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LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY : 
 
 DELINEATING 
 
 THE EVIDENT INDICATIONS OF MORAL 
 
 CHARACTER PERTAINING TO THE 
 
 FUTURE STATE. 
 
 BEING AN 
 
 INTRODUCT 
 
 TO 
 
 DODDRIDGE'S 
 
 3£lfse anTi ^Ptofltcss of SElclfflfon fn tjc Soul. 
 
 7 
 
 By JOHN FOSTER, 
 
 Author of Essays on Decision of Character, &c. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY JAMES LORING, 
 132 Washington Street. 
 
 1840. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF BOOKS WRITTEN BY AUTHORS 
 
 OF OPPOSITE MORAL CHARACTER. THEIR 
 
 ASPECT ON THE LIFE TO COME, .... 5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE HAPPINESS OR 
 MISERY OF SERIOUS OR INCONSIDERATE 
 READERS, 18 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF AN INFIDEL CONTRASTED WITH 
 
 THOSE OF A BELIEVER IN CHRISTIANITY, . 26 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EXPOSTULATIONS TO YOUNG PERSONS FROM 
 THE CONSIDERATION OF THE IMMORTALITY 
 OF THE SOUL, ITS RELATION TO ETERNITY, 
 AND ITS ACCOUNTABLENESS TO GOD, ... 53 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DECEPTIONS AND IMMINENT HAZARDS OF 
 DEFERRING RELIGION AND THE CARE OF 
 THE SOUL TO AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE TIME, 90 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AFFECTING PORTRAIT OF A MAN OF THE 
 
 WORLD, 116 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 REMONSTRANCES AND EXPOSTULATIONS 
 
 AGAINST THE SPIRIT OF THE WORLDLING, 
 ADDRESSED TO HIS CONSCIENCE FROM THE 
 MOST WEIGHTY CONSIDERATIONS, .... 128 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MEN OF THE WORLD, WHILE THEY DISTRUST 
 AND ENVY EACH OTHER, AS RIVALS IN THEIR 
 SORDID PURSUITS, VOLUNTARILY RENOUNCE 
 THE SOCIETY AND CONFIDENCE OF THE MOST 
 ESTIMABLE PERSONS, 181 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE IRRELIGIOUS AND SORDID DO NOT EN- 
 JOY THE PRESENT LIFE, AND MEET UN- 
 MINGLED WRETCHEDNESS IN THE FUTURE, 190 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONCLUDING ADMONITION, 203 
 
LIVING FOR IMMOllTALITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF BOOKS WRITTEN BY AUTHORS OF 
 OPPOSITE MORAL CHARACTER. — THEIR ASPECT 
 ON THE LIFE TO COME. 
 
 There are more ways to derive instruction 
 from books, than the direct and chief one, of 
 applying the attention to what they contain. 
 Things connected with them, by natural or 
 casual association, will sometimes suggest them- 
 selves to a reflective and imaijinative reader. 
 and divert him into secondary trains of ideas. 
 In these the mind may, indeed, float along in 
 perfect indolence, and acquire no good, but a 
 serious disposition might regulate them to a 
 profitable result. 
 
 Of these extraneous ideas, the most obviously 
 occurring, as being the most directly associated 
 with the book, may be some recollections or 
 2 
 
6 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 conjectures concerning the author. Perhaps 
 the most remarkable circnm.^taiices of his life, 
 and qualities of his character, are well known. 
 Some of these may come on the reader's mind, 
 suspend his attention to the written thoughts, 
 and draw him away into meditation on the per- 
 son, perhaps now no longer on earth, who once 
 thought them, and deliberately put them in the 
 words just seen on the page. 
 
 And the reminiscences, which thus bring 
 what the author was into conjunction wkh 
 what he has written, display the relation be- 
 tween them, greatly varying in character in the 
 different instances. The book, we will sup- 
 pose, teaches genuine wisdom, and forcibly in- 
 culcates the best principles ; and it may be 
 that the author is remembered or recorded to 
 have been worthy of his doctrine, an examj)le 
 of the virtues of which we are admiring him as 
 the advocate, and one of the excellent of the 
 earth. In this case, we have a pleasing reflec- 
 tion from his character shed on his pages. It 
 is the whole man, faithfully affirming to us, 
 with his heart and life, all that his language 
 expresses in testimony to truth and goodness. 
 The living spirit and practice of the man have 
 left an evidence and a power to animate these 
 sentences of the now silent instructor. If, at 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 7 
 
 his happy departure, his " works followed him," 
 they still also follow his words. And thus the 
 reader feels the henefit of that principle of as- 
 sociation, by which his thoughts, at some mo- 
 ments, pass from the writing to the author. 
 
 But a very different case is too possible, ia 
 which a dark haunting of the author's memory 
 shill at times cast a shade over sentences 
 bright with intelligence, strong in the assertion, 
 perhaps in the vindication, of important prin- 
 ciples of truth and virtue, and expressed with 
 all the appearance of sincere respect for them. 
 The idea of him may intervene with the effect 
 of a counteracting malignant genius, to blast 
 the fairest, and enervate the strongest, forms of 
 thought which he has presented to please and 
 instruct us. They cannot speak to us without 
 our seeming to hear an under voice, as if mock- 
 ing the attention and complacency which we 
 were beginning to give to them. There may 
 have been left such memorials of the author's 
 character, as to force upon us a doubt whether 
 he was honest in what he wrote ; whether the 
 principles which he displayed so much ability 
 in maintaining were his own sincere convic- 
 tions. Or, where there may not be cause for 
 so grave a suspicion, it may be too probable or 
 evident that his exertions were applied in a 
 
8 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 mere professional capacity, on a calculation of 
 distinction and advancement, and without any 
 cordial sense of the value of truth. Or, while 
 we may be convinced that we are reading the 
 honest dictates of his judgment, and that he did 
 really feel, at the time of writing, a concern 
 about their application to his own conduct, we 
 may have the mortification to know that the 
 tenor of his life, or many circumstances in it, 
 were in melancholy contrariety to his book. 
 It is even related of a man of orenius, of dissi* 
 pated habits, that he published a book of piety, 
 written by him in perfect good faith, and for 
 the very purpose of imposing a restraint on his 
 own follies and vices, by this expedient of com- 
 bining with the testimony of his conscience, a 
 formal pledge to the public, — and that he did 
 it in vain. 
 
 This dark obtrusion of the author's charac- 
 ter may tend, in its immediate effect, to lessen 
 the force of the sentiments and arguments by 
 which he seemed to be trainincr us to right 
 judgment and practice. If a man who could 
 think with such clear intelligence, could rea- 
 son so convincingly, could estimate the quality 
 of things, as it would appear to us, so impar- 
 tially and justly, and could advise and incul- 
 cate with such gravity, and semblance of being 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 9 
 
 in earnest, — if such a man might, nevertheless, 
 be even skeptical respecting the very princi- 
 ples which he seems to prove, or might, while 
 believing them, maintain them with no better 
 intention than that of making a display of his 
 ability, in order to advance himself in fame or 
 lucre, or might feel a sincere esteem for the 
 truths and precepts which he taught, and yet 
 allow himself to act in flagrant violation of 
 them, — can there be any real authority, any 
 solid importance, in the instructions we are re- 
 ceiving from his book ? But this inauspicious 
 relation of the author to his writings may turn 
 to the reader's benefit, if he will be quite se- 
 rious. It will force on his view another ex- 
 posure and exemplification of the sad disorder 
 into which our nature has fallen ; it will show 
 him of how little avail is a mere intellectual ex- 
 ercise of the mind on important truth; and 
 how much more is indispensable to the salutary 
 effect of right principles, than a bare assent of 
 the judgment, however decided. It will ad- 
 monish him that the efficacy of truth depends 
 on a habitual communication of the soul with 
 the God of truth. He has the author revisiting 
 him, as from the dead, to apprize him by ex- 
 ample, thcU truths the most important may pass 
 in the train of his thoughts, or may be retained 
 2* 
 
10 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 in his judgment as his fixed opinions, all in 
 vain, unless they be brought and kept in con- 
 tact with his conscience, and his conscience be 
 kept habitually reverent to the Supreme Au- 
 thority. And shall our Lord's declaration re- 
 specting a real intervention of one from the de- 
 parted be verified in this case too ; so that it 
 shall be entirely unavailing for this gloomy ap- 
 parition to the reader's mind, to warn him 
 against trifling with the serious instructions in 
 the book, as he that wrote them had trifled, 
 and adding one more to the number of those 
 who have deliberately gone the way to ruin, 
 bearing a lamp lighted by heaven in their hand ! 
 This representation of the secondary advan- 
 tage derivable from books, supposes them to be 
 read. But, even in the most cursory notice of 
 them, when the attention is engaged by no one 
 in particular, ideas may be started of a tenden- 
 cy not wholly foreign to instruction. A reflec- 
 tive person, in his library, in some hour of in- 
 termitted application, when the mind is surren- 
 dered to vagrant musing, may glance along the 
 ranges of volumes, with a slight recognition of 
 the authors, in long miscellaneous array of an- 
 cients and moderns. And that musing may 
 become shaped into ideas like these : What a 
 number of our busy race have deemed them- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. H 
 
 selves capable of informing and directing the 
 rest of mankind. How many who were pow- 
 erful in thought, or laborious in research, have 
 had their brief season under the sun, have at- 
 tained their respective shares of influence and 
 fame, and are now no lonjrer on earth ! What 
 a vast amount is collected here of the results of 
 the most strenuous and protracted exertions of 
 so many minds! What were, in each of these 
 claimants that the world should think as they 
 did, the most prevailing motives? How many 
 of them sincerely loved truth, honestly sought 
 it, and faithfully, to the best of their knowledge, 
 declared it? What misht be the circumstan- 
 ces and influences which determined, in the 
 case of that one author, and the next, and the 
 next again, their own modes of opinion ? How 
 many of them were aware, and acted on the 
 conviction, of the importance of a devout in- 
 tercourse with heaven, in order to their being 
 truly wise themselves, and to their being the 
 successful teachers of wisdom ? How many 
 of them were actuated by a genuine desire to 
 benefit their fellow mortals ? What may be 
 conjectured as to the degree of complacency 
 with which many of them have since, in a state 
 where they better knew the truth of things, and 
 better knew themselves, regarded the spirit in 
 
12 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 which they speculated, and the tendency of 
 what they left to speak in their name after they 
 were gone? 
 
 And how much have they actually done for 
 truth and ricrhleousness in the world 1 Do not 
 the contents of these accumulated volumes con- 
 stitute a chaos of all discordant and contradic- 
 tory principles, theories, representations of fact, 
 and figurings of imagination ? Could I not in- 
 stantly place beside each other the works of 
 two noted authors, who maintain for truth di? 
 rectly opposite doctrines, or systems of doc- 
 trines ; and then add a third book, which ex- 
 plodes them both ? I can take some one book, 
 in which the prime spirits of the world, through 
 all time, are brought together, announcing the 
 speculations which they, respectively, proclaim- 
 ed to be the essence of all wisdom, protesting 
 with solemn censure, or sneering contempt, 
 against the dogmas and theories of one another, 
 and conflicting in a huge Babel of all imagin- 
 able opinions and vagaries.* Within these as- 
 sembled volumes, how many errors in doctrine 
 may there not be maintained ; how many bad 
 practical principles palliated, justified, or dis- 
 played in seductive exemplification ; how many 
 
 * For example, the works of Bruckcr. 
 
LIVING FOR TAniOliTALITV. 13 
 
 good ones endeavored to be supplanted ; how 
 miny absurdities and vain fancies set forth in 
 plausible colors ! Is it not as if the intellect of 
 man had been surrendered to be the sport of 
 some malicious and powerful spiritual agent, 
 who could delight in playing it through all 
 traverses, freaks, and mazes of fantastic move- 
 ment, mocking at its self-importance, diverted 
 at its follies, gratified most of all when it is per- 
 verted to the greatest mischief; and malig- 
 nantly providing for the perpetuation of the 
 effect of all this, through subsequent time, by 
 instigating the ablest of the minds thus sported 
 with, to keep their own perversions in opera- 
 tion on posterity through the instrumentality of 
 their books ? If such a thing might be as the 
 intervention of the agency of a better and more 
 potent intelligence, to cause, by one instantan- 
 eous action on all those books, the obliteration 
 of all that is fallacious, pernicious, or useless in 
 them, what millions of pages would be blanched 
 in our crowded libraries ! 
 
 The man who is supposed to be thoughtfully 
 passing his eye over a large array of books, 
 may make such reflections, without being guilty 
 of arrogance. It is not supposed that he can 
 be intimately acquainted with the contents of 
 the majority of them, or that he is assuming to 
 
14 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 be the infallible judge how much might justly 
 be doomed to oblivion in those which he has 
 examined. But being apprized, in a general 
 way, of the qualities of a large proportion of 
 them ; having learned something of the charac- 
 ters of many of the authors: and to what class, 
 or party, or school, to what faith, or in some 
 instances no faith, to what prevailing system of 
 an age or nation, or to what singularities of 
 opinion they were severally addicted, he neces- 
 sarily knows that the multifarious collection ' 
 contains innumerable things at variance with 
 intellectual and moral rectitude. He knows, 
 that if each author had one living disciple 
 wholly obsequious to him, and if all these dis- 
 ciples could be brought together, there would 
 be a company in which almost every error of 
 the human understanding, and every wrong dis- 
 position and practice, would have an advocate. 
 Such ideas, arising in the exterior survey of 
 the vvorks of so many intellects, may yield some 
 instruction to a reflective man. While the 
 swarm of notions and conceits of fancy comes 
 upon his mental sight thick and tumultuous, 
 and as lawlessly capricious in their shapes as 
 the imps figured as thronging about the ma- 
 gician, he may reflect what the reason of man, 
 which should have been the light and glory of 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 15 
 
 such a creature of God, has become, and be- 
 come capable of producing, through some <iis- 
 astrous lapse into disorder. He may consider 
 what the rational facidty has been, and would 
 ever be, in the absence of divine revelation ; 
 and also what necessity there is for a correc- 
 tive and regulating influence from above on the 
 mind, if, n at ivit list audi ng that revelation, it can 
 have wantoned into so many aberrations. It 
 will be shown him under what ill omens he will 
 apply himself to the study of the most impor- 
 tant subjects without sim|)licity in his motives, 
 and a conscientious care of the procedure of his 
 judgment. He may think, and deplore to 
 think, what mischief may have sprung from the 
 intellectual obliquity, the pride, the turpitude, 
 the irreligion, or even the carelessness, of one 
 mind of great powers of seduction. He may 
 be mortified to see how fully can hnk itself to 
 intelligence, as if to expose it to scorn, while 
 he reflects how many men of superior intellect, 
 who therefore ought not to have been the dupes 
 of a phantasm, have been impelled to the most 
 intense exertion by the passion to be renowned 
 in this world, where they were to stay so short 
 a time — to be renowned in it, even after they 
 should have passed away beyond the possible 
 enjoyment of their fame : and a sentiment of 
 
16 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 mingled contempt and pity will arise at the 
 failure of these anticipations in the case of 
 some of them, whose earnest, indefatigable la- 
 bors have barely preserved their names from 
 oblivion. While his look is arrested by the 
 works of some of those of highest distinction, 
 splendid in literary achievement and lasting 
 fame, it may be suggested to his thoughts, with 
 respect to one of them, and another, whether, 
 on a Christian estimate of things, he would be 
 deliberately willing, were it possible, to shine ' 
 in all that splendor in his own and a succeed- 
 ing age, on the condition of being just of the 
 same spirit toward God and the best interests 
 of mankind, as those celebrated men. While 
 pronouncing their names, and looking at these 
 volumes, in which they have left a representa- 
 tive existence on earth, left the form and ac- 
 tion of their minds embodied in a more durable 
 vehicle than their once animated clay, how 
 striking to think, that somewhere, and in some 
 certain condition, they themselves are existing 
 still ; existing as really and personally as when 
 they were revolving the thoughts and writing 
 the sentences which fill these books ! From 
 the character of these images of their minds, 
 these enshrined statues, created to receive 
 homage for tffera after they are gone, what 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 17 
 
 may be deemed of their present condition else- 
 where ? The musing of our contemplatist may 
 at times be led to solemn conjectures at the 
 award which these great intellectual performers 
 have found in another state ; and he follows 
 some of them with a very dark surmise. 
 
 His eye may rest on a book inscribed with a 
 name far less " proudly eminent" in the honors 
 of genius and talent ; but a work which has 
 unquestionably done very great, and almost un- 
 mixed good. And he may be reminded of that 
 sovereignty of the Governor of the world in his 
 selection and apj)ointment, by which, minds 
 greatly below the highest order of natural abil- 
 ity may be rendered pre-eminent in usefulness. 
 It may also occur to him, diverting for an in- 
 stant from all the ranks and varieties of those 
 who have aspired to be teachers of mankind, to 
 reflect how many humble spirits, that never at- 
 tempted any of the thousand speculations, nor 
 revelled in the literary luxuries, contained in 
 these books, have nevertheless passed worthily 
 and happily through the world, into a region 
 where it may be the appointed result and re- 
 ward of fervent piety, in inferior faculties, to 
 overtake, by one mighty bound, the intellectual 
 magnitude of those who had previously been 
 much more powerful minds. And finally, 
 3 
 
18 LIVLNG FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 when he has such evidence that this world has 
 been always a tenebrious and ilhisory scene, 
 for the search after truth by a spiritual nature 
 itself weak, perverted, and obscured, he may 
 surely feel some aspirations awakened toward 
 that otiier world, where the objects of intelli- 
 gence will be unveiled, to faculties rectified 
 and nobly enlarged for their contemplation. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE HAPPINESS OR MIS- 
 ERY OF SERIOUS OR INCONSIDERATE READERS. 
 
 Thus far, the instructive reflections which 
 even the mere exterior of an accumulation of 
 books may suggest, are supposed to occur in 
 the way of thinking of the authors. But the 
 same books may also excite some interesting 
 ideas, through their less obvious, but not alto- 
 gether fanciful, association with the persons 
 who may have been their readers or possessors. 
 The mind of a thoughtful looker over a range 
 of volumes, of many dales, and a considerable 
 proportion of them old, will sometimes be led 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 19 
 
 into a train of conjectural questions : — Who 
 were they that, in various times and places, 
 have had these in their possession ? Perhaps 
 many hands have turned over the leaves, many 
 eyes have passed along the lines. With what 
 measure of intelligence, and of approval or dis- 
 sent, did those persons respectively follow the 
 train of thoughts ? How many of them were 
 honestly intent on hecoming wise by what they 
 read ? How many sincere prayers were ad- 
 dressed by them to the Eternal Wisdom during 
 the perusal ? How many have been determin- 
 ed, in their judgment or their actions, by these 
 books? What emotions, temptations, or pain- 
 ful occurrences, may have interrupted the read- 
 ing of this book, or of that? In how many in- 
 stances may a reader have shut one of them, to 
 indulge in a folly or a vice, of which that very 
 book had warned him to beware? Some of 
 these volumes are histories of the life and death 
 of good men ; how many readers may have pro- 
 ceeded along the narrative, approving and ad- 
 miring ; and, envying tiie happy termination of 
 the course, have said, " Let me die the death 
 of the righteous," and nevertheless have pur- 
 sued a contrary course, and come to a melan- 
 choly end ? May not some one of these books 
 be the last that some one jierson lived to read? 
 
20 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 Many that have perused them are dead ; each 
 made an exit in a manner and with circum- 
 stances of its own ; wliat were the manner and 
 circumstances in each instance ? It was a 
 most solemn event to that person ; hut how ig- 
 norant concerning it am I, who now perhaps 
 have my eye on the book which he read the 
 last ! What a power of association, what an 
 element of intense significance, would invest 
 some of these volumes, if I could have a mo- 
 mentary vision of the last scene of a number of 
 the most remarkable of their former readers ! 
 / Of that, the books can tell me nothing ; but let 
 i me endeavor to bring the fact, that persons 
 /'have read them and died, to bear with a salu- 
 I'^tary influence on my own mind while I am 
 \ reading any of them. Let me cherish that 
 temper of spirit which is sensible of intimations 
 of what is departed, remaining and mingling 
 with what is present, and can thus perceive 
 some monitory glimpses of even the unknown 
 dead. What multiplied traces of them, on 
 some of these books, are perceptible to the im- 
 agination, which beholds successive countenan- 
 ces long since " changed and sent away," bent 
 in attention over the pages! And the minds 
 which looked from within through those coun- 
 tenances, conversing with the thoughts of other 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 21 
 
 minds perhaf)s long withdrawn, even at that 
 tjine, from among men — what and where are 
 they now ? Among iUe representations of the 
 ohjecls of faith, contained in any of these works, 
 what pasisages may they be which approach the 
 nearest to a description of that condition of ex- 
 istence lo which those readers were transferred, 
 after closing the book for the Jast time ? If I 
 could have a sign, when I liappen to fall on 
 some page dark with portentous images of the 
 evil which awaits the impious and wicked, that 
 a certain former reader carelessly and presump- 
 tuously dared the experiment, and has found a 
 reality corresponding to those menaces, but 
 more tremendous: or a sign, when I am read- 
 ing sentences animated with noble and delight- 
 ful ideas of the felicity which awaits the faith- 
 ful, that a certain preceding reader, (and sup- 
 pose him signified by name,) is now in the ex- 
 perience of a fact, true in principle to these 
 anticipations, but far transcending in degree, 
 how p>owerfully should I be arrested at those 
 passages, as if 1 were come to an opening from 
 the invisible world, through which I could hear 
 " sounds of lamentation and wo," or songs of 
 triumph, from the identical beings who, at a 
 certain hour in the past, looked on these lines ! 
 There is actually a person telling me, that he 
 3» 
 
22 l.IVING FOR IMllOKTALrTY. 
 
 looked once on these very descriptions, these 
 emblems, which are at this moment before my 
 sight, and that he, the same person, is, at this 
 time that 1 am looking at them, overwhelmed 
 or enraptured by the reality. But I, that am 
 come after him, to read these representations 
 now, do I solemnly consider that I am myself 
 making my election of the yet unseen good or 
 evil, and that very soon I shall leave the books 
 in my turn, and arrive at the consequence ? 
 
 Sometimes the conjectural reference to the 
 former possessors and readers of books, seems 
 to be rendered a little less vague, by our find- 
 ing at the beginning of an old volume, one or 
 more names written, in such characters, and 
 perhaps accompanied with such dates, that we 
 are assured those persons must long since have 
 done with all books. The name is generally 
 all we can know of him who inserted it ; but 
 we can thus fix on an individual as actually 
 having possessed this volume ; and perhaps 
 there are here and there certain marks which 
 should indicate an attentive perusal. What 
 manner of person was he? What did he 
 think of the sentiments, the passages, which I 
 see that he particularly noticed ? If there be 
 opinions here which I cannot admit, did he be- 
 lieve them ? If there be counsels here which I 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 23 
 
 deem most just and important, did they effec- 
 tually persuade him ? Was his conscience, at 
 some of these passages, disturbed or calm ? In 
 what manner did he converse on the subjects 
 with his associates ? What were the most 
 marked features of his character, what the 
 most considerable circumstances of his life, in 
 what spirit and expectations did he approach 
 and reach its close ? The book is perhaps such 
 a one as he could not read, without being co- 
 gently admonished that he was going to his 
 great account ; he went to that account, how 
 did he meet and pass through it? This is no 
 vain reverie. He, the man who bore and wrote 
 this name, did go, at a particular time, though 
 unrecorded, to surrender himself to his Judge. 
 But I, who handle the book that was his, and 
 observe his name, and am thus directing my 
 thoughts into the dark after the man, I also am 
 in progress toward the same tribunal, when it 
 will be proved, to my joy or sorrow, whether I 
 have learned true wisdom from my books, and 
 from my reflections on those who have posses- 
 sed and read them before. 
 
 But it may be, that the observer's eye fixes 
 on a volume whicii instantly recalls to his 
 mind a person whom he well knew; a revered 
 parent perhaps, or a valued friend, who is re- 
 
24 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 collected to have approved and inculcated the 
 principles of llie book, or perhaps to have given 
 it to the person who is now looking at it, as a 
 token of regard, or an inoffensive expedient for 
 drawing attention to an important subject. He 
 may have the image of that relative or friend, 
 as in the employment of reading that volume, or 
 in the act of presenting it to him. This may 
 awaken a train of remembrances leading away 
 from any relation to the book, and possibly of 
 salutary tendency ; but also, such an associa- 
 tion with the book may have an effect, whenr 
 ever he shall consult it, as if it were the de- 
 parted friend, still more than the author, that 
 uttered the sentiments. The author spoke to 
 any one indifferently, to no one in particular ; 
 but the sentiments seem to be specially applied 
 to we, when they come in this connexion with 
 the memory of one who was my friend. Thus 
 he would have spoken to me, thus, in effect, he 
 does speak to me, while I think of him as hav- 
 ing read the book, and regarded it as partic- 
 ularly adapted to me ; or seem to behold him, 
 as when reading it in my hearing, and some- 
 times looking off from the page to make a gen- 
 tle enforcement of the instruction. He would 
 have been happy to anticipate that, whenever I 
 might look into it, my remembrance of him 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 25 
 
 would infuse a more touching significance, a 
 more applying principal, into its important 
 sentiments ; thus retainincr him, thouch invisi- 
 bly, and without his actual presence, in the ex- 
 ercise of a bene^cent influence. But indeed I 
 can, at some moments, indulge my mind to 
 imagine something more than this mere ideal 
 intervention to reinforce the impression of truth 
 upon me ; insomuch that, supposing it were 
 permitted to receive intimations from those who 
 have left the world, it will seem to me possible 
 that I might, when looking into some parts of 
 that book, in a solitary hour of night, perceive 
 myself to be once more the object of his atten- 
 tion, signified by a mysterious whisper from no 
 visible form ; or by a momentary preternatural 
 luminousness pervading the lines, to intimate 
 that a friendly intelligence, that does not forget 
 me, would still and again enforce on my con- 
 science the dictates of piety and wisdom which 
 I am reading. And shall it be as nothing to 
 me, for effectual impression, that both my mem- 
 ory recalls the friend as when living, in aid of 
 these instructions, and that my imagination, 
 without any discord with my reason, appre- 
 hends him, when now under a mightier mani- 
 festation of truth, as still animated with a spirit 
 which would, if that were consistent with the 
 
26 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 laws of the higher economy, convey to me yet 
 again the same testimony and injunctions? Is 
 all influential relation dissolved by the with- 
 drawment from mortal intercourse ; so that let 
 my friends die, and I am as loose from their 
 hold upon me as if they had ceased to exist, or 
 even never had existed. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF AN INFIDEL CONTRASTED WITH 
 THOSE OF A BELIEVER IN CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 In the slight exemplification of the manner 
 in which the sight of an assemblafje of books 
 may awaken serious reflection, by recalling to 
 our view the persons who are imagined or 
 known to have possessed or read them, we are 
 supposing the association confined to the par- 
 ticular volumes on the spot. Any attempt at 
 widening the scope of reflection, toward the 
 whole extent of all the editions and copies of 
 each book, would confuse and dissipate the 
 meditation in a multiplicity inconceivable and 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITV. 27 
 
 endless. Think of any one book that has been 
 long and extensively circulated ; — suppose Dod- 
 dridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the 
 Soul. The immense number of impressions 
 have engaged the attention, less or more, of 
 hundreds of thousands of persons. Each of 
 those copies has had its own particular destina- 
 tion, and many of them have, doubtless, been 
 attended with remarkable circumstances, thougii 
 to us unknown. If some of the most memora- 
 ble could be brought to our knowledge, in con- 
 nexion with the individual and still existinar 
 copies which they befell, what an interest would 
 be attached to those books, bearing such me- 
 morials of the past ! Imagine by what a strange 
 diversity of persons, as to disposition, mental 
 endowment, conduct, age ; in what a variety of 
 situations, under how many peculiar conjunc- 
 tures of occurrence ; and with what dissimilar 
 impressions and results, the book has been pe- 
 rused or noticed ! It is striking, to a degree 
 even awful, to reflect what such a book must 
 have done ; to how many it may have imparted 
 thoughts new and aflfecting, and which noth- 
 ing could expel ; how many it may have been 
 made the means of leading into a happy life, 
 and to a happy end ; how many it has arrested, 
 disturbed, and warned, whom it could not per- 
 
28 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 suade ; of how many it has aggravated the re- 
 sponsibility, more than influenced the conduct. 
 So great a number and diversity of accountable 
 beings, unknown, for the most part, to one 
 another, scattered here and there, over more 
 than one country, and over a space of time ap- 
 proaching to a century, have come into some 
 certain relation to this one book ! Among 
 them, many a single instance might, if the case 
 could be fully brought to our knowledge, ex- 
 hibit a remarkable history of a train of thought 
 and emotion, of determination and practical re- 
 sult; possibly including singular incidents, op- 
 portune and auspicious, or of disastrous influ- 
 ence. And who shall presume to cast any 
 thought toward an assignable duration of the 
 effect resulting to so many persons, from their 
 attention having fallen on this work, when that 
 effect is gone, or is to go, into the interests of 
 eternity 1 Let the idea of its unknown prolon- 
 gation be combined with that of the number of 
 beings experiencing it, and it would be no ex- 
 travagant fantasy, to believe, that the pious au- 
 thor may find it one of the amazements of his 
 future enlarging knowledge, to have a manifes- 
 tation in some way unfolding itself to him, of 
 even a minor part of the consequences of what 
 he wrote. 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 29 
 
 It is but a diminutive portion of what must 
 have happened to the book, in relation to its 
 former readers, and transient inspectors, that 
 we can brincj wjtliin the view of our mind, with 
 any distinctness of apprehension. But it is 
 easy to represent to ourselves a few instances 
 of so general a description, that it must be cer- 
 tain there have been many such. And we may 
 perliaps be indulged in tlie hope of inducing 
 somewhat of a serious and favorable predispo- 
 sition in some one or other, whose attention 
 may hereafter be drawn to tlie work, by em- 
 ploying the remainder of this Essay in specify- 
 ing a few exemplifications of the manner of re- 
 ception and attention, which the book may be 
 imagined to have found, witii persons of several 
 supposed characters of mind ; and suggesting, 
 in each case, some of the appropriate consider- 
 ations. We would wish to fall on such ques- 
 tions, persuasives, or expostulations, as might 
 have been pertinently addressed, and possibly 
 in some instances were addressed to the per- 
 sons so described, bv a sensible relisiious 
 friend ; whose character we may be allowed to 
 personate, in representing how his office might 
 be performed. 
 
 It would be of little use to expatiate on the 
 supposition, (not an improbable one,) that such 
 4 
 
30 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 a book may casually, at one time or another, 
 have fallen under the transient notice of a de- 
 cided unbeliever in revealed religion ; an un- 
 believer, therefore, in effect, in religion alto- 
 gether. We can easily conceive the supercil- 
 ious air, and the note of scorn, at the sight of 
 what cost the excellent author so much earnest 
 labor, with the most pure and benevolent in- 
 tention, and has occupied so many thousand 
 hours of the grave attention of readers ; what 
 has been the means of awakening many 
 thoughtless spirits to seriousness ; what has, 
 in not a few instances, opportunely occurred 
 to decide a mind wavering in the most momen- 
 tous of all practical questions ; and what has 
 by many been gratefully recollected, near the 
 close of life, as having greatly contributed to 
 the cause of its closing well. He could not be 
 unapprized of such things belonging to its his- 
 tory, unless we suppose him more ignorant of 
 the extension and effect of what may be called 
 our religious literature, than is quite consistent 
 with the character of a well-informed man, 
 which we may be sure he claimed. But we 
 may believe, that the knowledge of this did not 
 at all modify the tone of contempt, in which he 
 repeated the title of the book, to give it a new 
 turn : " Rise and Progress of — delusion, super- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY, 31 
 
 stition, nonsonse ! Rise of an isrnis fatnus, 
 from fernienliiior ignorance, to orlimiTier and 
 ran»l)le in a progress to exiinciion and noth- 
 ing!" And he was elated in the self-compla- 
 cency of being so mucli more wise and fortu- 
 nate than all such writers, and all their believ- 
 ing readers. 
 
 But icas it a self-complacency quite entire 
 and unmingled, or which could be maintained 
 in steady uniform tenor, through the diversity 
 of circumstances, and the varying moods of the 
 mind ? Let us suppose that, soon after his in- 
 dulging this contempt of the book and its sub- 
 ject, some grievous occurrence, or even the 
 mere unexplained fluctuation of feeling, re- 
 duced him for a while to a somewhat reflective 
 or gloomy temper ; and that just then one of 
 his own fraternity turned in to see him, and 
 happened to catch sight of the same book, — if 
 indeed it be an admissible supposition, that it 
 could have been suffered to remain any where 
 near him. We may imagine the visitant to re- 
 gard the book with the same disposition as his 
 friend ; and let it be supposed, that he went 
 into a strain of congratulation something like 
 the following : What a noble privilege of eleva- 
 tion we enjoy over those silly dupes of impos- 
 ture and superstition, the authors of these 
 
32 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 works, (such of them as really think as they 
 write,) and their disciples, who gravely and 
 honestly believe what they read. To think 
 what a mighty concern these simple people are 
 always making of their souls, talking of their 
 spiritual nature, their immortal principle, their 
 infinite value ! Whereas we, by virtue of rea- 
 son disenchanted and illuminated, could tell 
 them that this soul, so fondly idolized, so lu- 
 dicrously extolled, is nothing more than an ac- 
 cident of corporeal organization, and necessa- 
 rily perishes with the material frame — with the 
 body, as they call it in contradistinction, and 
 speak of it in terms of comparative contempt, 
 as if they possessed something incomparably 
 more noble. They are for ever, too, referring 
 to a Supreme Being, with whom they fancy 
 they are standing in some mysterious and sub- 
 lime relation. They talk of his favor, his prov- 
 idence, his grace ; and actually imagine they 
 can hold a direct communication with him, in- 
 dulging a fantastic notion of some special good 
 to be obtained from him by importunate solici- 
 tation. What an inflation of vanity ! to fancy 
 that such a being (if there be such a one) must 
 be continually thinking of fAem; that he should 
 care about their dispositions and deportment 
 toward him ; and that they can attract his 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 33 
 
 special attention, and constrain him to give pe- 
 culiar tokens of his favor. And what a wretch- 
 ed bondage of superstition, to be, at every step, 
 in every practical question, with respect to 
 every inclination and emotion, and with the 
 sacrifice of whatever their own immediate in- 
 terest may plead, under the constraint of an 
 imaginary obligation to consult the will of some 
 invisible and unknown authority ! Our privi- 
 lege of sounder reason reduces and restores us 
 to ourselves, from all such visionary amplitude 
 of relations; and exempts us from all the vain 
 solicitudes and distractions of an unremitting 
 endeavor to live in consistency with them. It 
 is enough that we hold our transient being un- 
 der certain laws of nature, fixed in the system 
 of the world, to which it is more easy to sub- 
 mit, than to the will and continual interference 
 of a formal and foreign authority. Our subjec- 
 tion to these laws we cannot help, but are hap- 
 py to take our destiny under it, with the free 
 allowance to follow our own inclinations as far 
 as we can. If there be an Almighty Power, 
 we may well believe he has other afTairs to 
 mind, than that of interfering with us while we 
 are minding our own. 
 
 It is true, these deluded people are persuaded 
 that he has made an express communication to 
 4* 
 
34 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 men, declaring the relations in which they 
 stand, and announcing his will. And indeed 
 it mast be confessed to be quite miraculous, 
 that so many things concur to make a sem- 
 blance of evidence that there has been such a 
 communication. But let us not trouble our- 
 selves about the matter : it is absurd to im- 
 agine there can have been any such anomaly in 
 the course of things, any such arbitrary substi- 
 tution for the dictates of our reason : our li- 
 cense of acting as we desire, would be surren- 
 dered in believing it ; and we will not be- 
 lieve it. 
 
 To crown the whole set of delusions which 
 these people call their faith, they are actually 
 persuaded that there remains for men a con- 
 scious existence after death ; a perpetual ex- 
 istence, they say, in a state bearing a retribu- 
 tive relation to what they shall have been in 
 this life. And they are elated with the hope, 
 and vehemently stimulated to exertions for the 
 attainment of an eternal felicity. A magnifi- 
 cent dream, certainly, for those who can lay 
 their sober senses aside, to admit the illusion. 
 Nor can we deny, that, through the medium of 
 such a notion, these enthusiasts have a view of 
 death vastly different from ours, and feel an 
 augmented interest in their existence, as they 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 35 
 
 approach near the end of what they are calling 
 its introductory stage. To hear them talk, one 
 would think they had received messengers or 
 visions from another world, to inform them of a 
 splendid allotment and reception already pre- 
 pared for them there, and of friends impatient 
 for their arrival. And it is a notorious fact, 
 that, on the strength of such a presumption, 
 great numbers of the devotees to this faith have 
 resigned their life with exultation, not a few of 
 them under tortures inflicted for their fidelity 
 to this their superstition. Well, the delusion 
 and the existence broke up together. And for 
 the present race of pious fools, let them expend 
 their cares, their passions, their life, their very 
 souls, upon their adored fallacy ; while we, on 
 a higher ground, can be amused to see them 
 led on by a phantom, which ere long will mock 
 at their sudden fall, one after another, into 
 nothing. We envy them not the ambitious as- 
 pirings which cheat them out of the enjoyment 
 of this world, never, assuredly, to repay them 
 in another. If we lose any thing worth calling 
 pleasure, in being destitute of that hope which 
 flatters them with images of a happy futurity, 
 we have an ample compensation in the riddance 
 of that fear which visits even some of them, in 
 their gloomy moments, with alarms of a miser- 
 
36 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 able one. Besides, a happiness of such a na- 
 ture as they dream of, would be little congenial 
 with the inclinations which actuate us, and 
 which we have neither power nor desire to 
 alter. Our wisdom is, to make the most that 
 we can, in the indulgence of these inclinations, 
 of the world that we are in. We hope in good 
 fortune, that our life may be long and prosper- 
 ous ; and if any thing of a sombre hue should 
 threaten to come over its latter stages, through 
 infirmities and the evident approach of its ter- 
 mination, we shall have the resource of philoso- 
 phy and fate ; and may find some remaining 
 amusements that will please and divert us to 
 the last. And when, at length, we are forced 
 out of the world and existence, we shall have 
 no consciousness of our loss. How insensible, 
 happily for us, we, or rather the dust that once 
 composed us, will be, while thousands of de- 
 luded creatures will be occupied with such books 
 as the Rise and Progress of Religion in the 
 Soul, and with the gravest earnestness afflicting 
 themselves with a superstitious discipline for 
 the attainment of an imaginary heaven, with 
 the frequent intrusion of the dread of an equally 
 fictitious hell. 
 
 Now, could the supposed speaker, without 
 plainly belying the matter, have made out the 
 
LIVING FOR IMMOUTALITY. 37 
 
 case for congratulation in terms much more 
 gratifying than these? But we may reasonably 
 doubt wliether a strain like tbis, expressed in a 
 confident tone of superior wisdom, but so pal- 
 pably betraying, with inadvertent honesty, the 
 sordid and disconsolate character and adjuncts 
 of the vaunted privilege, would be listened to 
 with complacency, during the depressed mood 
 ofthescorner of the religious book, religious 
 persons, and religion itself. We can imagine 
 him saying. Pray suspend your song of triumph 
 and disdain ; it has to me a raven sound. Are 
 we, then, in the very elation of our pride, in 
 plain fact thus prostrate on the earth ? Must 
 we confess, that we hold our advantage of rea- 
 son disabused, of stronger and freer intelli- 
 gence, at the cost of admitting so humiliating 
 an estimate of our being and destiny? Really, 
 we are in danger of giving these people that we 
 despise, occasion to indulge contempt or pity 
 in their turn. I could almost wish that I were 
 under the same delusion. 
 
 It would have contributed little to recover 
 him from tbis recoil of feeling, if, just about the 
 same time, an intellicrent religious man had 
 fallen into his company, had happened to learn 
 in what manner the serious book and its subject 
 had been disposed of, and had thrown in a few 
 
38 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 of his suggestions, to re-inspirit the shrinking 
 arrogance of irreligion. — I am rather sorry, (we 
 may suppose him to say,) that a book like that, 
 written with the most simple and benevolent 
 desire to do good, by a man who had deeply 
 studied his subject, should have been the ob- 
 ject of a contempt which I should have thought 
 full as justly bestowed on some of those produc- 
 tions, of frivolous quality, or dishonest inten- 
 tion, which I believe are the objects of your 
 favor. However, a work which has engaged 
 the most serious attention, and powerfully ope- 
 rated on the character of multitudes, and will 
 do so of multitudes more, can afford to incur 
 your passing glance and expressions of disdain. 
 And the subject of the book, religion, can 
 afford it too — that religion, which has sustained 
 the severest examination, and secured the con- 
 viction, and animated the virtues in life, and 
 hopes in death, of many of the strongest, no- 
 blest minds, who have bequeathed to its glory 
 all that was illustrious in humanity. So hon- 
 ored, what can it lose, think you, of its dignity 
 and venerableness, by the refusal of your hom- 
 age? It can, I repeat, afford that you should 
 be its rejecters and contemners, and should 
 lend all the credit of wisdom and virtues such 
 as vours, to the cause which is so fierce to ex- 
 
LIV[NG FOR IMMUUTALITY. 39 
 
 plode it. With perfect impunity to its honors, 
 religion can have you going about proclaiming, 
 that you have received a light by which it is 
 exposed as a delusion and imposture, — a light 
 of the same kind, (if so grave a topic would al- 
 low so ludicrous an allusion,) as that which 
 was obtained where the satirist reports to have 
 seen the wise men at work to extract sunbeams 
 from cucumbers. But when, in this s^elf-assur- 
 ance of rectified understandinor, you are indul^- 
 ing your contempt of religion, does the thought 
 never strike you, what a very curious chance it 
 was that this brighter illunjinaliun, under which 
 the old imposture vanishes, should fall exactly 
 on you 7 For, was your mind of an order, or 
 in a disposition, the most likely to attract the 
 latent element of truth to combine with it, and 
 disperse the fog? Was yours the spirit to con- 
 template, with comprehensive survey, in pure 
 serenity of temper, the theory of religion? If 
 from moral causes you needed and wished that 
 religion should not be true, was that the secu- 
 rity for impartial inquiry, ai]d undeceptive con- 
 clusions? If you experienced what you thought 
 injustice, (or I will suppose it really such,) from 
 persons of religious profession, and your re- 
 sentment against them grew into re-action 
 against religion itself, was that the proper 
 
40 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 mood for examining its authority ? If you had 
 yourself made pretensions to piety, but, forfeit- 
 ing your Ciiristian character by misconduct, 
 were censured or disowned by a religious com- 
 munity with which you had been connected, 
 and then called on infidelity to assist your re- 
 venge, was that a benign conjunction under 
 which to commence your new intellectual en- 
 terprise ? And if, to decide your hesitation, 
 expel your yet lingering fears, and promote 
 your progress, you betook yourself to the com- 
 panionship, through the attraction of their irre- 
 ligion, of men whom you knew to be unprinci- 
 pled and profligate, and perhaps ignorant too, 
 was that the school in which you can feel pride 
 to have been learners? Such things recollect- 
 ed, however, may be quite compatible with self- 
 complacency, in persons of your principles ; 
 but you may believe that religion will suffer no 
 default of its honors, by not having such as 
 you for adherents. 
 
 I allow that you have your advantages in its 
 rejection. Indeed, why should I deny this 
 very thing to be one — that you can think of 
 such a mode of deliverance from it,. and not be 
 stifled with shame? You have the still greater 
 privilege of being set loose from the constraint 
 of many obligations and prohibitions. You 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 41 
 
 ** are a cliartered (.NtZ/'-chartered) libertine," 
 and can give yourself freely away to pleasures, 
 amusements, or ambition. And you boast that 
 you have the high advantage of being intent on 
 realities^ while the captives of religion, you say, 
 dragged or threatened oflf from a thousand at- 
 tractive objects and opportunities, are consum- 
 ing their spirits and life on mere ideas, on the 
 imaginations of some intangible, unseen, and 
 reversionary good. But suspend, for a mo- 
 ment, your boast about this reality of the mate- 
 rials of your happiness. Say, whether it be not 
 a fact that you are in no otlier possession of 
 your favorite objects, than merely in idea, dur- 
 ing the far greater proportion of your time. 
 Your thinking of them, wishing for them, im- 
 agining how delightful would be the possession 
 of them; contriving how to attain them, feel- 
 ing how wretched and impatient you are in not 
 having them yet, fretting at the obstacles, ra- 
 ging at your disappointments ; again eagerly 
 anticipating them, as now nearly within your 
 reach, being mortified at a new delay, thrown 
 in this chilling moment on the reflection what 
 the pursuit has already cost you, and what it 
 may cost you still ; alarmed, perhaps, at what 
 the very success may cost you, in its possible 
 or certain consequences — what kind of reality 
 5 
 
42 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 is all this? Nearly the same as that of a fair 
 garden of fruit to a man looking at it or at- 
 tempting it across a treacherous moat, a steep 
 slippery bank, and an almost impenetrable 
 fence of thorns. Is this the reality which will 
 bear you out in your exultation over those who 
 are wasting, you say, their energy on objects 
 which exist to them only in idea ? 
 
 But you do sometimes obtain your objects, 
 and can say you now possess the thing itself; 
 which the devotees to religion, you say, never 
 can, since that which they are peculiarly to as- 
 pire after, is confessedly something not belong- 
 ing to this world. And you account it the 
 special advantage which you have over them, 
 that it is through the rejection of the truth and 
 authority of religion that you are empowered to 
 make a larger appropriation of what the real 
 world contains and offers. Had I remained 
 servile to that domination, you will exclaim, 
 what an interdict should I have met, whichever 
 way I turned 1 This object I must not have 
 put forth my hand toward at all ; this other I 
 must beware of following beyond a certain 
 length. If, thus enclosed round with a restric- 
 tion from so many desirable things, I could 
 soar aloft, that were well. I had leave to 
 mount up through the sky, to walk ideally in a 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 43 
 
 paradise, holdifig converse willi angels, and fix- 
 ing, by anlicipalion, on a mansion in new Je- 
 rusalem. But I was for no such elherial alti- 
 tudes, and impalpable superfine felicities. I 
 wanted the substantial good of this earth ; 
 wanted some things of a kind, others in a meas- 
 ure, and many on terms, which religion for- 
 bade. I have disowned the usurped authority, 
 have burst through the restricting circle ; and 
 now, see me here in possession or command of 
 things which need no faith to give them sub- 
 stance, and which are not the less agreeable 
 for being a little seasoned with what your spir- 
 itual people call sin. 
 
 But these realities, when actually possessed, 
 do they never let in upon you a mortifying con- 
 viction, that you have been nevertheless the 
 dupe of illusion ? As a purveyor to your sen- 
 ses, or as a gay spirit, or as a pertinacious as- 
 pirer to some pitch of pre-eminence above your 
 fellow mortals in wealth, or display, or power, 
 you may, in some instance and measure, have 
 succeeded in convertincr the mere images into 
 the very substance ; exulting, I may suppose, 
 to think how much you owed in this achieve- 
 ment to your emancipation from all religious 
 belief; but recollect, how long did the posses- 
 sion preclude all painful sense of deficiency ? 
 
44 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 Did no invadinor dissatisfaction turn your mind 
 to bitterness of reflection on the previous en- 
 chantment of imagination, which had so long 
 prompted you on with assurances of complete 
 delight? Might you never have been over- 
 heard to murmur, " What inanity in all these 
 things !" and to curse your destiny, as secretly 
 but an accomplice of religion, to punish and 
 plague you for its rejection ? 
 
 Thus, then, if you bring to account the en- 
 tire quantity of the busy occupation of your 
 faculties about that which you pursue as your 
 supreme good, and observe that the proportion 
 of perhaps nineteen parts in twenty of all this 
 is not the interest of actual possession, and 
 then make the deduction for the feelings of dis- 
 appointment and chagrin incident to the pos- 
 session obtained, (and which throw you back 
 again into reflection and imagination, that is, 
 into mere ideas, and those of a most irksome 
 kind,) it will appear that you have an extreme- 
 ly narrow ground for your boast of being a man 
 for the realities of good, in contrast with the 
 believer in religion, who, you say, subsists on 
 mere images, gleams, and shadows. Would 
 your experience thus far warrant you to com- 
 pute, that all the moments of full satisfaction 
 added together would amount to as much as 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 46 
 
 one year in a long life? A splendid triumph, 
 for a man who is blessing his superior reason 
 and good fortune, that he is not cheated out of 
 what is real and substantial, to waste his being 
 on the phantasms of Christian faith ! So much 
 it is that you can gain by availing yourself, 
 to the utmost extent that you dare under the 
 limitations imposed by the constitution of na- 
 ture and society, of the license conferred by 
 your infidelity. And so high is your advan- 
 tage over those who, while indulging the hope 
 of an immortal happiness, can make more than 
 you can of this world itself, under the sanction 
 of Christian principles in their selection and 
 pursuit. 
 
 But, while forced to admit so humiliating a 
 representation, you will, perhaps, in the re- 
 action of pride, say, that your being in posses- 
 session of truths is itself alone a noble emi- 
 nence that you have attained above the subjects 
 of an imposture, the deluded believers in a 
 revelation. Your spirit has risen up in its 
 strength, and defied the antiquated superstition 
 to lay you under its spell ; it has gone forth in 
 its might, and exterminated from your field of 
 view the crowd of spectres and chimeras. But 
 you must allow me to doubt, whether you re- 
 ally feel in this matter all the confident assur- 
 5* 
 
46 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 ance which you pretend. I suspect there are 
 times when you dare not look out over that 
 field, for fear of seeing the portentous shapes 
 there again ; and even that they sometimes 
 come close to present a ghastly visage to you 
 through the very windows of your strong hold. 
 I have observed in men of your class, that they 
 often appear to regard the arrayed evidences of 
 revealed religion, not with the simple aversion 
 which may be felt for error and deception, but 
 with that kind of repugnance which betrays a 
 recognition of adverse power. Say what pen- 
 ance you would not rather undergo, or of 
 which of your most favorite pleasures (even of 
 those in which you verify your privilege of 
 exemption from the authority of religion) you 
 would not rather deny yourself, for a consider- 
 able time, than be obliged to study deliberately, 
 in sober retirement, a few of the works most 
 distinguished for strength of argument in de- 
 fence of Christianity ; though this, it might be 
 presumed, should be a fair expedient for con- 
 firming your satisfaction ? I know that some 
 of your class, (and perhaps your conscience 
 testifies as to one,) have no resource for es- 
 caping from their disquietude, but in diverting 
 their attention completely from the subject, by 
 throwing themselves into the whirl of amuse- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 47 
 
 ment, into business, conviviality, or intemper- 
 ance. But it is not the hero's part to affect to 
 be occupied with necessary employments, or to 
 hide himself in a throng of masks and revellers, 
 when he descries the antagonist approaching 
 to challenge him. 
 
 But it may happen, that the subject, in its 
 menacing aspect, will present itself to you under 
 circumstances which preclude this escape. 
 And you cannot be unapprized what a striking 
 difference, in spirit and deportment, we have 
 sometimes had an occasion of observing, be- 
 tween one of your tribe, and a man whose mor- / 
 al strength was in the belief and power of re- 
 vealed religion, when overtaken by some ca- 
 lamity, or attacked by a dangerous distemper. 
 Nor can you have failed to hear of examples in 
 which that difference has become quite prodig- 
 ious, when the parties have sensibly approach- 
 ed their last hour. You cannot have forgotten 
 instances among those now lost to your frater- 
 nity, of some whose closing life presented a 
 direful scene ; who could maintain no longer 
 either their disbelief or their courage ; who 
 poured forth execrations on their principles, 
 and on those from whom they had learned 
 them ; called out on pious relatives, absent or 
 even dead ; implored the intercession of Chris- 
 tian friends, as if, ridiculed so often before for 
 
48 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 their faith, they were now believed to have 
 power to propitiate insuUed Heaven ; adjured 
 and dismayed their associates in irreligion, if 
 any of them had friendship or hardiiiood enough 
 to stay by them, in impotence to console them ; 
 were agonized with horror indescribable ; and 
 expired, as it were, in an explosion of the last 
 feeble life by the energy of despair. "What se- 
 curity can you have that yours shall not be such 
 an exit? For some that have ended so, were 
 exceeded by none in the previous ostentation 
 of confidence in both their principles an?, their 
 bravery. It would betray a contemptibly reck- 
 less temper of mind, if you can answer, in a 
 tone of indifference, that if such is to be the 
 event, it will only be the addition of one hide- 
 ous circumstance more, to the sufferings natu- 
 rally incident to death ; the concurrence of a 
 disorder of the mind with that which may be 
 destroying the body ; the ultimate working out, 
 perhaps, of a little superstition, which may 
 have lain latent from the infection of early 
 false instruction. Allow the case to be put so, 
 looking no further ; and even then, if you were 
 a thoughtful man, and apt, as comports with 
 that character, to look forward, the anticipation 
 of so frightful a scene as possible, would be 
 enough to quench many a lively sparkle, to im- 
 bitter many an unhallowed gratification, to re- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 49 
 
 press many an irreligious dariiicj, to dispirit 
 many an ambitious project, to mortify many a 
 proud sentiment. But there is anoilier thing 
 not to be overlooked, which may warn you to 
 take care how you dispose of tiie matter so 
 lightly. In most of these fearful death-scenes 
 of infidelity, the unhappy mortal has been rack- 
 ed to a confession, that he had never dealt hon- 
 estly with the subject and with his sou! ; that 
 he had never fairly examined the question ; 
 that he had not been sincerely intent on know- 
 ing the truth ; that he had repelled intrusive 
 lights, and suppressed remonstrant emotions ; 
 that he had suffered his pride, his vanity, or 
 his sensuality, to determine his rejection of the 
 authority of revelation. So that conviction 
 rushed upon them not in the simple character 
 of truth, but also in that of vengeance. It had 
 retreated before their defiance of both its more 
 imperative and more gentle attempts during 
 their progress, only to await them in retributive 
 pctwer at the end. See that you do not forget 
 that circumstance of their experience, when 
 you are disposed to make so light of the ac- 
 knowledged possibility that your end may be 
 like theirs. 
 
 But I am unwilling, while looking on your 
 countenance, to foresee you as exhibiting, one 
 day, another such spectacle ; and will limit my 
 
50 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 imagination to represent you as in a situation 
 less appalling, but very mournful. Let it be 
 supposed that you live on, constant to your 
 present system, and considerably successful in 
 your endeavor to make the best of the world on 
 your own plan, till you attain an advanced age, 
 a period when accumulating signs, and even 
 the mere reckoning of time, must warn you, 
 that you have nearly had your day. Let it be 
 supposed, that you then happen to be in com- 
 pany with a man of equal age, who has been 
 governed from his youth by a firm and cordial 
 faith in that which you have rejected. Imagine 
 that you hear him, induced, perhaps, by the 
 hope of conveying an influence to the minds of 
 some youthful friends, adverting briefly and un- 
 ostentatiously to his past life, as a religious 
 course ; recalling what he regards as the most 
 sensible commencement of the decisive opera- 
 tion of religion on his mind, when the convic- 
 tion of its truth and necessity became his reign- 
 ing principle ; then, noting some of the effects 
 which have evinced, in their succession, the 
 progress of its efficacy, both in the power of its 
 dominion, and in the creation of happiness; 
 and, finally, expressing with emphasis his de- 
 light and gratitude, that now, in the cold eve- 
 ning shade of life, this heavenly light shines 
 still brighter, as intermingling with those rays 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 5 1 
 
 which are comincr fast from a nobler state of 
 existr'nce, confidently expected to be attained 
 through death. Imagine yourself silently hear- 
 ing all this, expressed in perfect collectedness 
 of mind, in language clear of all wildness and 
 inflation, and observing the aspect of the speak- 
 er, uniformly dignified, whether grave or ani- 
 mated ; and imagine, too, your own feelings at 
 being placed in such a comparison. Can you 
 conceive it possible for you to maintain the 
 sense of a privileged condition, or not to sink 
 in the profoundest mortification? What will 
 you not be compelled to think of a system, 
 which throws an aggravation of gloom on a pe- 
 riod which the order of nature deprives of 
 pleasures, and besets with multiplying grievan- 
 ces, thus brought in contrast wiili that other 
 system which warms, and invigorates, and en- 
 riches, the close of a worn-out beinor, with 
 something far better than all the vivacity and 
 prospects of youth? What will you think of a 
 system, which forbids thougliifulness to old age, 
 and throws it, for relief, under the pressure of 
 its infirmities, upon the resources of business, 
 which it has no longer strength to transact, or 
 of amusements incongruous with the character 
 of that season, and in which the antiquated per- 
 former appears like a man dancing and jesting 
 to the place of execution. You shrink at the 
 
52 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 idea of being placed in such a contrast. 1 do 
 not say to yon, Embrace, then, without delay, 
 the faith which would place you, in that last 
 stage, on the superior ground ; for you will tell 
 me, that your belief is not in your own power; 
 meaning, wlien you say so, {is not this the 
 plain truth ?) that you have no disposition to a 
 serious, diligent, and really impartial re-exam- 
 ination of the subject ; but, at least, I am au- 
 thorized to advise you to be henceforth a little 
 reserved in your ridicule of books describing 
 the rine and progress of religion in the soul. 
 If tempted at any time to its unrestrained in- 
 dulgence, just look forward to the predicament 
 in which you may one day feel that you stand, 
 in comparison with a man who has experienced 
 that process, (whether the operating cause be a 
 beguilement or a truth,) and is joyfully await- 
 ing its consummation. And I venture to pre- 
 dict to you, that, in such a case, your utmost 
 efforts to re-assure yourself that the man so 
 contrasted with you is but a deluded fool, will 
 do little to disperse the gloom settling and 
 thickening on your spirit. 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EXPOSTULATIONS TO YOUNG PERSONS FROM THE 
 CONSIPERATION OF THE liMMORTALITY OF THE 
 SOUL, ITS RELATION TO ETERNITY, AND ITS 
 ACCOUNTABLENESS TO GOD. 
 
 But now let us turn our thoughts to conjec- 
 ture the kind of reception which this good 
 book may have found with persons of several 
 classes greatly different from the example we 
 have been supposing. We may assume, as a 
 certainty, that it has caught the notice of very 
 many persons indisposed to religion, but enter- 
 taining no doubt that we have a revelation to 
 declare its nature, and to command our solemn 
 attention to it. The circumstance did actually 
 ha[)pen, that the words of the title were taken 
 in by the eyes, and that some thoughts were 
 involuntarily raised in the mind. Persons now 
 living may recollect this having occurred to 
 them as an incident which did not please them. 
 We can imagine it to have happened to more 
 than a few gay young persons, of minds not un- 
 cultivated, not left entirely uninstructed respect- 
 ing the highest concern of their existence, but 
 quite averse to think of so serious a subject. 
 6 
 
64 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 A pious relative might have placed the book, 
 by a delicate device, in the way to seize the 
 eye ; or it might be taken up when casually 
 lying on the table of an acquaintance. And 
 we are too sure that we are but picturing an 
 example of many that there have been of the 
 same kind, when we imagine we see the young 
 person hastily laying down the volume, with a 
 look of disappointment and distaste, expressive 
 of the sentiment, That is no book for me. To 
 glance over the title-page was quite disgust 
 enough for so frivolous a spirit to endure. In 
 another instance, we seem to see the young 
 person inspecting the book for a few moments, 
 in an unfixed, heedless manner, plainly indi- 
 cating it would soon be closed ; presently 
 throwing it aside, as worth no further atten- 
 tion ; then fortunately detecting, where it had 
 slidden in among belter books, some very silly 
 romance ; seizing it as a discovered treasure, 
 and unable to lay it down till a whole volume 
 was run through. Another case may be con- 
 ceived, in which our book, of the Rise and 
 Proorress of Relioion, has chanced to be within 
 sight, in the interval of animated, restless ex- 
 pectation of meeting some gay associates, or of 
 going to some amusement ; when it detained 
 the youthful thought no longer than to suggest 
 a pleasurable idea of the difference, between 
 
LIVING FOR IM.MoUTALITV. 65 
 
 the dull and funereal business of religion, and 
 such exhiliration as that in prospect. It might 
 be no excess of fancy to suppose another case ; 
 tliat tliis same book obtruded itself on the 
 sight of a young person in an hour of disgust 
 and fallen spirits, after suffering some disap- 
 pointment and mortification amidst those gay 
 delights which had been so exultingly anticipa- 
 ted ; and that it excited no better feeling than 
 this, Let me not have another odious thing just 
 now to plague me ; I am vexed and out of pa- 
 tience enough. For one more instance : a 
 young person of this light spirit might be on 
 terms of acquaintance with one of a more 
 thoughtful character, and might happen to find 
 the latter reading, or apparently having just 
 read, the book, in question ; and might betray 
 some marks of sincere wonder at so strange a 
 taste; internally saying. If /were ever to have 
 been caught employed with such a book, I 
 would have hastily put it out of sight, at the 
 entrance of a pleasant visitor. — No one will 
 doubt, that there may have been facts answer- 
 ing to these conjectural descrij)tions ; and we 
 might, with equal probability, diversify the rep- 
 resentation into many other particular forms. 
 Where and what are the persons now, who 
 were the reality of what we are thus supposing ? 
 But will there not be yet many more human 
 
66 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 beings to be added to the account of such 
 examples ? 
 
 It may be that, in some of these instances, 
 the young person did not escaj)e receiving 
 some hints of admonition, from a friend, whose 
 benevolent viijilance had perceived this refusal 
 to converse an hour, or a moment, with a book 
 soliciting attention to the most important sub- 
 ject. Whatever might actually be , the strain of 
 such an admonition, we may think that friend, 
 — not laying any stress on the bare circum- 
 stance of dislike to this particular book, but 
 taking occasion from it, as indicating aversion 
 to religion itself, — would have deserved to be 
 listened to in usincr such terms as the follow- 
 ing : — Will you be persuaded, is it possible to 
 induce you, to make a short effort with your 
 mind, to constrain it to serious reflection ? 
 Would you have me, or not, to regard you as 
 capable of thinking and judging, as in posses- 
 sion of a share of good sense, and as admitting 
 that there really may be a just call for its exer- 
 cise, even at your age ? You are not willing to 
 be accounted the reverse of this. Well then, 
 prove that you can think, and that you can per- 
 ceive when there is a subject before you which 
 has peculiar claims that you should think. 
 And is there any thing which can urge a more 
 peremptory claim than the questions, What 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 67 
 
 manner of being it is that you possess, to what 
 end you possess it, and how it sliould be occu- 
 pied in order to the attainment of that end ? Is 
 your own nature a thing of such little account 
 with you, that you are quite satisfied with the 
 mere fact of its being an existence; and that 
 you have no doubt whether you may give away 
 all its faculties, without care or accountableness, 
 to whatever pleases them and invites them into 
 action ? Does every consciousness you feel of 
 what there is in that nature, a^ree to vour livinor 
 as a gay bird of llie spring; as a creature made 
 for the play and revel of mere life and sensa- 
 tion ; or at most, fitted for some little schemes 
 of transient interest, confined to a span of ex- 
 istence, and liable to be broken up and given 
 to the winds at any hour ? Is this all you find 
 in the endowments of your nature ; is this the 
 amount of its capabilities and dignity ? No, 
 you would say ; you believe that you possess, 
 for you have been taught that all of us do, a 
 spirit, of noble quality and important destina- 
 tion. Do you indeed believe any such thing ? 
 what, while I see the whole vigor of your being, 
 animal and mental, at some times dissipated 
 in levity, spirited off in effusions of mirth ; or 
 at other times consumed in earnest protracted 
 assiduity to accomplish some contrivance for 
 personal display, some little feat of competition, 
 6* 
 
58 LIVIXG FOR IMMORTALITy. 
 
 or some scheme, (a grand one, you think,) of 
 creating for yourself a happiness for a few years, 
 from materials which every day must diminish, 
 and any day may annihilate ? Is it impossible 
 to you, or do you not think it worth while, to 
 reflect whether so living be consistent with so 
 believincf ? Does it never strike you as a thing 
 to wonder at, that there can he a creature so 
 strangely formed as to admit these things to 
 coalesce, and that you happen to be that crea- 
 ture ? Or do you escape all sense of inconsis- 
 tency and shame through mere thoughtlessness, 
 which prevents your being reminded of that 
 truth which you say you believe? 
 
 Mere thoughtlessness ! and how is that pos- 
 sible ? How is it possible to believe what you 
 affirm that you do, and not often feel a solemn 
 influence coming over your mind, and banish- 
 ing, for at least a little while, all trifling moods 
 and interests ? Assured that you are, as to the 
 most essential property of your nature, a spiri- 
 tual and immortal being, think, account to your- 
 self, how it can be that such a conviction, fixed 
 and abiding within you, should abide there 
 alone, disconnected from all the activity of 
 your ideas and feelings, having, so to speak, 
 nothing to do there ; while in all reason it 
 ought to be combined there with many most 
 important ideas with which it has an insepara- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 59 
 
 ble relation, and which it ought to keep there 
 in active force. 
 
 For, consider what you are admitting, when 
 you say you believe you are such a being. 
 You are admitting that yon stand in a solemn 
 relation to t!ie Almighty ; that your present 
 state ot' existence is but a brief introduction to 
 another; that your body is but a frame accom- 
 modated to retain your superior and more essen- 
 tial being for a short period in this world ; that 
 its interests, therefore, and all interests which 
 respect this world exclusively, are infinitely in- 
 significant in comparison with those of the 
 spirit ; that you are every moment in progress 
 toward the experience of a happiness or misery 
 of incalculable magnitude ; and that this short 
 and uncertain life is the season for maturing 
 the dispositions and habits to a state which will 
 consign you to the one or the other, if the de- 
 clarations of God be true. Can you attempt to 
 deny, or pretend to doubt, that all this is in- 
 cluded in the fact of your possessing a rational 
 spirit, destined to endless existence, and most 
 justly required to obey the commands of your 
 Creator ? But if this be true, you cannot exer- 
 cise your judgment, and listen to your con- 
 science, for one hour, without plainly seeing 
 what is your highest interest and most imperi- 
 ous duty. Nothing in the world, nothing in all 
 
60 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 truth, can press upon you with mightier evi- 
 dence, than that your grand business in life is 
 the care of the soul, that shall live for ever. 
 Confess to your reason and conscience that the 
 case is so, and that any assertion to the con- 
 trary would instantly strike you as false and 
 foolish. 
 
 You do confess it. But what, then, should 
 be thought of you, what should you think of 
 yourself, if you will then act as if the very con- 
 trary were the truth. Suppose that, (in such a 
 spontaneous escape of thoughts in words, as 
 sometimes happens to a person musing in the 
 security of solitude,) the prevailing disposition 
 of your mind were to utter itself involuntarily 
 and audibly, and in expressions like these : — 
 " My supreme concern is as clear to my view 
 as the sun ; there is no denying it, there is no 
 question about it; it is, to apply myself earn- 
 estly to secure the welfare, here and hereafter, 
 of my immortal spirit ; but I feel no such care; 
 I dislike and evade all admonitions which would 
 enforce it on me; I yield myself to this dispo- 
 sition, without restraint, or remorse, or fear, for 
 the present, and shall do so — I do not know, 
 nor much care, how long." Supposing this 
 uttered in an almost unconscious passing of 
 your mind into your voice, would you not be 
 awaked and startled into recollection at sounds 
 
LIVING FOR liMMURTALlTY. 61 
 
 of such import, and be almost surprised into 
 the question — "Who was saying that? Was 
 it I ? How strangely it would have sounded if 
 any one hr.d been within hearing." If any one 
 had been wiiiiin hearing! And could you for- 
 get that there is One who perfectly knows that 
 internal disposition, of which expressions like 
 these might be the genuine utterance? 
 
 While you are intent on being happy, surely 
 it should be one thing regarded as indispensa- 
 ble to your being truly so, that you can ap- 
 prove yourself; that, whatever imperfections 
 there are for you to condemn and regret, you 
 yet can feel a deliberate complacency, a com- 
 placency of reflection and conscience, in the 
 prevailing habit and purpose of your mind. 
 What is it worth, that a variety of outward 
 things should please you, if you are haunted 
 with a sense that vour ovvn internal condition, 
 the condition of your very self, is something to 
 grieve you ? Now I wish it were possible to 
 induce you to turn upon yourself one resolute, 
 patient, impartial insj)ection. Look, with the 
 intentness with which you would gaze on an 
 emblematical picture, in whose signs you could 
 believe your destiny to be figured out, look on 
 the being, formed for an endless futurity, but 
 engrossed by the interests of a day ; appointed, 
 after a short term, to pass into another world, 
 
62 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 but repelling all thoughts and monitions of it; 
 capable of an elevated and perpetual felicity, 
 but sunlc and expended in transient pleasures 
 and precarious hopes ; invited to communion 
 with the Father of Spirits, but turning au'ay^ 
 with indifference or aversion, to seek all that it 
 wants, for affection and assistance, in the inter- 
 course of associates who are equally careless of 
 his favor ; and summoned to adopt a wise and 
 constant discipline, to make sure of its true 
 welfare, in time and eternity, but surrendering 
 the formation of its character, and the direction 
 of its course, to whatever may happen to obtain 
 the ascendency, to casual impressions, ill chosen 
 friends, or the prevailing spirit and habits of 
 the world. Behold this spectacle as being your- 
 self, your very self Do you turn from the 
 sight, and say you do not like to look at it T 
 What, then, you confess that, amidst all the 
 youthful vivacity in which you spring to catch 
 the passing pleasures, and call them happiness, 
 one primary requisite to true happiness is want- 
 ing. You cannot be happy while you dare not 
 be sometimes still, and abstracted from the stir, 
 lest you should hear a complaining and accusing 
 voice from within, telling you there is something 
 fatally wrong there. 
 
 You are reluctant to give any attention to re- 
 lifjion, and to look into a book which describes 
 
LIVIiNG FOR IMMORTALITY. 63 
 
 its Rise and Progress in the Soul. Why should 
 you, you think, have the brightness of your 
 early season overcast with the gloom of such a 
 subject? — preferring, in effect, that this shade, 
 if it must come sometime, should wait to bring 
 additional darkness over a period when the 
 sunshine of youth will be past, and life be de- 
 clining into that season which you never think 
 of but as of itself a dreary one. How cruel the 
 gay youth can resolve to be to the aged person 
 that he expects to become ! I will repel, he 
 practically says, all invasion of a grave subject 
 from this my season of animation and delight, 
 at the cost of having it to come, as a melan- 
 choly cloud, over a lime when I shall, by the 
 course of nature, have outlived the best part of 
 my life. So that my season of energy and en- 
 joyment be kept clear, never mind what 1 may 
 be accumulating to bring sadness on my spirit 
 in that stage where I shall need every consola- 
 tion. — Surely the consciousness of acting on 
 such a plan, should itself be enough to damp 
 the gayest of your vivacities. 
 
 You are unwilling to yield to the claims of 
 religion. But will you not take the trouble to 
 consider what religion is, and in what manner 
 it concerns you? It is not a thing which your 
 Creator imposes on you by a mere arbitrary ap- 
 pointment ; as if he would exact, simply in as- 
 
64 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 sertion of his supremacy, and in requirement of 
 homage from his creature, soniethiiig which is 
 in itself foreign to tlie necessities of your na- 
 ture. By its intrinsic quality it so corresj)onds 
 to your nature, tiiat the possession of it is vital, 
 and its rejection mortal, to your felicity, even 
 independently of its being made obligatory by 
 the positive injunction of the Almighty. From 
 the spiritual principle of your soul, there is an 
 absolute necessity that it be raised into com- 
 placent communication with its Divine Origi- 
 nal ; it is constituted to need this communica- 
 tion, now and forever ; and if it be not so 
 exalted, it is degraded and prostrated to objects 
 which cannot, by their very nature, adequately 
 meet, and fill, and bless, its faculties : to be 
 elevated to this communication, is religion. 
 You do not, I presume, wish that your spirit 
 were a being destined to final extinction a few 
 years hence ; but would you have it be immor- 
 tal, and yet estranged from what must naturally 
 concern it as immortal ? If really immortal, 
 it is under a plain necessity of its nature to 
 give a devoted regard to its interests of here- 
 after, of eternity : to do so, is religion. Again, 
 your soul is tainted with corruption ; it is in- 
 fected with sin ; you are sometimes conscious 
 that it is; and this is a malady which may 
 cling to it, and inhere in it, after all bodily 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. G5 
 
 diseases have ceased in death. But then there 
 is tlie phiiiiest necessity that some grand opera- 
 tion be eftected in it to remove this fatal dis- 
 order ; that its condition be renovated and puri- 
 fied ; that the action of its powers be deter- 
 mined to the right ends; that its guilt be 
 pardoned ; that, in one word, it be redeemed : 
 now this great process in the soul is religion. 
 Thus you may see that there can be no grosser 
 misapprehension than that which has sometimes 
 prompted the impious wish, that God had not 
 made religion necessary by enjoining it ; for 
 that, but for this extrinsic necessity, this neces- 
 sity of mere obligation to his authority, religion 
 might have been neglected, and the neglecter 
 have fared never the worse. 
 
 But you plead that, whatever may be your 
 conviction, and ought to be your feeling, you 
 cannot help regarding religion as an austere 
 and gloomy concern ; that you have at times 
 wished the case otherwise ; but so it is, that 
 the subject still presents the same repulsive as- 
 pect, whenever it comes by unpleasant surprise, 
 or in the returns of public or private religious 
 instruction, on your attention. You will take 
 every precaution to avoid being left alone with 
 a person, however estimable and kind, from 
 whom you are apprehensive of receiving any 
 / 
 
66 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 admonition respecting it. Perhaps evert the 
 sight of a book, familiarly known to be (as this 
 of the Rise and Progress of Religion) an earn- 
 est pointed inculcation of it, is like glancing at 
 the picture of a skeleton. The subject might 
 become quite a grievance of your iife,-^even 
 this subject, which represents to you how to be 
 happy forever ! — did not your health, your elas- 
 tic spirits, your companions, your diversions, 
 defend you so well against its frequent or pro- 
 longed annoyance. But sometimes, perhaps, 
 an interval does occur, when it visits you in 
 such a character of authority, that your resist- 
 ance fails for a short time, you are taken at an 
 advantage, and compelled to hear something of 
 its declarations, claims, and remonstrances. 
 And then you murmur, and say, A cruel alter- 
 native ! to yield such submission, or incur 
 such consequences. Is it not hard that I 
 should be required to surrender all the delights 
 which are the privilege of my age, to repress 
 my vivacity, to forsake my gay society, aban- 
 don my amusements, to inflict self-denial on my 
 inclinations at every turn, to deplore all that I 
 am, and all that 1 have been ; to force my at- 
 tention and affections away from this interest- 
 ing world around me, toward another and un- 
 seen world of which I know nothing ; to toil 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 67 
 
 through severe and never-ceasing exercises, 
 called discipline ; to exhaust my ispirits in sol- 
 emn reHeclion ; to live in terror lest every thing 
 I do or enjoy should be sin ; to renounce, and 
 put myself in conflict with, the prevailing hab- 
 its of society ; to be marked as an over-right- 
 eous or melancholy mortal ; to look through a 
 darkened medium at everything in life ; and 
 to go through the world thinking of every step 
 as a progress toward the grave ? 
 
 Now, even were it admitted that all this is a 
 true representation of religion, that all this is 
 its requirements, the friend who is urging it 
 upon you might still maintain his argument. 
 The question, he would say, what cost we 
 should be willing to bear in a process, is to be 
 determined, if wisdom be the judge, by an esti- 
 mate of the result. The greatest temporary 
 evil would be a mild condition of the attain- 
 ment of an eternal good. If religion actually 
 did require all this, but in return assured you 
 of being safe and happy forever, what would 
 your high endowment of reason be worth, in 
 practical application, if you would not resolve 
 on the endurance of such an introduction, rath- 
 er than lose such a sequel ? 
 
 But you well know that such a representa- 
 tion, unqualified, is no just account of the de- 
 
68 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY, 
 
 mands of religion. And beware of allowing 
 yourself in the disingenuousness of exaggera- 
 ting the hardship, in order to extenuate to your 
 conscience, or to vindicate against your friendly 
 admonisher, your neglect of the duty. 
 
 At the same time it is true, and must be un- 
 equivocally avowed, that religion, effectually 
 prosecuted, does involve great labors, a disci- 
 pline often severe, and therefore many painful 
 experiences. It must include much that is 
 mortifying to natural inclinations. How should 
 it be otherwise with a being of a corrupt na- 
 ture, who is to be trained and prepared, and 
 that while under the incessant influences of a 
 corrupt world, for a final state of holiness and 
 felicity? If the natural condition of the mind 
 be uncongenial with what is divine and heaven- 
 ly, its affections unattempered to live and de- 
 light in that element which is the vitality of the 
 happiness of the beings whom, alone and ex- 
 clusively, the revelation from God, and even 
 your own reason, authorize you to conceive of 
 as happy in a superior state, — if there be this 
 alienation and unfitness, (and what is the aver- 
 sion to religion but the proof of it ? or rather, 
 it is the thing itself,) — if the case be so, then 
 the soul is in a condition so dreadfully wrong, 
 that it is not strange the agency for transform- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 69 
 
 ing it should inflict pain in the salutary process. 
 That it should work with some expedients of 
 bitterness, keenness, and fire, is quite in anal- 
 ogy with the operations necessary for subduing 
 the extreme maladies of an inferior order. 
 Perhaps you will say that, as the Divine Power, 
 in the time and in the person of our Lord, an- 
 nihilated the worst diseases of the body by a 
 single act, making the subject perfectly well, in 
 an instant, and without pain, so the Almighty 
 could instantaneously set the moral nature 
 right, causing the spirit to rise up suddenly in 
 the delightful consciousness, that not a particle 
 of evil remains, blessed witii a triumph over the 
 disastrous fall, and assuming a ground still 
 higher than that which our first progenitor lost. 
 No doubt he could ; but since he has not willed 
 such an economy, the question comes to you, 
 whether you can deliberately judge it better to 
 carry forward a corrupt nature, uncorrected, 
 untransformed, unreclaimed to God, into the 
 future state where it must be miserable, than to 
 undergo whatever severity is indispensable in 
 the ])rocess of the religion which would prepare 
 you for a happy eternity. Reflect, that you are 
 every day practically answering the question. 
 Can it be that you are answering it in the 
 afl[irmative ? Do 1 really see before me the ra- 
 
70 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 tional being who in effect avows, — I cannot, 
 will not, submit to such a discipline, though, 
 in refusing it and resisting it, I renounce an 
 infinite and eternal good, and consign myself 
 to perdition ? 
 
 Religion, it is acknowledged, brings its 
 pains ; just because it comes from heaven to 
 maintain a deadly conflict in the soul, with 
 principles and dispositions which are rebellious 
 against heaven, and destructive to the soul it- 
 self. Nothing can be more thoughtless or un- 
 knowing than the strain in which some have 
 indulged in the recommendation of it, as if it 
 were all facility and enjoyment. You have 
 possibly heard or read graceful periods of des- 
 cant on the subject, representing to young peo- 
 ple especially, that their unsophisticated princi- 
 ples, ^AeiV lively perception of the good and the 
 fair, their generous sentiments, their uncontam- 
 inated affections, are so much in unison with 
 the spirit of piety, that it is a matter of the ut- 
 most ease for them, for such as you, to enter 
 on the happiness of the religious life. Some 
 little obstructions surmounted, one light spring 
 made, and you regain the walks of Eden ! Did 
 you believe it ? If you did, what unaccounta- 
 ble caprice, what pure wantonness of perver- 
 sity, could it be that withheld you ? Or, if you 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY, 71 
 
 were induced to make some short attempt in 
 the way of experiment, did you not wonder 
 how it should happen, by a peculiar untoward- 
 ness in your case, that these youthful qualities, 
 so congenial with piety, and so easy to be re- 
 solved into it, did nevertheless prove obstinately 
 repugnant to the union ? Did you not think. 
 Why, then, this aversion to read the Bible, or 
 to retire for serious meditation and devotional 
 exercise, or to any act of duty to be done sim- 
 ply in obedience to God 1 But, the declama- 
 tion which you had heard was idle rhetoric, or 
 wretched icjnorance. 
 
 It must be acknowledged, also, that much 
 worthier teachers have, from a better cause, 
 sometimes committed an error in underratincr. 
 or keeping nearly out of view, the austerer cha- 
 racteristics of religion, when inculcating it on 
 youth. In their benevolent zeal to persuade, 
 they were desirous of presenting a picture 
 wholly attractive. And perhaps religion was 
 become so decidedly their own chief happiness, 
 that they could, for the time, forget the pains 
 of the transformation through which it had be- 
 come so. They have therefore made a repre- 
 sentation illuminated nearly all over with de- 
 lightful imagts. It is better that you should 
 see the whole truth, and clearly understand 
 
72 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 that the agent which, in a capacity like that of 
 a tutelary spirit, takes in charge a perverted, 
 sinful, tempted being, to be humbled and re- 
 claimed, taught many mortifying lessons, disci- 
 plined through a series of many corrections, 
 reproved, restrained, and incited, and thus con- 
 ducted onward, in advancing preparation for 
 the happiness of another world, tnust be the in- 
 flicter of many pains during the progress of this 
 beneficent guardianship. And it is not, as 
 your aversion and murmurs would imply, the 
 fault of religion that the case is so, but of that 
 depraved nature which religion is designed and 
 indispensable to redeem. 
 
 So much for the darker side. But now, on 
 the other hand, you can surely conceive, as 
 compatible with all this, a great preponderance 
 of happiness in this life. And therefore you 
 ought to take it on your conscience as a re- 
 proach for criminal want of thought, or of hon-r 
 esty, that you will admit no other notion of re^ 
 ligion than that of a gloomy melancholy thing. 
 When you are turning away from it, as a grim 
 and ghostly object, sent to encounter you for 
 no more friendly purpose than to obstruct you, 
 with threatening aspect, at every avenue to the 
 scenes of delight, there ought to arise within 
 your mind a sterner image, to condemn you for 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 73 
 
 wilfully misjudging its character, and the ser- 
 vice it lias to offer you. For you can compre- 
 hend that there is attainable through the effi- 
 cacy of religion, something far better than all 
 you can hope ever to enjoy under the unlial- 
 lowed advantage of rejecting it. Try faithfully 
 whether you cannot understand, that it would 
 be a great felicity to feel that your spirit is 
 changing into conformity to a nobler model, 
 growing into the only right constitution and 
 image to be retained forever ; to feel the evil 
 which infests it is shrinking and subdued under 
 a mightier power ; to regard the best and great- 
 est Being as no longer an appalling object, 
 thought of with reluctance, and a wish that you 
 could be forever out of his si^ht and reach ; 
 but now with emotions of love, and confidence, 
 and hope, with an assurance of his mercy 
 through Jesus Christ, with an experience of 
 real communication with him concerning all 
 your interest!*, and with a consciousness that 
 you are in activity for a Master who will. confer 
 an infinite reward. Think whether it would 
 not be haj)j)y to feel habitually a power, main- 
 taining a sacred control over your passions and 
 your will, and preserving the current of your 
 life unmingled with the world's pollutions. 
 Imagine yourself animated, at the close of each 
 
74 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 year or shorter period, with a fervent gratitude 
 to God, in the consideration what sins and fol- 
 lies he has saved yon from thus much longer. 
 Can you doubt whether that one emotion would 
 really be worth more, to an accountable being, 
 than all the pleasurable feelings which an irre- 
 ligious person can have enjoyed during the 
 whole interval ? 
 
 Place before your mind a scheme of life, in 
 which you. shall see yourself committing to the 
 care and disposal of a beneficent Providence, 
 the course of your life from the beginning, with 
 a constant assurance that Sovereign Wisdom 
 and Goodness will watch over all its movements 
 and events, will conduct you through its per- 
 plexities and perils, will give you just so much 
 temporal good that more would not be for your 
 welfare, and will constrain all things which you 
 are to pass through to co-operate to your ulti- 
 mate happiness. Think also of enjoying the 
 consciousness that you are not throwing the in- 
 estimable spring season of your life away, but 
 expending it so as to enrich every succeeding 
 period, and to ensure a fine setting sun upon 
 the last. Say honestly, whether all this be not 
 something better than any scheme of life which 
 you have indulged your imagination in shaping. 
 Or, if you sometimes surrender yourself to the 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 75 
 
 fascinalions of romance and poetry, glowing 
 over brifrht pictures of felicity in which religion 
 has no place, make the experiment on your 
 mind, in an hour of cooler feeling, whether you 
 dare pronounce that it would be well to forego 
 this happiness of religion, by a preference of 
 that exhibited in these higl.ly colored fictions, 
 on the supposition that they could, for you, be 
 turned into reality. Yes, (f these images could 
 be turned into facts ; but let me hint to you, 
 that the very exhibitors of these delectable fab- 
 rications out of air would scorn your folly in 
 expecting any such realization. They would 
 tell you, deriding your simplicity, that the 
 shows which enchant you so much are the cre- 
 ation of their genius, exerted to a much finer 
 purpose than that of representing an actual or 
 even possible order of things ; that they con- 
 sciously and intentionally abandon the ground 
 on which plain mortality must toil along through 
 ordinary good and evil, to range among imagin- 
 ary element, obsequious to their will. Ludi- 
 crous and juvenile indeed, they would say, 
 must be the crediijity of any one setting out to 
 find somewhere, asJ,a fact, what it requires the 
 utmost of their inventive power but to figure 
 out in fiction. And you may perceive, if you 
 have any sober observation, that no such felic- 
 
?6 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 ity, wrought out of the mere materials of this 
 world, is actually in the possession of any of its 
 inhabitants — its youthful inhabitants, I mean ; 
 for yourselves will readily allow, that those of 
 them who are grown old, and are going to leave 
 it, must have a hopeless task in striving to 
 make it yield them happiness, when it is shak- 
 insf themselves off; shaking them off who have 
 expended their life in idolizing it, and are 
 clinging to it in the forlorn condition of feeling 
 no hope or attraction toward a better. 
 
 You do not deserve to know how to be hap- 
 py, even in this life, if you will not be persuaded 
 to make an honest effort of comparison between 
 any scheme that would promise to make you 
 80 independently of religion, and the felicity 
 which would attend a religious course, com- 
 mencing in youth. 
 
 Do not think to defend yourself by saying, 
 that the representation how happy a youthful 
 spirit might be in a devotement to religion, is 
 greatly exaggerated. Besides that in theory it 
 is evidently in the nature of that great cause, 
 and in the gracious design and promise of Him 
 from whom it descended, that it should confer 
 advantages surpassing all others, jou should be 
 willing to receive testimony as to the fact, from 
 those who have gone effectually into the experi- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 77 
 
 ment. And you know, that they whom you 
 verily believe to have made the most competent 
 trial, are the most decided, though not boastful, 
 in their declarations ; and that the tenor of 
 their deportment proves their sincerity. Ob- 
 serve some of those young persons, (I hope you 
 are not so unfortunate as not to know such,) 
 whom you yourself believe to be most fully 
 under the power of religion ; call them, if you 
 will, its prisoners, its bondmen, its slaves ; some 
 of your gay companions attempt to ridicule them 
 as its fools ; but do you observe whether their 
 piety conduces to their happiness. It is true, 
 they are not happy after the manner in which 
 your lighter friends account of happiness; not 
 happy, if the true signs of that state be a vola- 
 tile spirit, a continual glitter of mirth, a dissipa- 
 tion of mind and time among trifles, a dread of 
 reflection and solitude, an eager pursuit of 
 amusements ; in short, a prevailing thoughtless- 
 ness, the chief suspensions of which are for the 
 study of matters of appearance and fashion, the 
 servile care of faithfully imitating the habits 
 and notions of a class, or perhaps the acquire- 
 ment of accomplishments for show. It must be 
 confessed, they have thoughts too grave, the 
 sense of too weighty an interest, a conscience 
 too solicitous, and purposes too high, to per- 
 8 
 
78 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY'. 
 
 mit them any rivalry with the votaries of such 
 felicity. Certainly they feel a dignity in their 
 vocation, which denies iheni the pleasure of 
 being frivolous. But you vi'ill see them often 
 cheerful, and sometimes very animated. And 
 their animation is of a deeper tone than that of 
 your sportive creatures ; it may have less of an- 
 imal briskness, but there is more soul in it. It 
 is the action and fire of the greater passions,- 
 directed to greater objects. Their emotions 
 are more internal and cordial ; they can be 
 cherished and abide within the heart, with a 
 prolonged, deep, vital glow ; while those which 
 spring in the youthful minds devoid of reflec- 
 tion and religion, seem to give no pleasure but 
 in being thrown off' in volatile spirits at the 
 surface. Did you think that these disciples of 
 relision must renounce the love of pleasure 1 
 Look, then, at their policy for securing it. 
 The most unfortunate calculation for pleasure 
 is to live expressly for it; they live primarily 
 for duty, and pleasure comes as a certain con- 
 sequence. If you have but a cold apprehension 
 of the degree of such pleasure, if you can but 
 faintly conceive how it should be poignant, you 
 can at least understand that it must be genuine. 
 And there is in it what may be called a prin- 
 cipal of accumulation ; it does not vanish in the 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 79 
 
 enjoyment, but, while passing as a sentiment, 
 remains as a reflection, and grows into a store 
 of complacent consciousness, wfiich the mind 
 Tetains as a possession left by what has been 
 possessed. To have had such pleasure is plea- 
 sure, and is so still the more, the more of it 
 is past. Whereas you are aware, if you have 
 been at all observant of the feelings betrayed 
 ■by the youthful children of folly, in the intervals 
 of their delights, (and does nothing in your own 
 experience obtrude the same testimony?) that 
 those delights, when past, are wholly gone, 
 leavincr nothincj to fro into a calm habitual 
 sense of being happy. The pleasure is a blaze 
 which consumes entirely the material on which 
 it is lighted. So that the uncalculating youth, 
 who seized a transient pleasure last week, or 
 yesterday, has no satisfaction from it to-day ; 
 but rather, perhaps, feels fretted with a sense 
 of being cheated, and left in an irksome va- 
 cancy, from which he has no relief but in re- 
 covering his eagerness to pursue another, 
 which is in the same manner to pass entirely 
 away. And observe, this is the description of 
 the unenviable kind of felicity of the less crim- 
 inal class of the young persons destitute of re- 
 ligion ; it represents the condition of those who 
 surrender their spirits and life to vain and tri- 
 
80 LlVIiNG FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 fling interests, as distinguished from the grosser 
 evil which we denominate vice. To insist that 
 religion is better than that, as productive of 
 happiness in this life, would seem but an im- 
 pertinent pleading in its favor. 
 
 Now be, for once, a thoughtful and serious 
 being, willing to apprehend the contrast be- 
 tween all this and the state of a young person 
 who feels a profound invariable conviction that 
 he has made the right choice ; who finds that 
 his grand purpose will bear the severest exer- 
 cise of his judgment, and pleases him the most 
 when he judges the most rigorously ; who feels 
 an elation of spirit in vowing an eternal fidelity 
 to his object ; who beholds it undiminished in 
 excellence, if there come a season of gloom 
 over his other interests and prospects, when it 
 proves to be not a thing of mere splendid col- 
 ors, which vanish in a deepening shade, but 
 of intrinsic lustre, a luminary which shines 
 through, and shines the brighter for, the dark- 
 ness. Not that this youth makes any preten- 
 sion to be a stoic philosopher, serenely inde- 
 pendent of the temporal good and evil attend- 
 ing or awaiting his progress into life, with no 
 warm affections to the things in the scene 
 around him, to be painfully mortified when ad- 
 verse events and influences frustrate his hopes 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 81 
 
 and projects. But his advantage over those of 
 his coevals who have no better than such inter- 
 ests, is, that he has enshrined his best aflections 
 in that one tiling which does not partake of 
 mortality and tiiis world's uncertainty, and 
 therefore but evinces its worthiness the more 
 under the failure of every thing else that can 
 fail. It is, like Him who is its author and 
 guardian, '* the same yesterday, to-day, and for 
 ever." The pious youth, then, is not aban- 
 doned, for his chief enjoyment, to an endless 
 fluctuation, alternating between delight and 
 disgust, eager to seize, and wondering that the 
 possession turns so soon to nothing ; all the 
 while neglecting, or fearful to reflect, whether 
 the whole plan be not essentially wrong ; and 
 thus fulfilling the decree, that ** to him that 
 trusteth in vanity, vanity shall be the recom- 
 pense." 
 
 Be assured there are young persons who can 
 testify that this is their own experience of the 
 happiness of religion, in so considerable a de- 
 gree as to inspire an earnest wish to become 
 more completely possessed by its power, from 
 the conviction that then they should be much 
 happier still. And now do not let your mind 
 evade the question, whether they would not be 
 right in the feeling, that they would not for all 
 8^ 
 
82 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 the world be in the condition of those who 
 never think of religion but as the enemy of 
 youthful happiness. Some of them can well 
 remember when they were themselves in that 
 condition ; and they would at any time prefer 
 instant death to the calamity of relapsing into 
 it. No wonder, then, if you perceive them 
 holding extremely light the opinion of those, 
 too many of their own age, who can look on 
 them with a propensity to ridicule, or an affec- 
 tation of pity. 
 
 And, tell me, what do you think of such 
 judges ? I conjecture you may have been under 
 no small influence of the opinions of some rath- 
 er like them, and would have deemed it a sad 
 misfortune to be discountenanced in their com- 
 munity, or excluded from it by their aversion. 
 But at what rate do you really estimate their 
 judgment? If they were to tell you, plainly, 
 that it is needless and unseasonable in youth to 
 consider deeply of the best use of life, with ref- 
 erence to both its continuance and conclusion ; 
 to begin the expending of your time with a 
 careful estimate of its value ; to feel the impor- 
 tance ofyotu inmiortal nature, and be solicitous 
 for its welfare ; to seek, as the highest good, 
 the favor of the Almighty ; in short, to begin 
 well, that you may go on well, and end well, — 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 83 
 
 if they were expressly to tell you so, as their 
 opinion, what would you think their opinion 
 worth ? And should you not be ashamed of 
 whatever it was in your own mind that could 
 give that opinion any weight with you? Tiiink 
 how it should be possible for you to feel, for a 
 moment, any thing but contempt or pity for 
 their very understanding. But if they did not 
 tell you so, and could not deny that the con- 
 trary is true, what should you account of their 
 conscience, their practical principle ? Or, if 
 they never reflected enough to have any opinion 
 at all of the matter, what should you deem of 
 tliem altogether, as authorities and examples ? 
 Perhaps your plea would be, that they are 
 nevertheless, full of vivacity, pleasant and joy- 
 ous ; and that you must confess this captivates 
 you so, that you have not thought of any such 
 grave affair as that of thus taking account of 
 them. But, while you plead so, you know how 
 flimsy is the consistence of this joyous mood of 
 theirs, and by what means you could instantly 
 break it up. It is like that thin slime of varie- 
 gated hues which you sometimes see spread on 
 the surface of polluted water, and which you 
 can disperse into fragments by throwing in a 
 twig or stone. When they are at the highest 
 pitch of their spirits, and apparently " shut up 
 
84 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 in measureless content," you have but just to 
 mention the doom we are all under to die; to 
 name some young person of their acquaintance 
 who lately died, perhaps in great distress and 
 alarm for having been thoucrhtless like them : 
 or to make an allusion to the final account, — 
 '* For all these things God will bring thee into 
 judgment ;" — you have but to do this, and you 
 will quench, for the time, all their animation, 
 and will see what awkward efforts they will 
 have to make for its recovery. But, then, when 
 you would plead. Why should you not be al- 
 lowed to have, free and unalloyed, the pleasure 
 of your youth with and like so many of your 
 age, and be innocently happy though without 
 religion — does not your conscience smite you 
 at the reflection, that you are coveting the par- 
 ticipation of a happiness which, in its liveliest 
 hour, ten words, or five, would suffice to dash ; 
 and those words no other than such as every 
 young person should often hear, and with a se- 
 rious thought of their import? 
 
 There is but one topic more on which I will 
 expostulate with you. Perhaps you will say 
 that your neglect of religion is only deferring 
 it ; that you are sensible it is a concern which 
 you must attend to sometime, and that you are 
 fully resolved to do so in maturer or advanced 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 85 
 
 life. And are you saying this with the images 
 before your mind of one, and another, and still 
 another, within the circle of your knowledge, 
 whom you have seen cut off in youth ? Go, 
 stand by their graves and repeat it there ; for 
 there is folly in it, if you could not on those 
 spots repeat it with undisturbed assurance. 
 Say, over those dead forms, now out of sight, 
 but which you can so well, in memory, recall, 
 such as you saw them, alert and blooming, and 
 smiling, say there deliberately, that you know 
 not why you should not be quite at your ease 
 in delaying to some future distant time your 
 application to that, without which you believe 
 it to be a fearful thing to pass out of life. It is 
 possible that some one of them, in approaching 
 the last hour, expressed or conveyed to you an 
 earnest admonition on this subject, conjuring 
 you, in the name of a friend dying in youth, to 
 beware of the guilt and hazard of delay. If so, 
 go to the grave of that one especially, and there 
 pronounce, that an impertinence was uttered at 
 a season when every sentence ought to be the 
 voice of wisdom. Say, " I am wiser in this 
 carelessness of my spirit, than thou wast in the 
 very solemnity of death." Why should you 
 shrink at the idea of doing this ? And if you 
 dare not do it, what verdict are you admitting, 
 
86 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY 
 
 by implication, as the just one to be pronounced 
 on your conduct ? 
 
 But perhaps you are ready to reply, that this 
 is pushing the argument beyond its real 
 strength ; for that I seem to be assuming it as 
 probable that your life will terminate in youth ; 
 whereas, judging from a collective account of 
 the actual duration of lives, I must know this is 
 not the probability. Just so, no doubt, in ref- 
 erence to themselves, thought they whom you 
 have seen vanish in their early day. And a 
 few examples, or even one, of the treacherous- 
 ness of the calculation, should suffice to warn 
 you not to hazard any thing of great moment 
 on so menacing an uncertainty. For, in all 
 reason, when an infinitely important interest is 
 depending, a mere possibility that your allot- 
 ment may prove to be like theirs, is to be held 
 of far greater weight on the one side, than the 
 alleged probability of the contrary is on the 
 other. The possibility of dying unprepared, 
 takes all the value from even the highest proba- 
 bility that there will be prolonged time to pre- 
 pare : plainly because there is no proportion 
 between the fearfulness of such a hazard and 
 the precariousness of such a dependence. So 
 that one day of the certain hazard may be safe- 
 ly asserted to be a greater thing against you, 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 87 
 
 than whole imaginary years, promised yon by 
 the probability, ought to be accounted of value 
 for you. 
 
 In minor concerns, there may be purposes 
 not improperly formed by a healthy young per- 
 son, which, though he could efTcct them now, 
 he may defer upon a calculation of protracted 
 life; because the degree of probability that his 
 life will be protracted may be equal to any de- 
 gree of importance or urgency that there is in 
 the design ; so that he may be content to refer 
 and trust it to that degree of probability, saying 
 thus, — I reckon on accomplishing such a pur- 
 pose, if my life be prolonged. Or in other 
 words, it is such a design that, in the event of 
 his life not being so prolonged, it will be no se- 
 rious misfortune not to have accomplished it at 
 all. He may be content to hold, as thus de- 
 pendent on the contingency of lengthened life, 
 a purpose, for exam|)le, of visiting some foreign 
 country, of seeking a more agreeable locality to 
 reside in, of acquiring some particular branch 
 of not absolutely indispensable knowledge ; 
 and so of many other things. The object may 
 be of as much less than the highest necessity 
 to him, as he possesses less than a certainty 
 of long surviving his youth. But when you ac- 
 knowledge a concern to be all-important, and 
 
88 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 that a failure in it would be immeasurably dis- 
 astrous, and avow a purpose not to fail in it, 
 and yet can deliberately consign this purpose 
 for its accomplishment to a contingent futurity, 
 confidently reckoning on years which you con- 
 fess may never be yours, as an adequate provis- 
 ion for it in reserve, this is, indeed my young 
 friend it is, the worst insanity, because a crimi- 
 nal one. When the concern is so momentous, 
 and any hazard from delay so formidable, this 
 supposed probability of your life being prolong- 
 ed should not be taken as more worth than it 
 may prove to be worth. And what would it 
 prove to be worth, in the event of your being, 
 in this prime of your life, attacked suddenly by 
 an illness threatening to be mortal ? 
 
 Do not trifle with the matter so wretchedly 
 and wickedly as to say, that, even in that event, 
 perhaps you may have time allowed you for re- 
 deeming what you are now wilfully losing, and 
 for securing the safety of the great interest. 
 Perhaps may ! why, this plainly means that 
 you may not. But even if such an undeserved 
 indulgence should be granted, and your per- 
 verse will be suddenly transformed to make the 
 utmost use of it, are you not at this moment in- 
 fallibly certain that it would be a cause of in- 
 expressible grief to you to have made nothing 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 89 
 
 of life, for its grand purpose, till on the point of 
 breatliincT its last ? Besides lliat. a considera- 
 tion of what is the merely natural effect of the 
 dread of death, might justly throw a painful 
 uncertainty on the genuineness of the principle 
 which excited your solicitudes and efforts. 
 Besides, too, that you are perfectly aware se- 
 vere illness is a situation to the last degree un- 
 adapted to hard exercises of mind. 
 
 If you can give your attention for a while 
 to such representations, and still feel tiiat you 
 dare consign your most momentous interest to 
 take the chance, if I may express it so, of your 
 having time for it long after the season of youth, 
 and can look undisturbed, undismayed, at the 
 uncertainty where you shall be when the time 
 so reckoned upon shall arrive, it seems almost 
 in vain to reason with you any further ; ex- 
 cept entreating you to turn one reflection on 
 the stale of that mind with which it is in vain 
 to reason to such a purpose. Nevertheless, 
 there are considerations which might be en- 
 forced upon you, even though you could have 
 every degree of assurance, short of absolute 
 certainty, that a time far off" in prospect will be 
 yours in this life. — I am supposing, all the 
 while, that you really do intend, or think 
 9 
 
90 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 you intend, to apply yourself in earnest to the 
 suprenrie concern at a more advanced period of 
 your days. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DECEPTIONS AND IMMINENT HAZARDS OF DE- 
 FERRING RELIGION AND THE CARE OF THE SODL 
 TO AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE TIME. 
 
 It has been already enough insisted on, that 
 religion would make you far happier than any 
 thing you can enjoy in the neglect of it, during 
 youth itself, considered as one distinct stage ; 
 but I would now speak of it as connected with 
 the whole of life, allowing you to assume, if 
 you will, that your life is to reach the full term 
 of the age of man. 
 
 You say this protracted life must and shall 
 eventually be religious, confessing that other- 
 wise all would be wrong. What do you mean 
 by its being religious ? If you have any just 
 conception of the nature of religion, while you 
 are resolving that your life shall sometime as- 
 
LIVING FOU IMMORTALITY. 91 
 
 sume that character, you are resolving it shall 
 thou be service to God. But, now, what claims 
 can there be, tliat he will have on any later 
 portion of your life, hut has not on this earlier? 
 Answer your conscience whi/ it should be a 
 duty to serve him them, if it be no duty now. 
 What is to bring you under an obligation from 
 which you are now exempt ? is it that you 
 will then be more dependent on him, or subsist 
 more entirely on his bounty, or be more imme- 
 diately and conf5tantly in his presence ? Or is 
 it that you will have more vigor and liberty for 
 his service ; that you will have less to do with 
 the cares and crrievances of the world ? Or is 
 it that he has, in the communications of his 
 will, less expressly required the services of 
 youth, than of more advanced age ; giving, by 
 implication, a license to youthful spirits to for- 
 get him, and to take favors most largely at his 
 hands, on an unrlerstanding that there is to be 
 no present return ? No ; you readily say that 
 all this is absurdity. You do not deny, that 
 there extends over your whole life one grand 
 obligation of service to God ; only, you have 
 your own purposes to serve, and he must wait ! 
 lie has given you, for cultivation, a small tract 
 of life, of time, on which you might raise pre- 
 cious things for offerings to him ; when you 
 
92 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 have exhausted its best faculties of production 
 to gratify yourself, you will resign to him what 
 it may be made to yield when reduced to the 
 condition of sterility and weeds. But suppos- 
 ing you should become truly religious in the 
 latter part of life, you can even now understand, 
 that the very emphasis and intensity of the con- 
 victions of that new state of mind will be to 
 feel how absolute was the duty, and how sub- 
 lime would have been the happiness, of de- 
 voting every stage of life to the service of God. 
 What, then, will be the reflections with which 
 conscience will sting you, for having expended 
 the most animated part of it on the principle, 
 that what would be gained to him, would be 
 lost to you 1 
 
 Again, when you are making to yourself 
 these promises, that you certainly will some- 
 time, in a yet distant part of life, apply yourself 
 seriously to religion, you must mean, that you 
 will make it an earnest concern that your spirit, 
 by that time advanced far toward the conclu- 
 sion of its sojourn on earth, may attain a pre- 
 pared state for removing to a superior and per- 
 manent scene of existence. This is what you 
 mean, is it not ? But then how can it be, that 
 you are not struck with a sense of something 
 flagrantly absurd, in a plan of excluding from 
 
LIVIXli FOR I.MMOIITALITV. 93 
 
 all but the latter portion of life, an affair stand- 
 ing related to so rniglity a consequence 1 Think 
 of that existence durini{ endless ages, an exist- 
 once to commence in a condition, determined 
 for happiness or misery, by the state of mind 
 which shall have been formed in this introduc- 
 tory period. And is this the single case in 
 which all rules oi' jtrojjortioii may, without ab- 
 surdity, and with impunity, be set aside ? You 
 intend, I will suppose, to apply as much as a 
 few years, somewhere yonder in the decline of 
 life, to this great business of preparation ; that 
 is to say, as much of the time within those 
 years as will not be inevitably consumed by 
 worldly cares and attention to your infirmities. 
 That is the measure of time to be placed over 
 against the immense futurity ! Behold those 
 two, presented in such a relation. Look at 
 that ocean, and at the competence of the time 
 to prepare a vessel for launching upon it. Set 
 the poor fragments of weeks and months in the 
 years so appropriated in your determination, 
 set them, in your view, against the ensuing 
 millions of years or ages. Have you no percep- 
 tion of a frightful disproportion? 
 
 If you attempt an evasion by saying, but 
 what would be the ichole of this short life, em- 
 ployed in preparation, as set against that futu- 
 9* 
 
94 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 rity ! — the answer is, lliat the whole term of 
 life, diminutive as it is for a preparatory intro- 
 duction to that stupendous sequel, is what our 
 Creator has allotted to us, leaving to us no re- 
 sponsibility that it is not longer, and is there- 
 fore a space of time which his blessing can 
 render competent to the great purpose ; but 
 you are presuming to take a different and ex- 
 ceedingly diminished measure, on your own re- 
 sponsibility ; apportioning off, as an adequate 
 space for the preparation, a small section only 
 of what he has assigned for it. This is, in 
 effect, telling him that a far shorter time than 
 the short one which he has allotted for the pur- 
 pose, will be quite enough for it ; and demand- 
 ing of him that his blessing shall be conferred 
 on this arbitrary unsanctioned adjustment of 
 your own, so as to make a shorter time suffice 
 for the object, than that which he has appoint- 
 ed and required to be devoted to its accomplish- 
 ment. But turn your thoughts upon your con- 
 duct, to reflect what an act of reason you are 
 performing when you say. The whole of the 
 time which God has assigned for a preparation 
 to enter happily on an eternal existence is 
 very short, and therefore a much shorter is 
 sufficient 1 
 
 And reflect what an estimate you are enter- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 95 
 
 taining of both the nature and importance of 
 that preparation while you can in case or gaiety 
 see one month and year after another passing 
 away, and anticii)ate that many more will pass, 
 without contributing to it one particle. What- 
 ever truth there may be to be learned, whatever 
 discipline to be applied, whatever habits to be 
 formed, whatever communications with heaven 
 to be opened and maintained, and whatever 
 may be lost, and whatever guilt may be incur- 
 red, by neglecting all this, still, this year, and 
 many more yet to come, can well be spared 
 from the concern, and surrendered wholly to 
 any other demands. You can account with 
 yourself that it is so much, and so much more, 
 gained to your temporary interests, and lost 
 only to the process for raising you to the eter- 
 nal ones. At the end of one of these periods 
 you have to reflect, a year of the prime and 
 vigor of my life has passed in a lively career, 
 and is gone to be mine no more ; it might have 
 effected for me, and left me possessing, some- 
 thincr of inestimable value toward what I own 
 to be the supremely important business of my 
 life ; but it has left me nothing. When I shall 
 be constrained, at length, to apply myself to 
 that business with all my might, 1 shall have to 
 remember this year, with the consciousness 
 
96 LIVING FOR iMMOKTALlTY. 
 
 that there is not with me one advantage de- 
 rived from it in aid of my new and difficult un- 
 dertaking ; tiiat, as relative to that concern, it 
 was, by my own determination, flung with all 
 its rich possibilities out of my existence ; that I 
 shall have no benefit from it to all eternity. 
 You will have to reflect — I decided that the 
 latter part of my life was all I wouJd give to 
 the great aff'air; 1 have accomplished my de- 
 termination by alienating from it the finest por- 
 tion of my life ! 1 advance to old age, to death, 
 to judgment, to eternity, under tiie voluntary 
 loss ; and wiiether, with tiie impoverished re- 
 sources of this late remainder of my time, I 
 shall succeed or fail in the grand work, I shall 
 for ever have to remeniber, that 1 have not 
 thought it worth appropriating to it my most 
 valuable years. 
 
 So you will have to reflect. But now is the 
 time in which you are actually doing that on 
 which you will have so to reflect ; you are de- 
 liberately and daily adding something toward 
 your being placed in that predicament. It is 
 pressed upon you as the plainest truth in the 
 world, that you ought to be, through the largest 
 possible extent of your allotted time on earth, 
 in a state adapted to an endless life ; and you 
 resolve, and act on your resolution, not to be 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 97 
 
 in that state during many years of tliis intro- 
 duction. You Jay a resolute hand on this in- 
 vahiable portion, to withhold and defend it 
 against the claims of that sovereign interest, 
 practically j)ronouncing it better, that the com- 
 mencing and animated stage of your existence 
 should be alienated from all advantageous con- 
 nexion w ith the grand whole ; that it should 
 not conduce to final good ; that it should be 
 forever lost as to all that is to follow. Let it 
 be enough, you seem to say, that the endless 
 life to which I atn appointed and advancing, 
 shall have, as I do intend, a small part of this 
 introductory one yielded to a conformity with 
 the solemnity of its character, and applied to 
 secure its happiness ; and if its importance 
 would insist on more, I will resist the encroach- 
 ment. No authority of its requirement shall 
 wrest from me the liberty, of casting as much 
 as I please of this precious part of my time into 
 an abyss, never to emerge in wealth or pleasure 
 to me in futurity. And whatever that futurity 
 of existence may be the poorer or the worse for 
 so much lost to it, I am content to stand in my 
 lot. My choice is rather to f(;el how much has 
 been lost to my welfare then, tlian to forego 
 the pleasure of following my inclinations now. 
 And yet, at this very time, at any time, you 
 
98 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 will acknowledge that the interest of that futu- 
 rity is the transcendent one, that it is vast and 
 eternal, tliat it is critically depending, and that 
 it is your onm. O what trivial tilings are the 
 most lofty and soleinn words, or their import 
 either, to a mind that will not reflect, or can- 
 not feel ! 
 
 If, nevertheless, you are siill positive in the 
 resolution that you will devote your attention 
 to religion at a more advanced period, I would 
 represent to you that what you are meanwhile 
 losing, is not merely so much time. You deem 
 there is a peculiar value and charm in this 
 prime of your life, so that you rejoice you are 
 not old, nor middle-aged. You do so even in- 
 dependently of any direct thought of being so 
 much further off from the latter end. And 
 what is this so valued peculiarity of youth ? 
 Doubtless it is the plenitude of life, the vigor 
 and elasticity of body and mind, the quickness 
 of apprehension, the liveliness of emotion, the 
 energy of impulse to experiment and daring. 
 Now, consider under what signal advantage, 
 with respect to the subsequent progress, relig- 
 ion would commence its course in the strength 
 of these animated forces. It would be like 
 taking a steed of fire for some noble enterprise, 
 instead of one already tamed with time and la- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 99 
 
 bor, or nearly worn down. You would thus be 
 borne onward a great length before the vigor of 
 nature begins to reniit, and would have acquir- 
 ed a principle of impulsion to advance, after 
 that peculiar vigor should have ceased. Your 
 youth at leaving you would seem to send its 
 spirit forward with you. The religious career 
 thus commencing, would have all the advantage 
 which a stream, of vast length of course, ac- 
 quires from rising, and running its first stage, 
 on the slope of a lofty mountain, as compared 
 with that which is put in motion on a tract 
 little better than flat, and creeps heavily on for 
 want of such an impulse from its origin. So 
 important is it to the Progress of religion, that 
 it should have the utmost benefit from its Rise. 
 Again, consider that a person prosecuting, in 
 advanced life, a course which he deeply ap- 
 proves, has a peculiar pleasure in recollecting 
 it as having been also the favorite interest of 
 his youth ; a pleasure additional to that of 
 knowing that his early life was not thrown 
 away. For, all the pleasing associations of 
 that season adhere and impart their charm to 
 that which continues the approved favorite still. 
 There is the memory of departed friends, the 
 coeval or elder associates and promoters of his 
 youthful piety, his allies in the best cause, 
 
100 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 whose images in some solitary hour seem to 
 smile on him from the past, or from heaven. 
 The remembered conscientious efforts and 
 vows of self-dedication augment his satisfac- 
 tion in that which he still feels deserved them 
 so well. The animated emotions, which he 
 may sometimes regret that he cannot now re- 
 vive in their vernal freshness, are still his, as 
 having been given to that which is still his, to 
 that which has been continuously his grand ob- 
 ject. Thus, what is now ripening into fruit he 
 can delight to recollect in the beauty and fra- 
 grance of its blossom. What a difference be- 
 tween this and the feelings of a man who, be- 
 coming religious in later life, finds himself by 
 that very cause dissevered, as it were, from his 
 youth, except for painful, self-reproachful re- 
 flection ; who feels that its associations, in- 
 stead of conveying a genial warmth to him 
 along an unirjterrupted train of {)ie(y to the 
 present time, are gone away in connexion with 
 what he regards as the dishonor and calamity 
 of his existence ; like the gardens that once 
 were on a tract which a man has lost from 
 his estate by subsidence into the sea. 
 
 But still further : while you are resolving to 
 adopt the right plan sometime, and flattering 
 yourself that thus there will have been, on the 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 101 
 
 whole, and in the conclusion of life's account, 
 a safe preponderance in favor of religion, you 
 are to be admonished that the absence of it in 
 the earlier part of life is something more, and 
 worse, than simply so much lost to that account. 
 It is not only that you are not religious during 
 the time that you shall postpone that concern ; 
 not only that you are rendering so much of life, 
 with respect to that, a mere blank ; you are all 
 the while aggravating the difficulty, and lessen- 
 ing the probability, of your being religious at 
 a later period, or ever. Are you so thoughtless 
 or unknowing as to fancy that a long course of 
 estrangement from this interest, of aversion to 
 it, of resistance against its claims, of suppres- 
 sion of the remonstrances of conscience in its 
 behalf, is to leave you in a kind of neutral 
 state, impartial to admit at length the convic- 
 tion that now it is high time, and easily con- 
 vertible into a Christian spirit? Consider that 
 all this time you are forming the habits which, 
 when inveterately established, will either be 
 invincibly upon you through life, or require a 
 mighty wrench to emancipate you. This re- 
 fusal to think, this revolting from any attempt 
 at self-examination, this averting of your atten- 
 tion from serious books, this declining to seek 
 the divine favor and assistance by prayer, this 
 10 
 
102 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 projecting of schemes bearing no regard to 
 that favor, and which are not to need that as- 
 sistance, this eagerness to seize each transitory 
 pleasure, this preference of companions who 
 would like you the worse if they thought you 
 feared God or cared for your eternal welfare, — 
 these dispositions, prolonged in a succession of 
 your willing acquiescences in ihcm, will grow 
 into a settled constitution of your soul, which 
 will thus become its own inexorable tyrant. 
 The habit so forming will draw into it all the 
 affections, the workings of imagination, and the 
 trains of thought ; will so possess itself of them 
 that in it alone they will live, and move, and 
 have their being. It will have a strong, unre- 
 mitting propensity to grow entire, so as to leave 
 nothing unpreoccupied in the mind, for any 
 opposing agent to take hold on, in order to 
 counteract it ; as if it were instinctively appre- 
 hensive of the effect of protests from conscience, 
 or visitings from the powers of heaven, or inti- 
 mations from the realm of death; and therefore 
 intent on forminir the sentiments of the soul to 
 such a consistence and coalition, as shall leave 
 none of them free to desert at the voice of these 
 summoners. 
 
 And if you would reflect, you would be sen- 
 sible that, in effect, you wish the case to be just 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 103 
 
 SO. Do not practise any dissimulation with 
 yourself on the suhject. In making the resolu- 
 tion that soiuet'uiic, (and, now, honestly, is not 
 that a tini'} willinuly reiiarded as far off?) that 
 someiinie you will apply yourself to religion, 
 you |)lainly intend that you will nut he relig- 
 ious, that you will be estratiged from religion, 
 till then. But, in resolving that it shall not 
 command you, you necessarily must wish that 
 neither shall it disturb you. You wish that, 
 during all tlie time, no interfering, opposing, 
 alarming principle may abide in your mind ; 
 because you desire to enjoy fully, and in peace, 
 the kind of happiness which you are to exclude 
 religion in order to enjoy. You are wishing, 
 then, in effect, that your affections and tastes 
 may be entirely in harmony with a system of 
 life devoid of religion, that your judgment may 
 accommodate itself not to condemn your pro- 
 ceeding, and that your conscience should either 
 be beguiled to acquiesce, or repose in a long 
 deep sleep. That is to say, while you are re- 
 solvincr that at some advanced period you will 
 be religious, you are also resolving that, during 
 the long preceding time, you will yield yourself 
 to a process for consolidating those very habits, 
 which will fix your mind in a confirmed an- 
 tipathy to religion. You are intending to enter 
 
104 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 at last on consecrated ground, and yet are sur- 
 rendering yourself to a power, which will hold 
 you back with the grasp of a fiend when you 
 attempt to approach its border. You presume 
 that the latter stage of your journey shall be an 
 ascent to heaven, and yet, in this earlier one, 
 you deliberately choose a track in which you 
 can calculate how each downward step goes in 
 aggravation of the arduousnessof that ascent, if 
 you shall indeed ever attempt it ; as if a man 
 who had to reach the summit of a vast moun- 
 tain, and might do it on one side by a long, 
 gradual, and comparatively gentle declivity, 
 should prefer essaying it on that other side, 
 where, descending first to a great depth to 
 reach its base, he must then climb its preci- 
 pices. Whatever I am now gaining, he might 
 say to himself, in the way of pleasant indul- 
 gence, in this descent, is so much that I shall 
 find to have been gained against me by the 
 difficulty on yonder steep. 
 
 It may be easy for you to have credit with 
 yourself in denying, in a light inconsiderate 
 way, that you are actually adopting a plan of 
 such monstrous absurdity. You will say, that 
 you are far from being conscious of any wish to 
 aggravate the future difficulty of applying your 
 mind in good earnest to religion. But this is 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 105 
 
 an evasion, of the thouglitlessness or disingen- 
 uousness of which yon ought to be more than 
 ashamed. You are bound to consider, that in 
 adopting a plan, you are accountable for every 
 thing which is necessarily involved in it. And 
 when your plan is that of spending an indefi- 
 nite but large portion of your life exempt from 
 religion, you necessarily wish to have the unal- 
 loyed benefit of your privilege. (But what 
 terms I am using !) That clear advantage you 
 cannot have if invaded by convictions, if har- 
 assed by conscience, if kept in awe of the in- 
 visible Observer, if lightened upon by intima- 
 tions of a judgment to come. You necessarily 
 wish an immunity I'rom all this, in the prosecu- 
 tion of your scheme. But therefore, by impli- 
 cation, you wish for that which alone can so 
 exempt you ; and that is no other than such a 
 hardened slate of mind, such an oblivion habit- 
 ually, and such a power of defiance occasion- 
 ally, as will constitute, when fully confirmed, a 
 most fatal aversion and unadaptedness to that 
 transfer of your thoughts and affections to re- 
 ligion, on which you are presuming as the ul- 
 timate resource. 
 
 And it is probable that, if you had self- 
 observation enough, you might perceive this 
 process toward a confirmed state is going on. 
 10* 
 
106 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 Have you no consciousness that the last two or 
 three years of your neglect of religion have 
 rendered your disinclination to it more posi- 
 tive ? May there not be a more sensible re- 
 action against its remonstrances 1 If the earlier 
 feeling was that of mere carelessness about the 
 subject, has it in no degree changed to the 
 stronger one of aversion ? Perhaps a serious 
 book, (like this of the Rise and Progress of 
 Religion,) which would at a former time have 
 been lightly put aside, as what no way con- 
 cerned you, would now be regarded with a 
 pointed sentiment of dislike, almost of hostility, 
 as against an ungracious intruder, come, like 
 the ancient prophet to the impious king, '* to 
 speak no good of you, but evil." Perhaps you 
 find that you can more promptly set aside any 
 scruples of conscience that rise to obstruct you 
 in the way of your inclinations. And perhaps, 1 
 
 as a reward — an advantage, do you deem it ? — 
 of this boldness, you are now seldomer incom- 
 moded by such scruples. So that, though your 
 feelings clash more unequivocally with the dic- 
 tates of religion when it does arrest your atten- 
 tion, you are stronger to resist, and more ex- 
 pert to elude, and suffer on the whole less of 
 the trouble of its interference. 
 
 This is quite the natural course ; but you 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 107 
 
 ought to be aware of its progress. If you ab- 
 solutely will proceed on this plan, of retaining 
 a purpose in favor of religion, but deferring it 
 to some future distant time, I wish you would 
 be induced to keep yourself apprized of its 
 effect in you, by making now and then an ex- 
 periment, in the way of test, on the temper of 
 your mind. Will you be advised to take occa- 
 sionally some very serious and cogent book on 
 the subject of personal religion, the one just 
 named, or any other, or some peculiarly solemn 
 part of the Bible ; to read it a little while, and 
 watch in what manner your inmost feeling re- 
 sponds to it ? Do this again after an interval, 
 and observe whether the displacency, the re- 
 pugnance, of your heart, be less, — whether it 
 be not sensibly more. In an hour when you 
 are left alone, with a perfecr freedom to remain 
 for a while in this retirement, recollect the duty 
 of approaching your heavenly Father, with 
 thanks, confessions, and supplications : and 
 observe the movement of your soul under this 
 thought in this opportune hour. Do the same 
 in subsequent opportunities, and see whether 
 the indisposition be not increased rather than 
 diminished. And if the fact be so, what a 
 melancholy phenomenon ; a little, dependent 
 spirit voluntarily receding from its beneficent 
 
108 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 Creator ; directing its progress away from the 
 eternal source of light, and life, and joy ; and 
 that on a vain presumption of being under the 
 comet's law of returning at last to the sun ! In 
 a similar manner, at successive intervals, try 
 the effect, on the temperament of your mind, 
 of some remembered example of eniinent piety 
 in youth, of the recollection of former youthful 
 associates dead, or of the solemn idea of your 
 own death, and your continual approximation 
 toward it ; and see whether, under these aj)pli- 
 cations, there will not be betrayed, in the habit 
 of your feelings, an increasing alienation from 
 religion. And yet you are the person to in- 
 dulge an easy confidence, that, after you shall 
 have gone on many years thus confirming the 
 estrangement and aversion from it, you shall 
 easily turn to it as your best friend ! 
 
 Might it not be well to enforce it on your- 
 self as a rule. That this your resolution to be 
 religious sometime, shall be distinctly recalled 
 to mind in each successive instance of your 
 doing what tends to its frustration? When you 
 find yourself making an effort to banish the 
 shade of pensive feeling, or grave reflection, 
 which any circumstance of the time may have 
 bad power to throw ^over you, say to yourself, 
 It is I, nevertheless, that am to be religious, 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 109 
 
 and therefore to cherish such thoughts and 
 emotions, in a season yet to come. If you per- 
 ceive yourself carefully avoiding " the house 
 of mourning," even though it be your friends 
 that are visited there with sickness or death, 
 say, again, I am one day, however, to entertain 
 and welcome that religion which would be 
 there, at this time, enforced on me with such 
 powerful admonition. When you are entering 
 a gay thoughtless party, to mingle in such a 
 hilarity as any visitings of religious reflection 
 would quell, say to yourself. That very thing 
 which would freeze this animation of theirs and 
 mine, shall after a while be the grand solace of 
 my heart ; and this is the way I am taking to 
 prepare myself for its being so ! Ifyougoso 
 far as to endure voluntarily and without repug- 
 nance, society where serious subjects and pious 
 men are turned to jest, and the most awful 
 names taken in vain, say, I am training myself 
 here, through familiarity with irreligion, to give 
 my utmost reverence and affection to that of 
 which I am thus abetting the scorn and profan- 
 ation. If you are projecting a scheme for the 
 occtipation and satisfaction of a considerable 
 portion of your life, but cast upon a principle 
 and plan evidently unfavorable to your spiritual 
 welfare, reflect on it, and say again. There is 
 
110 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 another sclieme to be afterwards undertaken, 
 into which I shall pass with all the advantage 
 of having wholly excluded the care of it from 
 this prior one: when my lighter juvenile un- 
 concern about relicrion shall have settled into 
 an utter estrangement, as a part of the habit 
 confirmed through my long and complete en- 
 grossment by a worldly project, then I shall 
 need but one touch of conviction, but one re- 
 collection of my former vow, but one act of my 
 will, to throw my spirit free, and become relig- 
 ious enough for death and for heaven. 
 
 I repeat to you, that by this course of pro- 
 crastination, this scheme of reversionary piety, 
 you are not simply losing so much, with regard 
 to the greatest affair, but are also taking strong 
 security against yourself that you shall not save 
 the remainder. The worthless or noxious 
 growth which you suffer to overspread the first 
 large division of your allotted tract of time, is 
 continually extending its roots far forward, and 
 will scatter its seeds thickly over all the space 
 beyond. Consider how well, even at your age, 
 you are informed of it as a truth, that whatever 
 entwines itself with the youthful feelings main- 
 tains a strange tenacity, and seems to insinuate 
 into the vitality of the being. How important 
 to watch lest what is thus combining with its 
 
LTVFNG FOR 1 MM" iRTALITY. HI 
 
 life, should contain a principle of moral death ! 
 Consider, that in this earlier period yon are pe- 
 culiarly disposed to entertain social partialities, 
 are perhaps giving yourself to companionship 
 and friendships, or contracting more intimate 
 relations, which must have an important influ- 
 ence on the growing formation of your mind 
 into its decided character, and on the conse- 
 quent tenor of your life. Now when this so- 
 cial attraction combines several parties destitute 
 of religion, they are in effect giving mutual 
 pledges never to be religious ; since they are 
 giving and receiving the whole influence of 
 their friendship to fix their minds in that state 
 in which they are at present pleased with one 
 another ; that is to say, in a state of aversion to 
 religion. And supposing that each of them 
 were, nevertheless, like you, intending to be 
 religious sometime, we cannot well conceive 
 any fairer occasion for the scoft' of a malig- 
 nant spirit, than to see them thus all in a 
 league to frustrate what each of them believes 
 he intends. 
 
 This same intention, you have no reason to 
 doubt, has been entertained in earlier years, by 
 many whom you now see advanced to the mid- 
 dle or the decline of life, without havincr done 
 any thing toward its accomplishment. Yet 
 
112 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 they were, in their time, as confident as you 
 are now. Should not this alarm you ? Some 
 of them may have yielded up the design, not 
 by any express act of renouncement, but insen- 
 sibly, in the gradual hardening of their con- 
 sciences, their complete immersion in the 
 world, and assimilation to its spirit ; with the 
 addition, in too many cases, of the practice of 
 some more positive kind of sin. Many of them, 
 however, are perhaps still retaining the pur- 
 pose, inert and buried under an accumulation 
 of repressive habits ; like a seed artificially 
 kept torpid in order that it may be quickened 
 into germination at a preferable time. The 
 consciousness that they are mortal, and must 
 be forced at last out of all that now occupies 
 and pleases them, is soothed to repose in this 
 presumption, that they shall bring a reserved 
 expedient into action, before the neglect of it 
 be fatal. But answer honestly, do you think it 
 probable that they will ? Do you expect, if you 
 should live to see them forward a few years 
 further — do you expect to see them withdraw- 
 ing their engrossed affections, breaking asunder 
 their inveterate habits, and doing a great thing 
 which they have systematically and wilfully 
 prepared themselves not to do, that is, devoting 
 themselves to God and the care of their salva- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 113 
 
 tion ? Perhaps you have allowed yourselves to 
 imagine that you, after having made a consid- 
 erable progress in years, shall become, at every 
 advance, proportionally more and more sensible 
 of the shortening of life, and shall necessarily 
 behold nearer the visage of death, presented 
 througrh a clearer medium, and with enlar^incr 
 and more defined features. How can it, you 
 may have said, be otherwise, in the exorcise of 
 mere common sense, than that this approach 
 toward the end should aggravate upon me the 
 cogency of my grand duty? Do then look 
 again at the multitude of examples around you, 
 and see what avails them this obvious arithmetic 
 of time. You see persons with whose names 
 you and your companions, with a tacit pleasure 
 of contrast in your favor, couple the epithet 
 " old," still as heedlessly and confidently as 
 yourselves, reckoning on time enough yet, to 
 continue deferring the grand business without 
 peril of its being left undone. If their youthful 
 " trust in their own heart," that they would ul- 
 timately applv themselves to the indispensable 
 business, fi.X' i that determination on about 
 some given. Vpoint or period in their future life, 
 they can pass, or perhaps have passed that pe- 
 riod, with the same iticility of neglect as any 
 foiiuei one, fiuviiug nolinng to stop them there 
 11 
 
114 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITr. 
 
 with the peremptory exaction to perform theif 
 vow. The lying spirit which had promised to 
 meet them at the assigned spot, to conduct 
 them thenceforward toward heaven, appears not 
 OH the ground when they arrive there, unless 
 to tell them that another stage, still further on, 
 will be more advantageous for commencing the 
 enterprise. You look at the marks of time on 
 their countenances, recollect them perhaps as 
 in mature or middle age when you were in in- 
 fancy, and wonder they can yield themselves 
 to such an imposition ; and all this without a 
 single reflection, that you are putting yourseJf 
 in the train of the same delusion. How can 
 they act so, you say, when I feel so certain of 
 the justness of my determination to act other- 
 wise, on the strength of my conviction of the 
 ultimate necessity of religion ? Be you assured 
 there is no more fatal betrayer than a right and 
 excellent principle adopted, but consigned to 
 future time and more favorable inclination for 
 beincr carried into action. The consciousness 
 that you are certainly keeping a good resolu- 
 tion, only deferred to await a " more conven- 
 ient season," will help you to indulge a falla- 
 cious security, while every season for accom- 
 plishing it is passing away. Through one 
 period of your time after another, it will appear 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 115 
 
 to you infallibly efficacious for the next ; and 
 no period will come as that from which you 
 cannot look forward to still another. And this 
 your purpose, suspended as it were in advance 
 over your course, as a malign imitation, by in- 
 fernal art, of the star which the sages followed 
 to find the Saviour of the world, will probably 
 lead you on, still confiding that it must stand 
 arrested at the spot where you shall accept the 
 grace of that Redeemer, till you are drawn to 
 a precipice, where your deluder will vanish and 
 you will fall. 
 
 All the latter course of this pleading has pro- 
 ceeded on the supposition that you Tway have 
 a protracted life. It has been an attempt to 
 represent to you, that even if you might be al- 
 lowed to assume a very strong probability, little 
 short of certainty, of reaching the full term of 
 human life — nay, that if you were certain you 
 shall, your scheme of exempting its earlier por- 
 tion from religion, on a promise to yourself and 
 to God of taking that for your chief concern at 
 a more advanced stage, would still be absurd, 
 and wicked, and most dangerous. But [ warn 
 you again, do not so criminally trifle with your 
 own reason as to proceed on any such calcula- 
 tion, in sight and in contempt of the thousand 
 
116 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 instances of your fellow-mortals dying in youth, 
 and in the immediately following stage. 
 
 Now, will you, my young friend, lay such 
 considerations to heart; or will you rather have 
 it to remember, perhaps when all too late, that 
 they were pressed upon you in vain? 
 
 in @ 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AFFECTING PORTRAIT OF A MAN OF THE WORLD. 
 
 This expostulation, conceived as what might 
 have been addressed to some one of the many 
 young persons who may, in various times and 
 places, have had their attention drawn for a 
 moment to this treatise of the Rise and Pro- 
 gress of Religion, and averted by the serious- 
 ness of its purport, has been prolonged so ex- 
 ceedingly far beyond our intention, and its due 
 proportion, that but little space is fairly left for 
 exemplifying, in other forms, the trains of in- 
 structive reflection that might take rise from 
 imagining what has happened in connexion 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 117 
 
 with the book. We therefore leave it for an 
 exercise of the reader's own thoughts, if he 
 should deem there is any profit in such an em- 
 ployment of them, to imagine in what manner a 
 variety of individuals, each a specimen of the 
 character of a class, may be supposed to have 
 noticed the book at one time or another ; what 
 feeling was excited at the sight, or transient in- 
 spection, or perusal of it ; how they were 
 affected toward its subject, so inculcated ; what 
 influence, if any, it had on their determina- 
 tions ; and to conceive, in each case respec- 
 tively, what would have been the appropriate 
 admonitions, which it had been well if there 
 had been any intelligent and persuasive friend 
 opportunely to offer. What such a friend 
 might pertinently have said in any of those in- 
 stances, is of course the advice or remonstrance 
 applicable in any similar cases, occurring now 
 and hereafter, among the incalculably numer- 
 ous persons whose attention must be attracted, 
 more or less, to a work which is in still widen- 
 ing circulation. 
 
 Foregoing, then, the design of specifying 
 several other discriminated examples, we will 
 protract this discourse only a little further, by 
 supposing one more instance ; an example, 
 however, of a character unhappily far too gen- 
 ii* 
 
118 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 erally prevalent to be called that of a class. 
 We may describe the person as a mere man of 
 the world — yet not in the worst sense of that 
 designation ; for we do not suppose him an 
 abandoned profligate, trampling and spurning 
 the most obvious rules of social morality ; nor a 
 scoffer at religion ; nor a scorner, in a virulent 
 spirit, of pious men ; but devoted to this world, 
 idolizing it in his affections, exerting all his ac- 
 tive energy in its pursuits, surrendering his 
 whole being to mingle with its interests and be 
 conformed to its temper ; and therefore habitu- 
 ally forgetting the other world, and all the 
 grand economy of truths, overtures, means, 
 preparations, and cares relating to it. He 
 might have been in youth just the same kind of 
 person as the one expostulated with in the pre- 
 ceding pages ; we are supposing him past that 
 age, and all that belongs peculiarly to its char- 
 acter ; yet not necessarily as very far advanced 
 in life. 
 
 It cannot have failed to happen that many 
 such persons have been accosted, as it were, 
 by the spirit of our pious and benevolent au- 
 thor, in the vehicle of his book. If we may 
 conjecture that fifty thousand copies have been 
 diffused among all orders of society, and have 
 obtained, through choice or accident, with ap- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 1 IQ 
 
 probation or under sufferance, a position in al- 
 most so many abodes, our fancy has a warrant 
 to figure an indefinite variety of circumstances, 
 under which these volumes have fallen in con- 
 tact with such men of the world. 
 
 There may have been the case of such a 
 man's unwittingly laying his hand on the book, 
 as one of a number which had been left him by 
 a religious parent, opening to see what it was, 
 as not recognizing it by its exterior, and being 
 smitten with something like an electric shock 
 at the sudden reflection, that for ten, or twenty, 
 or thirty years since that parent's death, he has 
 been no better for this or any other religious 
 book. Another such man, on happening to fix 
 his eye on the volume, has been struck with 
 the recollection, inflicting perhaps a twinge of 
 mental pain, that there was a time, a transient 
 one, long since, in his youth, when he felt 
 some convictions and emotions of a religious 
 tendency ; and procured this identical book in 
 aid of those salutary movements in his mind. 
 Another may have chanced to notice it among 
 books, which a better care than his had pro- 
 vided for the instruction of the young people of 
 his own family ; and has perhaps had the mo- 
 mentary thought — what, then, are these young 
 men and women to be reminded of religion, 
 while /forget it ? Another may have retained 
 
120 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 from early instruction, accompanied by exam- 
 ple, a certain impression, resting on his mind 
 somewhat like a superstition, that the Sunday 
 ought to be in some degree unlike his other 
 days, and a small portion of it given to serious 
 reading; and in looking for a book of that 
 character, he may have happened to take this, 
 and to read enough of it to cause him a disqui- 
 eted consciousness, or a suspicion that his spirit 
 and habits are not quite in the right. The 
 case may have occurred, that such a man has 
 caught sight of this book in the recess of an 
 apartment where he and others were waiting to 
 follow a dead person to the grave ; and that, 
 under a passing gleam of right apprehension 
 and kind feeling, he internally said. The Pro- 
 gress of Religion — I hope it was that road that 
 the deceased took in his way to the world 
 whither he is gone, for else it were ill with 
 him now. 
 
 It may seem as if these suppositions do not 
 quite agree with the general description of the 
 character, as altogether estranged from religion. 
 Such involuntary and transitory excitements of 
 a recognition of that great interest, are not, 
 however, incompatible with a prevailing deci- 
 ded neglect and alienation : but, in truth, the 
 conjectures may justly fall into a less charitable 
 train. We supposed the cause of such a man's 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 121 
 
 observing that the book had been offered to tlie 
 attention of the younger branches of his family, 
 and admittincr a slijiht reflection of self-rebuke. 
 But it is not less likely to have happened, that 
 a man of this character, on perceiving such a 
 circumstance, has signified displeasure at tliis 
 expedient for rendering the happy young crea- 
 tures prematurely grave and melancholy, ex- 
 tinguishing, he said, their delightful vivacity, 
 (which would soon enough be repressed by the 
 cares and troubles of life,) by unseasonable ap- 
 prehensions about the welfare of their souls. 
 It is no improbable case, that the book may 
 have come in the way of such a man just about 
 the time when he has seen, or perhaps experi- 
 enced to his injury, an instance of want of 
 principle in some person making high preten- 
 sions to religion ; and that he said, with irrita- 
 tion and a frown, I think I may as well let this 
 affair of religion alone, till I see more integrity 
 in those who profess to be so deep in it. The 
 main matter of duty is, to be upright in our 
 transactions; and, thank God, I am that with- 
 out making any canting pretensions to saint- 
 ship. Another man of this description may 
 have accidentally looked into the book a little 
 while, and then laid it aside, evading all per- 
 sonal application with the thoughtless senti- 
 ment, That is all very well for persons whose 
 
122 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 situation allows them to give themselves up to 
 retirement and thinking ; but men like me 
 have far too much to do with the practical busi- 
 ness of life to have leisure for attending to the 
 subject. The book may have obtruded itself 
 on the notice of a man deliberating whether to 
 add a new worldly undertaking to those he was 
 involved in already, an undertaking not neces- 
 sary, but calculated to make a little more of the 
 world his own. And might it not be supposed 
 that such a monitory intervention might con- 
 tribute to suspend the affirmative decision, by 
 force of the question whether this concern, of 
 religion, did not demand to take precedence of 
 every other new undertaking? No; the ques- 
 tion struck but feebly on his mind ; the sug- 
 gestion was easily cleared away from interfer- 
 ence with his debating thoughts ; religion could 
 be attended to at any time indifferently ; where- 
 as now or never was the time for the project 
 which was warming his desires. The book 
 was thrown by, and the subject vanished. 
 
 It is familiar to observation that men of the 
 world have an arrogant estimate of worldly wis- 
 dom, though the sphere of its objects be so 
 limited, and the term of its employment and 
 profit so short. Never did the adepts in abstract 
 philosophy, or in science, indulge a prouder 
 consciousness in virtue of living and reigning 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 123 
 
 in the intellectual world, than these men do on 
 the strength of beinu shrewd and efficient in 
 the judgment and conduct ofafFairs. Suj)pose, 
 then, one of them, on returning from a place 
 of resort and competition, where he has excel- 
 led in the discussion or transaction of some of 
 these affairs, to have been led by any chance to 
 open such a book, and to have glanced over a 
 few sentences or paragraphs. He probably did 
 not waste even his contemjit in more than a few 
 brief expressions to this effect : — Tiiese men, 
 all for religion, talk of the insignificance of what 
 they call earthly things, the vanity of the world, 
 the Christian's vocation to live above it, the 
 meanness of its concerns compared with their 
 nobler pursuits ; and all the while they know 
 nothing about it. Too fantastic and feeble for 
 the vigorous activities of our department, let 
 them be indulged in their notion that they have 
 vastly superior employments in their own. It 
 were hard to deny them the pleasure of de- 
 claiming against that which they do not under- 
 stand, and in which they would make a miser- 
 able figure in attempting to act a part. Another 
 man of the worldly character, in a less super- 
 cilious temper, may be supposed to have looked 
 a little into the book with a feeling like this : 
 One does wish one could manage to have some 
 commodious sort or share of religion, that would 
 
124 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 not cost much trouble, and would put one in 
 safety as to future consequences. But religion 
 as described here^ meets me as an inquisitor 
 and a tyrant. It would force a judicial investi- 
 gation through my whole soul, and that only to 
 expose, condemn, and affright me ; insists on 
 some strange revolution in my principles and 
 feelings ; demands an unconditional, unlimited 
 submission, to a jurisdiction which will leave 
 nothing within me, or without me, at my own 
 free disposal ; and, in short, insists on setting 
 the main purposes of my life in a new direc- 
 tion. This is not to be endured. If I must at 
 last, for safety's sake, submit on such terms, 
 let me enjoy my exemption as long as I can 
 or dare. 
 
 But a man of the world may be a formalist ; 
 may think that no such religion can ever be 
 necessary, and that he has a sufficient one in 
 his regular performance of an order of mere 
 external observances. Somewhere, no doubt, 
 there is a copy of the book in question which 
 such a man has inspected, with eyes now per- 
 haps closed for ever ; and we can figure the 
 aspect, (though the pages do not reflect the 
 image,) of alternate disdain and indignation at 
 what he pronounced to be rank enthusiasm, 
 with self-congratulation on knowing a far eas- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 125 
 
 ier method of satisfying the requirements of hi3 
 Creator. 
 
 We might go on indefinitely recounting, in 
 probable conjecture, the modes in which the 
 worldly spirit has been affected at coming in 
 contact with this vehicle of serious admonition. 
 And what a manifestation would be given of 
 the nature of that spirit, if, from unknown times 
 and places, one twentieth part would be recalled 
 of the instances in which its quality has been 
 the most remarkably betrayed under such a 
 test. We will describe but one example more. 
 It is not to be doubted that this production of 
 pious zeal has at some time fallen in the way 
 of a person who had continued faithfully devo- 
 ted to the world quite to old age. Perhaps it 
 met his notice at the time when he was just 
 upon making the utmost exertion of his declin- 
 ing strength, and with an eagerness equal to 
 any passion of his youth, to accomplish the 
 concluding, the crowning part, of a long 
 wrought project for bringing within his grasp a 
 material acquisition of emolument or distinc- 
 tion ; in other words, for gaining more posses- 
 sesions against the day of losing them, and 
 more decorations against the day of putting 
 them off. And perhaps he did not plainly say, 
 Religion, with all that depends on it, must take 
 its chance ; I never yet have been disposed to 
 12 
 
126 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 forego any thing for its sake, nor am I now. 
 But we may confidently suppose him to have 
 said in effect, I must at all events complete this 
 affair in hand, whatever becomes of any thing 
 else. And who knows but he was smitten with 
 death before either the momentous something 
 else obtained his attention, or the project, for 
 the sake of which he refused it, was accom- 
 plished ? Or we may imagine the occurrence 
 happening to a man in a more prostrate state of 
 feeling, vt^hen a long prosecuted scheme had 
 failed, too late in his life for him to form a new 
 one ; or about the time that increasingf infirm- 
 ity had constrained him to the dreaded task of 
 making his will ; or when he had recently seen 
 his most trusty co-operator, or his nearest rela- 
 tion, of his own age, or even the last of his 
 children, sink into the grave. And would it 
 be too hard upon human nature, or an unchar- 
 itable judgment of the temper of a mind grown 
 old in devotedness to the world, to suppose 
 that, even in circumstances like these, the man 
 still could not resolve on so serious a thing as 
 attention to religion ? No, we can believe that 
 he revolted from the urgent enforcement of the 
 subject, felt as if any other way of disposing of 
 it were preferable to that of thinking of it, and 
 threw aside the book. He had recourse to 
 some expedients of change and amusement, to 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 127 
 
 relieve his drooping spirits and darkening days ; 
 or, perhaps, he made a strife to force his de- 
 caying powers to some farther and superfluous 
 exertions in the world's business. It may even 
 be conceived, that the very terms " Rise and 
 Progress," suggesting the idea of long and la- 
 borious continuance, excited a gloomy sense of 
 the want of commensurateness between such a 
 lengthened process, and his now shortened 
 life ; and that, through a lamentable perversity, 
 the sadness of this consideration, instead of 
 alarming him to an instant application to the 
 grand concern, made him the more recoil from 
 it, and but added to the infatuation of his con- 
 suming the short remainder of his life, as he 
 had consumed all before. 
 
128 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 REMONSTRANCES AND EXPOSTULATIONS AGAINST 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE WORLDLING, ADDRESSED TO 
 HIS CONSCIENCE FROM THE MOST WEIGHTY 
 CONSIDERATIONS. 
 
 Now, in each of all tliese instances, an intel- 
 ligent Christian friend might have remonstrated 
 in terms specially adapted to the individual's 
 state of mind, modifying the general argument 
 for religion to meet the cast of irreligious feel- 
 ing in the particular case. And a discerning 
 and skilful pleader in this good cause may 
 sometimes seize upon the peculiar mode of 
 feeling, in such a manner as to turn it to ac- 
 count, availing himself of it to give his remon- 
 strance something of the point and appropria- 
 tion of the argumentum ad hominem. But we 
 shall content ourselves with a short address of 
 the nature of a plain general expostulation, ap- 
 plicable to the general qualities of the wordly 
 character. 
 
 It is true, tha^t the spirit required in any 
 effort so directed, is not a little repressed by a 
 sentiment partaking of despondency. There is 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. ]29 
 
 no evading the thought, Why should words, 
 and arguments, and images of unseen things, 
 and adjurations, be expended on that man, on 
 those men ? Tlicy will continue the same. 
 Why should religion, like Cassandra, waste 
 her dictates and premonitions on a hopeless 
 determination to the wrong ? How can it be 
 worth while to be trying, as if it had so much 
 as even the uncertainty of an experiment, how 
 many missiles will rebound from a rock, or dis- 
 appear in a swamp ; or how many times the 
 taper may burn out in the vain attempt to 
 kindle a fire in materials which contain no 
 fuel ? 
 
 But we would wish to turn this very fact it- 
 self, of the dispirited sentiment which damps 
 the Christian pleader's efforts to press religion 
 on the attention of devoted men of the world, 
 into a topic of admonition to them. How 
 comes it to pass, we might say to them, that a 
 person, whose own mind is possessed with the 
 most absolute and mighty conviction of the im- 
 portance of religion, cannot help feeling it near- 
 ly a forlorn attempt to awaken any sense of 
 that importance in you ? Has he good cause 
 for this despondence ? Is it his experience, his 
 just estimate, of the character of your minds 
 and habits, that makes him feel so ; and does 
 12* 
 
130 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 your self-knowledge tell you it would be too 
 sanguine for him to feel otherwise ? Is it, then, 
 a fact, that you are hardened into a settled in- 
 sensibility to the things which most vitally and 
 profoundly concern you ? Have you really a 
 power, and that power so complete that it is 
 effectual almost without an effort, and through 
 the inert force of habit, to meet with indiffer- 
 ence or defiance the aspects of whatever is the 
 most sublime, most amiable, or most tremen- 
 dous, in existence? When mercy, in a celes- 
 tial form, approaches to apply to your soul the 
 redeeming principle without which it will per- 
 ish, can you turn it away, coolly saying. Anoth- 
 er time, perhaps, — or perhaps never? And in 
 refusing it access, do you feel the satisfaction of 
 a person who has promptly and easily dismissed 
 an unreasonable applicant ; regarding it as an 
 arrogant requirer, rather than as a benefactor 
 offering you inestimable good ? Do you feel, 
 in thus being out of the power of religion, a 
 gratifying, sense of immunity from one of the 
 evils which are infesting mankind ; that there 
 is one malady against which your mental con- 
 stitution is fortified, while some of your fellow- 
 mortals, attacked by it, are objects almost of 
 your pity ? And do you account this exemp- 
 tion, and carry it upon you through the com- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 131 
 
 merce of life, as 3. privilege of your class, which 
 you as rightfully maintain as any other advan- 
 tacre, and with which it were little better thaa 
 impertinence for any one to interfere, by rep- 
 resentations in favor of that from which you 
 thus walk at liberty ? If this be the estab- 
 lished condition of your minds, it is what 
 ought to alarm you, like that deadly calm 
 which, in some climates, would be an omen 
 to you of the subterranean thunder, and of the 
 ground heaving and rending under your feet. 
 But at the same time, it is what may well 
 cause a Christian friend to be despondent of 
 the efficacy of expostulation. 
 
 He is so, because he is aware that there is 
 nothing within your minds adequately, or in 
 any tolerable degree, corresponding to the im- 
 portant and solemn terms which he must em- 
 ploy. He must speak of the soul, redemption, 
 faith, holiness, conformity to the divine image; 
 of heaven and hell, of judgment and eternity. 
 But these are insignificant sounds, unless, when 
 pronounced, they strike upon conceptions al- 
 ready in the mind, which answer to their im- 
 port, conceptions which contain in them, so to 
 speak, the ideal substance of what is meant by 
 these signs. And he can perceive too well 
 that this whole order of ideas has but a crude, 
 
132 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 undefined, obscure, and feeble formation in 
 your understanding. The most solemn call of 
 these great words, is replied to with but a faint 
 and equivocal recognition from within. It is 
 as if the names were called of a company of 
 persons asleep, who answer without the dis- 
 tinctness of consciousness, and some of them 
 not at all. Nay, might not men of the world 
 be found in such a condition of the intellect, 
 that these words, addressed to raise the corres- 
 ponding ideas in it, would be nearly like calling 
 aloud, in a field of the dead, the names which 
 are inscribed on tlieir tombs? Change the 
 subject, and see the difl^erence. There are 
 many terms which have their appropriate ideas 
 most perfectly formed in your understanding ; 
 distinct, palpable, and, in full dimension. Let 
 the denominations be pronounced of divers 
 kinds and values of worldly property, of meth- 
 ods and rules of transactincr business, of the 
 different stations in society, with their respec- 
 tive relations and circumstances, or of the ma- 
 terials and accommodations for gratifying the 
 senses ; let some of these be named, and in- 
 stantly the corresponding ideas arise in the 
 mind, substantial and distinct ; so that the ut- 
 terer of the designations knows he can do with 
 the auditor whatever depends simply on his 
 
LIVING FOR IMMOR'J'ALITY. 133 
 
 having a right notion of the things. But when 
 you hear some of these terms expressive of the 
 most important meanings that could ever enter 
 into human intelligence, how confused, un- 
 couth, and inane, how spiritless and powerless, 
 are the forms of thought wiiich glimmer on 
 your apprehension ! It is as if words pronoun- 
 ced to evoke mighty spirits, were answered 
 only by the coming of the owls, bats, and in- 
 sects, of the twilight. 
 
 The religious monitor is tempted to despond, 
 again, because he sees that your devotion to 
 the world is established into system, almost 
 into mechanism. A very young person may 
 be frivolous and thoughtless to the last degree ; 
 but he is variable ; his present impressions may 
 quickly give place to new ones; he may aban- 
 don one favorite pursuit for a different one; 
 and should religion attempt to seize him at an 
 interval of these versatile movements, it will in- 
 deed have to contend with his levity, and the 
 radical aversion in his nature to sacred sub- 
 jects, but not with a set of habits grown to a 
 firm consistence, in a shape, we might say an 
 organization, adapted to keep his whole soul in 
 one steady mode of adhesion to the world. 
 This latter is a description of the condition of 
 many of you, its devotees. There is no longer 
 
134 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 any question whether, or in what way, you shall 
 be wholly surrendered to it. The habitual fact 
 has taken the matter out of the province of vo- 
 lition. That you faithfully adhere, in spirit, to 
 the world, that you live for it, to-day, and to- 
 morrow, and each ensuing day, and wherever 
 you may be, seems as much of course as that 
 bodily you walk on its surface. And not only 
 are you under this principle of determination to 
 it as your general object, but you have a settled 
 adjustment of feeling and estimate to its diver- 
 sities respectively. You have your maxims, as- 
 sociations, and affections, in an orderly state to 
 meet and coalesce with them all and each. 
 And your general worldly spirit preserves a 
 consistency of its special action throughout all 
 the detail of its objects ; the manner in which 
 the predominant law operates with respect to 
 each, agreeing with its mode of operation in all 
 the others. Thus, you are men of the world 
 not only by one general sentiment of devoted- 
 ness to it, but in a systematic appropriation of 
 that sentiment to various and numberless par- 
 ticulars. While you cleave to the world gen- 
 erally, we may be allowed, the figure of saying, 
 that each fibre, each nerve, of your moral na- 
 ture, has its own particular point of application 
 to this your sovereign good ; and all pervaded 
 
LIVING FOR LMMORTALITY. 135 
 
 and kept in uniformity of action by the ascen- 
 dant principle ; tii;it principle by which you 
 " serve the creature more than the Creator." 
 
 While you are beheld in this firm conjunc- 
 tion with the worUI, by a general attachment, 
 and by a distributive application of that attach- 
 ment, like the Indian fig-tree connecting itself 
 vitally, at a hundred spots, with the soil over 
 which it spreads, it is no wonder that a person 
 desirous of warning you not to make light of 
 infinitely higher interests, should attempt it 
 with very faint hope, or be discouraged from 
 making the attempt at all. That which he has 
 to present to you will be repelled by a principle 
 which acts in a combination of resisting im- 
 pulses, working with uniformity and constancy ; 
 some of them proceeding, perhaps, from the 
 temper of mind acquired in commercial pur- 
 suits ; some of them from the habits of feeling 
 which have grown from ** friendship with the 
 world," from contented and preferred associa- 
 tion with men devoid of religion ; some of them 
 from the disposition produced by the study and 
 strife to make your way upward in society ; 
 some of them from the practice of relieving 
 the cares of business only by the indulgences 
 of pleasure ; and some of them, perhaps, from 
 a taste for appearing as men of fashion. All 
 
136 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 this is a systematic fortification against the 
 access of religion, to instruct, persuade, or re- 
 monstrate. And the fatal completion of the 
 evil may be, that you are insensible of any 
 great evil or danger in all this. For you have 
 fully adopted the world's standard of character, 
 according to which you may be, all this while, 
 what are called honorable men. You may even 
 come to take credit for considerable liberality 
 of opinion in allowing, that it is right enough 
 there should be in the world a class of earnest 
 devoted religionists, as well as other varieties 
 of character ; that they do very right to follow 
 up their own convictions ; their only offence 
 being the fanaticism of insisting, that all ought 
 to be such — that you ought to be such ; where- 
 as yours, you say, is a character much better 
 adapted to the world we are to live in than 
 theirs. 
 
 So you are, on the whole, in high favor with 
 yourselves. You may not, indeed, be entirely 
 secure against occasional disturbances to your 
 self-satisfaction ; there may be moments when 
 a suspicion arises from the dark depth within 
 that all is not right ; when conscience, gener- 
 ally still, gives some intimations, like the sighs 
 of a person beginning to recover from suspend- 
 ed animation ; when some glimpses of a greater 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 137 
 
 economy are admitted througJi narrow rents 
 and openings in the little system within which 
 you are immured. But you suffer no iiabitual 
 annoyance of an impression that you must alter 
 your plan. This your general satisfaction with 
 the part you are acting, depresses the spirit of 
 the pleader for religion. He wants to persuade 
 you to reflect ; but how and when can he bring 
 an adequate force of such persuasion to act on 
 such a state of the mind ? You are so possessed , 
 he says, with your own good opinion, that any 
 serious examination, whether it be not a de- 
 lusive one, will appear to you a superfluous 
 trouble, and the exhortation to it, oflicious and 
 impertinent. 
 
 But will you absolutely refuse such an exer- 
 cise of your reason ? How can you have lived 
 so long without feeling that so much, at least, 
 is what a rational, accountable being ought to 
 do? Do it now ! What should prevent you? 
 You have in that spirit the power to think at 
 this very lime. You can fix it intently on the 
 subject that you shall choose. Now is an in- 
 terval which can be exempted from tlie indi.s- 
 pensable demands of business, and, if you will 
 it so, from the allurements to dissipation. You 
 may, you can, this hour, recollect whether there 
 be a subject of transcendent importance, which 
 13 
 
1 38 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 you have never duly considered yet ; and you 
 may choose it, instead of another subject, for 
 present consideration. You cannot help seeing 
 what that subject is. It is Religion that stands 
 before you, with oracles, lights, and an exhi- 
 bition of the most grand and awful images. It 
 is that which represents io you, the real truth 
 of the state of your soul toward God, the con- 
 cern of your eternal interests, the relation you 
 stand in to another world, the peremptory re- 
 quirement of what you must do to be saved. 
 What can ever, through endless duration, be 
 worth your considering, if this be not ? You 
 know that religion, unless it be a fable, has all 
 this importance, that it has this importance to 
 yov, and that it has it to you now, while this 
 day, this hour, is passing. In a matter of in- 
 comparably less magnitude, (say it were a most 
 critical hazard, threatening you at the point 
 where your temporal prosperity mainly depend- 
 ed, and might be ruined for life,) you would 
 feel that the concern pressed importunately and 
 justly on the thoughts and cares of the present 
 instant. If any one advised you to take no 
 trouble of vigilance or exertion about it, to oc- 
 cupy yourself entirely with other matters, and 
 indifferently await the event, you would spurn 
 the suggestion as equally unfeeling and absurd. 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 139 
 
 What ! you would say, when the wliole ques- 
 tion of safety or utter ruin may be depending 
 on tlie judgment and activity which 1 may ex- 
 ercise this day ? But here is the supreme in- 
 terest of your existence. It cannot be safe, 
 you will confess it cannot, if you will give it no 
 serious attention. But then you are confessing 
 that you have left it till now in peril, and that 
 it is so at this very hour — nay, in greater peril 
 than ever before, as aggravated by the guilt of 
 such wilful neglect, and by the diminution of 
 the term allotted for the attainment of a happy 
 security. And can you repel from you, can 
 you resolutely set yourself to force off, its ur- 
 gent application for your immediate attention ? 
 Look at the action of your mind. Is it really, 
 even now, in the very effort of an impulse to 
 drive this subject away, and are you giving 
 your whole will to make this impulse success- 
 ful ? And do you feel that you are prevailing? 
 And is it impossible for you to reflect, at this 
 moment, ichat it is that you are successfully 
 doing ? Cannot you perceive, have you no sus- 
 picion, what dreadful principle it is that is giv- 
 ing you this power and this success? Can you 
 let it perform such a work, and not resolve to 
 inspect its nature 1 Look at it, observe its fa- 
 tal operation just now going on ; and then say, 
 
140 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 honestly, whether any thing can be of a quality 
 more execrable ? Do not say this is extrava- 
 gant language ; do not stay to mind the lan- 
 guage at all ; but fix your attention on the 
 thing itself. Words are wind ; but there is a 
 reality there in operation at this moment in 
 your mind. It is actually there — the fearful 
 principle, which is actuating your feelings and 
 your will to force away from your spirit the 
 thoughts, and all the benefit of thinking, of 
 your highest duty and interest, of your eternal 
 salvation. If it could be suddenly revealed to 
 you in full light, what an operation this is 
 which you are even now suffering there in your 
 heart, no awful catastrophe in nature, no tem- 
 pest nor shock of an earthquake, would affright 
 you so much. 
 
 After an interval, we would ask you, and is 
 it now done ? Has the repelling principle, after 
 so many former successes, prevailed once now; 
 so that the great subject which approached you, 
 appealed to you, solicited you, displayed smiles 
 of divine benignity, alternating with just men- 
 aces and frowns on your obstinacy, has been 
 driven off, and is vanishing like the images of a 
 disturbing dream when one awakes ! Are you 
 now quite at your ease again, to go free into 
 your business, conviviality, or amusements? 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 141 
 
 Then, what have you accomplished, — but to 
 send an angel of mercy away, and to vanquish 
 any last power thai remained in an almost ex- 
 piring conscience ? What have you gained, 
 but to have your soul still more securely grasped 
 by that which withholds it from God, and a 
 confirmed power and facility of rejecting that 
 which speaks in his name, if it should obtrude 
 on you again ? In what new principle do you 
 walk forth, but that of having less remaining 
 time, and augmented disinclination, for that 
 one thing of which the failure is perdition? 
 
 Such a view of the disposition of your 
 minds, and of the manner in which you sub- 
 mit and betray them to be acted upon, chills 
 the animation of a person who would plead 
 with you to apply them to religion. But still 
 we would hope belter things, and that it may 
 yet not be in vain to conjure you to reflect on 
 this great subject as involving your welfare. 
 Tell us whether it be utterly an idle hope, 
 which a more perfect knowledge of you would 
 show it foolish to entertain, that you may be in- 
 duced to employ, in the exercise of such reflec- 
 tion, this day and hour to better purpose than 
 any former one of your life. Why should not 
 this be the day for a determined seriousness of 
 thought? Think enough, at least, to give a 
 13* 
 
142 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 reason why it should not ; and think whether 
 it would not be worse than a shame to refuse 
 such an employment without a reason. And if 
 the only reason be, that you are reluctant, con- 
 sider whether that reason, that reluctance, will 
 ever spontaneously cease. But consider, too, 
 whether that reluctance be not itself, in truth, 
 a mighty reason on the opposite side, as imply- 
 ing, in the conscious discordancy between your 
 spirit and the subject, a disorder so formidable, 
 that madness alone would be content to leave it 
 unexamined and unreformed. Would that 
 a super-human power might stand in your way 
 just here, stop you at this point in your course, 
 and constrain you to reflect now! The hours, 
 the day, which you are just now entering on, 
 are as yet vacant, but will soon be filled, and 
 gone. They are coming as a space of time 
 which might be, may be, filled with a mental 
 exercise of immense value. Here is a subject 
 claiming to occupy them as they come on. If ad- 
 mitted to do so, it will indeed inflict remorse for 
 your having sent away into the past, a long suc- 
 cession of the portions of your time charged with 
 no such precious contents ; thus avenging itself 
 on you for your prolonged rejection. But will 
 that be an indication that you would have done 
 well to reject it still, and excite your grief that 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 143 
 
 it has for once effectually arrested you ? Would 
 you, under tliis arrest, struggle as to escape 
 from an enemy ; when the subject will bring 
 with it the evidence and the conviction that, 
 though with an austere and accusatory aspect, 
 it is certainly come as a friend ? Admit it into 
 your mind and time this once, with all its so- 
 lemnities, and even its reproaches. And if, as 
 a condition of doing so, you will insist on re- 
 taining some precautionary resource against 
 being absolutely and irrecoverably surrendered 
 to it, you may be assured, (if you can accept so 
 melancholy a fact for consolation,) that in the 
 strength of your corrupt nature you will not 
 easily lose all power of re-action for debarring 
 its entrance, when, at another time, it shall 
 present itself to you again. 
 
 There possibly are special circumstances of 
 the present time of a nature to enforce this ex- 
 hortation. It may be, that one of you, wor- 
 shippers of the world, has just experienced an 
 ill reward of his faithful devotion. Some griev- 
 ous disappointment, perhaps, some failure of a 
 project, some fall of your fortunes, some blast on 
 your hopes, has reduced you to a temporary dis- 
 gust with what you have so unreservedly loved. 
 Just now the world stands before you with 
 faded attractions, and you feel as if you could 
 
144 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 forswear your dedication and attachment to it. 
 Now, though this be a turn of feeling not the 
 purest in |)rinciple, it might be made beneficial 
 in effect. Instead of allowing your spirit to re- 
 main stagnant in a sullen and resentful mortifi- 
 cation, waiting till the world, which, however 
 cruelly it may sport with its votaries, does not 
 easily let any of them go, shall again assume an 
 aspect of blandishment, and renew its promises, 
 how wise would it be to take advantage of this 
 reflux of your affections to turn your thoughts 
 toward religion, and see, and try, whether there 
 may not be something better for you there. It 
 would be a worthy revenge on a world that has 
 disappointed, cheated, and wronged you, to 
 avail yourself of the recoil of your heart from it, 
 in reinforcement of the conviction that it is time 
 to " seek a better country ;" thus turning it 
 into an impulse to a new-formed aim at ** the 
 prize of the high-calling." But at any rate, 
 and at the least, do not let this disturbance of 
 your friendship with the world be lost, as a cir- 
 cumstance to coincide with the remonstrance 
 which would awaken you to serious reflection. 
 Do not, at once, fall out with the world, and 
 disregard or resent that which would tell you 
 how just is your quarrel, how long since it 
 ought to have taken place, and how incompar" 
 
LIVIJSG FOR IMMORTALITY. 145 
 
 ably belter you may do llian make up the 
 breach. 
 
 Perhaps some of you have just witnessed, 
 with indignant vexation, one of tlie iniquitous 
 partialities of fortune, as you call it. A man 
 whom you know to be of worthless or detesta- 
 ble character, has obtained, through apparent 
 casualty, or by means of craft or corrupt inter- 
 est, or even by the most undisguised violation 
 of right, some remarkable advantage of enrich- 
 ment or precedence ; such a thing as you had 
 coveted but not presumed to hope for ; or, pos- 
 sibly, as you had hoped and indefatigably la- 
 bored for, many years, but never could grasp 
 the prize. And in the pride of this acquisition 
 he insulted the more deserving men, at the cost 
 of whose disappointment and injury he had 
 made it. You exclaimed, What a world this 
 is, where the good things go to the worst men ; 
 and merit may pine and die! But is this the 
 identical world to which you, nevertheless, are 
 60 infatuated that you will not so much as think 
 of another ? What, are you resolved that a 
 glaring manifestation to you of the quality of 
 the object you have idolized, shall rather serve 
 to any effect, even that of corroding your heart 
 to no avail, than to that of lending force to the 
 persuasions of religion ; of religion, which has 
 
146 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 uniformly testified to you that your object is — 
 what you are now practically finding it ? Would 
 you rather be retained, resentful but still ser- 
 vile, for this tyrant to exhibit you in scorn as a 
 slave, fretting indeed, but impotent, even in 
 will, to revolt, than adopt the hero's language, 
 exalted into, a Christian sense and spirit, 
 " Then, thus I turn my back ; there is a world 
 elsewhere ?" 
 
 It n)ay be, again, that one of you has lately 
 seen a rival and coeval worshipper of the world 
 leave it. Perhaps the manner of his departing 
 answered to the description, " driven away." 
 You observed the long, lingering look cast after 
 all that was receding, and the fearful glance 
 toward what was approaching. You saw what 
 was the result of that choice which had been 
 made by you both, and to which he had re- 
 mained constant nearly to the moment when 
 an irresistible power interposed to rend him off. 
 You have the images of this sad spectacle fresh 
 now in your mind ; and those images — are they 
 atheists there ? 
 
 Or you may have beheld a less tragical ex- 
 emplification of what the world will do for its 
 friends, in the case of one whom you had long 
 known as a believer in its promises, a zealot to 
 its principles, and a staunch pursuer of its ob- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 147 
 
 jects ; but who, in the closing scene, relented 
 into shame and penitential sorrow, faintly min- 
 gled with hope in the divine mercy which he 
 implored. He declared to you his overwhelm- 
 ing conviction of the folly of his course, and 
 yours ; and entreated you no longer to leave 
 your whole soul immersed in that which must, 
 in such an hour, break away from around you, 
 and abandon you to a desolation like his. 
 Now recollect ; at the time of receiving such 
 an admonition, did you really think there was 
 nothinor rational in it? While, for decorum's 
 sake at least, you put on a grave and assent- 
 ing manner, did you, nevertheless, coojly say 
 within yourself, or was there a consciousness 
 equivalent to saying, I need not take any fur- 
 ther thouofht of this ? I do not wonder that this 
 person, in such circumstances, should talk so ; 
 but what he says or feels has no appropriateness 
 in its application to me. I must not let any 
 such gloomy ideas take possession of my mind ; 
 no; not even though it be possible enough, I 
 m^y. ultimately come into a situation in which 
 I shall think and feel in the same manner. 
 
 We may confidently assume, that you did 
 not, on the spot, maintain such composure, and 
 pledge yourself to these conclusions. A cer- 
 tain indistinct dismay, at the least, invaded 
 
148 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY 
 
 you, to the effect of subduing you, with some 
 general kind of conviction, to the formation of 
 some general kind of purpose. Or possibly the 
 impression was exceedingly powerful, the con- 
 viction a distinct act of judgment, and the reso- 
 lution very determinate. And what then ? 
 Have you since deliberately judged all this to 
 have been a vain agitation of your spirit, a 
 brief delirium, occasioned by a sympathetic in- 
 fection from the sight of sickness, distress, and 
 death? If not, have the intervention of a cer- 
 tain number of hours and days, a short succes- 
 sion of risings and settings of the sun, and the 
 return of the accustomed thoughts and employ- 
 ments, essentially altered the merits of the case ? 
 Have these caused what was truth, and obliga- 
 tion, and danger, to be such no loncrer ? Has 
 the mere passing of time reduced importance to 
 inanity ? Or has it detached from you, and 
 brought to appear as no longer your own, that 
 grand interest which can have no reality but as 
 a personal one, but as your own ? — ^just as if 
 you were to consider the things affecting your 
 natural life (for instance, your state of health 
 or disease, your exposure to a peril or security 
 against it,) as something existing in the ab- 
 stract ; a reality indeed, but something quite 
 separable from* yourself. The circumstance, 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 149 
 
 too, that by the passing of the intervening time, 
 you are carried a little nearer to the final result 
 of your plan of life, — has this actually lessened 
 the importance which you saw in such magni- 
 tude by that solemn light, which flashed upon 
 you in the gloomy chamber where a rival lover 
 of the world was penitentially preparing to leave 
 it? Think of a rational being so easily passing 
 free from the hold of the Ktron;Test forms of ad- 
 monition ; and spending his time to the very 
 purpose, in effect, of reducing his apprehension 
 of the awful magnificence of eternity, progres- 
 sively to a more and more diminutive impres- 
 sion aiiainst the moment when he is to plunn-e 
 into it ! 
 
 Should no circumstances nearly resembling 
 these have occurred within your recent expe- 
 rience, it would be a rather unusual lot if you 
 have not met with some incident, some turn 
 of events, some aspect of life or death, adapt- 
 ed to enforce serious reflection. Look a little 
 way back in memory, and see if no image will 
 arise to remind you that then, and there, by 
 such an event, such a spectacle, such a voice, 
 you were specially admonished to consider your 
 course. And answer it to yourself what effect 
 that appeal to your conscience ought to have 
 had. But do not narrowly limit such a review, 
 14 
 
150 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 as if afraid to return to those spots in past time, 
 where the hand of a dreaded power touched 
 you as you passed, where truth spoke to you in 
 severe accents, or a more gentle, persuasive 
 voice entreated you not to go thoughtlessly on. 
 If you he afraid to go back thither, what is it that 
 this apprehension tells you ? Do not limit the 
 retrospect as if you had no cencern with the 
 occasions and causes that once, long since, 
 challenged your consideration to the most im- 
 portant subject. Do not yield to the deluded ^ 
 feeling, that all those, being gone so far away, 
 have perished from all connexion with you ; 
 like the portion of air which you then breathed, 
 or the grass or flowers on which you happened 
 to tread. For be assured they inseparably be- 
 long to your present and ultimate responsibility. 
 They are all coming after you, however silent- 
 ly and unthought-of, and will be with you in 
 the great account. And if you could be in- 
 duced to make an effbrt, in any thoughtful 
 hour, to imagine with what a vividness of re- 
 cognition, and intensity of reproach, the moni- 
 tory occurrences of your past life will at last 
 present themselves to strike upon your con- 
 science, if they shall have been disregarded in 
 their time, and suffered to go useless into ob- 
 livion as you have proceeded on, it might have 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 151 
 
 the effect of recallinof them now, to combine in 
 operation with all tlie other things which sum- 
 mon you to reflection. 
 
 Wiien a religious ol3server sometimes has 
 his thoughts directed upon you, he is struck 
 with the idea, what a mighty assemblage of 
 considerations, that should irresistibly compel 
 you to thoughtfulness, you are insensible of. 
 As, when we extend our contemplations conjec- 
 turally into the economy of existence which 
 surrounds us, it is suggested to thought what 
 unembodied intelligences, what communica- 
 tions, what agencies, what elements perhaps, 
 what processes, there are on all sides, and 
 many of them relating to us, but of which the 
 senses admit no perception ; so in the spiritual 
 economy, that is, the system of relations in 
 which the immortal mind stands involved, 
 there are realities, there are truths, of highest 
 import, there are arguments, warning circum- 
 stances, alternatives of good and evil, most 
 vitally relating to your welfare, but non-existent 
 to your apprehension. The very emanations 
 of heaven, radiating downward to where you 
 dwell, are intercepted, and do not touch you. 
 It is the frequent reflection of a thoughtful 
 mind, in observing you — what ideas, what 
 truths, what mighty appeals, belong to the con- 
 
152 LIVING FOE IMMORTALITY. 
 
 dition of this one man ; and of that, devoted 
 and enslaved to the world — O, why is it impos- 
 sible to bring them into application ! A few 
 words are sufficient to express such things, as if 
 they were to fall with their proper weight, and 
 no more, on their spirits, enclosed, as it were, 
 in the consolidated habits of the world, mixed 
 and hardened in its clay, would excite a com- 
 motion through their whole insensate being, 
 and alarm them to a sense of a new world 
 of thoughts and interests. A few minutes of 
 time would be enough for the enunciation of 
 what, if it could be received by them in its 
 simple, unexaggerated importance, would stop 
 that one man's gay career, as if a great serpent 
 had raised its head in his path ; would confound 
 that other's calculation for emolument ; would 
 bring a sudden dark eclipse on that third man's 
 visions of fame ; would tear them all from their 
 inveterate and almost desperate combination 
 with what is to perish, and, amidst their sur- 
 prise and terror, would excite an emotion of 
 joy that they had been dissevered, before it was 
 too late, from an object that was carrying them 
 down a rapid declination toward destruction. — 
 And the chief of these things, so potent if ap- 
 plied, are not withheld as if secreted and silent 
 in some dark cloud, from which we had to in- 
 
LlVIxNG FOR IMMORTALITY. 153 
 
 voke them to break forth in lightning ; they 
 are actually exhibited in the divine revelation. 
 This so strange a condition, — that there are 
 mighty truths, requisitions, overtures, promises, 
 portents, and menaces, as it were close to you, 
 suspended just over you, of a nature to demol- 
 ish the present state of your mind if brought in 
 contact with it, and that, nevertheless, it re- 
 mains undisturbed, — is sometimes a matter of 
 gloomy, indignant, and almost misanthropic 
 speculation. But in the season of better feel- 
 inor, the reliorious beholder is excited to a be- 
 nevolent impatience, a restless wish that things 
 so near and important to you should take hold 
 upon you. Why cannot, he says, that which 
 comes between and renders those things, in- 
 trinsically of such awful force, actually power- 
 less, be destroyed or removed? Iftherebea 
 principle of repulsion, if there be a veil, if there 
 be a shield invisibly held by a demon's hand, 
 let it be annihilated, that the appropriate truth 
 may rush in with all its power. Let the 
 thought of the Almighty fulminate on the mind 
 of that mortal who is living " without God in 
 the world." Let the idea of eternity over- 
 whelm that spirit, whose whole scheme of ex- 
 istence embraces but a diminutive portion of 
 time. Let the worth and danger of the soul be 
 14* 
 
154 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 instantly revealed to that person, whose chief 
 cares are engrossed with the accommodation or 
 adornment of the body. Let the value of treas- 
 ures in another world be brought into sudden 
 contrast with earthly wealth, in the view of that 
 worshipper of Mammon. Let the scene of the 
 last judgment present itself, in a glare, to him 
 whose conscience is in repose on the delusive 
 principles of the world's morality and religion. 
 Let an austere apparition, as from the dead, 
 accost him who is living as if life were never to 
 have an end. To him who is indifferent to the 
 whole concern of salvation, let there be an 
 affecting display of what an extraordinary ap- 
 pointment, of mingled justice and mercy, was 
 required to render it possible, and of what it 
 cost the Saviour of the world. Let these things 
 strike into the souls of men of the world, and 
 they would awake in amazement at their pre- 
 vious condition, and continue long in sorrow 
 for its criminality and absurdity. And are 
 these still to be exactly the things for which 
 they have no sensibility or perception ? And 
 is it in the immediate presence of these objects, 
 constantly pressing for their attention, but un- 
 acknowledged and unseen, that they are to oc- 
 cupy themselves with every business, or enter- 
 tain every trifle and vanity, satisfied that noth- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY . J 55 
 
 ing ivS greatly wrong, assured that all is safe, or 
 not even caring so much as to think whether 
 they be safe or not ? 
 
 But, men of the world, it is possible you 
 may be provoked to assume the defensive, and 
 deny the justice of so strong a charge of irra- 
 tionality and guilt as we make, in applying to 
 you this denomination with these comments. 
 But it is not safe for you to do tiiis with a 
 thoughtless confidence, without an exercise of 
 reflection to ascertain the real state of your 
 mind and character. Be persuaded to make an 
 effort to take a true account of that state, as a 
 simple matter of fact. Of what, in all the 
 world, should you be concerned to know the 
 truth, if not of that internal condition which is 
 forming your destiny for hereafter? 
 
 Now, then, is it not true, is it not a fact, 
 that almost the whole system of the feelings 
 and activity of your mind is limited exclu- 
 sively to this world, so as to be practically 
 much the same as if you were unaware that 
 your being has an ampler sphere of interests? 
 Observe what is the extent of the range which 
 your spirit takes. Question it how far it goes 
 forth, habitually, or at any time. See, and ac- 
 knowledge to yourself, what it is that is in sole 
 
156 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 possession of you, as if you were made for 
 nothing more. 
 
 Take a view of your thoughts. Tiiey are in 
 number incalculable, and they can go in all 
 directions, to a boundless extent ; they might 
 *' wander through eternity." Whither do they 
 go, the countless thousands of them, and on 
 what do they fix ? You may perceive that near- 
 ly all of them stop within the circle of this 
 world's concerns. They start, and move, and 
 Iravjirse, incessantly, but still within this con- 
 tracted scope ; seeming to know of nothing 
 that is revealed, or important, or possible to 
 you beyond it. How many of them ever go, in 
 the impulse of faith, into the spiritual region, or 
 bring you intimations of having seen into a su- 
 perior world ? But there is no need of thus ad- 
 ding question to question ; you plainly know, 
 that the continual activity of your thoughts is 
 centered upon an order of temporal interests; 
 that there, and there almost exclusively, they 
 are busy and never tired, morning and evening, 
 and throughout all your times and seasons. 
 
 Observe, also, your affections and passions, 
 those feelings of the heart which often accom- 
 pany the acts of thought. See what it is that 
 most certainly awakes them at the slightest 
 call ; that attracts, attaches, and absorbs them. 
 
LlVlNfi FOR IMMOUTALITV. 157 
 
 Suppose that, at very many times, fallen upon 
 inditrerenlly and without any selection of occa- 
 sions, the question were to be suddenly put, 
 and ingenuously answered from consciousness 
 at the instant, What is, just now, the most an 
 object of comi)lacency, desire, or solicitude ? 
 how often do you think it would happen, in 
 a thousand repetitions of the question, that the 
 answer would name any object of higher order 
 than this world's affairs ? Would it be twenty 
 times ; would it be ten ? 
 
 And your schemes of active pursuit, — what 
 is that which would be their success ? Is there 
 one of them, or any part of one of them, of 
 which no possible turn of worldly events would 
 be the disappointment? Would any thing, that 
 should be the most disastrous to your spiritual 
 welfare, be a frustration of any one of those 
 schemes ? 
 
 We say, is it not true, that this is your- 
 state of mind ? But, then, reflect, that you 
 practically disown the grand relations of your 
 nature. You endeavor not to belong, if we 
 may express it so, to a spiritual world, but to 
 the merely material and animal order of exis- 
 tence. In plainer terms, you acknowledge no 
 good in being spirits, but to serve the earthly 
 purposes of this short life. You do what you 
 
158 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 can to withdraw, by a resolute subsidence and 
 degradation, from that economy which holds 
 the spirit's sojourning on earth connected with 
 every thing higher in existence. From the sys- 
 tem constituted, (as a part of that economy,) 
 for renovating, training, and finally exalting 
 them, you practically make yourselves aliens 
 and outcasts, rejecting its benefits, and wishing 
 you could be forgotten in its jurisdiction. You 
 are content that any other fallen beings, rather 
 than you, should be included in the dispensa- 
 tion of mercy, through a Mediator. And, to 
 complete this abdication of your most solemn 
 relations, you assume to be only in some very 
 relaxed and undefined manner subjects of re- 
 sponsibility and retribution. All this, in effect, 
 you are doing, in devoting yourselves, with soul 
 and life, exclusively to the interests of this 
 world. For what less can you be doing, while 
 you refuse all practical acknowledgment of 
 these grand relations, maintain a state of mind 
 unconformed to them, employ no cares or affec- 
 tions upon them, and will not allow even your 
 thoughts to be directed to them 1 But is it not 
 an enormous and fearful absurdity, that while 
 thus you are actually involved in relations 
 which no power but that which could annihi- 
 late your being can dissolve, with a grand sys- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 159 
 
 tern, comprehending wliatever belongs to the 
 existence and interests of spirits, comprehend- 
 ing a method of redemption tiirough a Media- 
 tor, an invisible state, heaven, hell, and eter- 
 nity, you should form your life on a plan, as if 
 this relative condition of your spirit were abol- 
 ished, or were nothing but a fiintastic theory, 
 and contract all the interests of your spiritual 
 and immortal being to a span of time and 
 earth? Think what the predicament will be, 
 when these disowned but indissoluble relations 
 shall vindictively verify their reality and au- 
 thority, and wrest you away from that object 
 to which you have reduced and confined your- 
 self, so as to be almost growing into one sub- 
 stance with it. 
 
 Again, is it not true, that, in this devoted- 
 ness to the world you are living estranged 
 from God ? Though this was implied in the 
 preceding representation, you would do well 
 to make it a distinct matter to be brought to 
 the proof. Try it by any mode of questioning 
 that would the most prominently expose the 
 truth. For example : suppose that such a 
 thing were at any time to take place, as that 
 you should feel a mighty impression of the di- 
 vine presence, a consciousness of being per- 
 vaded, in your every faculty, quality, and 
 
160 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 thought, by the sunbeams, as it were, of his 
 irresistible intelligence, an affecting sense of 
 your entire dependence, a horror for having 
 sinned against him, an ardent aspiration to en- 
 joy his eternal favor, and a determination, with 
 the utmost impulse of your affections and will, 
 to serve him thenceforward, — say whether this 
 would not be the most amazing phenomenon 
 that had ever happened to you. Would you 
 not wonder, beyond all power of expression, 
 what new moral element could have been shed 
 around you, for your spirit to see and breathe 
 in ? But then the fact must be, that the pres- 
 sent state of your mind is the reverse of all this ; 
 that the Almighty God, your creator, preserver, 
 and governor, the supreme benefactor, and the 
 sole possible giver of ultimate felicity, has hith- 
 erto been in your regard a comparatively insig- 
 nificant object. The universe of his works, the 
 revelations of his word, the directing interfer- 
 ence of his dominion, the wonders and mys- 
 teries involved within your own existence, 
 have but feebly and seldom brought the appre- 
 hension of him to your minds. The good 
 which you have enjoyed, and which could 
 not have come to you but through an incon- 
 ceivably multifarious agency of an intelligent 
 Power, you have received as if resulting from 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 161 
 
 some mechanism of nature, or imparted by the 
 pagan unthinking soul of the world ; but in- 
 deed, without reflecting on it so much as to ac- 
 knowlediie even that for its source. The 
 schemes, which have been the chief business 
 and interest of your life, were formed with no 
 express consideration whether God would ap- 
 prove them, and prosecuted in utter forgetful- 
 ness of dependence on him for aid and suc- 
 cess. If the thought had spontaneously arisen, 
 What is God to me, in sensible importance? 
 the reply might have been, Nothing; or less, at 
 most, than that person, my friend, or that other, 
 my foe; than that ability of my coadjutors, that 
 application of art, that machinery, that sum of 
 emolument. As to piety aspiring so high as 
 the experience of communion with God, and 
 the influential operation of his Spirit, if such 
 ideas, conveyed in such terms, incidentally met 
 your notice, they appeared either unintelligible 
 or fanatical. Recollect and question the habit- 
 ual temper of your mind, whether it has not 
 been an unwelcome thing to be reminded of 
 God at all. If it might have been conceded to 
 you that you should obtain what would please 
 you most, with respect to a lasting condition of 
 your existence, would not the wish have been 
 something like this : that God, contenting him- 
 15 
 
162 LIVING FOR [MiMORTALlTY. 
 
 self with carrying on the general system of the 
 world, only rendered a little more commodious, 
 w^ould allow you to live in it indefinitely onward 
 — and let you alunc ? 
 
 Now, if there should be an interval when you 
 are inclined, (for some of you profess to be ca- 
 pable of abstracted mental employments,) to in- 
 dulge your imagination in contemplating awful 
 and portentous spectacles, in ideal or actual ex- 
 istence, you need not range in quest of such 
 into the visionary world. Nor need you go to 
 far-off tracts of the creation, seeking what 
 mighty forms of evil may there have their 
 abode. The guardians of the fearful secrets of 
 any dark coast might justly remand you back, 
 to behold here, in your own place, a visitation 
 of the most direful prodigy which can have 
 blasted any region with its presence. For here, 
 in the condition of your spirits, the sovereign 
 and most sacred principle of order in the crea- 
 tion is abjured and exterminated. To be most 
 intimately in the presence, to be surrounded 
 continually by the glory, of a Being omnipotent 
 and infinitely intelligent, existent from eternity 
 to eternity, the originator, supporter, and dis- 
 poser of all other existence ; and to feel no 
 powerful impression on your mind, no rever- 
 ential fear, no frequent intimations even of the 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 163 
 
 very fact, — is not this an astonishing violation 
 of all rectitude, a most melancholy dereliction 
 of all reason ? This is to have your best facul- 
 ties shrunk and stupified to a strange conform- 
 ity with brutal nature, without its innocence 
 and impunity. This is in eflect to tell that 
 Being, that his infinite supremacy is a vain cir- 
 cumstance in this province of his dominion ; 
 that his is an unnecessary and undesirable pres- 
 ence, tolerable only while leaving you unre- 
 minded of it, or consenting to be recrarded with 
 indifference. It is as if, with an inversion of 
 piety, you would thank him only for being in- 
 visible and silent, and pray only that he would 
 be more entirely and be always so. You tell 
 him that the most inconsiderable of the thinors 
 he has made, or even the thincrs which men 
 have made, are of more importance in your 
 view than all the magnificence of his glory. 
 Under the heaven and effulgence of that glory, 
 you deliberately involve your spirits, as it were, 
 within little opaque spheres of mailer, pleased 
 to be secluded from the light of the universe. 
 
 How can we help it, if you will regard this 
 as a mere rhetorical and perhaps pompous dis- 
 play of an evil really of no formidable mag- 
 nitude, and coolly pass it by with the remark, 
 that we might as well employ sober language ? 
 
164 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 We will only say, beware that, in calling for 
 sober language, you do not mean a language 
 conveying a faint an unawakening expression of 
 the truth. Beware, also, that you do not, on 
 such a subject, mistake for soberness, any 
 thing less than deep and most serious thought. 
 And if you will but have the conscience to 
 exercise such thought, it may be left to your 
 own judgment to estimate the evil involved in 
 the undenied fact, that, being continually and 
 inevitably in the presence and power of the 
 Almighty, you yet are careless of this infinitely 
 the most important circumstance of your situa- 
 tion. The character of that fact would be ex- 
 posed to you in alarming manifestation, if your 
 reflection should cast a faithful light upon it 
 in the instances in which you may have the 
 evidence that it is a fact. Fix your attention 
 on some of those circumstances which will 
 prove to you that you are " without God in the 
 world," and honestly endeavor to see, in those 
 exemplifications, whether it be possible to over- 
 rate the irrationality, the guilt, and the danger. 
 Thus, for instance, when you feel yourself vigi- 
 lantly, and even intensely solicitous about your 
 reputation among your fellow-mortals, as if the 
 essence of your happiness depended on their 
 opinion of you, and are gratified or wounded as 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 165 
 
 that opinion honors or depreciates you, reflect, 
 that you feel no such concern, and perhaps 
 never have felt a thousandth j)art of the meas- 
 ure of concern, how you stand in the account 
 of the Governor and Judtje of the world ; and 
 then, dwell on this fact with judicial considera- 
 tion, and answer to yourself whether there be 
 not a profound depravity in such a state of 
 rriind. When you have been spending many 
 hours in society, with a lively interchange of 
 sentiments, with your attention directed to va- 
 rious persons, and with variously modified inter- 
 est in being in tiieir company, reflect, (for may 
 not this be often the truth ?) that you hardly 
 once, all the while, recollected the presence of 
 the greatest Being in the universe ; and then 
 soberly consider what a grossness of spirit is 
 proved by such an oblivion. A show of hu- 
 man countenances and figures, a circulation of 
 ordinary converse, with some intermingling ex- 
 citement of vanity and competition, were 
 enough to preclude, during the race of many 
 thousands of your moments, all recognition of 
 Him, who was then preserving your life, in- 
 specting your heart, witnessing your procedure ; 
 and who was adored by whatever nobler spirits 
 might have their offices to perform in this part 
 of the terrestrial scene. Think of this, and 
 1>* 
 
166 LIV.NG Ful\ IMMORTALITY. 
 
 confess tijat such a complete and prolonged ab- 
 sence of the recollection betrays a condition of 
 mind most refractory to the training for that 
 other society, where his presence is continually 
 felt as the one most impressive fact, and most 
 animating cause of delight. 
 
 It may be allowed to descend to still more 
 special illustrations. We may suppose one of 
 you to direct his look, or liis walk, over a piece 
 of ground, in which he has tlie rights of a 
 proprietor — till his successor shall take them. 
 He might reflect, that this space of earth has 
 more occupied his thoughts and affections, has 
 been beyond comparison a more interesting re- 
 ality to him, than the Author and Sustainer of 
 the whole creation. Then let him look again 
 on the soil, exert one solemn act of thouofht 
 toward him by whom, and in whom, all things 
 exist, and judge whether this be not a horrid 
 impiety. Another of you has gazed upon, and 
 leaned over, the material which represents 
 wealth, and confers the power of it ; he has 
 stood by his god, delighted and absorbed, with- 
 out thought or care respecting any other, in 
 earth or heaven. It should be possible, when 
 he shall find himself in this situation again, to 
 constrain himself to one effort of serious reflec- 
 tion ; and when he has done so, let him tell 
 
LIVIXO FOR [MMORTAMTY. 1G7 
 
 wlii'tlier he did not seem to hear a voice say, 
 " Thy money j)erish with tliee." Some of you 
 may be men of a more refined taste, and may 
 have drawn into your possession a rich collec- 
 tion of the works of genius, in literature and 
 art. Let thorn confess to themselves whetlier 
 they have not contemplated the splendid and 
 growing accumulation with a delight, a care, 
 and a pride, of incomparably stronger preva- 
 lence in the mind, than any sentiment regard- 
 ing the Divinity. To be thus environed with 
 the productions, (even though they little, in 
 truth, consulted them,) of the most vigorous 
 and cultivated minds of many regions and ages, 
 constituted, perhaps, a kind of heathen elysium, 
 in which they were insensible of any necessity 
 of converse with the perfect Intelligence, the 
 Source of all mental light, of all beauty and 
 grandeur. But, shall their dwelling amidst the 
 collected results of thinking, be itself a cause 
 to disable them for reflection ? If not, let them 
 consider what is the true quality of that passion 
 by which they are rendering this abode the 
 scene of a voluntary exile from ** the Father of 
 lights," raising as it were a wall, constructed of 
 the works and monuments of human intellect, 
 to shut themselves up from his communications. 
 And let them reflect how melancholy it must 
 
168 LIVING FOR liVl MORTALITY. 
 
 be, to go away from amidst the pomp of literary 
 treasures, poor, (and the more so for the very 
 passion for possessing them, and the idolatry of 
 them as possessed,) in all the attainments and 
 dispositions preparatory to an entrance on that 
 scene where no truth, no intellectual glory, no 
 ideas or realities of sublimity or beauty, can be 
 apprehended separately from their Divine Orig- 
 inal. Let the gratified possessor look again at 
 the imposing array of the vehicles of all that 
 has been the most powerful, admirable, and 
 enchanting in human thought and fancy, but 
 with a reflection with which he may never be- 
 fore have surveyed the spectacle. Here is the 
 intellectual world concentrated, as it were, and 
 embodied before me. It is but a small por- 
 tion of it which the brevity of life, with its 
 many employments and grievances, will permit 
 to be of any avail to me for a valuable use; 
 but I find there is a principle operating, which 
 can turn the whole collectively to a pernicious 
 eflfect. For, the more I delight myself in being 
 surrounded with this afl^uence of the produc- 
 tions of mind, the less aril I disposed to com- 
 munication with Him whose living influences 
 on my spirit can alone make me wise and hap- 
 py. But can I be content to think that I shall, 
 after a little while, retire from this proud tern- 
 
LIVIJMG FOR IMMORTALITY. 1G9 
 
 pie to the honor of human intellect, actually 
 floonied to take with me an unfitness acquired 
 in it for the life of intelligence and felicity in 
 the immediate presence ol God ? 
 
 Again, some of you might be addressed as 
 persons raised high above the level of the com- 
 munity, in wealth, rank, or power, or all these 
 togetlier. You, of this order, sometimes look 
 down to see how far the multitude are below. 
 And proud indeed would your position be, if, 
 in looking down from your eminence, you did 
 not descry certam things which, if we may ex- 
 press it so, dare to look up, and dare, though 
 the multitude do not, to ascend. Against such 
 things as vexation, pain, sickness, old age, and 
 death, your lofty station is not embattled ; and 
 their commission to ravage the plain below, 
 contains no restriction that they respect your 
 elevated ground. Still, notwithstanding, you 
 are highly pleased with the situation which ex- 
 hibits you in such splendor, affords such variety 
 of gratifications, and gives so commanding an 
 ascendency over inferior mankind. You in- 
 dulge sometimes in the luxury of verifying to 
 yourselves, by an act of reflection, what a for- 
 tunate lot it is that you possess ; and the ima- 
 ges you raise to augment this luxury, by con- 
 trast with what you can the most forcibly rep- 
 
170 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 resent to yourselves as infelicity, are those of a 
 condition in life insignificant, obscure, and indi- 
 gent. Til is proud complacency would perhaps 
 be heightened, if you could have a disclosure 
 fully made to you of the mortification and envy 
 felt, by many tens of thousands, in comparing 
 their situation with yours. Indeed you some- 
 times do, some of you, gratify yourselves by 
 imagining this. But, amidst all the satisfaction 
 or exultation, have you no perception of a 
 shade stealina^ over the tract of brio;htness 
 where you are walking in pride ; an ominous 
 gloom, charged with deep meaning, " instinct 
 itself with spirit," and giving intin)ation of a 
 Being who knows no envy or admiration, and 
 is ** no respecter of persons?" True, there is 
 very much in your situation to prevent all such 
 perceptions. It is striking to consider what 
 resources it affords for escaping or expelling 
 the invasion of all serious thought that should 
 make any reference to heaven. The means 
 you possess for change of place, and every 
 other stimulant variety ; the pomp and show of 
 life; the routine of ceremony ; the amusements 
 offering in rapid and endless succession ; the 
 epicurean gratifications; and, in the case of 
 some of you, the extensive concerns of business 
 and enterprise, or tlie management of impor- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 171 
 
 tant public affairs ; — all those are of mighty 
 efficacy, as long as you enjoy tolerable health, 
 for averting the admonitions of a more solemn 
 interest. On every side to which you turn, the 
 " god of this world" has disposed his enchant- 
 ments, that you should not see the objects 
 which are making signs to you by authority of 
 heaven, nor hear their call. And you are 
 pleased to have it so ; as the people of former 
 ages, when that sj)ectacle of rare appearance in 
 their hemisphere, which they denominated the 
 blazing star, was regarded as of direful presage, 
 were glad that aii unbroken array of clouds 
 should veil the sky, to yield them a temporary 
 but thoughtless alleviation of their alarm, by 
 concealing the dreaded phenomenon. If you 
 could resolve on an exercise of reflection, to as- 
 certain the causes of the gratification you feel 
 in these pomps, diversities, luxuries, and occu- 
 pations, you would find a very material one to 
 be, that they save you from any serious and 
 prolonged recognition of the Almighty, and of 
 those great subjects inseparable from the idea 
 of him. You would instantly be sensible that 
 you are so estranged from him ; and would dis- 
 cover that you have been thanking these be- 
 guilers for assisting you to be so. 
 
 But is not this a most perverted and perilous 
 
172 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 condition ? With the full consent of your will, 
 you suffer this worldly grandeur, this prosper- 
 ity, these quickly successive and variegated 
 gratifications, to have the effect, that whatever 
 is to be dreaded from the justice and disappro- 
 bation of a God neglected and despised, ap- 
 proaches still more and more near, and hovers 
 imminently over you, without being seen or ap- 
 prehended ; as the monarch of Babylon's sump- 
 tuous revelry was the very cause that the de- 
 stroyer of all that triumph could come so close 
 without being perceived. Think also of the 
 circumstance that, while you are placed, by the 
 possession of the high advantages (that is, what 
 may and ought to be advantages) of your situa- 
 tion, under a most cogent responsibility to God 
 for their use, you suffer this very possession to 
 render you thoughtless of this responsibility. 
 What will prove to be the guilt and the conse- 
 quence of such conduct towards him ? To 
 complete the estimate of such a condition, 
 consider how certainly all this pageant of your 
 pride, pomp, and luxury, will break up, and be 
 gone, when the angel of death alights by you, 
 to send your spirits, divested, disenchanted, but 
 unprepared, to their great account. A funeral 
 parade over your dust will seem as if expressly 
 designed in mockery of your past grandeur, by 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALI'J'Y. 173 
 
 celebrating your ejection from it ; and will 
 serve your equally thoughtless successors for a 
 variety in the exhibition of their pride and 
 state. 
 
 In all the ranks of society, (below the high- 
 est,) there are very many actuated by a restless 
 ambition to obtain the notice and conceded ac- 
 quaintance of those above them. In turning 
 our observations, for a moment, to persons of 
 this description, we might appeal to their own 
 consciousness of what it is that they allow to 
 take precedence of ail thoughts and solicitudes 
 relating to God. There is sometimes stealing 
 upon you a sentiment of mortification that your 
 lot had not been cast in a hijiher rank, and that 
 it is in vain to think of attaining the envied 
 station. Fortunately for your self-complacency, 
 you can turn this chagrin into an active spirit 
 for gaining the next best object in your esteem, 
 that is, to be on such terms with those above 
 you as shall gratify both your pride and your 
 vanity. You aspire eagerly to be acknowl- 
 edged by them, and to be seen to be acknowl- 
 edged, as persons of some account in their esti- 
 mation. You work assiduously, by manners 
 expressive of deference, by adulation, when you 
 can venture to offer it, by officious and volun- 
 tary services, and some of you by gross servility, 
 16 
 
174 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 to purchase their favorable attention. And 
 when a degree of it is conferred on you, in a 
 manner not too palpably that of condescension, 
 (though you are not, perhaps, very fastidious 
 on this point,) you are elated as if you had ac- 
 quired some great accession of intrinsic worth. 
 You solicitously watch for still more unequivo- 
 cal tokens of the gracious disposition, and for 
 occasions of putting yourselves in the way to 
 receive them. And the progress of your suc- 
 cess is probably marked by a more stately or a 
 more condescendino^ manner, assumed toward 
 yovr inferiors. Some of you, of prouder tem- 
 perament, and vigorous talent, disdaining all 
 the servile expedients, aspire to command the 
 estimation and respectful attention of the higher 
 favorites of fortune. And when you have in a 
 measure done so, you exult as if it were some 
 grand victory. It appears to you a splendid 
 achievement to have conquered possession, by 
 means of solely personal qualifications, of a 
 ground where you stand on nearly an equality, 
 in effect, with persons whose honors and im- 
 portance in the world may consist alone in the 
 splendor of their external circumstances. You 
 may affect to depreciate this extrinsic impor- 
 tance of theirs ; but you are vastly gratified by. 
 that kind of community with them to which 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. J 75 
 
 your abilities and exertions have mounted you. 
 — Thus, " man worships man," as a method 
 instinctively adopted in aid of each man's wor- 
 ship ondmsclf. 
 
 Now this habitual passion and labor to re- 
 alize some imaginary element of well-being in 
 the good graces of your superior fellow-mortals, 
 may have so debased the temper of your spirit, 
 that any admonition suggested to withdraw and 
 raise your thoughts toward him who is su- 
 preme to judge, to bless, and to confer honor, 
 may be like calling the attention of an un- 
 cultivated rustic to the sublimities of astron- 
 omy. The infinite greatness of God above all 
 things, the obligation of a constant reference 
 to him, the honor that comes from him, the 
 duty of aspiring to be acknowledged by him 
 with a|)probation, and the glory of possessing 
 it, — all these are but feeble glimpses on your 
 apprehension. But this is a degraded and 
 guilty predicament. Endeavor to think wliat it 
 must be to be valuing yourselves just so much 
 the more, in proportion as you succeed in pre- 
 vailing on these earthen domi-gods of your 
 prostrate superstition to accej)t, and sparingly 
 reward, the homage which you refuse to the 
 Almighty. Think what it is to watch and wait 
 with anxiety, with manoeuvres of insinuation, 
 with patience resolutely maintained, or impa- 
 
176 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 tience unavailingly indulged, and even with 
 sacrifices and self-denial, for looks and expres- 
 sions of complaisance, acknowledging you as 
 not unknown or despised, from creatures of 
 your own kind, possibly of little worth, and in- 
 significant but for their appendages of fortune, 
 so soon to be resigned ; while you are totally 
 regardless of that sovereign Power who is in- 
 viting you to the honor of being acquainted 
 with Him. And when your vanity is gratified, 
 in thinking how you stand exhibited in the 
 view of other men as enjoying a measure of the 
 dearly bought privilege, one serious reflection 
 might expose to you what ignominy inexpressi- 
 ble it is, to be elated at appearing before a por- 
 tion of society with the distinction of some flat- 
 tering attention from your superiors, and to be 
 perfectly indifferent in what account you shall 
 be seen to be held by the Judge of the world, 
 when men and angels will be the witnesses of 
 the estimation. 
 
 Men of the world might be addressed on one 
 other very general characteristic of their spirit 
 and proceeding. Many of you are zealously 
 intent on the advancement and amply endowed 
 establishment of your families ; ambitiously 
 compassing for them, at whatever moral cost or 
 hazard, the utmost quantity of the materials of 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 177 
 
 prosperity. Under the consciousness, though 
 little and reluctantly brought into any distinct- 
 ness of thought, that your own tenure is but for 
 a very limited term, the mind instinctively seeks 
 to escape into any factitious mode of extending 
 the interest of mortal existence, and yields to 
 some undefined sort of deception, as if in your 
 surviving descendants you were to retain some 
 kind of sympathetic life yourselves. In this 
 enigmatical feeling, for yourselves and them, 
 you study, and scheme, and toil, to place them 
 on the most advantageous ground, or in the 
 way to attain it. And this being effected, the 
 great business for them is accomplished ! How 
 often have we been struck with wonder in ob- 
 serving some of you, dwelling with delight and 
 pride on the prosperous introduction into life, 
 and the fine prospects, of one and another 
 branch of your family, and evidently with an 
 entire inadvertence to any greater concern 
 atTecting their welfare. Secure the primary 
 object, of their passing through life in a hand- 
 some style, in fair repute, and with plenty of 
 the world's accommodations at their command, 
 and that other affair, of their being accountable 
 to God, of its beintr their chief business in life 
 to be his servants, may be left as an insignifi- 
 cant matter, about which you do not, and they 
 
178 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 need not, take any trouble. You are thus wil- 
 Jing to be destitute of religion virtually beyond 
 your individual capacity, and to take on you 
 the weight of responsibility for its exclusion 
 from your relative sphere. You are consent- 
 ing, as it were, to be irreligious both in your- 
 selves and in those who are to survive you ; 
 saying, Let us form a family compact for the 
 prolongation of impiety ; a patriarch and a pos- 
 terity estranged from the Father in heaven. 
 But, thus to render yourselves expressly their 
 authorities for living without God, is it not a 
 most sinister and fearful office that you per- 
 form for them? When they shall find that all 
 you have wished and schemed for them, and 
 incited them to attain, has left their main in- 
 terest abandoned to ruin ; that paternal care 
 has operated systematically to betray them out 
 of all recollection and all favor of the mightiest 
 Patron, what will be the language of the thanks 
 they will return you ? And think what it will 
 be to be associated with them in the natural 
 result of this present estrangement from him, in 
 a sad exile, at last, from his presence. And 
 see, in this condition, and in that prospect, how 
 alienation from God destroys the value of that 
 one affection which is always represented as the 
 most genuine and faithful of human charities. 
 
LIV1N(; FOR I.M.MORTAL[TV. 179 
 
 These exemplincations, with the questions 
 and censures on ihum, have been attempted 
 in a form to lead you, men of the world, into 
 such reflection as would verify to your own 
 minds, that your prevailing spirit actually does 
 disown your relations to God, that it is irrelig- 
 ion ; and to expose to you that such a condition 
 is fatally wrong. They have represented that 
 irreligion chiefly as it is apparent in reference 
 to the more commanding and awful characters 
 in which the Divine Being is to be acknowl- 
 edged, as supremely great and powerful, as 
 present with perfect intelligence through all ex- 
 istence, as the observer and judge of all moral 
 agents. We should have more distinctly ad- 
 monished you to take account how you are 
 affected toward him in his character of sover- 
 eign goodness, in which you might have access 
 to find infinite resources for felicity. Reflect 
 what it is that you do, in declining all commu- 
 nication with him in this relation. In a certain 
 possible state of your spirit toward him, you 
 would have the sense of his attention resting on 
 you, directly and individually, as a favored 
 creature, with emanations of benignity which 
 would breathe a deep emphatic vitality into 
 your soul. And from all the objects and inter- 
 ests which would diversely engage your thoughts 
 
180 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 and affections, you would return, at intervals, 
 to be sensibly in the presence of a Divine 
 Friend, and realize it still again as both the de- 
 light and the energy of your existence. Think, 
 then, what it is to be so compacted and con- 
 substantial, as it were, with the world, as in 
 effect to say, Nothing of all this is mine, and 
 for nothing of all this do I care. I have no 
 adaptation nor desire to reciprocate sentiments 
 with any being of higher order than myself. 
 If God do really offer himself for such commu- 
 nication with men, 1 must tbrego the privilege, 
 of which 1 could have no possession without, 
 I know not what, vast chiuige in my spirit and 
 habits. But indeed I have no conception of 
 such a mystical source of delight. How should 
 any one receive tokens of special favor, respon- 
 sive to his own emotions and aspirations, 
 from a Being who never appears nor speaks 
 to the world, and whose concern is with the 
 wide creation as a whole? However it may 
 be, such a spiritual sympathy is not for my 
 experience ; and I must content myself with 
 such good as I can draw from intercourse 
 with the objects in the scene around me. 
 With these is my soul in communion ; they 
 are my happiness; and do not disturb me 
 with warnings of what it will be to go into the 
 
MVi.\(; F(iR i.M.MnirrAi.ri'V. 181 
 
 presence of God as a stranger when I must 
 leave them. 1 hope that, in some way or other, 
 I sliali have sufficiently made peace with him, 
 against the time when I am to find myself 
 present with liini, and no longer vvitli them. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MEN OF THE WORLD, WHILE THEY DISTRUST AND 
 ENVY EACH OTHER, AS RIVALS IN THEIR SORDID 
 PURSUITS, VOLUNTARILY RENOUNCE THE SOCI- 
 ETY AND CONFIDENCE OF THE MOST ESTIMABLE 
 PERSONS. 
 
 If your devotedness to the world be thus a 
 fatal alienation from God, it is comparatively 
 but little to add, that it places you out of frater- 
 nity of feeling and character with the best and 
 noblest of mankind. This may generally not 
 cause you much mortification ; and, lest it 
 should do so, you have recourse to the expedi- 
 ent of depreciating the religious character, as 
 exemplified in those who professedly bear it. 
 But your attention must have been sometimes 
 
182 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 arrested by such examples, on record or in the 
 living world, as defied your self-defensive mal- 
 ice. You have beheld a real, unquestionable 
 devotion to God, to truth, to holiness, and to 
 another world. You have observed men living 
 in habitual acknowledgment of the divine pres- 
 ence and authority ; preserving a faithful con- 
 science and obeying it, in scenes of temptation ; 
 maintaining fidelity to their high principle 
 through all changes of season and condition ; 
 amidst the troubles of their lot deriving conso- 
 lation from above and from hereafter ; through- 
 out their mortal course still looking forward to 
 the end ; and terminating it in the assurance 
 that they were ** dying in the Lord." There 
 was left you no cause or power to doubt that 
 this was all genuine, and you felt self-convicted 
 of baseness, if you affected to question it. You 
 were also constrained to admit, that these are 
 the true exemplifications of religion ; and that, 
 therefore, all cavils raised against it from the 
 unworthy character of many of its ostensible 
 adherents, are wickedly dishonest. To say 
 that but few professed religionists exhibit this 
 combination of qualities in such high excel- 
 lence, is saying nothing, unless you could as- 
 sert that such excellence, when it does exist, 
 
LIVING FOR IMMtjRTALrrV. 183 
 
 is something more, or sometiiing else, than 
 religion. 
 
 It is a matter of great difficulty to decide, 
 what degree of deficiency of such a character 
 may not be incompatible with the essential of 
 personal religion. But at all events, here are 
 placed in your view those whom religion has 
 rendered the very best of the human race. Nor 
 can you evade the point for which we cite 
 them by saying, they were recluses and as- 
 cetics, and therefore inappropriate examples for 
 any use of condemnatory comparison with you, 
 who are necessarily occupied with the business 
 of the world. For many of them were much 
 and variously employed in that business ; and 
 showed how religion may be mingled with sec- 
 ular interests and transactions, so as to retain 
 its own briffhtness and throw lustre on them. 
 
 Now, we are confident you cannot deny that 
 there are moments of transient light on your 
 mind, when the conviction comes upon you, 
 that this is the worthiest, noblest, most admi- 
 rable order of human character ; however in- 
 distinctly you may apprehend some of the most 
 refined principles on which it is formed, and 
 however disposed you may be to the iniputation 
 of mysticism and excess. On any question 
 arising in your reflections, irho are the most 
 
1 84 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY, 
 
 truly estimable and dignified, the most wise 
 and the most safe, your thoughts involuntarily 
 glance toward this class of men, and you can- 
 not make them fix on any other. They are the 
 honorable and select of mankind, the '* people 
 favored of the Lord," and Balaam cannot blast 
 or degrade them for you. 
 
 And shall it be your only regret that you 
 cannot reduce them to your own level 1 Would 
 you deem it a desirable thing that they could 
 be re-converted (such as are living) to that 
 worldly character which now separates you so 
 far from their community ; so that there should 
 be none to shine in contrast with you, as ex- 
 emplifying the possible glory of that nature 
 which you degrade ? Reflect soberly whether, 
 if you did see, and feel, and act, like the best 
 of those men, it would not be a most happy 
 change from your present condition. Would it 
 not be happy that the state of your mind cor- 
 responded to one inspiring sentiment of these 
 men, — that they have a Master in heaven whom 
 it is delightful to serve ; to another, that no 
 faithful effort or sacrifice will, as to its reward, 
 be lost ; to another, that every victory over sin 
 surpasses the value of all worldly successes or 
 triumphs ; to another, that their guilt is par- 
 doned through the divine mercy; to another, 
 
LIVING FOR IM.MORTALLTY. 185 
 
 that they, and all their concerns, are under a 
 sovereign guardianship which can never err or 
 fail, and that, therefore, in every juncture they 
 have the nnightieyt power in the universe at 
 hand for their assistance ; and to still another, 
 that one sensible interest in transacting the suc- 
 cessive affairs assigned them in this world, is 
 in the circumstance, that eacii one accomplish- 
 ed has carried them so much farther toward 
 quilting the whole, for something better ? Com- 
 prehend in the account whatever other things 
 form a part of the difference which religion 
 makes between tiiem and you ; allow this 
 difference to verify itself to you as a reality ; 
 and then say whether you can be fully content 
 and self-complacent in standing thus dissocia- 
 ted. Estimate impartially any favorite worldly 
 object, pursued or possessed, and think whether 
 that would not be well surrendered to place 
 you in a community of situation with these 
 Christian spirits. In a lucid hour, you cannot 
 but perceive that, by being associated with 
 them in congeniality of feeling and action, you 
 would be in harmony with those grand laws 
 and relations of your existence with which you 
 are now at variance, and often at war. Those 
 bonds of connexion with the highest objects, 
 adamantine bonds, which with all your striving 
 17 
 
186 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 you cannot break, but which you now feel^ 
 when recognized at ali, as fatal chains to what 
 you cannot love, and to a doom which you 
 dread and cannot escape, would then be vital 
 conductors through which you would communi- 
 cate with heaven. United to that assembly, 
 you would stand on a ground where beams 
 descend from the eternal sun, where angels 
 visit, where afflictions are turned to blessings, 
 where death is divested of his terrors. You 
 would be able to say, with cordial emphasis, 
 Wherever their souls shall be, there let mine 
 be forever. 
 
 On the other hand, look at the men with 
 whom you are now conjoined and assimilated. 
 As your own men of the world, the models to 
 which you conform yourselves, the class with 
 whose destiny you are committing your own, it 
 might be presumed they should have your ap- 
 probation, your confidence, your sincere affec- 
 tion. But is it so? Take an honest account 
 of what you think of them, in moments when 
 you are drawn a little aside from the bustle in 
 which you are mingled with them, and when, 
 for a short time, you feel your league with 
 them somewhat relaxed. At such times, you 
 will have found yourself looking at them with 
 a cold, keen, judicial inspection ; recalling to 
 
LIVING FOR I.MiMORTALITY. 187 
 
 tniud tlioir conduct, toward one another or 
 yourself; observing tlieir motives, and admit- 
 ting an estimate of these men of your prefer- 
 ence and fraternity. The narrowness of their 
 purposes, their seifisliness, the world-hardened 
 cast of their feelings, and their unsound prin- 
 ciples, stood palpably exposed in your view. 
 Confess how often you have been thrown into a 
 very different train of thinking of them from 
 that of considering them as your friends^ your 
 own chosen favorite class. Confess that you 
 do not, and cannot, feel a genuine esteem for 
 them, not to say affection or veneration. You 
 do not repose a tranquil confidence in them. 
 You have to watch, and guard, and surround 
 yourselves with every precaution. With many 
 of them you find yourselves in undisguised 
 competition ; and with your very allies and co- 
 adjutors you dare not remit the exercise of a 
 silent vigilance on their movements, and all the 
 indications of their dispositions and designs, — 
 a vigilance which, you need not doubt, is exer- 
 cised on you in return. What invaluable 
 beings you are to one another, if you be right 
 in this reciprocal distrust ! 
 
 Even as to reliixion, careless as you are about 
 it, you occasionally feel a certain indistinct im- 
 pression, that some other worldly men are too 
 
1S8 MVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 careless ; especially when you observe any of 
 them in declining health, or far advanced in 
 age, as eagerly intent on worldly pursuits as if 
 they had the assurance of half a century of life 
 before them. You could not avoid some per- 
 ception of incongruity in this, which has be- 
 trayed you into the expression. It is really time 
 for that man to begin to think a little of other 
 concerns. It may very possibly have happened 
 to you to be disgusted, and almost shocked, to 
 see one of your thorough men of the world re- 
 suming all his ease, vivacity, and ambition, for 
 playing his part in it, with hardly the shortest 
 interval after some sad event in his family pr 
 nearest connexions. If such an event brought 
 him an accession of temporal advantage, he 
 waited, perhaps, barely " one little month," to 
 rush, with the impulse of his new forces, and 
 the exultation of having acquired them, into the 
 busiest or the gayest scenes of life. Suppos- 
 ing, again, that you have been dangerously ill, 
 and visited by one of your fraternity, you have 
 seen what a man of the world can do in the 
 way of consolation. What was the balm which 
 that physician applied ? If you could not be- 
 lieve the assurances which he made to you, 
 (whether he thought so or not,) that you would 
 
L[VING FOR IMMORTALITY. 189 
 
 recover, what resource was presented to you 
 besides ? 
 
 In short, you will not deny that, if there 
 could be given you what you could believe to 
 be an undeceptive presage, that though associ- 
 ated with the men of the world now, you 
 should not be so hereafter, it would please you 
 exceedingly. We mean, it would do so at 
 those more thoughtful seasons, when the real 
 quality of your worldly association, its heart- 
 Jessness, its want of mutual approbation, its 
 poverty of the means of alleviating sorrow, and 
 its destitution of moral dignity, are exposed, in 
 a degree, to your reluctant apprehension ; and 
 when to all this is added, that its advantages 
 and pleasures, whatever they may be, are lim- 
 ited, both in fact and hope, to a diminutive 
 portion of your existence. This closing con- 
 sideration throws a deeply melancholy charac- 
 ter over the whole vast spectacle or your multi- 
 tudes and activities. A crowd of human beings 
 in prodigious ceaseless stir to keep the dust of 
 the earth in motion, and then to sink into it, 
 while all beyond is darkness and desolation ! 
 It is as if a great army, appointed to march 
 on some magnificent enterprise of distant con- 
 quest, should confine themselves to waste all 
 their energy in an idle tumuli of strifes and 
 17* 
 
190 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 revellings in their camp, and obstinately stay 
 on the ground to perish away, and be interred 
 there. 
 
 CHAPTER rx . 
 
 THE IRRELIGIOUS AND SORDID DO NOT ENJOY THE 
 PRESENT LIFE, AND MEET DNMINGLED WRETCH- 
 EDNESS IN THE FUTURE. 
 I 
 
 On a whole view of these representations, 
 it must needs appear, that, in your devotion 
 to the world, you are losing the grand object of 
 your existence. This is the plain brief sen- 
 tence on your course of life. And it is most 
 striking to think how insignificantly it may 
 sound to you, whose guilt and calamity it pro- 
 nounces. Will you say what combination of 
 words that you could hear, would pass more 
 lightly off. You have heard it, and, perhaps 
 within a few minutes after, retained in your 
 consciousness no trace of any thing impressive 
 having been made sensible to your mind. Are 
 you not tempted to repeat it, for the mere curi- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 191 
 
 osity of observing how much at ease you can 
 be with what seems of such formidable im- 
 port ; as if you were playing with a snake, 
 rendered harmless by tiie deprivation of its 
 fangs, or by your possessing the Egyptian's 
 charm against them. Repeat the sentence, 
 which affirms you are disowning and losing the 
 great purpose for which you are sent into the 
 world, and smile at the seriousness which 
 thinks it an expression of fearful meaning. 
 Say you are sensible of nothing lost, as long as 
 the good things of the world are gained. 
 ** Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with 
 goods, and have need of nothing ; and knowest 
 not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and 
 poor, and blind, and naked V It is not, how- 
 ever, that you are incapable of being profoundly 
 affected by the short proposition in words of 
 something disastrous in your situation. The 
 iew words that should announce to you that 
 your house, or other valuable property, was in 
 flames ; or that, (supposing you a trafficker by 
 sea,) a ship, in which you had an important 
 venture, had been last seen driving, in a shat- 
 tered state, at the mercy of a storm ; or the 
 judgment positively signified to you on a topi- 
 cal disease, that you could be relieved only by 
 a frightful amputation ; or the most laconic 
 whisper that should apprize you of a design 
 
192 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 formed against your life ; would produce such an 
 intense excitement, as if all your strongest past 
 emotions, extinct and almost forgotten, came, 
 as by a general resurrection, again to life, com- 
 bined in one tumultuous alarm. And yet the 
 melancholy truth, pressed upon you in admo- 
 nition, that the primary object of life, the grand 
 venture and value of your existence, is thus far 
 lost, and in the course to be finally lost, 
 through your devotion to the world, may leave 
 your mind unmoved, to await the stronger im- 
 pression of the next inconsiderable temporal 
 misfortune. 
 
 But you are awaiting also, little as you may 
 apprehend or care for it, impressions of another 
 order, and from another cause. They are re- 
 served, most inevitably to come, after a certain 
 succession, longer or shorter, of emotions from 
 ordinary causes shall have had their times and 
 be gone by. A thoughtful religious mind often 
 perceives intimations concerning you, pro- 
 phetic images, as it were mingling with the 
 sight of your persons, while it beholds you thus 
 absorbed in worldly interests, and insensible of 
 what you are doing in throwing away an infi- 
 nitely greater. That man, and that other, how 
 little do they care that all the powers of their 
 being, and periods of their time, are useless for 
 the noblest and the absolutely indispensable 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 193 
 
 purpose of life ! Plow content that what they 
 are acquiring should be at the cost of what 
 they are losing! How easily they can say, in 
 effect, ** Get thee behind me," to any thing 
 that would tell them what it is tliat they are 
 sacriHcincr to their idol, and warn them of the 
 consequence. But, to each of tliem an hour is 
 coming, at some certain distance in ai)proach- 
 ing time, w^hen they will awake from the in- 
 fatuation, to the surprise and dismay of seeing 
 that their life has been so far in vain. They 
 will look back to behold it, with all its fair and 
 precious possibilities, blasted and desolated by 
 their having passed over it. They will look 
 back to measure how far it micrht have carried 
 thera on toward the possession of incorruptible 
 treasures, unfading honors, an eternal inheri- 
 tance ; and then to acknowledge the miserable 
 fact, that it has not advanced them one stage 
 or step. It will. come,-^the hour which is 
 charged with the destination to afflict them. 
 There may be temporal grievances or misfor- 
 tunes, affixed by divine appointment to certain 
 parts of the time coming on ; but infallibly 
 there is, somewhere in the train, the hour 
 commissioned to bear the yet unkindled ele- 
 ment which will flame against their consciences. 
 Will it be while there are yet to follow days of 
 protracted grace, and possible " newness of 
 
194 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 life ;" or will it be the conclusion of their time, 
 and lighten on them only that they may read 
 the sentence of an inevitable doom ? Or is the 
 appointed moment, of that awakening to the 
 conviction that life has been expended in vain, 
 reserved to come after the last of the hours on 
 earth ? — With such thoughts the serious ob- 
 server looks toward futurity on your account, 
 while you are heedlessly, and perhaps you call 
 it pleasantly, occupying your life in the very 
 manner which will bring at length this convic- 
 tion, that you have slighted and lost its chief 
 end. 
 
 Allow us to remind you of so obvious a con- 
 sideration, as that of the rapid passing away of 
 your life. A large proportion of you, of the 
 character in question, have reached its middle 
 period, many are going down into its decline, 
 some have the certainty of being near its ter- 
 mination. And you cannot but have been 
 often struck with the reflection, how soon each 
 period of it, which had been before you, was 
 gone into the past. Have you never felt an 
 impulse to quarrel with time for leaving you so 
 fast, after you had perhaps been impatient for 
 some particular portion of it to arrive ? But it 
 would neither stay to be your companion, nor 
 slacken to receive your reproach. It seems to 
 come past you but for the purpose of stealing 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 195 
 
 away your life ; each day, each lioiir, taking off 
 a share of that as its spoil. Observe how the 
 theft and diminution are incessantly going on, 
 while you are planning, or consulting, or exe- 
 cuting, while you are striving or relaxing, ex- 
 ulting in success or fretting at failure. The 
 one continual fact is, that life is speeding off. 
 
 Now surely it is high time to adopt a de- 
 termined policy with respect to that which, 
 while of immense importance to you, is thus 
 continually deserting you. And the right pol- 
 icy is, not to attach yourselves, as your main 
 object of interest, to any thing to which life 
 cannot "be attached and fixed in abidincr con- 
 junction. In other words, how is any thing 
 practically of value but as you can have life for 
 its prosecution, possession, and use? There 
 are in the world riches, " respects of honor," 
 amusements, gratifications of curiosity, delights 
 of the senses, what you please. If you could 
 command life to delay, or to take a fixed state, 
 so that you might effectually appropriate these, 
 and unite them as it were to your being, that 
 were something. But by the rapid departure 
 of life, that is to say, of yourselves, you are de- 
 nied the essential condition of makinji them 
 yours. You but snatch at them in passing, 
 hold them for a moment, are carried away from 
 them ; leaving them to make a similar mock- 
 
196 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 ery of offering themselves to the next coveters 
 in the ever-transient succession. If you, be- 
 lieving yourselves to be immortal beings, can 
 be content with this, if you are willing to place 
 your all in things of which your fleeting life 
 allows you to try the good but for a moment, 
 how mysterious is it that such beings should 
 have come into the world to be so befooled ! 
 
 You will hardly be so unwitting as to retort, 
 that neither can life be stayed, and rendered a 
 durable condition, for taking: and holdincr the 
 goo^ of the spiritual interests, any more than 
 of these temporal ones. This would be true in 
 but so narrow a sense as not to be worth the 
 saying. For the cases are infinitely different. 
 It is in the nature of those higher interests that 
 they belong to this life only as a brief prepara- 
 tory term, the great scene of their enjoyment 
 necessarily being hereafter. The main prin- 
 ciple of the aspirant's connexion with them 
 here is avowedly not that of possession, but of 
 anticipation ; and in that anticipation he sees 
 combined with them an endless life, as his con- 
 dition for a full possession of them. So that 
 he may be more than content, he may be grati- 
 fied, that the present life is so fleeting, because, 
 in beinff so, it hastens him toward that where 
 the circumstance of transiency, inseparable 
 from the experience of a created being, will 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 197 
 
 seem lost in the character of permanence. 
 For, though he must possess his felicities in a 
 succession of duration, the assured eternity of 
 that duration will infuse a certain effect of the 
 permanence of the whole, to be perceived in 
 every successive point ; thus precluding the 
 character of evanescence from the series per- 
 petually passing. In contrast to all this, yovr 
 objects belong exclusively to time, and to the 
 very short time of your life on earth. And 
 therefore, the speedy pace of life is the rapid 
 parting from all you are possessing, or en- 
 deavoring to possess. And the possession it- 
 self during its brief continuance, is turned to 
 vanity, by your knowing that this pressing 
 haste, with which you are carried away from 
 each particular of it, is just so much fatal speed 
 toward your losing it all. 
 
 But the consideration of the rapid progress of 
 life toward a close, is enforced on you by more 
 familiar and palpable forms of admonition. 
 There must often be brought to your remem- 
 brance events and circumstances in your expe- 
 rience, which appear as receding far into the 
 past. Can these recollections be always unac- 
 companied by the obvious reflection. If all the 
 time since then be so much taken out of my 
 life, how reduced must be the remainder; and, 
 if the interval between that time and this, in 
 18 
 
198 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 one sense so wide, appears to have been very 
 soon passed over, can 1 be reckoning on a 
 very slow movement, whicii shall afford leisure 
 for all manner of occupations or diversions, in 
 passing over any space that can be yet in re- 
 serve for me to traverse ? Perhaps some of you 
 are conscious of a feeling occasionally arising, 
 which would shape itself into the wish that 
 you could be young again. Is this sentiment 
 dismissed witliout reminding you what pro- 
 gress you have made, and what despatch you 
 are making, in the journey of life? Some of 
 you see your descendants already busy in the 
 worldly career ; can you have evaded the sug- 
 gestion, what period of your life it must be to 
 which this stage in theirs is parallel ; with this 
 thought further, how soon they will, if they 
 live, have reached the same point in theirs as 
 you have in yours ; and where will you be 
 then ? When sometimes a tempting occasion 
 is presented to you, of embarking in a new 
 scheme, the thought will come over you, like 
 one of the cold winds precursory of winter, 
 that you are gone too far for any reasonable 
 prospect of living long enough to see such a 
 project through to its desired result. You are 
 compelled to a brief reluctant computation, of 
 about what stage in its prosecution might very 
 probably be the last in the course of your activ- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTAr^ITV. 199 
 
 ilies under tlie yiin. Some of yoii may be 
 seen building a house, for your more respect- 
 al)le and comtnodious residence in the latter 
 part of your life. When, in such a case, we 
 iiave observed the care and vicfilance exerted to 
 ensure that every part and adjustment be firm 
 and durable, the question would occur, Is this 
 person, so careful about the soundness of ma- 
 terial, and security of fixture, of each beam, 
 each board, each carved ornament, — is he not 
 silently visited by any thought of where he 
 shall be, long before the time that the structure 
 will show any signs of decay, long before the 
 time at which it would vex him to foresee there 
 would be any such signs? When you are 
 planting young trees, for fruit or agreeable 
 shade, can you avoid the reflection, how likely 
 it is, that before these trees will be matured to 
 their full productiveness, or be amply spread 
 and thickened round the dvvellincr, or over the 
 walks, you will have entered another kind of 
 shade? And then '* whose shall those things 
 be which you have provided?" 
 
 While exemplifications of so special a cast 
 will bear directly on some of you only, there 
 are many things of a more common kind, 
 which would admonish any of you who would 
 practise a little reflection. Consider how often 
 you fail to complete what you had in inten- 
 
200 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 tion limited to a certain time ; and then you 
 say the time was gone too soon for you to ac- 
 complish it. You appropriate a portion of 
 time, to be taken from business, to some plea- 
 surable pursuit ; and how soon you have to 
 say it is gone like a dream ! The great 
 changes of the year, or some marked point of 
 it, the anniversary of your nativity for instance, 
 return upon you by surprise ; it is but as yes- 
 terday, you exclaim, since this was here be- 
 fore. The appointed terms for transactions 
 and settlements in the course of your affairs 
 are here upon you again, when you seem to 
 have but just got rid of the last. Some of you 
 have become afraid of pledging yourselves to 
 do one thing, and another, from experience 
 that the time is apt to be gone before you can 
 make any effectual movements. Many of you 
 have begun to remark, that it seems to go fas- 
 ter now than it did in your earlier life. Some 
 of you, perhaps, occasionally fall into a mood 
 of thought, in which you number the years be- 
 tween your present age and the farthest term 
 to which it is in any way reasonable, under the 
 most favorable circumstances, to calculate that 
 you may live ; and then intrudes the idea that, 
 (even supposing you assume that you shall have 
 so many years of life,) if th6y shall steal off as 
 fast as an equal number of the preceding ones 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 201 
 
 seem to have ^one, you will very soon be at 
 the end. The most aged class, if they too 
 must still retain the folly of reckoning on the 
 future, unsubdued by the certain littleness of 
 their nearly exhausted store, may consider, 
 whether even all the infirmities and burdens of 
 the last stage will so retard the lapse of time, 
 that a very few more summers and winters will 
 not quickly have vanished from between them 
 and the exit out of life. 
 
 If things in some analogy to these were ex- 
 hibited as the fancied circumstances of a fic- 
 titious order and condition of moral agents, de- 
 vised to give a strong image of a state of 
 urgency and danger, combined with insensibil- 
 . ity, the representation would excite no little of 
 that sentiment partaking of alarm, which you 
 can feel by sympathy for even imaginary 
 beings. But you, men of the world, know that 
 this is a plain description of your actual situa- 
 tion. It is yourselves who are beset by so 
 many circumstances to apprize you of the 
 rapidity of the course, by which you are pass- 
 ing out of life. And your unhappy case is, 
 that you make your life as worthless to your 
 true welfare as it is evanescent in its continu- 
 ance, by rejecting from your care its one grand 
 business. You act as if you really had under- 
 18* 
 
202 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 Stood your existence here and hereafter not to 
 be the same existence ; but that the present life 
 was expressly appointed by the Creator to be 
 occupied with the matters of this earth ex- 
 clusively, that it was to be altogether " of the 
 earth earthy ;" and that, for the next, you are 
 to be literally created anew, in a different 
 order of being, constituted in a similar adap- 
 tation to be occupied with what there may be 
 in another world, and having no reference or 
 relation to the previous and probationary state. 
 But, if such be not the law of your existence, 
 reflect what a fatal proceeding you adopt in so 
 devoting, through this life, your soul to this 
 world, that when you leave it you will find 
 the substantial thing that remains with you, 
 after all its shadows and delusions are past, is 
 an unfitness for a better. 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 203 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONCLUDING ADMONITION. 
 
 Here we conclude this long course of re- 
 monstrance. Perhaps you are ready to say it 
 is a rueful and offensive representation, just 
 such as a splenetic spirit, which has quarrelled 
 with the world, would be gratified to make, in 
 the wish to poison the satisfactions of those 
 who have yet some cause to regard it as a 
 friend ; and who, at all events, think it yet too 
 soon to fall into hostility with themselves. But 
 consider at whose cost it will be that you repel 
 a statement which you cannot refute. The 
 truth of the matter goes, in reality, no further 
 off from you for being rejected ; any more than 
 the hour of death can be deferred by refusing 
 to think of it, or by heedlessness of the solem- 
 nity of the prospect. Where would be the 
 sense of a man, (if such a case could be,) who 
 should turn with impatient disgust from the 
 sight of characteristic morbid appearances 
 shown in a delineation, and at the same time 
 be well content to bear in his own person the 
 disease itself? That the preceding descrip- 
 
204 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 tion of your state is in substance the truth, we 
 may challenge you to deny ; to deny, that is to 
 say, upon such serious and honest considera- 
 tion as you cannot refuse without being guilty 
 of the most deplorable trifling, a trifling which 
 you will in due time meet with something that 
 will avenge. And we may appeal to your own 
 reason, thus exercised, what you would think 
 of a doctrine or a teacher, that would consent 
 to leave you satisfied with a plan of life which, 
 for the sake of this world, renounces the good, 
 and braves the evil, of the world to come. 
 
 But, though the representation thus far be of 
 menacing character, all is not dark. As we 
 have seen in a pictured view of Babylon, sup- 
 posed on the eve of its fall, there remains one 
 portion of the hemisphere, and one celestial lu- 
 minary, not yet obscured by the portentous 
 shade. While no colors can throw too gloomy 
 an aspect on the condition in which you have 
 been described, there shines on your view still 
 that great resource to which all this series of 
 what may have seemed austere reprehensions, 
 has been aimed to constrain your attention. 
 And if you could be made to apprehend the 
 importance, which there really is in the consid- 
 erations so inadequately conceived and ex- 
 pressed, you would be awakened to wonder 
 
MVINT. FOR I.\; MORTALITY. 205 
 
 and gratitude that, after so constant and sys- 
 tematic a rejection of the sovereign good, you 
 should not now find " a great gulf fixed be- 
 tween it and you." On your side of that tre- 
 mendous chasm there is still Religion, accessi- 
 ble to you in all its blessings of deliverance, 
 peace, and security for hereafter. You are 
 still on that favored ground, where you are in- 
 vited by a God of mercy, a Redeemer with his 
 atoning sacrifice, a Divine Spirit with all pow- 
 ers and operations of assistance, to enter yet 
 at last into the possession of that, which will 
 be a glorious portion when all you have been 
 striving with the world to gain will vanish in 
 dust and smoke. But be warned again, that 
 the time is passing, and a very short persistence 
 in your folly may make it too late. 
 
 Shall we, in concluding, suppose that some 
 of you may be disj)osed to answer these exhor- 
 tations in some such manner as this ? *' But 
 what can we do ? We cannot make ourselves 
 reJigious. Though we should admit that all 
 this is true, and of the last importance, we can- 
 not, for that, command and compel our dispo- 
 sitions, our affections, the settled habitude of 
 our minds, to change into the new order re- 
 quired. What can we do ?" The answer to 
 this should be appropriate to the temper in 
 
206 LIVING F(JR (MMORTALITY. 
 
 which it is spoken. We have heard of instan- 
 ces of expressions like these being uttered evi- 
 dently in a spirit of impious and desperate 
 carelessness. There was no real concern about 
 the subject ; but a determined addiction to the 
 world, and to so much of sin as that should 
 involve, a wilful avoidance of reflection, a stu- 
 pid and defying indifference to .consequences ; 
 and all this taking to itself an excuse, or al- 
 most a justification, from the moral impotence 
 of our nature. The man was in effect saying, 
 As I am resolved to pursue my course, it were 
 a satisfaction to believe, and I will believe, that 
 I could do no otherwise ; and as I am to fulfil 
 my destiny, the less I trouble myself with 
 thinking about it the better. Now, to a person 
 who should reply to religious admonitions in 
 this disposition of mind, we should deem it 
 utterly trifling and useless to offer any pleading 
 of speculately theological or of metaphysical 
 argument. The reasoning faculty of such a 
 man is a wretched slave, that will not, and dare 
 not, listen to one woid in presence and in con- 
 travention of his passions and will. The only 
 thinij there would be any sense in attempting 
 would be, to press on him some strong images 
 of the horror of such a deliberate self-consign- 
 ment to destruction, and of the monstrous enor- 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 207 
 
 mity of taking a kind of comfort in his approach 
 to the pit, from the circumstance that a prin- 
 ciple in his nature leads him to it ; just as if, 
 because there is tlmt in him which impels him 
 to perdition, it would iherclore not be he that 
 will perish. Till some awful blast smite on his 
 fears, his reason and conscience will bo un- 
 availing. 
 
 If he be guarded on the side of his fears, 
 by entertaining a light opinion of that conse- 
 quence on which he is so precipitating himself; 
 should he say, that it certainly uwuld be a 
 dreadful thing thus resolutely to go forward 
 toward it, and a flagrantly absurd one thus to 
 satisfy himself in doing so, if he had any such 
 appalling estimate of that future ruin as relig- 
 ious doctrine affects to enforce ; but that lie 
 believes this threatening to be a prodigious ex- 
 aggeration ; — we have only to reply, that, as he 
 has not y( t seen the world of retribution, he is 
 to take his estimate of its awards from the de- 
 clarations of Him who knows what they are, 
 and that it is at his peril he assumes to en- 
 tertain any other. — If any one answer to this, 
 that he does not believe in the existence of 
 any such declarations, he is not one of the 
 persons we are meaning to address. 
 
 But some of you will make the supposed re- 
 
208 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY, 
 
 ply, " What can we do ?" in a less depraved 
 temper of feeling. We will suppose, that you 
 are not quite indifferent on the subject, that 
 you seriously admit the necessity of religion, 
 that you feel some uneasiness at your estrange- 
 ment from it, that, in short, you wish you 
 could be religious, and in this spirit somewhat 
 despondingly put the question. For you we 
 have a plain short answer ; — indeed, we have 
 anticipated this in some preceding part of the 
 discourse. You can deliberately apply your- 
 selves to a serious, honest, prolonged, repeated 
 consideration of the subject. Do not incur the 
 shame, for one moment, of pretending to doubt 
 whether you can do this. On any one of your 
 worldly matters of importance, you know that 
 you can fix your thouglits, attentively, long, 
 and again ; you can severely examine in what 
 manner it is connected with your interests, can 
 weiirh the reasons for and aorainst, and look 
 forward to near and more distant consequences. 
 And you can do all this with respect to relig- 
 ion. Do you allege that, the subject being a 
 strange and hitherto foreign one to your 
 thoughts, and also presenting itself to you with 
 a disquieting and reproachful aspect, your 
 minds are strongly inclined to escape from be- 
 holding it ? What then ? You can think again 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 209 
 
 of the absolute necessity of considering it, and 
 can compel them back to confront it once more, 
 and still again. You can recollect that noth- 
 ing will be gained, and all will be lost, by ceas- 
 ing to think of it. You can reflect that, if you 
 dismiss it now, because it does not please you, 
 it will inf^illibly return upon you ere long to 
 please yon still less; and will return ultimately 
 in such imperative force, that it can no more 
 be evaded or dismissed. 
 
 Perhaps there may be some of you who 
 will complain, that, notwithstanding sincere 
 and considerable efforts to this purpose, you 
 find that the subject does not, and seems as 
 if it would not, take effectual hold on your 
 spirits ; that you cannot fed it to have that im- 
 portance which you know it to have. And 
 what then ? Again we reply. Arc you going 
 to make this a reason for suffering your minds 
 to withdraw from the subject and let it go, — 
 the subject which cannot go without abandon- 
 ing you to the dominion of death ? The ques- 
 tion whether to yield to this obstinate defect of 
 sensibility, is the critical point of your contest 
 with the deadly power of evil, within you and 
 without you. Yield, and all will hasten to 
 ruin. But, surely, the terror of such a hazard 
 19 
 
210 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 and such an alternative, or the clear conviction 
 at least that you OKglit to feel terror at if, 
 must incite you to persevering and more earnest 
 efforts. Look at it, dwell on it, and see wheth- 
 er a more protracted and intense consideration 
 of it will cause or suffer your resolution to re- 
 mit. That it should so remit, is hardly con- 
 ceivable of any rational being. But if it even 
 did so remit, that circumstance itself would 
 bring a new and frightful phenomenon to rouse 
 the spirit which had such a consciousness, and 
 excite it to call for all compassionate powers 
 and agencies to come to its rescue. 
 
 And here you are to be admonished, that you 
 cannot feel that you are faithfully making the 
 required exertion, unless you have recourse to 
 the most approved means for rendering it effec- 
 tual. You cannot answer it to God or your con- 
 science, that you are doing justice to your souls, 
 in this their dangerous crisis, unless you have 
 the resolution to withdraw yourselves as much 
 as possible from trifling company ; to seize 
 from your secular occupations some portions of 
 your time for solemn thought ; to forego some 
 recreations, not perhaps sinful in themselves, 
 for the sake of employing the time on the most 
 pressing concern in all existence ; to read se- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 211 
 
 rioiis books, with an effort of your own to in- 
 culcate their instructions on your minds ; and 
 read this excellent book, " Doddriuge's Rise 
 AND Progress of Religion in the Soul," 
 which we commend to your serious and 
 thoughtful perusal ; but especially converse 
 with the Word of Life itself. And there is yet 
 one more expedient, of obvious duty and prac- 
 ticability, and superlative in efficacy. You be- 
 lieve that the Almighty admits his creatures, 
 and indeed has with endless iteration invited 
 and commanded them, to express their neces- 
 sities in petitions to Him ; and that he listens 
 with peculiar favor, to applications for spiritual 
 good. You are not afraid to do this ; and you 
 are convinced, on the strength of innumera- 
 ble promises, and of the merits and interces- 
 sion of Christ, that it would be successful. 
 Though there did not appear to be any z'm- 
 mediatc success, you believe, you absolutely 
 know, that persevering application to Heaven 
 will finally prevail. You can, with this abso- 
 lute assurance, implore the removal of that 
 odious insensibility, that indisposition, that 
 aversion even, which you allege as a discour- 
 agement from persisting to apply yourselves to 
 the all-important subject, and feel as a temp- 
 
212 LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 
 
 tation to turn away from it. This can be 
 done, a thousand times over. It can be done 
 as lonij as the evil and the danger continue. 
 And each day of their prolonged continu- 
 ance supplies a stronger, and still stronger 
 motive, to a more earnest use of the sover- 
 eign expedient. And again and again we tell 
 you, that at each repetition you know, be- 
 cause God has declared it, that such appli- 
 cation cannot ultimately fail. Let this be 
 done, and you are victorious. And O is it 
 not worth while ! 
 
 Now, you must acknowledge, that this is 
 what you can do. But what ! are we about 
 to use a language seeming to imply that you 
 zre 7'eluctant to acknowledge it? What! are 
 we supposing you would wish it rather proved 
 that you cannot perform this simple, effica- 
 cious, inestimable service to your immortal 
 spirits ? Is it possible, that, because the pro- 
 cess of discipline is hard, (it is confessedly 
 so,) you would be willing to find in its im- 
 practicability a deliverance from its obliga- 
 tion, — at the cost, the inconceivable cost, of 
 losing its great object ? Is your professed 
 thoughtfulness on the subject rather employed 
 in trying and feeling the state of your fac- 
 
LIVING FOR IMMORTALITY. 213 
 
 ullies, to verify that there are invincible bonds 
 of fate around you, than in seeking the in- 
 tervention of that hand whicii can break all 
 the bondage off? Beware that, while you 
 pretend a solicitude for your eternal welfare, 
 you be not, in fact, rather seeking to make 
 a melancholy provision against the event of its 
 failure, in the delusion of finding a resource of 
 extenuation in some mysterious destiny, or the 
 determination of the Almighty. 
 
214 THE LOSS OF A SOUL ! 
 
 THE LOSS OF A SOUL ! 
 
 The following sublime passage is copied from a Ser- 
 mon of the late Rev. Robert Hall, of England, 
 delivered on the Death of the Princess Charlotte in 
 1817. Its eloquence and solemnity cannot fail to 
 command attention, and the whole is peculiarly 
 apposite to the subject discussed in the preceding 
 pages. 
 
 We are made for the enjoyment of eternal 
 blessedness ; it is our high calling and destina- 
 tion ; and not to pursue it with diligence is to 
 be guilty of the blackest ingratitude to the Au- 
 thor of our being, as well as the greatest cru- 
 elty to ourselves. To fail of such an object, to 
 defeat the end of our existence, and in conse- 
 quence of neglecting the great salvation, to 
 sink at last under the frown of the Almighty, is 
 a calamity which words were not invented to 
 express, nor finite minds formed to grasp. 
 Eternity, it is surely not necessary to remind 
 you, invests every state, whether of bliss or of 
 suffering, with a mysterious and awful impor- 
 tance, entirely its own, and is the only prop- 
 erty in the creation which gives that weight 
 and moment to whatever it attaches, compared 
 to which all sublunary joys and sorrows, all in- 
 
THE LOSS OF A SOUL ! 215 
 
 terests which know a period, fade into the 
 most contemptible insignificance. In appreci- 
 ating every otlier object, it is easy to exceed 
 tlie proper estimate ; and even of the distress- 
 ing event which has so recently occurred, the 
 feeling which many of us possess is probably 
 adequate to the occasion. The nation has cer- 
 tainly not been wanting in the proper expres- 
 sion of its poignant regret at the sudden re- 
 moval of this most lamented princess, nor of 
 their sympathy with the royal family, deprived 
 by this visitation of its brightest ornament. 
 Sorrow is painted in every countenance, the 
 pursuits of business and of pleasure have been 
 suspended, and the kingdom is covered with 
 the signals of distress. But what, my brethren, 
 if it be lawful to indulge such a thought, what 
 would be the funeral obsequies of a lost soul ? 
 Where shall we find the tears fit to be wept at 
 such a spectacle ? or, could we realize the ca- 
 lamity in all its extent, what tokens of commis- 
 eration and concern would be deemed equal to 
 the occasion ? Would it suffice for the sun to 
 veil his light and the moon her brightness ; to 
 cover the ocean with mourning, and the heav- 
 ens with sackcloth ? or, were the whole fabric 
 of nature to become animated and vocal, would 
 it be possible for her to utter a groan too 
 
216 THE LOSS OF A SOUL ! 
 
 deep, or a cry too piercing, to express the mag- 
 nitude and extent of such a catastrophe 1 
 
 But it is time to draw the veil over this 
 heart-withering prospect, remembering only 
 what manner of persons we ovght to be, who 
 are walking on the brink of such an eternity, 
 and possess no assurance but that the next mo- 
 ment will convey us to the regions of happiness 
 or of despair. Impressed habitually with this 
 solemn recollection, we shall rejoice as those 
 who rejoice not, we shall weep as those who 
 weep not, we shall use the world as not abusing 
 it, remembering that the end of all things i$ 
 at hand. 
 
 It is scarcely to be supposed that so remark- 
 able an example of the frailty and uncertainty 
 of life as the recent providence has displayed^ 
 has failed of impressing serious reflection on 
 the minds of multitudes : it is difficult to con- 
 ceive of that degree of insensibility which could 
 totally resist such a warning. But there is 
 reason to fear that in a great majority of in- 
 stances it has produced no salutary fruit, and 
 will leave them, after a very short period, as 
 careless and unconcerned about a preparation 
 for a hereafter as before !