first, and then to use his mind's faculties 
 to defend the accidental course thus taken. He 
 had that balance of qualities which is so rare. And 
 in an age of competition and struggle, when theo- 
 ries of division of labor are carried into morals as 
 well as affairs, — when so many influences tend to 
 create maimed, irregular, and fragmentary charac- 
 ters, monstrous on one side, dwarfed on another, — 
 it is well for us to consider that the true manhood 
 is not an exaggeration of one quality, but the har- 
 monious development of aU. These great funda- 
 .mental qualities appeared in the most ordinary de- 
 tails of life ; for he was not one 
 
 " Great for an hour, heroic for a scene. 
 Inert through all the common life between." 
 
 They appeared ^n the simplicity and directness of 
 his mind, and in the simple dignity and seemingly 
 unconscious courtesy of his manners. They ap- 
 peared in the refinement and delicacy of his moral 
 
THE MEMORIAL OP VIRTUE, 315 
 
 tastes, in the equity of his judgments, in the seren- 
 ity of a self-controlled and cheerful temper, and in 
 the disposition to exact less of others than of him- 
 self. He loved children. The unfortunate among 
 his early friends were never forgotten. The com- 
 peers of his early professional life, and those who 
 followed him in the same profession, seem to have 
 estimated him highly, almost in proportion as they 
 were brought into contact with him. A quarter of 
 a century's retirement and the influx of new and 
 honored names did not efface their respect for him. 
 His affectionate nature was so strong, that all who 
 were brought into its sphere, not only loved him, 
 but loved one another the better. He had nothing 
 of the overbearing temper which so often belongs 
 to powerful and penetrating minds and decided 
 wills. He was the best of listeners, evidently hold- 
 ing his judgment in suspense tUl he had heard all 
 that another, child or man, had to say. He had a 
 high and large sense of public duty. He was con- 
 servative, but his conservatism was not of the kind 
 which cares not what becomes of the world, provided 
 itself be peaceful and prosperous. He was not an 
 agitator, nor a revolutionist, nor a professional re- 
 former, but an improver, — one who took the hear- 
 tiest interest in the improvement of society, — one 
 who took, not a theoretical, but the actual world, 
 the actual sky and sun and soil, and endeavored to 
 make the best of them. And for J;he last half-cen- 
 tury I doubt if there has been an important institu- 
 tion or enterprise, which has proved to be for the real 
 progress of this community, with which he was not 
 
316 THE MEMORIAL 05 VJETITB. 
 
 in some way influentially connected. I doubt if 
 there was a place in the city where those engaged 
 in any wise movement for the improvement of so- 
 ciety met with a heartier sympathy than in the 
 sunshiny chamber where he spent his age. 
 
 I have been told by members of his own profes- 
 sion, who knew him from the beginning, that he was 
 distinguished for firmness and courage, and for a 
 certain chivalric and resolute temper. I think this 
 might have been suggested to any one by his intel- 
 lectual and moral directness. Neither his mind nor 
 conscience had any indirect or circuitous methods. . 
 He went straight to the point, by the iiiost sun- 
 lighted road. And this is rarely the case with the 
 timid, but only with the brave and single-minded. 
 
 His religious faith was simple and trusting. His 
 idea of practical religion might have been summed 
 up, I think, in the words of the Prophet, — " to do 
 justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God." 
 And the most complex creeds will hardly carry one 
 above this. 
 
 His old age was one to be held in the memory. 
 The ardor and fervor for which, we are told, he was 
 remarkable in earlier years, subdued under a serene 
 and cultivated self-control ; his mind un dimmed ; 
 his heart unchilled ; all that he most loved in his 
 near neighborhood ; his intellectual tastes expanding 
 into larger circles of reading and thought, rather than 
 contracting, witk age ; occupied but not engrossed 
 by the affairs of the day ; tranquil, cheerful, self- 
 governed, trusting in God, enjoying life, prepared to 
 die, — it was an age that all men loved to look on. 
 
THE MEMORIAL OF VIRTUE. 317 
 
 A little more than nine years ago, in a calm and 
 lovely day of early autumn, a younger brother, re- 
 markable for every gift of active life, and with a 
 heart as just and with a nature of as fine a temper 
 as his own, was borne to the grave. Their bodies 
 were borne to the grave. I think such brotherly 
 affection ^oes beyond the tomb. It is the dust only 
 that returns to the dust. Life's discipline over, the 
 spirits of the just are. with God. 
 
 When such 'a man dies, the first thought is of loss 
 to the survivors. A light is darkened in the com- 
 munity, a pillar is withdrawn, and from the domes- 
 tic system the central orb, around which all revolved, 
 is gone. A -void is left for them not to be filled. It 
 is on this aspect of death that we " are apt to dwell. 
 But perhaps not justly. A few verses before the 
 text it reads, " Call no man happy till he dies." 
 Death, whose frost blights so many fictions and pre- 
 tences, sets the seal of immortality on virtue. But 
 when one in the fulness of years departs, — one who 
 has fulfilled his course, who has won from life its 
 treasures of justice and kindness and reverential 
 trust, to whom this mortal discipline has imparted its 
 richness and strength, and whose soul, having been 
 faithful, is prepared for other scenes, — something 
 surely is to be thought of beside grief and loss. 
 Soldiers have thought it triumph to die in the mo- 
 ment of some great victory. The death of a good 
 man is the triumphant conclusion 6i the long con- 
 flict of life. His work is done. No earthly shadow 
 shall fall on him. So much is secure. The infirmi- 
 ties of the body dropped, the immortal affections of 
 
 27* 
 
318 THE MEMOEIAL 01 VIRTUE. 
 
 the soul restored to their natural youth, the happy 
 ending of this life the happiest omen for another, — 
 what death, even in your dreams, could you wish 
 for better than this ? Whatever- the grief felt by 
 those left behind, there should be mingled with it 
 and rising above it a profound gratitude and joy, 
 that one who was loved and honored had thus 
 passed triumphantly through the perils of life, and 
 been Victorious unto the end. "When a good man 
 dies, it becomes us to think, not merely of death and 
 its brief partings, but of the life within him and the 
 life beyond. Virtue and faith annihilate the dark 
 'meanings of death. 
 
 I do not pretend to give any careful, and still less 
 a complete, view of the character of him. whom we 
 have lost. I have a different object. I have in 
 mind those who are entering life, whose career is 
 yet to be run, whose choice of direction is stUl more 
 or less free. Were I to speak of the worth of virtue 
 in general, all that I could say would be so obvious, 
 that it would hardly arrest the attention. But I will 
 hope the declaration of the text, "that of all earthly 
 interests and ends virtue weareth the crown, may be 
 made impressive by this attendant commentary of a 
 character which you all knew and honored. 
 
 The moral result of life, what you shall be morally 
 at its conclusion, can be no matter of accident. The 
 very idea of virtue implies purpose, choice, will. 
 And a virtuous character is not the product of an 
 hour, but of the life. Every one, though we are not 
 half conscious of it, chooses the character he shall 
 finally have. He will never be better than he wishes 
 
THE MEMORIAL OF VIETUE. 319 
 
 and wills to be. Now the very first condition of a 
 right choice is a right estimate of human attain- 
 ments. The most fatal difficulty in the way of a 
 right life is the want of faith in the reality and the 
 worth of virtue. An atheist may have elevated pur- 
 poses, but the infidel to virtue sees nothing in it 
 even to be sought. In the practical life nothing is 
 so important at the foundation, and few things so 
 neglected, as the clear, well-considered, settled con- 
 viction, that of all we can gain or lose on earth 
 a righteous character is the supreme good. Not 
 amusement, not happiness, not health, not prosper- 
 ity, not any worldly distinction, but a righteous 
 character. Let us apply a test to this truth. You 
 knew him who is gone. Suppose, by sacrificing 
 some portion of his generous interest in the wel- 
 fare of others, he had been much more prosperous, 
 by disregarding the rights of others, or by any un- 
 scrupulous means, had gained places of power and 
 distinction, would any of these outward prizes have 
 compensated for the loss of the virtues ? Nay, could 
 he have gained all for which men struggle, by al- 
 lowing, consciously, the existence of one bad habit, 
 running like -a fault in the precious marble through 
 his character, would they not have been gained at a 
 deadly cost ? You would have said, now that he is 
 gone, "We have rich men enough, and learned men 
 enough, and ambitious men enough and to spare, 
 but give us back the simplicity and dignity of a vir- 
 tuous manhood, that we may have it to think of and 
 to honor and to be inspired by. In thinking of the 
 dead, we never doubt that of all earthly goods vir- 
 tue wears the crown. 
 
320 THE MEMORIAL OF VIRTUE, 
 
 A character of virtuous wisdom, simplicity, and 
 dignity is the noblest product of the earth. It is the 
 greatest gift of God to society. So precious is it in 
 God's sight, that to produce this fairest work is the 
 great end of all this varied discipline of joy and 
 trial, the struggles of life, the influences of nature, 
 the lessons of Providence, the teachings of the Bible. 
 This is the great end of all, — to build up human 
 souls in righteousness. When such men exist, they 
 are the treasures of society. Were there none such, 
 the world would be a desert. But so long as any 
 remain, in palaces or hovels, in humble places or 
 high, life is elevated by their presence. They are 
 perpetual reminders of what all in their degree might 
 be. Their presence rebukes our poor aims and at- 
 tainments. They stimulate our aspirations, and give 
 an ideal standard to heart and mind and conscience. 
 So precious a thing is it in God's sight, that he does 
 not hesitate to subject his children to severest trial 
 that they may reach this highest good, — leading 
 them to the crown, if there be no other way, even 
 by the cross. We are taught, in the striking lan- 
 guage of the wise man in connection with the text, 
 " The true beginning of wisdom for a man is the 
 desire of discipline," — the desire to be trained in 
 her ways. At first she will walk With him by difii- 
 cult and crooked paths, and bring fear and dread 
 upon him, and torment him with her discipline, 
 until she can trust his soul. Then will she return 
 unto him and comfort him, and show him her se- 
 crets. And when we behold one who has followed 
 her, and see how the discipline which at first tor- 
 
THE MEMORIAL OF VIRTUE. 321 
 
 mented by its restriction has become a strength, and 
 the self-denial been transformed into self-control, 
 and the outward tasks develop the inward power, 
 and the struggle has conquered a higher peace, and 
 the steep and rocky hill has led up to serene hopes, 
 we acknowledge that this man has done well to fol- 
 low wisdom, and that, of all the sovereignties of the 
 world, the virtue to which she would conduct him 
 weareth the crown. 
 
 But the sceptic in virtue says that such men are 
 powerless, or, in the language of the objector of old, 
 it is in vain to serve God. The loud tongue, the 
 grasping hand, the unscrupulous will, carry the day. 
 Perhaps too much, but not always. In the last re- 
 sort, wisdom and uprightness have a peculiar power, 
 which belongs to nothing else. Let me draw an 
 illustration from the character we have been review- 
 ing. For more than thirty years he had withdrawn 
 from public life. His retirement went beyond the 
 ordinary meaning of the word. He held no place to 
 attract the ambitious. He mingled in affairs no fur- 
 ther than to perform the simple duties of a private 
 citizen. He was one whom the huzzaing crowd 
 pass by. He had no place among them. In these 
 great excitements of the day, when it seems as if we 
 were never more than half in earnest except in our 
 love of excitement, he was forgotten. And yet not 
 forgotten. When a great and real work was to be 
 done, when it was desired to give shape and sim- 
 plicity and clearness to law, and so strengthen the 
 authority of justice and the foundations of the Com- 
 monwealth, he was remembered and sought for. 
 
322 THE MEMORIAL OP VIRTUE. 
 
 In agitated times, when complex questions of morals 
 and law and statesmanship divided men, and the 
 State was shaken by conflicting passions, to whom 
 did we go for counsel sooner than to him ? There 
 was no one among us who did not stand stronger 
 when sustained by his judgment, arid few who 
 would not have thought it at least worth the while 
 to revise and confirm the reasons for an opposite 
 conclusion. And why ? Not merely because of his 
 wisdom. Others might or might not be wiser than 
 he. But because from him, as we thought, we 
 might derive a judgment signally unbiassed by 
 passion, unbribed by interest. Because he was 
 one whose wisdom was penetrated by a prevail- 
 ing, vitalizing love of virtue and truth. Such men 
 are not forgotten. Amidst the clamor of tran- 
 sient passions, and the conflict of unimportant 
 events, they are unheeded. But when the crisis 
 comes, when it is seen that there can be no more 
 trifling, men know where they are. They have not 
 lost sight of them. They know where to find a 
 leader at the plough, and the exile in the desert, and 
 the prophet in his solitary cave. In life they are not 
 forgotten, and when they are gone are stUl remem- 
 bered. They are installed among the standards of 
 human worth, and become a part of the moral in- 
 spiration which blesses those who follow them. 
 
 But the sceptic as to the worth of virtue objects, 
 as of old, that while vice triumphs and flourishes, 
 righteousness toils and denies itself without success. 
 In answer, I say that I know not why virtue should 
 expect to monopolize all the successes of life, and so 
 
THE MEMORIAL OE VIRTTJE. 323 
 
 destroy its own best discipline and antedate the ret-- 
 ributions of another world, reducing the sublimity of a 
 continued and connected moral existence to the nar- 
 row point of the passing day. But virtue is no dis- 
 qualification for any reasonable success. This, how- 
 ever, does not touch the real difficulty, which lies in 
 the false judgment as to what success is. What is 
 the successful life ? Of these' hundreds of dying 
 men, whom do you single out as the truly success- 
 ful ? Let the miser's gains be beyond counting, yet 
 if he has lost the grace of a generous, kind, and 
 sympathetic heart, though prosperous in his affairs, 
 he has failed as a man. The ambitious man, 
 though loaded with honors, if he has become jeal- 
 ous, false, and time-serving, though he sit on a 
 throne, has not succeeded as a man. Whatever 
 one's outward fortunes, prosperous or adverse, no 
 man's life is successful which has not grown in vir- 
 tue. Let me die the death of the righteous, was the 
 prayer of one in old time. It expressed the univer- 
 sal sentiment. If one fail of attaining the virtues of 
 a right character, his life has not been worth the liv- 
 ing. The attainment of a Christian manhood is the 
 success of life. And in the sight of wise men, of 
 angels, and of God, he who has attained it, no mat- 
 ter how he lives or where he dies, has triumphed 
 over the world, and gained the victory over death. 
 
 But my object is not to vindicate the worth of 
 virtue. Our own memories of the past, the homage 
 paid to heroism, the respect which a conscientious 
 purpose commands, the whole moral order of the 
 universe, make man's words idle and superfluous. 
 
324 THE MEMORIAL OP VIRTUE. 
 
 But what I would urge as not superfluous, as some- 
 thing of the highest moment to every one, is to have 
 a definite moral plan of life, — a plan of life, to know 
 what you are living for, to know what moral results 
 in character you would be satisfied to have at the 
 end. He that enters any profession or business has 
 some general idea of what he means to do or be. 
 He goes through the severest discipline, rising early 
 and watching late to attain the end, often a poor 
 and indifferent one. He has a plan of life, to which 
 in a greater or less degree everything is made to con- 
 form. Without it he accomplishes nothing. Does 
 any one expect to attain the virtues of a simple, just, 
 and righteous soul at a cheaper rate and with less 
 forethought and care? Does any one expect to 
 stumble by accident into an elevated character? 
 However it may be with one's secular fortunes, there 
 is no accident in the laws or the progress of the soul. 
 Nature and Providence weigh here with even bal- 
 ances. There is no harvest where there has been no 
 seed-time ; and just as has been the seed-time, idle, 
 selfish, or profligate, or faithful and loyal to good 
 uses and holy ends, just such will be the harvest. 
 No man will long have any virtue which rises above 
 the level of his prevailing moral aims. And if left 
 to itself, the moral plan of life will in most cases be- 
 fore long be a poor and & low one ; for it will con- 
 stantly be lowered by the steady, urgent pressure of 
 the appetites and passions. Therefore know what 
 you mean to live for, what you are willing to live 
 for, what you are willing to present before the judg- 
 ment-seat as the product of your life. Let your 
 
THE MEMORIAL OP VIRTUE. 325 
 
 plan of life be one which shall be as favorable as 
 possible to the cultivation of the highest virtues, one 
 that shall keep you out of the way of bad influences 
 and in the way of good ones. Let it embrace habits 
 of usefulness, of kindness, of public spirit, and of 
 piety to God. Consider that the companionship, 
 the reading, the employments, and the amusements, 
 which damage your regard for truth, or soil your 
 purity, or chill to a lower temperature your moral 
 feelings, must be excluded from your plan of life. 
 Have a plan of life, and abide by it, which shall 
 make you .every year wiser, more truth-loving, more 
 humane and useful among men, more loyal to your 
 Maker. There is no one so trifling who does not 
 make plans beforehand for pleasure or profit or repu- 
 tation. Be not wise for trifles, and frivolous in re- 
 gard to that for which you are created. Have the 
 moral plan and purpose and fixed determination of 
 the will to subdue your life to the laws of a Chris- 
 tain manhood. For without fidelity on your part, 
 neither nature nor providence, nor Christ's death, nor 
 God's grace, will ever give you the virtues which 
 have on them the stamp of immortality. And when 
 shall such a plan be better framed, than when the 
 closing year is reminding us of weakness and of fail- 
 ure, and reminding us too of the shortness and un- 
 certainty of life ? The almighty Providence, has 
 spared us another year. Has it been for our good 
 or our harm ? In the moral account which the year 
 bears up to heaven, is there witness borne to your 
 growing virtues ? It is a fearful thing to stand at 
 the closing gates of the departing year, and to be 
 
 28 
 
326 THE MEMORIAL OE VIRTUE. 
 
 compelled to say, The year has been lost : I am no 
 wiser or better ; and if I am always to live thus, bet- 
 ter that I had not been born. That is a miserable 
 man who prospers only in his affairs, and grows poor 
 in the virtues and affections of a righteous soul. 
 Then while I make the uncertainty of life no ground 
 of superstitious appeal, still the fact of that uncer- 
 tainty remains, and in every wise man's account it 
 is a most serious one. We may know that there is 
 a certain average length of life ; but we also know 
 this, that there will be a certain proportion of those 
 who begin the year with us who will not see the 
 end of it. "Whether the young or the aged, those 
 in sickness or those in health, shall be called, — 
 whose name shall be drawn from the urn, — no man 
 can foretell ; but we know that in a few years we 
 shall all be gone. The fever of life will be over ; its 
 transient successes and reverses will have melted out 
 of thought, like bubbles on a stream ; the snows of 
 winter will fall on our graves, and nothing will re- 
 main but what we bear with us in the soul. And 
 in that heavenly world which we at least hope to 
 enter, one kind affection, a more settled principle of 
 rectitude, a grateful heart, will be worth more than 
 the prizes of the round world. These are not count- 
 ed in heaven. Then while life is yours, and choice 
 is yours, and there is time and room, establish in the 
 soul some definite and fixed plan of living, which 
 shall look forward to the immortal life and upward 
 to Christ and to God. 
 
SEEMON XXIII, 
 
 STILLNESS OF MIND. 
 
 BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD. — Psalm xlvi. 10. 
 
 It is in the calmness of the soul, — not when its 
 passions are awake, not in its insensibility, but in 
 its calmness, — that- we become most conscious of 
 the Divine Presence. Thus the prophet sought his 
 cave ; and the patriarch went out at eventide to 
 meditate ; and Jesus found, on the solitary summit 
 of the mountain, a place where he might be alone 
 to pray. But, forgetting these great examples, we 
 spend our days in restlessness and hurry, amidst the 
 struggling and competing crowd, and beset by the 
 stings and goads of ceaseless excitements. Man 
 and the works of man come between the eye and 
 the works of the Almighty, till, enslaved to the 
 senses, it seems to us as if there were nothing in the 
 universe except these human contrivances and pro- 
 jects and interests. We need, more than the patri- 
 arch of old, to go forth at eventide to meditate, and 
 to seek in the quietness of the heart the presence of 
 God. 
 
328 STILLNESS OF MIND. 
 
 The text implies, what all experience affirms, that 
 stillness and retirement of mind are necessary to the 
 appreciation of spiritual truth. Those truths are as 
 simple as they are sublime ; but we come to a just 
 appreciation of them not so much through processes 
 of reasoning as by the direct perceptions of the 
 awakened soul. And that appreciation is always 
 most clear and vivid in the stillness of the. mind. 
 
 Stillness of mind ! What meaning in these words. 
 Be still, and know that I am God ! The command 
 and the all-sufficient reason ! Here is one of the 
 truths learned in the stillness of the mind. Be still ! 
 Yes, this is the first step to knowing anything of 
 God. While I am engaged in the stir and struggle 
 of daily business, the sounds of the wharf, the street, 
 and the workshop in my ear, ^ow hard to think 
 of anything beyond ! Man is too near. His words 
 fill my ear and shut out all divine voices. Every- 
 thing that connects man with earth is awake, but 
 •the soul sleeps. Were we never alone, were we 
 compelled to live always in a crowd, man would so 
 fill our eyes and thoughts, and thus so exclude the 
 thought of God, that it may be doubted whether, by 
 a kind of mechanical influence, we should not be- 
 come atheists. 
 
 Let us leave man and man's works, and go abroad 
 into the heart of the natural world and learn some 
 of its lessons. Summer has brought back its ver- 
 dure and its bloom. As you leave the crowd of men 
 and enter the retreats of nature, you are at first 
 struck with the silence. The rattling of a wheel on 
 the stones, the lowing of the herds, even a word 
 
STILLNESS OF MIND. 329 
 
 spoken, is heard from a strange distance. But pres- 
 ently, and it is with a feeling of awe, you become 
 sensible of other sounds. There are the cattle on a 
 thousand hills, the birds in the trees ; and from the 
 grass rise myriad insect voices. The world of man 
 is left behind, and you are introduced into a new 
 universe of sights and sounds. The air is peopled 
 with inhabitants unmarked before, the earth is peo- 
 pled, every wave throws on the beach new forms of 
 life, and the sunshine is full of glistening insect 
 wings. As the mind pause^ilently on such a scene, 
 it does not reason or question, it feels and knows, 
 that there is a God. But it is not merely animated 
 existence ; the most striking peculiarity is that it is 
 happy existence. Songs begin with the morning, 
 and only end with the night. The voice of waOing 
 comes only from human dwellings. You cannot 
 count the infinite variety of sounds in nature, and 
 all musical, — the singing of happy animal life. The 
 lives of animals may be brief, but ordinarily death 
 comes suddenly, and there is nothing of that antici- 
 pation of the last hour, and that dread forelooking 
 of an hereafter, which gives the sting to death. If 
 anything is evident, it is that, to the animate crea- 
 tion, life is almost invariably a series of agreeable 
 sensations, a constant happiness, — a happiness, if 
 destitute of the benefits, unalloyed also by the fears 
 and pangs and pains, which come with the reason- 
 able and accountable nature of man. 
 
 These countless forms of animal life cannot pro- 
 vide for themselves ; yet they are all taken care of, — 
 from birth to death they are all taken care of ; all 
 
 28* 
 
330 STILLNESS OF MIND. 
 
 that is needed for a happy existence is provided. 
 As I look on such a scene, I understand that our 
 Saviour's words are to be taken literally, — I want 
 no commentary of books upon them; Nature attests 
 and explains his words, when he says, Not a lily 
 blossoms, not a hair of the head, not a sparrow, falls 
 to the ground without your Father's notice ; how 
 much more then will he care for you, O ye of 
 little faith! Come, ye who doubt the goodness of 
 God, and the reality of his providence ; here is not 
 the vague, far-distant p»oof of it, — here is the very 
 reality, here is the thing itself. It shines in the light, 
 it flows in the streams, it bathes these summer fields 
 in hues' of beauty, it is proclaimed in the motions 
 and sounds of animal life, — the goodness of God! 
 From all this wide horizon, from the flowing waters, 
 and the bosom of the bountiful earth, spreading her 
 table for the nations, comes a voice, declaring that 
 God is good! From these shifting and shining 
 clouds, from the depths of the clear, blue heavens, is 
 uttered the name of God! Man may utter false- 
 hoods, he may feign and belie his convictions, but 
 Nature has no art to deceive, and here is the worth 
 of her testimony ; — the infinite goodness shines 
 through all her forms, and you see it, as you see the 
 sun's light. They are no words of poetic fancy, but 
 here you feel them to be words of soberest truth, — 
 
 " The birds that rise on soaring wing 
 Appear to hymn their Maker's praise ; 
 And all the mingled sounds of spring 
 To thee a general paean raise." 
 
 But there is a more impressive voice than that of 
 
-STILLNESS OP MIND. 331 
 
 Nature which speaks of God, — a voice from the 
 human soul ; — and here the command becomes 
 more imperative, Be still, and know that I am God ! 
 When philosophers would adduce evidence of the 
 existence of God, they are accustomed to appeal to 
 the works of nature, the wonderful frame of man, 
 the myriad forms of life, the worlds that fill the skies, 
 the laws that reach from the plant to the stars, and 
 bind all in one harmonious whole. The evident 
 design, the beneficent purpose, the sublimity of plan, 
 obtrude themselves on our senses, and compel us to 
 acknowledge the Creator. But the evidence which 
 appears when we look into the human mind is still 
 more impressive. It is so from the very absence of 
 all mechanical arrangements. We can take the 
 human body apart, and understand something of its 
 arrangements, and the forces that act within it. Ex- 
 cept the principle of life, there are parts of it whose 
 construction we can almost imitate. We can help 
 the shattered hand, the darkened eye, the sealed ear. 
 But come to the soul, and here is something beyond 
 not only our feeblest imitations, but something that 
 we do not understand. Chemist and physiologist 
 make no approaches towards it. We can account 
 for its existence from no mechanical contrivance, 
 from no spontaneous birth. Each new soul comes 
 forward, as wondrous, as miraculous a thing, in all 
 save the novelty, as Adam in Eden. 
 
 Whence comes this reasoning mind, — of large 
 discourse, — with memory and forecast reaching out, 
 like two vast peninsulas, into the dreary ocean of 
 the Past and the Future, — these affections that tri- 
 
332 STILLNESS OS MIND. 
 
 umph over the grave and follow the shining track of 
 angels, — these imsounded depths of awe and hope 
 and fear, — these capacities whose largest develop- 
 ment is only an omen of their infinite reach-, — 
 whence came the human mind? If a ship is not 
 built by chance, if the construction of the commonest 
 engine is the work of mind, — the mind itself which 
 frames ships and engines, and holds laws and com- 
 monwealths in its embrace, can be no chance work. 
 The existence of a single mind takes us at once to 
 the creating mind of the universe. 
 
 And there is more than original creation. The 
 aspirations of the soul, never satisfied with anytl^ing 
 short of the infinite, take us up to heaven. And the 
 conscience, which is meaningless except as it repre- 
 sents the moral law of God, which associates us 
 with the moral order of the universe, and is a perpet- 
 ual connecting link between the soul and its Maker, 
 — the conscience, whatever our theory respecting its 
 nature, is always the divine voice in the soul. And 
 whose life has been so forsaken that he has not been 
 constrained to say. Once, yea twice, God hath 
 spoken .to me ; in my sorrow he hath comforted and 
 in my sin he hath corrected me. God is present in 
 holier thoughts, in more heavenly aspirations, in the 
 gentle restraint when we are going astray, in the en- 
 couragement when we despond, in the providence 
 that guards and protects. 
 
 But when and where and how shall we hear these 
 divine voices ? Only in the stillness of the mind. 
 They come not in the thunder and the earthquake, 
 but are still and low. In the clamor of the passions. 
 
STILLNESS OP MIND. 333 
 
 in the noise of the world, we do not hear them. But 
 be alone, and be still, and in the calmness the soul 
 feels and knows the presence of God. Therefore 
 the guilty flee from solitude, because God speaks in 
 the silence. They would put other men between 
 them and their Maker. And therefore will the de- 
 vout seek retirement, for in retired hours the divine 
 presence is nearest, and immortal truths reveal them- 
 selves to mortal eyes. You have seen a lake em- 
 bosomed in the hills. In the morning, while the 
 winds swept over it, you could see only the glitter- 
 ing surface, tossed into spangles of light, which, 
 instead of revealing, did but hide the depths below. 
 But the winds went down, and the waters grew 
 calm as those over which the feet of the Saviour 
 passed ; and there, in the calmness, its depths were 
 disclosed, its rim of shining sands, and the reflection 
 of the forests and the skies, and, as night came 
 down, the everlasting stars. So it is in the calm 
 and silent soul ; when the passions are hushed, and 
 this superficial disturbance of the world is stilled, 
 the great truths of heaven are reflected there. 
 
 Be still, and know that I am God ! These words 
 have scarcely less application to us than • to those 
 who first heard them. We come to a belief that 
 there is a Sovereign Creator and Sustainer of the 
 Universe. But all this may be, and still we may 
 have no feeling that he is really God, that he is the 
 actual ruler and disposer of all things, that these 
 heavens are but the symbols of his presence, and 
 these summer airs and genial rains and springing 
 harvests are but the present manifestations of his 
 
334 STILLNESS OE MIND. 
 
 benignity. When I murmur at trial, or am impa- 
 tient for some success, and wish to make my own 
 will sovereign, can I be said to feel that the Creator 
 is God ? When every evil and calamity, and every- 
 thing that seems to go wrong, makes me despond 
 and despair, can I believe in the reality of a Provi- 
 dence ? The text addresses itself to these half-be- 
 lievers. Thou who art troubled with many things, 
 who art thrown into despair by disappointed hopes, 
 crushed into the dust by misfortune or sorrow, do 
 not imagine that your true good is dependent on 
 worldly success; know that I am God, that these 
 things come not by accident, that I am near you in 
 these trials, that I visit you in these sorrows, and 
 that I take you by this rocky and thorny road be- 
 cause it is the only one that leads to the soul's 
 peace. 
 
 And thou who art walking in sifl, know that it is 
 no dream of superstition, no lie of priestcraft, that I 
 am God! In the penalties that rush or creep on 
 guilty deeds, in the spectral memories that dog and 
 haunt your steps, in the vague fears that comje and 
 sit by you in lonely hours, by the calm of a good 
 conscience, by the stings of a guilty one, know that 
 I dwell not apart, heedless of man, but that I am 
 God, ruling the world in righteousness. 
 
 Is the world still oppressed by evil deeds and evil 
 men, does selfishness triumph over mercy and jus- 
 tice, is there wrong and oppression and error in the 
 world, and does the Lord's hand seem slack and 
 does he delay his coming, and do you lose faith be- 
 cause all things are not done in the way and as 
 
STILLNESS OP MIND. . 335 
 
 speedily as you wish ? Do you grow faithless be- 
 cause your efforts to do good bear so little fruit ? 
 Let your doubts be still. The Lord reigns. If 
 your plans fail, doubt not that it is well they should 
 fail ; and if He waits a thousand years for the slow 
 progress of man, think it not hard that you should 
 wait a day. 
 
 The greatest of all questions which a human 
 being ever asks himself is, in cases of uncertainty 
 and doubt, What is right ? Answer that question, 
 as it is brought up by one and another emergency, 
 and the greatest problem of life is solved. How 
 shall we reach a just answer to such a question ? 
 
 Our most common method is to fly to man. We 
 congregate together ; we must hear what others 
 have to say ; we discuss and agitate and harangue. 
 Almost before 'we have begun to think, we are com- 
 mitted to a side ; we would impose our views on 
 others ; we are intolerant of independent judgment; 
 our passions move quicker than reason ; and pride, 
 anger, indignation, distrust, and bitterness flood the 
 intellect and sweep it away, or use it as they will. 
 In the heated crowd, fevered with passion, we may 
 find impulse enough, if that were what we needed ; 
 but surely it is no place in which to settle any se- 
 rious question of duty. The conflagration of the 
 passions, sweeping above and around in fiery eddies, 
 excludes the higher light of truth, till to seek it 
 there is as if the astronomer should attempt to study 
 the laws of the heavenly bodies through the smoke 
 of a battle. The scene of excitement has its uses, 
 but it is not the place in which to determine a ques- 
 tion of duty. 
 
336 STILLNESS OF MIND. 
 
 Neither can the intellect, acting alone, be safely- 
 trusted to settle a question of duty. And the con- 
 clusive reason, apart from all other considerations, 
 is this. Every question of duty is a mixed one, 
 partly intellectual and partly moral. The intellect 
 has its office ; it collects statistics, arranges facts, 
 determines the truth of statements ; still further, it 
 can calculate the utility of one course or another ; 
 but the intellect, acting independently and alone, 
 cannot decide a question of duty. When it has Col- 
 lected the materials, those other elements of man's 
 nature, by virtue of which alone he has an idea of 
 duty, and feels its binding authority, and is con- 
 scious of harmony or discord between himself and 
 right, must be called in. Every faculty of man has 
 its office. The office of the intellect is to determine 
 truth. It can settle a question of natural science. 
 But by itself alone it can be no more competent to 
 decide a question of duty, than the conscience is 
 competent to decide a fact in physical science. 
 
 For a similar reason, a mere appeal to the con- 
 science is not enough. I do not mean by this mere- 
 ly — w'hat nevertheless is true — that the conscience 
 is liable to error, is easily shaped to our wishes or 
 passions, and is open to all kinds of misleading 
 sophistries ; but I mean that what we term the con- 
 science does not include all the elements of man's 
 nature which ought to be appealed to in determin- 
 ing a question of right. Above the conscience, — its 
 life, — without which it would wither into a mean- 
 ingless phrase, is the religious sentiment, connecting 
 conscience and intellect with God. The decision of 
 
STILLNESS OP MIND. 337 
 
 a question of duty, always the most solemn act that 
 a human being can perform, rightly demands the co- 
 operation of all man's spiritual faculties. The in- 
 tellect collects facts, but it belongs to the conscience 
 to decide on their moral bearings, acting with a con- 
 scious reference to the approval and the will of Al- 
 mighty God. I do not say that an imperfect being 
 like man can, under any circumstances and with all 
 the light of nature and revelation to aid him, rely 
 on his judgments as infalhble; but he who does 
 what I have described, faithfully, even when wrong 
 in his judgment if measured by absolute truth, will, 
 relatively tb himself, be right. 
 
 I return now to the question. What is the best 
 course for me to take in endeavoring to determine, 
 in any doubtful case, what is ray duty ? And, borne 
 out by the laws of man's nature and the declara- 
 tions of revelation, I reply in the words of the text, 
 for they suggest the whole answer, " Be still, and 
 know that I am God! " In many things it is proper 
 to ask merely what is pleasant, what will gratify the 
 taste, what will be useful. But in deciding a ques- 
 tion of duty, the appeal is made to what is highest 
 and best in a man, and the answer must come 
 thence, or it will only cheat and lead astray. The 
 primary necessity is to separate one's self from the 
 urgencies of the passions. We have come to a 
 question which no crowd can settle by vote or reso- 
 lutioii. And what is more, no other human beings, 
 much as they may help us, can settle it for us. I 
 would summon up the best counsellors. I would be 
 out of the sound of human voices. Then is the time 
 
 29 
 
338 STILLNESS OP MIND. 
 
 for retirement. Be' still, and know only that with 
 you is God. One hour in these summer fields alone, 
 in the silence of nature, with a heart that looks in 
 prayer to Him who is above the open heavens, is 
 worth more in determining a question of duty, than 
 ages of rhetoric and libraries of logic. An hour in 
 this place, before the memorials of Christ, with the 
 heart seeking God's guidance, has in it more w^is- 
 dom than all the oracles philosophy ever uttered. 
 Evil suggestions fade away from the consciousness 
 of the Divine presence. The mind acts in an un- 
 embarrassed sphere ; it is placed in a right position, 
 and is open to the unbewildered light of truth. The 
 intellect will seek truth most faithfully when the 
 heart seeks God most truly. Prayer does not take 
 the place of reasoning, but the reason finds guidance 
 and protection in prayer. I do not say that even 
 under these circumstances one will always judge 
 aright ; but he will judge rightly for himself. He 
 has done the best he can, and will never repent of it. 
 In this reverential and prayerful seeking for right, 
 one is not likely to go astray ; and such a spirit will 
 correct its own errors. The prompting of such an 
 hour it is generally wise for one to follow, and no 
 man ever yet regretted that he was governed in his 
 acts by the spirit of such an hour. In seeking what 
 is right, when you have used other means, have 
 some religious retirement of mind. With a prayer- 
 ful heart, be still, and alone, conscious that God is 
 with you. 
 
 From life and from death, from nature and the 
 human soul, comes the response to the command, 
 
STILLNESS OF MIND. 339 
 
 " Be still, and know that I am God." Thus saith 
 the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, whose 
 name is Holy, I have made the earth, the man and 
 the beast that are upon the ground. I form light 
 and create darkness. He sitteth upon the circle of 
 the earth, he stretcheth forth the heavens, he maketh 
 a way in the sea. All nations before him are as 
 nothing. He bringeth princes to nothing, and rais- 
 eth the poor out of the dust. The Lord reigneth. 
 The heavens declare his glory, the firmament show- 
 eth forth his handiwork. The voice of the Lord 
 is fuU of majesty, he judgeth among the mighty; 
 let the earth therefore tremble and keep silence be- 
 fore him. The works of man perish, but the works 
 of God endure for ever. In a changing world, 
 amidst the crumbling piUars of human pride, and 
 the blight of human policy, and the wreck of human 
 hope, it shall be the refuge of man, that God re- 
 mains the same. Be still, thou mourning heart, and 
 know that it is God who sendeth sorrow, as he send- 
 eth joy. Be still, trembling and timid soul, and put 
 your trust in God,- and his arm shall bear you up as 
 you walk over the waves. Be still, guilty heart, 
 and, when sin tempts, remember Him who is judge 
 of quick and dead. Be still, desponding and dis- 
 trustful soul, who art thrown into despair by the 
 delay of good, or seeming triumph of wrong, and 
 fear not, but wait, for the Lord God omnipotent 
 reigneth. 
 
SERMON XXIV, 
 
 OPPORTUNITY AND PREPARATION. 
 
 THEN SHALL THE KINGDOM OE HEAVEN BE LIKENED UNTO TEN 
 TIEGINS, -WHO TOOK THEIE LAMPS AND WENT FOBTH TO MEET 
 THE BKIDEGROOM. — Matt. XXV. 1. 
 
 This is one of a remarkable series of parables, all 
 bearing on one general point, — the necessity of be- 
 ing ready to meet the -call of God in the occasions 
 and opportunities, in the duties and trials, of life. 
 The repetition of the lesson, its different applications 
 and the solemn forms under which it is inculcated, 
 show how great is the importance attached to it by 
 our Saviour. We say, Do this or that when the 
 hour comes. The Saviour says, Be ready for the 
 hour. He does not look chiefly to the final act, but 
 to the preceding condition of the character. Make 
 the tree good, keep the heart right, and the fruit will 
 be good, and the words pure. 
 
 Immediately preceding this, we have the parable 
 of the householder who leaves his servants in charge 
 of his goods, in which we find the same lesson : " Be 
 ye also ready, for in an hour when ye think not, the 
 
OPPORTUNITY AND PKEPARATION. 341 
 
 Son of man cometh." So also in another place, 
 when exhorting men to lay up treasure in heaven : 
 " Let your loins be girded about, and your lights 
 , burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait 
 for their lord, when he will return from the wedding ; 
 that when he cometh and knocketh they may open 
 unto him immediately : blessed are those servants, 
 whom their lord, when he cometh, shall find wait- 
 ing." 
 
 In the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, which 
 occurs just before, the same principle is applied to 
 the common duties of life". God gives us our tasks, 
 proportioned to our ability. He never calls on us to 
 do more than we have power to do ; oftentimes men 
 seem called on for less. They wait in the market- 
 place, and no one employs them. Our lives run to 
 waste, they say, and we have nothing to do in which 
 we can satisfy ourselves, or be useful to men or serve 
 God. To such our Saviour says, Fear not and de- 
 spond not ; at the eleventh hour, if not at the third, 
 you will be called. Yom* present duty is to wait, 
 and to be ready. Almighty God, who can dispense 
 with the labor of all of us, looks not so much at the 
 magnitude of the work which we accomplish, as at 
 the readiness to perform the works, humble or high, 
 which are given us to do. 
 
 In the parable of the virgins, reference is had to 
 the call of God in the hour of death. It is still the 
 same idea. Be ready for its coming. It will come 
 alike to all, — to those whose lamps go out, and to 
 those whose lamps are kept trimmed and burning. 
 The difference is not in the coming of death, but in 
 
 29 
 
342 OPPORTUNITY AND PREPAKATION. 
 
 the preparation to meet it. " Watch, therefore, and 
 be ye ready; for in such an hour as ye know not, 
 the Son of man cometh." 
 
 The same idea runs through all these passages. 
 The great hours, the opportunities and exigencies of 
 life, cannot be foreseen. The time when we shall 
 be catted, we know not, and the precept, founded on 
 this uncertainty, is not one of apathy or sloth or neg- 
 lect, but to be prepared. "We shall meet the hour 
 rightly only as we are prepared. Therefore, not 
 knowing the hour, be ye ready, — ready as they who 
 ait all night in the trencheg, and watch in storm and 
 snow and cold ; though worn and exhausted, watch- 
 ing in darkness till the cold morning breaks ; ever 
 ready, not knowing the hour. 
 
 I apprehend that this is a lesson which it were 
 well for us all to ponder. We rely on opportunities. 
 The sluggish and the repining, beholding the use- 
 fulness or virtue of this man or that man, attribute 
 them to favoring circumstances, and say, Had the 
 same opportunities come to us as to them, it would 
 have been with us as with them. No one can deny 
 the importance of the opportunity. The hour must 
 conspire with the man ; and wish and wiU must be 
 able at least to anticipate the occasion. But this is 
 not all. 
 
 1. The preparation in ourselves is, one might al- 
 most say, a part of the outward opportunity. The 
 previous preparation enables one man both to see 
 and use the occasion, and the want of it incapaci- 
 tates another either to see or profit from it. The 
 preparation is like another eye given to man. An 
 
OPPORTUNITY AND PREPARATION. 343 
 
 ignorant man traverses barren mountains and desert 
 sands, and finds nothing but desolation. The in- 
 structed man follows just behind, and sees the evi- 
 dences of an Eldorado under the desolate surface. 
 The same opportunities of improvement or useful 
 ness pass before a crowd ; but they are valueless 
 except to those who are in some way prepared to 
 see and use them. The greater the opportunity, the 
 more essential the preparation of mind and heart. 
 Great occasions anise ; and out of multitudes only 
 a few can meet them. The rest, during the time of 
 preparation, have waited as the foolish virgins waited. 
 They have slept instead of watching. The will has 
 become inert, the heart has lost its strenuous pur- 
 poses, and when the hour arrives, the oil in their 
 lamps is consumed, and it is now too late to supply 
 the want. To them it is no opportunity, because 
 they are unprepared. 
 
 Herein lies the so common fruitlessness of good 
 advice. You forewarn one of opportunities which 
 may come, and give the counsels of experience; but 
 you learn afterwards that all has been in vain. You 
 then see that you had assumed the possession, by 
 him whom you counselled, of qualities or attainments 
 which did not belong to him. Your advice did not 
 transfer to him the long previous training which 
 gave to you its significance. When he began to 
 act independently, he acted from his general level of 
 mind and heart. He had neither understood you, 
 nor the occasion. Without the preparation, it was 
 in truth no opportunity to him, whatever it might 
 seem to you. Not only is the hour important, but 
 
344 OPPORTUNITY AND PREPARATION. 
 
 that preparation which puts one on a level with the 
 hour. 
 
 This idea controls all wise education. We do 
 not rear the young to perform a single act ; but, not 
 knowing what the exigencies of life may be, we give 
 them a wider culture, that they may be prepared for 
 the varied demands that will be made upon them. 
 For, whatever the demands, there must be a readi- 
 ness beforehand to meet them, or they will not be 
 met. That is no opportunity to a child which is one 
 to a man, nor to the ignorant savage which is so 
 to him who is civilized. And > so in all things, the 
 preparation within us to see and act, in great part 
 makes for us the opportunity. 
 
 2. We must be ready for the hour, in order that we 
 may derive from it its benefits. 
 
 Life does not for any of us proceed in an even 
 and unbroken line, but its regular order is perpetually 
 interrupted by new occasions and new claims ; by 
 unforeseen perils or opportunities ; landing-places in 
 the ascent, where we may pause and correct the 
 future by the past ; junctures, crises, partings by the 
 way, on which we come suddenly ; the very turning- 
 points of life, where what we do or leave undone 
 decides the fate of years ; hours of decision and 
 doom. These hours cannot be foreseen, yet they 
 must be met, and they never leave us as they found 
 us. Not only must they be met, but if we neglect 
 them or are unfaithful to them, they are lost, and 
 commonly for ever. For, in most cases, the same op- 
 portunity is not repeated. We drift by the oppor- 
 tunity, — following the significant derivation of the 
 
OPPORTUNITY AND PREPARATION. 345 
 
 word, drift by the port over against which we lay, — 
 and cannot, put back to the point once past. We 
 may have other opportunities and similar ones, but 
 not the same. In secular affairs the neglect of op- 
 portunities is the loss of success. In the moral life, 
 this is more sadly true. We feel this, and therefore 
 the great proportion of our regrets for the past are 
 regrets for neglected opportunities. 
 
 To excuse ourselves, we sometimes would make 
 believe that we have lacked opportunities ; but our 
 hearts repudiate the fiction. For all moral purposes 
 we know it is not true. On the contrary, as we 
 look back, along the way are the perpetual remind- 
 ers of our unfaithfulness, — reminders more sad 
 even than the crosses by the mountain pathways, 
 marking our moral disasters. The neglected oppor- 
 tunity of youth is the impoverishment of manhood. 
 There is scarcely a serious regret, or discomfort, or 
 debasing habit, or form of ignorance, — scarcely one of 
 those causes which make men say, I would.not will- 
 ingly live life over again, — which is not connected 
 with some lost opportunity in the past, some precious 
 season squandered or misused, or given away for 
 some inferior end, as savages give golden ingots for 
 bawbles of glass. Alas, there was a time when we 
 might have begun to be all that we value in others or 
 dasire for ourselves. There was a time for improve- 
 ment in what since would have been so precious. 
 There, and there, and there, were the parting ways 
 where I might have chosen good, and chose evil. 
 Half the sufferings of the present are but the natural 
 retributions on neglected opportunities. There was 
 
346 
 
 0PP0BTU3:jITY AND PREPARATION. 
 
 a time when the utterancfe of a word, a decisive act, 
 the change of a single habit, the avoidance of a temp- 
 tation, repentance of a single sin, might have changed 
 our whole course. There was a time to have done 
 what I wish had been done, but the time has passed 
 by ; I have swept along on the rapids beyond the 
 green and peaceful haven where I might have land- 
 ed ; and it is now too late. There was a time when 
 I might have saved a friend or blessed a home, or 
 taken a stand in a right way, but the time has 
 passed. We had a thousand good purposes to- 
 wards others, but the time for executing them went 
 by, and now it is too late. We have had a thou- 
 sand good purposes for our own lives, but they died 
 out; and where they burned, there is now no spark 
 in the ashes. In the case of others, how often has 
 death come in to interept the delayed purpose of 
 good ! We repent the delay, but we cannot tell the 
 dead of our repentance. The lost opportunities 
 come not back. We may mourn bitter tears ; but 
 in this burial-place of lost opportunities we sit by 
 gravestones whose dead rise not again. The lost 
 years come not back. Once gone, for ever gone ! 
 The past had its tasks, as the future will have its 
 tasks. We must meet opportunities at the time, or 
 never. The lamps must be trimmed and burning 
 when the bridal passes, or we cannot join it and 
 enter in, but must be left behind in the outer dark- 
 ness. 
 
 And remember that you are no passive spectator 
 of the panorama of life, whom opportunities can 
 bless, whether you heed them or not. The rains fall 
 
OPPORTUNITY AND PEEP^ATION. 347 
 
 and refresh the earth, though it lie silent and impas- 
 sive. But for man not to use opportunities aright, 
 is to be ruined by them. One great office of reason 
 is to see occasions. Instinct warns the animal of 
 the appointed hour. The bird flies, prompted by an 
 unerring voice, from its southern to its northern 
 home. But man must use his reason arid watch for 
 the appointed hour. 
 
 The greatest opportunities are perhaps those 
 which do not go by that name. Sometimes they 
 are the trials from which, if possible, we would en- 
 tirely escape. The sorrows which call for the great 
 virtue of submission, not to be gained except through 
 life's severest discipline, the occasions that demand 
 forbearance towards our neighbors or self-denial in 
 ourselves, the sicknesses, the disappointments, the re- 
 verses, the anxieties of life, — all demanding their cor- 
 responding virtues, and virtues which could have no 
 existence without these trials, — how shall we regard 
 them ? However we do regard them, the Christian 
 view of them is, that they are opportunities ; — op- 
 portunities for gaining what is of priceless worth, 
 and what can never be gained without the corre- 
 sponding discipline. And the Christian view is the 
 nobler one. 'What a blessed thing for us if we could 
 but put aside our selfish weakness, our petty fears, 
 our anxiety lest we should lose a pleasure, and 
 should say. This trial, hard to be borne perhaps, has 
 come to me in the order of God's providence ; I will 
 make no moan over a lot which he appoints ; I will 
 hear its voice, which calls me into the vineyard, 
 though it be to tread the wine-press alone, and I 
 
348 oppoRTxajiTT and preparation. 
 
 will cheerfully obey ; now the hour has come which 
 is to prove what I am, and with no coward heart it 
 shall be mine to do or to bear God's will as he may 
 require ! Had we this spirit, we should see that the 
 great trials of life are its great opportunities for vir- 
 tue. Over the cross we should see the crown ; first 
 the trial, and then the triumph. It is a sad thing to 
 see men suffer, but sadder to suffer basely ; and no- 
 blest of all it is to suffer nobly, — to see men bravely 
 and cheerfully, in any emergency, sacrifice themselves 
 f«r the right. It is in that class of opportunities 
 which we call trials, that the heroism of the world is 
 to be found. 
 
 But here again the opportunity is lost, unless one 
 be prepared to meet it. But how be ready ? We 
 cannot foresee when or to what we shall be called. 
 ■We only know that we cannot live long, without 
 having every appetite and passion tempted, and 
 without having demands made on our justice and 
 kindness, our good-will to man and our loyalty to 
 heaven. When or how the call may come, we know 
 not. And herein lies an essential part of life's disci- 
 pline. It is required of us, not merely to perform an 
 act, but to have a character prepared for all acts and 
 emergencies. We need a discipline like that of the 
 camp, which prepares men alike for attack or de- 
 fence, for the night's watch and the day's toil, and 
 for all unforeseen exigencies. In exigencies men act 
 from the level of the character ; at least no more 
 can be relied on. How they meet an opportunity 
 depends on what they were before the opportunity 
 came. As the reservoir sinks or rises, the fountain 
 
OPPORTUNITY AND PREP4_RATI0N. 349 
 
 throws its sparkling waters with less force or in 
 higher columns towards the sun. So the force 
 which has been accumulating in the human heart 
 determines the height of opportunity which one can 
 meet. 
 
 But how be prepared for the great opportunities 
 of life ? There is but one way, and that is through 
 fidelity to the duty of the hour. Be it to wait in 
 the market-place through the day, be it to watch 
 for the coming of the lord at night, be it ever so 
 humble or insignificant a thing, — the duty of the 
 present hour, to do it, to bring high motives to bear 
 on it, to put great principles into the doing of it, to- 
 obey the law of Almighty God in doing it, — that 
 is our only adequate preparation for greater duties 
 and severer trials. 
 
 The most impressive and fearful part of this para- 
 ble I have not as yet referred to. The foolish vir- 
 gins, we read, startled by the call, hasted to find oil 
 for their lamps. But the season for preparation was 
 gone. It was now too late. The procession of joy 
 had passed on, and when they returned, the streets 
 were empty, the music silent, and the door was shut. 
 It is possible, then, to be too late. Not only is it pos- 
 sible, but the whole order of Providence proceeds on 
 the idea, that there are not only duties, but seasons 
 for them, and that if -the season pass by, the duty 
 must pass with it. There is no recall of the neglect- 
 ed hour. The work of spring must be done in the 
 spring, and the work of autumn in the autumn. O 
 could we but recall the wasted hours ! we say ; but 
 we cannot. In the journey of life we pas& through 
 
 30 
 
350 OPPOETTJNITY AND PEBPAKATION. 
 
 the successive years, as through a succession of halls 
 containing the wonders of science and art, obliged 
 always to go onward, and forbidden to return. Each 
 hall has its own claims on eye and thought, but 
 whatever our minds carry from it must be garnered 
 up while in it. While within its walls we may do 
 as we will ; but we must go on, and as we leave it, 
 the door is shut, and we return no more. This irre- 
 trievable character of lost opportunities startles us, 
 and yet Providence is ever warning us of it. There 
 was an hour when the ship might have been saved, 
 had not the helmsman slumbered. There was an 
 hour when the fate of battle might have been turned, 
 had the leader been prompt to see and decide. 
 Health, success, hope and despair, turn on these 
 decisive hours. And this is true of the spiritual in- 
 terests of which the parable treats. There are sea- 
 sons when joy ca.lls on man for a grateful obedience, 
 or when death, trial, change, arouse him from his 
 lethargy. It is God's call to man. If obeyed, it is 
 his salvation ; if neglected, the season passes by, and 
 whatever may be in the future, so far as that oppor- 
 tunity is concerned, the door is shut. 
 
 The parable sets forth the necessity of prepara- 
 tion in this life for that which is to come. Each 
 day has its duties, which terminate not in themselves, 
 but are also a preparation for those which shall fol- 
 low. But the day passes, its fidelity or neglect en- 
 ters into the records of the past, and the door is shut. 
 So it is with life. The Scriptures teach us little 
 respecting the particular conditions of the future 
 life. Nothing is said to gratify a mere curiosity. 
 
OPPORTUNITY AND PREPARATION. 351 
 
 But in regard to all that is of practical importance 
 to us, nothing can be more distinct and decisive. 
 "Whatever is to be hoped or feared when we enter 
 the next world, is connected with a preparation in 
 this. There is no severing gulf between. As youth 
 prepares for manhood, and manhood for age, so 
 this life for the next. And' that preparation lies not 
 in a few actions, to which we are driven by a dread 
 of God's judgments, but, essentially, in the moral 
 affections of the heart. When the first Christian 
 Emperor of Rome deferred baptism to the last, that, 
 cleansed from all sin when it was too labe to sin 
 more, he might be sure of entering heaven, we see 
 the superstition and the error. But they are scarcely 
 more absurd than a thousand other expedients by 
 means of which men have endeavored to secure sal- 
 vation without putting evil out of their hearts. The 
 fundamental idea of the Gospel seems to be this, 
 that it will be with us according to what we love. 
 Death breaks up our transient relations, and delivers 
 us over to our spiritual affinities and affections as 
 they have been developed in this life. He that loves 
 righteousness will have the blessedness of the right- 
 eous. They that have here served God with a willing 
 heart will then rejoice, with those like themselves, 
 in his service. The Apostles who loved the Lord 
 expected to be with him. God is Love, and whoso- 
 ever dvvelleth in love dwelleth in God. The corrupt, 
 the selfish, the debased, the unforgiving, will enter 
 the spheres and the employments of those of like 
 moral affections with themselves. Thus the only 
 preparation for the heavenly felicity is, not the dread 
 
352 OPPORTUNITY AND PREPARATION. 
 
 of sufTering, nor the love of happiness, but the love 
 of what is loved in heaven. And in whatever way, 
 be it through penitence or prayer, through labor or 
 trial, through suffering borne in submissive trust, or 
 duties done, looking for God's approval, we attain 
 unto anything of the heavenly spirit, we are prepar- 
 ing for heaven. 
 
 The great work appointed for this life is this spirit- 
 ual- preparation. What the ages of eternity may re- 
 yeal, we are not competent to tell. But it is clear 
 what is the great work of this life, and that, so far 
 as the special opportunities for this preparation are 
 concerned, those of which we have knowledge close 
 with life. Then the door is shut. We have no au- 
 thority to look beyond and to speculate on what 
 God's mercy or justice may do, in other worlds and 
 conditions. Revelation fixes our attention on what 
 we are to do- here, — on the kind of preparation 
 necessary to those who embark on that mysterious 
 voyage. 
 
 The great question for us all then is. How far 
 are we making this preparation ? Days and years 
 go by, childhood and youth and manhood fleet 
 away, and soon this, to every reasonable person 
 who believes in immortality, must be the absorbing 
 question. Happy if he answers it before it is too 
 late. Put to your hearts those startling questions 
 which revealed the characters of those to whom they 
 were uttered. Were Christ, this day, to say to us, 
 as those of old. Follow thou me ! should we gladly 
 follow him, or turn and pass by on the other side ? 
 Where he to say, as to his disciple, Lovest thou me ? 
 
OPPORTUNITY AND PEEPAEATION. 353 
 
 could we reply, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee ? 
 Or were it the summons of death, would it find us 
 with lamps trimmed and burning, — ready for the 
 coming of the Lord ? 
 
SERMON XXV. 
 
 IDLE WORDS. 
 
 Onl OF THE ABUNDANCE OP THE HEAET THE MOUTH SPEAKETH. 
 A GOOD MAN OUT OP THE GOOD TKEASURE OP THE HEAET BRING- 
 ETH FORTH GOOD THIlf&S ; AND AN EVIL MAN, OUT OP THE EVIL 
 TREAaUEE, BRINGETH EOETH EVIL THINGS. BUT I SAY UNTO 
 TOU, THAT EVERT IDLE WORD THAT MEN SHALL SPEAK, THEY 
 SHALL GIVE ACCOUNT THEREOF IN THE DAT OP JUDGMENT. — 
 Matt. xii. 34-36. 
 
 These are wide-embracing and solemn and fear- 
 ful words. If we are ever tempted to think that 
 there is exaggeration in them, it may be because we 
 do not consider what this gift of speech is. Except 
 the 'mind itself, no gift is more wonderful. Through 
 it mind reaches mind, and we are carried out of a 
 dumb and silent solitude, and placed in spiritual re- 
 lations with one another. It gives to men a bound- 
 less mutual influence for evil or good. Consider 
 one moment how much is implied in the fact, that 
 one mind can hold intelligible intercourse with an- 
 other mind. 
 
 A silent, invisible thought is coined into a word, 
 and cast forth on the air, and the breath of heaven 
 bears it abroad on every side, till the floating *sylla- 
 
IDLE WORDS. 355 
 
 bles are caught up, and enter a thousand other 
 minds, to be again transformed into thought or 
 emotion, and to form a part of those minds for ever. 
 Who of us has not sometimes felt a thrill of awe 
 come over him, when, in some silent assembly, an 
 invisible spirit, through these wonderful instrumen- 
 talities which God has established, has been making 
 itself manifest to his spirit ? He may have closed 
 his eyes, but has not, by so doing, escaped its influ- 
 ence. The whole atmosphere was repeating the 
 words. It was no longer a mere supporter of life, 
 but had a new element thrown into it, — the ele- 
 ment of thought, which every mind breathed, as the 
 lungs breathe the air. And as the body is affected 
 by a healthful or tainted atmosphere, so the mind is 
 affected by breathing this element of thought. And 
 how vast the extent of its influence ! By it, a pas- 
 sion or emotion which must otherwise have slum- 
 bered and died in the individual heart is cast abroad 
 on the winds, and acquires a universal presence. 
 By it, one strong soul may communicate itself to 
 another, and, spreading in ever-enlarging circles, 
 may make the souls of a whole people strong. The 
 wisdom of one becomes the wisdom of aU, and the 
 passions of one the passions of all. The hand can- 
 not touch, nor the eye reach, the soul ; but a word — 
 a word — can reach it and tempt its weakness, or 
 inflame its passions, or breathe through its sorrows 
 the very consolations of heaven. 
 
 Surely a power like this gift of speech, by which 
 one mind puts itself into contact with all other 
 minds, and by a mysterious agency fills them with 
 
356 IDLE WORDS. 
 
 its own thoughts and feelings, was not given to be 
 lightly used. He who uses it to tempt another 
 astray, to inflame his passions, to excite his unjust 
 suspicions, to foster his prejudices, to contaminate 
 the purity of his thoughts, has done a deadly wrong 
 to his fellow-creature, and God declares the magni- 
 tude of the guilt when it is said that for every idle 
 word which man utters he shall render account in 
 the day of judgment. This declaration is not made 
 to show for what unimportant things men may be 
 judged, but, on the contrary, to show the importance 
 of idle words, and to make men sensible how life 
 and death are in the words of the lips. By this fear- 
 ful sanction God would guard the tongue, because 
 of the power of the tongue. 
 
 A sentence of such fearful import as this should 
 make us careful to distinguish as to what is meant 
 by idle words. It cannot be supposed that our Sav- 
 iour intended to forbid the use of all excepting those 
 which imply laborious thought, or which concern im- 
 portant truths, or which look to some great result. 
 He who touched the clouds with light, and filled the 
 earth with beauty, and made the healthy exercise of 
 all faculties a source of present enjoyment as well 
 as of permanent utility, doubtless intended that the 
 gift of speech should be employed, not merely for 
 the discussion of great truths, but also for the pro- 
 motion of all pleasant and kindly feelings between 
 man and man. The generous humor that lights up 
 the monotony of labor ; the pleasant words which, 
 though they be about trivial things, give expression 
 to kind feelings ; the seemingly trifling talk which, 
 
IDLE WORDS. 357 
 
 from relating to what at the moment concerns us, 
 maintains an open frankness between friends and 
 associates, — do not come under the description of 
 idle words. In truth, they are not in any sense idle, 
 but by maintaining an unembarrassed unreserve, 
 by the light and shade they give to life, and by 
 keeping alive the common sympathies of men in 
 regard to those smaller interests which fill up nearly 
 all our days, instead of being idle, they often consti- 
 tute a most useful part of human intercourse, and 
 are not to be dispensed with. Were the whole of 
 our intercourse to be confined to subjects which 
 moralists and philosophers are pleased to term great 
 ones, the mass of mankind, being neither moralists 
 nor philosophers in this sense, would be debarred 
 from the privilege of speech. 
 
 But this is not the meaning of the text. By idle 
 words, as appears from the whole passage, as well 
 as from the original word imperfectly translated 
 " idle," are meant injurious, calumnious words, — 
 words that are meant to injure, and wound, and ex- 
 cite unrighteous prejudice, — often spoken lightly 
 and idly perhaps, but leaving wrong and injury be- 
 hind them. 
 
 I do not enter into any minute specifications 
 respecting the duties or the sins of the tongue. 
 What we rather need is to consider the essential 
 guilt there is in the injurious words idly scattered 
 abroad, and which, though at first seemingly as in- 
 significant as the feathered seeds of a noxious plant 
 scattered by the winds, may finally bear as disas- 
 trous a harvest. If it be considered how idle rumors, 
 
358 IDLE WORDS. 
 
 once obtaining currency, may follow one up and 
 down, like ghosts, for years ; how a careless sus- 
 picion, carelessly uttered, may awake a wide dis- 
 trust ; how fixing attention on one failing may 
 eclipse a hundred virtues ; how the contemptuous 
 words of the proud may crush the courage and con- 
 fidence of the self-distrustful ; how unfounded doubts 
 about a man's affairs may create the very mischief 
 against which it would pretend to guard ; how the 
 attributing of bad motives can palsy the best enter- 
 prises ; how a readiness to hear and utter words of 
 detraction can set families ajar, and break up all 
 neighborly relations ; how a man, by inconsiderate 
 sarcasms, by readiness to sow suspicion, by a will- 
 ingness to make the worst of the failings of others, 
 by an anxiety always to turn out to the light the 
 slightest rent in an otherwise fair and costly robe 
 worn by another, may make his common words like 
 the poisonous prickles of the tropical plant, which 
 stings and wounds all who touch it ; — if we con- 
 sider how much of injustice in action, how much of 
 the strife 'and wrath and bitterness between man 
 and man, how much ungrounded suspicion, and 
 hard, ungenerous judgment, come from this idle 
 speech ; how many friendly actions are cooled and 
 chilled, how many good purposes blighted, by them ; 
 how words are not, as we soinetimes deem them, 
 mere vocalized air, but actions, imbued with a 
 strange life to propagate themselves ; and how " ill 
 deeds are doubled with an evil word " ; — we can- 
 not wonder that our Saviour should say that for 
 these idle words we must render account in the 
 day of judgment. 
 
IDLE WORDS. 359 
 
 Of course, it is not understood by this that we 
 are to make no discriminations between good men 
 and bad men, nor that we are to walk blindfold 
 through the world, making believe that all is good 
 when we know it is not. To do this, to be insensi- 
 ble to the superiority of uprightness over dishonesty, 
 to make no distinction between worth and baseness, 
 is to be treacherous to human virtue. But because 
 we see evil, we are not therefore obliged to dwell 
 upon it perpetually ; and more, we are to remember 
 that he is corrupt far beyond the ordinary limits of 
 wickedness, in whom that which is good does not 
 far outbalance that which is bad. And if we recog- 
 nize the evil, infinitely more it becomes us to recog- 
 nize heartily and fully the good. 
 
 But this is not what our Saviour is speaking of. 
 It is of injurious words, whether carelessly or inten- 
 tionally meant to be injurious. They are so easily 
 uttered, that we do not appreciate the essential in- 
 justice involved in them, nor their self-perpetuating 
 power to injure. If in your dealings you have un- 
 awares overstepped the bounds of justice, you can 
 entirely repair the wrong, and your good purpose 
 and the act of restitution shall make it as if it had 
 never been ; but not so with idle words. When 
 they have passed your lips, they are beyond your 
 control ; they^ enter into the general language of 
 men. What you whispered in a corner, is pro- 
 claimed from the house-top. The spark buried 
 under the ashes is uncovered by the winds, and 
 kindles a conflagration. It is possible that an inju- 
 rious suspicion, or a false charge flippantly uttered, 
 
360 IDLE WOKDS. 
 
 may fall to the ground and perish ; but they do not 
 always die out of themselves, and you have no 
 right to assume that they will die out at all. Often- 
 times they cannot be corrected either by yourself or 
 the victim, and, when they have got beyond your 
 reach, become the source of evils of which you dread 
 but to think. ," The smith is weary at his forge," 
 so readeth the proverb, " and wieldeth the metal 
 carelessly, and the anchor breaketh in its bed and 
 the vessel foundereth with her crew." A word of 
 anger is muttered, engendering the midnight mur- 
 der. The calumny which you thought answered 
 may reappear again at some crisis in life when no 
 answer is possible. It is one of the worst kinds 
 of wrong, because it so easily goes out of your 
 power to repair the wrong. All censorious speech 
 is wicked, because censorious ; all careless sus- 
 picions are wrong, not only in themselves, but be- 
 cause, if unjust, it is difficult to recall them ; and 
 all severe judgments, though they be just, should be 
 uttered with hesitation and carefulness, because the 
 judgment will be remembered ; while the repentfince 
 of hirh who is its object may make that which is 
 just one day unjust the next. 
 
 But, great as is the mischief of- idle words to 
 others, a still greater evil recoils on him who utters 
 them. There is such a connection between thought 
 and speech, that metaphysicians assume that it is 
 nearly, and perhaps quite,, impossible to think ex- 
 cept through the medium of words, unuttered per- 
 haps, but still in the mind, and giving form to the 
 thought. We are so apt to regard words as the in- 
 
IDLE WORDS. 361 
 
 strutnents of thought, that we do not enough con- 
 sider that, in their turn, like the body which is the 
 instrument of the mind, they may become its mas- 
 ters. The utterance of a thought gives it distinct- 
 ness. The simple utterance of it changes the place 
 which it occupies in our minds. The utterance of 
 a passion inflames the passion. Communities work 
 themselves up into a rage, they may hardly know 
 about what, through the power of speech. The 
 passions which when distributed unuttered in indi- 
 vidual hearts were nothing, — wgre but as the sev- 
 eral sparks of fire drawn apart on the winter hearth- 
 stone, and which, like them, if let alone, would have 
 soon gone out, — by simply being brought together 
 and blown upon by the common air, kindle and 
 spread and blaze. The habit of uttering suspicions 
 confirms the suspicious temper. The habit of utter- 
 ing denunciatory judgments envenoms the malignity 
 from which they spring. Once begin to utter inju- 
 rious words of another, and you are in a manner 
 pledged to make them good. You will see what- 
 ever he does in the worst light ; you wiU believe all 
 evil things of him. To show that you have not 
 wronged him, you will cover the first injury by a 
 succession of greater injuries ; and at length it will 
 be easier for your victim to forgive you, than for you 
 to cease from injuring him. The habit of frivolous 
 words fosters frivolous habits of mind ; and on the 
 contrary, kindness, justice, truthfulness in speech, 
 strengthen kindness, justice, and truth in principle. 
 Thoughts and words act and react on each other. 
 Words are like the leaves of the forest, which draw 
 
 31 
 
362 IDLE WORDS. 
 
 up their life and nourishment from the soil beneath, 
 but in turn fall and decay and enrich the soil from 
 which they sprung. 
 
 There is another evil from idle words which is still 
 less considered. We warn the young against the 
 society of the corrupt and depraved, and the great 
 reason is, that the custom of witnessing evil deadens 
 the moral sensitiveness which repels it. The habit 
 of dwelling on the faults of our neighbors has pre- 
 cisely the same tendency, and it does not matter 
 much that we do it for the purpose of condemning 
 them. The habit of occupying the mind with them, 
 as we must when we make them the subject of our 
 words, is almost of necessity debasing. The man 
 who, in a bad spirit, is constantly dwelling on the 
 defects and vices of others, and not on their virtues, 
 may be sure that he is disciplining his mind to adopt 
 easily and willingly, if he be tempted, the same de- 
 fects and vices. I suppose that all experience shows 
 that it is not safe to trust a man on those points 
 about which he is habitually censorious in regard to 
 others. I am not speaking here of any just judg- 
 ments of men, but of the censorious spirit which 
 loves to dwell on the evil which is in other men, 
 and to make the worst of it; and I say thElt it is 
 precisely on those points where their words are loud- 
 est and most censorious, that they are themselves 
 least to be trusted if they are tempted. And -one 
 cause of it — not the only, but one cause of it — is, 
 that the mind becomes assimilated to that which, 
 with the love of dwelling on it, it dwells upon. No, 
 for your own soul's health, while you are faithful in 
 
IDLE WORDS. 363 
 
 moral discriminations, dwell as little as may be on 
 the corruption and depravity of mankind, and if it 
 be spoken of, let not a bad temper, but justice and 
 kindness, rule your tongue. 
 
 But how govern the tongue ? There is only one 
 rule of any worth, and that is suggested by the first 
 part of the text : " Out of the abundance of the 
 heart the mouth speaketh." Whatever engrosses 
 the thoughts will more or less find its way out 
 into words ; and, except for the mischief that it does 
 to others, it is well that it should, — well for the 
 sake of one's truth and self-consistency; and well, 
 that the evil thoughts may come out in a form 
 ■which shall subject one to their legitimate retribu- 
 tion. Those prudential maxims about guarding the 
 tongue which do not take into account the state of 
 the heart, — maxims which do not require the correc- 
 tion of the inward evil, but only teach how to avoid 
 the penalty, — words which allow the heart to be 
 corrupt, and which only seek to make the utterance 
 fair, — corruption within, the marble sepulchre with- 
 out, — these prudent maxims do not meet the case. 
 There ^s but one rule for governing the tongue of 
 any worth, and that is to govern the heart. Say 
 what you have to say, but see to it that you have 
 no thoughts which it is wrong to utter. Keep jus- 
 tice and truth and reverence towards God and good- 
 will towards men in your heart, and your words will 
 be well enough, and all the better the less you think 
 of them. Keep the fountain pure, and the stream 
 which flows from it will hardly fail to be pure. 
 
 And why should not we expect to render account 
 
364 IDLE WORDS. 
 
 of our idle words ? Our words are deeds, with 
 which as deadly blows may be struck as with the 
 armed hand. They are the embodiments of thought, 
 they spring out of the depths of the passions and the 
 affections, and give to that which otherwise would 
 slumber in our bosoms a life beyond our life. And 
 they are as potent for good as for harm. The child 
 that habitually utters pleasant words out of a pleas- 
 ant and loving heart is the sunshine of a household. 
 The man who has no power to act may through his 
 words awaken all around him to benignant and 
 blessed thoughts, or pour poison into the ears of all 
 who approach him. The habits of society, in re- 
 gard to the subjects which are discussed and the 
 methods of discussing them, will in time powerfully 
 affect both the mental and moral character of its 
 members. Different stages of civilization are not 
 more different, than are the levels of social inter- 
 course in the same community. The climates of 
 the globe do not vary more than do these social cli- 
 mates. In one region, the lightest and the gravest 
 discourse tends in its final influence to diffuse friend- 
 ly and humane and reverential feelings, and to give 
 authority -to those truths on which man's welfare de- 
 pends. And in another region, the lightest and the 
 gravest discourse tends alike to foster selfishness 
 and low views of life, and faithlessness in man and 
 duty and Providence. The ancient faith, that there 
 were words which held in them a charm powerful 
 enough to stir the regions of the dead, and to com- 
 pel spirits to obey the behests of men, was not all 
 fancy. . There is no one of us who may not every 
 
IDLE WORDS. 365 
 
 day utter words able to evoke spirits that we have 
 more reason to fear than those that gathered around 
 the trench which the magician opened under the 
 starless night; or which do not call down blessed 
 angels whose presence is a benediction. The at- 
 mosphere which supports animal life the Creator has 
 caused to bathe with its vital and healthful waves 
 the earth ; but that atmosphere which the soul 
 breathes is made vital with affection and passion by 
 ourselves, and, according as we will, becomes the 
 atmosphere of life, or is loaded with deadly vapors, 
 in which, as a light let down into a well, our moral 
 life goes out. The tongue is a little member, saith 
 the Apostle, but therewith may we bless God, and 
 therewith may we curse men which are made after 
 the similitude of God. It is a little member, but 
 behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth, and 
 the tongue which gives utterance to an unrighteous 
 spirit is a fire, a world of iniquity ; — so is the tongue 
 among our members that it defileth the whole body, 
 and setteth on fire the course of nature, and it is set 
 on fire of hell. When evil, it is an unruly evil, full 
 of deadly poison. "Who, he says, is a wise man, 
 and imbued with knowledge among you, let him 
 show out of a good conversation his works with 
 meekness and wisdom. They are words to which 
 we may well give heed. We never regret to have 
 kept silence when unkindness or anger has prompts 
 ed us to speak. We never regret that an injurious 
 word was checked, and the injurious thought which 
 prompted it cast out. Keep a guard over your heart, 
 that you may guard your tongue, that you may not 
 
 31* 
 
366 ' IDLE WORDS. 
 
 utter those irritating words which leave scars be- 
 tween friends, nor those censorious words which 
 injure your neighbors. Keep a guard over your 
 heart, that with your lips you may utter those 
 words which cheer the desponding and encourage 
 the weak, and which promote justice and charity 
 and truth, and a reverential trust in Him who de- 
 mands the service both of the lips and the heart. 
 
SERMON XXVI. 
 
 THE PKESSUKE OP DUTIES. 
 
 AND MOSES SAID, WHO AM I THAT I SHOULD GO UNTO PHAKAOH, 
 AND THAT I SHOULD BEING EOKTH THE CHILDKEN OE ISRAEL 
 
 OUT OF EGYPT f — Exodus iii. 11. 
 
 Moses shrank from the burden of duty laid upon 
 him. He would gladly have excused himself. It 
 seemed heavier than he could bear. In this he was 
 the representative of a common feeling. In seasons 
 of weariness and despondency, men often feel as if 
 the claims which duty makes upon them were more 
 than they could meet. They lose confidence. They 
 are oppressed with a sense of incompetency. There 
 is a mountain before them. There is a lion in the 
 path. They wish that they could escape responsi- 
 bility. They long to be away, — long for some con- 
 dition where tjie burden of care shall be less, — 
 where less shall depend on what they do or leave 
 undone. But the labors finished at night return 
 again with the morning. There is no escape from 
 duty. The pleasures of the child are cut across by 
 its more serious tasks. The quiet of the man is 
 broken up by incessantly returning and inexorable 
 responsibilities. 
 
368 THE PEE3SUEB OF DUTIES. 
 
 This pressure of duties ! At times it may be the 
 joy of life, at times it is its despair ; but always it 
 forms a part of the plan of Providence. Whether 
 we will or no, we cannot escape from them. Ordi- 
 narily we may not wish to ; but in seasons of dis- 
 couragement, it is good for us to see how that 
 which is for the time our burden is notwithstanding 
 a wise and merciful arrangement of Providence. 
 How shall one who feels this pressure of duties, 
 who is discouraged and wearied and anxious and 
 despondent, view them ? 
 
 1.' It is a very imperfect and low estimate of them, 
 and yet one not to be omitted, to say that they are 
 essential as the protection of human innocence and 
 virtue. They occupy the mind, and so shut the gates 
 against temptation ; they also brace and invigorate 
 the moral powers, so that they can resist it. It was 
 in the quiet of Paradise, its freedom from care and 
 responsibility, that our first parents were so easily 
 overcome. They had nothing to do but to think of 
 the temptation, and so were made its victims. The 
 first reform of the monasteries, in the early ages of 
 the Church, consisted in introducing a regular rou- 
 tine of labor, and on the principle, as it was ex- 
 pressed by one of the fathers, that, if the occupied 
 man is tempted by one devil, the unoccupied is be- 
 set by a thousand. Work was as needful as prayer, 
 simply as a means of moral protection. Lift off from 
 any community the pressure of its active duties, and 
 no reasonable man would dare to live in it. That 
 immense activity with which the human heart is 
 charged must find outlet somehow, and if there be 
 
THE PRESSURE OP DUTIES. 369 
 
 no serious duties to be performed, this vital activity 
 of man would be his ruin. Poets have pictured the 
 Isles of the Blest, where — the more burdensome 
 duties of life over — untrammelled pleasures return 
 fresh with each successive day. It was a pleasing 
 fancy, but the reality would be unendurable. Man 
 was not made to enjoy passively, but to enjoy 
 through action. Such an Elysium of idle self- 
 indulgence would involve the lethargy, if not the 
 perversion, of all the higher qualities of man, and 
 the extinction of that higher felicity which the un- 
 satisfied might seek in its sun-lighted realm. 
 
 There can be no greater calamity than to be re- 
 lieved of duty. Better stand guard every night, 
 better wear the body out in watchings and priva- 
 tions, better know nothing but ceaseless self-denial, 
 if it can duly be in the way of duty, than a life so 
 freed from serious responsibilities as to leave room 
 only for self-indulgence. Though the burden may 
 sometimes be heavy to bear, blessed are they whose 
 lives are made serious and useful by the performance 
 of duty, and whose hearts are protected by the con- 
 sciousness of ever-present responsibilities which can- 
 not be set aside. 
 
 2. But man has not need merely of moral protec- 
 tion. He is subject to trials and sorrows, and needs 
 help and solace ; and they are best found in the 
 faithful and religious discharge, of duty. Sometimes 
 the feeling seems to exist that respect for the dead, 
 when we have lost some dear friend, requires that 
 we should seclude ourselves from the world, and sit 
 down amidst the memorials of bereavement, and 
 
370 THE PRESSURE OP DUTIES. 
 
 dwell on what has been lost, — a feeling that the 
 thought of the living is sacrilege toward the de- 
 parted. The course of David has seemed to me as 
 admirable as it was natural. " While the child was 
 yet alive," he says, " I fasted and wept, for I said. 
 Who can tell whether God will be gracious unto me 
 that the child may live ? But now he is dead, 
 wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back 
 again ? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to 
 me." Did he forget his child? We may be sure 
 that it was not lost out of that heart, so full of 
 all tender affections and emotions. But from the 
 child's grave he went at once forth again to his 
 duties. 
 
 The religious performance of duty is the natural 
 and healthy consolation of sorrow. In any real and 
 great affliction, the mind is brought very near to the 
 spiritual world. He who giveth and who taketh 
 away seems almost visibly present in our homes. 
 All the great spiritual realities, at other times often 
 so vague, appear real to our quickened perceptions. 
 If I could take you back to any season of deep 
 affliction, you would probably say that you then 
 had a more vivid sense of' the Divine presence, that 
 you saw more clearly the true ends of life, that your 
 purest and best affections were awakened, and that 
 you were moved to dedicate yourself more faithfully 
 to the highest interests of all with whom you had to 
 do. They were not sad but blessed hours, when from 
 the lonely mount of sorrow you had this more just 
 view of life. What shall retain this sense of the 
 Divine presence ? It is not inactive contemplation, 
 
THE PRESSURE OE DUTIES. 371 
 
 but the going forth with a high and Christian pur- 
 pose, to discharge the duties which God lays upon 
 you, to perform them as his work. Every duty thus 
 performed will be an embodied prayer. It will bring 
 you into the very presence of God. It will keep 
 actively alive the spirit of trust and submission, that 
 spirit which finds in itself, or which opens the heart 
 to receive, the. highest consolation. It is not mere 
 thinking about God that brings us near to him, any 
 more than mere day-dreaming about friends draws 
 us nearer to them ; but that which draws us near to 
 Him is the faithful, patient, religious discharge of 
 the duties He lays upon us ; and there will be con- 
 solation in sorrow, as distinguished from mere grow- 
 ing insensibility, almost exactly proportioned to this 
 trusting, obedient, submissive sense of the Divine 
 presence. 
 
 Blessed to the afflicted, for another reason, is the 
 pressure of duties. Sorrow is not necessarily nor 
 naturally selfish. It naturally opens the heart to all 
 kind and sympathetic and merciful impulses. But 
 if, deserting the appointed path of God, I sit down 
 in inaction to brood over what is lost, if I thus cher- 
 ish the thought of my affliction, it will speedily be- 
 come selfish. My sad thoughts may be to me as if 
 I held coals of fire to my heart ; but a way of think- 
 ing which shuts out the consideration of others, and 
 which makes myself the centre of the world, though 
 it be caused by grief, will inevitably make me self- 
 ish. Almighty God, as the fitting counterpoise of 
 this danger, has surrounded us with these pressing 
 and imperative duties which connect us with others. 
 
372 THE PRESSXIKE OF DUTIES. 
 
 If I sit down with my own sad thoughts, I am filled 
 with the consciousness of my own afflictions ; but 
 scarce a duty can be proposed which does not in- 
 stantly carry my thoughts abroad to others. All the 
 great duties of life connect us with others, with a 
 family, with kindred, with friends, with enemies, 
 with society. So long as we are engaged in them, 
 any selfishness of grief must be very much set aside. 
 The self-denying, just, and generous principles are 
 called into action, while the ever-recurring thoughts 
 of bereavTsment only give a certain sanctity to the 
 duties on which we are engaged. And thus the 
 best consolation of sorrow becomes also the best 
 preservation of the disinterested, as well as of the 
 devout affections. 
 
 3. But this pressure of duty is not merely the pro- 
 tection of innocence and the consolation of sorrow ; 
 it is the discipline appointed by God for the develop- 
 ment of virtue. "We constantly hear the question. 
 What are the processes through which a right char- 
 acter before God is formed? There is among us 
 infinite self'-criticisra, and the endeavor to shape and 
 mould and give direction to the character through 
 some direct action. It sometimes seems to be 
 thought that one can mould his character as the 
 artist chisels a statue. I believe that there is much 
 exaggeration in these views, that, on the contrary, 
 the true method of self-formation is comparatively 
 to forget self and self-improvement in simple devo- 
 tion to the duties of one's lot. Let us consider this 
 point a little more at length. 
 
 The idea of self-culture has been with us a favor- 
 ite one. It seems to accord with our Northern 
 
THE PEESSURB OE DUTIES. . 373 
 
 habits of self-dependence and calculating forecast. 
 No doubt, in many respects, it is a just idea. In a 
 certain sense, self-culture ought reasonably to be a 
 great end of life. But this by no means implies or 
 requires that a man shall be perpetually thinking of 
 this end. On the other hand, nothing so surely 
 defeats it. If it is as an end to be kept steadily be- 
 fore the mind, I infinitely prefer, as more practical 
 and more true, the declaration of the catechism, that 
 the chief end of man is to glorify God. 
 
 All moral self-culture that can be successful, re- 
 quires much oblivion of one's self. A true moral 
 self-eulture is a development of qualities which re- 
 quire, not self-consciousness, but a perpetual self- 
 denial and postponement of one's self to something 
 higher and truer and better. Justice is disinter- 
 ested ; the love of truth is disinterested ; rectitude 
 in every form is disinterested, — requires that per- 
 sonal interests shall be made subordinate to some- 
 thing higher, — disinterested, not in the sense of 
 being unimportant to our true interests, but in re- 
 quiring that man shall act with reference to princi- 
 ples which make him for the T;ime self-forgetful of 
 personal advantages. 
 
 The culture of these principles is moral self-cul- 
 ture. And it is carried on not by turning the 
 thoughts inward, and trying experiments on one's 
 self. Of this nothing comes, but some feeble imita- 
 tive sentimentalisms of justice and beneficence and 
 piety. But the method of self-culture appointed by 
 Providence is to think little of one's self in any way, 
 giving up the heart and thought to the performance 
 
 32 
 
374 ^ THE PRESSURE OE DUTIES. 
 
 of duty. Go and do justly ; go and act out mercy ; 
 walk humbly and reverently before GoH, and you 
 will gain self-culture, though you know not the 
 meaning of the words ; and very likely all the better 
 because you do not know their meaning. 
 
 It is because a true moral self-culture is a great 
 end of man's life on earth, that God has surrounded 
 us with such a pressure of duties. They constitute 
 His school for man, — not opened for a few hours in 
 a day, not interrupted by long vacations, but com- 
 mencing at the beginning of life, and terminating 
 only with its close. Our contrivances for moral self- 
 culture, our ingenious speculations about it, are 
 comparatively of little moment. The arguments to 
 enforce its importance are of comparatively little 
 moment. Providence does not leave so important a 
 matter to our accidental judgments about its utility. 
 He puts us into a wise and beneficently arranged 
 school at the outset. We may be, because we are 
 free, unfaithful ; but He puts us into a school, and 
 keeps us there, whether we think of it or not, and 
 surrounds us by teachers who never weary; — and 
 these teachers are duties, which on every side lay 
 their demands upon us. We may make this school 
 more or less profitable, — here is our free agency, — 
 but the essential elements, even when they are not 
 learned, are taught to all. 
 
 And it is in this fact that we discover an explana- 
 tion of another fact, — that we are almost as likely 
 to find the higher elements of character in one con- 
 dition of life as another. We wonder sometimes at 
 seeing high virtues — that is, a high moral self-cul- 
 ture — in very exposed conditions. But the truth is, 
 
THE P^SSUKB OP DUTIES. 375 
 
 that they whom man has deserted, and either made 
 or left to be miserable, God has not forsaken. 
 
 The mother who in loneliness and penury watch- 
 es over her sick child, the father who denies himself, 
 who gives up perilous habits, who avoids disreputa- 
 ble acts lest his wrong-doing should harni his chil- 
 dren, — they are both in an efficient school of sejf- 
 culture. The little boy in the street who with 
 watchful labor gathers up a few farthings a day, 
 and, spending nothing on his own pleasures, carries 
 all home, that a destitute mother may have means 
 to buy bread for still younger children, is not only 
 in a school of self-culture, but is learning blessed 
 lessons every day. 
 
 The poor emigrant who lays aside the earnings 
 of months that she may send them to her distant 
 'home, for the help of parents. and brothers and sis- 
 ters in their necessity, little as she may have learned 
 in human schools, has learned at least one noble 
 lesson in the great school of Providence. These 
 persons, and so it is in all other conditions of life, 
 attain virtues by practising them. They use the 
 strength they have, and gain more by its use, — 
 the one talent becomes ten. By the- eternal law of 
 Heaven, to him that hath, and uses well what he 
 hath, is given. 
 
 It is one of the real misfortunes of what we think 
 to be the happier lot, that prosperity and helping 
 friends, and too abundant pleasures, enable us to 
 escape the best means and methods of self-culture, 
 — enable us to be truants in the school of Provi- 
 dence, to throw on others the labors and self-denials 
 which we ought to consider our most blessed privi- 
 
376 THE PRESSUEE OB pXJTIES. 
 
 lege. That prosperity has been no blessing which 
 has made one feel less the pressure of any serious 
 duty. In vain do we try to substitute easier and 
 softer methods of self-culture. Our schools, our 
 meditations, our exhortations, are vain, are no sub- 
 stitutes, though they may be aids, of those meth- 
 ods of self-improvement which Providence supplies. 
 Nothing answers, but doing the duties that God 
 lays on us. And when a happier lot furnishes the 
 means of general culture, and thus develops all the 
 sensibilities, instead of its being more safe to sit 
 down in passive self-indulgence, it is only more 
 perilous. 
 
 Think it not hard, then, that this pressure of du- 
 ties weighs on you sometimes heavily. Trouble 
 yourself not about their amount, but let the energy 
 so often exhausted in repinings be expended in ef- 
 forts to accomplish good and useful ends. 
 
 Thank God, that when you wake at morning, you 
 know that there is not an hour in the day which 
 will not be crowded with claims not easily put 
 aside. Thank God, that you have pressing and im- 
 perious duties. If at any time you find they are 
 more than your strength, do not bemoan that fact. 
 Even if they must all be done, and life and strength 
 are exhausted in the doing, there are worse ways of 
 dying than by the performance of duty. But the 
 truth is, there is no occasion for this. In such cases, 
 tlie highest, and sometimes the hardest duty, is to 
 give up plans and labors which were once dutiep, 
 but have ceased to be so for you, — the hard duty 
 to a conscientious person, for the time, of doing 
 nothing, — the duty of waiting instead of acting. 
 
THE PRESSURE OE DUTIES. 377 
 
 In ordinary life, it is not the duties which properly 
 belong to us which create an occasion of martyr- 
 dom. , Ordinarily, Providence intends that men shall 
 live, rather than die, for duty. But if, as may very 
 likely be the case, duties press too heavily, discrim- 
 inate ; put aside the secondary duties, the artificial 
 claims that grow up with an artificial society, and 
 which, at the best, must hold a very subordinate 
 place in a well-ordered life. If anything be set 
 aside, let it be these, and dedicate yourself to the 
 great duties of your position. Give yourself up to 
 them, for their performance will be your soul's life. 
 If such duties do not exist, find them, or make 
 them. Have enough to do that is worth the doing. 
 Make it impossible for you to spend a day without 
 doing much that is for the happiness and welfare of 
 others. Be no cumberer of the ground. Look for 
 the protection of innocence, look for the solace of 
 affliction, look for the growth of virtue and piety, 
 to the faithful, strenuous, religious performance of 
 the duties that belong to you. Of old, the fire came 
 down from heaven to consume the offering as soon 
 as it was laid upon the altar. It is in the perform- 
 ance of duty that God now meets man. 
 
 The altar on which we lay the accepted sacrifice, 
 is that on which we surrender our wishes to the 
 Divine will. In every true purpose of duty, heaven 
 and earth are brought into contact. The soul opens 
 itself and receives holy influences. Through the 
 duty required, God is communicating his best bless- 
 ings to man, and through the duty performed, man 
 draws nearest to God. 
 
 32* 
 
SERMON XXVII. 
 
 CONFIDENCE IN GOD. 
 
 I TBtrST IN THE MBECT OF GOD^ TOR EVER AND EVER. — Psalm 
 
 Hi. 8. 
 
 YEA, THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY OE THE SHADOW OS 
 DEATH, I WILL EEAR NO EVIL; FOR THOU ART WITH ME; THY 
 KOD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT MB. — Fsalm Xxiii. 4. 
 
 The language of Pavid is the expression of un- 
 bounded confidence in God. It is a reasonable 
 confidence, founded on just conceptions of the Di- 
 vine Providence. For what is this Being ? He 
 filleth immensity. We look behind and before, and 
 the mind finally rests ever on him, the High and 
 Holy One who inhabiteth eternity ! And yet he, 
 by whom all things subsist, cares for all by car- 
 ing for each. As the light of his sun shines into 
 the humblest dwelling not less than into the highest 
 palace, so his providence reaches all and each. His 
 will moves these starry worlds which retreat before 
 the gaze into immensity ; and he hears the sighings 
 of the lowliest heart -that go up from the earth. Those 
 who are forgotten by man are remembered by God. 
 
 And He reveals himself. Behind the thin screen 
 
CONFIDENCE IN GOD. 379 
 
 of this material world, the oth'erwise overwhelming 
 brightness of the Infinite Majesty is partially con- 
 cealed ; and yet, at the same time, the brightness 
 tempered to our vision, partially revealed, — not tran- 
 siently, but constantly, through those laws whose en- 
 ergy lies in his living will, — revealed not in some 
 local human language mefrely, but in a language 
 which can never become dead, or obsolete, in univer- 
 sal laws and providential arrangements which ever 
 speak of him. Nay, lest we should deify this ma- 
 terial order, he has condescended to the infirmities 
 of men, and by direct interposition has showed his 
 sovereignty over the world. From the clouded glory. 
 He who ordinarily veil^ himself behind the order of 
 his works has come down in front of his laws, and 
 in the miracles of his Son has compelled us to recog- 
 nize the author of the perpetual miracle of the uni- 
 verse. Through his Son he has revealed what 
 nature but imperfectly discloses, his paternal care. 
 The Gospel is a revelation of the merciful Providence 
 of that awful Power whose sovereignty stretches 
 over the creation. Wherever we look, to the heav- 
 ens above or the earth beneath, we behold the mani- 
 festations of One in whom we live and move and 
 have our being. Well may our unworthy and sin- 
 ful hearts be still with awe, when we think of that 
 awful Power in whose presence we stand. 
 
 It is obvious, that any plan of life which leaves 
 out of it the idea of the moral Governor of the world 
 must be wrong, — any habits of thought or feeling 
 which are not more or less colored and controlled by 
 this great truth must be defective. For what is 
 
380 CONFIDENCE IN GOD. 
 
 man ? A creature of yesterday, with foresight enough 
 to be aware of the opening destinies before him, but 
 not enough to foresee what they shall be, — encom- 
 passed by abysses of mystery that he cannot fathom, 
 while moves over him and around him that Power 
 which is the life of all that exists. To that Power 
 he is united, by his "weakness and dependence, and 
 united in a still more fearful way, by that accounta- 
 ble nature which makes him responsible to the moral 
 Sovereign of the world. What then should be the 
 sentiments which I ought to cherish toward God ? 
 As I look back over the past, I am compelled to ac- 
 knowledge, however little I may feel it, that my life 
 has been loaded with undeserved blessings. From 
 the time that the child is laid in the cradle, till the 
 aged man is borne on the bier to his grave, the sun- 
 shine and the air are not more constant than those 
 blessings which come, not through casual, but fixed 
 arrangements of Providence, — enjoyments seemingly 
 needless, superinduced upon utility, every right ex- 
 ercise of any faculty a source of pleasure,' the sins of 
 men overruled so as to work out unintended good, — 
 a mercy most patient and most pitiful, which would 
 reclaim all who go astray, which blesses man on the 
 earth almost in spite of himself, and reveals a higher 
 and holier world, which, little as the best may de- 
 serve to enter it, is promised to the weakest and the 
 humblest who strive in their place to walk in the 
 paths of duty. This infinite beneficence of the Cre- 
 ator, this unbounded goodness, showered like light 
 over the dark earth and into the darkness of human 
 hearts, — for this, what shall we render unto God ? 
 
CONFIDENCE IN GOD. 381 
 
 We can render nothing; and all that he asks is, 
 that we shall not be insensible to it. Let our morn- 
 ing and our nightly prayer then be, " Save us, O 
 God, from the sin of the thankless heart ; save us 
 from the guilt of remembering everything else and 
 forgetting thee." "We can return nothing to Him 
 who giveth all. May we at last, when life draWs to 
 a close, be able to feel that in the midst of our bless- 
 ings we were mindful of their magnitude and of 
 their source ; and may we be able also to remember 
 that these blessings were not all used for selfish ends, 
 but were the source of happiness and of good to those 
 who knew more of the deprivations and less of the 
 enjoyments of life than we. 
 
 But the mind cannot stop here. This Being who 
 is above me is not only the centre of the material, 
 but of the moral, order of the world. The true wel- 
 fare and blessedness of all orders of existences, from 
 those on earth to the highest seraphim, depend upon 
 conformity to the controlling law of holiness and 
 love. I cannot be an exception. Obedience to the 
 will of God is the peace and blessedness of the uni- 
 verse. Shall I struggle against his law ? Shall I 
 think it hard, that it has been revealed for the gov- 
 ernment of man ? No ; I will rejoice in the law of 
 the Lord. My sins even, and my fears, shall not 
 suffer me to forget that my greatest privilege is to 
 have revealed to m* the character and the will of 
 God. There are many things respecting which we 
 may easily rest in ignorance; but to be in ignorance 
 of the character and will of God is to extinguish 
 every light above the sea, and every hope in the 
 
382 CONFIBBNCB IN GOD. 
 
 heart of man. My sins, my shortcomings, my 
 many errors and wanderings, may well make me 
 tremble before the law of Infinite Holiness. But 
 I will not wish that the holiness of the universe 
 should be lowered, in order that I may sin without 
 fear. I will rejoice in the law of the Lord ; — rejoice 
 that it guides me safely when I would walk in a 
 right way, and that it alarms me with no unfounded^ 
 apprehensions when I depart from moral rectitude. 
 
 But more than this, we should find in this the 
 supreme law of life. There is one thing which in- 
 cludes in itself all other good, and that is the Divine 
 approval. Let me seek this with singleness of heart, 
 let me be able to feel that the course which I take is 
 one which the Infinite Goodness shall look down 
 upon with an approving eye, and what higher than 
 this can I desire, and with this, what shall I greatly 
 fear ? Though enemies compass me about, though 
 the floods go over my soul, trusting in Thee, I wUl 
 fear no evil. 
 
 Again, with this habitual sense of the Divine pres- 
 ence and care, the trials of life are lightened. That 
 cloud which, drifting alone in the heavens, was so 
 black, when seen in the light of a merciful Provi- 
 dence shines with celestial radiance. Even that 
 trial to which all are called, the loss of kindred and 
 of friends, changes its character when we see it in 
 connection with God. "We spmk of the consola- 
 tions of sorrow. I believe we often mistake as to 
 their true nature. And many, from personal experi- 
 ence of the little peace which is to be derived from 
 the common topics of comfort, imagine that there is 
 
CONFIDENCE IN GOD. 383 
 
 no consolation save in time and in forgetfulness. It 
 is certainly an infinite boon to have the assurance, 
 when we bear a friend to the grave, that all is not 
 there, that nothing is there that we love, — to know 
 that, while we restore the dust to its kindred dust, 
 the spirit has been taken up to its God. But multi- 
 tudes have believed in the doctrine of an immortal 
 life, and have found but little , comfort in it when 
 they look down into the grave. Not that this faith 
 is powerless, even to them. Far away, from behind 
 the distant horizon of mortality, dawns the light of 
 immortal hope ; but it is distant, and now there is 
 separation, and the craving sense of loss and be- 
 reavement. Consolation comes chiefly, not from 
 truths offered from without, but from the state of 
 the heart within. It shines not upon our outward 
 eyes, but the dayspring rises within the soul, and 
 the true consolation may be described in a single 
 sentence. It consists in a profound habitual sense 
 of the Divine presence, and a trusting submission to 
 His will. Where this exists, there is such an open- 
 ing of the- heart in confidence to God, such reliance, 
 that in the midst of the deepest affliction, and in the 
 midst of tsEirs, there is peace, — peace such as the 
 Saviour himself had in the season of his trial. 
 
 If we look on a friend's' departure separate from 
 all his spiritual relations, — look on it as an isolated 
 event, — if we forget God and remember only our- 
 selves, — it is the dreariest as well as thfe saddest 
 spectacle on which the heavens look. Under the fair 
 sky, in the midst of this open world, one that loved 
 and was loved feebly pants forth his life. Separa- 
 
384 CONFIDENCE IN GOD. 
 
 tion, loss, tears, the grave, and bleeding hearts and 
 wounded affections and broken ties, are words which 
 but feebly represent the thoughts which close around 
 that scene. But this is not to see death as it is ; it 
 is like looking at the sky and forgetting that in it is 
 a sun. In that chamber of mourning there is the 
 presence of one who is invisible. He is present 
 there, — He whose love is wiser and more compassion- 
 ate than yours, — and all this takes place in accord- 
 ance with his wise and merciful law. Through the 
 ministries of his providence, He is calling one away 
 dear to him as to you. Slowly and painfully the 
 thread of life is unloosed ; slowly and painfully the 
 spirit separates itself from its mortal dwellings ; but 
 God is there, and it is his hand ; at length there 
 remains visible to you only the closed eyes and stUl 
 features of death. But were your eyes couched, 
 so that you might look in on immortal scenes, you 
 should behold the one you loved freed from the 
 burden of the flesh, already with purer and holier 
 beings ; you should behold that infinite care stUl 
 sheltering the departed, as it shelters those who re- 
 main, with a love uniting those on earth and those 
 in heaven. In the hour of sorrow we may say, It is 
 God's hand, it is his presence. And when the heart 
 can truly say, I trust in Thee, I resign to Thee that 
 which was so loved, I commit my own feeble and 
 faltering heart to Thee, — in that self-surrender to 
 God, in that alliance of the child with the Infinite 
 Parent, in that trusting faith which in the hour of 
 death sees, not chiefly the body, but the soul loosen- 
 ing itself from its mortal frame, — sees the presence 
 
CONFIDENCE IN GOD. 385 
 
 of Him who not only gave, but is taking away, — 
 there is a consolation which all the darkness of the 
 grave and the transient separations of death cannot 
 extinguish. 
 
 And we too must pass through the same scene ; 
 and what shall give us support, and enable us to 
 meet with self-collected composure that hour ? If 
 the mind retain its full activity, and is aware of 
 what is taking place, but one thing, — trust in God. 
 David has expressed the profoundest experience of 
 human nature, when he declares its true support in 
 the season of death. " Though I pass through the 
 valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for 
 Thou art with me." In that hour my strength shall 
 fail ; my friends may stand around me, but their help 
 is in vain ; they may watch my closing eyes, they 
 may bear my body to the grave, but there the ten- 
 derest affections leave me. But there is one Being 
 still with me. He was with me in health, he was 
 with me in unnumbered blessings. He made those 
 around me dear to me. In every conceivable way 
 he has given me assurance, such as no earthly 
 parent gives a child, of his goodness. He is still 
 with me, and as the body fails, the spirit only be- 
 comes more conscious of his presence. Shall I 
 not trust in him? I may doubt the wisdom and 
 beneficence of man, but if there be anything of 
 which I am certain, it is that God wishes nothing 
 but good to anything which he has created. To 
 secure their highest good, he may lead them through 
 the discipline of trial, and save them from the per- 
 manent ruin of sin by the ministry of suffering; but 
 
 3.3 
 
386 COKFIDENCB IN GOD. 
 
 still I know that in all he wishes for nothing but the 
 good of his creatures. Shall I not trust in him? 
 Yea, though I go through the valley of the shadow of 
 death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. I 
 need not fear to go where God leadeth. Give to 
 me the penitent heart and the will submissive to 
 his, and I need not fear. I will commit myself to 
 him, and say, " Thy will be done." 
 
 In this I believe lies the higher spiritual peace 
 which attends the departure of the good. It is 
 sometimes said, as if it were surprising, that the last 
 hours oJ nearly all men are composed. I think to a 
 considerable extent it is true, and not surprising, but 
 that it rather illustrates the merciful providence of 
 God. In that last hour, when it is too late to do any- 
 thing, God seems to save man from apprehensions 
 that can now lead to no action. 
 
 If the disease -has been brief and sudden, nature 
 often supplies the opiate of feverish bewilderment 
 and pain. If the disease has been long, the person 
 has been descending, step by step, a long way, to- 
 ward the tomb, and, exhausted and spent, the last 
 step seems little more than any which preceded. 
 But it would be a great mistake to suppose, except 
 in cases of sudden death, that the last hour comes 
 unanticipated and without any previous struggle. 
 While as yet nothing has been said, while you have 
 feared that the sick man was ignorant of his condi- 
 tion, he has very probably been sounding the depths 
 of his soul, and asking himself whether he is ready 
 to die. The struggle is not in the last hour, but long 
 before, in seasons of silent and lonely watchings. 
 
CONFIDENCE IN GOD. 387 
 
 Pleasant words of friendly greeting were upon the 
 lip ; but in the heart, the overshadowing, unspoken 
 thoughts of God, and death, and eternity, — thoughts 
 that were unuttered save in the silent prayers of the 
 heart to the Creator. There was the struggle and 
 the conflict, — there the parting in the solitary heart 
 with the fair scenes and the loved companions to be 
 left behind on the earth, — there, through weeks and 
 months, perhaps, the silent preparation for the last 
 hour ; and when at the end of tSat, for the first time, 
 the dying man has asked you whether he should re- 
 cover, you have trembled to answer him the truth, 
 that he could not ; and yet that answer, instead of 
 agitating him, probably gave him more elevated 
 calmness. And tlie reason was, that he had pre- 
 pared himself for the answer. And when this se- 
 cret history of the heart is unveiled to you, you find 
 that this preparation has consisted, almost solely, in 
 a single thing, in a surrender of one's self to God. 
 The sick man has said, in the soberness of the heart 
 in the presence of death, "I commit myself to Thee; 
 I trust in Thee." He may be conscious of frailties 
 and sins, — he has irnplored the Divine forgiveness ; 
 but one thought has risen above all other thoughts, 
 — "I trust myself in the hands of God." 
 
 I do not mean to say that the whole of a religious 
 life can be compressed into this point, or that, while 
 one lives all his days regardless of God, it is suffi- 
 cient if in his last hour he should think of him; but I 
 want to illustrate the point, that, in the great emer- 
 gencies of life, experience shows that peace, com- 
 posure, and hope come from a trusting submission 
 
388 CONFIDENCE IN SOB. 
 
 to the Divine will, — a submission Which gays from 
 the heart, " Thy will be done," — a subniission that 
 disposes one to do or bear cheerfully whatever God 
 may appoint. And I refer to such cases only to 
 show, that this principle which meets the wants of 
 the soul in its severest trials should be the controlling 
 principle of life. Everything teaches us that the 
 state we are to seek is that of an habitual trusting 
 reverence for the Divine will. A soul that has at- 
 tained to this state, though it still may be clogged 
 with many infirmities, has attained to the highest 
 peace of earth and of heaven, for it is at peace with 
 God. It is that state which we should most wish 
 for ourselves and our friends. 
 
 I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me ! Even 
 , while we deserve his punishments, we will trust in 
 the goodness of the Lord. In the midst of oiijr bless- 
 ings we will remember that it is God that " leadeth 
 us along the green pastures and beside the still wa- 
 ters." If doubt and perplexity beset us, may we 
 follow confidently the guiding hand of God. And 
 while we live, may we cherish such a spirit that, 
 when, as all must soon, we go down the dark valley 
 of the shadow of death, we may take up the w^ords 
 of the Psalmist, and say, " I will fear no evil, for 
 Thou art with me." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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