A NT HIRO POS.
:6 -e BYiE
REV. W   P; -BREED,  D.D.
AUTHOR OF
"]MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS BELIEF," &OC.
"ON EARTH THERE'S NOTHING GREAT BUT MAN."
PHILADELPHIA:
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION,
No. 821 CHESTNUT STREET.
(?.. (., 
E ntered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by
THE TRUSTEES OF THE
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District
of Pennsylvania.
STEREOTYPED BY WESTOOTT  & THOMSON. 
? L i- r               
;'' t W A{  -t; 
CONTENTS.
I PAGE
I. ANTHROPOS............................................................ 5
II. MAN...................................................................... 7
III. MAN TO MEN......................................................... 12
IV. MAN IN THE BIBLE................................................ 18
V. MAN TO HIMSELF................................................... 24
VI. MAN AS HE IS...................................................... 31
VII. THE WONDERFUL-THE BODILY FRAME.................... 33
VIII. THE WONDERFUL-THE SOUL................................... 46
IX. THE WONDERFUL-BODY AND SOUL.......................... 54
X. THE FEARFUL-MORTALITY...................................... 60
XI. THE FEARFUL-IMMORTALITY................................... 63
XII. THE FEARFUL-PAIN............................................... 69
XIII. MAN AND THE SON OF GOD.................................... 79
XIV. MA.N AND THE GOD-MAN......................................... 91
XV. MAN AND HEAVEN.................................................. 99
XVI. MAN AND RELIGION................................................ 108
3
,,I  
ANTHROPOS.
I.
ANTHROPOS.
"While the mute creation downward bend
Their gaze, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies."
TEE Greek word anthropos is given us in the
lexicons as a triple compound, made up first, of an
adverb that signifies "upward;" then of the fragment of a verb that means "to turn," and lastly of
a noun that designates the "human face."  The
whole, combined in one word, points us to man as
the creature that turns his face toward the skies.
In this term we may find a reference either to
that peculiarity of physical structure that makes an
upward look possible, natural, and easy to man, or
to a real or supposed yearning in human nature for
a higher destiny, or to that sense of dependence
upon a higher power that has so abundantly and
variously expressed itself in man's religious history,
teaching him to look for help from above, or to all
~~1 W.*~~ 5 
ANTHIIROPOS.
of these together. And it is not impossible that
there may lurk within it a hint as to human duty
to the powers supposed to reign on high.
However this may be, it is an interesting fact,
that man is furnished with a singular and beautiful
combination of joints in the neck, at the top of the
spinal column-a ball and socket joint, enabling
him to turn the face from side to side, and a hinge
joint permitting him at will to throw back the head,
and gaze into the heavens. Thus he is, in his physical structure, an anthropos, a looker toward the
skies.
6 
MAN.
II.
MAN.
"What am I?  Whence produced, and for what end?
Am I the abandoned orphan of blind chance,
Dropped by wild atoms in disordered dance?
Or from an endless chain of causes wrought,
And of unthinking substance, born with thought.
Am L but what I am, mere flesh and blood,
A branching channel, with a mazy flood?"
MANY have been the definitions given of man,
some sportive and some grave. HIe has been called
an unfeathered bird-a food-cooking, fire-using animal-the talking animal, the animal that laughs
and weeps-an animal capable of acquiring knowledge. Strict materialism defines him a thinking
organism, an animal whose organs secrete thought.
But whatever else is true or untrue of man, it is
certain that he is distinguished from all other terrestrial beings by the power of self-knowledge.
He possesses self-consciousness.  He is intelligently aware of his own existence, of the thoughts
arising, and the emotions that play within him, and
of the motives that impel him to action.
The eye that sees other objects cannot see itself,
but man is an eye that can see himself.
7 
ANTTHROPOS.
"The stars that shine, and the planets that
Wheel unshaken in the wide universe,"
the winds that whisper in the summer evening, and
howl in the winter tempest, the ocean now a smooth
mirror, reflecting back the glory of the skies, and
now raging under the torment of the storm, and'all
birds, beasts, fishes and insects, all execute the will
of God, and perform the parts severally assigned
them in the economy of nature, and help to weave
the wondrous web of human history, and yet all as
incapable of truly knowing that they exist, and
what they are, and what they do, as the loom that
weaves its ingenious tapestries, or the printing press
that embalms upon the paper page the thoughts of
a Homer, Milton or Bacon. But man, among all
these the only true actor in human affairs, is a selfconscious being, and knows not only that he is, but
to a large extent what he is and what he does.
Doubtless there lie hidden in the recesses of his
nature, mysteries too deep to be reached by any
sounding line as yet in his possession. And his influence is more impressive and' far-reaching than he
often suspects, or is able to comprehend.
Still he is an eye that sees himself-a loom that
may know to a large extent what he weaves, a printing press that is conscious of the thoughts that he
imprints upon the page of his own and the world's
records.
The mere animal has its instincts that feebly and
but feebly typify the mental processes of man,
8 
MAN.
though they enable it to achieve results that fill us
with surprise and admiration. WVith the nest of the
bird, the web of the spider, the cell of the bee, the
architecture and strange economies and wars of the
ant, we are all more or less familiar. Through the
operations of this mimic intelligence, we are told
that "the ox eats two hundred and seventy-six
herbs, but rejects two hundred and eighteen; that
the goat finds four hundred and forty-nine palatable, but feels averse to one hundred and twentyseven; the sheep three hundred and eighty-seven,
not touching one hundred and forty-one; the horse
two hundred and sixty-two, leaving two hundred and
twelve untasted. The reindeer lays itself down,
scrapes away the deep snow with its horn and forefeet, and finds its aliment."
This animal instinct is a matter of profound interest, and has given exercise to some of the acutest
of philosophical minds. Descartes discussed it, and
Lord Brougham has a charming little volume upon
it. But whatever may be the general truth respecting its nature, it is without all doubt as nothing to
the commanding intellect of man.
He, too, has his instincts, but they are at the bidding of his higher powers. Shatter the leg of a
lion, and he will howl in dismay and despair.
"But when a cannon ball fell into the room of
Charles the XII., and he remained calmly in his
chair-when the Dutch Admiral, in the moment he
was to take a pinch of snuff, and lost the extended
9 
ANTHROPOS.
hand by a shot, took it with the other-and when
the British cannonier, whose right hand was torn
off by a ball as he was about to discharge his cannon, used the left with the words, "Does the enemy
think that I have but one hand?"-they showed,
as President Rauch in his Psychology well remarks,
"That they by their will were above the necessity
of yielding to fear, or the influence of pain.
Man then is an animal, or rather he possesses
and may use an animal nature, with all its array of
appetites and instincts, but the possessor of these is
something vastly higher and nobler than the animal
nature possessed.
And one of the grandest of his attributes is the
power to know himself. He may dissect the body,
count and study the bones, muscles and sinews that
make up this strange life-bundle. Hie may, to a
large extent, fathom the physiological wonders that
are hinged together in a marvellous system of harmonious action and reaction, in health, disease,
growth and decay. And he may go down into the
chambers of his own mind, and there setting himself before himself, he may become at once the observer and the observed, in its constitution and action.
It is possible, it is not uncommon, to become so
engrossed with the remote, as to overlook and neglect what is nearest. Many a man can tell about
bees and ants, while yet he knows little or nothing
about himself. One in gazing at the stars may
walk off a precipice and perish.
10 
MAN.
We propose a brief survey of some of the strange
things embosomed in our nature, and to consider
some of the solemnities, responsibilities and possibilities involved therein.
I! 
ANTH,POPOS.
III.
MAN TO MEN.
"Man is one:
And he hath one great heart. It is thus we feel,
With a gigantic throb athwart the sea,
Each other's rights and wrongs; thus are we men."
MANY centuries ago, the great Aristotle wrote,
"Man to man is the most attractive of all objects."
And it may justify and help to persuado to self-inspection and study,to glance at this truth and some
of its illustrations.
Is it not true that man merits and actually occupies a very high place in human regards?
Gather the works upon which man has poured his
loftiest and most ardent and brilliant thinkings, and
see to how large an extent his brother man has engrossed them. The painter who paints, and the
sculptor who moulds, not for the present hour but
for human interest during all coming time, take
care to give man a central placeintheircreations.
And the great epics, that pass the fiery ordeal of
the centuries,take their text, and imbue their commentaries with gatherings from the same repository.
Bishop Warburton, in that amazing thesaurus of
learning, the "Divine Legation," insists, that hu
12 
MAN TO MEN.
man literature has room but for three true epic
poems, and assigns the occupancy of this literary
realm to that royal triumvirate, Hiomer, Virgil and
Milton. The first possessed himself of the province
of morality, the second that of politics, and the last
that of religion.  " These are the three species of
the epic poem; for its largest sphere is human action, which can only be considered in a moral, political and religious view."
There remains, however, another grand sphere
of literary labour, which, however, embraces all the
themes of all these three, and that is Ilistory.
And Herodotus, and Thucydides, and Gibbon and
Macaulay will still hold their places in human libraries, side by side with Warburton's grand triumvirate. And the charm that secures them their immortality grows out of man's interest in men. And
the historic page, whatever other claim it may have
to human regard, needs no other than the fact that
it frowns or smiles, weeps or bleeds with the crimes,
virtues, struggles, darings, victories, defeats, joys
and woes of our kind!
It is these that hallow the scenes where they
have taken place.
"What's hallowed ground?
A kiss can consecrate the ground
Where mated heads are mutual bound;
The spot where love's first links are wound,
That never are riven,
Is hallowed down to earth's profound,
And up to heaven."
2
13 
ANTIHROPOS.
And if a kiss, much more a tear. And if a tear,
much more a drop of blood. And what is human
history but a long tale of tear-shedding and bloodshedding?
Indeed let a man but once cross your pathway in
human life-let him be thrown together with you
for but the casual intercourse of a single hour,
and a greater or less interest is thereby awakened
in your heart in his behalf. And years after, if
tidings reach you of that stranger as the sharer in
some strange good fortune, or the victim of some
bloody outrage, or the subject of some sore calamity, that past acquaintance of an hour, now recalled,
will invest the tidings with a tenfold interest in your
mind and heart.
To the traveller in remote and unfrequented regions, though nature may concentrate about him
her beauties and sublimities, yet if in the midst of
all,a man emerge to view, his heart will thrill with
an intensity of fresh delight.
Our western plains are diversified with certain
excavations and upthrowings of earth, which, as
mere terrestrial elevations and depressions, lack all
special claim to human regard. Yet in fact they
have attracted man in solitary pilgrimage and in
caravans, to inspect and gaze with mysterious awe
upon them.
Why now this pre-eminence accorded to them in
man's regards over many a mass of terrestrial sublimity of God's own workmanshp? The secret lies
14 
MAN TO MEN.
here. Those mysterious mounds bear indisputable
evidence that minds have thought and hands have
wrought them-hands and minds of our brethren
according to the flesh, of whose career and doom, history, tradition and song are alike silent as the grave,
and of whom the only tidings within human reach
are the enigmatical whisperings of those fast decaying earthworks.
The geologist, as he turns over leaf after leaf of
that rocky volume in which nature has been so long
writing her autobiography, no matter how deep his
interest in the fossil remains of vast ungainly monsters, of fern-prints and fish turned to stone, all is
forgotten if the foot-prints of a fellow-man come to
view.
And yonder landscape, of hill and dale, of winding
stream with flowery banks, of tall trees and lesser
shrubs, villages in the distance, and flocks browsing
in the meadows-is it beautiful?  Does it surpass
all actual art, and mock conception of improvement? Well, if man cannot excell it upon the
canvass in lines and colours, he still has his
triumph. He is able to invest even that, or any
other scene in nature, with a vastly enhanced interest over the human heart. While engrossed
with its natural beauties, let some one whisper in
your ear,
"In yonder grove, Pocahontas saved the life of
Smith. Beneath yonder spreading elm, Penn made
his treaty with the Indians. On yonder plain the
15 
ANTHROPOS.
mailed knights of England extorted from their lackland king the Magna Charta. In yonder house,
Milton was born-in that one, Shakspeare died.
Yonder rock received the foot of Tell, as he sprang
from the grasp of Gesler. Yonder field, where now
the nodding corn invites the sickle, when the sun
of Waterloo went down, was.'covered thick with
other clay-'
" Heaped and pent,
Rider and horse, friend and foe, in one red burial blent.'"
Nay, even at Niagara, where that world of waters
rushes in tumultuous merriment down that awful
hill, and then, wreathing its brow with rainbows,
plunges into the wild abyss, well assured that he
who bids the leap will know where to find every
precious drop-even there, we say, if pointed to the
spot whence slipped the maiden, to rescue whom her
lover sprang and both were swept to death-Niagara
herself, present with us face to face, vanishes from
our apprehension!
In a word, let physical nature do her utmost; let
her exhaust all her treasures of beauty and sublimity
to throw a spell over the human spirit, and then,
but let that scene become associated with the doings
and darings, the triumphs or the woes of man, our
brother, and the spectator's bosom will heave with
a tumult of emotions that nothing else could possibly
evoke.  Niagara's voice is drowned to silence in
that one maiden's shriek. Niagara's glories are
16 
MAN TO MEN.
eclipsed to darkness by the woe of that one hapless
youth!
So genuine, so general and intense is the interest,
that man awakens in the bosom of his brother man!
Why, then, should he not seek acquaintance with
himself?
2 *
17 
ANTHROPOS.
IV.
MAN IN THE BIBLE.
"THE word of God, as contained in the Scriptures
of the Old and New Testaments," is mostly conceived
of by men as a revelation of which God is the chief
subject, as well as the author. We are, perhaps,
too much in the habit of considering it as the allengrossing aim and end of holy writ to remove the
veil that hides the attributes of the Divine Being,
and make him better known.
But it merits attention also, that in so far as God
is the theme of inspiration, men are the audience
addressed therein, and that it was in order that his
glory might shine through men, that the Holy Spirit
brooded over the sacred penmen, furnishing matter,
and so controlling the mind as to secure an infallible
and authoritative record of the Divine will.
But in truth, the Bible is hardly more an unveiling of God than it is of man; and a chief aim, and
one grand result of inspired teaching, is to make
man known to himself.
And, indeed, a theology of any practical value is
impossible, unless coupled with a sound anthropology.
18 
MAN IN THE BIBLE.
Beyond the reach of the rays of revelation, all know
how wild have been the anthropologies of even the
sages of the highest civilizations.  Thales, the father
of Greek philosophies, was to himself, in nature,
origin and destiny, a profound mystery. Nor did
the oscillations of philosophic speculation, for two
centuries from his time to Socrates and Plato,
develope truth for a single sound and reliable proposition upon this subject. And the teachings and
progress of four centuries more left that noble
inquirer, Cicero, still in the dark, as to whether
there dwelt within him a soul that would survive the
shock of death that laid the body in the grave. No
one can follow him in his dark gropings after the
truth among the masses of contradictory opinion
without a deep commiseration for his perplexities,
nor read, but with a pang, the touching confession
hlie puts into the mouth of one of the interlocutors
in his discussions of the nature of the soul.
" I know not how it is, but while I am reading
Plato, I feel fully assured of the soul's immortality;
but when I lay aside his book, all my firmness of
assurance passes away."
If this were so with the cultivated and acute
Greek and Roman mind, we need not wonder at the
marvellous visions that have haunted the thoughts
of the imaginative Orientals.
Brahm wakes from his long slumber and becomes
Brahma; and out of Brahm matter issues, and these
latter united form the universe. This universe con
19 
ANTHROPOS.
tains mind, and the grosser elements, and the union
of these produces the genii and men. Then comes
the endless series of transmigrations, the aim pf
which, through aid of religion, is the reabsorption
of the individual into the great soul.
Connected with this is that masterpiece of Satan,
Caste. From Brahma's head come the Brahmins,
the predestinated masters of mankind. From other
parts of the god, the other classes issue, down to the
foot, whence come the poor Indras. These, with
their thirty or forty subdivisions, constitute a social
system which forms one of the most formidable
barriers that true religion is called to surmount.
Thus, our missionaries can gain no access for the
truth but by breaching these walls and overthrowing
to its foundations this monstrous anthropology.
Hence, the opening page of revelation tells the
true story of man's origin and nature. A personal
God creates him in his own image. Matter is
moulded, with exquisite workmanship, into a most
beautiful form, and into this form God breathes a
life, and man becomes a living soul.
As the opening page of God's book tells how man
came into being, an early record shows how he fell,
and furnishes us with the explanation of the physical
ills and moral perturbations which fill the earth
with disorder, and cover it with the pall of death.
Then comes the gradual development of the
scheme for his redemption and rescue. Altar-fires
begin to blaze, and altars and sacrifices to be multi
20 
MAN IN TIlE BIBLE.
plied. Abraham is called. Moses is rescued from
the Nile and builds the tabernacle. Solomon erects
the temple. In the fulness of time Christ comes,
the Lamb of God, to take away the sins of the
world. Faith lights her torch; hope holds out her
star; and man, by aid of the cross, climbs back to
heights that Adam in paradise never knew.
And from beginning to end of the Holy Word,
man constantly appears as the chief actor in its
scenes, and the chief object of its provisions. If
devils come upon the stage, their aim is to ruin man.
If angelic interventions abound, their object is sometimes to execute judgments upon, but oftener to
lend a helping hand to man. "Are they not all
ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them
who shall be heirs of salvation?"
In these pages, man's character is powerfully,
terribly delineated;  "deceitful  above all things,
desperately wicked; abominable, filthy, drinking in
iniquity, like water."
His condition before God is displayed; under
condemnation, by nature, "a child of wrath."  His
duty is declared. Appeals, warnings, exhortations,
expostulations, threats, and invitations abound.
And the volume closes with pictures; some grand,
some terrible as imagination ever conceived, of the
two several abodes into one or other of which man
passes when hidden from earthly scenes.
Thus, if this book is all alive with God, it is not
less alive with man.
21 
ANTHROPOS.
The one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm may be
taken in this respect as a kind of epitome of the
whole book. There we find these two grand subjects
of inspired teaching coupled in some of the sublimest
strains of David's minstrelsy. The psalm opens
with the two in juxtaposition, man under the burning eye of God.   "0 Lord, thou hast searched me,
and known me!"
In the sentences next following, this general
truth is reduced to particulars. In every posture
and position, in all his ways, going and returning,
rising up and lying down, he is still the object of
the divine observation.   In this knowledge, the
movements of the tongue and the exercises of the
mind are included.
"My thoughts,before they are my own,
Are to my God distinctly known;
He knows the words I mean to speak,
Ere from my opening lips they break.
"Within thy circling power I stand,
On every side I find thy hand;
Awake, asleep, at home, abroad,
I am surrounded still with God."
Then follows a brilliant flash of poetic fire, the
theme of which is the divine Omnipresence.
"Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither
shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into
heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell,
behold, thou art there! If I take the wings of the
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
22 
MAN IN THE BIBLE.
even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right
hand shall hold me! If I say, Surely the darkness
shall cover me; even the night shall be light about
me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but
the night shineth as the day: The darkness and
the light are both alike to thee!"
Then, man becomes again the prominent object
of thought.
"I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.   My substance was not hid from
thee when I was curiously wrought in the lowest
parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my
numbers were written, which in continuance, were
fashioned, when as yet there was none of them."
If, then, the God of heaven has made man a chief
theme of the only written revelation ever penned,
well may man make himself the theme of frequent
and solemn meditation and study.
23 
ANTHROPOS.
V.
MIAN TO HIMSELF.
"The proper study of mankind is man."
THIE well-known precept, "Know thyself," is said
to have been inscribed over the door of Apollo's
temple, at Delphi. And if subordinate nature,
animate and inanimate, are worthy of study, surely
the student himself is not less worthy.
For man's views of his own nature, correct or
erroneous, cannot fail to exert important influence
upon his conduct, and his conduct sows the seed of
a harvest he will spend an eternity in reaping.
If one assume with some philosophers that man
is a mere mass of finely organized matter, a mere
bundle of flesh and bones, veins and muscles, he
will also assume that the world is a great larder
fitted up to gratify human appetite, and that man's
chief end is to secure the largest possible number
of pleasurable sensations at the smallest possible
cost.
But let him realize the truths as to his nature
and relationship to his brother man on the one hand,
and to his Creator on the other; that made in the
24 
MAN TO HIMSELF.
image of God, he is immortal, accountable, living,
thinking and acting under the unclosed eye of him
who will adjudge him to an eternity in correspondence with his character and conduct, that death,
lurking at every corner, will usher him a naked soul
into the presence of his judge, and the pressure of
these high truths must give a tone to his spirit, a
loftiness to his aims, and a force to his better purposes, that mere materialism cannot conceive.
There are those who never rise to a higher conception of life and of the world, than that which
makes the one a great play-ground, and the other a
protracted holiday. What man is, they never trouble
themselves to inquire. If he is more than a twittering wren, or a swallow, gliding to and fro in
the summer air; a gay butterfly, commissioned to
flit from flower to flower on sunny fields, they never
make the discovery; and hence they do nothing but
trifle from one end of life to the other.
The world cries piteously for aid, but the trifler
trifles on. Social and political earthquakes unsettle
established order, prostrate ivy-grown customs, and
inaugurate new schemes and systems, and he, the
while,watches with all-engrossing interest the revolutions of fashion. While others grapple in the
struggle for the overthrow of some giant wrong, he
sighs or exults over some momentous change in the
cut of a vest pattern.
War breaks out, and patriotic furors surge like a
deluge through the land, and patriotic hosts, leaving
3
25 
ANTIT OPOS.
all the endearments of home, "mount barbed steeds"
"To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,"
and he the while "courts an amorous looking-glass."
While others seize the musket, he seizes his cane;
while others buckle on the cartridge-box, he buckles
on his neck-tie; while others march to battle, he
marches up and down the fashionable thoroughfares,
a gratuitous advertiser of the wares of the mandresser.
And at length he reaches the end of his life, (for
varieties as well as values have an end,) and looking
back through an avenue of forty or fifty years, with
widows here and orphans there; here the groping
tribes of the indigent blind, and there of the deaf
mute; here the poor children of lunacy, and there
the populous hospital-ward, and everywhere the
poor and ragged and wretched, and what in the
name of humanity has he done for them?
And now, what has he to show to his conscience,
to society, and to God, for all these years of life's
gifts, enjoyments, and opportunities; what but a
manly account of so much-bread consumed, so many
suits of clothing worn out, perhaps so many horses
disabled, and carriages defaced, and a respectable
pyramid of broken champagne bottles and empty
cigar boxes?
And what has he to offer to the grave but a mass
of dust that had been more profitably expended in
constructing an ox, a horse, or a faithful dog, and
26 
MAN TO HIMSELF.
what to God but a soul that had better never been
created!
One whose name is known to almost every child
in the land, when approached upon the great subject
of man's destiny, replied, that he cared not to
trouble himself now with these matters, for he should
soon pass to another world, and then he would know
the whole truth without the trouble of inquiring.
As if the commandant of a national ship, in time of
war, ordered on a cruise, should spend his time as
comfortably as he could in his cabin till his provisions ran out, and then return to ask the goernment whither, and for what he was sent. It will be
too late in the life to come first to inquire what one
ought to do in this.
But in some instances, at least, the question as
to man's nature and destiny will-not suffer itself to
be quietly postponed.
Seated in our study one summer evening, the
door-bell announced a visitor. Hie was a youth of
perhaps nineteen, of uncommon acuteness and uncommon thoughtfulness of mind. Hie had come to
talk about his soul.
Long and interesting was the conversation that
ensued. Ile evidently thought for himself, and
exhibited an almost morbid disregard for authority.
He was willing, even anxious to be a Christian, provided he could reason his way through, and be able
to give to himself. and especially to others, a rational
account of the processes and objects of faith. ile
27 
ANTHROPOS.
was even afraid that his desire to become a Christian
would have an undue influence upon his judgment
and action in the case.
Some of his views were dreamy and pantheistic
in their tone.  "I sometimes," he said, "fancy
myself a mere dream, destitute of real existence.
Mysteries encompass and baffle me. I know not
which way to turn."
He, however, avowed that realities he could not
permanently doubt, and possibilities that he could
neither affirm nor deny were sometimes the occasion
of mental disturbance that rose almost to anguish.
"Here I am," he said.  "I am not here for ever.
Die I must. I may die to-night. What then?
Perhaps  I shall  be annihilated.   This I could
welcome, but perhaps I shall not. I may survive
death; and if so, I may be miserable; I may be
happy; but all is involved in doubt."
"I do not believe that there is a God; but I do
not believe that there is not. I have no ground on
which I can base either proposition. I am all at
sea without a rudder or a chart. For all I know
there may be a triune God and an atonement, a
judgment, a hell and a heaven. I do not know
that there is a hell, and yet I know that to-morrow
I may be there."
"This utter uncertainty makes either happiness
or rest impossible. I often lie awake at midnight
and cannot and dare not sleep, lest I be launched
into the abyss of the unknown."
28 
MAN TO HIMSELF.
I anxiously sought for the source of this state of
mind so unusual in one so young, and I found that,
like many others, he had in his quest for a so-called
rational religion thought it needful to study "the
other side of the question." He must not, like a
child, take his faith from the hand of tradition, but
must construct a creed for himself.  Hence, he must
read what had been written against religion also.
And he had read! Read every infidel book that
came in his way; and he had so mastered them, that
he had come into possession, or rather, he had put
himself into the possession of all the doubts and
sneers and sarcasms that ribald infidelity had heaped
up in its literature. These so swarmed in his mind,
that whenever an argument for the truth rose to his
thoughts, it was at once cancelled by some ready
infidel contradiction, or so crippled, that it could
not make its way to his convictions. Thus, by
infidel aid, he had disabled his own powers of believing the truth. He was like a poor inebriate, so
chained by his awful habits, that although he at
times more than suspected that he was destroying
his own soul, he was helpless for reform. One sight
of the wine-cup would drown all his better resolutions, and take captive all his better judgments.
I asked him to lend me one of his most potent
authorities. He sent me one. It was Dr. Hobach's
"System of Nature," with foot-notes by Diderot, a
rigid and powerfully reasoned system of materialism. He, however, could not see the absurdity of
3*
29 
ANTHROPOS.
Diderot's malignant denunciations of those who held
opposing creeds; for if the system of material necessity were true, his opponents could no more help
believing and acting as they did, than the Mississippi
could help flowing, or Niagara falling. Nor could
he see that the reasoning of his cherished author
was the most vicious of circles. For according to
him, all events were a mere series of inevitable
causes and effects without any first cause. Nature
was a great mill with shafts, bands and spindle,
without any motive power to set it agoing. There
was an adamantine chain of consecutive links, but
no staple to hang the chain on!
How thoroughly that book had been studied,
however, was manifest from its appearance. And he,
poor fellow, was more thoroughly entangled in its
coils than were Laocoon and his sons in those of the
twin serpent on the shores of Troy.
In his then state of mind, he made me think of
the Indian, who, sleeping in his canoe, was imperceptibly wafted out upon Niagara's current, and
awakened only by the hissing and howling of the
waters on the margin of the precipice. There
seemed nothing left for him but to sing his deathsong and perish. And from what I have learned
of that youth since, I tremble to think that this was
indeed his end!
But there are certain things that we may learn
of our nature by a little reflection, and to some of
these we propose to point the reader's attention.
30 
MAN AS HE IS.
VI.
MAN AS HE IS.
"Learn more of reverence, not for rank or wealth-that needs no
learning;
That comes quickly, quick as sin does! Aye, and often leads
to sin.
But for Adam's seed-MAN! Trust me;'tis a clay above your
scorning,
With God's image stamped upon it, and God's kindling breath
within."
WE recall the brief pregnant saying, already
quoted from the word of God, in which the psalmist
writes:
"I am fearfully and wonderfully made."
Perhaps a strictly literal rendering of this passage
would read-"With terrible things I am made
wonderful." But either rendering classifies the
truths respecting our nature under these two general
heads-the Fearful and the Wonderful.  Now, it is
true, that the several topics thus suggested overlap
each other. Most of the fearful elements in our
nature are wonderful, also, and some of the wonderful are fearful. Yet they are sufficiently distinct
to justify a general division of our theme-man as
he is-into these two lines of meditation.
31 
ANTHROPOS.
Fixing our eye then first on the wonderful, we
find it branching into three several streams, each
alluring us to a stroll upon its banks. There is
first the wonderful, as displayed in our bodily frame;
then, the wonderful as seen in our mental or spiritual
nature; and last, but by no means least, the wonderful as involved in the union subsisting between
these two.
32 
THE WONDERFUL-TTHE BODILY FRAME.  33
VII.
THE WONDERFUL-THE BODILY FRAME.
THE most obvious and palpable among the ele
ments of human nature, is the bodily frame. Man
is not a body, but he has one. "He is not an
organism, but an intelligence served by organs."
In general and of right, the man is the master of
the body; but in some respects, and in some cases,
in a degree no way honourable to him, it is his
master. It should serve him, but he often serves
it.  HIe ought to make it an instrument in a useful,
holy life; it often makes him the slave of sin.
It, is through the bodily organs that external
nature reaches the soul, and affects not only his
comfort, but his disposition and character. No
doubt more than man knows, he is at the mercy of
meteorological, electrical, and magnetic vicissitudes.
Heat and cold determine the forms of especially
domestic architecture, and to a considerable degree,
man's social habits, and thus very largely his character and disposition.
"Will any one deny," asks Dr. Draper, in his
"Intellectual Developement of Europe," "the influ 
ANTHROPOS.
ence of rainy days on our industrial habits, and on
our mental condition, even in a civilized state?"
" Meteorology to no little extent influences morals;
the instinctive tendency to drunkenness is a func tion of the latitude."
The stolid Esquimaux, the lively Frenchman, and
the grave Englishman, owe their differences very
much to the effects of external objects upon human
nature.
1. In looking at man, the first thing that strikes
the eye is his attitude.
In an assemblage of the lower order of animals,
one is not long in discovering which of them is of
the seed royal.  The lordly lion carries dominion in
his very tread; but introduce man among them, and
both you and they are struck with his great and
evident superiority. He stands erect, they are
prone. Ie looks to heaven, and they to earth; and
in his eye there is fire that awes the boldest of them.
In this erect position of the body, man is alone
among the tribes that tread the earth; all others,
by nature, bend forward and look downward to the
dust from which they came, and into which, at death,
they descend.
The quadrumana, whose general structure most
closely approximates that of man, such as the chimpanzee and the ourang-outang, of necessity bend
forward, and their long arms are ever ready to act
the part of legs in their ungainly locomotion. But
the human arm, made for nobler purposes, hangs by
34 
THE WONDERFUL-THE BODILY FRAME.  35
the side, while the framework, with its well-adjusted
curves, brings the centre of gravity between the
feet, and makes him, as has been said above, even
physically an anthropos, a looker toward the skies.
The erect position in man is at once a distingishing  fact and  an impressive sermon.   The earth
beneath his feet is to him but a stepping-stone to
something higher, and intimates an upward tendency-an eagle's flight.  " They that wait upon the
Lord," with eyes turned towards his throne, "shall
mount up with wings as eagles; they shell run and
not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint."
That earth must remain where God placed it, beneath his feet. It may not climb, with its boasted
treasures, into his affections, dragging him down like
a wretched muckrake, to dig and scrape in its mire for
his chief good. And when licentiousness and drunkenness bend his noble form into similitude with that
of the brutes, he exchanges the nature God gave
him for a baser, and no longer an anthropos, an
upward looker, he becomes a burrower among defilements that unman him, and depravities that debase
him.
2. Then the structure of the human frame is full
of marvels.
The steam engine is properly considered one of
the most masterly achievements of human genius.
How admirable is that combination of strong arms,
cranks, wheels, pistons, and cylinders. The very
type of resistless energy, almost of self-acting intel 
ANTHROPOS.
ligence; but compared with man, its maker, what is
it that thou art mindful of it?
There are those more than two hundred bones,
shielding the brain, protecting the eye, forming a
sheath for the life-marrow in the spinal column, and
in the legs supporting the frame, as "pillars of
marble set upon sockets of fine gold," the whole
forming firm framework for the system, made up of
materials conveyed mysteriously to their places by
a series of wonder-working organs.
And how marvellously are these bones combined;
some with serrated edges in close suture, as with the
bones of the skull; some as the teeth rigidly secure,
"like pegs driven into a board;" while others are
adapted to the free motions required in the exigencies of life. The ribs projecting forward and downward, by their evolution in respiration open a cavity
within large enough to admit from seventy to an
hundred cubic inches of air. Nor can any mechanism be more perfect than that displayed in the joints;
now a hinge where motion in a single plane is required, as at the knee, and now the ball adjusted to
its socket, where a circular motion is needed. In
all these cases, too, the tips of the bones are supplied
in their delicateness of structure with connecting
ligaments and separating pads, and withal a constant supply of lubricating mucilage, preventing
friction and rendering action easy and painless.
We need only to add the durability of this
machinery of locomotion. "A limb shall swing 
THE WONDERFUL-THE BODILY FRAME.  37
upon its hinge, or play in its socket many hundred
times an hour for sixty years together, without
diminution of its agility."  Surely we are wonderfully made!
Then, what wonders lie embosomed in that system
of muscles, more than five hundred in number, that
wrap this long framework round in a covering of
flesh with their strange power of contraction and
relaxation! Each muscle is a bundle of fibrous
cords, and we are told that at least ten several conditions are met in each mass, figure, magnitude,
fulcrum, point of action, collocation with respect to
the two ends, place, position of the whole muscle
and introduction into it of nerves, arteries and veins.
With reference to the joints, the muscles are so
adjusted as to work just the effect needed in each
case, whether motion in a plane or in a circle.
Sometimes they are located at the point where the
result is needed; but when this would be inconvenient, as in the fingers, they are placed at a distance
and the force conveyed to the proper place by cords
strong enough for the purpose, and yet not too large
for convenience.
The rapidity of their action is another marvel, as
in speaking or playing upon a musical instrument;
and another still, is their amazing complication, a
hundred of them acting in every breath we draw.
Attention, too, is often called to their interdependence, the failure of a single one of the multitude
plunging the subject into suffering.
4 
ANTHRIIOPOS.
We are told of one, who, from the failure of two
little muscles to act, was long unable to see, except
as he lifted his eyelids with his fingers.
"Our life contains a thousand springs,
And dies if one be gone;
Strange, that a harp of thousand strings
Should keep in tune so long!"
Another world of wonders is disclosed in the
nervous system, with its larger masses in the brain
and spinal column, its curious ganglion knots, and
its endless ramifications through the framne, playing
so important a part among the functions of the
animal life, and with their inexplicable connections
with the mind. So profuse are their radiations
from the great centres, and so complicated the
mazy net-work with which they overspread the
surface of the body, that the finest needle-point can
find no room for entrance between them. From
millions of minute points these fibrous lines, like
telegraphic wires, dart intelligence to the mind, of
any painful impression, and back again through
another minute cord, often lying beside it in the
same enveloping sheath comes the mandate of the
will to meet the exigencies of the case.  The finger
touches a hot surface, and quicker than thought,
the tidings flashes to the brain, which as quickly
sends back the mandate for the withdrawal of the
suffering member from the destructive contact.
There, too, is the eye, that beautiful window
through which the soul looks out upon the surround
38 
THE WONDERFUL-THE BODILY FRAME.   39
ing world. Shielded in its bony socket, and with
its hairy lash-fringe it has little to fear from either
the blow of violence, or the invading dust. The
careful eyelid keeps its surface well moistened.
Beautifully adjusted muscles roll it in any direction
desired. The opening in front admits and measures
the needed amount of light, which, passing through
its various compartments, paints on the little,acutely
sensitive retina, the elements of a landscape many
miles in extent, and transmits the needful impression to the brain.
And this delicate little organ, which a ray too
much of light offends, which a sand-grain tortures,
which a pin-scratch destroys, how rarely is it injured!
I As the eye catches the light, the ear takes in
sound, which startles the spiritual indweller with
the cry of alarm, soothes it with melodies and harmonies, or instructs it with words of wisdom.
As the complicated machinery of the factory is
set in motion by the rush of water or the pressure
of steam, so the auricular machinery of the human
head is set in operation by atmospheric undulations,
and one thing moves, and another trembles, and
another shakes, and the brain feels, and the mind
catches the child's cry, the mother's call, the eloquence of Cicero, or the tramp of battle!
The outside ear gathers in the undulations of the
air, and passes them along a little canal, defended
with its wax-coating an-d abattis of hlairs against
harmful intruders, till they reach a little drumhcad 
ANTHROPOS.
stretched across the opening, and fastened at its
edges  in  a strong  bony  rim.   The  drumhead,
trembling under the touch, shakes a little bone
behind it.  This bone, like a hammer, knocks upon
another of anvil-shape. A point of this anvil disturbs a little bony triangle, and this the liquid in a
little chamber behind it. The trembling of this
liquid sets up a series of vibrations in a nerve, and
the mind hears!
The most moving sounds that enter through the
ear are those which come fi-om the human voice.
The air passes into and out of the lungs through a
chamber curiously wrought with plates, and cords,
and valves, variations in the position of which change
the breathing into sound; it may be the warblings
of a Jenny Lind; it may be a cry of pain. By the
aid of the lip, tongue, and teeth, this sound is
divided up into articulate speech, into that mystery,
the spoken word.
What is such a word? Is it a material or spiritual
thing, or neither?  It is a thought on wings, a
thought riding upon the air, a thought embodied in
a sound. But whatever it is, or is not, it is sometimes a thing of immense power. A careless word
from the lips of a king once brought the powers of
England and France together in a bloody war. A
few words from the lips of the present Emperor of
the French, made the finances of Europe tremble,
and filled her sky with menacing clouds. A British
captain, commanding a man-of-war, when he saw
40 
THiE WONDERFUL-THE BODILY FRAME.  41
some of his men flinch under the broadside of the
foe, with fearful imprecations, wished them all in
perdition! After the battle, a Christian sailor said
respectfully:
"Captain, had your wish been fulfilled, where
should we all be now?"
The word went to the captain's heart, and he
became a successful preacher of the gospel.
"The ships," writes James in his epistle, "are
turned about with a very small helm, so the tongue
is a little member, and boasteth great things.  The
tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, it defileth the
whole body and setteth on fire the course of nature."
And what shall we say of the human hand? In
it, as has been well said, we have "the consummation of all perfection as an instrument." In its
structure, twenty-nine bones are so adjusted to one
another with muscles and delicately formed hinges,
as to allow a marvellous facility and variety of
action. The fingers when extended are all of
different length; but when closed upon the palm,
their extremities lie all in the same line. Among
its distinguishing features is the long, strong, and
variously moving thumb.  No small degree of the
value of the hand depends upon the facility with
which its tip may be brought into contact with the
tips of each of the fingers at will. The muscles
that play ill its motions are chiefly located at a
distance so as not to interfere with its raised actions,
and the surface is padded so as to keep its mechanism
4* 
ANTHROPOS.
from injury under the strong grasp of the'sailor
when he hangs his whole weight upon them, of the
woodman when he swings his axe, or of the mechanic
as he lifts the timber or the heavy stone.
But its strength is even surpassed in interest by
the delicacy and velocity of its movements. How
the fingers fly over the piano keys!
Now, it is the possession of such an instrument,
by such a creature as man, that places him in so
high lordship over the physical creation. If he
cannot, like Samson, tear open the jaws of a lion,
or disengage himself when once in the grasp of the
tiger, he can frame an instrument that shall send a
leaden ball to meet the monster, and slay him
hundreds of feet away.  By agency of the hand,
matter, vegetable and mineral, soft or hard, is made
to take on the forms decreed for it by mind; the
forest-tree is transmuted into beautifully wrought
and polished furniture; marble, from the quarry,
takes on the form of man; the canvass comes to
palpitate with the scenes of human life, and the
mnountain ores are moulded into swords, or pruninghooks, or into glittering coin.  And it is through
the fingers that human thoughts pass to the custody
of the deathless page.
The feet also are among the marvels of the bodily
frame.
"There is no part of the human body more wonderfully constructed than the human feet.  They have
the requisite strength to support the weight of the
42 
THE WONDERFUL-THE BODILY FRAME.  43
human body, and often an additional burden; flexibility, that they may be adapted to the inequalities
of the surface on which we tread, and elasticity to
assist in walking, running, and springing from the
ground. This advantage we possess from the number of the joints, the arch of the foot being composed of twenty-six bones. The bones have considerale play upon each other, and as each articulating surface is covered with cartilage, the essential
property of which is elasticity, jarring is thus prevented."
Thus, standing is made possible. A problem of
great complexity is solved, when a mass of the size
of the human body is enabled to stand firmly on so
small a basis.  A marble statue in human form can
be pushed over by a child.  How it is that man
stands so firmly, and with such ease, by what play
of the complex machinery of muscles and bones, is a
mystery not yet explained; but the effect seems to
be due to "a faculty of perpetually shifting the
centre of gravity, by a set of obscure, indeed, but of
quick-balancing actions, so as to keep the line of
direction within its prescribed limits."
There is still another wonder in the human frame
that has justly excited admiration. Many of its
activities are at the option of the will. Man walks
when he will, and talks, or is silent at his own
volition; but happily for him his organism is so
adjusted as to make many of the most important of
these movements independent of his wil. 
ANTHROPOS.
Sir Charles Bell, in his admirable book on the
"Human Hand," writes  "If the vital actions of a man's frame were
directed by his will, they are necessarily so minute
and complicated, that they would immediately fall
into confusion. Hle cannot draw a breath without
the exercise of sensibilities, as well ordered as those
of the eye and the ear.  A tracery of nervoussords
unites many organs in sympathy, of which, if one
filament were broken, pain and spasm and suffocation would ensue. The action of his heart and the
circulation of his blood, and all the vital functions
are governed through means, and by laws, which
are not dependent on his will, and to which the
powers of his mind are altogether inadequate. For
had they been under the influence o# his will, a
doubt, a moment's pause of'irresolution, a forgetfulness of a single action at its appointed time
would have terminated his existence."
An act of breathing brings into play a hundred
muscles, but man breathes as well when asleep as
when awake; and if hlie would, he cannot voluntarily
cease to breathe.
The adtjustmenit of the human frame to the planet
on which he lives is another marvel.   The power
of gravitation draws with a certain force upon the
bodily frame, a force too great for the frame enfeebled by disease to resist. HIad our planet been
twice its actual size, this power would have dragged
the strongest man to the surface of the earth.
44 
THE WONDERFUL-THE BODILY FRAME   45
Thus, too, the jaded light-ray coming with its
inconceivable velocity from stars so distant, that
thousands of years are spent in the voyage, on
reaching our planet, finds the eye of man constructed
to take it in and employ it for the purposes of
vision. Thus, the strength of the human muscles
and bones is nicely adjusted to the size of the orb
on which we dwell, and the little eye-ball fitted
to the general economy of the universe.
Such is a brief glance at the human body with its
vast assemblage of organs working on, day and night,
in tireless activity, and playing into each other's
hands, the very perfection of harmonious adjustment.
And this  china rose which a pebble might dash
to pieces, this harp of a thousand strings that dies
if one be gone, continues on through countless
changes of climate, weather, and temperature, for
so many years unbroken and unmarred! In the
arid desert, and amid Siberian snows, where his dog
will lie down and die from the fierce frigid or torrid
extremes, man travels on with impunity. Surely
we are wonderfully made!
Had not the Apostle abundant ground for his
stirring exhortation,
"I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God,
that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." 
ANTHROPOS.
VIII.
THE WONDERFUL-THE SOUL.
" For though the Giant Ages heave the hill,
And break the shore and evermore
Make and break, and work their will;
Though worlds on worlds, in myriad myriads roll,
Round us each with different powers,
And other forms of life than ours,
What know we greater than THE SOUL!"
IN turning from the body to the soul, we expect
to find a wonderful resident in so wonderful a tenement. In kings' houses we look to find those who
wear soft clothing. Palaces are not built for
paupers, not even by man. When then we find
the All-wise constructing an edifice of such elaborate
workmanship, to last but a few years, we may be
sure that it is for a tenant that God delighteth to
honour.
It is true that some have affected to doubt the
existence of an immaterial indweller in the physical
frame. Reason and science have been suborned to
testify that man is twin brother to the soulless brute.
Nor is tlkere a more humiliating fact in the history
of humah thought than that presented in the perverse efforts of the creature made a little lower than
46 
TIE WONDERFUL-THE SOUL.
the angels to reduce himself to the condition of a
full-grown monkey.
"For some philosophers of late, here,
Write, men have four legs by nature;
And that'tis custom makes them go
Erroneously upon but two."
It has been' sharply said, that the only evidence
of an origin and nature so mean, is the fact, that
some men have been found to believe it. If, indeed,
Lord MIonboddo, or any one of his followers will
claim for himself the dignity of a descent from
some ancient and respectable ape, we may not
quarrel with the claim, so far as he himself is concernied; but he must not drag the human race down
to that level of degradation.
If man knows anything, he knows in his own selfconsciousness, that he has an immaterial soul. And,
if his consciousness deceives him here, it loses all
claim to credence in any of its dictates.
"This frame compacted with transcendent skill
Of moving joints obedient to my will,
Nursed from the fruitful globe like yonder tree,
Waxes and wastes-I call it minie, not me.
New matter still the mouldering mass sustains;
The mansion changed, the tenant still remains;
'And from the fleeting stream repaired by food,
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood."
The mind or soul is the self. " I turn my attention on my being, and find that I have organs, and
that I have thoughts; my body is the complement
47
0 
ANTHROPOS.
of my organs. Am I then my body, or any part
of my body?  This cannot be.  The matter of my
body is in a perpetual process of renewal. I do not
pass away. I am not renewed."
"Neither am I identical with my thoughts. They
are manifold. I one and the same. Each moment
I am  aware of the existence or'change of my
thoughts; this change is sometimes produced by me,
sometimes by something different from me; but I
always can distinguish myself from them."
It was in the bestowal of a mind, that the Creator
stamped his own image upon our nature. A beautiful proof of this resemblance to God is seen in the
concord existing between our thoughts and those of
God.   Cicero has said, in effect, perhaps in "The
Tusculan Questions," "that he who can appreciate
and approve of the works of God, therein shows that
his nature is like that of God." Thus, he who can
peruse and comprehend "Paradise Lost," demonstrates that he is a Milton, though perhaps, in many
respects, of a far humbler  grade.  It does not
indeed follow, that a mirror that can perfectly reflect
a picture, is of the same nature as the painter of
the picture. But when this mirror is self-conscious,
and taking in all the elements of a painting; sees in
it all the painter saw, and appreciates it as thoroughly, he evinces therein the possession of a nature
like that of the artist.  The ox can see a picture,
but cannot appreciate it.
So, when man looks at a flower, comprehending
48 
THE WONDERFUL-THE SOUTL.
its parts, approves the plan of its structure, and
says to himself: " Had I the power to make such a
flower, and wished to reachl the ends manifestly
aimed at in its formation, I would have adopted just
those means of attaining those results," he shows in
his perceptions and judgments, that his mind acts
just as does the mind that made that flower.
The mind, at birth, may be likened to a watch
that has " run down."  It is quiescent, and yet
with an array of powers that only need the turn of
the winding key to set all in motion.
It now begins to perceive, that is, to go out of its
material enclosure, and learn of the existence and
character of the outer world. Gradually it lays
in large stores of knowledge. The bee, too, is
a littre watch, with embosomed powers, that at
maturity, sends it forth upon a certain round of
works. What it does, it does well; but we cannot
suppose it to know what it is doing, and all its life,
it can do no more than it does the first day or week.
But man advances in knowledge and skill, and from
the wigwam he comes to construct a Coliseum or
Cathedral; from the clumsy toy he comes to make
a telescope, a steamship, a printing-press.
The bee is perfectly satisfied with  the simple
monotonous round of activities assigned it in the
economy of nature.  It asks not how the ants live,
nor what the stars are. But man is not, and cannot
be satisfied with merely knowing that certain things
are. Ile is impelled, by a resistless inquisitiveness
5
49 
ANTIIROPOS.
of spirit, to penetrate and comprehend the causes
and modes of their existence.  If we show a little
child, that by burning a bit of paper in a tumbler,
and then suddenly inverting the tumbler and plunging it in that position into a basin of water, the
liquid will rise and partially fill the glass, he will
instantly ask, " Oh, what makes it?"
Man finds out that the planets move in elliptical
orbits, that certain mysterious forces impel them in
their courses. Cost what it may, he will penetrate
to the heart of burning Africa, and to the Arctic
pole. There is always within him a "greedy grasping at the distant," and the hidden.   lie studies
plants and animals, learns their habits, and classifies
them into orders and families. Armed with certain
connate principles or powers of analysis, arrangement, combination and generalization, he produces
the whole cyclopaedia of the sciences.
Ile possesses also a strange power of self-modification, and, as it were, of reconstruction.  He is
crowned by nature with a potent lordship over himself. The tiger must remain ferocious, and the
lamb can never make itself other than unresistingly
tame and gentle. Man, too, is evidently born with
tendencies to certain courses of action, with a certain disposition imbedded in his nature. But it
does not follow, that his life will prove a mere
development and cultivation of these connate inclinations.  If he find himself the subject of strong
animal passions, hle is not thereby necessitated to
50 
THE WONDERFUL-THE SOUL.
become a mere human brute. There may dwell
within him a native tendency to miserly penuriousness; and in spite of this he may rise to the dignity
of large-hearted liberality. Though, by nature
irascible and petulant, he may become meek and
kind and forbearing.
He soon becomes aware of a principle within him
that approves or disapproves of certain courses of
action with himself and others, a principle that
impels him to these and dissuades from those, a
power that commends or condemns him in what lihe
thinks or does.  Certain actions are followed by a
glow of pleasure, as if the wings of a bright angel
were waving over him, or by a horror of soul, as if
dark demons were mocking at and tormenting
him.
Scenes equivalent to that fearful one the poet has
pictured in Dunsinane have often been realized in
human experience-when in the middle of the night
Lady Macbeth walks the room, wringing her hands,
as if washing them, and exclaiming:
"Yet, here's a spot!  Out, I say!  One, two!
Why, then,'tis time to do it! Fye, my lord! a
soldier, and afraid! Yet, who would have thought
the old man had so much blood in him?
"i Here's the smell of blood still! All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand!
Oh! oh! oh!"
But one of the most impressive facts of the mind,
is the memory.
51 
Ace TII[RO)P(S.
At a very early period, the mind becomes and
continues to be a reservoir of ideas, of impressions.
Countless items of experie,tice pass into and remain
in its recesses. It is highly probable that the mind
never parts with an item of knowledge.  Thoughts,
perceptions,  imaginati;.ons, volitions,  emotions,  all
those unnumbered items that make  up the active
life of the soul, enter and remain in the soul a year,
five years, for ever!  Some of these contents may
be summoned back into the consciousness by the
mandate of the will, more -of them rise to view
through the principle of association, but multitudes
disappear and may not be recalled for a lifetime.
Yet they are there!
Much light is thrown upon the subject by such
facts, as the familiar one of the patient in Paris,
who, in a fever-delirium, poured forth a torrent of
articulate utterances from his lips, utterly unintelligible to his attendants. At length, a person entered
who at once perceived that the patient was speaking
a patois of one of the remoter provinces of the
realm. When the fever passed off, the sufferer
could neither speak nor understand the language he
so fluently uttered in his ravings, showing that in
the depths of the soul one may carry about with
him for years the knowledge of a whole language, a
knowledge beyond  the reach  of  all his present'
powers to recall!
Thus, it would seem, man is for ever photographing himself upon himself.  He thinks, he feels, he
52 
TIlE WONDERFUL-TIHE SOUL.
loves, he hates, he speaks, he acts, he weeps, he is
merry, and all these acts and experiences engrave
themselves in everlasting record upon his deathless
soul.
Indeed we are wonderfully made!
53
,5Q
1. 
ANTIIROPOS.
IX.
THE WONDERFUL-THE BODY AND SOUL.
" Ilow poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
hlow complicate, how wonderful is man!
From different natures marvellously mixt!"
WE have, by no means, fathomed the depths of
the wonderful in man, till we have encountered the
marvels involved in the union between the body and
the mind.
The fact of such a union in so circumscribed a
system is full of interest. In the great universe,
the "macrocosm," we are not surprised at the coexistence of mind and matter, for the line of demarcation is so badly drawn-God, the great spirit
yonder on his throne, and matter his footstool and
slave. But in this "microcosm," this little universe,
they are commingled in a mystery of relationships
whose depths no  human  sounding-line has ever
falthomed!
In the characteristics in which these elements,
matter and spirit, severally reveal themselves, they
are to each other as perfect opposites.  Heat and
cold, sound and silence, fire and water, light and
darkness, life and death, are not more unlike, and
54 
THE WONDERFUL-THE BODY AND SOUL.  55
mutually opposed. And it is an amazing triumph
of divine power and skill, that in human nature they
are made to embrace each other and work in harmonious action for the glory of the Creator.
That "prince of philosophers," Sir Wm. Ia,milton, quoting words ascribed to Pascal, says, "Man is
to himself the mightiest prodigy of nature. For he
is unable to conceive what body is, still less what is
mind; and least of all, how there can be a body
and a mind. This is the climax of his difficulties;
yet this is his peculiar nature."
But without this union, man is not man. Should
a human body be created without a soul, it would
not be a man. Were a soul created without a body,
this were not a man.   Thus, a material body is to
the human soul a necessary point of departure from
non-existence into being.  Once set forth a living
self-conscious thing, it plumes its wings for a flight
more daring and prolonged than the eagle's; but it
cannot begin to fly without a resting-place in a material body at the outset. An essential condition
of its existence at all as a human soul, is a converse
for a longer or shorter period with flesh and blood,
and bones!
A second consideration of intense interest is the
eternity of this marriage relation between matter
and spirit in man. At death there is a temporary
divorce of body and soul, but the resurrection
re-unites them in a union never to be dissolved.
The mysteries of the separate condition of the 
ANTH1ROPOS.
body while bereft of the soul, the dissolution and
dispersion of its particles, the distance they travel,
the various alliances they form with other organisms,
animate and inanimate, their careful preservation,
and their instant restoration at the sound of the
resurrection trump and reconstruction upon a new
and more glorious model, and the remarriage of
body and soul to dwell together for ever, are points
upon which devout meditation may well expend its
time and strength.  It would seem as if the soul
had set its inviolable seal upon a given portion of
mlatter'that once palpitated with its life, and made
them for ever its own.
Upon such points as these we are not careful to
answer the suggestions of philosophy. In many
things we hlumbly look up to it, but in matters of
revelation such as these, we look far down upon it.
Its coffers contain only the guesses of human reason,
ours divine revealings. Our faith, so far as believers
are concerned, is expressed in these well-weighed and
time-honoured words: " The souls of believers are,
at their death, made perfect in holiness, and do
immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being
still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the
resurrection." At the resurrection, " in a moment,
in the twinkling of an eye, the dead shall be raised,"
"the corruptible" having "put on incorruption,"
the "mortal," "immortality."
But the marvel, which has most severely taxed
the powers of thinkin,g minds ever since philosophy
56 
THE WONDERFUL-1TIE BODY AND SOUL.   57
lighted her lamp in a dim antiquity, is the manifest
communion of soul andl body in the various phenomena of mental and physical life. The view
taken of this matter has given a distinctive character
to the various philosophies which have, for ages,
exercised the acumen of the profoundest minds.
Consciousness, our court of final appeal in such
matters, our "intellectual bible," makes no more
imperative demand upon our faith than that in perception, volition, and action, the mind and body
somehow come together; that there is a reciprocal
action and re-action of the one upon the other, that
in perception, matter is at once the occasion and
object of consciousness; that in volition,determining
bodily action, mind actually moves matter.
Yet, here lies the difficulty. HIow can substances
so heterogeneous as the material and immaterial,
the extended and unextended, the corporeal and
incorporeal come into contact, so to speak, at least
into such co-operation as is reported to us in consciousness?
Upon the assumed impossibility of such communion, the materialistic atheist plants himself, and
there affects to defy the armies of the living God.
Upon the same ground, Plato denied that God
could either create or directly control the material
world. Hence, he interposed a "soul of the world,"
a substance intermediate between God and matter and
a kind of mediator between them.
The same difficulty, forbidding any immediate
-ft 
ANTHROPOS.
knowledge of matter, or efficient contact between
them, has given birth to all the curious theories
which interpose between the perceiving mind and
the perceived external world, some substitutionary
object, material or immaterial, "images more or less
shadowy coming from the object to the mind, or
formed by the mind itself, and of itself, in correspondence with the external, real object."
To elucidate this mystery, Des Cartes invented
or adopted, and Malebranche developed the noted
theory of "occasional causes," which holds, that
when the material object is presented, God himself
works the result that we call perception. When
the mind wills to lift the arm, God, and not the
mind, works the muscular result.
Leibnitz would solve the mystery by the theory,
that the mental and material worlds are like two
separate clocks; the one furnished with the timekeeping, and the other with the striking apparatus;
and that such is the harmony divinely pre-established
between them, that when the hands of the one point
to the given number, the bell of the other strikes
off the hour! When the will would move the foot,
the foot, of necessity, utterly disconnected with the
mind, moves as desired, in virtue of this harmony
pre-established between them!
Thus, in the mysteries of this adjustment of mind
to matter, and matter to mind, in the human system,
God has baffled the skill of the shrewdest, keenest,
mightiest minds he ever made! Plato, Des Cartes,
58 
TIIE WONDERFUL-TTI-E BODY AND SOUL.  59
Malebranche, Leibnitz, what names in the catalogue
of human thinkers out-mark these?  And yet, so
wonderful isthis mystery, that they stand gazing at
it almost like rude savages at an eclipse! The
"soul of the world," "occasional causes," "preestablished harmony," splendid fictions of splendid
Hminds, all leave the mystery still as dark and profound as they find it!
Indeed, we are wonderfully made!
I
i 
ANTIIROPOS.
X.
THE FEARFUL-MORTALITY.
"Sure'tis a serious thing to die, my soul!
What a strange moment mniust it be,when near
Thy journey's end,thou hast the gulf in view!
That mortal gulf by mortal ne'er repassed,
To tell what's doing on the other side!
Nature runs back and shudders at the sight,
And every life-string bleeds at thought of parting!"
WE are "fearfutilly," as well as "wonderfully"
made.  As already intimated, some of the elements
of our nature specified above, are, or may be as full
of the formidable as they are of the admirable.
Among these is the memory.
"The memory of the eternal yesterdclay
Which ever waning, ever still returns."
This rolling up to the surface of the consciousness of the contents stored up in the mind, is destined to become in many an everlasting torment.
There is profound suggestiveness in the incident
recorded of the great philosopher, who, when accosted in the streets by some professor of mnemotcchny, with the offer for a certain sumi to instruct
him in his art, replied:
60 
THE FEARFUL-MORTALITY.
" I will give you twice that sum to teach me to
forget!"
"Were it not better to forget
Than but remember and regret?"
Yes, the impossibility of forgetting, the imperative
necessity of remembering,will prove to many a terrible endowment.
But the most obvious terror in the constitution
of our nature,- is our mortality.
"Death, death," iterated and re-iterated a dying
apostate, " is a bitter herb!"
The marriage tie between the soul and body is
for eternity, and so intimate is their union, and
such the nature of their inter-dependence, that the
hour of their divorce for a time, is a brief, but real
reign of terror-of the king of terrors.
There is the pain of separation, the depth and
acuteness of which, wvhatever may be the speculations and inferences of physicians, or the experience
of those who sometimes sink to the gates of death
and revive, none but those who have actually died
can know.
Then, there is the mystery of it. Man may go
with secure confidence about his own house in midnight darkness; but set him down in such darkness
in a house of which he knows nothing, and his
movements will be extremely cautious. Man shrinks
from a plunge into darkness.
But death passes man into a state to him utterly
unknown. Even the body seems to shrink back
6
61 
ANTHROPOS.
appalled from the process and state of dissolution
which is to it so like annihilation. And the soul,
that as yet has known nothing of unembodied existence, that at the very birth of self-consciousness,
found a material arm to lean upon, and ever since,
material organs through which to express its life
and exercise its powers, shudders to set out alone
upon that untried way.
And that human being, body and soul, that at
birth found itself in a mother's arms, that during
childhood and youth never lacked a brother, sister,
or playmate, to share its joys or sorrows, that in
maturer life could always, with one loud call, summon kind hearts and hands to its aid, must now
leave them all, say farewell to earth and sky, and
friends and home, and go forth all alone upon a
path he never trod, into a world to him entirely
new, and without the possibility of return!
And withal, there are the dread solemnities that
overhang this closing up of an earthly career, this
sealing up of all earthly accounts with the self and
the Creator!
Thus, an inexorable law demands that we shall
die, and we are so made that we can die, and therefore, we are "fearfully" made.
62 
TIlE FEARFUL-IMMORTALITY.
XI.
THE FEARFUIL-IMMORTALITY.
-"0, listen, man!
A voice within us speaks that startling word
Man, thou shalt never die!"
WhIATEVER may be said or thought of our mortality, as a fearful element in our nature, it is as
nothing to our immortality! That attribute, that
constitutes man an imperishable being, is not more
wonderful than it is fearful.
True, it has long been the proud claim of man
that, in this respect, he ranks high above the soulless brutes that perish.
Poets ring their harmonious changes upon this
theme, and think, without all misgiving, that they
are crowning man with a chaplet of felicity.
" Celestial voices
Hymn it to our souls; according harps,
By angel fingers touched, when the mild stars
Of morning sang together, sound forth still
The song of our great immortality."
Of nothing did Socrates more ardently long to be
assured than man's immortality.   Of this, Plato
strove long and hard to construct a rational demon
63 
AN    ROPOI'S.
stration. The noble Cicero would have given his
right eye for the removal of all doubt upon this
point, and in his discussions he puts this sublime
paradox into the mouth of one of his characters:
"I had rather be wrong with Plato in affirming,
than right with Demnocitus in denying this doctrine!"
But with all this, is it not, in a merely rational
point of view, a fearful attribute-this of immortality?  To be compelled to live for ever; to be
doomed to immortality, death, cessation of existence,
an everlasting impossibility!
That man is immortal none can rationally doubt,
and revelation makes absolutely certain.
In all ages and nations, the soul, of its own
instincts, looks to conscious existence beyond the
grave, and all theologies have busied themselves
with schemes of a future life.  The poet has clothed
these anticipations in his own fine phraseology:
"It must be so, Plato, aou reasonest well,
Else why this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality."
"The soul secure in its own existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger and defies its point."
It is certainly, at least powerfully suggestive of
this truth, that the mind cannot conceive of its owi
annihilation without a manifest self-contradiction.
Every conception of the mind is of necessity accompanied with the conception also of the existence of
the conceiving subject.  In the conception of a star,
there is contained, with the idea, or image of the
64 
THE FEARFUL-IMMORTALITY.
star, the consciousness of the existence and activity
of the conceiving mind. Each conception of the
self, contains a double self, the self as the object
conceived, and the self as the conceiving subject.
Now, with the effort to conceive of the self as annihilated, as non-existent, there of necessity clings to
the mind all the way through, the conception of the
self, as yet existing and acting, that is of the continued existence of the object it essays to conceive
of as non-existent!
One  may  entertain the proposition-" I shall
become non-existent, I may be annihilated." But
in the Result of the effort to conceive of one's own
non-existence, he finds, from the necessity of the
case, himself yet existing and conceiving! In other
words, the very constitution of our nature makes a
conception even of one's own non-existence a palpable self-contradiction and absurdity.
We do not say that this demonstrates our immortality; for the principle applies to the past as well
as to the future; but we cannot but think that there
is profound significance in the fact, that when once
launched into rational existence, we have glided
beyond the possibility of a rational conception of
our own non-existence.
But this question is for ever set at rest in the
word of God. All its great doctrines assume man's
immortality, and its chief exhortations charge him
to prepare for it.
Come then, what may, as the ages roll on, what     6( *
65
-i 
.INTIIltOPOS
ever s  rms may beat, conflagrations onsume, catas trophes precipitate terrestrial or celestial things to
ruin, to you and me, though jaded and foot-sore,
distressed or tormented, cessation of conscious exist ence is an impossibility!
Were there some Lethe whither the soul might
hasten in the hour of woe, and bathe itself into
eternal unconsciousness, could we but conceal in the
folds of the soul's robe some annihilating dagger, or
poison, wherewith to end existence in the hour of
need, we might with more courage face the future.
But this may not be!
I am immortal!  I cannot help being iiQortal!
Thou bright sun, %hen thou hast dismissed thy last
ray, I shall live to see thy ashes gathered to their
urn and placed away in the recesses of eternal darkness!
Ye stars, though an existence of millions of millions of years be allotted to you, ere I have passed
the infancy of my existence, I shall see you fall
and die!
And  "the hills rock-ribbed and ancient as the
sun;" the earth, with all its temples, palaces, aan(l
towers, while yet in the dewy morning of my early
youth, I shall see them all depart, and like the
baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind.
Until then, from sonime source or other, man can
obtain assurance that the future state is to be, if not
painless, at least, tolerable; until some clear and
reliable information can be obtained as to the con
66 
THLE FEAftFUL -1-MIORTALITY.
dition of mail during that endless future, it were
wiser that he seekl to avoid rather than court it.
It is, indeed, often said, that nothing is so dreadful to the mind as the prospect or possibility of
annihilation.  And no little use is made of this
assumption by certain errorists, who teach with a
zeal worthy of a good cause the doctrine that the
wicked are annilhilated at death.
But what is the truth? Mlany times have we
heard the wish uttered with bitter emphasis, "I
would to God I had never been born!"  From the
lips of even the young and the gay, we have heard
the wish for annihilation.
And +who is not familiar with the passionate,
terrible exclamations of the man of Uz in the day
of his darkness and woe?
"Let the day perish wherein I was born,  and
the night in which it was said, here is a man child
conceived. Let darkness and the shadow of death
stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; t' the blackness
of tlie day terrify it.  As for th&   fight, let darkness seize upon it; let the star. of the twil;glt
thereof be dark; neither let it see the dawiii gi f
the day: because it shut not up the doors of my
mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes."
Anid hle that would not prefer annihilation to
endless pain and remorse, is a mnadman!   Who
would not choose a dreamless sleep before a waking
agony?
And, unless we are greatly mistaken, it is vastly
67
4 
ANTlI!ROPOS.
more rational to prefer non-existence to the inexorableQ necessity of being dragged through an eternity
in which anything is possible and everything uncertain.
"To die-to sleepNo more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to-'tis ai consummation
Devoutly to be wished!  To die-to sleepTo sleep! Perchance to dream! Aye, there's the rub!
For, in that sleep of death wvhat dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause."
68 
THE FEARFUL-PAIN.
A
XII.
THE FEARFUL-PAIN.
ALL that is fearful in our nature is tremendously
enhanced by our susceptibility to pain.
Among the "Jacula Prudentium" of old father
Herbert, is this: "W Ae cry when we are born, and
every succeeding day shows whly."
For we hourly grow in our capacity to suffer.
Man is born a sensitive plant that increases in sensitiveness while life remains.   The mana  can suffer
more in an hour than the iifant ill a week.   And
when the end comes, we often see mani tossed on the
billows of a sea of agonoy, anid on these billows he
glides firom  our view.  Aside from revelation, it
looks as if the future might be a mere continuance
of this life, that is, an everlasting growth of our
susceptibility to suffer, coupled with, at the very
least, a liability every now and then to quiver with
anguish in every nerve.
Whether we look at the body, or the mind, we
cannot hide it from ourselves, that every faculty
and every organ may become an avenue of pain.
The nerves of sensation, if now they are soothed
by the balmy breath of,?ring, may shrink before
69 
ANTHROPOS.
w
the freezing blast of Winter.  The eye, if now it
luxuriates in the beauties of the charming landscape,
and gazes with delight upon the faces that we love,
may also be called to look upon those same faces
distorted with agony, or pale in death. Into-the
ear music may roll her rich and melting harmonies,
and the same ear may be compelled to hear the
lamentations of sorrow and the wailings of woe.
But what are all possible bodily distresses to
those of which the mind is capable? "A wounded
spirit who can bear?"
There are woes that course through the soul like
streams of burning lava!  There  are frames of
mind to which the brightness of a May morning is
odious-the singing of birds grating torture, the
merry laugh like the chattering of fiends!
In the afternoon of the 15th of January, 1853,
six houses,in process of erection in New York city,
suddenly fell, burying several men beneath their
ruins. Great was the excitement in that city for a
time, but it soon gave way to the din of business,
and passed. from the general mind. But one day,
while surviving workmen were busy restoring the
wreck, a female figure, in black, was seen hovering,
like a phantom, about the spot. Hier eyes were
wild, and her manners strange and startling.
"Who  is that?" whispered one workman to another.  "That woman," the other answered, "is
the widow of one of the men killed here the other
day, and she is a maniac!"
0
70 
THE FEARFUL-PAIN.
Now, tell us you who have balances in which to
weigh human agony, how dreadful and many were
the convulsive throes, which shook down the walls
of that mind, and buried that woman's reason in
ruins heavier far than those that crushed the life
out of her husband's frame!
What a thrill went through our land years ago at
the tidings wafted to our ears, from across the sea,
of that widow's son, now a "thin, loose-jointed boy,"
exhuming the rocks from the quarry, now enlightening the world upon the fossiliferous treasures of the
"old red sandstone," and now gathering the "testimony of the rocks" upon the truth, that all
knowledge is a grand duet, revelation playing the
celestial, and nature the terrestrial part; and now,
his manly frame quivering in agony, till in delirium
from an overwrought brain, with his own hand
quenching the light of his own life!
Oh, we are fearfully made!
And what a glare of illustration do religious doctrine and religious experience fling upon our capacity to suffer!  For, if man, as a religious being, is
capable of infinite happiness, as such, he is also
capable of infinite misery.
Can any one tell how much distress has been
endured by men in view of their condition as
sinners yet under condemnation?
The celebrated Dr. John Owen, we are told, when
arrested by the Spirit of God, in the midst of his
academic honours, with talents that made him the
71 
0
ANTIIROPOS.
pride of his university, " wa,s so broken down, that
for three months he could hardly speak a word to
any one, and for five years the anguish of his mind
embittered his life."
In the journal of the Rev. David Brainard, we
read such records as this:
"One night, I remember in particular, I had
opened to me such a view of my sin, that I feared
the ground would cleave asunder under my feet and
become my grave, and send my soul quick into hell
before I could get home. I scarcely dared to sleep,
for I thought it would be a wonder if I should be
out of hell in the morning."
Some years ago, entering a house, I met a lady
just going out on an errand of social enjoyment.
After a brief conversation about her soul, I left her,
and in her hands a " Baxter's Call."
The next evening, perhaps it was, a ring at my
door-bell brought me a message from that lady,
begging me to visit her. On entering her room, I
found her-reclining upon a sofa, in such an agony,
as I have rarely seen in a human being. She filled
the room and the house with her cries of distress.
She was sure that her soul was for ever lost.  "' Oh,"
shle cried, "tell me of Christ.  Tell me how I may be
savTed!  Pray for my poor soul!"  For days and
nights she continued in a frame of mind bordering
on despair, and we all feared that the reason would
give way under the terrible pressure, and her mind
b)e plunged into ruins!
72 
TIIE FEARFUL-PAIN.
Sitting once by an aged and godly man, I listened
while he recited the story of his conversion to God.
IJe said:
"When a young man, I was exceedingly profane
and wicked. I married, however, a young woman
of known, and high-toned piety. On the evening
of the first day after we entered our little home, as
the twilight was gathering, my wife, without saying
a word, set out a little stand by my side with a
Bible upon it, and then took a seat on the opposite
side of the hearth.  I, of course, saw at a glance,
what this meant. And there was such a look of
confident expectation upon her face, that under a
kind of fascination I opened the sacred book, read
a chapter, and'kneeling down offered a prayer.
While thus engaged, such a feeling of horror came
over me at the thought of what I, a wretched blasphemer, was doing, as no one ever suffered. I said
nothing of this to her, but inwardly avowed that
this should be the last time I would be caught in
such a service!
The night passed in awful mental distress, and
the following day brought no alleviation. In the
providence of God, the next evening caught me
entrapped in precisely the same way!  And when
I saw my pious young wife sitting before me and
calmly waiting, I had not the power to refuse.
Yielding, once, made it impossible to refuse now. I
repeated the service, and an increasing horror darkened my soul. It continued through the night, and
73 
ANTIIROPOS.
so increased on the following day that I resolved on
suicide! I knew there was a, rope hanging from
the limb of an apple tree in the orchard, and as the
evening drew on, and the moment for worship
approached, I started from our back door for the
orchard!  As I went, my  anguish increased.  I
lost, to some extent, the command of my reason. I
missed the tree and the rope, and found myself
running in the woods.  I ran until I fell to the
earth and rolled on the ground in agony!  While I
lay there, it seemed to me for a time, that I was in
hell! Suddenly, however, no doubt, in answer to
the prayers of others, the light broke; I saw my
Saviour in all his beauty and forgiving love, and
rose from the ground the happiest sinner that was
ever saved; and from that hour to this, I have
never known a doubt!"
As the old man told this story with his two hands
folded over the top of his staff, his tears rained down
upon the floor, and I felt that I was near the gate
of heaven.
But sometimes a settled despair gathers over the
soul in view of its condition as immortal, and yet
for ever lost, the Holy Spirit for ever grieved, the
harvest for ever past, leaving it to curse the day of
birth, and to wish for annihilation! 
In such a case, one sees and feels that he is in
the "iron cage."
"So, the interpreter had him into a very dark
room, where there sat a man in an iron cage.  Now,
74 
THE FEARFUL-PAIN.
the man to look upon seemed very sad. He sat
with his eyes looking down on the ground, and his
hands folded together. Then, said Christian to the
man,
"What art thou?"
" I am a man of despair, and am shut up in it, as
in this iron cage. I cannot get out. Oh, now I
cannot! I have crucified the Lord afresh, and done
despite unto the Spirit of grace!"
" But canst thou not now repent and turn?"
"God  hath denied me  repentance.   Ilis word
gives me no encouragement to believe.  Yea, himself hath shut me up in this iron cage.  Oh, eternity, eternity! how shall I grapple with the ills I
must meet with in eternity?"
That this is no fancy sketch, many ministers of
the gospel can testify from their own observation,
and the word of God makes certain.
The door may be shut on the soul for ever even
in this life.  The voice may go forth of a soul, " Let
him alone; he is joined to his idols;" a voice heard
by the ministering angels, and by all the means of
grace.
"For, if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth
no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking for of judgmenit and fiery indignation,that shall
devour the adversaries."
For long, this exclusion from the kingdom of
heaven may be unknown and unsuspected by the
75 
ANTIIROPOS.
doomed one. In the meantime, the soul may be as
merry as the day is long, as happy as if the name
were seen written in the Lamb's book of life. But
the conviction of the awful truth may flash upon the
mind at any moment. It may come in the midst
of life. It may not come until the hour of death;
but wiven it comes the spectator may see and know
what anguish is!
A pastor informed me of the following, that came
under his observation: A young man was arrested
by the death-summons in the midst of a life of
profligacy. As the last hour drew near, he was
seized with an awful horror about the future. Ile
would one while pour out oaths and imprecations,
then, fixing his eye upon his mother, he would
spring from his bed, and throwing his arms around
her neck, beg her to save him! But whenever she
proposed to send for a clergyman, he would again
break out and rave in blasphemies.
Such torments may men experience in view of
their sins and the dreaded penalties.
But even yet, the whole story is not told! Beneath all these depths there lie other deeps still
opening wide and threatening to devour-dense
darkness, to which all this is but the mere penumbra!
There are yet to be considered, the horrors of the
" second death," the death that lives for ever!
It is very remarkable, that nearly all the theologies constructed by man contain a future endless
punishment.  The enlightened heathenisms of an
76
11 
TIIE FEARFUL-PAIN.
tiquity embraced not only an Elysium, but a Tartarus; a dismal prison surrounded by a triple wall
of brass, whose entrance was hidden by a cloud
three times more gloomy than the darkest night.
Around this wall rolled the fiery river Phlegethon.
Its gates of adamant even the gods could not
open!
Such is the hell invented by men for themselves!
And the words of Jesus say, "These shall go away
into everlastingf punishment."  It is "the blackness
of darkness for ever."  There the "worm  diethi
not, and the fire is not quenched."
If now, men can suffer as they do this side the
grave, what beyond?
Surely, we are fearfully made! All made capable
of drinking to the dregs all this varied and concentrated bitterness!
How, then, is it that men can live as we see them
living? That the birds spend their days so joyously,
leaping from branch to branch, singing their songs,
is no marvel; for, though they, too, are wonderfully, they are not fearfully made.   But amazement
may well possess us when we see human beings
living as thoughtlessly as they, singing and dancing,
filling the air with their sounds of mirth and revelry,
uttering the high oath and the terrible blasphemy!
Do they not know that they are human beings;
that as such, they are susceptible to every form of
anguish that ever comes to man? Within the bosom
of every unpardoned soul there slumbers a magazine
7*
77 
ANTHROPOS.
of anguish which any day a word of God may
explode!
Well may every human being often and deeply
meditate upon the fearful elements embedded in his
nature!
78 
MAN AND THE SON OF GOD.
XIII.
MAN AND THE SON OF GOD.
WE have been meditating upon the wonders
embosomed in the nature of which we find ourselves
partakers.
Another, second to none, for depth of interest
and wide-reaching consequences, is found in the
alliance of which this nature has been proved capable by the event, with the divine nature.
From all eternity, "before the mountains were
brought forth," God existed in himself, by himself,
himself the whole universe of being, the uncaused
cause of all, uncreated, self-existent.
A chief characteristic of this Divine One is his
unity. " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one
Lord." The marks of this unity are seen in the
all-prevailing harmonies of the created universe,
certifying it as the offspring of one mind.
But this unity of God is not of such a character
as to exclude all diversity. Man also is a unity in
variety, a material nature, and a spiritual nature
blended in the harmony of a single person. And
the boundless affluence of being in the divine nature
embosoms a tri-personality. In the formula of bap
79 
ANTIIROPOS
tism the names of the three persons appear, and in
the apostolic benediction, we bless in the name of
"the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost."
Now, among the decrees on the eternal page, was
one fore-ordaining a marvellous and everlasting
union, between the loftiest nature in the universe,
and the lowest of known created intelligences,
between the divine nature in the person of the
eternal Son of God and human nature.
The execution of this decree was celebrated above
eighteen hundred years ago, when the angels hovering over Bethlehem, shook floods of radiance from
their wings and filled the air with their congratulatory songs.
Our world is full of wonders, but the incarnation
far outrivals them all.  In the little acorn in our
hand, we hold not only the cradled oak, but the
pregnant germ  of countless generations of oakforests! Bound up in that little bundle are powers
which, if the proper conditions be furnished, will
produce a tree; that tree will, in the course of its
life, give birth to myriads of like acorns, each of
which repeat the process, and so on, to the end of
time. No thoughtful mind but is staggered at the
mysteries wrapped up in that one little seed.
But on that little bundle of life wrapped in swadling clothes in the Bethlehem manger, angels gaze
with amazement, and in its presence, man may well
stand with unsandalled feet, and with bowed head,
80 
MAN AND TIIHE SON OF GOD.
exclaim: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
It is high, I cannot attain unto it."
In studying this mystery, we are to bear in mind,
that in the incarnation, it was a nature, not a person,
that was assumed into union with the Son of God.
The alliance was formled, not between a divine
person and a human person previously existing, else,
as Dr. Shedd remarks in his admirable discussion
of this subject in his " Iistory of Christian Doctrine," the result would have been a twofold-self, or
rather, two several selves, while in truth, Jesus
Christ, the God-Man, was but a single personal self,
embosoming two natures; one human, one divine.
The union was effected by the voluntary assumption on the part of the eternal Son of God into
alliance with himself of a human nature in the
earliest stages of its existence, before it had become
an individual person. The human nature of Christ
never knew aught of existence separate from him.
It was interwoven with himself and constituted into
a being in connection with him, moulded  by his
power, shaped by his will, and conformed to the
great eternal design.
"Forasmuch as the children are partakers of
flesh and blood," a human nature, "he also himself,
likewise," already a person, "took part of the same."
(Heb. ii. 14.) "lIe took not on' him," took not
hold of "the nature of angels; but took on him the
seed of Abraham." It was the seed, the nature in
its original elements, that he, by his power, blended
81
4k, 
ANTHROPOS.
with his own nature in one divine-human, humandivine personality.
In this procedure, of course, the Son of God acts
in pure sovereignty, as he forms a union not with
an individual human person with a will of its own,
but with an elementary human nature not yet
become a person.
The immediate result of this assumption is the
person thereby constituted. In this strangely constituted person, there exists two complete unmutilated natures, a perfect human nature, and a perfect
divine nature, as in an ordinary human person we
find an animal nature blended with a mental nature.
In this union, neither nature parts with any attribute properly belonging to it, in itself considered.
"The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord
Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God
became man, by taking to himself a true body and
a reasonable soul."  "The Word was made flesh."
In this new person the basis and all-controlling
element is the second person of the blessed trinity.
This predominant nature is not merely like, but
actually is God.
Adam was like God.   He was made in his image.
He was like him in being perfectly holy; like him
in his moral perceptions. Two chords of a musical
instrument were0never attuned to harmony so complete as that with which the moral nature of man
originally responded to that of his Creator.
He was  like him  in dominion over the lower
82 
MAN AND TIlE SON OF GOD.
creation.  God  divided  terrestrial creatures into
two classes; the lordly and the subject races.   In
one he placed man, and beneath him the fish of the
sea, and the fowl of the air, and every living thing
that moveth upon the earth. All these man might
catch and kill, buy and sell, and yoke to his uses.
He was like God in his immortality, and from
the moment of his creation, his duration runs parallel with that of God.
Neither is the Redeemer a mere human being,
inhabited as it were by a divine power.
Such were the Prophets and Apostles as inspired
men.   "The Spirit of God spake by me," wrote
David(l, "his word was in my tongue."   " Holy men
of Gcd spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
The Spirit of God dwells in all believers. "K now
ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the
Spirit of God dwelleth in you."
Men of genius are in an important sense the subjects of divine influence.
. "Anl4 the Lord spake unto Moses, saying: See,
I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, and
I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom,
and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all
manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works,to
work in gold, and in silver, and in brass."
David blesses God, who taught his "hands to
war and his fingers to fight."
Hence, the appropriateness of the sublime apostrophe of Milton in the opening of Paradise Lost,
83 
ANTHROPOS.
assuming that there was in the poet's breast a tone
of true devoutness.
"0, Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou knowest.
What in me is dark,
Illume! what is low, raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal providence,
And justify the ways of God to man."
The higher nature in the Redeemer was purely
and properly and perfectly divine, "very God of
very God."   "The Word was God."
"When he bringeth in the first-begotten into the
world, he saith, And let all the angels of God
worship him.   Unto the Son, he saith,  Thy throne,
0 God, is for ever and ever."
"We are in him that is true, even in his Son
Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life."
The second and inferior element in the person of
the Redeemer, is truly, purely, perfectly human.
his body was a true human body, not aieeming
body, a phantom body, assumed temporarily for a
purpose, to be put off at death.   "Behold!" said
Jesus, after the resurrection, "behold my hands
and my feet, that it is Imyself: handle me and see;
for a spirit hath not flesh and blood, as ye see me
have."
His tears were true human tears.  His blood was
true human blood.
But this human nature was more than a mere
84
t= 
MAN AND THE SON OF GOD.
body, a mere mass of animated flesh. This alone
were no human nature. A mere body, in whatever
form, without a soul, is not a human, but a merely
animal nature.  But Christ took to himself " a true
body and a reasonable soul," a soul replete with all
the attributes and endowments of a complete human
spirit. hience, he was subject to all the common
emotions, sympathies and susceptibilities of our
nature.
He loved his country, and in the tears that rolled
down his cheeks, as he wept over doomed Jerusalem,
patriotism had a share.  He was a true philanthropist, and his bosom burned with love for his adopted
race. Friendship kept her altar-fires kindled in his
heart, and he "loved Martha and her sister, and
Lazarus," and he "loved his disciples to the end."
"Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which
is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and
mother." Nor were pure domestic affections wanting.  He loved his mother, and tender thoughts of
her moved within him, even on the cross.
Now, both these natures, the human and divine,
were blended in one person. All the experiences
of the Messiah were those of this complex, but
single person.
Ilad there been two selves, then, as has been well
said, as only the human nature can suffer, Christ's
sufferings would have been inadequate to the work
of the atonement. The penal sorrows he endured
must possess an infinite value, which to those of a
85
4 
ANTHROPOS.
merely human self were utterly impossible. As it
was, his agonies, though strictly borne in the humbler nature, received a value from its alliance with
the higher, such as to render them infinitely precious
and effective. As the suffering, not of a merely
human self, but of a self divinely human, humanly
divine, they avail to pay all human debts, satisfy
divine justice, and reconcile us to God.
In this complex person, the divine nature was in
constant and  commanding  control,  blending  the
human with itself, sanctifying and glorifying all its
powers and susceptibilities.
We are thus enabled to understand and explain
many of those otherwise startling paradoxes of inspiration. For in the sacred writings, whatever
may be affirmed of either nature, is affirmed of the
person.
As with man, when one says:  "I thirst," it is
the man, the person that thirsts, although the appetite has its root in the physical nature. And when
the poet writes           "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumours of oppression and deceit
May never reach me more!"
it is the man, the person that longs, though the
longing comes up from the depths of a noble moral
and intellectual nature.
And when Jesus says, "I and my Father are
one," this is true of Jesus, the Messiah of the com
86 
.MAN AND TIlE SON OF GOD.
plex, theanthropic person, but the affirmation is
based strictly upon the divine element in that
person.
And when he says, "My Father is greater than
I," thlis, also, is true of the person; but this affirmation is grounded strictly upon the lower constituent
nature in that person.
"Before Abraham was, I am."  "The Son of man
lwho is in heaven," and such like passages, are true
of the speaker, and yet refer us directly to the
divine element.  "They crucified the Lord of glory."
"The church which hlie hath purchased with his own
bloodl." These passages also are true of the person,
but point us strictly to that nature in that person
which alone is capable of suffering.
"Thley shall call his name Emmanuel, which beimg interpreted is, God with us."
Sometimes  a banner is put into the soldicr's
hlands inscribed with the name of battles he has
foug,ht and won, and how fondly he gazes upon its
folds as they rise and fall on the breeze, and what
nerve the sight of it imparts when another battle
draws on!
But this banner passed from the angels to Jesus'
hand, in behalf of the race, betokening the alliance
between God and man in our nature.  Who can tell
the whole power and felicity of its influences upon
mankind?  Governments have been moulded by it.
Legislation has acknowledged its influence, and all
literature lhas experienced its power!
87
40g 
ANTIIROPOS.
No other regiment in all thle host of God can
carry such a banner.   It waves over the towers of
no other city in all the empire of Jehovah!
Now, do we not find in the fact, that our nature
is adapted to such a union with the divine, a chief
one among the wonders that challenge our admiration?  There are many cre,at'tre-natures with which
we cannot conceive such a union to be formed.
Had the angelic nature been chosen so far as we
are able to understand that nature, such a union
would have been far less strange and surprising than
the alliance with ours.
And does notthis union disclose to us a new and
profound significancy in the declaration that man is
made in the image of God?
The decrees of God are one eternal purpose.
The perfections of the divine nature forbid the conception of any succession in those decrees.  His
plans are in no sense a construction implying any
after-thought and addition. In our mode of conceiving of them, we are constrained by the nature
of our minds to recognize a certain logical order in
them.   But in the divine mind they are all, as it
were, one complete picture.
Ruskin, in his "Modern Painters," contrasts the
mental processes of an ordinary artist with that of
a first-class genius. The one constructs his picture
and puts his conceptions together piecemeal.   The
other conceives a given work at once as a wlhole.
One constructs, the other creates.  One conceives,
88 
MAN AND TIIE SON OF GOD.
say, the trunk of a tree, then fits on its branches
and twigs and foliage, changing and readjusting
until the object is shaped to his judgment. The
other sees the whole tree at a glance,in all the perfections of its outline and proportions, and thence
lhas nothing to do but to embody the conception in
lines and colours on the canvass.
Rising from the finite to the infinite, from man to
God, we must conceive of the Divine Being, as
having from all eternity before his mind, so to
speak, a perfect picture of the predestinated universe
in all its completeness. In his book all its members
were written, which in continuance, were fashioned
when as yet there were none of them. Actual
creation has added nothing, can never add anything
to this preconceived creation. Every atom of matter, with all the successive forms through which it
was destined to pass, firom the beginning to the end
of time, every sentient creature, with all the events
in the history of each, what each should be, do, and
suffer, were all there in that original plan.
Hence, we may say, the universe as truly existed
for God before, as after the actual forth-putting of
creative power. It is not so with the artist. His
statue on the pedestal is more a real substantive
thing than it was while it lay in ideal in his mind.
But with God, the thing decreed is as instinct with
reality before, as after its creation. The execution
of the purpose embodying the eternal thought gives
that object no new substantial being with God.
8 -*
89 
ANTHROPOS.
Now, since the parts of the universe are all ad
justed to one another in perfect harmony in the
decree, we must assume that the marvellous nature
ordained for man, with all that makes it wonderful
and fearful, had original reference to the relationship it was to bear to the divine nature in the person
of the eternal Son, not only here on earth, but in
heaven above. There for ever, the heavenly host
are to behold their king, "a Lamb, as it had been
slain." The sceptre, at whose uplifting they bow,
is in the hand of Him "who liveth and was dead,
and who is alive for evermore." In the blessed
economy of heaven, the Son sits on the throne in
the glorified body carried with him thither, at the
ascension from Olivet's crest.  Thus, the heavenly
host see for ever in their king an incarnate God,
our nature in eternal alliance with the Deity, "God
and man in two distinct natures, and one person for
ever.
In the image of this eternal king, in the form
which the eternal Son of God was for ever to wear
upon the throne he won by his condescension, his
birth, life and death, (" wherefore God hath highly
exalted him, and given him a namewhich is above
every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow,of things in heaven, and things in earth,
&c.") man was made, and therefore, again hlie was
" wonderfully made."
90 
MAN AND THE GOD-MAN.
XIV.
MAN AND THE GOD-MIAN.
ANOTHER chapter of wonders awaits our perusal
in the mysteries and glories'involved in the union
subsisting between Christ, the God-man, and each
soul on whom his atoning blood has been sprinkled.
First, we find man, in himself, an inexplicable
mystery, combining in his person a blending of a
material, and a spiritual nature. Then, we find
this marvellous nature taken into alliance with the
Son of God in the mysteries of the incarnation.
The climax of all is reached in an additional union
between the ransomed soul and the ransoming Re'deemer.          *
For "we are members of his body, and of his
flesh, and of his bones. This is a great mystery,
but I speak concerning Christ and the church."
"I am the vine, ye are the branches."   " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
The body participates in this union. "The body
is for the Lord." "Know ye not that your bodies
are members of Christ."
91 
ANTHROPOS.
On this passage (1 Cor. vi. 15,) Dr. Charles
Hlodge remarks: "Our bodies are the members of
Christ, because they belong to him, being included
in the redemption effected by his blood, and also,
because they are so united to him as to be partakers
of his life.  It is one of the prominent doctrines of
the Bible that the union between Christ and his
people includes a community of life, and it is clearly
taught that this life pertains to the body as well as
to the soul."
Nor does death, which temporarily divorces the
soul and body, interrupt or suspend this membership
with Christ. And it is this relationship that secures
a glorious resurrection.  "If the Spirit of him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, lie that
raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken
your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in
you."  "Our bodies being still united to Christ, do
rest in their graves till the resurrection."
Death is called a sleep, and saints are said to
"sleep in Christ;" but this is taue only of their
bodies.  The soul does not fall asleep; for it, " to
be absent from the body, is to be present with the
Lord." But, if the body participates in this strange
union, it is because it is drawn in thither by the
soul, and the channel through which the soul glides
into this relationship, is faith. The vine clings to the
supporting tree by its tendrils; the tendrils of the
soul are the forth-puttings of faith.
By nature, the vine, weak and helpless, crawls
92 
MAN AND TIlE GOD-MAN.
along upon the ground.  At length, it reaches a
tree and begins to climb.   One tendril after another
clasps a twig hete, and a twig there, and at length,
the naturally grovelling becomes a towering vine,
and swings in the air at tlhe tree's very top.  So,
by nature, the soul crawls and grovels, and hugs
the ground.   But lwhen it reaches the Son of God,
the tree of life, and puts out its tendrils, it mounts
and mounts, and emibracing the tree all around, so
becomes one with it, that the axe that smites the
one, smites the other, and no tornado, not strong
enough to uproot the tree, can dislodge the vine
from its resting-place.
Thus, faith is the connecting link between the
believer and the Pedcleemer.   A  stone forms part
of an edifice by position.  A foreigner becomes one
with a nation by naturalization.  MIan is joined in
happy relationship with his neighbour by fiiendship.
By marriage, a more intimate and profound relationship is constituted, and " they twain become one
flesh."
Now, between Christ and man, faith is a marriage
tie.  Christ is the bridegroom.   The soul is the
bride. The Christian pastor is the friend of both,
who, standing by, greatly rejoiceth at the bridegroom's voice.  The bridal party is composed partly
of the membership of Christ's body, the believing
saints, and partly of the angels, who fill heaven
with their gratulatory songs when this union is once
effected.
93 
ANTHROPOS.
The moment the marriage vows are uttered, man
and woman are one flesh. The moment man exercises saving faith, he and Christ are one. The act
of faith is an act of transfer, by which one leaps the
chasm of unbelief and is clasped in the arms of the
Saviour, in a grasp never to be relaxed, for ever
and ever.
But we must go one step farther back to find the
origin of this alliance.
The vine clasps the tree through the agency of its
tendrils; but whence  come the tendrils?  These
come from the inresident life of the plant that
extrudes them from its own bosom. They issue
from the depths of its vitality.
But in man by nature, as a religious being, there
is no life. "In Adam, all die." The vine is dead.
Hence, it can neither move towards the tree, nor
push out tendrils to grasp it.
Whence comes the life? The source of this is
the eternal Spirit of God. "Born," brought into
life, "not of flesh, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God."   "Born of the
Spirit."  It is "by one Spirit that we are baptized
into one body."   The agent in this work is the
Holy Spirit, " convincing us of our sin and misery,
enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ,
and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable
us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the
gospel." The tree is Jesus Christ. The gospel
plants that tree in human soil within reach of the
94 
MAN AND TIHE GOD-MAN.
human soul. Then, the Spirit, by a creative, regenerating act, implants a life which becomes the
basis of a new series of activities. Interweaving
with itself the native contents of the soul, the
understanding, the will, and the affections, it sets
them upon a new course of action. New perceptions arise, new thoughts, new motives, new emotions, new purposes. By virtue of these new powers,
the vine leaves the ground, and grasps and climbs
the tree.
Or, recurring to the marriage scene, it is the
Holy Spirit of God that stands as the officiating
priest, marrying the soul and the Saviour into a
union, whose felicities are as great as its mysteries
are profound.
These mysteries are as baffling (but no more so)
as those of the union between the material and immaterial in human nature, as those of the human
and divine natures in the Messiah, as those of the
trinity.
The felicities of this union are of greater magnitude and preciousness than we ever shall know till
we have left
"This bank and shoal of time,"
and found ourselves upon the bank of life's river in
the skies.
A common life now pervades the God-man and
the redeemed man. As the plant-life takes hold of
And interweaves with itself the life of the engrafted
95 
ANTHRIOPOS.
twig, so the Christ-life takes hold of and entwines
with itself the life in the soul.   Whatever  befals
the one includes the other.  When the persecutor
smites a saint, he smites Christ.  " Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou ime!"   "In alltheir afflictions he is
afflicted."  MIany are the afflictions of the righteous,
but in all of them they are only "filling up that
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ."
And they die in Christ.   "I am crucified with
Christ." They bear the penalties of the law in
Christ, and with him. They live in and with Christ.
"Because I live, ye shall live also."   They rise
with Christ.  His resurrection involves and necessitates theirs. They ascend with him to heaven, and
there reign with him for ever and ever.
A beautiful and precious result of this union is
seen in the closeness of the bonds thus established
among the brotherhood of the faithful.
The question of external union among the various
tribes of believing Israel, is ever recurring. All
wish for it. All pray for it. The sacred petition
of Jesus is ever on their lips.  "That they may all
be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
that they also may be one in us.   I in them, and
thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one."
Nor are these yearnings a mere freak of vaind-earmiing enthusiasm. They grow out of the actual,
constitutional union, now subsisting between the
gi,e,at vine and the branches.  They are the yearnili,s of different members of a divided family for the
96 
MAN AND TIIE GOD-MAN.
removal of all causes of division, and a complete
and visible family union.
For already they are actually "one in Christ."
In him "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is
neither bond nor free."
Go out under the unclouded sky of night and
look up at the stars.  They seem to lie in unarranged confusion, as if the Creator had sown them
broad-cast over the heavens, as the farmer sows
seed in a field. Each one seenms to trim its silver
lamp and hold up its burning censer before God in
entire isolation from its bright-robed companions.
But the truth is, that a cord strong as the will of
God, holds every primary in its place, and binds the
secondaries to their several centres.
And send the ribald scoffer through the world,
and he will doubtless find abundant diversity, not
to say disorder among the members of the household
of faith. Here, a band of Christians will be found
worshipping after one mode, there after another.
With this denomination, special, and even inordinate
stress is laid upon one doctrine or ordinance, and
with that upon another.  Nay, at times he will find
those who acknowledge each other as Christians in,
the true sense of the word, arrayed against each
other, as foe against foe, here exulting in controversial triumph, there chagrined with a sense of
discomfiture.   One lives in the luxurious ostentation of a prince, another amidst the privations of
extreme poverty, in the bonds of slavery, or even
9
97
-i 
ANT'RIIROPOS.
begging upon the king's highlway.  One fills the
professor's chair in the academy, and another,
doubting that the earth is round, and that it revolves
upon its axes, knows only that he has a soul, is a
lost sinner, and that Christ died to save.  One
wears the black skin of the African, another the red
skin of the American Indian, and another the fair
skin of the Caucasian.
But, differing and alienated, and even hostile,
they are still all one in Christ.  " We  being many,
are one body in Christ, and every one members one
of another. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ."
And why may we not hope that this vital, constitutional union, expressing itself in these yearnings
for a union that is external and visible, shall be olde
day fully realized? The church is one. The truth
is one. And when this one church, freed from dividing imperfections, comes to see this one truth just
as it is, what will remain as a ground-work and cause
of division?
98
,I
At 
MAN  AND   liiEAVEN.
XV.
MAN AND HEAVEN.
"Who are these in bright array,   This innumerable throng, Round the altar night and day,
Tuning their triumphant song?
Worthy is the Lamb once slain,
Blessing, honour, glory, power,
Wisdom, riches to obtain;
New dominion every hour."
IN the marvellous constitution of our nature,
fitting it for union with the eternal Son in the incarnation, and with the God man by faith in regeneration, we see a manifest pre-adaptation for the
honours and glories assured in the word of God, to
all who, washed and made white in the blood of the
Lamb, find their way into the mansions of bliss.
Few accessible objects have eluded the prying
inquisitiveness of the human mind; but, as yet, no
instance has been discovered of a living creature not
manifestly so adapted to surrounding circumstances
as to fit it for enjoyment.
Even the mnuch-talked-of sloth is found to be no
exception to this law.  The apparently disproportionate length of its arms, as coSiapared with its legs,
99 
ATHRIlOPOS.
being nearly twice their length, the structure of its
feet and claws, curved inwardcls to such a degree as
to compel it, when attemipting, progression on a
plane surface, slowly and pa-ifully to drag itself
along on its elbows, suggested the idea that it was,
as it were, a kind of- creative mistake, doomed to a
precarious and wretched life.  But wlhen it is found
to be an arboreal quadruped, born, living, and dying
in the trees, whose proper mode of progression is
along the branches and twigs, hanging beneath and
passing one foot over the other in an easy, and by
no means tardy, progress, it becomes another proof
and illustration of divine wisdom and goodness.
It is little likely, therefore, that man, the wonderfully-framed monarch of all, should be an exception
to this beneficent law.  Ie desires happiness, and
was evidently made for enjoyment.
Sin, in making him miserable, plunged him into
an abnormal condition. Christ came to cancel sin,
and thus removing the cause of all sorrow to restore
man to his normal happy condition.
This restoration, however, is not complete in this
life. Cares still burden, suspense harrasses, apprehensions vex, disappointment weighs him down,
sickness wears him out, and then his spirit is conveyed to another and a better world.
In that better world, all sources of discomfort
disappear, and everything around ministers to his
bliss. Poetry and inspiration combine to picture
the scenes of enjoyment above, and yet confessedly
100 
MAN AND IHEAVEN.
fail, partly through the feebleness of language to
express, and the incapacity of finite minds to conceive of the actual condition there, to do more than
produce the impression that those joys are boundless.
In the last chapters of Revelation, the original
paradise is not only reproduced, but all its glories
are infinitely magnified.   The first paradise is a
garden, and so is the last.  But in this last, there
is no forbidden tree.  Besides this, the felicities of
the first are enhanced by the addition of all that is
fascinating and improving in social life, and in the
richest results of a perfect civilization.   The glories
of a splendid city are added to those of a perfect
garden.  Heaven is represented as a garden in a
city. The city is spacious,-fifteen hundred miles
square. The wall is of jasper, its foundations garnished with all manner of precious stones, and its
twelve gates are so many pearls.   The streets are
paved, and lined with edifices of pure, transparent
gold.
The height of the city is also fifteen hundred
miles. In this, perhaps, we may find allusion to
those great and splendid cities of antiquity with
which John was familiar, most of which contained
towering eminences crowned with edifices, upon
which art had lavished all its gifts and wealth all
its treasures.   Over the streets of Ephesus,  the
temple-crowned heights of Prion and Coressus threw
their long shadows. Upon Athens, the Acropolis
looked down the central base, as the rhetoricians
9 *
101 
ANTIItROPOS.
said, of a vast fire-circled shield, the outer four of
the circles being the city, Attica, Greece, and the
world-the Acropolis itself " one vast composition
of architecture and sculpture, dedicated to the
national glory and the worship of the Gods."
Corinth had her renowned Acrocorinthlius, towering abruptly upward, two thousand feet above the
city.  Its lofty summit, from which the Acropolis
of Athens,  forty-five miles away, was  distinctly
visible, afforded room for a whole town.
The heaven of the man of Patmos had its templecrowned Acropolis fifteen hundred miles high!  On
its top was the throne of God, from out of which
flowed the "river of water of life, clear as crystal,"
now gliding through a plain, now leaping in cascades, now lingering on the terraces, and now thundering down in magnificent rapids!  On either side
wvas the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits,
each yielding its fruit every month.
All this, of course, is only the affluence of oriental imagery, struggling through the holy impulses
of inspiration, to tell us that the glories of heaven
cannot be told! It conveys permission to the
sanctified fancy to plume its wings for its loftiest
possible flights in the effort to compass some conception of what awaits the glorified.
But the crowning glory of even this heaven is
found in the rank assigned to ransomed mortals in
this world of glories. It were enough that man
were admitted within the gates of this city-paradise,
102 
MAN AND HEAVEN.
and we can comprehend the raptures of the saintly
Rutherford, when he wrote, "Though I never enter
those pearly gates, I shall be content if I may but
from outside the walls be permitted to throw my
praises over into the lap of my Lord!"
But the saints are not kept outside the walls.
They do not even occupy the mansions on the lower
terraces of the city. Their home is in the Acropolis!
They compose the very court of heaven! The
angels are farther from the throne than they!
The " new song" in heaven, that awakens its
highest raptures, is one the angels cannot sing, but
to which they only respond with their joyous, cordial
amen!  They can never say " Unto I-him that loved
us and washed us from our sins in his own blood."
The Son of God has never come into such relations with the angels, nor done for them as he has
for man.  He never lifted a burden from an angel's
soul, nor wiped a tear from an angel's cheek.   ]e
never saw an angel mother bending over a coffin that
contained the remains of a precious babe, nor an
al,gel widow faint on the edge of the grave in which
lay the remains of her dearest friend and sworn protector. But all who from earth join the throng around
the throne, go up thither out of great tribulation.
"And one of the elders answered, saying unto
me, what are these which are arrayed in white robes,
and whence came they?  And I said unto him, Sir,
thou knowest. And he said unto me, These are
they which came out of #'e(att tribulation."
103 
ANTIIROPOS.
"Once they were mourning here below,
And wet their couch with tears;
They wrestled hard, as we do now,
With sins and doubts and fears."
No angel in heaven is indebted to Christ for the
pardon of a sin, and hence, they are not bound to
him by the ties of love gushing from hearts grateful
for rescue from an awful perdition.
"Jesus said: Simon, I have somewhat to say
unto thee. There was a certain creditor which had
two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and
the other fifty. And he frankly forgave them both.
Tell me therefore, which of them will love him
most?
"Simon answered, and said, I suppose that he to
whom he forgave most. And he said unto him,
Thou hast rightly judged."
But all who ascend from earth to dwell at God's
right hand, have received forgiveness of countless
transgressions, and each will sing for ever
"Love I much, I'm much forgiven,
I'm a miracle of grace."
Of the two sons in the parable, he who loved his
father most tenderly was the returned prodigal.
And we may be sure that there is no such love for
the Son of God in heaven, as that which glows in
hearts that have been snatched, as brands plucked
out of  the burning,  from  everlasting  woe,  and
gathered to eternal joy through the sprinkling of
atoningi) blood.
104
0 
MAN AND IIHEAVEN.
But the fountain'of all the wealth of felicity,there
poured into human coffers, is found in that strange
alliance which makes each ransomed one a member
"of his body and flesh and bones."  No such alliance
has been formed with the angels. " He took not
on him the nature of angels."
"Not angels round the throne
Of majesty above,
Are half so much obliged as we,
To our Imlumanuel's love."
"They never sunk so low;
They are riot Caisedc so tigh;
They never knew such depths of woe,
Such heights of majesty."
"The Saviour did not join
Their nature to his own;
For them he shed no blood divine,
Nor breathed a single groan."
Hence, even on earth, the angels are the servants
of the ransomed. "Are they not all ministering
spirits,sent forth to minister for them who shall be
heirs of salvation?" They take a profound interest
in all that concerns them.
"i He bids his angels pitch their tents
Round where his children dwell;
What ills their heavenly care prevents,
No earthly tongue can tell."
They rejoice over their conversion. "There is
joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner
that repenteth." At death, the angels bear the
soul to Abraham's bosom.
105 
ANTHROPOS.
Acid in the rapt visions of John, in Patmos, we
always see the saints nearer to, and the angels
farther removed from, the throne.
"And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne,
and of the four living ones, and in the midst of the
elders,stood a Lamb, as it had been slain."
And when the Lamb "had taken the book, the
four living ones, and the four-and-twenty elders fell
down before the Lamb."   Who  these elders and
living ones represent, we learn in their song.
"Thou art worthy to take the book and to open
the seals thereof: for thou wast slain and hast
redeemed us to God by thy blood."
And then the angels round about the throne, and
the living ones, and the elders, thus redeemed, sing
their responsive song.
"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive
power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and
honour, and glory, and blessing."
In accordance with this idea of special nearness
of the saints to God in heayen, is the proclamation.
"Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and
he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people,
and God himself shall be with them."
The reason given of this special nearness, is the
mark of his purifying blood on their white garments.
They have washed their robes and made them
white in the Food of the Lamb.   "Thterefore, are
they before the throne of God, and serve him day
106 
MAN AND IIEAVEN.
and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the
throne shall dwell among them."
"Know  ye not," writes  Paul, "that we shall
judge angels?"  that in the arrangements of the
final economy, the angels will hold a position inferior
to that of the blood-ransomed, blood-washed saints
of the Lamb.
Well may the believer exclaim, in view of such
prospects, of all that, is involved in the glories and
felicities of such a nearness to the throne of heaven,
and for the mysteries of such a relationship to its
once crucified occupant-" Oh, the depth of the
riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
IIow unsearchable are his judgments and his ways
past finding out."
"Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is
high, I cannot attain unto it!"
107 
ANTHROPOS.
XVI.
MAN AND RELIGION.
IN the light of the truths now discussed, and,
especially in view of the wonderful, fearful nature
we bear, the adaptedness of true religion to our
condition stands forth in bold relief.  It glorifies all
that is wonderful, and furnishes also the alchemy by
which all that is fearful is transmuted into the
brightest jewels in the human casket.
Who can parry, or replyto the charge ofthe infinite
folly of squandering the affluence of such a nature
upon the sensual and evanescent, and the sin and
shame of sacrificing it on the altar of profligacy,
and thus, not only robbing it of all the glories proffered in the mystic alliance with the God-man, and
the exaltation and bliss of an eternal heaven, and
God of a lamp that else might shine for ever with
others around his throne, but, also taking security
for everlasting woe!
Cleopatra, at the banquet given to Anthony, at
Tarsus, (afterwards the birthplace of Saul,) is said
to have dissolved a pearl, worth fifty thousand
pounds sterling, in vinegar, and swallowed it at a
draught!  That pearl "might have been sold for
much, and given to the poor."
108 
MAN AND RELIGION.
But, what is even the insane extravagance of that
profligate queen, when compared with his, who dissolves, as it were, the pearl of such a nature as ours,
in the cup of three-score years and ten, of easy,
wild, worldly voluptuousness?
Belshazzar perpetrated an act of fatal folly, when
he lighted up a heathen banquet with the golden
candlestick, from the Holy Place, in the temple of
Jehovah. And what do they, who, at the ordinary
feast of secular life, burn out all the fires of a human
nature?
We blush, and weep together, when we see, as we
so often do, talents, intellectual, and  other, that
might adorn our literature, might certify and purify
legislation, multiply hospitals, asylums, and institutions of learning, making education more efficient
and more generally accessible, make two blades of
grass to grow in the place now filled by one, build
comfortable tenements for the worthy, toiling poor,
in a word, do many of the ten thousand things that
go to replenish the cup of national prosperity and
social happiness, thrown away in unmeaning and
unmanly trifling!
But, what is even this, in comparison with the
course of him, who, in the endowments of a human
nature, possessing the means of glorifying God, of
serving heaven for himself, and of leading many
others thither, lavishes all upon pursuits and pleas
ures, which, at length, leave the exhausted spirit
to the lamentation of the expiring Talleyrand.
10
, 109 
ANTIIROPOS.
"Behold! eighty-three years passed away! What
cares!  What agitations!  What anxieties!  What
complications!  What  ill-will!  And  all without
other result than great fatigue of body and mind, a
profound sentiment of discouragement for the future,
and of disgust for the past!"
And, if angels ever shudder, they do it at the
sight of the man who takes his marvellously, fearfully framed body, with its mysterious, immortal
tenant, and lays it a living sacrifice to be burned to
ashes on the altar of drunkenness and debauchery!
And, who can measure the catastrophe, and compass its full magnitude, when a nature, sueh as
man's, folds the wing that might have soared to the
highest heavens, and sinks like a mill-stone from an
angel's hand, into eternal woe! Well might the
prophet write  "Hell, from beneath, is moved to meet thee at
thy coming! It stirreth up the dead for thee. All
they shall speak and say unto thee-Art thou also
become as weak as we?  Art thou become like unto
us? How art thou fallen, Lucifer, son of the
morning!"
And how admirable the adaptation of true religion to meet the exigencies of human nature!
In all that is wonderful in man, we see only the
adjustment of a harp of many strings to thrill with
the most rapturous harmonies.
The action of the powers of thought upon merely
secular objects, is often attended with rich enjoy
110 
MAN AND RELIGION.
ment.  The logician, as he forges link into link, in
the chain of close consecutive reasoning; the orator,
as he pours his soul-stirring sentences upon the ears
of listening multitudes; the artist, as the bright conception flashes upon him, and he burns to transmit
it to the canvass, or embody it in marble; the poet,
" his eye with fine frenzy rolling," as he enshrines
his thoughts in enduring lines; the philosopher, as
he pursues the paths of investigation in the world
of nature, all find in the excitement of thought
itself, an intense enjoyment.
But when the heavenly replaces the earthly, as
an object of thought, and the finite mind, now in
saving alliance witIh the infinite, pursues such themes
as man's redemption, the legislation of heaven for
human salvation, the processes by which a sinsmitten world is washed of its defilements, and its
ruins built into a temple for the living God, in a
word, any of all the grand themes of revelation, it has
reached a terrace, where balmier airs fan the brow,
sweeter music greets thile ear, and brighter prospects
gladden the eyes. And all the play of the moral
nature, now in conscious harmony with that of God,
brings with it its own peculiar reward.
The memory, too, busied with recollections of
gracious providences, and gracious exercises, by
and through whichi the soul passed from death to
life, and the various scenes of spiritual enjoyment
through whichl it has  been  led, becomes  a new
treasure in its coffers.
111 
ANTIIROPOS.
The play of the affections, now divorced from the
odious and sinful, and throwing their tendrils around
that which is pure and enduring, mingles drops,new
and sweet, in the cup quaffed by the soul.
And this mind with all its powers, washed of all
defilement, relieved of all weaknesses, and instinct
with the vigour of the life above, how will it lash with
its sanctified and glorified wing, the air of heaven,
and sing and soar while eternity lasts?
If we turn from the wonderful to the fearful, in
our nature, just as the rising sun floods the clouds
in the horizon with hues more in number, than man
can name, so does the religion of our Lord gild all
these fearful things into felicities!
Take our capacities to suffer. They are no longer
fearful. For these capacities simply make suffering
possible, not necessary. But, at my Saviour's side
above, what afflictive causes can ever reach me?
Even here, how sorrow's cup is robbed of its
bitterness! The period during which suffering is
possible, is very limited.  They  are  "but  for a
moment."   Who  cannot  suffer  anything  for "a
moment," when he knows that then the griefs not
only come to a perpetual end, but usher the patient
into everlasting bliss? Through all our griefs this
one commanding truth confronts us, that we are
now engaged in bearing all the ills that will come
upon us, for ever and ever!
Then, invaluable mitigations, in many forms,
mingle sweets in the bitter cup.   The Spiit of God
112
t 
MAN AND R1ELIGION.
dwelling in the soul, nerves up its powers to endure,
and the effect is the same, whether the burden be
dimninished, or the  strength increased.  And  we
have ever at hand the "Rock of Ages," into whose
clefts we may  run, as a "hiding-place from  the
wind, a covert from the tempest, rivers of water in
(a dry place, and the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land."
Sympathy of the loving in our struggles, makes
thema easier. "And in all our afflictions, IIE is
afflicted."
"Fear thou not, for I am with thee.   Be not
dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen
thee, yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee
with the right hand of my righteousness."
But better than all, these very sorrows, that by
nature, are mill-stones to weigh us down, become
wings wherewith we fly and rejoice!  "They work
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of
glory." Sanctified sorrow is ona of the most effective
of purifiers.             /
We see the legitirait,e effect of its ministrations
in the case of Psul. He was a great sufferer.
"Out of much affliction and anguish of heart, I
wrote unto you with many tears." Bunyan and
Baxter were great sufferers. It has been the rule,
rather than the exception, that suffering and high
sanctification have gone together.
But instead of complaining, these men of God,
"were exceeding joyful in all their tribulations.,"
10 -*
113 
ANTlHROPOS.
Thus, our capacity to suffer, becomes the avenue
of enjoyment. The possession of eyesight makes it
possible to see sights that might harrow up the soul;
but, if they weep here a while, what visions await
them at the right hand of God?  The ear might be
the inlet of weepings and wailings, and gnashings of
teeth, but in heaven they will only hear the roll and
swell of celestial harmonies. Thus, our very capacity to suffer, making it possible to be exceedingly
happy, calls loudly for songs of grateful joy.
There, also, is our mortality, We must die. It
is so appointed. The body and the soul must part.
Earthly friends must be left behind. The anguish
of the last hour must come.
But religion puts us in a position to welcome
death as our best friend.
"I would not live alway: I ask not to stay,
Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way;
The few loridI mornings that dawn on us here,
Are enough for life's woes, full enough for its cheer.
"Who, who would live alway; away from his God;
Away from yon heaven, that hlissful abode,
Where the rivers of pleasure flow o'er the bright plains,
And the noon-tide of glory eternally reigns."
To be freed from the law of death would be an
eternal imprisonment in a world of ever-recurring,
ever-varying sorrow.
Hence, the hour of departure has ever been a
welcome hour to God's dearest children.  "Comne,"
said one of the Janeways to the weeping friends
114 
MA'     AN D  RELLIGION.
around his dying bed-" come, see a man happier
dying than you ever saw one living."
Pastor Rien, of Denmark, a little before his death,
cried out, "I see the angels coming on the clouds
of heaven, they are coming to take me, they descend,
they stoop down, they encircle my bed, they are
come to guide me to their glorious abode!"
Andrew Fuller, a half hour before his departure,
opened his eyes, and with a smiling countenance,
said:  "Dying is sweet work, sweet work!  My
Father! my heavenly Father!  I am looking up, I
am looking up to my dear Jesus, my God! my portion! my all in all!  Glory, glory! I-Home, hoome!"
Such transmutation does the IKing of Terrors
undergo in the hands of true religion! Let one,
then, but read his "title clear to mansions in the
skies," and this terrible element in our nature
becomes clothed with glory, and the dying saint,
without presumption, may say,
"Come Death, shake hands! I'll kiss thy bands!
'Tis happiness for me to die.
What! dost thou think that I will shrink?
I'll go to immortality!"
And this immortality, so oppressive to the thought
of one unprepared to die, becomes another of the
choicest jewels in the Christian crown!
"So shall we be ever with the Lord!"  A new
and everlasting life poured through all the faculties
of the soul, fear annihilated, memories so sifted as
to minister only bliss, hopes and expectations fed
115 
ANTHROPOS.
with ever new  revelations, ever new displays of
divine wisdom, power and love; what a life-what
a prospect!
There the soul never tires. The rest remaining
for the people of God, is not the condition of repose,
but the condition that results from repose; a cond(lition not of resting, but of restedness.  It is always
there, as if one had just awaked from a refreshing,
re-invigorating slumber.  Here, if the soldier ride
twenty nmiles to cai'ry an order, he needs rest.
There, when the glorified one has borne a message
from the king to the remotest bounds of the universe,
lie is just as fresh for a return, as when he first
spread his wings.  Here, if one essay a brief meditation on the glories of God,  he soon wearies.
There, the spirit mounts and soars with tireless
delight.  Could a Humboldt, or Newton, pursue
his investigations for sixty years, fresh and elastic,
each succeeding hour, as at the first, what treasures
of knowledge would he accumulate?  There, one
shlall go on for ages without wearying.
Here, in the best condition, satiety will come.
Power does not satisfy. Thomas Jefferson, at the
end of his second presidential term, said:
"No bondsman ever put off his'chains half so
willingly as I these robes of office."
Riches cannot make happy. It was our lot once
to walk with a friend through lawns of uncommon
beauty, and to be pointed by him to a mansion in
its midst, a prince might covet; from whose doors
116 
MAN AND RELIGION.
one bright morning the wealthy owner issued to find
his way to a tree, upon those grounds, where he
committed suicide, by hanging!  His burden was
satiety. With all his possessions, he could find no
means of feeding hungerings and thirstings which
had become intolerable.
Pleasure, too, digs her own "voluptuous tomb."
Paris, the paradise of the mere pleasure-seeker,
reports a larger annual number of suicides than any
other city in the world.
Nothing can satisfy an immortal mind, and permanecntly postpone disgust and misery, but a boundless affluence of appropriate food and an everlasting
affluence of variety.
Two prisoners were shut up in a cell together for
years.  The first year they entertained one another
with stories of their lives. The second year they
spoke little, for all they could say was a mere
iteration and re-iteration of what had been said
before. The third year was spent in almost unbroken silence. They had exhausted all their
thoughts, and shut up as they were from access of
any new material for thought, they could do nothing
but gloomily brood in silence, and in vacuity of
mind.
One shut up long in solitary confinement, at
last having gazed ten thousand times upon every
visible spot and angle in the walls of his cell, having
ten thousand times  thought over every thought,
having turned over the contents of his memory until
117 
ANTHROPOS.
all is worn threadbare, worried and wearied with
the monotony of everlasting iteration, his jaded
mind goes mad!
Hence, one of the necessary conditions of tolerable, not to say happy life, in an immortal being, is
an exhaustless and endlessly varying supply of
objects for the employment of the mental powers.
This condition will be grandly met in the future
life of the blessed in the boundlessness of the fields
thrown open for exploration, and the exhaustless
and ever-varying developments of divine wisdom.
Perhaps this is the significance of that river that
flows from the throne of God and the Lamb. What
figure more rich in suggestion of exhaustless copiousness and never-ending variety, than that of a perennial
full-brimmed river. As we gaze, legions and legions
cr sparkling water-drops glide by, following and
iollowed by other legions of legions, on, on, for
ever, and ever, and ever.
Thus, into the ever-craving, never-cloyed mind in
heaven, with never-ceasing flow, will come  fresh
materials for thought, study, and meditation, and
as the soul looks and wonders, it will be quickened
in its activities by exhilarating expectations of new
and greater wonders yet to come.
Could we but mount to Abraham's side, as he sits
and meditates beneath some evergreen palm on the
banks of the river of life, and question him as to his
past and present, and anticipated future, what a
story should we hear!
118 
MAN AND RELIGION.
All his past would be one delicious and fragrant
garden of flowers.  From Ur, of the Chaldees, to
the grave of Macpelah, how bright every event as
viewed from the heavenward side! In the darkest,
cloudiest day on earth, the sun still shines in all iLs
brightness; and could we but  mount above the
clouds and look down upon them, our eyes would
rest upon one wide sea of glory. So, the events in
the believer's life, however dark and distressing the
aspect from below, looked on from heaven's battlements, are bright with all the glory of divine wisdom
and love.
And from his entrance into heaven at death, to
the present moment, what a poem is the story of
his experience!
And as to his present, he would say, "Every
object my eye lights on, increases my joy.  Ever*
sound that reaches my ear, is a note from the harmonies that roll like a boundless ocean about me.
Every breeze that kisses my brow, is like the breath
cf Jehovah."
"But what about the future? When a boy in
your father's home among the Chaldees, you little
(Ireamed of the tears your eyes were appointed to
shled, of the distress and anguish that were to wring,,
your spirit. Now, eternity is yet before you. Maiy
there not come in the course of its evolutions and
developments, experiences still less anticipated, infinitely less to be desired?"
Perhaps he would reply
119 
ANTHIROPOS.
"Respecting the future, near and remote, we
know nothing. Every hour brings us some new
surprise. But, nestling in love of God, we experience as little anticipation of ill, as when a babe, I
lay on my mother's bosom.  All we know of the
future, and all we desire to know, is that the source
of our joys is as stable as the throne of the Redeemer."
Thus, religion, true religion brought from heaven
on wings of incarnate love, beginning in the soul
with faith, and repentance, and developing into
loving devotion and fidelity, demonstrates its origin
by its thorough and complete adaptedness to human
nature. The author of this religion can be no other
than the creator of the soul. This religion is the
glory and crown of our nature. It is the interpreter
of its profoundest mysteries. It reveals the cause
of our tears, and the cure of our woes. It opens
spheres of activity here, in which we take part with
the angels of God. It furnishes the most effective
incentives to ennobling service.  Interpreting, it
transmutes our very sorrows into felicities, and gives
a new flavour to all our joys.
Ile who becomes possessor of this treasure will
th.tink God for ever for his being, and that he was
not made an angel, cherub, or seraph, but a MAN.
THE END,
120
I