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LIFE LESSONS 
 
 SCHOOL OF CHRISTIAN DUTY. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR Off 
 
 "THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN HUSS," ETC. 
 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 ANSON I). F. RANDOLPH, 
 
 110 BROADWAY, 
 
 Corner of Ninth Street. 
 
 1864, 
 
 n 
 
 d?c4.?></fr*r 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 
 
 ANSOS- D. F. EANDOLPH, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 
 District of New York. 
 
 ;V-3 
 
 EDWARD 0. JENKINS, 
 printer & Stcreotgper, 
 No. 20 Noeth William St. 
 
THE aim of this volume is practical throughout. It 
 is designed to conduct the mind of the reader on- 
 ward from a state of religious indifference to a sober con- 
 templation of the objects and duties of life, and to urge 
 them upon the heart and conscience. Without entering 
 minutely into the obligations that pertain to our several 
 relations as social beings, its main theme is, Life and its 
 Duties. Hence its title, Life Lessons. 
 
 Some portions of the volume have been published in 
 different forms, and, by some readers, will doubtless be 
 recognized. They have here been restored to their proper 
 place in the chapters to which they belong. If the an- 
 ticipations of the individual at whose instance the work 
 has been prepared for publication shall be fulfilled in the 
 useful service which it may render to the cause of Christ, 
 the author's labor will be more than requited. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 SERMON PAGE 
 
 I. — A Picture of Human Life 7 
 
 II. — Two Types of Human Life 14 
 
 III. — The Vanity of Life 22 
 
 IV. — The True Dignity of Life 30 
 
 V. — The Compass of Life 37 
 
 VI. — Duty, the Law of Life 44 
 
 VII. — Life-service Due to God 51 
 
 VIII. — Living for Others 57 
 
 IX. — Atheistic Evasion of Duty 65 
 
 X.— The Good of Life 78 
 
 XL — Ignorance of the Good of Life 85 
 
 XII. — Need of Revelation 93 
 
 XIIL— The Law of Nature 106 
 
 XIV. — The Revealed Rule of Life 112 
 
 XV. — Terms of the Life Eternal 124 
 
 XVI.— The Fatal Lack 131 
 
 XVII. — Life from the Dead 137 
 
 XVIII.—" The Wonderful" 144 
 
 XIX. — The Christian Life— "What it Implies 161 
 
 XX.— The First Aim of Life 168 
 
 XXI. — The Conflict of Life 175 
 
 XXII. — Life an Education 184 
 
 XXIII.— Culture of a Holy Life 191 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON PAGE 
 
 XXIV.— Thb Life Founded on Christ 199 
 
 XXV.— The Living Temple 213 
 
 XXVI. — Living for the Unseen 220 
 
 XXVII. — The Standard of the Christian Life 234 
 
 XXVIIL— The Tent and the Altar 244 
 
 XXIX. — Life's Tears and Harvest 254 
 
 XXX.— Walking in the Truth 265 
 
 XXXI.— Character 272 
 
 XXXIL— Social Discipline— Its Significance 282 
 
 XXXIIL— Influence 290 
 
 XXXIV.— The Tongue 305 
 
 XXXV.— Power of Example 319 
 
 XXXVI. — Power and Responsirility of Wealth 332 
 
 XXXVII. — Power of Association ; or, on Pitching One's Tent to- 
 ward Sodom 346 
 
 XXXVIII.— Blessings and Duties 363 
 
 XXXIX.— Value of Time 381 
 
 XL.— Waste of Time 394 
 
 XLI. — The Psalm of Life „-.... 400 
 
LIFE LESSONS 
 
 i. 
 
 A PICTURE OP LIPE. 
 
 "They walk on in darkness." — Psalm lxxxv. 5. 
 
 IN one of our New England villages is a graveyard — 
 in most respects not unlike scores of others — in which 
 sleep the remains of hundreds, and perhaps, thousands, 
 belonging to past generations. Many a moss-covered 
 gravestone is there, and " many a holy text " is sculptured 
 on those monuments which, ever sinking deeper in the 
 sod, or already fallen to the earth, seem themselves to 
 envy the oblivion of the dust they cover, and by their 
 own crumbling and decay, as well as their inscriptions, 
 " teach the rustic moralist to die," 
 
 But human enterprise has for many years been busy, 
 encroaching upon that sacred enclosure. A valuable 
 quarry, cropping out on the neighboring bank, offered 
 that temptation which to the industry and thrift of our 
 countrymen is irresistible. The rock was quarried and 
 carried away, leaving as the excavation approached the 
 graveyard, a precipitous wall from thirty to fifty feet 
 high. Still pressing on, the laborers cleared the rock 
 away, till only at a single narrow point could the grave- 
 yard be approached, and at last, this too was assaulted, 
 threatening to change the peninsular into a rock-walled 
 island of the dead. 
 
8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 What a spectacle ! Human enterprise sweeping around 
 such a spot as that, sparing it indeed, but leaving it iso- 
 lated and inaccessible, chafing against it as a barrier, 
 and shaking the sacred dust of its graves with the shock 
 of its explosions, disturbing the hallowed silence appro- 
 priate to it, by the echoes of rude voices and the din of 
 pick and chisel, and desecrating, to the extremest verge of 
 possibility, the scene where friendship had found sad 
 pleasure to linger, and affection had been wont to weep ! 
 From morning till night, human industry is intensely ac- 
 tive, almost beneath the shadow of the monuments, but it 
 has itself built up the wall, that keeps it, although so 
 near, from all contact with them, or any chance to peruse 
 the stone-graven lines that speak the solemn lessons of the 
 grave. Unheeding toil takes no thought of the voices 
 that seem flung back to it, in every echo of its blows, 
 from those rocky walls within which the dust of the dead 
 finds repose. 
 
 Who can regard such a spectacle without feeling that 
 it is emblematic — that a painter, turning from the picture 
 of Cole's " Voyage of Life," might have been warranted 
 in selecting this as the picture of life itself — its energy, 
 activity, and enterprise, rolling on like a torrent, till it 
 touches the realm of the dead, then pausing only to cir- 
 cle around it, and sweep away every approach, every 
 foot-path by which human thought draws near to medi- 
 tate on human destiny, or by which the toiling laborer 
 himself might mount up to read the lessons of his own 
 mortality ? 
 
 It is a sad truth, that the industry and energy of man 
 too often work just to wall him out from ready access to 
 the sphere of serious thought and religious meditation. 
 He digs and mines and excavates, only to rear higher and 
 
A PICTURE OF LIFE. g 
 
 render more insuperable the barriers that shut him out 
 from converse with his higher interests or communion 
 with his God. There he is — his life long — under the 
 very shadow of graves and monuments, the dust of the 
 departed crumbling around him, as it shakes with the 
 stroke of enterprise encroaching on its domain ; and yet 
 every hour, as he plunges deeper for new treasures, he is 
 but building higher that precipitous wall which shuts 
 him out from access to what is so near, and casts ever 
 deeper and darker shadows over his scene of toil. Thus 
 he forgets where he is ; he forgets what he is. He heeds 
 not that soon the waves of enterprise will roll and chafe 
 around his own grave. 
 
 If there is anything that may well occasion surprise 
 it is the thoughtlessness of dying men — their thoughtless- 
 ness with regard to their spiritual and eternal interests. 
 They traverse seas. They explore continents. They 
 pry into the secrets of the wilderness. They climb the 
 snow-capped mountains. They mark the transit of dis- 
 tant planets. They unroll antique parchments and pore 
 over moth-eaten volumes. They excavate buried cities 
 like Nineveh and Pompeii. They decipher old inscrip- 
 tions and scrutinize Egyptian hieroglyphs. They study 
 the fossil autographs of dead ages, on the rocky pages of 
 the earth, till the globe becomes their library, and cata- 
 racts and currents cut the leaves of long sealed volumes 
 that they may be read. They question the microscope 
 for the minute wonders of creative skill in the structure 
 of a sand grain, an animalcule, or a snow-flake. They 
 dissolve air and water into their original elements, and 
 unfold the laws that govern the combination of these ele- 
 ments. They track the lightning to its lair, tame it and 
 teach it, charged with messages, to leap along their iron 
 1* 
 
io LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 wires. They penetrate the invisible realm of mind, 
 search out its constitution, the order of its faculties, the 
 methods of their operation, the laws by which they are 
 governed. They give wing to fancy and revel in the 
 strange, weird domain of imaginary existence, surrender- 
 ing their being almost to the spell of fiction and romance, 
 and yet — while the mind is thus roused to intense activ- 
 ity, while the waves of the sea of human thought roll on 
 and cover almost every thing tangible or conceivable — 
 the one great theme which towers above others like the 
 Alps above their valleys, is left, like a mountain island 
 of the ocean, neglected and unexplored. Men are intent 
 to study the world around, but not the world within them. 
 They read the doom of nations and forget their own. 
 They decipher old crumbling monuments of stone, but 
 translate not the inscriptions on the living tablets of the 
 heart. They linger spell-bound over the poet's page. 
 They sit at the feet of the philosopher. They listen to 
 the sagacity of statesmen. They are kindled to enthusi- 
 asm by the creations of the artist, or by the magnificent 
 span of cathedral domes, and yet when a " greater than 
 the temple/ 7 a " greater than Solomon," he that " spake 
 as never man spake/ 7 opens his lips to reveal the secrets, 
 of the life eternal, they turn away, with stolid indiffer- 
 ence or cold contempt. 
 
 Can this be so ? Can it be that man can so regard all 
 things else, and forget himself? Can it be that the one 
 subject of thought, which to him is most important, most 
 vital, which transcends every other, which confronts him 
 perpetually wherever he turns, that is suggested in all 
 the forms of nature, the buried seed, the fading flower, 
 the ripening harvest — that is whispered in all the seasons, 
 in the springtime that bids him sow the seed, in the sum- 
 
A PICTURE OF LIFE. 1 1 
 
 mer that shows hiui a thousand symbols of that higher 
 beauty which the soul may win, in the autumn with its 
 harvests, asking him what from all his years angel reap- 
 ers shall gather, in the winter that speaks of age that 
 will need a shelter and support which nature cannot give 
 — can it be that this one subject thus suggested, and sug- 
 gested ever also by his own experience, by the cravings 
 of the soul, by the aspirations of hope, by irrepressible 
 longings for immortality, nay, by his failing strength and 
 tear-dimmed eye, by the badges of mourning, the funeral 
 procession, the graveyard mound, the dull echo of the 
 clods as they strike the coffin lid — can it be that this one 
 subject of his own personal spiritual destiny thus pressed 
 on his notice, thus whispered in every breath, thus pho- 
 tographed in every scene, is just the one of all others 
 which he banishes from his thoughts, and which for him 
 is left to stand amid the surging ocean-waves of human 
 activity precipitous and inaccessible like the island of the 
 dead ? It is a humiliating question to answer, but it is 
 not a difficult one. The answer is before us, in what we 
 see and hear and feel. That which justly claims human 
 attention first, is neglected till the last. How it must be 
 thrust upon men before they will entertain it ! How it 
 comes knocking at the door, and is left unheeded ! How 
 it speaks but gains no reply ! How men turn their back 
 upon it, and haste away, one to his farm and another to 
 his merchandise ! How thorough is their practical obliv- 
 ion of their spiritual destiny ! Sabbath after Sabbath 
 traces solemn words on the memory, but the first ripple 
 of week-day traffic rolls over them and shows that they 
 have been traced on the sand. 
 
 What a wondrous art of forgetfulness ! What a per- 
 fection of heedlessness ! There, right before them, like 
 
12 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 the Alps to the traveler's eye, looms up this great theme, 
 in a grandeur and magnificence which pour contempt on 
 all the little toys and vanities that rivet their gaze, and 
 their busy ceaseless activity only clouds them about with 
 dust, till they stand all unconscious beneath the awful 
 shadow that comes down over them from those sublime 
 heights to which thought should soar. Thus they often 
 live, and thus, often too, they die. The voice that admon- 
 ishes them to better things, is as the voice of one crying 
 unheeded in the wilderness. Friends by their side drop 
 away and disappear, but no earnest questioning peers 
 into the nature of that unseen world that is brought so 
 near. Their houses crumble over their heads and need 
 constant repair, but they seek no title to " a house not 
 made with hands eternal in the heavens." They are all 
 absorbed in the petty losses and gains of business, and 
 seek not to lay up treasures where moth and rust cannot 
 corrupt. 
 
 See them in varied spheres pursuing various objects, 
 and only agreed in rejecting one, persistently pressed on 
 their notice ! There they are, poring over the ledger. 
 There they are, bending intent over " the chequered 
 board f they have come back from a friend's grave, per- 
 haps, to renew their game. The Sabbath comes — that 
 hallowed day which seems the golden link between earth 
 and that better land of the eternal Sabbath, yet how its 
 hours drag, and how amusements crowd out devotion, 
 and how the sanctuary, visited possibly once, is thence- 
 forth shunned ! It would seem as if religion was as repul- 
 sive as a heathen Dagon — as if the light which it kindles 
 and flings in loving missionary beams of mercy along the 
 pilgrim's way deep into the shadows of the dark valley, 
 was unwelcome — as if the language in which it speafoi 
 
A PICTURE OF LIFE. 13 
 
 of " the glory to be revealed in us," was that of unmean- 
 ing speculation — as if the best thing for a man, a possi- 
 ble heir of immortal blessedness, was to keep himself as 
 unconcerned and indifferent within the cheerless walls of 
 his earthly prison-house, as the worms that crawl around 
 him, or the spiders that spin their webs to curtain the 
 barred windows of his cell. Is this wise ? Is it rational ? 
 Is it becoming ? Is it the part which lie should act who 
 knows, beyond all shadow of doubt, that soon his work 
 on earth will be done, and the seed-time of the life immor- 
 tal will have forever fled ? Should he give thought free 
 range on all other topics, but forbid it to touch the one 
 of most momentous concern ? Should the mind soar in 
 every other sphere, but crawl only when it enters the 
 sphere of spiritual truth and religious duty? Should 
 years be piled on years in order to climb and grasp a 
 wreath or fortune that ere long will slip like sand from 
 the cheated fingers, and only the scattered dust and frag- 
 ments of time be left for the foundations of the life ever- 
 lasting ? 
 
 Each one must answer these questions for himself. 
 Each one knows how he has lived, and whether the guilt 
 of inconsiderateness can be laid to his charge. You can 
 look back and scrutinize what has secured your attention. 
 You can see the current and direction of your thoughts 
 and the channels they have traced. Have they been such 
 as your calm judgment approves ? Are you satisfied, if 
 the claims of religion have been uniformly and persis- 
 tently neglected? Do you justify such neglect, or do 
 you condemn yourself? Do you class yourself with the 
 brute or with the man, with the unreflecting or the 
 thoughtful ? Do you count your final destiny a matter 
 of no account, or one of infinite moment ? 
 
II. 
 
 TWO TYPES OF LIFE. 
 
 u Better is it to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the 
 spoil with the proud." — Pkot. xvi. 19. 
 
 OF that great Roman Emperor, Augustus Caesar, it 
 is related that on the morning of his death, sensible 
 of his approaching end, he called for a mirror, and de- 
 sired his gray hairs and beard to be decently arranged. 
 Then asking of his friends whether he had played well 
 his part in the drama of life, he muttered a verse from 
 a comic epilogue, inviting them to greet his last exit 
 with applause. 
 
 Perhaps the world had never seen a greater ruler die. 
 The Roman Empire, excluding the more barbarous na- 
 tions, was the empire of the world. With some peculiar 
 advantages, yet with art and arms, Augustus had grasped 
 it and ruled it, and made it his own. He had acted an 
 imposing part in the great drama of history. He had 
 reached the highest point of mere earthly ambition. He 
 had been neither a debauchee nor a tyrant. One might 
 have said of him, that nothing that this world could give 
 was wanting to render his lot enviable. Yet who does 
 not gaze in pity on that — an emperor's deathbed ? Who 
 does not feel a painful contrast between his last hours, 
 as he gazes at his gray locks in the mirror, and talks of 
 having played his part well in the drama of life, and the 
 exultant triumph of " such an one as Paul the aged," 
 
TWO TYPES OF LIFE. 15 
 
 writing with manacled hand from his chill prison, on the 
 eve of martyrdom — ■" I have fought a good fight, I have 
 finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth 
 there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness ? " One 
 seems to be thinking of the applause of men. He wants 
 the voice of praise and flattery to cheer his dying hour. 
 The other is looking forward not to the praise of man, 
 but to the " well done " of the great Judge. One feels 
 that his jeweled crown will no longer cover that gray 
 head, ripe for the sickle of the great Reaper. The other 
 is assured of an everlasting crown, such as senates can- 
 not grant, nor death take away. One looks back on a 
 life of successful, but selfish ambition. The other has 
 the testimony of a good conscience that he has lived to 
 serve God. One has climbed the heights of power and 
 surrounded himself with the pageants of wealth and 
 feasts and splendor, only to die like a play-actor. The 
 other has deliberately chosen a path which, through 
 mobs, and prisons, and scorn, and hardships unnumbered, 
 leads him to a martyr's death, but a martyr's triumph. 
 Both wrought with rare ability and rare energy. Both 
 exerted a powerful influence on the history of the world. 
 Each in a measure attained his end. But in the final 
 result the sceptered hand grasped a bubble, and the 
 manacled hand grasped a crown. 
 
 It might seem a vain question — which of these men is 
 most to be envied, for no one of us could by any possi- 
 bility be the one or the other. Only one in all the mil- 
 lions of the ancient world could have been an Augustus. 
 Only a few could have been like Paul. Each of us has 
 limitations, not of our own choice or appointment, affixed 
 to his lot. But taking the two men as types of classes — 
 the successful man of the world and the self-denying 
 
16 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Christian, the one who lives to be applauded and dies 
 thinking what men will say of him, and the one who is 
 content to forego all if he may but have the testimony 
 of a good conscience and the smile of God, and we can 
 say for ourselves which is to be preferred. There is a 
 vast difference. It is plain to every one. In show and 
 parade they are quite unlike, but if one glitters like isin- 
 glass in the noonday of its own splendor, the other is no 
 less a jewel though you have to mine for it in prisons, or 
 wash off from it the mud of slander and contempt. 
 
 There are some men who seem to have no ambition to 
 be the one thing or the other. They live extempore. 
 They have very little of plan or purpose. They play 
 truant for seventy years, and never learn the first lesson 
 of shaping life. They are like straws floating with the 
 stream. The friendships they form, and the circumstan- 
 ces in which they are placed mould them like wax. 
 They have no more moral shape or stability than water 
 poured into the hollow of a rock. They do not really 
 live ; they just stagnate. Their hope is ease ; their 
 dread, work or starvation. They are candidates for 
 temptation and crime, and if saved from these, it is to 
 sink into moral cyphers. They are men who think little, 
 and who dream life away in a dull routine. Ingenuity 
 itself would be taxed to put anything but their names on 
 their gravestone. The biographer would only be able 
 to write of them, they were born, they ate, they drank, 
 they fell sick and died. No high purpose roused their 
 energies. No noble or generous aim broke the even tenor 
 of their selfishness. In the harvest-field of life, they are 
 stalks that never headed. Morally considered, they are 
 mere chaff and stubble. 
 
 Does this seem like caricature or irony? It is the 
 
TWO TYPES OF LIFE. i 7 
 
 simple truth. There are men who have no more idea ap- 
 parently of shaping their lives by any recognized stand- 
 ard than the ox that ploughs in the furrow. But is not 
 this a crime against reason ? Is it not a criminal stu- 
 pidity for any one capable of reflection to find himself in 
 a world like this, and never ask — what am I here for ? 
 Does it not become him as he opens his eyes thoughtfully 
 to the light of this world, to consider with himself that 
 he is here for some purpose worthy of the powers with 
 which he is endowed, and the privileges with which he 
 is favored ? Everything is valuable for what you can 
 make out of it, or what you can do with it. So it is with 
 human life, and there is nothing else that can be made 
 either so worthless or so precious. You may cut the 
 ivory into beautiful shapes. You may mint the gold into 
 shining coin. You may chisel the marble till it seems to 
 embody the grandest ideal of the majesty of intellect. 
 You may polish the rough-looking stone till it glitters as 
 a jewel fit for the brow of beauty, or the kingly crown. 
 You may subject the tangled, rocky waste to culture, till 
 it becomes a Central Park ; but neither ivory, nor gold, 
 nor marble, nor fertile soil, nor diamonds of the mine 
 have such a native capacity as these years of life. Char- 
 ity can cut them into shapes as beautiful as the ministry 
 of a Howard, or the pity of the Good Samaritan. Faith 
 can mint them into deeds of piety and devotion, bearing 
 the image and superscription of Jesus of Nazareth. Self- 
 denial may chisel them into the statues of goodness rising 
 to the stature of a perfect manhood in Christ Jesus. In- 
 tegrity and fidelity to duty can make them resplendent 
 with a loveliness, and precious with a value that belong 
 not to even a Koh-i-Noor jewel, while he that cultivates 
 them in the fear of God can turn the soil once covered 
 
18 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 with the weeds of vice and the brambles of sin, and the 
 rocks of depravity, into an earthly Eden, in which the 
 music of a conscience void of offense will chase all care 
 and fear away, and over which angels will delight to 
 linger and to gaze. 
 
 It is indeed a surprising thing to think of what the 
 humblest life is capable. It does not need a throne for 
 its pedestal. Its real value does not depend on its being 
 conspicuously exhibited. The little flower that blooms 
 in the wilderness is as exquisitely delicate and fragrant 
 as if transplanted to royal gardens. The solitary trav- 
 eller — some Mungo Park perhaps — alone is cheered by it, 
 but the gaze and admiration of thousands would not add 
 to it a single grace. So it is with the moral beauty of 
 lowly life. Its value is in itself, not in being the centre 
 of some elegant nosegay. To be is more than to seem. 
 The great good man wants no echoes of mob applause. 
 God's eye can supply the place of admiring crowds. 
 You might put some Robinson Crusoe on a lone island 
 of the sea, but even there, if his heart glows with love to 
 God, and he learns submission to his lot, and soars on 
 the wings of faith to the heights of holy thought and di- 
 vine communings, how under the good man's tread, the 
 lone isle becomes a Patmos, and his own heart a living 
 temple, and his devout meditations the lofty worship of 
 sanctuary service. 
 
 Go into the obscurest walks of life ; leave senates and 
 pageants and the echoes of fame far behind, and see what 
 the most unpretending can do in works that cheer the 
 sufferer, that strengthen the tempted, that minister the 
 oil of sympathy to bleeding hearts, that whisper hope to 
 the despairing — and whose spirit, in the fragrance of 
 goodness is as " ointment poured forth." See that cheer- 
 
TWO TYPES OF LIFE. 19 
 
 fill self-denial that reminds one of the two mites of the 
 poor widow — that unswerving attachment to all the 
 friends of Christ that recalls to mind the Moabitess of 
 old exclaiming, " thy people shall be my people, and thy 
 God my God," — that gentleness and meekness and char- 
 ity that calm the turbulence of passion, like oil poured 
 on the troubled waves — that tenderness of conscience 
 which seems to hallow all around it, like " the burning 
 bush," so that no sandaled foot may tread upon it — that 
 unwearied prayerfulness which sanctifies every duty and 
 transforms it into an angel service — that patience and 
 submission which are the loftiest heroism, and which 
 without a murmur exclaim, " not my will, but thine be 
 done," — that kindly beneficence which, radiant as the 
 morning's light, carries hope and smiles to the home of 
 sorrow, and that sublime faith which has power to change 
 the shanty, the garret, or even the prison cell into a 
 Bethel, and bring down all around them such a hallowed 
 presence that angels seem to hover there, and unceiled 
 rafters or damp walls seem to echo the voice of the mas- 
 ter — " my peace I give unto you." 
 
 Here are attainments within the reach of all who are 
 willing to walk by faith. Here is a success that is within 
 your grasp, which no calamity can foil. I would not say, 
 
 " Lives of great men all remind us 
 We may make our lives sublime." 
 
 I would put good in place of great. You do not want an 
 emperor's chances, or a Paul's chances. You do not 
 need purse or scrip, a scholar's lore, or an orator's elo- 
 quence. You have now all that is essential ; you would 
 have if you were only a poor Lazarus at the rich man's 
 gate. 
 
 
20 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 What then, with the help of G-od always, will you 
 make of your own life ? What standard will you set up, 
 what plan, what model will you adopt ? Will you say 
 it is not worth caring for ? It is mere rubbish, seaweed, 
 vapor. True it is brief, transient. It fleets with every 
 moment. But this only admonishes you to snatch the 
 passing hour, to work while it is day. But it is a grand 
 mistake to say it is valueless. There is nothing else on 
 earth more precious. The man that built great Babylon 
 accomplished less for himself than the man who by God's 
 grace is built up on the foundation of Jesus Christ into a 
 living temple. The time will soon come when the rich 
 must leave all their possessions, and the king must lay 
 down a sceptre which his dying grasp can hold no longer. 
 Then the only treasure of the soul will be found in itself. 
 All else, however inviting once, will be only like the blos- 
 soms that fall off when the fruit ripens. We shall have 
 only what we are. What we have made of our life will 
 be all that we can carry with us out of this world up to 
 the judgment seat. An emperor, breathing his last, 
 comes down to the common level of mortals. The test 
 of success will be what survives our dust. 
 
 And that which is most precious does survive. And 
 what is it? The results, the harvest, for good or evil, 
 for weal or woe. of these fleeting years. What shall 
 these be ? They are your inventory for eternity. They 
 are your portion forever, to rejoice in or regret. What 
 they shall be, you are determining now, you are deter- 
 mining even while you hesitate to determine. The artist 
 who has a block of marble put into his hands that he 
 may shape out of it a Ximrod or an Angel, may defer to 
 do anything, till to him, though he shapes no Ximrod 
 out of it, the block is worthless. So, only worse, it may 
 
TWO TYPES OF LIFE. 21 
 
 be with you. For the block is crumbling. Every mo- 
 ment chips off a minute fragment, and already perhaps 
 its integrity is gone. It is time to determine between 
 the Nimrod and the Angel, the Emperor and the Apostle. 
 Yours is a solemn trust, a fearful responsibility. The 
 burden is upon you and you cannot lay it off. An " in- 
 heritance incorruptible " is staked upon the issue. Just 
 to live involves the necessity of accepting or rejecting it? 
 Shall it be yours ? This is the momentous question which 
 you are to answer for yourself. The issue cannot be 
 evaded. It must be met. Will you not meet it man- 
 fully, fairly, intelligently? Your welfare demands it. 
 Your reason demands it. Your conscience demands it. 
 Your Maker and your Final Judge demand it. 
 
III. 
 
 THE VANITY OP LIFE. 
 
 "Vanity of vanities." — Ec. ii. 1. 
 
 WITHOUT the Christian hope, and the truth upon 
 which it is based, what is this world but empti- 
 ness and vanity ? Grand processions, mighty armies, the 
 trains of enterprise and caravans of commerce sweep 
 over it, but they flit by and vanish like shadows. Great 
 men arise, and their names are borne on the echoes of 
 fame around the globe • but when the bubble of their 
 greatness bursts, and the current of time rolls on, nothing 
 is left but a transient and vanishing memory. There is 
 a magnificent dirge-like music in that passage in which 
 Jeremy Taylor describes the humiliating end of earthly 
 hopes : 
 
 " Many men, by great labors and affronts, many indig- 
 nities and crimes, labor only for a pompous epitaph, and 
 a loud title upon their marble ; whilst those, into whose 
 possessions their heirs or kindred are entered, are for- 
 gotten, and lie unregarded as their ashes, and without 
 concernment and relation as the turf on the face of their 
 grave. A man may read a sermon, the best and most 
 passionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter 
 into the sepulchres of kings. In the same Escurial where 
 the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and 
 decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery, 
 where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time 
 
THE VANITY OF LIFE. 
 
 2 3 
 
 shall be no more. And where our kings have been 
 crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk 
 over their grand-sire's head to take his crown. There 
 is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest 
 change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched 
 coffins, from living like gods to die like men." 
 
 You do not need to look up to the heavens in their 
 magnificent array of revolving worlds to be prompted to 
 ask, " Lord, what is man?" you may just look around you 
 and see the various living forms that are flitting to dark- 
 ness and oblivion, or you may look beneath your feet at 
 the earth already furrowed by graves, yet ever opening 
 to take new treasures of affection to its cold bosom ; and 
 even then it will be difficult to repress the thought 
 suggested by the exclamation of Edmund Burke, speak- 
 ing of the sudden departure of his compeers and rivals, 
 " What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue !" 
 
 " We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works 
 Die too. The deep foundations that we lay — 
 Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains. 
 "We build on what we deem eternal rock, 
 A future age asks where the fabric stood, 
 And in the dust, sifted and searched in vain, 
 The undiscoverable secret sleeps." 
 
 What thoughtful mind can fail to be impressed by the 
 lesson of human frailty that seems traced out before our 
 eyes wherever we turn ? Think of Nineveh's glory, and 
 all the splendor of Assyrian kings, and then think of a 
 Layard excavating the crumbling marbles on which 
 Assyrian victories were inscribed. Think of Tyre, once 
 mistress of the seas, whose merchants were princes, and 
 then see the fisherman spread his nets on the rocks half 
 
24 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 covered by the rubbish of her palaces ! Think of Egyp- 
 tian pyramids, the tombs of kings, and the rock-hewn 
 vaults where the embalmed bodies of princes were laid, 
 and then see the Arab strip them of their cerements to 
 light his fire and cook his scanty meal ! Walk over the 
 great battlefields — a Waterloo, an Antietam, a Gettys- 
 burg — where beneath the green turf, with no memorial, 
 unless perhaps a mound, the remains of thousands are 
 sinking back to the decay that mingles them with their 
 kindred dust, and who can withhold the exclamation, 
 " Lord what is man !" All nature sympathises with these 
 sad objects. The withered leaf of autumn rustles upon 
 the listening ear parables of human decay. The flowing 
 stream floats onward, and away forever the foam that 
 once sparkled in bubbles brilliant as the hues of youthful 
 hope. Setting suns are daily recurring emblems, and 
 the shadows of night foreshadow the night of the grave. 
 Who can look at the lonely monument that affection 
 rears, and see it standing clear, and cold, and solitary, 
 only now and then visited by the curious wanderer, who 
 reads its inscription with little more emotion than a name 
 on a box of merchandise, and not feel the force of those 
 lines of Grey's elegy : 
 
 " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
 
 And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
 Await alike the inexorable hour, 
 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 
 
 What are all biographies, but more extended funeral 
 inscriptions — what is history but the graveyard of past 
 activity in which philosophy loves to muse ? And what 
 is all our learning, but threads which we spin off from 
 
THE VANITY OF LIFE. 25 
 
 the cocoons of dead men's thoughts which they wove 
 around them with life-long toil, as the shrouds of their 
 own mortality ? 
 
 Surely, it is not mere fancy which reads parables, and 
 more than parables in the life and the end of those 
 who command the world's language. One, after another 
 rises and moves along before us on the stage of human 
 action, but each, as he goes down amid the shadows of 
 age, moralizes on the emptiness of the pageant in which 
 he has played his part. I cannot envy the feelings or 
 disposition of the man who sees without emotion the 
 change that soon passes over all human greatness — a 
 Newton prying into the mysteries of the heavens, and ex- 
 ploring spaces from which the swiftest beam of light, 
 starting while he lies in his cradle, could not reach him 
 before his body is laid in its grave, and yet at last with 
 enfeebled intellect poring over a problem of which he 
 can only say, "I knew it once" — a Duke of Marlborough, 
 the greatest general of his age, receiving almost royal 
 honors and the world's applause, yet at last exhibited for 
 so much extra by his servants to the curious visitor of 
 of those magnificent grounds which his taste and wealth 
 had changed to an earthly Eden ; and finally, when death 
 comes, and honors wait on his crumbling dust, and the 
 funeral car is covered with shields whereon, are inscribed 
 those victorious battle-fields — Blenheim and Eamillies, 
 Lille and Tournay, Bethune and Ruremonde — vanishing 
 from among men, only to have the after world criticise 
 the meanness that was combined with his valor, and the 
 penuriousness and treachery that were allied with his 
 sagacity — or a William Pitt, as Prime Minister of Eng- 
 land, wielding in his hand almost the destinies of nations, 
 sinking in the midst of his years from his place of power 
 2 
 
LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 to the helplessness of an invalid, his body, within a fe\v 
 hours of his decease, left unattended in a lonely tenement^ 
 from which every living occupant had vanished — or a 
 Napoleon setting up or overthrowing thrones by a stroke 
 of his pen, at last a neglected prisoner on a far-off ocean 
 island, forced there to speculate in bitterness on the in- 
 stability of all human greatness, and the uncertainty of 
 all human prospects. 
 
 And what a sad story — upon which Solomon, if living 
 now, might well moralize — comes to us from across the 
 ocean, setting before us the scenes that followed the re- 
 cent departure from earth of one of England's most 
 gifted minds, the critic humorist Thackeray, whose writ- 
 ings have delighted both hemispheres, and whose words 
 had such power — to use his own language of another — 
 " to light up a rascal like a policeman's lantern." World- 
 ly journalists could not but comment upon the change 
 that passed over the scenes which he had made so at- 
 tractive. Scarcely was the dwelling on which he had 
 expended his taste, and which he had made so exquisitely 
 inviting, complete, when its owner was called away, and 
 in a few days more, those rooms in which he had spread 
 around him the luxuries of thought, and in which he had 
 enjoyed the pleasures of converse with the most gifted, 
 and intellectual, were filled with a lot of customers, a 
 motley group, which only his pen could describe — stran- 
 gers to one another, shrewd, coarse-minded men, hanging 
 on the auctioneer's hammer, anxious to pick up at the 
 lowest price the best bargains, and handling with busi- 
 ness coarseness what the author's mind had linked to 
 precious or sacred memories. 
 
 Looking at such scenes as these, recurring every day, 
 who that asks — what is man ? — does not feel that if he is 
 
TEE VANITY OE LIFE. 27 
 
 to judge him only by the show or pageant and its humili- 
 ating sequel, he must concede that he is only the play- 
 thing of chance, the bubble of time, the rocket of ambi- 
 tion. Who is not ready to turn aside and exclaim with 
 sadness, " and is this the sum, the scope, the goal of man's 
 eager hope ? Does he shine for a moment only to give a 
 meaning to the emblem of the glowworm spark ? Does 
 he flourish for a moment, only to give the plucked and 
 withering flower a deeper significance? Does he pass 
 before our eyes and then vanish to be seen no more, only 
 to humiliate his life by its contrast with that of the oak 
 of centuries that spreads its broad arms over his grave, 
 and survives every memorial of his crumbled dust ?" 
 
 It is not strange that when a king of England with his 
 barbarous chieftains were gathered to listen to the mes- 
 sage of the first Christian missionary, who told them of 
 the Great Father and the life eternal, one of the more 
 serious, as a swallow entered the tent, flew about it and 
 then sped away, should take up the parable and say — 
 " Lo ! King ! a symbol of our life here ! We are like 
 the swallow that enters the tent, flies about and then 
 soars away we know not whither. If these men can tell 
 us of our future, or throw light on the unexplored dark- 
 ness, let us hear their words." Does any one listen to 
 that barbarous yet thoughtful chieftain without feeling 
 that the words find an echo in his own heart ? What is 
 life ? what is its meaning ? Is the grave the final boun- 
 dary, the goal of human hope ? Do you say yes ? What 
 a mortifying littleness then there is about it! How 
 humbling are its vicissitudes and changes ! How unsat- 
 isfactory its highest honors, its amplest fortunes ! How 
 the very height to which the boldest and strongest climb, 
 is but the edge of the precipice — the Tarpeian rock — 
 
2 8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 from which, they must inevitably plunge to a deeper and 
 deeper oblivion ! 
 
 The man who takes this view of life degrades his priv- 
 ileges, degrades himself, and degrades God's purpose in 
 his creation. Most appropriately may he say, let us eat 
 and drink, for to-morrow we die, and so revel his few 
 fleeting hours away — hours that have no more meaning, 
 and will have no future resurrection for judgment, when 
 once they are gone. Or still more appropriately, scorn- 
 ing all that he sees as the pageant of an hour, and feel- 
 ing that reason itself, setting forth his capacity and his 
 doom, his power to soar and the grave to which he is 
 chained, is but the expositor of his conscious misery, he 
 may exclaim — " let me escape from this farce of existence 
 and drown hope and disappointment alike in the stream 
 of oblivion." 
 
 But who can acquiesce in such a conclusion ? Who 
 does not feel all the instincts of his being rising up to 
 protest against it ? And who can take this view of life 
 which the word of God reveals without feeling that that 
 alone ennobles existence — that that alone is worthy the 
 end which God had in view in creating man — that that 
 alone gives dignity to the lowliest lot, and lifts man up to 
 that platform of hope and effort and aspiration for which 
 he was designed ? 
 
 Then it is that we may hope to see realized what the 
 seraphic Howe has so eloquently described — " That lofty 
 soul that bears about with it the living apprehensions of 
 its being made for an everlasting state, so earnestly in- 
 tends it, that it shall even be a descent and vouchsafe- 
 ment with it, if it allow itself to take notice what busy 
 mortals are doing in their (as they reckon them) grand 
 negotiations here below. . . . He hath still the image 
 
THE VANITY OF LIFE. 
 
 29 
 
 before his eye, of this world vanishing and passing away : 
 of the other, with the everlasting affairs and concern- 
 ments of it, even now ready to take place and fill up all 
 the stage, and can represent to himself the vision (not 
 from a melancholic fancy and crazed brain, but a rational 
 faith and a sober well-instructed mind) of the world dis- 
 solving, monarchies and kingdoms breaking up, thrones 
 tumbling, crowns and sceptres lying as neglected things. 
 He hath a telescope through which he can behold the 
 glorious appearances of the Supreme Judge ; the solemn 
 state of his majestic person ; the obsequious throng of 
 glorious celestial creatures, doing homage to their eternal 
 King, the swift flight of his royal guards, sent forth into 
 the four winds to gather the elect — the universal silent 
 attention — the judgment set, the books opened, the 
 frightful, amazed looks of surprised wretches, the equal 
 administration of the final judgment, the adjudication of 
 all to their eternal state, the heavens rolled up as a scroll, 
 the earth and all therein consumed and burnt up." 
 
IV. 
 
 THE DIGNITY OP LIFE. 
 
 "The glory which thou gavest me, I have given them." — John xvii. 22. 
 
 np^HE vanity of man as mortal" is one thing, and 
 JL his dignity as immortal is quite another. One 
 is as the candlestick, the other is as the light set in it 
 which gives it use and value. Oue is the perishing husk 
 of the seed, the other is its living germ. One is the chaff 
 and stubble, the other is the precious and garnered grain. 
 
 Regard man's existence simply as bounded by the cra- 
 dle and the grave, and wonderful as it is, it is still more 
 pitiable. Its bloom is as the early cloud and the morn- 
 ing dew. Its hopes are narrowed to the prospects of an 
 uncertain to-morrow. Its soaring aspirations are chained 
 down to the clod, or shut up like an eagle in a canary 
 bird's cage. Make it gaudy as you will, and it is only 
 like a garlanded victim, marching in pomp to the sacrifice. 
 It is a magic lantern picture that vanishes forever when 
 death puts out the light of genius and energy within. 
 
 All the memorials that it can leave behind it are only 
 like inscriptions traced on the sand that the rising tide 
 will soon cover. The waves of oblivion are ever dashing 
 their foam nearer and nearer. In a little while all will 
 be buried or obliterated forever. How the great primae- 
 val forests have been crushed down and compacted till 
 in the coal mine of to-day you cannot discern limb or 
 trunk, and only here and there is the imprint of the leaf 
 that once spread out its gaudy beauty to the sun ! So it 
 is with the generations of human genius. They overlie 
 
 (30) 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LIFE. 3 1 
 
 and crush one another, and the scholar, digging up the 
 lessons of the past, is exploring fossils, is bringing up from 
 unsunned depths what the world had forgotten. History- 
 has not pens enough to record more than just the outlines 
 of national progress or decay, and if she had, her memo- 
 rials would be given over to cobwebs, dust, and worms. 
 
 A great ship goes down on the ocean, and the waves 
 roll on over it with unbroken sweep just as they did be- 
 fore. So it is on the sea of time with the great and gay, 
 the man-of-war and the pleasure yacht. What if here 
 and there there are a few floating spars! They only 
 inspire sadness. They are fragments that tell of ruin, 
 soon to be beached on the lone desert shore. 
 
 Looking at man as mortal, there are beasts that survive 
 him, and whose long-lived existence makes more humilia- 
 ting the span of his uncertain three- score years and ten. 
 There are trees that his hand plants that continuing after 
 he lias vanished, will perhaps be rooted and fed from the 
 sod that covers his dust. His life is an apparition. His 
 memory is the vanishing blaze of the meteor. 
 
 And is this all for which man was designed ? Did He 
 who placed him here and set him on the pinnacle of this 
 lower world, only design him for the same doom with the 
 clod he treads upon — only endow him so wondrously that 
 he might see his vanity and feel his misery, and gaze 
 down helpless into the gulf of annihilation that awaits 
 him ? Did he fit up this globe with all that it contains, 
 and make man the lord of it, only that he might more 
 keenly feel what a mere straw is his broken sceptre, and 
 how hollow is the homage that just furnishes him his 
 funeral equipage as life itself becomes a march toward 
 the grave ? Did he make each dying seed with its living 
 germ an emblem of the resurrection, only to suggest hopes 
 
52 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 of immortality that are doomed to blight ? Did lie frame 
 the plan of our life so that these years should become an 
 education for a future we are never to know ? Did he 
 set an intelligent soul in this exquisite mechanism of the 
 body, as a mere engine to keep it in motion till it sinks 
 with the worthless hulk to a common decay ? Did he 
 endow it with faculties to look through nature up to 
 nature's God, and with affections that can rejoice in His 
 love and call him Father, only to leave it abandoned at 
 last, a more than orphan outcast, only privileged to say 
 to corruption " thou art my Father, and to the worm thou 
 art my mother and my sister ?" 
 
 Then indeed, human existence becomes a troubled 
 dream, and all our inward agony of thought, our reproofs 
 of conscience, our strivings and struggles after a higher 
 life and a moral blessedness, are but a useless incubus of 
 woe, a bitter nightmare for which the oblivion of the grave 
 may be a welcome relief. Then does the globe itself be- 
 come, instead of the perch from which we spread our wings 
 for an immortal flight, the tomb of human aspiration, the 
 slough of our despond in which hope sinks forever stifled. 
 
 Then, as I walk the earth, it rings hollow to my tread, 
 calling me down to its sunless realms. As I gaze on 
 ruined desolation, it sympathizes with my woe. As I 
 tread the empty halls where splendor revelled, the cheer- 
 less echoes of my footstep are the funeral dirge that ac- 
 companies my march to the tomb. The stars that look 
 down upon me are the sentinels of my despair. History 
 has no meaning. Probation and discipline, and retribu- 
 tion are empty words. I am a floating atom drifting to 
 oblivion. I am gifted with reason and consciousness 
 only to read with keener sagacity and keener torture the 
 humiliation and anguish of my final lot ? 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LIFE. 
 
 33 
 
 But is this the design of God ? Dare I impute such 
 cruelty to his benevolence, such folly to his wisdom? 
 Must I not feel that man is of higher destiny than the 
 worm that crawls under his feet ? Must I not respect 
 human life as I cannot that of the brute whose flesh feeds 
 me, or the tree whose fuel warms me ? In a word, can I 
 stop short of accounting man immortal, and recognizing in 
 him one whom God deigns to own as a child ? 
 
 " Shall man be left forgotten in the dust, 
 
 When fate relenting bids the flower revive ? 
 Shall Nature's voice, to man alone unjust, 
 
 Bid him though doomed to perish, hope to live ? 
 Is it for this fair virtue oft must strive 
 
 With disappointment penury and pain ? 
 No ! Heaven's immortal spring shall yet arrive, 
 
 And man's majestic beauty bloom again 
 Safe through the eternal year of love's triumphant reign." 
 
 And now it is that I can recognize the dignity of man. 
 I can discern the beautiful consistency, harmony and 
 order of the divine plan that makes this life the seed- 
 time of being, the germ of an immortal destiny. I do 
 not need thrones and palaces or pompous pageant to con- 
 fer distinction on the short-lived superiority of man to 
 the brute. He is throned in his immortality. He is 
 crowned by his destiny. His greatness is not measured 
 by the toys and playthings of earthly ambition, by rank 
 or title, or wealth or dominion. His own great "birth- 
 right of immortality pours contempt on all other legacies. 
 By the side of that which is common to all, the things in 
 which men differ are of small account. Human life is 
 sacred because it is God's allotment of a probation on 
 which the issues of the life immortal are suspended. 
 2* 
 
34 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Man is great as man, not because he is in high station, 
 not merely because he has powers that can study the uni- 
 verse, and weigh the mountains in scales, and survey the 
 heavens, and unfold their mechanism, but because these 
 powers are destined to an infinite and eternal develop- 
 ment, because God owns him as a child, because heaven 
 may be his home. 
 
 Now you may see what he is, and what homage is paid 
 him, and how time and nature, and revelation, declare 
 his greatness. Mark his capacity and discern what it 
 really is, and what is its scope — not to build palaces or 
 swift ships, to span rivers, to lay iron tracks, to tunnel 
 mountains, to decipher the fossil rocks, to trace the pro- 
 gress of art or pioneer its march, or classify the facts of 
 history — not to unfold the mysteries of his own being, or 
 analyze the operations of his own mind — but in doing all 
 this to discipline his powers for a higher service, and by 
 the consecration of all his aims make the ladder of human 
 attainments, the ladder by which the soul mounts to a 
 more comprehensive survey of the works and providence 
 of God. He is great, not in the strength of affections 
 that idolize child, or husband, or wife, or parent, or coun- 
 try, and that welcome hardship and the risk of life to 
 serve them, but in affections which cling to the Almighty 
 Father and to a covenant God, and twine themselves with 
 deathless tendrils to the props of the everlasting promise. 
 
 Away then with all the baubles that amuse the fancy 
 or minister to a shallow pride. Away with all distinc- 
 tions that cover up the one grand distinction of man as 
 the heir of immortality. Let rags and broadcloth be 
 alike transparent that I may recognize the man — the 
 heart beneath them all, that God will deign to make his 
 living temple, and that shall ring with songs of deathless 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LIFE. 35 
 
 praise when the last minster spire or cathedral dome is 
 wrapt in the final flame. 
 
 It is this recognition of man's immortality that justifies 
 his position where God has placed him as the lord of 
 this lower world. All things on earth are made for him. 
 This globe is the stage on which he is nobly to act his 
 part. All its changing phases are the revolving chart 
 on which he is to study his Father's lessons. Its seeds 
 and flowers and harvests, its clouds and sunshine, its 
 mountains and valleys, its dawn and twilight, its silence 
 and its song, its discord and its music, its rests and tem- 
 pests are all of them emblems. He and he alone has a 
 mind to read and a heart to feel them. How the great 
 heavens seem to come down at his bidding to map them- 
 selves on his eyeball I How the mountain ranges and 
 the fossil strata keep back their secrets till he questions 
 them ! How history unrolls its chart to his steady gaze 
 till he sees in the light of revelation the grand outline of 
 God's wonderful and eternal providence. How the dis- 
 cipline of temptation and trial subdues his vain confi- 
 dence, rasps away his follies, and perfects the jewel of 
 his faith. How sun and stars to his thoughtful eye beam 
 with a light which no prism can dissolve, and the shadows 
 beneath which he walks, teach him to hold firmer by the 
 word which is a lamp to his feet and a light to his path. 
 
 It is to him, subordinate to God, that nature pays her 
 homage. For him winds blow and waters roll. For 
 him the mine has kept its treasures safe through uncounted 
 ages. For him the earth is carpeted with verdure, and 
 for him the forests and the harvests wave. The sea and 
 land alike lay their treasures at his feet. Beast, bird 
 and insect, defy one another, but yield to his control. 
 Canvass and marble wait his touch to p4ow with some 
 
36 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 lofty ideal. Even the wilderness beckons him to its pos- 
 session, and the ocean wave teaches him daring. Society 
 itself is, normally, the school of affection and of virtue. 
 The family is God's nursery for the young immortal. 
 The state is the gymnasium of civil integrity, ordained 
 of God to school men in the alphabet of that very justice, 
 and order, and legislation, and retribution, which illus- 
 trate his own moral and infinite government. 
 
 But the revelation of Jesus Christ in declaring the 
 dignity of human nature, even in spite of the apostacy 
 and the unspeakable ruin that must finally overtake the 
 perverted guilty soul, leaves all else behind. An impris- 
 oned monarch may buy his ransom by ceded kingdoms. 
 An Inca of Peru may seek to redeem himself from arrest 
 by halls piled up with solid gold, but the blood that 
 flowed on Calvary is more precious than mines or empires, 
 and that blood was shed as a propitiation for our sins. 
 This is the last, great, crowning gift of divine love, 
 declaring in the preciousness of our ransom the dignity 
 and value of the soul. 
 
 Recognize then, your true, your real greatness, not 
 that of beauty or wealth, or taste, or learning, or gifts ; 
 not that of charities, or self-righteousness, or good deeds ; 
 for in all these things, our highest attainments leave us 
 whelmed in dust and humiliation — leave us only to reflect 
 on the vanity of man as mortal — but consider your birth- 
 right of immortality. Consider how God has put you 
 here in training for the skies, how he seeks to reclaim 
 you from all that is low, and sensual, and selfish, that he 
 may lift you up to himself and teach you to set your 
 affections on things above, that you may be, more than 
 the heir of kings, more than the wielder of sceptres — • 
 God's own child. 
 
THE COMPASS OF LIFE. 
 
 "A conscience void of offense." — Acts xxiv. 16. 
 
 OUR life on earth has been often compared to a 
 vessel on the ocean. We are afloat on the waves 
 of time, and if we ever reach the port of peace, it will be, 
 as the vessel reaches the harbor, not by drifting, but by 
 steering aright. 
 
 But the emblem of the vessel is only too weak. We 
 bear with us a treasure richer by far than the holds of 
 famed India fleets or Spanish galleons. A human soul 
 freighted with the hopes — the possibility of immortal 
 blessedness, is such a prize for the great Infernal pri- 
 vateer, as corsair or pirate never seized. Eich in facul- 
 ties, affections, privileges, opportunities of sublime aim 
 and virtuous effort, capable of doing and enduring and 
 loving till its very presence is a joy and benediction, it 
 would only be degrading it to class it with silver plate 
 or California gold. It is sad enough to look at the 
 skeleton frame of a noble vessel flung crushed upon the 
 rocks, its timbers sinking to decay, the ooze and mud of 
 the sea carpeting deck and state-room — but what is this 
 to the sight of a soul flung wrecked and helpless on the 
 rocks of eternal judgment, going down, amid the requiem 
 of its own moans and anguish, to the deeps of gloom and 
 darkness — the prey of desolation and utter despair ? 
 
 And the dangers that threaten the human soul are paral- 
 
 (37) 
 
3 8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 leled by none which the sailor meets upon the sea. The 
 records of probation would show a percentage of loss 
 such as would force an underwriter to decline all risks 
 of insurance. How few of life's voyagers reach the har- 
 bor without loss and in triumph ! How many sink out- 
 right — how many are left castaways as it were on the 
 desert shore ! 
 
 There must be something terrific in a storm at sea, — 
 when the waves come rolling on like watery avalanches, 
 and the oak-ribbed vessel quivers under the shock ; when 
 the loud trumpet shout that should convey orders is 
 drowned by the thunder's and the tempest's roar ; when 
 the cordage snaps and the masts are swept by the board ! 
 There is the great floating coffin that sinks in the trough 
 of the sea as if it were a grave, and just beneath are 
 those fathomless depths so deep that the light goes out 
 as if in caverns, and there is no landmark, no beaten 
 path, no glimmering lighthouse to guide the vessel's 
 course. 
 
 And yet there is another sea whose face is swept by 
 fiercer tempests, whose deeps are more unfathomable, whose 
 shores are all lined with broken spars, and whose bottom 
 is covered with countless wrecks which no human eye 
 may explore. To many it is one wide waste of waters, 
 a scene of ever tossing agitation, tempestuous with tempta- 
 tion, and its rock-bound shores stern as retribution wait 
 to crush human hopes flung upon their mercy. Who can 
 enter into that inward struggle through which the soul 
 must pass to reach in triumph the peace of God, and see 
 it whelmed beneath the waves, or striking on hidden 
 rocks, or sinking visibly to the awful darkness beneath, 
 and not feel that the perils of our life are not those of a 
 Kane among Polar icebergs, or a Speke among barbarous 
 
THE COMPASS OF LIFE. 39 
 
 African tribes, or a Sedgwick and Wadsworth under the 
 battle-field's hail of death, but rather are to be found 
 everywhere, where a human spirit quails before the 
 tempter, or wavers in its allegiance to God ? 
 
 If a painter with the most consummate art should draw 
 you two scenes — one, that of a Columbus returning tri- 
 umphant from his voyage of discovery, with the riches 
 and treasures of a New World in the hold of his vessel, 
 and the crowded docks alive with men shouting his wel- 
 come home — the other, that of some foundering Arctic, 
 going down with its freight of human life amid the rush 
 of waves, the blaze of lightnings and the thunder of the 
 storm, — the contrast would but symbolize the different 
 fate of human beings, starting from the same harbor, 
 with equal capabilities, with common hopes, and with 
 the same favoring breeze. One passes away as it were 
 in the triumph of a successful voyage, with words of lofty 
 cheer in his feeblest whispers, while the port of rest 
 greets and cheers his dying eye — the other sinks silent 
 and hopeless beneath the waves and storms of life, leav- 
 ing no memorial perhaps behind but the bubble of his 
 parting breath. One stands on Pisgah conversing with 
 angels. The feet of the other stumble on the dark moun- 
 tains. One leaves behind him such memories of good- 
 ness as make every place of his earthly sojourn fragrant 
 for generations — the other is thought of only as a Pilate, 
 a Gallio, or a Demas. 
 
 What makes this difference? Why does the world 
 never weary to hear of Mount Vernon, the tomb of Wash- 
 ington ? Why does the latest generation keep still well- 
 worn the path by which for centuries the noblest of earth 
 have hasted to lay the freshest flowers on the graves of 
 the martyrs ; while of one of the very ablest of England's 
 
4 o LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 gifted statesmen (Walpole) the historian has been con- 
 strained to say, " Eo enthusiasm was ever felt for his per- 
 son ; none was ever kindled by his memory. Iso man ever 
 inquired where his remains are laid, or went to pay an 
 homage of reverence to his tomb." The explanation is 
 not far to seek. In one case duty ruled ; in the other only 
 a selfish ambition, so inherently mean, that no poet's 
 strains could ennoble it, and no stars or ribbons blazon 
 over its infamy. I do not wonder, in view of the con- 
 trast between the soul walking the earth but treading on 
 it with the high resolve of duty, and the soul mining 
 mole-like among the low elements which are given up 
 to clods and worms, that the poet Wordsworth should 
 apostrophize that by which alone life can be redeemed 
 from contempt : 
 
 " Stern daughter of the voice of God, 
 
 duty, if that name thou love, 
 Who art a light to guide, a rod 
 
 To check the erring and reprove ; 
 Thou who art victory and law 
 When earthly terrors overawe ; 
 Give unto me, made lowly wise, 
 The spirit of self-sacrifice." 
 
 Who would not respond, "Amen ?" Who would not say, 
 let duty be to me 
 
 " victory and law 
 Whem earthly terrors overawe." 
 
 Suppose a native of some heathen land should ap- 
 proach the pilot of a vessel in a dark and stormy night, 
 and see him often turning to gaze upon a glass-covered 
 box, within which a long iron needle is poised! He 
 
THE COMPASS OF LIFE. 41 
 
 knows not what it is, and he cannot understand this fre- 
 quent gaze. He inquires, and is told that under all 
 changes, in every sea, and in every latitude, that iron 
 needle will still point unwavering to the pole. When 
 the darkness sets all human calculations at defiance, and 
 the keenest sagacity cannot even guess whitherward the 
 vessel moves, that little piece of senseless metal knows 
 more than pilot, crew, and royal and scientific societies. 
 
 " How wonderful," perhaps he replies ; " but is it ab- 
 solutely infallible?" Why, no! Another piece of iron 
 laid alongside of it, which the heedless observer might 
 not detect, would turn it out of its course, and make it 
 utterly untrustworthy. It might only mislead. It might 
 just excite confidence only to betray it. And yet we do 
 not throw it away. It is something above and beyond 
 all reason and all calculation. Without it the sailor would 
 be lost in the darkness. The clouds would spread like a 
 pall over his vessel. But with the compass — satisfied that 
 no unwarranted attraction draws it aside — he steers on 
 by night and by day, in storm and sunshine, and feels 
 assured that all is right. 
 
 Well, conscience is the soul's compass. On our vogage 
 it points steadily to the pole of truth. It is not indeed 
 infallible. It may be drawn aside from its true direc- 
 tion. Persecutors have dipped their hands in innocent 
 blood and thought they did God service. Men making 
 gain by mean or mischievous pursuits have warped their 
 conscience round into line with their business. Many a 
 crime, many a strange fanaticism has pleaded conscience. 
 Men have engaged in the slave trade and persuaded 
 themselves that they were carrying out the designs of 
 the Almighty. But in every such case the conscience 
 was not void of offence. It was affected by adverse in- 
 
42 LIFE LESSON'S. 
 
 lin. 
 
 fluences, by self-interest, the love of pleasure or gain. 
 The purse, with its metal contents perhaps, was too near 
 this needle of the soul. 
 
 But he that would be safe at last must regard it. He 
 must steer his course by the intimations which it gives. 
 It is possible that ships abandoned by polar navigators 
 should drift down to some southern coast and be again 
 recovered, but he who drifts on the sea of life is lost be- 
 yond all recovery. And what is a career of pleasure but 
 drifting with the breath of jesting and amusement, and 
 what is a career of selfishness, but scudding without a 
 helmsman before the blasts of passion and interest ? 
 Does any man imagine that thus he will ever reach the 
 port? 
 
 Nt>, he needs the compass, he needs it free from all 
 disturbing influences, he needs to study and heed its 
 pointing finger, and steer as it directs. Unless he does, 
 he is lost. The man without a conscience, if such a thing 
 could be, would be the greatest wretch on earth — the 
 most amazing object of pity, and is he less so, who, with 
 a conscience, heeds it not, or allows it to be subjected to 
 influences that pervert it ? 
 
 And yet what is any continuous course of evil but a 
 steady, systematic perversion and offending of the con- 
 science ? It is like a straining of the eye till the power 
 of vision is lost. It is a tampering with those convic- 
 tions of duty by which the soul is held back as by a cable 
 from the maelstrom of perdition. 
 
 What would you think of a man who on board a vessel 
 should tamper with the compass, should allow scraps of 
 iron to be left near it, and then throw some covering over 
 them, that they might not be seen ? He would imperil 
 the vessel and its cargo, his own life and the life of all 
 
THE COMPASS OF LIFE. 
 
 43 
 
 on board. And yet this is what that man does who al- 
 lows his conscience to be perverted, who brings his purse 
 or his business or his pleasure so near to it as to draw 
 it from its true line. He imperils his soul with all its 
 precious interests. He imperils his everlasting inher- 
 itance and the welfare of all that are associated with 
 him or are influenced by his example. 
 
 Or what would you think of a man who should throw 
 the compass overboard, and should choose to be drifted 
 with the winds and currents whithersoever they might 
 bear him, to strange seas or to hidden rocks. And yet 
 this is no more than what that man does who throws 
 conscience overboard, and allows himself to drift on the 
 current of pleasure or be driven by the blasts of passion 
 or interest. He is afloat on a stormy sea, and he will 
 never reach the port. "We need no spirit of prophecy 
 to be assured that his life will be a tragedy, and that 
 ere long he will become a sunk or stranded wreck. 
 
 Above all things, then, tamper not with the con- 
 science. Never allow it to be warped by unhallowed 
 influences. A little thing, like a mote in the eye, may 
 irritate, if not injure, it irreparably. One great attain- 
 ment of Probation is a properly educated conscience. It 
 is the monitor of duty ; it is that which echoes in the 
 soul the voice of its Maker. If it speaks doubtfully, if 
 you have stifled its utterance, if you have perverted it 
 from its true direction and scope, then you are risking 
 the results of life on a false compass — false through your 
 complicity, or by your own act. 
 

 VI. 
 
 DUTY — THE LAW OF LIFE. 
 
 " These things ought ye to have done." — Matt, xxiii. 23. 
 
 THE word ought implies duty. Is there such a thing 
 as duty ? Is there any thing that should have con- 
 trol of a man above his own personal interest — above his 
 pleasures and his tastes ? 
 
 Thousands live as if they fully believed there was not. 
 They are governed by self-interest. The great question 
 with them — the maelstrom that swallows up everything 
 else — is, What will contribute to my gain, to my 
 pleasure ? The world they live in, and the world they 
 live for, centers in self. Their morality — if they are 
 moral — is a matter of education or taste. Not to be 
 honest would be a loss of reputation or standing. Not 
 to be sober would risk health and success in business. All 
 their virtue is simply natural amiability, or a matter of 
 habit or calculation. 
 
 Such men often go through the world with a fair repu- 
 tation, and do some good on their way — good, however, 
 not of the kind that springs from design, or holy purpose, 
 but good like that of a wheel in a piece of mechanism — for 
 God's providence, without reference to their own plan, 
 makes them wheels in the social organism. Sheltered 
 by honorable associations, the tornado of temptation 
 spares them. They stand visibly upright to the last» 
 
 (44) 
 
DUTY— THE LAW OF LIFE. 
 
 45 
 
 and no stain attaches to their names. But have they 
 answered the end of life? Have they been governed 
 by right motives ? Have they built on the rock, or on 
 the sand ? 
 
 Sometimes they give back an answer themselves which 
 contradicts their life. Sometimes, as remorse coils its 
 folds about their sinking frame, they confess with in- 
 ward agony that they have committed a great and life- 
 long mistake. They spurn as mockery the soothing 
 flattery that they have been upright and moral. The 
 memory of their self-indulgence is to them like the 
 " hand-writing on the wall." They see nothing high or 
 noble or pure to redeem their life from the blight of a 
 wasted probation. 
 
 And yet men will say, If I interfere with no man's 
 rights, may I not consult my own convenience or pleasure? 
 May I not do what I will with my talents, my time, my 
 wealth ? What good will it do me to be a hermit, or 
 an ascetic, to crucify ease or comfort or taste by self- 
 denial ? 
 
 Well, let us suppose that a man need recognize no law 
 above his own convenience or interest. What one may 
 do, all may do. Duty is dispensed with. No man asks, 
 What ought I to do ? There is no ought in the case. 
 Every man's interest, taste, or pleasure is his rule. What 
 follows ? What is the result in the family, in society, in 
 the state? You have dissolved the whole framework 
 of social order. The parent neglects the child, and the 
 child disobeys the parent. Every brother is a Cain, 
 every mother is an Herodias, every neighbor is an Ish- 
 mael. Will you remonstrate against this ? How can 
 you do it ? You must appeal to that obsolete principle 
 of duty. You must recognize the fact that we are not 
 
46 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 independent of one another — that we owe to one another, 
 without respect to what we receive, love and service. 
 
 Introduce the principle into the State. It repeals every 
 law, for civil legislation is swallowed up by individual 
 caprice. It reduces social order to chaos. It inaugurates 
 anarchy and revolution and endless civil feuds. It sanc- 
 tions tyranny, and theft, and murder, and the will of the 
 strongest. Ambition, avarice, and revenge abolish courts, 
 and bludgeons and pistols take the place of sheriffs. 
 And what becomes of patriotism? The State cannot 
 claim that a man should forego ease or personal gain, to 
 serve either in its councils or in its armies. 
 
 But this is not all. If there is no such thing as duty, 
 no promise is binding, no oath is inviolable. Why should 
 a man observe truth or justice if there is no such thing 
 as moral obligation independent of taste or interest? 
 And without truth between man and man, where is so- 
 ciety, where is the State? The drifting sand, every 
 grain independent of its fellow, is cohesion and solidity 
 itself, to a system in which every ruler is a Nero, and 
 every subject an Ishmael. 
 
 Yet all this flows forth as the legitimate result when 
 you dispense with the cement and the authority of duty. 
 The veriest despotism that barbarism ever constructed 
 could not hold together an hour without some respect 
 for the obligations of duty. The Dey of Algiers, or 
 even the King of Dahomey, is forced, in spite of the 
 fiendliest passions, sometimes, at least, to keep his promise, 
 to fulfill his engagements. 
 
 There is, then, such a thing as duty. There is some- 
 thing which claims the right to govern a man, above his 
 own taste, or caprice, or interests. Nay, his own nature, 
 seared and flawed by sin till it threatens to crumble to 
 
DUTY— THE LAW OF LIFE. 
 
 47 
 
 absolute corruption, is still — like the rock interfused with 
 silver — veined with conscience. In spite of the most 
 confirmed and desperate depravity, the soul bows uncon- 
 sciously before the majesty of the truth it hates, and 
 Felix trembles at the look of his prisoner, even while his 
 words mingle their tones with the clanking of his chain. 
 If you examine piecemeal a steam-engine, in its opera- 
 tions, you come to what is called the governor, which is 
 designed to regulate the engine in all its motions. You 
 have no more doubt of its design than you have of the 
 existence of the engine itself. So if you take the hu- 
 man mind to pieces you find that this — infinitely more 
 curious and complicate than any structure that human 
 genius ever contrived — has its governor also. It has 
 that which assumes to guide, and judge, and control 
 all a man's actions — that which grasps the helm 
 of the mind as unhesitatingly and boldly as the 
 captain of a vessel directs how it shall be trimmed — 
 issues its orders, as it were in conscious mastery — looks 
 the soul in the face when it yields to low, base self- 
 interest, and says : " You mean, dastardly wretch ! blush 
 to hold up your head among decent men." That gov- 
 ernor is the human conscience. A man may not like its 
 control or company. He may abuse it, and violate it, and 
 spurn it, and stupify it with vice and drunkenness ; he 
 may put it under the heel of his lusts, and bore out its 
 eyes with sophistry, and smother its voice with the loud 
 tones of revel ; — but, torn, bleeding, dishonored, gasp- 
 ing in whispers — it lives yet, and it claims its rightful 
 throne, and it maintains still the tone of a king ; and 
 sometimes it flings off all the murderous lusts that 
 trampled on it, and rises up like a giant to reassert its 
 control over a wrecked and trembling; nature. It can 
 
48 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 not be destroyed. It can not be exiled. To the very 
 last, when the flesh crumbles, and the limbs shake with 
 weakness, and reason itself is ready to give way, con- 
 science speaks in the soul with a voice as much more 
 authoritative than all other voices, as God's thunders are 
 louder than human revels. 
 
 And whence is conscience ? Is it an accident ? Was 
 it dropped in as a fragment to fill up the seams or round 
 out the intellectual or social nature of man ? Nay ; is it 
 not the very substance of our moral nature, and does it 
 not bear as plainly the stamp of design as the governor 
 in a steam-engine? And was it not put there by the 
 great Builder, and does not its very presence declare 
 louder and plainer than words, that man, in all his facul- 
 ties, tastes, sympathies, and purposes, is to yield to its 
 control? It is the constitutional sovereign of the empire 
 of our faculties. To disregard it, is treason ; to disobey it, 
 is rebellion. To set up pleasure, or convenience, or gain, 
 or personal or selfish interest, in place of it, is to dethrone 
 the rightful monarch ; it is, as it were, to release Barab- 
 bas and crucify Jesus. 
 
 Man, then, is made under law ; he is created subject to 
 the law of duty. That law is supreme. It is as much 
 above lust, passion, and interest as the laws of the United 
 States are above the resolutions of a caucus of secession- 
 ists — as the laws of Sinai are above the rules of etiquette 
 at Belshazzar's revels or Dives's feasts. 
 
 If any man could yet doubt it, he would only need to 
 compare the results of a life of duty with a life of pleasure 
 — the lofty heroism of a Daniel faithful to his God amid 
 all the allurements of a heathen court, with the selfish 
 aspirations of a Hainan climbing up to swing from his 
 own gallows — the sublime fidelity of a Washington to 
 
DUTY— THE LAW OF LIFE. 49 
 
 the sacred trust his country reposed in him, with the 
 baseness of an Arnold selling himself to a golden infamy 
 — the truthfulness of unswerving integrity under whose 
 shadow the wronged finds shelter and the wretched pity, 
 with the trifling, vain, heedless indulgence that degrades 
 a man to the level of a peacock or a swine. Placed side 
 by side, even a fool might be struck by the contrast. 
 One is sunlight, the other fog ; one is the fragrance of 
 Eden, the other a stench. The study of one inspires and 
 thrills us beyond the note of drum or trumpet or martial 
 strain j the sight of the other makes us sick of human 
 nature. We turn away as from a slough of filth and 
 loathing. Yet one is duty incarnate, the other selfish- 
 ness gone to seed. 
 
 The great question, then, which is to determine the 
 plan and destiny of a man's life is this : Shall I yield to 
 the supreme law of duty ? Shall I bow to the mandate 
 of conscience, and of God speaking through the con- 
 science ? Shall I put base or selfish interest foremost, or 
 shall I simply ask, " What ought I to do," and make the 
 answer final ? 
 
 On that decision depends more than pen can write or 
 tongue can tell. On that hinge the results of probation 
 and the issues of eternity. By that is to be determined 
 whether these years shall be carved into the statuary of 
 noble and godly deeds, or whether they shall be ground 
 down to the sandy rubbish with which Satan strews the 
 pathway of blinded thousands to hell — whether your 
 example shall be a moral lighthouse which the storm- 
 tossed shall see and bless, or a rocket, whose charred 
 remnant shall be trod under the heel of contempt, even 
 by its once admirers — whether you will mount upward 
 or sink downward — soar or crawl — be Godlike or beast- 
 3 
 
5 o LIFE LESSON'S. 
 
 like — be the world's benefactor or its curse — grow up 
 to the stature of a sanctified manhood or be dwarfed and 
 shriveled to the littleness of base and selfish aims. 
 
 Can any man hesitate with such a choice before him ? 
 He might almost as well hesitate between an angel's 
 crown and a felon's cell, between the benediction of 
 Heaven and the agonies of despair. 
 
 And now the question meets him, What is duty ? It 
 is not a difficult one to him who is ready to deny himself 
 and take up his cross — to one who has made up his mind 
 fully to shrink from no task which he ought to meet — 
 to him who stands resolved to thread every deed and 
 thought on the string of right. Such a man will soon 
 find that all authority centers in the will of God, that 
 morality has its true and eternal basis in religion, that 
 he cannot begin his course without first asking, What do 
 I owe to that great Being in whose hand my breath is, 
 and whose are all my ways ? And he cannot long con- 
 sider this without being brought to feel how grossly he 
 has sinned already, and how much he needs the pardon- 
 ing love and grace of God. 
 
 And then may he find in the volume of God's revealed 
 will a release from all his difficulties, and a solution of 
 all his doubts. He will find provision made for all his 
 need. The path of duty will open before him, and he 
 will see that its very starting-point is just where the 
 penitent sinner bows in humble confession before the 
 cross of Christ. 
 
VII. 
 
 LIFE SERVICE DUE TO GOD. 
 
 "Will a man rob God?" — Mal. iii. 8. 
 
 AS morality — in a general sense — is duty toward 
 man, so religion is duty toward God. Both are 
 demanded of us, and we cannot be just if we deny the 
 claims of either. If we allow one and refuse the other, 
 we stand condemned by our own act. We are inconsis- 
 tent with ourselves. 
 
 And yet there are thousands who claim — and perhaps 
 justly, as they understand it — to be upright and moral, 
 whose religion is but a form and many times a mockery. 
 They are honest with men — as they measure obligation. 
 They are dishonest toward God. If they admit that they 
 ought to obey and serve and love their Maker, it is an 
 admission that dies on the lip and never affects the heart. 
 With little or no anxiety they tread their own convic- 
 tions under foot ; they press on in a course which their 
 consciences condemn, and which conflicts with all the 
 principles which they avow or even cherish in social 
 intercourse. 
 
 Such is the career of thousands and tens of thousands. 
 They palliate it. They excuse it. They offset it by an 
 array of their own virtues, their integrity or morality. 
 But what is its character ? What is the proper name 
 for it ? It is robbery — robbing God. 
 
 But "will a man rob God?" There is something 
 atrocious in the very thought ! To rob a stranger is 
 
 (51) 
 
5 2 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 criminal, and the law of the land reprobates it. To rob 
 a neighbor is more repulsive. To rob a friend, one who 
 has done us kindly offices, is still more heinous. To rob 
 a parent is accounted the height of baseness as well as 
 guilt — but to rob God, who is not only our great heavenly 
 Friend, our Ruler, our Maker, but our Father in heaven, 
 infinitely transcends it all. 
 
 But can the charge be brought home to us ? Is it 
 true ? What is the verdict of every unbiassed conscience 
 in view of the evidence ? Let us see. 
 
 And first, can a man rob G-od ? The whole universe 
 is his, and man is his creature. You may say that he 
 can carry nothing off the premises, and it is true. But 
 can there be no robbery save that which succeeds ? The 
 owner of property sits unseen by the intruder, sees him 
 enter and seize his plunder, is ready to recover it again 
 at the proper moment, or perhaps knows that the rob- 
 ber is too weak to carry it off, will in fact drop exhaust- 
 ed and helpless in the attempt. But is the deed any 
 the less a crime for all this ? So God's eye is on the 
 culprit. He sees not only the outstretched arm, but also 
 the very thoughts of the soul. He can resume anything 
 that guilty man may choose to appropriate just when he 
 will ■ nay, he knows that life itself, like a palsied hand, 
 must soon sink too enfeebled to grasp or retain its prize. 
 But the spirit of the deed yet remains. If not successful, 
 it is yet robbery. 
 
 But God has so made man as a free and accounta- 
 ble agent that he can at will retain and withhold what 
 is due to God as his in right and justice. He is put in 
 trust with that which belongs to God, and is justly to 
 be rendered back to him — which cannot be withheld from 
 him or his service without great guilt. 
 
 I 
 
LIFE SERVICE TO GOB. 
 
 53 
 
 Man is God's creature, his intelligent creature, capable 
 of studying, and by instruction of understanding the end 
 of his being, aud devoting himself toward its attainment. 
 God has a supreme right to demand of every man that 
 he shall enter into the divine design and co-operate 
 heartily and steadily in carrying it out, and to withhold 
 that devotion or co-operation is to rob him of the duty 
 which an intelligent creature owes. 
 
 Man is God's subject, made under law, born under au- 
 thority, bound to obey and to render every duty of loy- 
 alty and fidelity. He can rebel in spirit and purpose, 
 and refuse obedience, and withhold loyalty. And what 
 a robbery is this ! Ask the statesman or patriot. How 
 can a value be fixed on that of which it is said " to obey is 
 better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of 
 rams." 
 
 Man is God's child, and owes him a child's duty of 
 love and affection. That love and affection belong to 
 God. They are his by right. No one can be justified — 
 can justify himself in withholding them. And what is 
 their worth? Love is the treasure of the heart: it is 
 that which we prize the most. It is that on which God 
 sets the highest estimate. A man might steal your purse 
 or rob your dwelling, and you might perhaps forgive 
 him, but suppose he stole away the affections of husband, 
 wife or child, would you not feel that the robbery was 
 one which no gold could compensate ? Would you not 
 say that this was the very height and atrocity of rob- 
 bery ? And what in the sight of Him who owns creation 
 and can make millions of worlds at a breath, are all the 
 treasures of mines and kingdoms, to the love and affec- 
 tion of one who can say — "My Father God?" That 
 little prattler on your knee cannot think as you think,. 
 
54 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 cannot speak as you speak, cannot earn a penny to add 
 to your store, but its smile is the sunshine of your home, 
 and how much you should prize its unbought kiss you 
 may never know perhaps, unless called to look at death's 
 seal on its marble brow and its closed eyelids. Ah ! 
 what a robbery, when God, with a God's authority and 
 a parent's affection, says to his wayward child, my son 
 give me thy heart, and the heart is denied ! 
 
 God rightly claims your influence and example on his 
 side. There is a controversy going on between sin and 
 holiness, and he that is not with him is against him. The 
 worldly wealth you may have to give to promote the 
 spread of Christ's kingdom may be small, but a conse- 
 crated life he has a right to claim — a life of prayer, a 
 life that commends religion to others, a life that tends to 
 check the tide of overwhelming- sin, and draw lost men 
 to the cross of Christ. Here is something that you 
 either give or withhold. If you withhold it, then you 
 rob God. 
 
 God rightly claims the service of your hands — the 
 consecration of all the fruits of your toil. These belong 
 to him as the great proprietor, and you are but his stew- 
 ard. Some men make an unwarranted distinction be- 
 tween what they use for themselves and what they give 
 away in charity. But God recognises no such distinc- 
 tion. What you expend for your own comfort you are 
 to expend for him and his glory, as well as what you 
 give to spread the Gospel. God entrusts his own wealth 
 to you for both, to use in either case for him. His wealth 
 furnishes that garment. His wealth spreads that table. 
 Do you recognize it as his ? Is it consecrated ? is it all 
 consecrated ? Do you read the image of God as well as 
 of the goddess Liberty on the coin — the image of Jesus 
 
LIFE SERVICE TO GOD. 55 
 
 overspreading that of the President or the Secretary of 
 the Treasury ? Or like Ananias and Sapphira, are you 
 keeping back from God a part of what you acknowledge 
 to be his ? If so you are robbing God. 
 
 God rightly claims the service of your intellect. His 
 name as owner is stamped on your every faculty, more 
 than burnt or branded in. He is its absolute proprietor. 
 Has it been devoted to his service ? Has it been enlisted 
 in his army ? Has it taken the oath of allegiance ? Do 
 you think, plan, purpose for the glory of God ? 
 
 And if there is anything which is God's beyond dis- 
 pute, it is these hours of probation. Every year, day, 
 hour, moment, belongs to God. Have you given them to 
 him — not only the Sabbath, not only the hour of prayer, 
 of consecrated thought and meditation, but each moment 
 — have you given it back with holy service ; have you used 
 it as not your own, but entrusted to you that you might 
 do the work of life, might prepare for eternity, might, 
 lay up treasure in heaven ? 
 
 If in any of these respects you have failed, then you 
 have robbed God — robbed him not as a clerk robs his 
 employer of money — not as a traitor robs his country of 
 loyalty — not as a child robs a parent of the love and 
 affection it owes — but you have as it were robbed him 
 of his own glory, you have lived as if He were such a 
 being that he could claim nothing at your hands, and 
 was only to be — if not simply dreaded — neglected and 
 despised. The evidence is full and complete. It is writ- 
 ten on the memory. It is traced on the conscience. It 
 is recorded in the book of Omniscience. The stolen 
 property is perhaps in your hands, or your spendthrift 
 policy has not pawned it beyond recall as a witness 
 against you. 
 
5 6 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 What will you do ? Confess your sin. Look at it in 
 its full enormity. See yourself at the mercy of an 
 offended God. Confess your guilt at His bar. Select 
 Christ as your advocate, and then plead the merits of 
 atoning blood. 
 
 But is there nothing, hitherto withheld, that is to be 
 rendered back to God ? Has he not a right to say — 
 " My son, give me thy heart ?" Can you evade the force 
 of that appeal — " if then I be a father, where is my honor ? 
 and if I be a master, where is my fear V God is en- 
 titled, as God, to your supreme love and your cheerful 
 service. Will you withhold them ? And what is that 
 but robbery ? 
 
 " My Maker and my King, 
 To thee my all I owe ; 
 Thy sovereign bounty is the spring 
 Whence all my comforts flow. 
 
 " Shall I withhold thy due ? 
 And shall my passions rove? 
 Lord, form this wretched heart anew, 
 And fill it with thy love." 
 
 
VIII. 
 
 LIVING FOB OTHERS. 
 
 " Bear ye one another's burdens." — Gal. vi. 2. 
 
 BY the very constitution of society, as well as that of 
 our own being, we are placed under obligation to 
 seek and promote the welfare of others. Out of the cir- 
 cumstances of our mutual relations, the sense of duty is 
 necessarily evolved. These circumstances are not of our 
 ordering. They are due to the design of the great 
 Maker himself, who has ordered our lot. Rightly read 
 by the thoughtful mind, they sustain by their analogy the 
 natural authority of those divine injunctions which re- 
 quire us to " deny ourselves," to " bear one another's 
 burdens,' 7 to be " our brother's keeper," and, in a word, 
 to discharge those missionary obligations, so often 
 branded as fanatic, which the Gospel of Christ enforces 
 upon us. 
 
 Some beams of this great truth evidently dawned, be- 
 fore the advent of Christ, on the heathen mind. It is 
 significant that Cicero should write a treatise de officiis, 
 and bring to view the mutual obligations of men and 
 citizens — that he should say so emphatically that "the 
 true, the simple, the sincere was that which was most 
 suited to the nature of man," * that self-interest should 
 yield to justice, that we are not born for ourselves alone. 
 
 * Quod verum, simplex sincerumque sit, id esse naturae hominis aptis 
 si mum. 
 
 3* W) 
 
58 
 
 LIFE LE880NS. 
 
 Such conclusions may have been drawn simply from 
 the study of the constitution of man, or the constitution 
 of society. But. whether the fact is recognized or not, 
 these have God for their author, and the wise study of 
 them reveals His design, and lends His sanction to the 
 obligations that had, perhaps, been already inferred. 
 The relations of parent and child, of ruler and subject, 
 and, indeed, all those which grow out of our social exis- 
 tence, must be referred to Him. Our well-being is iden- 
 tified with the proper discharge of duties which we owe 
 to others. 
 
 This does not happen by chance. It is not a mere in- 
 cident of our probation. Created as we are, social be- 
 ings, our own natures could not be developed, except 
 through intercourse with our fellow-beings. Nor. is it 
 left to our choice whether this shall be the case. We 
 could not change the order of things if we would. So- 
 ciety is constituted into families, neighborhoods and 
 states. The family is the school in which first of all the 
 race is trained. Each helps to educate the other. The 
 child educates the parent as really as the parent does 
 the child. A new order of affections, anxieties and ef- 
 forts is called forth by the necessary discharge of pa- 
 rental duty, and many a virtue is evoked by the discharge 
 of parental fidelity in protecting, guarding and educating 
 the child. 
 
 First of all there is forethought for those who are en- 
 tirely and absolutely dependent. The infant, unable to 
 tell its wants, or even to know them itself, silently ap- 
 peals for help and kindness and care. It is an appeal 
 which no parent can resist. It comes with a kind of di- 
 vine authority. In yielding to it, the parent is compelled 
 to consider what is adapted to the circumstances of the 
 
LIVING FOR OTHERS. 
 
 59 
 
 child, to observe its varied wants and exposure, to study 
 what is adapted to its bodily comfort and mental im- 
 provement, to train and educate it for future usefulness 
 and to take care of itself. 
 
 Nor is this all. Each member of the household must 
 be thoughtful for the welfare of others. This is the ne- 
 cessary law of the well-ordered and happy household. 
 An exclusive selfishness is intolerable. It would turn 
 the domestic scene into a theatre of hostile and war- 
 ring passions. Perverted as humanity is, the family 
 is the school in which we are placed first of all — placed 
 by God — to unlearn the depravity of our selfishness, 
 and make it part of our life to take forethought for 
 others. 
 
 Turning now to society at large, we find that for our 
 own good we must toil and care for one another. So- 
 ciety itself is a mutual league of help. There is no 
 formal or expressed, but there is an understood alliance. 
 We work, plan, invent, not for ourselves alone, but for 
 one another. Others share the benefit of our industry 
 and virtue, and we share the benefit of theirs. Life it- 
 self is valuable or worthless, a joy or a burden, largely 
 in proportion as we have around us those whom we love 
 or whom we distrust. By society we are educated to 
 that which we call public spirit, that is, a disposition 
 which rises above considerations of narrow, private in- 
 terest. Let society become organized, as it must be, 
 into the form of government, and every citizen is trained 
 to consider the claims of the state, or, as it is called, the 
 commonwealth. By the very vote we are called upon to 
 give, we are educated to think of the whole social body 
 and what will be for their benefit. 
 
 Nor is this all. Government represents the national 
 
66 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 mind, studious not for the profit of those who compose 
 the administration, but of those who compose the state. 
 It has to consider the wants, the exposure, the burdens, 
 the defence, the prosperity of all. So in the neighbor- 
 hood. Even our own peace, and prosperity, and security 
 are the motive if all others are wanting, to study the in- 
 telligence, morality and well-being of others. We want 
 them educated and we build schools for them. We want 
 them reformed, and we build penitentiaries and houses 
 of refuge. We want them brought under religious re- 
 straint, and we form bible and tract societies to furnish 
 them religious reading, or build houses of worship in 
 which they may be taught of God. 
 
 And these social and civil duties are such that we neg- 
 lect them at our peril. If we selfishly abandon all con- 
 sideration for others, if we concentrate all care and 
 anxiety on our own aggrandizement or emolument, we 
 take the surest way to destroy our own security and com- 
 fort. If we, in our avarice or selfishness, leave others to 
 grow up ignorant or vicious — if we leave them uncared 
 for in their vagrancy or vice — if we withhold the means 
 needed for their reform, we educate society itself to be- 
 come a den of human wolves — we leave it to sink to a 
 level with the revolting order or rather anarchy of sav- 
 age life. All the forms of wickedness that fester in the 
 lanes and alleys of great cities till they breed a moral 
 pestilence — all the crimes that, nursed in moral neglect 
 and social corruption, at length stalk forth infernal Nim- 
 rods, to rule and ruin, and trample on those who did not 
 trample them out by kindness at the opportune moment 
 — all these are the penalty for remissness in social duty 
 and social virtue. 
 
 Again, the most attractive forms of human excellence 
 
LIVING FOR OTHERS. 61 
 
 are those which are produced from the soil of our social 
 relations. Man is never so admirable as. when he for- 
 gets himself to bless others. There are no deeds that 
 so kindle the heart to admiration and enthusiastic praise 
 as those in which we bear others' burdens, or volunteer 
 to suffer and endure in their behalf. It half redeems 
 from rebuke the vices of the savage parent, when we see 
 him risking his own life to save that of the child, and 
 who can read without tears of sympathy of those strug- 
 gles of honest poverty by which the self-denying parent 
 endeavors to clothe, and feed, and educate a child? 
 Those sleepless nights, those tiresome days, those anxious 
 hours, those welcomed hardships — adding new wrinkles 
 to the brow, and bending the frame with other burdens 
 than those of age — these mark a heroism, hidden indeed 
 from the eyes of the great crowd, but not less noble, gen- 
 erous, or admirable than that which on battlefields wins 
 the plaudits of the world. 
 
 And what is the charm that invests the annals of 
 philanthropy but just that cheerful charity which fore- 
 goes ease, and gain, and selfish advantage, to promote 
 the comfort and welfare of those who have no legal claim 
 to such service? The deeds which redeem from con- 
 tempt the broad desert of selfishness which constitutes 
 the waste of human history, are those in which generous 
 spirits, postponing all selfish considerations, have la- 
 bored, suffered, endured hardship, or peril, or death for- 
 others. The world may not be commercially richer for 
 the search for Sir John Franklin. Its map may not have 
 been much altered by the generous valor of a Wilken- 
 reid or Tell, and many a patriot and many a martyr may 
 have fallen without seeing the cause consecrated by their 
 blood triumphant. But we, at least, socially, morally, 
 
62 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 spiritually, are the richer for them, and the portrait gal- 
 lery of history holds upon its walls, bidding them gaze 
 down upon us from the canvass, features that impress 
 themselves upon our remembrance, and which force us 
 to aspire to a loftier standard of thought and en- 
 deavor. 
 
 Even war, with all its stern, forbidding aspects — war 
 that is wont, like the fabled G-orgon's head, to change 
 the hearts of those that long gaze upon it into stone, finds 
 here almost its only redeeming features. "When men 
 forget themselves for their country's sake, and for the 
 love of others breast the surging tide of battle, and risk 
 life and everything on earth at the call of patriotic duty, 
 it is impossible for us not to admire and praise. Such 
 deeds rise like the Alps above the lowlands and quag- 
 mires of selfishness, and cold and dead must that heart 
 be which does not gaze up to them with the awe and 
 reverence due to moral greatness. 
 
 Thus it will be found that in all the deeds or courses 
 of action which most constrain to admiration, the real 
 element that commands homage is the forgetfulness of 
 self in order to promote the well-being of others. He 
 that takes forethought for those who cannot or do not 
 take forethought for themselves, for the widow and or- 
 phan, or even for the depraved and vicious, is the moral 
 hero. And yet without going out of our way we may 
 find in our own homes, neighborhoods, communities, those 
 who challenge our sympathy and care. God's providence, 
 therefore, sets before us in nature the very lessons of His 
 word of grace, teaches us to bear one another's burdens, 
 incites us to self-sacrifice to promote their well-being, 
 calls upon us as we have freely received freely to give, 
 urges us to look not every man on his own things, but 
 
LIVING FOR OTHERS. 63 
 
 every man also on the things of others, echoes in our 
 ears the great lesson — no man, no true man, liveth to 
 himself, and no man dieth to himself. 
 
 To the disciple of Christ I need not say, your Master's 
 example rebukes once and for ever everything like an 
 absorbing selfishness. He went about doing good. Your 
 business is to follow in His footsteps. You have no right 
 to think only of your own ease and comfort. God is 
 educating you every day by the lessons of your probation 
 to care for the well-being and blessedness of others. 
 While you are pleading to yourself your own ease or 
 comfort, while you are careless whether your example 
 cheers and encourages your Christian brethren, whether 
 they find you at, or absent from, your post, you are vio- 
 lating not only the solemn injunctions of your Master, 
 but the very laws of the social constitution enacted by 
 the Author of nature itself. 
 
 But can it be a duty to study the social and moral wel- 
 fare of others, and not their spiritual good ? Would you 
 consider it a criminal neglect in a parent to clothe and 
 feed his child, yet leave his mind untaught and his heart 
 untrained ? Does that deserve the name of education which 
 leaves uncared for all which constitutes man human and 
 immortal ? Am I taking true forethought for one whom 
 I send on a distant journey where he will be exposed to 
 damp and cold, if I just furnish him with an umbrella to 
 shield him from the present rays of a scorching sun? 
 Surely, in truthful fidelity I must consider what he needs 
 most, what he will need. And what does man need 
 most? What do you need yourself? Bound to eternity, 
 bound a sinner to the judgment-seat, aspiring to ever- 
 lasting blessedness in a holy world, what is it that is all 
 essential — what but a new heart, a regenerated and sane 
 
64 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 tified spirit, full and free forgiveness through the chan- 
 nels of mercy opened by sovereign grace. 
 
 Your duty then, your highest duty, is to lead others to 
 Christ — to think of their welfare, not as creatures of to- 
 day, but as heirs of eternity. They are ever with you. 
 They are fellow-pilgrims. They are children of the same 
 Father in heaven. As guilty and wretched, they are en- 
 titled to your compassion. As human, they demand your 
 sympathy, and the heart that denies that sympathy will 
 be burdened thereby. It is made cold, stern, repulsive. 
 The very features of it at last bear the imprint of their 
 own cursed selfishness, while the loveliness of charity 
 cannot remain hid even by the veil of its modesty. 
 
 "As the rivers furthest flowing, 
 
 In the highest hills have birth ; 
 As the banyan, broadest growing, 
 
 Oftenest bows its head to earth — 
 So the noblest minds press onward, 
 
 Channels far of good to trace ; 
 So the largest hearts bend downward, 
 
 Circling all the human race." 
 
IX. 
 
 ATHEISTIC EVASION OF DUTY. 
 
 " The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." — Ps. xiv. 1. 
 
 THE only consistent method of evading the claims 
 of duty, is that which is pursued by the Atheist. 
 In denying the existence of a Supreme Ruler, he leaves 
 man to all that measure of freedom in his self-will and 
 his self-indulgence, which circumstances will allow. In- 
 stead of quarrelling with specific obligations, or meeting 
 and setting aside the claims of duty in detail — he would 
 annihilate at once the authority whicli enjoins them all. 
 Instead of cutting down the tree — under the shadow of 
 which he cannot bear to sit — piecemeal, instead of lopping 
 off limb after limb, he strikes boldly at the trunk itself, and 
 it is neither the fault of his will or purpose that he does 
 not succeed. In all this — though "a fool," he is a 
 logical and consistent fool. He does not take the Uni- 
 versalist's position and pretend that the Scriptures — a 
 bed of thorns to him in his sins — is as soft as down, 
 fighting with a thousand texts of Scripture and finding 
 it but a cheerless task to smother them one after another, 
 when they come to life again so soon. He does not stop 
 at Deism — still a half-way house on the road to a broad 
 denial or evasion of duty — finding in that the ground of 
 a more than possibility, that all he dreads may be true — 
 but boldly, if not honestly, he strides at once to that 
 
 (65) 
 
66 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 position where alone lie can consistently reject the claims 
 enforced by conscience and the Bible. Calling himself 
 an Atheist, with any life that he pleases to lead, he is 
 incased and shielded from all assault. You may exhaust 
 the magazine of motive, and you cannot reach him. He 
 is proof against all. Archimedes said, Give me a pou sto, 
 a place to stand, and I will lift the world. The Being 
 of a God is pou sto, the place to stand, to move and con- 
 trol the mind of man ; and when that is denied, your re- 
 sources are gone, you have nothing on which to rest your 
 lever. Sometimes a man is shrewd enough to see this, 
 and in his aversion to duty he leaps at once into the for- 
 tress of Atheism, and defies you. He puts himself be- 
 yond the reach of argument or remonstrance. What 
 can you say to him ? You might as well attempt to rea- 
 son with one who denies your presence. He climbs the 
 Babel tower of infidelity to its topmost turret, where no 
 arrow of truth can reach him — but if there be an earth- 
 quake — his grave would be the deepest as his fall would 
 be greatest. But this much we may say for him, while 
 he puts himself up so high — so near the lightnings — that 
 it is the only place where — with an impenitent heart, 
 fully set in resistance to the claims of duty — he can con- 
 sistently be at peace. It is the only place where his 
 life and principles will not quarrel. 
 
 But to all this there is an offset. There is something 
 horrid in the sublime theory upon which Atheism plants 
 itself — assuming thence to look down on the existence of 
 a God as an idle fantasy. Grant the principle of the 
 Atheist, and Nero's wish for Rome is realized for the 
 universe. It has but one neck that may be severed at a 
 blow, and without a God it is severed. You have noth- 
 ing left but a headless trunk — a mere carcass fit to moul- 
 
ATHEISTIC EVASION OF DUTY. 67 
 
 der and rot. Other errors rob us piecemeal — this does 
 its work by wholesale. Others hew off here a thumb, or 
 finger, or arm, or pluck out an eye, this tears out the 
 living heart as it beats. It is a great loss to have one 
 of God's grand and precious truths torn from us, but 
 nothing to losing God himself. How do you think one 
 of the blessed martyrs would have felt, to have been 
 robbed, while hunted in mountain or glen, of any one of 
 those pillars of immortal hope which he finds in the word 
 of God ? — any one of those beams that shone full from 
 the Sun of Righteousness in upon the darkness of his 
 bosom ? And yet, would it have been anything to be 
 compared with having all those pillars wrested away, and 
 the fabric overthrown — or having that sun itself blotted 
 out with all its beams in eternal night ? Atheism is con- 
 sistent with itself when, as in the French revolution, it 
 writes over the gateway to the grave, " Death is an eter- 
 nal sleep." It is consistent with itself when it annuls 
 every restraint that is exercised over wicked men by the 
 apprehension of. a Supreme Judge and a final retribution. 
 It is consistent with itself when it closes every temple 
 of worship, and rends to atoms all those hallowed sym- 
 pathies and hopes with which the soul of man is inspired 
 to do and suffer on earth. It is consistent with itself 
 when it leaves the unaided reason of man to grapple in 
 blank despair with the fearful problems of his existence 
 and destiny — when it sends him to the grave with all the 
 racking uncertainty and doubt that invest the possibili- 
 ties of a hereafter — when it robs the injured sufferer of 
 the last hope of redress in the justice of heaven, and at 
 the same time unbars the gates of every lawless passion 
 and impulse, emancipating it from all sense of accounta- 
 bility or dread of retribution. If there is any one con- 
 
68 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 ception into which all these elements of the terrible, the 
 sublime and the despairing, are compressed and combined, 
 it is that this scheme of existence, this moral and physi- 
 cal universe, is without a controlling mind — without a 
 God. We stand appalled at the blind working of this 
 immense mechanism of worlds, where one jar or accident 
 hurls the whole to atoms, and makes the vast chaos one 
 common grave for all that lives. Suns and systems rush 
 along no iron track with a speed that mocks the grasp 
 of our conception, and there is no engineer with his 
 hand upon the throttle or the break. The structure of 
 human society, of human justice and legislation, is with- 
 out any divine sanction. Its corner-stone is crumbled, 
 and every hour it runs the risk of destruction and ex- 
 tinction. 
 
 The security of an oath is but a fable — and the ad- 
 ministering it a jest. The laws of justice are but the 
 rule of expedience, and crime is merely the blunder of 
 him that commits it. All the punishment that the guilty 
 needs to dread is just that which he has to fear from an 
 equal, and all the encouragement that the innocent can 
 hope, is that which is doled out to him in the scanty and 
 fallible allotments of the accidents of human justice. 
 You have taken away all that strength to resist, and 
 that encouragement to endure, and that sense of respon- 
 sibility forbidding to swerve, which are found in the 
 thought, " Thou God seest me." You have annulled all 
 those cheerful, hopeful springs of effort which find their 
 strength in the complacent smile of an approving God. 
 In the hour of calamity and darkening anguish, you have 
 taken away the last resource on which the child of 
 sorrow and affliction can lean. Life is only a brilliant 
 dream, lighting its own way to the grave, kindled just 
 
ATHEISTIC EVASION OF DUTY. 6g 
 
 long enough, to flash upon the gloom that is to cover it. 
 Man is an orphan — or a helpless child of uncertainty, 
 want, guilt and anguish. The world is a desert and a 
 graveyard. Eternity is a terrible unexplored chaos, 
 the more terrible because unknown. The lofty hopes 
 inspired by the Gospel are like itself, ignes fatid, brilliant 
 only to mislead and betray. The fond affections that 
 would follow their loved object to the grave, and will 
 not desert it even then — these are but the implements of 
 our torment, the chains that we must wear to gall us. 
 No hope lights up the parting hour of earth ; no possible 
 prospect of a blest reunion can extract its sting. We 
 must stand shuddering over the fathomless gulf of anni- 
 hilation, and feed our fancy on the shadows that imagi- 
 nation summons out of its darkness. 
 
 " Behold, then, man, the creature of a day, 
 Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay, 
 Frail as the leaf in Autumn's yellow bower, 
 Dust in the wind, or dew upon the flower ; 
 A friendless slave, a child without a sire, 
 Whose mortal life and momentary fire 
 Light to the grave his chance-created form, 
 As ocean wrecks illuminate the storm. 
 And when the gun's tremendous flash is o'er, 
 To night and darkness sink for evermore." 
 
 If a man can embrace such a theory — a theory whose 
 open arms wait to press him to its bosom of hidden 
 daggers — a theory that sacrifices all that we love, and 
 scorns all that we respect, and blasts all that we hope, 
 and desecrates all that we worship — if he can embrace 
 such a theory and find delight in it — and feel no humilia- 
 tion at the nothingness to which it reduces him, and no 
 
7 o 
 
 LIFE LES80N8. 
 
 pain at the robbery which it inflicts, we will consent to 
 except him from the common lot and sympathies of man, 
 but in disavowing him, we must disavow his theory too, 
 and own that such an attainment as his is beyond and 
 above the reach of our envy. 
 
 Such, then, is the gloomily sublime position which the 
 Atheist occupies — and often is proud to occupy, as though 
 there were a merit and a triumph in the bold achieve- 
 ment of mounting to that height of scepticism from 
 which he looks down contemptuously on all' that is dear, 
 or honored, or sacred in the life and hopes of man. Then 
 he lays claim to a mind more impartial, an intelligence 
 more searching — a science more extensive and accurate, 
 than that of other men ; he speaks in a tone of pity of 
 their religious weakness and errors, their superstitious 
 scruples, their bondage to worn out and obsolete notions. 
 But what is his achievement, save the gloomiest conquest 
 of all? what his triumph but the triumph of despair? 
 If he has searched beyond the ken of others — if he has 
 read with a keener vision the mysteries of nature, 
 if he has explored the realms of thought which others 
 have never trod, what is the result that he brings back ? 
 what is the conclusion of all, that he is proud to an- 
 nounce ? That there is no God ! 
 
 " Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim, 
 Lights of the world, and demigods of fame ? 
 Is this your triumph, this your proud applause, 
 Children of Truth, and champions of her cause ? 
 For this hath Science searched with weary wing, 
 By shore and sea each mute and living thing. 
 For this constrained to utterance earth and air, 
 To waft us home the message of despair. 
 Then let her bind the palm, her brow to suit, 
 Of blasted leaf and death-distilling fruit. 
 
A THEISTIG EVASION OF B UTT. 7 1 
 
 Then let her read, not loudly nor elate, 
 The doom that bars us from a better fate. 
 But sad as angels for the good man's sin, 
 Blush to record, and weep to give it in." 
 
 The Atheist's presumed conquest is that of disaster 
 and defeat, his boast is one over which his heart might 
 break. 
 
 But by what strange method is it that the Atheist 
 climbs to this rocky height, where, like Satan on the 
 throne of hell, he sits " supreme in misery " ? How are 
 we constrained to wonder at the immensity of his re- 
 sources, by means of which he can reach that position 
 from which he can look down upon the being of a God 
 as an exploded and obsolete notion — from which he can 
 look abroad through the immensity of suns and systems 
 and feel warranted to declare, " They had no author ; 
 they have no guide." Before such an immense and won- 
 derful intelligence as this, all the learning and attain- 
 ments of the greatest scholars and philosophers of the 
 world, become diminutive and insignificant. The mind 
 of Newton had a wonderful grasp and sagacity, but all 
 that he attained only led him to bow the more reverently 
 before the throne of the Great Ruler, and the poet has 
 traced his epitaph in those words : 
 
 " Sagacious reader of the works of God." 
 
 Milton was read in classic lore, and he possessed a 
 genius to make classic whatever flowed from his own 
 pen ; but from his broad survey of earth and man he 
 turned back, exclaiming : 
 
 " One Almighty is from whom 
 All things proceed and up to Him return." 
 
7 2 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Bacon, with an intellect that seemed made to pioneer the 
 ages, uncovered with a mighty hand link after link in 
 the chain of causation ; but instead of reaching the lofty 
 position of the Atheist, he had to be content with a 
 humbler measure of attainment, and the feeble light that 
 he kindled was only enough to extort the confession : 
 " I had rather believe all the fables of the Legend, and 
 the Alkoran, and the Talmud, than that this universal 
 frame of things is without a God.' 7 But all these minds, 
 great as we measure them, are but pygmies to the 
 Atheist, and all their attainments leave them on the first 
 round of that ladder to whose top he climbs ! 
 
 Who does not wonder, then, by what power of genius 
 that height is reached — what hands have framed the lad- 
 der or hewn the staircase, by which the brain of man, 
 without reeling or growing dizzy, has mounted to it ? 
 
 The basis on which the wisdom of all other philosophy 
 has been constrained to rest, has been the existence of a 
 great first cause on which all others depend ; but Atheism, 
 outrivalling the Almighty himself, who hung the world 
 on nothing, presumes to suspend all secondary causes on 
 no hook at all, and sustains them all without an uphold- 
 ing hand. 
 
 What other minds consider as absurd, and repudiate 
 as folly, the Atheist receives as reasonable, consistent 
 and wise. He can believe in a design without a designer, 
 a creation without a creator — a government without a gov- 
 ernor, a system without a devising and ordaining mind. 
 
 What other minds in their paroxysms of unbelief are 
 constrained to confess, they can only attain to doubt, he 
 boldly and habitually denies, asserting as established 
 that of which they can see not the barest possibility of 
 proof or evidence. 
 
ATHEISTIC EVASION OF DUTY. 73 
 
 What other minds deem incredible, because outfaced 
 and overwhelmed by a thousand contrary and invincible 
 probabilities, he declares to be true, running in the teeth 
 of other men's reason and common sense. 
 
 While other men can go back in the history of the 
 worlds only to the creating fiat of Jehovah, he can 
 declare their eternal existence, or put the " genesis of 
 chance " among the rationalities of his creed. 
 
 While everything else in the universe animate or inani- 
 mate, according to its grade and nature, declares like a 
 witness, " there is a God/ 7 and the very structure of the 
 Atheist's body and soul confirm the evidence, his voice 
 rises discordant and gives them all the lie. 
 
 What then must be that immense superiority of intelli- 
 gence, that surpassing grasp of mind, that unparalleled 
 learning, which shall warrant a man to take this position, 
 with every sun and star in heaven looking down with an 
 eye of rebuke upon him, and every sand grain and dew 
 drop flashing back the remonstrance, and then and thus 
 assert, there is no God ? Such a man should possess, in 
 himself, not only the lore of ages, but the history of eter- 
 nity, not a narrow acquaintance with a single world, but 
 a minute familiarity with all worlds, not a shrewd suspi- 
 cion of what the soul may be, but a positive knowledge 
 of all its mysteries, its origin and destiny. He should 
 have the power of reasoning surpassing any thing that 
 mortal man has ever developed, a glance that can not 
 only penetrate the mysteries of nature, but discern the 
 secrets of eternity. And when you can bring me such 
 an one denying that there is a God, in other words, pre- 
 sent me with God himself in audible voice, disavowing 
 his own existence, then, and not till then, will I consent, 
 not to be an Atheist, for that would still be impossi- 
 4 
 
74 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 ble, but to confess that to be one admitted of some pal- 
 liation. 
 
 Surely that intelligence that presumes to have reached 
 such a point as Atheism, has overshot its object, and only 
 embarrassed itself by its presumption. It has assumed 
 so much that we can yield it nothing. It has claimed 
 such wisdom that with the warrant of God's word, we 
 can call it nothing but fool. And what has it accom- 
 plished, what has it aimed to accomplish, but to achieve 
 death and demonstrate despair, and assure annihilation ? 
 Sadly, sadly do we contemplate such triumphs if they 
 were real, rejoiced rather to think and sing : 
 
 " Thou art O God, the life and light 
 Of all this wondrous world we see ; 
 
 Its glow by day, its smile by night, 
 Are but reflections caught from thee ; 
 
 Where'er we turn, thy glories shine, 
 
 And all things fair and bright are thine." 
 
 The absurdity of Atheism has but one parallel and that 
 is the disastrous nature of the conclusions at which it 
 seeks to arrive. 
 
 But Atheism is not the product of intellect ; it does 
 not, unless in some very rare cases, originate in the brain. 
 The fool has said in his heart " there is no God." He 
 has gone down, down into the deepest, darkest cham- 
 bers of imagery within, that there without discovering a 
 blush, and hidden from the scrutiny of reason, he might 
 assert, there is no such thing as light, " for God is light, 
 and in Him there is no darkness at all." It was in that 
 den, where all manner of evil thoughts are born, thoughts 
 that are robbers, and extortioners, and adulterers, and 
 murderers, long before the guilty deed is done, — it was 
 
ATHEISTIC EVASION OF DUTY. 75 
 
 there that Atheism drew its first breath. It was born 
 of rebellion and of crime. The dreadful wish was father 
 to the thought. Man hated God before he denied Him. 
 He broke His law, before he attempted to dethrone Him. 
 There must be a strong impulse to Atheism from within, 
 before reason can be driven to the bold assertion that 
 contemns the evidence without. The heart must be a 
 tyrant before the head can become a slave to lie for its 
 master. Then it puts into the lips of reason, words 
 whose utterance degrades it, sentiments with which 
 reason has no relations but of antipathy. Of rabid scep- 
 tics this has in many instances been the history. By 
 some sin or course of sin they had first committed them- 
 selves to a life with which Atheism alone was consistent, 
 and they were impelled by all the memory of the past, 
 and every foreboding of the future, to patch up some de- 
 vice that could shield their conscience, and cry peace, 
 2Jeace, even though there was no peace. 
 
 The true remedy for Atheism therefore, as might be 
 supposed, is not evidence or argument addressed to the 
 intellect, but moral truth and duty brought home to the 
 conscience and the heart. The whole Bible has not an 
 argument in it addressed to the reason of man to con- 
 vince him of a God. That point is everywhere assumed. 
 And there is no need of plausible suggestions to show 
 that in this it is right. 
 
 The man who will swallow the absurdities of Atheism, 
 that will believe that any other intellect than his own is 
 the crude product of chance, that will count the world 
 and human existence things undesigned, must be impelled 
 by a something within him too mighty for reason to mas- 
 ter. The heart is wrong, and, first of all, he must be 
 made to feel and confess it. We say to such a man, 
 
76 
 
 LIFE LESSONS, 
 
 look in upon your own being, and see if you have never 
 felt that you were a sinner, if you have never heard a 
 still, small voice speaking within you as experience never 
 speaks, with a more than mortal majesty, reminding you 
 of duty and enforcing it by something more terrible than 
 the fear of human justice. Look and see if upon your 
 whole moral nature there is not stamped a deep sense of 
 accountability that you cannot shake off ; ask that nature, 
 whether it be not true as the most noted of all French 
 revolutionists was at last constrained to declare, that if 
 there were no God, it behooved man to invent one ; ask 
 yourself if the sense of your dependence and accounta- 
 bility does not plainly declare, that your own soul is in 
 an unnatural state, when it does not look up in glad 
 and grateful recognition of a God above, in whom you 
 live and move and have your being ; ask yourself if that 
 life which religion, or the recognition of a God, calls 
 upon you to lead, is not the one most suited to your state, 
 condition and hopes ; ask whether the daily mercies that 
 overflow your path do not call forth an involuntary and 
 spontaneous burst of gratitude, and to whom does that 
 gratitude refer, who is or can be its object but God. 
 
 Surely that life of man out of which the element of 
 religion is excluded is at war with reason, with conscience, 
 with the peace, and condition and hopes of man. The 
 suffrage of all ages condemns it. There is nothing to 
 defend it but the absurdity of Atheism. 
 
 Let one thing then remain fixed and solid among the 
 eternal principles by which life is to be guided— there is 
 a God. There is a great eternal power above us all, 
 under whose eye we live, whose will is our law, and to 
 whose tribunal we are accountable. Live then under the 
 solemn consciousness of this great and fearful truth, and 
 
ATHEISTIC EVASION OF DUTY. 77 
 
 in forming your purposes, and cherishing your hopes, let 
 them never clash with it, for whosoever shall fall on this 
 shall be broken, and on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall 
 grind him to powder. 
 
 It is only the perverse heart that rebels against the 
 authority of God. It is only the guilty heart that wishes 
 Him not to be. But holiness triumphs in the assurance 
 that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that 
 diligently seek Him. The soul panting for a higher 
 than any earthly good, cries out for God, for the living 
 God. The pure spirit exults to contemplate the perfec- 
 tions of that great Being whose name is a terror to the 
 evil-doer, but to whom the wronged, the sufferer, the peni- 
 tent, humbled prodigal turn, casting themselves with hope 
 and joyful trust on " the Fatherhood of God." 
 
X. 
 
 THE GOOD OF LIFE. 
 
 " What is good for man." — Ec. vi. 12. 
 
 SUPPOSE a rnan in the full vigor of his matured 
 faculties, but without previous knowledge or ex- 
 perience, to be placed in just such a world as this. He 
 cannot — at first, at least — converse with others, and so 
 he is dependent for all he can discover on himself alone. 
 What are the questions that will press themselves on the 
 attention of such a man. and what are the conclusions he 
 will be forced to adopt ? 
 
 As he begins his explorations, he finds that this world 
 is fitted up as a dwelling place, and an appropriate 
 dwelling place, for man. It furnishes him food, shelter, 
 and endlessly varied materials for his ingenuity to shape 
 into forms for use and comfort and beauty. In the most 
 secluded valley his prospect is as boundless as the distant 
 stars, and his gaze pierces into the depths of immensity. 
 The light is adapted to the eye. and the eye to the light ; 
 the air to the lungs and the lungs to the air, food to the 
 system and the system to food. Every joint of the body 
 is a mechanism of most wonderful art. and the inexplic- 
 able control of the will over the muscles is a perpetual 
 miracle of goodness. The riches of the earth, in soil, 
 mine, forest, vegetable and animal life, are inexhaustible, 
 and all these are placed under the control of man. The 
 broad domain is all his own. 
 
 ' : What does all this mean," he asks. i: I had no 
 agency in placing myself here. I did not originate my 
 
 (78) 
 
THE GOOD OF LIFE. 
 
 79 
 
 own being. And jet here I am in a world wondrously 
 constructed, while I myself am a greater wonder still." 
 Would not the conviction flash upon him inevitably — 
 " I am placed here for some purpose, and my first business 
 is to know what that purpose is ? I can think and feel 
 and reason ; I am not like the brute grazing yonder, that 
 is only intent on its food. I am not like the acorn fall- 
 ing unconscious to the earth, to root and germinate 
 where it falls. The reason within me demands a prob- 
 lem to grapple with, but where is one to be found like 
 this — why am I here, and what is the object of my 
 creation ? Till this is solved, every other is impertinent. 
 A traveller needs to know his goal before he sets out on 
 his journey. I cannot take a step till I know my real 
 mission." 
 
 And now — without any revelation as yet that speaks 
 to him directly — he seeks to know what that mission is. 
 First of all he sees that it must be an important one — 
 that the world itself is evidently made for man. Every- 
 thing is subservient to his comfort and advantage. He 
 is the lord, the world is his domain. He is the flower 
 of the stalk — the apex of the pyramid. He is the central 
 orb around which all the others revolve. Everything 
 finds its highest use and value in serving him. Take him 
 away, and the world is a kind of headless trunk. What 
 is his inference? Is it not that the great Maker 
 creates and works -and governs with reference to man, 
 that the end for which all these wonderful things exist, 
 is to be sought where it centers — in the man ? 
 
 " Here, then," he says, " am I fearfully and wonder- 
 fully made, and everything I see around me seems to say, 
 we exist for you. The sun says, I shine for you. The 
 flower says, I bloom for you. And the harvest says, I 
 
80 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 wave for you, and the birds say, we sing for you. The 
 world is the garden, but I am the vine, and by what I 
 am, or what I can do or produce, creative wisdom is to 
 be justified. 
 
 " And what can I do or become ? I can live like the 
 brute and die like the brute y but then all my superior 
 faculties would be superfluous. I can live to eat and 
 drink, and jest and sport years and opportunities away 
 in wanton pleasure. But I feel that this would be 
 making myself a barren fig-tree, useless alike to God 
 and man. Better that I had never breathed. I can 
 carve statues and pile up palaces, and build swift ships, 
 but ere long the statues will crumble, and the palaces 
 will fall, and the swift ships go to the bottom of the sea. 
 I must do some other work than this. I must sculpture 
 something beside marble. I must quarry something 
 beside granite. I must build with something better than 
 elm or oak or pine." 
 
 And would not such a man then be driven to ask — as 
 Plato did — what is the good ? What is the best thing? 
 What above all else is the richest jewel of this great 
 mine of human enterprise? It is not beauty. That 
 fades. It is not strength. That decays. It is not 
 learning. Over-crowded memory lets it spill and waste. 
 It is not honor or fame. A breath makes these, and at 
 a breath they fade. It is not show or splendor. The 
 pageant vanishes like a vapor, and moths consume the 
 wardrobe. It is not even disciplined intellect. That 
 may be the tool of ambition. It may be used to poison 
 the fountains of human thought. The man that has it 
 may curse it at last, if an evil heart makes it but an 
 instrument of mischief, or if it gives him to see only too 
 clearly what he is. 
 
THE GOOD OF LIFE. 81 
 
 All these things are the husk, but what is the grain ? 
 Is there none? That cannot be. Winnow away the 
 chaff and stubble, and what is left ? Let a man's body- 
 crumble, let his fortune be scattered, let the works he 
 built go to decay — has all then perished ? Possibly. 
 And yet if that man was true to conscience and to 
 charity, every one feels that he was richer than his for- 
 tune, and greater than all his works — that he was the 
 building and they the scaffolding — that he was himself 
 the treasure, and they the box that guarded it. The 
 integrity that millions could not bribe, we all feel to be 
 worth more than these millions. A Luther at the Diet 
 of Worms, planting himself on the authority of Scripture 
 alone, and declaring, " here I take my stand ; I cannot do 
 otherwise ; God help me" — a Bradford or a Winthrop 
 sacrificing ease and comfort, and the luxuries of English 
 homes for the perils of the wilderness with the privilege 
 to worship God — a Hampden standing up manfully to 
 contest the tax of a few shillings, but which invaded the 
 freedom of the English constitution — a John Howard 
 or Robert Raikes, or Oberlin or Felix Neff, studying out 
 new methods of Christian charity and putting them into 
 execution— who does not feel that such men as these 
 show us in what the worth of human existence con- 
 sists, and how, just as rain and sunshine and damp 
 soil and decaying matter are by Nature's chemistry 
 changed into the majestic tree that spreads out its broad 
 branches in bloom and strength and beauty, so by the 
 true chemistry of virtuous aims, these hours of service, 
 this soil of probation, and this wealth of transient privi- 
 lege are transformed or absorbed, and so incorporated 
 into that human career which by self-denial and charity 
 and holy purposes, is made a tree of life, and under the 
 4* 
 
g 2 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 shadow of which earth's weary pilgrims, invoking bless- 
 ing on it, lie down to rest ? 
 
 The world, too, whatever other ends it may be de- 
 signed for — and in everything from the insect to the 
 eagle, from the sand grain to the mountain, it glorifies 
 the great Maker — is specially designed to educate the 
 soul. You go into a school-room, and though built of 
 logs, yet by all its arrangements, you recognize its de- 
 sign. There are benches, desks, books and diagrams, 
 and charts, perhaps, on the walls. Is not the globe a 
 broader school-room, with "tongues in trees, books in the 
 running brooks, sermons in stones, etc." ? Is it not cov- 
 ered over with diagrams and parables and emblems? 
 Is there a thing that blooms or fades that does not 
 preach its silent sermon to the listening ear ? Do not 
 the deep-set rocks and the giant mountains become to us 
 speaking types of the deep-set foundations of justice, 
 and the towering greatness of incorruptible virtue ? 
 What is history, as generations make it and write it, but 
 just the register of human attainment — the scholarship 
 of those who have learned to teach others and become 
 eminent themselves, or who have excelled in mischief? 
 What do these centuries turn out but the graduates of 
 probation — and what is experience working out every 
 day, even where human science is unknown, but new 
 measures of moral attainment ? A man may succeed or 
 fail in business, he may be distinguished or obscure, but 
 one thing is always true of him, he is receiving a moral 
 education. He is under discipline. He is studying the 
 fruits of good and evil deeds. His eye is directed in- 
 evitably at the career and fate of others, and he is forced 
 to consider what will be the consequence of his own 
 action. Thus is he forced to deliberate, to weigh mo- 
 
THE GOOD OF LIFE. 83 
 
 tives, to calculate results. This is true of all, and almost 
 the only thing that is. How it proclaims the nature and 
 scope of our existence here ! Just as the scholar would 
 attain the ends of scholarship, just as he feels that for 
 these he seeks the halls of science and learning, and that 
 sportive indolence and dissipation are foreign to his pur- 
 pose, and that rich dress and sumptuous feasts cannot 
 promote it — so we, pupils under God's tuition, are edu- 
 cating for moral ends, are under discipline to learn 
 lessons of truth and duty, to perfect ourselves in virtue, 
 to become such in life and character as to justify the 
 outlay for the advantages we enjoy, and the price of 
 divine tuition. 
 
 And what a new force and pertinency is given to this 
 thought when we consider how short our stay here on 
 earth is ? A few years at school or college seem to those 
 who look back on them from the distance as a type of 
 life itself. We stay here only to be educated — only to 
 complete our moral lessons, only just long enough to 
 make it plain that we have improved our privileges, or 
 that we never would if they were prolonged a thousand 
 years. And then we go away. We go as the scholar 
 does, carrying away nothing but just his education itself. 
 He sells his furniture, quits his room, parts, perhaps, 
 with his books, breaks off from all his old associations, 
 bids farewell to all his intimate companions, and goes 
 forth without any visible remnant of all his toil and 
 application, to what is as it were a new world. The 
 result of all his efforts is to be found in himself alone, in 
 his knowledge, his disciplined powers, his education — in 
 nothing you can weigh or handle, or offer for sale in the 
 market. 
 
 And who can fail to see the parallel of our life ? Is 
 
84 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 it not stupid not to see the difference between a well- 
 stored study and a well-stored mind? And is it not 
 stupid not to see that our privileges on earth are 
 valueless except as they educate the soul and discipline 
 it for moral service, and fit it, as it bids farewell to 
 earthly associations, to enter upon others more enduring, 
 fitted already for the world for which it was preparing 
 here. 
 
 Now suppose a man reasoning from the facts of his 
 own experience, to come to such a conclusion as this, 
 and then to fall as it were accidentally upon the word 
 of God, even without knowing it as yet to be divine — 
 what, as he peruses it, will be the impression it will 
 make ? Will it not rivet his conclusions, yet infinitely 
 enlarge his views ? Will it not put beyond all doubt 
 the question as to life and its meaning? Will it not 
 force him to say — " I am here to prepare for a higher 
 life ? I am here a probationer for eternity. The great 
 end for which the world has been made and man placed 
 on it, is to be attained by the shaping and education of 
 the soul, and responsible for this, I am bound to make it 
 my first and greatest care." 
 
 Nay, will he not feel that the only real good of life 
 must be sought in the attainment of the end for which it 
 was bestowed ? Must he not count everything else sub- 
 ordinate to this ? Must he not feel that it becomes him 
 above all to apply himself to understand in what a 
 proper education for eternity consists, and what is the 
 method by which it is to be secured ? 
 
XI. 
 
 IGNORANCE OP THE GOOD OP LIFE. 
 
 "Who knoweth what is good for man in this life?" — Ec. vi. 12. 
 
 IF a little child should assume to set aside all control 
 and educate and govern itself — if it should be allowed 
 to indulge without restraint its likes and dislikes — it 
 would shortly become a little willful tyrant, a specimen 
 of ripe, full-grown depravity. His will would not only 
 master his own judgment and conscience, but would spurn 
 alike the counsel and the authority of others. He would 
 present an embodied definition of the folly and the wick- 
 edness of human nature left to itself. 
 
 The result is due to two causes, though they co-operate 
 as one, like the weight and the speed of stroke in the 
 momentum of a murderer's club — one is the child's abso- 
 lute ignorance of what is best for itself, and the other is 
 his indisposition to the good even when he knows it — 
 that is, his perverting persuasion that what he wishes is 
 best, and that what he dislikes is evil. 
 
 But men are only children of a large growth, and in 
 them both these causes are also more or less at work. 
 In our ignorance of what is best for us, we are too often 
 like children, and in our attempt to make that our good, 
 by the force of will, which can only tend to mischief, we 
 act the part of children whose erring fancies tempt us to 
 smile, or whose more deliberate errors we sternly correct. 
 
 (85) 
 
86 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 A child wants certain toys. He gets them ; per- 
 haps pays an exorbitant price for them. How soon they 
 lose all their charms, and are cast by as rubbish. Who 
 does not read in that a parable of more advanced years, 
 men seeking certain objects to insure their happiness, but 
 soon satiated, and casting them aside as unsatisfactory. 
 
 The child sees a beautiful butterfly and chases it. 
 Only to secure it will fill his eager desire. He follows 
 it perhaps in vain, or if he grasps it, he crushes the frail 
 treasure which is cruelly injured. What is this but the 
 chase of men for the objects of ambition. 
 
 A little child has two large apples given it. Benjamin 
 Franklin, to teach a lesson, says, give it another. In 
 trying to grasp the third, it loses both. What is this 
 but human avarice grasping more than it can hold, not 
 satisfied with enough, and losing what it has to gain 
 more? 
 
 Again, the child longs for some toy which it is not fit 
 to manage, a knife or a pistol, or some such dangerous 
 thing. It gets it only to maim itself and bitterly regret 
 that its wishes were ever gratified, or that its parents 
 ever indulged its wild humor. 
 
 Still again, it longs for something that shall minister 
 to its vanity, some ornament or some article of rich 
 clothing. It moves abroad in its rich array, feeding on 
 the admiration it excites, and its thoughts are set on the 
 light trivialities of dress, or the praise or notice which 
 these follies may secure. Who can tell the mischief that 
 is thus done ? Who can tell how long that moral poison 
 of vanity and self-conceit, that is thus introduced, will 
 rankle in the soul ? But how much more dignified or 
 becoming are the thoughts of thousands who are eager 
 for display, or who seek the praise and honor of men ! 
 
 
IGNORANCE OF THE GOOD OF LIFE. 87 
 
 Many a one that attains these is intoxicated by them, and 
 only acts the part of a gaudy human peacock, to the dis- 
 gust of thoughtful and the pity of anxious observers. 
 
 How often does one say to himself, if I could only at- 
 tain such a position I should be satisfied and happy. 
 He struggles for it. He sacrifices his peace to gain it. 
 Perhaps he condescends to mean or dishonorable acts ; he 
 risks and perhaps loses his reputation for fairness and 
 honorable dealing to attain it. And after it is gained, 
 it only draws him into the very path of the tempter. It 
 throws him into the society of the unprincipled or in- 
 temperate or profane to which he feels forced to conform. 
 Henceforth his path is downward, and the career to ruin 
 dates from the very success which he coveted. If his 
 aims had been defeated, he might have died an honest 
 man. 
 
 It is the story of the gambler's first success over again. 
 He is lured to his ruin. He sees what he calls good, 
 and eager to grasp it plunges over a precipice. 
 
 Many a man might have lived safe and useful in some 
 humble sphere where Providence had cast his lot. He 
 might have been happy there. But restless and dissatis- 
 fied he flies from one object to another. He climbs some 
 strange height to be dizzied there. He plunges into 
 some mine of intrigue only to be smothered in its stifling 
 damps. He hurries from one enterprise to another only 
 to fail in all, and pile wreck on wreck. 
 
 But suppose a man by shrewdness and energy to suc- 
 ceed in all he undertakes — suppose him to become all 
 that his worldly ambition could covet. Is that best for 
 him ? Has he the true good ? His short years know 
 scarcely a sorrow or disappointment. He is like Job in 
 his first prosperous estate. Thousands perhaps regard 
 
88 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 him with envy. They see not the secret cares that are 
 wrinkling his brow. They read not the inward wretch- 
 edness that can wring so little happiness out of such 
 large possessions and such marked triumphs. 
 
 But what does it all amount to when a few years are 
 flown — when the hand trembles and the steps totter. 
 Perhaps this present good kept a future and eternal good 
 out of sight. Perhaps the man was so well satisfied with 
 what he had, that he sought no more. He had houses, 
 but no conscious title to a house not made with hands. 
 He had wealth, and that deluded him into neglect of the 
 treasure laid up in heaven. He had the respect of men, 
 and that allowed him to think lightly of the honor that 
 cometh from God only. Too late he wakes up to the 
 fact that he is poor in all that constitutes the riches of 
 the soul, unprosperous in all that constitutes true success. 
 His prospect is dark as the grave that no promise illumi- 
 nates. He has no hope. He has no trust or peace in 
 God. He feels, if there is a judgment to come, he is all 
 unprepared for it. If there is a future retribution, he 
 can only fear. How, perhaps, he envies the poor invalid 
 that is dependent on charity for bread or a grain of 
 comfort ! How he exclaims — " that I had never known 
 such success as I have met with, such rewards as I have 
 gained. In a harder lot I had been a better man. Un- 
 der the smart of affliction, my pride had been humbled 
 and I had been taught to rely on God." 
 
 How this reminds us of the lament which Milton puts 
 in the mouth of the great fallen arch-angel : 
 
 " O had his powerful destiny ordained 
 Me some inferior angel, I had stood 
 Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised 
 Ambition." 
 
 
IGNORANCE OF THE GOOD OF LIFE. 89 
 
 No man — so far as worldly attainments or possessions 
 are concerned — can tell what is best for him. The 
 things lie covets most may do him the greatest harm. 
 They may be the very ones which, if he could see the 
 end from the beginning, he would pray to be delivered 
 from. Sometimes his prize turns out to be an infernal 
 machine. His arts of gain prove the rust that eats his 
 soul as it were fire. The society which he successfully 
 aspires to secure, is but an honorable escort to dissipation 
 and perdition. His very genius, securing him the ap- 
 plause of others, is only the rocket's blaze lighting him 
 up to heights from which pitying eyes shall mark his 
 fall. In the end it may even be, and sometimes is the 
 case, that he would give all his wealth and honors just 
 to be put back where he might begin anew a different 
 life. Like Richard Cour de Lion at his father's bier, he 
 feels all the sad regret compressed in those stinging, re- 
 morseful words : 
 
 "Alas, my guilty pride and ire! 
 Were but this deed undone, 
 I would give England's crown, my sire, 
 To hear thee bless thy son." 
 
 If one thinks of the life to come, to how brief a space 
 does this vain life, transient and fleeting as a vapor, 
 shrink ! How unimportant appear its outward circum- 
 stances ! What matters it to the sojourner for the night 
 whether the roof that shelters him is canvas or a dome 
 of gold? What matters it to him that no sumptuous 
 feast frowns contempt on his meaner fare ? These years 
 fly by like the wastes of the traveller's journey, and as 
 each day vanishes, how little concern does its show or 
 parade excite ? For a little while to be cheered or hissed, 
 
9 o LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 for a little while to be in want or to abound, for a little 
 while to stand on the pinnacle or in the valley— what 
 does this amount to ? And who knows which is best in 
 the end ? To be where the lightning strikes — to have 
 that as an ornament which grows into a cross, heavy to 
 be borne — to be one of a circle which are linked together 
 to drag one another downward — who might not pray, 
 from all this, " Good Lord deliver us ?" The steep path 
 which energy may climb may be edged with the precipice. 
 The sumptuous fare that appetite craves may confirm a 
 glutton. The sunshine of prosperity may wilt and wither 
 the fresh, green hopes that would have thriven in the 
 shade. 
 
 The wisdom of man is to confess that so far as worldly 
 circumstances are concerned, he does not know what is 
 best for him. A nation does not know. Judah in cap- 
 tivity was learning lessons that restored her to the favor 
 of her offended God. The civil war of England was the 
 stern discipline that bore fruit a generation later in the 
 Revolution Settlement and Act of Toleration. We are 
 passing now through the Red Sea and Desert of our 
 history. Who can tell whether hereafter even short- 
 sighted men shall not pronounce it the most important 
 and profitable period of our career, teaching us lessons 
 that would have been too faint-lined unless written in 
 blood ! 
 
 So no man can say that his hardest trials are not the 
 most profitable for him. No man can fix his heart on 
 any worldly good whatever, whether of property or sta- 
 tion or knowledge or power, and say, That will bless me ; 
 that will make me ha,ppy. There is nothing left for us 
 but to bow our ignorance in the dust before God's infinite 
 wisdom, and to say like the child conscious of his weak- 
 
IGNORANCE OF THE GOOD OF LIFE. 91 
 
 ness, Lead me as thou wilt, I know not what to ask. 
 Not my will, but thine. 
 
 Yet is there no good that is such beyond all question- 
 ing or doubt ? Is there not something attainable by man 
 in this his brief, vain life, which by the concession of all 
 is of vast importance, and of unutterable value — some- 
 thing which is not granted merely to a favored few, the 
 exclusive favorites of fortune, but which the poor and 
 rich, the learned and ignorant alike may be warranted 
 to seek ? Is there not something which is to all outward 
 blessings like the wheat to the chaff, like the gold to the 
 dross ! Is there not something without which a Croesus 
 is but an object of pity, and with which a Lazarus might 
 be the envy of kings ? 
 
 I had not completed writing the foregoing paragraph 
 when I received a letter written by one who for months 
 had been steadily looking forward to bis decease, and 
 who while yet he was able was dispensing charitably and 
 wisely the wealth with which God had blessed him, in 
 which he says — " My flesh and strength are much wasted, 
 and I am very feeble. I can only walk or tottle to my 
 chair. . . . But I feel calm and resigned. . . . My 
 Saviour appears beautiful and glorious to me. The Gos- 
 pel and the promises thereof never looked better or 
 brighter. There is full provision for oil our wants." 
 The questions of that paragraph were thus answered — 
 ere they were asked — by this testimony from the bed of 
 a dying saint. It was testimony from a truthful pen — a 
 pen tremulous in the feeble grasp that held it, but clear 
 and unhesitating in its avowals. "Was there room longer 
 to ask whether — in this brief, vain life of man — there is 
 not something attainable which is of vast importance and 
 infinite value ? Was there room to question the supe- 
 
9 2 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 n ^ 
 
 riority to all tilings else of a living faith in the Son of 
 God ? The testimony only added another drop to the 
 full overflowing stream of evidence. It was but one 
 more voice confirmatory of the chorus of the " great cloud 
 of witnesses." We know, that ignorant as we are of 
 what is best for us as to our outward lot, there is a good, 
 the possession of which may well make the soul forget 
 all earthly want. 
 
 Most assuredly there is. There is a good without 
 alloy — which does not betray with a kiss, which does 
 not offer a cup of blessing drugged with woe. It is 
 religion — pure and undefiled — that religion which bears 
 the fruits of hope, faith, love and joy. Its presence makes 
 the heaven of the soul even in this vale of tears. It gives 
 us God for our present and everlasting portion. It sanc- 
 tifies sorrow, and roofs the wanderer's unsheltered head 
 with the guardianship of Jehovah. It is a possession 
 which no man ever regrets. It leaves no sting in the 
 memory, no gnawing worm in the conscience. 
 
 And it is offered to all. It is offered to you. It is 
 urged upon your acceptance. You are besought by all 
 that is precious in hope or fearful in judgment to make 
 it yours. The price that purchased it was the blood of 
 God's own Son. Are you eager for worldly good — for 
 ease or comfort? Let them go, till this is secured. 
 They are but straws, while this is the everlasting crown. 
 
XII. 
 
 NEED OP A REVELATION. 
 
 "A light shining in a dark place." — 2 Peter i. 19. 
 
 E* YEN a heathen, with the ripe fruits of Christian ex- 
 / perience before him, may feel and acknowledge that 
 the true good of man is not of a material but a spiritual 
 nature. He may be led freely to confess that the path 
 of holiness is the path of blessedness. A voice within 
 his own soul may respond its amen to this conviction. 
 But without the results of a Christian life before him, 
 would he ever have discovered the true good of man, or 
 have been won by the attractions of holiness ? 
 
 A man may accept unhesitatingly the results of astro- 
 nomical research, and he may hold the convictions which 
 the revelations of others have wrought in him, with un- 
 shaken tenacity. He may see and feel their truth, while 
 yet by his own unaided efforts he never could have at- 
 tained to an apprehension of them. It is not so with the 
 conclusions of our moral and spiritual astronomy ? Rea- 
 son may be utterly inadequate to discern truths which 
 when once disclosed, seem to carry their own evidence 
 with them, and which the conscience of the little child 
 accepts unquestioningly as the simplest spiritual axioms. 
 Yet let us by no means depreciate that elementary knowl- 
 edge of God — that A, B, C, of theology — or those mono- 
 syllables which reason spells out on the pages of creation. 
 All this is valuable. As reason's alphabet, it is inestima- 
 
 (93) 
 
94 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 bly precious, and yet it is only an introduction to our 
 ignorance. It gives hints and suggestions of problems, 
 buried deep beyond the reach of reason's plummet. It 
 catches a view of the great and ominous shadows, cast 
 around our path, from the realities of the invisible world, 
 and only spurs our curiosity — and our interest too — to 
 know more about them than reason teaches. For beings 
 that are by their very nature and constitution, accounta- 
 ble, we are possessed even by reason's light, of a fearful 
 mass of knowledge — enough to make us tremble at what 
 we are — and are to be — enough to render our guilt inex- 
 cusable and our condemnation just — but not enough to 
 assure us of hope, or clearly define the objects of our faith. 
 Our condition in the absence of revelation is that of a 
 man groping in the dark, feeling his way, and by the slow 
 and tedious process of touch, learning what the lighl 
 might teach him in the twinkling of an eye. The Gospel 
 is therefore preeminently " a light shining in a darl 
 place." 
 
 The feebleness with which reason apprehends — if at 
 all — some of the most important subjects of human thought 
 and destiny, calls for a revelation that shall make them 
 plain. Here in this world, with Nature's lamp only to 
 guide, we are like the traveller groping his way at mid- 
 night with a lantern in his hand, now climbing the 
 almost precipitous height, now gliding along the edge of 
 chasms, or sinking in the bog and marsh, till his limbs 
 are weary and his patience worn out, and his success 
 more than doubtful. We feel that we want the broad 
 light of the noonday sun, flung in a flood of splendor over 
 hill and valley, lofty crag and deep ravine, till the whole 
 landscape stands out distinct to the eye, and the path we 
 are to take is clearly and fully before us. It is true 
 
NEED OF A REVELATION. 95 
 
 there are some eyes that can see better in the dark than 
 others ; there are some minds that might have read by 
 reason's aid far more than others ; spelling out important 
 truths inscribed in hieroglyphics on the ruins of this great 
 temple of our human nature. But such minds are few, 
 and even they see very indistinctly, and when pride does 
 not forbid it, speak like Socrates of old with the full con- 
 fession of their ignorance and doubt. Let one grope for 
 a while under the guidance of the ancient philosophers, 
 and he will begin to learn the value of a solid basis of 
 knowledge and a definite apprehension of the state, object 
 and prospects of human existence. There are questions 
 innumerable that throng about our path, asking for a 
 solution, and the oracles of reason are well nigh dumb, 
 or if they speak, they are but Delphic shrines. Even the 
 probabilities, which we settle down upon, are shaken by 
 counter-probabilities, or if undisputed, ask for a clearer 
 confirmation. Reason tells me there is a God, but how 
 worthless is that great fact, till I know what he is, and 
 learn his disposition toward me ! By Nature's light I 
 can discover my own dependence and subjection to law, 
 but I ask, in vain, for the clear and definite idea of that 
 moral government which is over me, and there is even 
 room to question how far I shall be held responsible. 
 From the works and providence of God I discern a gene- 
 ral expression of his friendliness to virtue and reproba- 
 tion of vice, but how far this is to take effect hereafter I 
 cannot tell. Reason teaches me that I am a fallen being 
 — a transgressor of the law, and throws out many hints 
 of how terrible a thing it is for any one to place himself 
 in the way where the wheels of God's legislation shall 
 roll over him, but she is silent when I ask, what is the 
 penalty, how enduring, and in what shape will it come ? 
 

 96 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 No man needs a labored instruction in regard to the sin 
 and misery of the world. The apostacy of man is sculp- 
 tured deep on the heart and the life of the race. But 
 there is a problem as to how this guilt and woe shall be 
 removed and man stand justified before his Maker, which 
 transcends all the powers of mortal discernment. My 
 own constitution, speaking through its aspirations and 
 instincts, tells me that I was made for happiness, but 
 nature shows me nothing worthy to feed this inward hun- 
 ger — she opens no path to that blessedness for which I 
 feel that I was made. Reason teaches me how guilt is 
 incurred, and that condemnation may not improbably 
 fall upon me, but says nothing of any full assurance of par- 
 don and deliverance from the curse. No man needs to 
 teach me that the world is full of want and anguish, mis- 
 fortune, pain and disappointment, but I do ask for a solu- 
 tion that shall reconcile all this with the character I love 
 to ascribe to my Maker— and reason fails in the attempt 
 to furnish it. Surmise and probability are not enough. 
 Exposed every moment as we are to accident and death, 
 we want a ground for the assurance that our present 
 afflictions are light — light because they shall work out 
 for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 
 The light of nature suggests, and to some minds doubt- 
 less, enforces the conviction of a future judgment, but the 
 great features of this foreshadowed fact are only to be 
 found on the pages of Revelation. We may gather up 
 also many hints in regard to a future state from the aid 
 of reason — but still we want something to scatter the 
 dimness of doubt, and bring life and immortality to light. 
 We may puzzle ourselves not always vainly, but most un- 
 satisfactorily, over the strange methods of that Provi- 
 dence which distributes the allotments of life in seemingly 
 
NEED OF A REVELATION. 
 
 97 
 
 unequal measure — but we feel that we want a revelation 
 to clear up all, and make our faith intelligent and firm. 
 The picture of a thoughtful man in the mazes of igno- 
 rance, seeking to understand himself and God, but seek- 
 ing in vain for the want of light, is exceedingly affecting. 
 But is that of the thoughtless multitude less so, blindly 
 acquiescent in their ignorance, and dropping into their 
 graves insensible as the. brutes, and making death, the 
 catastrophe and issue of a dream? It is not in the 
 nature of the human mind lightly to be satisfied on themes 
 of such importance as those which should naturally form 
 the burden of a Revelation, and which so intimately con- 
 cern all that we have to hope or fear forever. We want 
 the dim and shadowy outline to become distinct. We 
 want the fleeting shapes and coloring that pass before us 
 in the prospect, arrested, and fixed down visible and 
 definite, giving substance to the transient imagery, that 
 sweeps before the field of our reflection. 
 
 For a mind constitutionally timid and distrustful, the 
 light of Nature furnishes but a feeble solace. It is more 
 inclined to look on the dark than on the light side, and 
 dwell on the extent of our ignorance rather than the 
 reach of our knowledge. 
 
 What must be the reflections of such a mind scarcely 
 venturing to rest on the bare probabilities with which 
 it is forced to be satisfied ? Yet with them alone, and 
 holding them too by an uncertain tenure, it looks around 
 it in the absence of revelation, upon the great mystery of 
 life and probation. 
 
 Every question it asks, every struggle after a firm foot- 
 ing which it puts forth, only sinks it deeper in the mire. 
 It dares not trust even its clearest and boldest reasonings. 
 Perhaps it has once relied upon a fallacy, and past expe- 
 5 
 
9 8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 rience of its error confirms its tendency to doubt. It 
 looks about it like a solitary traveller who has lost his 
 way in the wilderness, and vainly searches after a fami- 
 liar object, some track or tree, or distant hill-top that 
 shall furnish a clew to extricate him from error. The 
 questions are innumerable that throng upon the mind. 
 It finds itself on this broad ocean of being, without chart 
 or compass, or experience, with the broad bright heavens 
 indeed above, but with none to translate their mysteries, 
 with none to point to Bethlehem's guiding star. The 
 facts that are plain only make the mystery of man's state 
 still more wonderful and trying. He lives, to die. He 
 looks forward, to fear. He reasons, to tremble. He 
 hopes, to apprehend disappointment. " What am I," he 
 asks, " what is the object of my being, what my state, 
 what my relations to a surrounding universe, what my 
 prospects for the present or the future ? My present 
 home is a world of graves where the survivors dance 
 over the dust of the departed, and where death and life 
 meet in a strangely near relationship. I too am mortal, 
 and when my body crumbles to the dust where will my 
 spirit go ? Will that too be dissolved or absorbed, sent 
 forth an everlasting and homeless wanderer, or impris- 
 oned in chains of darkness ? If it survives, on what sort 
 of a field will it enter, with what associates will it min- 
 gle, or what will be the nature of its employment ; will 
 it be happy or wretched, will it live over again such a 
 life as it lived on earth, or a far higher and nobler one ? 
 or possibly one far subordinate and degraded ? Shall it 
 ascend or descend, rise to the angel or sink to the clod ? 
 In what will the nature and object of it consist, will it 
 be spiritual, refined, and holy, or polluted, sensual, and 
 brutish ? Will it carry with it there the taint of earth, 
 
NEED OF A REVELATION. 99 
 
 and be followed by its works, and words, and thoughts, 
 as persecuting avengers? What is the connection be- 
 tween this life and that to come, and what shape shall be 
 given to this, so that there shall be no room for after and 
 vain regret ? Where can a sufficient guide be found in 
 our error, a sufficient remedy in our disease, a support in 
 the hour when heart and flesh shall fail ?" 
 
 To these interrogations and a thousand others, reason 
 makes no full, no clear reply. She surmises • sums up 
 probabilities ; forecasts results ; but pronounces nothing 
 definite and certain, ventures no direct assertion, but 
 leaves us still in the attitude of expectation and suspense. 
 We know enough to excite our fears, to waken our curi- 
 osity, to urge us to investigation, to excite our apprehen- 
 sions, but just there Nature closes her volume, and leaves 
 us in the dark. Something more is necessary now, than 
 would have been if the moral order of the world had 
 never been disturbed. The clearness of our own reason 
 and judgment has been somewhat blinded in the shock. 
 Wc have been disqualified for application to the problem 
 by the same cause that has, if not created it, involved it in 
 deeper difficulty. We cannot occupy with all the powers 
 of the largest reason, the position which a sinless being 
 might, nor are we prepared by nature's light to say what 
 course the infinite wisdom of God will adopt, or what his 
 measures will be in regard to us in this unprecedented 
 state of things to which the world has been brought by sin. 
 
 And as we might beforehand suppose the light of nat- 
 ural reason insufficient, experience has proved it to be so. 
 " The world by wisdom knew not God." Every page 
 of the history of the race demonstrates our need of a 
 revelation. Its enlightening, its purifying, its restraining 
 influences were all called for. Read the popular mythol- 
 
loo LIFE LESSONS, 
 
 ogies, we can hardly call them religious systems, of 
 the Old Y^orld, and see what vast magazines they were, 
 of wayward fancy and distorted truth, of cruel supersti- 
 tion and grossest error, yet swaying the minds of men by 
 their strange and terrible spell. They were evidently 
 the growth of darkness, of ignorant fear, or, possibly, 
 sometimes of ingenious and tyrannic fraud. They were 
 limited to no one age or nation. They disgraced the 
 fame of Greece and the civilization and learning of 
 Rome, as well as the pride of Egypt and the fame of the 
 warrior race of Odin. In here and there an instance, no 
 doubt, their authority was repudiated, but the exceptions 
 were rare. Take up the writings of the wisest men of 
 antiquity, and see how they stumbled on some of those 
 elementary principles of religious knowledge which pass 
 unquestioned even by the modern sceptic. These truths 
 on which they doubted are some of them such that the 
 simple statement of them carries with it well nigh the 
 power of demonstration. And yet if no revelation came, 
 no clear and plain instruction of God and His will, how 
 long would these errors maintain their hold ? We know 
 that of old they yielded only as Christianity progressed, 
 and they yield to-day as they did then, not to the ridicule 
 of a Lucian, or the contempt of philosophers, but to the 
 light of the Gospel. The most odious and horrid vices 
 disgraced the noonday of Roman and Grecian achiev- 
 ment, and were intimately associated oftentimes with the 
 celebration of their mysteries and religious rites. By 
 their most distinguished men, they were sometimes 
 shamelessly avowed, and formed a fitting counterpart to 
 a mythology which seemed the creature of a polluted 
 fancy revelling in its own shame. If the light of reason 
 could have sufficed, these things should have been as 
 
NEED OF A BE VELA TION. i o 1 
 
 transient before it as the mists of the morning. They 
 should not have waited for the sun of Christianity to rise 
 and dispel them. But they maintained their ground in 
 spite of art, learning and culture, till this appeared. Nor 
 need we be surprised at it. Look at the most eminent 
 men of old and see whether their reason could have been 
 more than a rushlight amid the darkness around them. 
 "Epictetus bids you temporize and worship the gods 
 after the fashion of your country ; Pythagoras forbids 
 you to pray to God, because you know not what is con- 
 venient. Plutarch commends Cato of Utica for killing 
 himself amidst philosophic thoughts, with resolution and 
 deliberation, after reading Plato on the immortality of 
 the soul. Cicero pleaded for self-murder, in which he 
 was seconded by Brutus, Cassius, and others who prac- 
 ticed it. Customary swearing is commended sometimes 
 by precept and often by example of their best moralists." 
 Some maintained that right and wrong were mere con- 
 ventionalities, just as the Lacedemonians legislated in- 
 genious theft into repute. 
 
 Surely, with all the wisdom of antiquity, the knowledge 
 of God was not there, and where is the man to-day that 
 can point to a tribe or nation that renounced idolatry 
 till it came in contact with at least the reflected light of 
 revelation. 
 
 Then look at the sanctions and restraints of human 
 law, and how weak they are as well as moral considera- 
 tions generally, till they are enforced by the clearer 
 declarations of revealed truth, quickening the public as 
 well as private conscience to renewed sensibility, and 
 rebuking all manner of crime by the solemn and fearful 
 expectation of a just award, of sanctions that are drawn 
 from beyond the grave. 
 
102 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Socially, intellectually and morally, man needs a reve- 
 lation. Nature's light is insufficient. The world has 
 proved it so. If it bad not, our own feelings would out- 
 run the necessity of argument. We want light, light to 
 shine in a dark place, light for our souls. 
 
 And what is it that makes our want of a revelation so 
 urgent ? The reasons may be found in God's character 
 and man's condition. 
 
 What reason teaches us of God forbids us to imagine 
 that we are placed here except with a wise design. We 
 see a plan apparent in all his works, and man, too, ex- 
 cept he be a discord in the great harmony, has an end to 
 subserve. Unlike the physical and brute creation he is 
 to be intelligently active in attaining it, and instruction 
 of some kind is highly necessary to this end. He must 
 know God's design in order to be able to enter into it 
 and cooperate with it, and the perfection of this design 
 itself seems to imply that he should possess this know- 
 ledge to such an extent as to render neglect inex- 
 cusable. 
 
 Then man's condition, also, is such as seems to call for 
 the compassion of such a thing as reason is willing to 
 conceive God to be. There are times when ignorance is 
 woe, and doubt anguish, and when the mind hungering 
 for knowledge is as much an object of pity, as the poor 
 victim of disease, or the starving wretch pining for bread. 
 And what other than this is the state of man when in the 
 absence of revelation he becomes conscious of his want ? 
 Place him where he is often found, in circumstances of 
 bitter trial, where one by one each earthly hope fails him 
 till they all give way, and the forlornness of his lot sinks 
 deep into his soul, and with no light or hope from heaven 
 what can he do ? He knows of nothing yet in reserve to 
 
 
NEED OF A REVELATION. 103 
 
 sustain liim. The future is all blackness unpierced by a 
 single cheering ray. No beam of hope traverses the 
 tomb or smiles upon him from beyond the grave. He is 
 shut up to a present robbed of consolation, or given over 
 to a future bounded by despair. What is there now on 
 earth to cheer or aid this struggling soul ? The stoicism 
 of reason is a poor physician. It nauseates the mysteries 
 of science. All the treasures of learning cannot charm 
 away its anguish. It needs a divine consoler, it asks a 
 guide who will show the way from earth to heaven. It 
 is man's sensibility to his want and woe that urges the 
 demand, a demand which human wisdom has proved it- 
 self unable to supply. We feel, after all, that the sui- 
 cide's argument cannot satisfy us, and it poorly reconciles 
 us to our lot, if in the refuge of the grave we are to find 
 nothing but its oblivion. 
 
 What again must be the feelings of the sensitive mind, 
 clinging with a lingering fondness to this its conscious 
 being, yet girt about by the gloomy doubts that invest 
 the hour of its departure from these scenes ? Have you 
 read the story of the dying Hindoo questioning his 
 Brahmin teacher what would become of his soul after 
 death? The doctrine of its transmigration from one 
 body to another, now tenanting a beast, and now a rep- 
 tile, was but a poor consolation. No wonder he asks, 
 "what then will become of it," and with every new 
 change continues still to ask, " what then ?" It is very pos- 
 sible for persons even in a Christian land so to shut out 
 the light that shines around them that their death too is 
 heathenized, and like the dying Rabelais they feel if they 
 do not exclaim, " I go to seek a great Perhaps." With- 
 out a faith whose eye is enlightened by revelation, it 
 must be so. How sad the farewell song of its departure : 
 
to 4 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 u Over the dark, dark sea 
 
 I must go, for the hour has come. 
 But where shall my wandering spirit rest 
 In its final home ? 
 
 " My life is a dim Perhaps. 
 
 From the rock of faith I'm driven, 
 ISTo shining light in my clouded breast, 
 No star in heaven. 
 
 " What if this vital force 
 
 Shall be spent when this last breath flies, 
 And thought and feeling vanish in night, 
 As the lightning dies ! 
 
 " Or what if the conscious soul 
 
 Should be damned, as was taught of old, 
 To live in body of bird or beast, 
 Years manifold ! 
 
 " Into the gloom I go, 
 
 With perhaps alone before, 
 The great sea rolling all around 
 Without a shore. 
 
 " Shall I rise to the Christian world, 
 With the pure and the good to dwell, 
 To live forever in joy and love ? 
 I cannot tell. 
 
 14 Shall I be hurled in wrath 
 To the penal flames below ; 
 For endless years to suffer and sin ? 
 It may be so. 
 
 " Farewell — my eyes now close 
 On the light of the certain day ; 
 And into the dark of death, my soul 
 Plunges away." 
 
NEED OF A REVELATION. 105 
 
 Who does not feel all the sympathies of his soul drawn 
 forth toward the tried and struggling spirit, arguing 
 with doubt, but arguing in vain. What want can be 
 more trying than the want of that revelation which can 
 bring life and immortality to light, and which solving the 
 puzzle of our being here, points us to the realms of glory, 
 and a home in heaven. With this, and only with this, 
 can we hope for guidance for our stumbling steps. On 
 our dark path to eternity reason alone is but a rushlight, 
 and genius is but a glowworm's spark. What a question 
 then, with the antecedent probabilities of divine mercy 
 and human need, is this, Have we a light to cheer and 
 guide us ? one that God Himself has kindled, one by the 
 teachings of which the once troubled soul can exclaim : 
 
 " But darkness and doubt are now flying away ; 
 
 ITo longer I roam in conjecture forlorn ; 
 So breaks on the traveller, faint and astray, 
 
 The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn. 
 See Truth, Love and Mercy, in triumph descending, 
 
 And Nature, all glowing in Eden's first bloom ; 
 On the cold cheek of Death, smiles and roses are blending, 
 
 And Beauty Immortal awakes from the tomb." 
 
 5* 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE LAW OF NATURE. 
 
 "The work of the law written in their hearts." — Rom. ii. 15. 
 
 HAS God given a law to men ? That is, has he 
 made known rules of life or action for men to 
 which penalties are annexed ? 
 
 He has unquestionably enacted what is sometimes called 
 " the law of nature," that is the law which the nature or 
 constitution which he has given to man, requires or 
 enforces. 
 
 Such a law results from the very fact of creation. The 
 Creator is necessarily to a certain extent a legislator. 
 By calling a thing into being, he determines what it is, 
 how it shall be constituted, upon what it shall act, and 
 how it shall be acted upon. As created it has its quali- 
 ties, capacities, adaptations, or in other words, its nature, 
 and the conditions or modes in which these are designed 
 to act are the law of the nature of the thing. It is the 
 law of the seed to germinate, of the vine to produce 
 grapes, of the oak to produce acorns. 
 
 So if you take the human body, it has its laws of health- 
 ful action. The eye is for sight. The lungs are to 
 breathe, the feet are to walk. This is the law of their 
 creation. Their proper and healthful action is dependent 
 on certain conditions, or laws of health, which must be 
 met or complied with, and the penalty of non-compliance 
 
 (106) 
 
 
THE LA W OF NA TUBE. 1 07 
 
 is pain, disease, or feebleness. So there are physical laws 
 of sobriety and temperance, the penalty of which is dis- 
 sipation, suffering and infamy. These laws belong to the 
 code of nature, and any man, except the fool, can read 
 them by observation, and the fool reads them at last in 
 his own experience as if they were written in large 
 capitals. 
 
 So there are laws which govern man's intellectual and 
 moral nature. The mind must be used or it will rust. 
 There is law and penalty. Certain conditions in the use 
 of the intellect must be observed, or it will be made nar- 
 row, or bigoted, or sophistical. The moral nature has 
 its laws. Integrity is required, or distrust will be pro- 
 duced, conscience will reproach, the calm of the soul will 
 be broken. There must be simplicity of purpose, or one 
 must be double-minded. The will must be held in check, 
 or a man will become its serf and the slave of passion. 
 
 So each faculty of mind and of the moral nature has 
 its own laws. They are cut into the very constitution 
 of things like the name of a temple sculptured on its 
 portico. 
 
 Every thing that exists has its peculiar constitution 
 and relations. The nature of the tree or shrub governs 
 its growth and development. The instincts of the brute 
 govern its action. The intelligence and conscience of 
 man govern, or are designed to govern his acts and 
 career. 
 
 These laws, therefore, are very diverse. Some are 
 simply physical, others are moral. Some secure inevita- 
 bly the desired result ; others simply impose obligation 
 on the creature, impelling him, but not absolutely neces- 
 sitating him to act. But in either case they are alike 
 the laws of the Great Maker. No man can doubt the 
 
io8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 fact of his legislation. Intelligent creation is ipso facto 
 legislation. 
 
 But what is the character of this law of nature as 
 regards men ? It is to man's constitution that we must 
 turn for an answer. This shows the design of his being, 
 and the design of the Creator suggests the end which 
 man is to attain. If you look at any mechanism of man, 
 you find out by study, or the explanation of others, the 
 use for which it was designed. That designed use deter- 
 mines how it is to be employed. A spade can be used 
 as a bludgeon. But plainly this was not the design of 
 its maker. Man can be perverted into a chattel, a glut- 
 ton, a sensualist, a knave, but evidently this was not the 
 design of his Maker. The plain and safe rule of inter- 
 pretation here is, that a thing or being is designed for 
 the highest and most useful purpose for which it could be 
 employed. It would be absurd to suppose one to invent 
 a curious and complicated machine exactly fitted to sow 
 or reap, which should be employed to level furrows by 
 dragging it over them, when a simple bush or roller 
 would do as well. So if a man lives like a brute, it does 
 not follow that he was meant for a brute, or that this is 
 the law of his being. If he has passions whose excessive 
 indulgence would make him a glutton, a sot, or a tyrant, 
 it does not follow, if it is possible for them to be checked 
 and moderated, and answer a good purpose in a subordi- 
 nate sphere, that they were meant for unlimited indul- 
 gence, but rather the reverse. The design of the maker 
 is to be learned by inquiry of what a thing is susceptible, 
 or what is the highest and most important end which it 
 can evidently subserve. That design, so far forth as it is 
 manifest, is of the nature of law, and failure to attain it 
 is of the nature of penalty. 
 
 
THE LA W OF NA TUBE. 1 09 
 
 Here then is man made, not like a stone, subject to the 
 simple law of gravitation ; not like a human machine to 
 expedite the processes of industry, of science, or of art ; 
 not like the brute, to be subjected to a superior will and 
 intelligence, guided only by blind instinct, but with an 
 intelligence that allies him to his Maker ; with a sense of 
 right and wrong that enables him to sit in judgment on 
 human action, others, and his own ; with a power of rea- 
 son and judgment that qualifies him to trace causes to 
 results, and determine the consequences of different 
 courses of action ; with sagacity to perceive what is 
 wisest and safest among proposed measures ; with a will 
 that can carry his designs into execution, and renders 
 him accountable for his acts ; with capacities and means 
 to make others happy, or influence them to what is pure 
 and good ; with susceptibilities for virtuous enjoyment 
 infinitely superior to all the pleasure of sense ; with a 
 power of thought to soar into the great realm of the un- 
 seen, and power of feeling to be moved by all that is great, 
 or good, or sublime in moral action ; and with such possi- 
 bilities of intellectual and moral growth and development, 
 that his standing point on earth seems but an eagle's 
 perch for far loftier flights ; and all these wheels, all 
 these complicated mechanisms of his moral being are so 
 adjusted to each other, and to the sphere in which he is 
 to act, that he is stupid, beyond comprehension, who does 
 not respond to the sentiment of the psalmist, " I am fear- 
 fully and wonderfully made f or who does not while he 
 responds, stand awestruck before the majestic design of 
 his Maker, sculptured as it were in legible letters in his 
 own constitution. 
 
 That design reveals law — the highest law of Nature — 
 that law that should govern the purposes and aims of 
 
ll0 LIFE LESS OSS. 
 
 every man. He who degrades himself by low, base, or 
 selfish aims, who uses his intelligence to make himself 
 only a lettered brute ; his sense of right and wrong to con- 
 demn others and not judge himself ; his reason and judg- 
 ment to excuse his evil or plead the cause of vice ; his 
 sagacity to discern how his own selfish lust and passions 
 may be gratified ; or his will to execute purposes that 
 build up his despotic supremacy, on the ruin of others' in- 
 dependence ; or his sensibility to the good and great as a 
 foil to his own baseness of heart, such a man violates the 
 very law of Nature. He has no right to pervert his 
 intellect, his conscience, or his affections. He has the 
 capacities which, rightly used, can approximate him to an 
 angel, and he violates the law of his creation and consti- 
 tution, when he uses them to assimulate him to a despot, 
 or a sot, a brute or a devil. Every step in this direction 
 is a step in transgression. Every leaning to such a result 
 is a leaning against the sharp piercing point of the statute 
 of the Eternal Lawgiver. 
 
 Now some may object to this law, on the ground that it 
 is not proclaimed. But here we take issue with them. 
 We say it is proclaimed, even by the light of Nature. 
 You might as well take the statute book of the state, that 
 condemns your crime, with you into the cell or dungeon, 
 and because of the darkness and gloom which your wick- 
 edness has brought upon you, say that there is no law 
 because you cannot read it. Man's sin has blinded him 
 to the law of Nature, and his guilt has made its republi- 
 cation by revelation necessary. But though republished, 
 and more fully and clearly drawn in the Bible, it does not 
 follow that it has not been proclaimed. Laws in various 
 ages have been variously published, sometimes graven in 
 stone, sometimes by the voice of the herald, sometimes by 
 
THE LA W OF NATURE. 1 1 1 
 
 reports of others, sometimes by obscure handwriting on 
 pillars, sometimes as unwritten, or common law. The law 
 of Nature is the common law of the universe. It is writ- 
 ten at least in the conscience. It is embodied even in 
 the moral judgments we form of one another, and the man 
 who complains that it is not published, and imagines that 
 he has reason for what he says, only argues that his own 
 sin or moral blindness has blurred and blotted the hand- 
 writing till his own copy is almost or quite illegible. 
 
 We admit that it is sometimes almost illegible. But 
 the fault is not in the proclamation or publication, but 
 the guilty suppression of it. This suppression, extensive, 
 general, and, we may say, universal, has made a fuller 
 and clearer republication important, but that republica- 
 tion could not be claimed. God has graciously made it, 
 but that grace was not our due. And if now by the light 
 of the revised statute, we can better read the old, spelling 
 it out letter by letter, we only infer, first the great evil 
 of the sin that obliterated the old, and then the infinite 
 obligation which is imposed by the giving of the new. 
 
XIV. 
 
 THE REVEALED RULE OF LIFE. 
 
 " Thy testimonies are wonderful." — Ps. cxix. 129. 
 
 HAVE we in our hands an actual revelation from 
 God ? Have we the authentic utterance of His 
 will and character and purpose ? 
 
 There are several works in the world that lay claim 
 to the character of sacred books, but I presume no one 
 who has the faintest knowledge of their real character 
 would allow consideration, even for a moment, to the 
 claims of any but the Bible. Some flaw — as scientific 
 error, imperfect morality, absurd legends — stamps all but 
 this as counterfeit. The Bible, and the Bible only, can 
 plausibly challenge attention as a revelation from God. 
 
 What is it, then ? It will help us to weigh its eviden- 
 ces if we know what it is. We can understand at least 
 what interest, in examining its evidences, its contents 
 excite. The Bible, then, is made up of history, doctrine, 
 morality or laws of duty, devotional utterances, prophecy 
 and the declared purposes of God's providence and 
 grace. 
 
 It is first of all history. This is the largest element 
 of the whole. Here are sixty-six separate books or 
 treatises, written by nearly forty different authors, and 
 their dates are spread, as near as we can judge, over the 
 
 (112) 
 
THE REVEALED RULE OF LIFE. 
 
 113 
 
 space of fifteen centuries. The earliest writers had 
 been dead more than a thousand years before the last 
 took up his pen. Each was independent of the others. 
 The styles are distinct, and the volume cannot have been 
 forged by a single hand. Nor can it have been got up 
 by collusion or conspiracy, for the different writers be- 
 longed to diverse ages, and could never have met and 
 consulted together. 
 
 Yet they have written conjointly the most wonderful 
 history in the world, fully as remarkable for its unity as 
 for its diversity. It gives us the first, the earliest, and 
 the only record that we have of the creation of the globe 
 and its inhabitants. It gives us the sketch of succeeding 
 centuries, and an authentic narrative of the peopling of 
 the world, through a period which all other histories 
 abandon to myths and fable. Nowhere else can we learn 
 anything of the actual origin of the race. Nowhere else 
 can we trace the original divisions and settlement of the 
 human family. Nowhere else during this period can we 
 feel that we tread the solid ground of reality. 
 
 But on this common trunk of all history, a peculiar 
 history is grafted. It is the history of God's dealings 
 with men, and the successive steps by which He has car- 
 ried forward his providential design for the restoration 
 of a fallen race. Here we have the central line of march 
 of the world's progress, the great highway into which all 
 the lanes and by-roads of history converge. Here is the 
 channel of the river of which other histories are but 
 eddies, or at the best, tributary rivulets. This keeps ever 
 distinctly in view the sublime object of original creation and 
 subsequent redemption. Elsewhere, even from the pens 
 of Gibbon and Macaulay, of Bancroft and Prescott and 
 Motley, we have only fragments chipped off from the 
 
u + LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 obelisk of time. Here we have time's very statue flung 
 out in bold relief on the background of eternity. Other 
 writers give us links, but here by prophecy and history 
 combined, we have the great chain which reaches down 
 from the staple of creation to the final regeneration and 
 completed judgment of the world. Men are learning at 
 last that the cross of Calvary is the pivot of the destiny 
 of the race. Christianity is the motive and moulding 
 power of the world. The real history of time is just 
 the history of the process by which it has been evolved 
 and brought to bear upon individuals and nations. The 
 forays of a Nimrod, the conquests of an Alexander, or 
 the triumphs of a Cassar, are but episodes, incidental 
 chapters, subordinate in importance to Abraham's faith, 
 Moses' leadership, Daniel's career, or the labors of Christ 
 and his apostles. The Jewish theocracy was the scaffold- 
 ing to the Gospel temple. The history of their erection 
 gives us the channel current of time, while other writers 
 have busied themselves with the waves or foam. 
 
 Here then, is the most wonderful and unique history — 
 the true history of man — the true history of the race — 
 the true history of its relation of God. From first to 
 last there is one object in view — and with this the recov- 
 ery of the world through the mediatorship of the prom- 
 ised Messiah, before us : every fragment of this volume 
 takes its place in a pre-arranged and divine harmony. 
 The book of Leviticus is no superfluity. The ceremonial 
 law prefigured the facts of our redemption. The book 
 of Ruth is not an episode. It is an important link in 
 the chain by which the geneological descent of the Mes- 
 siah is traced in accordance with prophecy. The book 
 of Daniel is no digression. It sets up a notable land- 
 mark in our progress from Eden to Calvary. 
 
THE ME VEAL ED RULE OF LIFE. 115 
 
 Thus, sift it as you will, the Bible history has from 
 first to last a wonderful unity, not formal, not paraded 
 or obtrusive, but real and radical. It is written by 
 nearly two score authors of different ages, and yet but 
 for the varied style, it would seem that a single mind 
 guided the pen. The sublime simplicity of the books of 
 Moses, the rigid annalism of Judges, the ceremonial pre- 
 ciseness of Chronicles, the graphic imagery of the Pro- 
 phets, the simple narrations of the Gallilean fishermen, 
 and the earnest, glowing utterances of Paul — all blend 
 together in harmony like the colors of the rainbow in 
 simple light, so that one idea, running along beneath all 
 forms of expression and all shades of thought, masters 
 unconsciously annalist and preacher, poet, seer and evan- 
 gelist, insomuch that they elucidate in wonderful corres- 
 pondence the same great theme, conspire unwittingly to 
 unfold the same great plan by which infinite wisdom is 
 carrying forward to its conclusion the purposes of human 
 redemption. 
 
 Where is there another such history as this — so grand 
 in conception, so perfect in outline, so triumphant in con- 
 clusion — where each book, though a fragment in itself, 
 fills its own niche in the perfect structure, and all har- 
 monize together like the varied limbs of a living creature, 
 instinct with the same spirit and vitalized by the same 
 energy? Who is not constrained almost to exclaim al- 
 ready, Human pens may have written it, but the Eternal 
 Mind was its author ! 
 
 But the Bible is not mere history. It presents the 
 doctrines of religion, the facts of theology, the elements 
 of the grandest and most perfect system of religion ever 
 propounded to man — one that has no rival, or the shadow 
 of a rival in all human speculation. The most elaborate 
 
u6 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 systems of Deism, or natural religion, are to the Gospel 
 system only as a worm to a man, only as the wigwam of 
 a say age to a civilized home. This system, historically 
 presented in detached portions, but harmonious to the eye 
 of the devout student who takes it into view in its proper 
 connections, is simple but sublime. A child shall appre- 
 hend it, while an angel cannot comprehend it. " God is 
 a spirit !" what a flood of light does this throw on the 
 nature of God and the worship he requires ! " Our 
 Father which art in heaven !" what lessons are unfolded 
 in a word concerning the character of God and our rela- 
 tions to him ! " By nature the children of wrath !" " The 
 carnal mind enmity against God !" " The heart deceit- 
 ful above all things, and desperately wicked !" What 
 volumes of meaning concerning man's apostasy from God, 
 and its bitter fruits ! " Our hearts condemn us, and God 
 is greater than our hearts and knoweth all things !" 
 What a humiliating exposure of our condition as trans- 
 gressors of the divine law, and expectants of deserved 
 vengeance ! " God so loved the world as to give his 
 only begotten and well-beloved Son !" " While we were 
 yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly!'' Who can 
 fathom the grandeur of this demonstration of divine grace 
 toward us, this wonderful display of infinite compassion 
 for the guilty. " He is able to save to the uttermost all 
 that come to God by him !" How amazing the extent, 
 how glorious the sufficiency of that mediatorship by which 
 Christ becomes our perfect Redeemer! And then a 
 judgment to come, the blessedness of heaven, the retri- 
 butions of the world of woe — how they stand forth sub- 
 limely conspicuous on the pages of the Bible, casting into 
 shadow all the high thoughts of the proud, all the splen- 
 dor and pomp, all the crowns and dominions of earth ! 
 
THE REVEALED RULE OF LIFE. 117 
 
 How wonderful the volume that thus boldly presumes to 
 draw the curtain of the eternal world, and lets frail, 
 toiling, trifling, dying man walk on in the full blaze of 
 the infinite glories, so that if he will, his pathway to the 
 grave shall be irradiated with the light of immortality, 
 and the night of Probation's day shall be the twilight 
 dawning of heaven ! 
 
 But the Bible is also a code of law, a system of morals, 
 claiming the divine sanction for its injunctions. And 
 here, simply as a moral text-book, it has in all literature, 
 not a peer or rival. The skeptic has acknowledged its 
 superiority, and with the sagacious wisdom of a Franklin, 
 the polite suggestions of a Chesterfield, the teachings of 
 Socrates and Seneca, codes of law, codes of honor, sen- 
 tences, maxims and proverbs, all at his command, has 
 thrown them aside that he might put into the hands of 
 his children the words of the Author of the Sermon on 
 the Mount. The instincts of his affection were truer 
 than the elaborate pleadings of his perverted reason. As 
 you read this book, you feel all evil rebuked, as if an all- 
 seeing eye were looking right through the soul, till all 
 wicked designs, fraudful deception and selfish schemes 
 are searched out by its beams, and the very chambers of 
 sheltered darkness and sin have all their imagery ex- 
 posed. This book — the good love it ; the bad hate it. 
 To the one it is a guide, to the other a detector ; so that 
 in spite of themselves, the instincts of sin, strangely unite 
 with the sympathies of holiness to attest its power ; the 
 first trembling at its rebukes, the last strengthened by 
 its sanctions. 
 
 Of the prophecies of this book, I have not space here 
 to speak at length. But when you read them, and note 
 the austere standard of duty, which the overpowering 
 
n8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 glory of the divine character portrayed, the thunders of 
 rebuke that roll forth with each succeeding sentence, the 
 stern denunciations of iniquity that they utter, the glow- 
 ing and superhuman imagery with which they are often 
 clothed, you feel that either these are expressions of the 
 sublimest impudence of which man could be guilty, or the 
 very messages that have come down to the world from 
 the throne of God. 
 
 But what shall be said of the devotional spirit and 
 breathing of this volume ? In this respect it is neither 
 surpassed nor equalled by any other. Good men have 
 written good books — books that set forth truth and duty 
 eloquently — that kindle the soul to flaming zeal, or bow 
 it in deepest self-abhorrence — that inspire it with Godly 
 aims, arouse the energies of its consecrated powers as 
 the notes of drum or trumpet stir the soul to harsher 
 deeds of arms. I would depreciate none of them. I 
 would bless God for such messengers of piety and devo- 
 tion as Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," Baxter's " Saint's 
 Rest" and " Dying Thoughts," Howe's " Blessedness of 
 the Righteous," Rutherford's Letters, Romaine on Faith, 
 Legh Richmond's Tracts, and scores of others, and I 
 would lend them new wings to visit on angel errands 
 the homes of God's sorrowing or toiling ones ; but all of 
 them are only — in the presence of the Bible — like planets 
 around a central sun. They shine only by a borrowed 
 light, and if I must have but one — I say give me that 
 which makes my day rather than that which merely 
 adorns my night ; give me the diadem instead of the single 
 gem. For who can go up with Abraham to Moriah, or 
 with Moses to Sinai and Pisgah, or hear David sing in 
 memory of his own past, " The Lord is my shepherd," or 
 pray the words the Saviour taught, or lean with the 
 
THE REVEALED RULE OF LLFE. 
 
 119 
 
 beloved disciple on Jesus' bosom at the supper, or yield 
 himself to the upward currents of devotion poured forth 
 in the aspiring praise and supplication of the Apostle 
 Paul, and not feel himself wafted above the world, borne 
 as it were on eagle wings to a height where the eloquence 
 of a Chatham or Webster, the genius of a Milton, the 
 philosophy of a Bacon, shrink to the sparkling insignifi- 
 cance of sand grains gazed at from the mountain's brow ? 
 Our sweetest lyrics have been gathered from the Hebrew 
 Psalms. One of our greatest statesmen pronounced that 
 beginning, " I love thy kingdom, Lord," unsurpassed in 
 literature ; and where can the bowed, crushed, broken 
 heart find such expressions as in the Penitential Psalm ! 
 And now is it wonderful that such a volume should 
 have had such a history — that it should stand for cen- 
 turies as it stands to-day, as powerful as it is venerable — 
 the spiritual battery to electrify nations and the world — 
 the moral lighthouse to illuminate the career of individ- 
 uals and of governments — the lever to lift fallen humanity 
 from the pit of its misery — the guide-book of the erring 
 and the lost, to bring them back to their Father's house ? 
 It helps us to know the book better — to know what it 
 is — if we turn and see what it has been, where it has gone 
 and what is has done. It has enlightened ignorance, 
 dispelled doubt, chased away superstitious fear, and been 
 a fountain of light and hope to the despairing. It has 
 transformed character, changed the lion to the lamb, the 
 brute to the angel, and the humbling confession of the 
 penitent publican has been wrung by it from the tongue 
 of the desperado in guilt, the felon in his cell, and the 
 blasphemer breathing out once the vernacular of hell. 
 Men whose vileness has been proof against all human 
 persuasion have been subdued by the power of the cross. 
 
120 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Robust and hard-hearted iniquity has been made to trem- 
 ble like Felix before Paul. Lips slimy with oaths have 
 become redolent of praise. Tongues loaded with impre- 
 cation have caught the music of the new song, and over 
 the form of the prostrate persecutor angels have bent, 
 to soar aloft with the exulting announcement, " behold 
 he prayeth." 
 
 Human eloquence has never won such victories, or ex- 
 ulted in such triumphs as have been achieved by the liv- 
 ing words of the Bible. It has slain the enmity of the 
 human heart. It has disarmed the persecutor and sub- 
 dued the strength of malice by a stronger love. It has 
 gone into dens of vice and pollution and turned the foul 
 spirits out. It has entered the temple of the soul and 
 overturned the tables of the money-changers, and restored 
 the prostrate and neglected altar. It has laid conse- 
 crating hands on the faculties and powers of the whole 
 man, till, instead of the slave of selfish gain, he became 
 " eyes to the blind and feet to the lame." It has touched 
 the indolent spirit and made it flame forth with active, 
 self-denying love. It has sent those whose educated 
 tastes led them to spurn all contact with vulgarity, into 
 streets, and lanes, and alleys, and hovels, where they 
 might stretch out to the wretched and degraded the 
 hand of sympathy and of brotherhood. It has evoked 
 the sublimest illustrations of moral heroism, and you may 
 safely credit the generous self-denial, the large-hearted 
 charity, the bravest and the gentlest deeds that have en- 
 riched the story of the past, to the power of the Bible. 
 Evangelists, missionaries, martyrs, drank from this in- 
 spiring fountain, and along every nerve thrilled the new 
 energy which made them more than conquerors amid hard- 
 ship, peril, dungeon and the flames. 
 
THE REVEALED RULE OF LLFE. 121 
 
 No other book has ever wrought out such results. Into 
 the solitary bosom, into the social circle, and into the 
 broad sphere of our common humanity, it has borne the 
 whispered message of the angel of the covenant. As it 
 spoke, Care smoothed his wrinkled brow, Pain forgot his 
 agony, Age shook off the burden of years, Sorrow dis- 
 cerned rainbow hues, memorials of the everlasting cov- 
 enant in its falling tear drops, while Passion hushed its 
 raging waves, and the dying sufferer seemed to catch 
 echoes from the music of the golden harps mingling with 
 the pathos of love's last earthly farewell. Human affec- 
 tion borrowed an unutterable sweetness and grace as les- 
 sons from this book subdued every tone, while the timid 
 spirit, through the inbreathed energy of divine truth, be- 
 came more than a Leonidas, became a Christian martyr. 
 
 Where is the institution of humanity or benevolence 
 not indebted to it ? Where is the Christian state which 
 it has not brought under infinite obligation ? Where is 
 the legislation that it has not leavened, the schools and 
 colleges and asylums which it has not nurtured ? It has 
 been the strength of the world's strongest men. It has 
 furnished the watchwords and mottoes that have kindled 
 the enthusiasm of the Christian heart. The stars and 
 stripes? Here is the star of Bethlehem, the glorious 
 salvation of Him by whose stripes we are healed. The 
 Bible has been Protean, not to curse but to bless. It has 
 been the Christian's guide-book, the soldier's armor, the 
 sufferer's consolation, the believer's charter to a heavenly 
 birthright. It was Luther's armory, Baxter's panoply, 
 Bunyan's library, Knox's battle-axe, the pilgrim's guide- 
 book, and everywhere for all time the herald of pure 
 learning, social morals, just laws and religious life. It lit 
 the star in the west that guided the Mayflower. It sent 
 6 
 
122 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Elliott and Brainerd to the savages of the wilderness, 
 and over broad continents and the islands of the sea it has 
 kindled the pioneer watchfires of the millennial advent. 
 
 But, is this all ? Nay, there is scarcely a great writer, 
 or great thinker, or great actor of these last centuries, 
 whose debt to the Bible, in a mere intellectual point of 
 view, is not immense. It has quickened the life of na- 
 tions, and given to enterprise a new, if not original, im- 
 pulse. Milton studied its grandest lyrics before he 
 penned his own immortal song. Bacon gathered its 
 brightest gems to set in the frame of his own golden 
 thought. Addison in every page betrays his obligation 
 to its lofty morality as well as its majestic diction. Cow- 
 per suffused his lines with odors from the bruised flowers 
 of Gethsemane, and who doubts that Washington was a 
 braver and abler leader, and Wilberforce a more reliable 
 statesman, and Chalmers a mightier thinker, through the 
 power of this book? 
 
 Thus through literature, legislation, moral reform and 
 all industrial enterprise its spirit has gone abroad. Not 
 a sail unfurled upon the sea but owes something to its 
 influence. Not a law on the statute book but has felt 
 its shaping pressure. Not an iron wire that thrills with 
 the mandate of a nation's will, or an iron track which 
 bands a continent together, that exists independent of the 
 impulse which the Bible has ministered. 
 
 And how endeared it is to millions of hearts ! It is 
 cherished with unutterable affection by those who would 
 feel its loss like the blotting of the sun from heaven. 
 They heard it read in early years by saintly lips now 
 sealed in the silence of the grave. Its very words have 
 that familiar yet solemn tone which distinguishes them 
 from all others. They have been preached in the pulpit, 
 
TEE REVEALED RULE OF LIFE. 123 
 
 they have been paraphrased in song. The music of their 
 speech has been heard at the bridal and at the burial, in 
 the sanctuary and by the fireside. The volume itself 
 was, perhaps, the very earliest memorial which affection 
 bestowed, as hope gives the fond assurance that it shall 
 be the last to fall from the trembling hand. A solemn 
 awe, a reverential fear attended its first perusal, and 
 every subsequent call to listen to its words has confirmed 
 the impression that was then made. Its sentences are 
 imbedded in the memory. Its promises are enshrined in 
 the heart. What childhood repeated, age loves to re- 
 hearse, and graven on countless tombstones are traced 
 the holy texts " that teach the rustic moralist to die," or 
 speak the sacred hope of blessedness beyond the grave. 
 
 Thus highly is it prized. And is it all a mistake ? Is 
 this book the delusion of the soul ? Is it a false guide ? 
 Is it a forged charter ? "We may, at least, presume not, 
 so long as, 
 
 " What none can prove a forgery, may be true, 
 What none but bad men wish exploded, must. 11 
 
XV. 
 
 TERMS OF THE LIFE ETERNAL. 
 
 "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" — Mabk x. 17. 
 
 WHAT a wonderful book the Bible is ! The mar- 
 vel of literature, the text-book of the world ! 
 Where is there anything like it in all the writings of 
 men ? It is the only book extant that can be called a 
 book for all, or that is equally adapted to all. You put 
 it into the child's hand, and he grows old reading it, 
 but it has new charms to the last, and is unexhausted 
 still. The hoary head bends over it — not less intent than 
 the eyes that gleam out under the fair young brow — 
 tracing lines that have been traced a hundred times, but 
 which are still as fresh and bright as ever. Childish sim^ 
 plicity is taught the deepest truths, and readily appre- 
 hends them, while separate books or even chapters of the 
 volume task the ingenuity and exhaust the learning of 
 deep-read scholars. The peasant pores over it in his 
 hovel and the nobleman in his palace, and it is alike a 
 teacher for both. The thankful heart finds in it the lan- 
 guage of praise, and the penitent heart adopts its forms 
 of contrition. The soldier reads it in the camp, or in 
 the intervals of battle, and the widow reads in it as she 
 conies back from the new-made grave, " The Lord is thy 
 husband." The patriarch of four-score reads it bv his 
 
 (124) 
 
TERMS OF THE LIFE ETERNAL. 
 
 !*5 
 
 fireside, and the lisping prattler on his knee is charmed 
 by its stories from the old man's lips. How could you 
 teach youth a simpler petition than our Lord's prayer, 
 and how could the profoundest learning frame anything 
 more comprehensive, appropriate or sublime ? 
 
 Suppose you invited all the wisdom and genius of the 
 world to-day to combine their energies to produce a text- 
 book of morals and religion which should go alike to the 
 Englishman's castle and the Hottentot's kraal, with Kane 
 to the Polar Seas, and Livingston to African deserts, that 
 the professor of law should tell his students to read for 
 its style, and the very infidel should teach his child for 
 its sublime morality — a book that should do more than 
 the wisdom of all codes to shape the legislation of na- 
 tions, and more than all science to overthrow the temples 
 and the idols of pagan nations — a book that a mother 
 should put in her boy's knapsack when he goes forth to 
 the scenes of battle, and to which she turns herself for 
 consolation when she learns that he sleeps with the un- 
 tombed dead — a book that shall guide the footsteps of 
 erring youth, and pillow the hope of the departing spirit 
 — a book that shall cheer the prisoner in his cell, and 
 that shall raise up Judsons for the heathen, and Howards 
 for jails, and Wilberforces for the enslaved African — a 
 book in which a Newton, a Herschel, a Brewster, and a 
 Mitchel shall devoutly confess they discover truths more 
 glorious than their telescopes reveal, and which shall 
 have power to change the savage to a man — and does 
 any one imagine that the ripest civilization of the nine- 
 teenth century, garnering up all the lore and experience 
 of ages could produce such a book ? Philosophers read 
 Lord Bacon, and scholars study Plato, and in these men 
 you find the ripest thought of centuries and of generations ; 
 
i 2 6 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 but what are they to the laborer or the school-boy — nay, 
 how their brightest thoughts die out as a meteor-flash, 
 when you read the wonderful parables of the man of 
 Nazareth, or listen to the utterances of his Sermon on 
 the Mount ! 
 
 No wonder that the book is cherished. No wonder 
 that precious memories of it are twined about the past, 
 and that the brightest rainbow hues of the future are 
 borrowed from the hopes it inspires. It is associated 
 with all that is dearest to the human heart. The old 
 family record grows almost sacred, interleaved with 
 these pages. The dying parent goes to this fountain to 
 find words of farewell counsel to those he leaves behind. 
 Here is what we repeat at the bridal, here is what we 
 read at the burial. Here is the chapter for family devo- 
 tion, and here the text for the sanctuary. The richest 
 bequest of parental piety comes from the teachings of this 
 book, and with the last memorial of the departed we trace 
 on the tombstone some " holy text" which it has enshrined. 
 
 What is the meaning of all this in connection with a 
 book penned largely by shepherds and fishermen? There 
 is but one answer. Here is God's text-book for the race, • 
 adapted to every capacity and to every lot. This tree 
 of wisdom beneath whose shadow we gather to learn 
 lessons beyond all that was taught in Platonic groves, is 
 a tree of God's planting. It is rooted in the soil of the 
 distant centuries. It spreads its fibres beneath Sinai and 
 Calvary. The Spirit of God breathes through its whis- 
 pering leaves, and the songs of prophets, and apostles, 
 and martyrs yet wake living echoes beneath its branches. 
 The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, 
 and its fruit is the fruit of the tree of life. Humanity 
 itself pants for a place beneath its shade. 
 
TERMS OF THE LIFE ETERNAL. 127 
 
 And what is the object of it ? Not to teach art or 
 science or philosophy — not to please or entertain, but to 
 educate the soul for heaven. It answers for every man 
 the question " Good master, what shall I do that I may 
 inherit eternal life ?" It answers it for the Jew. It an- 
 swers it for the pagan. It answers it for the Christian. 
 Different classes want different text-books, but here all 
 are taught from one. The shepherd boy and the King 
 of Israel, the fisherman and the pupil of Gamaliel, Nico- 
 demus and Zaccheus, Milton and the ploughboy, Job and 
 the jailor of Philippi, may take their place on the same 
 benches, and say alike, " A greater than Solomon is 
 here I" 
 
 Just as a well-arranged text-book carries a pupil on 
 step by step to the highest problems, so God by revela- 
 tion has educated the race. The types and shadows of 
 the old ceremonial law were the alphabet of the atone- 
 ment — the rudiments of the Gospel. In the profoundest 
 sense the law was a schoolmaster, a child-guide to lead 
 us to Christ. The commandment of duty comes logically 
 before the sense of transgression, and with the confes- 
 sion of sin comes that cry for mercy which the Gospel 
 answers. 
 
 And as it is with the race, so it is with the individual. 
 If the Jews were taught as children, so is the doubting, 
 trembling inquirer even now. Does he ask, What shall I 
 do to inherit eternal life? he is told to keep the command- 
 ments. This is first of all. Why ? Because it is wisest. 
 Because no man is capable of seeing the beauty and 
 grace, and feeling the preciousness of the Gospel till he 
 has tried to render obedience, and has been humbled 
 into the dust by his confessed failure. He needs to know 
 the law — to feel its spirituality, to understand its extent, 
 
i 2 8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 to know what it requires, and to feel how far he has 
 come short. It was to this end, that Christ would sweep 
 aside from the eyes of the young man his blinding self- 
 flattery, and show him to himself. For this he gives him 
 to understand that his wealth is yet his idol, dethroning 
 and shutting God out of his heart. He is not fitted to 
 follow the Saviour, till he can learn to sacrifice all else 
 to do it. 
 
 This is the first great lesson. In vain is the Gospel 
 preached to you if you refuse to learn this. We say, if 
 you will attain eternal life by your own exertions, keep 
 the commandments. You are bound to do it. Every 
 fibre of your conscience responds to the claim — thrills 
 with the sense of obligation. You are bound to love God 
 with your whole heart, to keep His commandments — to 
 seek His glory. You are bound to hold all you have, and 
 are subject to His command. You are bound to subdue 
 every unhallowed and selfish passion, to drive out every 
 evil thought, to love your neighbor as yourself. You are 
 bound to have a heart holy and pure and free from sin. 
 You have no more right to do wrong, to speak or do, or 
 even think or wish, an evil thing, than an angel in heaven. 
 The very same law binds you that binds the seraph, that 
 binds the highest archangel. Back of all the sophistries 
 of the heart, beneath all the apologies with which con- 
 science is overlaid, you can read upon it, as if graven 
 with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond — Keep 
 the commandments. Breathe out your soul in prayer. 
 Make your life a hymn of praise. Let all your affections 
 be set on things above. Live as Christ did. Carry 
 heaven's own atmosphere of holiness and charity with 
 you to your daily tasks. Turn every hour into a season 
 of worship, of holy service. Act, speak, think always 
 
TERMS OF TEE LIFE ETERNAL. 129 
 
 just as you should to be ready to stand at the bar of a 
 heart-searching God. Make every moment of these years 
 a fitting introduction to that glorious sequel, " Well done, 
 good and faithful servant." 
 
 Why not ? Are you not bound to do it ? Has not 
 God a right to demand it ? Has He not in fact de- 
 manded it ? Can He be God, the God of his creatures, 
 and require less? What is the use of a conscience 
 if it does not say Amen to the justice of this com- 
 mand? 
 
 Begin this obedience, then. Begin it now. Do you 
 fancy it is an easy thing ? Try it ! Commit your whole 
 soul to it, and see whether you are ever like to reach 
 heaven. Ah ! then you will see what you never saw, per- 
 haps, before. You will find that you have an evil heart 
 of unbelief, of disobedience, of rebellion. You will find 
 that the law is wide and broad. You will find the truth 
 of St. Paul's words, " By the deeds of the law shall no 
 flesh be justified." Every step of your effort will carry 
 you lower down in your own self-esteem. You will see 
 what you have done — what you have failed to do, what 
 disobedience you are guilty of, what fatal infirmity clings 
 to your sin-palsied soul. You will be brought to the 
 verge of despair. You will be cast down into the dust 
 before God. You will see the just terrors of a holy, but 
 a violated law. You will begin to feel what a trans- 
 gressor deserves. 
 
 But there is no Gospel hope for you till you are brought 
 to that point — till that holy law you have broken has 
 struck your hand loose from all your false props, so that 
 no human hope is left you on which to lean. Then pos- 
 sibly you may be ready to cry out — " Lord, save or I 
 perish I" Then you may exclaim, with the tremulous 
 6* 
 
i 3 o LIFE LE8S0N8. 
 
 emotion of a sinner just ready to sink to hell, " God be 
 merciful to me a sinner." 
 
 Ah ! this is the extremity to which every sinner needs 
 to be brought. Then, perhaps, he will plead for mercy. 
 Then, perhaps, angels bending over him with agonizing 
 sympathy, may shout back to heaven the glad intelli- 
 gence — " Behold, he prayeth !" 
 
 Then, too, you will be prepared to appreciate the Gos- 
 pel. You will see the love of God, and his readiness to 
 forgive, manifested in that provision by which He can be 
 just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. 
 And it may be that then the glory of Redemption will 
 burst upon your view. It may be that Christ will ap- 
 pear — no longer as " a root out of dry ground without 
 form or comeliness" but — as " the chief among ten thou- 
 sand, and the one altogether lovely," and you will no 
 longer wonder that Paul should exclaim', overwhelmed 
 by the grandeur and grace of the scheme of Redemption, 
 " God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE FATAL LACK. 
 
 " One thing thou lackest." — Mark x. 21. 
 
 ONE thing thou lackest! One thing! Only one? 
 What is that among many? Perhaps it is one 
 among fifty, all of equal importance, but neither essential, 
 and so may be dropped out of account. 
 
 But sometimes the lack of just one thing, is virtually 
 the lack of all. A ship on the ocean might lose a sail or 
 even a mast, and still keep on its way. But what if it 
 should lose its rudder ? One might chip off great blocks 
 from a large granite arch, and the pile might still stand 
 firm ; but what if it should lose its keystone ? So a man 
 may lack many things. He may have a scant wardrobe. 
 He may lack many a comfort. He may be exposed to 
 hardships, but what if he lacks religious faith ? What 
 if he lacks the warrant to say, God and Heaven are mine ! 
 Is it not like the loss of the rudder ? Is it not like the 
 loss of the keystone ? 
 
 The one thing which meets man's great want, which 
 alone fits him to live and prepares him to die, without 
 which he is orphaned from hope, and with which no 
 calamity can more than temporarily depress him, the one 
 thing which leads him to live with a right purpose, which 
 consecrates all his aims, which gives him a constant 
 refuge, which gilds with light the darkest cloud, which 
 
 UBi) 
 
3 2 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 brings relief to fear and foreboding, which brings with it 
 down to the darkened stormy spirit the light and peace 
 of God, which makes the weary journey of life a pilgrim- 
 age to heaven, and which alone teaches the triumphant 
 song, " death ! where is thy sting ? grave ! where is 
 thy victory ?" — the one thing that does all this, is religi- 
 ous faith, the faith by which being justified, we have peace 
 with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 It is but one thing, but how many ends does it sub- 
 serve ! The light of the sun is but one thing, yet what 
 would the world be without it, but a drear, barren, fro- 
 zen desert ? It thaws the ice. It softens the clod. It 
 kindles life in the sleeping seed. It calls up the grass 
 blade. It opens the bud. It spreads out the leaf. It 
 ripens the harvest, and it cheers all nature and all the 
 scenes of human life with its genial beams. What that 
 is to this visible world, that the light of the glory of God 
 in the face of Jesus is to the redeemed soul. Will you 
 put out that light ; or will you thut yourself from it ? 
 Yet without that faith which a lost and ruined sinner is 
 called to exercise in the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour, 
 he shuts out by the clouds of his guilt those beams of 
 love and grace which alone will thaw his cold and frozen 
 heart, and turn it into the Eclen of peace and holiness. 
 
 So the air you breathe is but one thing. Yet what 
 would life be without it ? You would only gasp and die ! 
 Every thing would sink to the motionless repose of the 
 grave. In one instant the earth would be wrapped in 
 the pall of death. Yet what is the soul without the 
 atmosphere of faith and prayer ? 
 
 M Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, 
 The Christian's native air." 
 
THE FATAL LACK. 133 
 
 Let him lack that alone, and of what avail is all else ? 
 A man rich, and wise, and learned, and honored, and 
 robed, and sceptered if you please, that cannot pray ! — 
 who denies himself the atmosphere of spiritual life, — ■ 
 whose instinctive longings make him gasp for the unseen 
 blessedness, but who gasps only to die ! 
 
 The lack of one thing then may be a fatal lack ! It 
 may be as that of a tree without roots, a desert without 
 water, a house without foundations, a painting without 
 colors, a state without laws, a world without a God ! 
 
 Religious faith, though but one thing, implies much. 
 It implies knowledge of God, the sense of guilt, repent- 
 ance, faith in Christ as the only Saviour, a new heart, 
 pardon, peace, and tbe hope of eternal life. It may be 
 compared to a crown, with all these jewels in it. The 
 lack of one is, for the most part, the lack of all. What 
 is it then to lose the crown itself? 
 
 Without religion, or religious faith, you have no proper 
 sense of your condition and guilt in the sight of God. If 
 you had, you would not continue in it. But what means 
 this lack ? 
 
 A man unused to the cold of the polar regions sinks 
 clown under it, becomes almost or quite insensible. He 
 feels an irresistible inclination to sleep. You know his 
 danger and what do you do ? You try to rouse him. 
 You tell him to sleep is to die. He needs to know and 
 realize his danger, or he is lost. Is it not so with the 
 sinner? He is disinclined to bestir himself, to awake, 
 to repent. He would be let alone, and sink to lethargy. 
 What is the result ? 
 
 So without religion, there is no repentance. And what 
 is a sinner without repentance ? You visit a prisoner in 
 his cell. He is guilty and depraved. You seek to soften 
 
*34 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 his hard heart. You array before him the features of 
 his crime. But you make no impression. You feel that 
 that iron insensibility is a coat of mail wrapped about 
 his sin, and while it remains unpierced, you have no hope 
 of him. 
 
 But are not you a sinner against the Majesty on high ? 
 And has your heart never been melted in shame and sor- 
 row under it ? Have you never thought of that wonder- 
 ful, infinite goodness of your heavenly Father against 
 which you have sinned ? Have you refused to look on 
 that infinite loveliness and gentleness that have been 
 arrayed before you from early years ? Has nothing, not 
 even the love of Jesus, or the pathos of that deathless 
 affection exhibited on the cross, been enough to win your 
 heart ? Must we not say, in vain is all else, genius, art, 
 energy, worldly blessings, while that heart, hard as the 
 granite, is impervious to the love of God ? 
 
 Again, faith in Christ as the only Saviour is a necessity, 
 the one thing needful. A man, we will suppose, has 
 fallen into a deep pit. He cannot climb up its steep 
 sides ; he cannot contrive by any art of his own to escape. 
 But from above a rope ladder is let down to him, evi- 
 dently by some friendly hand. He sees no one, but he 
 hears a voice calling to him, and telling him to lay hold 
 of it, and climb up by it. What shall he do ? What 
 must he do ? Suppose he should call out, will it hold me ? 
 — and gets no answer. Suppose he waits long, and watches 
 to see whether it will be withdrawn. How you stand 
 ready to rebuke his folly, and tell him, linger not ; it is 
 your only hope. 
 
 But sin has plunged every one of us into the pits of 
 guilt and hopeless condemnation, from which there is no 
 escape by any art or device of our own. We have fallen 
 
THE FATAL LACK. 135 
 
 to the depths of guilt, of ingratitude and disobedience, 
 from which we can be delivered only by help from above. 
 How we are constrained to look up and see if any one 
 appears to help us ! And while we watch, behold a lad- 
 der let down to us, a ladder shaped as if from the cross, 
 and a voice is heard bidding us cling to it, and climb by 
 it. Is it rejected ? What a lack there is of this obedi- 
 ent faith! We are left without atonement, without a 
 Saviour, without help or relief, and sink only to despair. 
 
 Again. Pardon is needed. A man becomes a crimi- 
 nal or a traitor, and so is outlawed. He shrinks away in 
 fear of apprehension. What is necessary to calm and 
 disperse his fears but pardon ? And have not all of us 
 incurred the guilt of rebellion against the King of kings ? 
 Is it not written, he that believeth not, is condemned 
 already ? But upon a man without religion, or religious 
 faith, that condemnation still abides. Nothing but the 
 grace of a pardoning God can ever take it away. But 
 to lack pardon, to remain here and drift on to Eternity 
 and the judgment seat unforgiven, to have the load of 
 guilt still resting with crushing weight upon the soul 
 whenever it ventures to think, or is made to feel, what 
 can compensate for all this ? There is the 1 ^ guilty one, 
 under sentence of the court. See him, while the words 
 keep ringing their echoes in his ear, trying to master and 
 control himself ! What will all else avail him ? Well- 
 born, well-bred, gifted with genius and taste, with friends, 
 that yet plead for him in vain, with wealth that yet will 
 not buy his ransom ; what does all this avail without 
 pardon ? 
 
 What is the lack of religious faith then but the lack of 
 what is vital, of what you need most, the sense of your con- 
 dition as a sinner, a penitent spirit ; the faith that can say 
 
136 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Christ is mine ; peace with God your Maker ; the sense 
 of pardoning love, and the hope of immortal blessedness ? 
 These constitute the life of the soul, and how does Scrip- 
 ture describe your condition except as that one dead in 
 trespasses and sins ? 
 
 One thing ! But who can tell its importance ? You 
 stand by the bier of one you loved. You lean down over 
 the coffin lid. What do you see ? The form and features, 
 the same that have long been familiar, all are there. 
 There is the brow calm, but still suggestive of the thoughts 
 that once glowed beneath it. There is the eye, closed 
 indeed, but the same that once beamed with love. There 
 are the lips that once breathed forth the music of speech 
 and the tones of affection. But though you call there is 
 no answer, though you g?.ze there is no answering smile ! 
 What does it mean ? One thing is lacking. Only one — 
 but that is life. 
 
 Here is an emblem of the soul without faith. Is it an 
 emblem of your soul ? Is it true of you that you have 
 not the life of God in you ? Can you be content with 
 such a lack ; you who labor to supply the ten thousand 
 wants of your perishing body ; you that spare no pains 
 to secure a single comfort ; you to whom the Lord of Life 
 comes with the offer to supply your greatest need ? 
 
 Are you amid these solemn privileged scenes an atten- 
 dant as it were, at your soul's funera! ? Oh that you 
 might heed now His words, the words of Him who once 
 by the bier of the dead, said, Arise ! 
 
XVII. 
 
 LIFE FROM THE DEAD. 
 
 " The power of God to salvation." — Rom. i. 16. 
 
 NOT long since I heard a man describe the manner in 
 which he arrested a thief who attempted by night 
 to rob his money drawer. The criminal was a young man 
 whom he had befriended, and whose character, till that 
 time, had been regarded as reputable. When detected, 
 he begged piteously that he might not be exposed. But 
 he was given over to the police and lodged in prison. The 
 man whom he had attempted to rob went the next morn- 
 ing to see him, and he found him a picture of despair. 
 His pale lips, his tortured features, his agonizing look, 
 told of the terrible anguish that he was enduring. 
 
 Surely it was a fearful sight. The man who had been 
 ready to shoot him down on the spot when he arrested 
 him, was melted to pity. Every revengeful feeling was 
 gone. But he knew not what to do. He wished to be 
 merciful, and yet he felt that he must not defraud justice. 
 He wanted, if possible, to save the young criminal, and 
 restore him to the paths of integrity and usefulness. He 
 could refuse to appear against him, but the question 
 was — would this answer ? It might save him from being 
 sentenced to prolonged imprisonment, and from attendant 
 disgrace, but would it make him that he should be — 
 would it save him ? 
 
 (137) 
 
138 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 There were two things that he needed — to be saved 
 from condemnation, and to be saved from himself, and a 
 complete salvation would include both. If, released from 
 prison, he should carry back with him into society all 
 the vices of the past, it would only be to plunge into 
 deeper ruin. The loss of character and self-respect and 
 self-control ; the habits of evil, strengthened by indul- 
 gence and familiarity with sin — all would combine to 
 precipitate his fate. 
 
 Thus we see that if a man has done evil, two things are 
 necessary to his recovery — deliverance from the con- 
 demnation which that wickedness brings with it, and 
 deliverance from the wickedness itself. Both are neces- 
 sary to a complete salvation, and that complete salvation 
 is what every sinner needs. 
 
 In the first place, sin is the violation of law, and that 
 violation calls for sentence and penalty. This is the 
 universal rule. In God's domain, penalty, is just as sure 
 as sin. It may be speedy, or it may be slow, but it is 
 sure to come. Just as sure as the seed ripens to the 
 harvest, just as sure as the stone falls to the earth when 
 you let go your hold of it, just so sure is the penalty of 
 violated law. All nature and all history are alike 
 crowded with the evidence and the warnings of this 
 truth. If frost will wither leaf and flower, if dissipation 
 will ruin health, if lack of principle will incur contempt 
 and loss of character, every violation of God's statutes is 
 sure to be visited with judgment. Human courts may 
 not take the matter up. Public opinion may overlook it. 
 The guilty deed may be buried in darkness — it may have 
 been done by stealth, without a human witness ; but it 
 cannot finally escape. The soul will witness against 
 itself. Memory will keep the guilty record. The hour 
 
 
 
LIFE FROM THE DEAD. i 39 
 
 of reflection will come at last, and if a too early death 
 adjourns it over to the unseen world it will be only — so 
 all earthly analogies teach us — to make the final reckon- 
 ing more terrible. 
 
 Besides, no sin, no evil thought or desire can escape 
 the notice or fail to meet the disapprobation of God. It 
 cannot escape his notice, for to his eye every thought and 
 feeling is as palpable as the hills and rocks are to us. 
 It cannot escape his disapprobation, for everything — 
 every moral act — is to him either good or evil, either to 
 be approved or disapproved. It is, therefore, forever 
 under his judgment. And that judgment, covering every 
 deed of life, is an eternal judgment. It is the judgment 
 of an eternal God — the same yesterday, to-day and for- 
 ever. So that he that believeth not is condemned 
 already. Sin implies condemnation. 
 
 And what is the condemnation that God pronounces 
 on sin ? It is the condemnation of the law against every 
 violation of it. It is the sentence due to a disregard of 
 the end for which man was made ; due to treason against 
 God's authority ; due to the abuse of his goodness ; due 
 to the contempt of his mercy ; due to the debasement and 
 degradation, and ruin of a soul entrusted as an infinite 
 treasure to our keeping. And let the sinner himself say 
 what that ought to be ! Say what is due to your own 
 guilt for defeating the end of your being, for turning as 
 it were, to a crawling worm, what should have soared 
 beyond the eagle's flight on the wings of faith and love ; 
 for having transformed God's temple into an idol's shrine ; 
 for having stifled in the dust of sensuality and worldli- 
 ness, aspirations that should have stopped at nothing 
 short of a heavenly birthright as a child of God ? What 
 do you deserve for having dethroned God in your affec- 
 
4 o 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 tions, for having trodden under foot the blood of redemp- 
 tion, for having grieved the Spirit that would convince 
 you of sin and lead you to the mercy-seat as a suppliant ? 
 What do you deserve for restraining prayer and with- 
 holding praise, for giving to the creature what is due 
 only to the Creator ; for spurning the duties and the priv- 
 ileges of an heir of heaven ; for disqualifying your soul 
 utterly for the service and worship of the sanctuary above ! 
 
 If some one had undermined and blown up with gun- 
 powder some great structure like St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 or the Tower of London, what would have been said of 
 him ? But the ruin of a soul is more than the ruin of a 
 tower or cathedral, for it is designed as God's spiritual 
 temple. What could sting and torture you more than to 
 have some worthless favorite steal away the affections of 
 husband, or wife, or child ? What robbery could com- 
 pare with it ? Yet what is the condemnation due to rob- 
 bing God of your love, turning his glorious name by your 
 sin into a word of terror, offering him scarce the mockery 
 of a passing recognition, and living without any reference 
 to his will ? 
 
 Condemnation for all this is ensured by God's own jus- 
 tice. The law does not go beyond what a properly en- 
 lightened conscience approves. And yet its sentence — 
 the sentence that overhangs all sin — that is suspended 
 over the head of every transgressor — is fearful indeed. 
 He is to be shut out from the glory he scorned. He is 
 to be denied the mercy he refused to seek. He is to hear 
 the words, " depart ye cursed." His lot is to be with the 
 enemies of God forever. He is given over to everlasting 
 self-accusation, to bitter remorse, to the anguish of des- 
 pair. The wrath of God abideth on him. There is no 
 place for him in all the realms of light and glory, in all 
 
LIFE FROM THE DEAD. 141 
 
 the mansions that Christ has gone before to prepare. 
 There is not a pure heart in heaven, not a sinless or ran- 
 somed spirit before the throne, with which he can sympa- 
 thize. His portion is with those that forget God, that 
 are cast into outer darkness, that are left to reap the 
 eternal harvest of their own sin, to eat of the fruit of their 
 own way. All is summed up in this, the soul that sin- 
 neth it shall die ! It is dead thenceforth to all that con- 
 stitutes the proper life of the soul, dead to the joys of 
 holiness, to the attractions of Christ, to the life of the 
 redeemed. 
 
 Who can contemplate this unmoved, and yet who can 
 call it in question ? Who is not forced to confess, " all 
 this by shutting God out of my soul, and taking the 
 world in, do I deserve — all this is my rightful portion ?" 
 
 But where is deliverance? The law cannot be re- 
 pealed or set aside. It is as eternal as God himself. 
 His existence as a Holy being makes the law of holiness 
 the law of the universe. That law is imprinted on every 
 man's conscience, like letters so inwoven into a flag that 
 the flag must perish before the letters will fade. The 
 conscience must be annihilated before it can fully and 
 finally give up its trust. You must lose your conscious- 
 ness as a moral agent before you can cease to feel the 
 obligations which bind you as a creature of God to his 
 service. And as sure as the law exists, so sure is its 
 penalty, unless deliverance can be found, which, without 
 putting aside the law, provides pardon for the guilty. 
 
 Is there such deliverance ? Does it not become every 
 one to ask ? Is not this the one great want of guilty man ? 
 There is the tribunal before you, only a little way off. 
 You are moving toward it every day. Each passing 
 moment, each returning Sabbath, brings you nearer. 
 
142 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 There is the judge, before whose presence the heavens 
 and the earth shall flee away. The hour is at hand when 
 your doom must be determined. Can you doubt what it 
 must be, if you can offer there no plea for mercy ? Is it 
 not time to ask whether you can find such a plea ; whether 
 pardon may be secured, whether deliverance is possible ? 
 What sort of conduct is that which says, " I know that 
 God is holy and that I am a sinner against him, and that 
 I must be arraigned at His bar, and that no man can say 
 how soon the summons may come, but I am resolved to 
 give no heed to it, to dream on to the last, to rush blindly 
 upon that awful future, and take all the consequences ?" 
 Is this language, though practically the language of thou- 
 sands, that of wisdom or folly, that of prudence or despe- 
 ration? Is it possible that you can be guilty of it? 
 Should not rather everything else yield to the question 
 of your salvation ? Should not all the powers of reason 
 and reflection be concentrated here? Have you any 
 right to rest content till you know that there is no such 
 thing as salvation from condemnation ? 
 
 Either there is, or there is not. If there is not, then 
 all the messages that suggest it are false, and all the 
 hopes that aspire to it are vain, and all the thousands 
 who have cheered themselves in the joyous confidence 
 that God had forgiven their sins, have been mistaken* 
 We may sit down in the dust and wrap around us the 
 mantle of despair, or we may madly make the most of the 
 few transient joys that flash like fire-flies through the 
 twilight of our woe, and say to ourselves, " let us eat and 
 drink for tomorrow we die!" We may stupify con- 
 science and brutify reason, and settle down to an irresist- 
 ible fate, but surely, even there, our very despair would 
 bear about it some shreds of sense and propriety, and 
 
LIFE FROM THE DEAD. 143 
 
 we might have the consolation of feeling that we endure 
 and await nothing which it was possible to avert. 
 
 But if deliverance from condemnation is possible, where 
 is one who claims to exercise the reason and the thought- 
 fulness of a man who can afford to regard it with indif- 
 ference ? Who should not inquire into it, and learn how 
 he may himself be saved ? 
 
 But the very end and scope of the Gospel is to declare 
 that deliverance found, and to reveal its method. A Sa- 
 viour has come to our world, and we are taught that 
 whosoever believeth in him is not condemned. The con- 
 victed jailor, like the thousands on the day of Pentecost, 
 cries out, inquiring what he must do to be saved, and the 
 reply is ever, " believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." Hear 
 the Apostle himself, once a persecutor, exclaiming, " There 
 is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, 
 that walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." And 
 as the centuries pass, thousands take up the strain, and 
 other thousands catch it from their dying lips, and roll 
 it on till to-day from distant lands, from souls once bound 
 down in heathen despair, comes up the fresh and living 
 testimony, the testimony of what they know, and what 
 they have felt themselves, that it is gloriously true. 
 " There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ 
 Jesus." 
 
 Have you no desire for this deliverance ? The Gospel 
 comes to tell you of it. Jesus is speaking of it to you 
 through human lips. Do you listen indifferent ? 
 
XVIII. 
 
 "THE WONDERFUL." 
 
 " His name shall be called Wonderful." — Is. ix. 
 
 horn 
 iral- 
 
 A WONDERFUL Being must He be, one for whom 
 no history of man can find a precedent or a paral 
 lei, who presumes to interpose in behalf of a lost race, 
 and who in doing it, proclaims Himself " mighty to save." 
 He must be one who is warranted to interpose — one who 
 while he pities the lost, is fitted to appear in their be- 
 half before the majesty on high — one so lowly that he can 
 take us by the hand — one so exalted that He can bear us 
 with Him to heaven. 
 
 And as such is Christ revealed to us. Scripture 
 showers upon Him titles which it would be impious to 
 address to a creature. He is " the Wonderful, the Coun- 
 sellor, the mighty God, the Father of Eternity (everlast- 
 ing Father), the Prince of Peace." He is " the Alpha 
 and Omega, the first and the last," " the King of kings 
 and the Lord of lords." In Him dwells " all the fullness 
 of the Godhead bodily." He is " head over all things to 
 the Church," " the word that in the beginning was with 
 God, the word that was God." He is the Son of man, 
 yet the " Lord of the Sabbath." He is " God manifest 
 in the flesh," and has " power on earth to forgive sins." 
 He heals the diseased, gives sight to the blind, raises the 
 dead, quiets the storm, feeds the multitude, lays down 
 
 (144) 
 
".THE WONDERFUL? 145 
 
 His life and takes it again. He needs no one to tell 
 Him of the human heart, for " He knows what is in man." 
 He is " the Messiah that was to come," who could tell 
 His hearers " all things," who could say, " before Abra- 
 ham was, I am," thus claiming the JehovaJi-power of the 
 great I Am. He is the one whom " all men are to honor 
 even as they honor the Father," the one " to whom every 
 knee is to bow and every tongue confess." It is He who 
 alone has ever ventured or felt warranted to say, " Ye 
 believe in God believe also in me." We may not speak 
 of any one's falling asleep in Moses, or Paul, or David, 
 but we do speak of their " falling asleep in Jesus." He 
 is " the resurrection and the life." He is that Shepherd 
 who gives his flock that follow Him " eternal life," and 
 He has such power that no one can pluck them out of 
 His hand. 
 
 Such are only a few of the passages in which the great- 
 ness of Him who " thought it not robbery to be equal 
 with God," though He took upon Him the form of a ser- 
 vant, is described to us. In these I can see nothing by 
 which to institute a human comparison. We are dealing 
 with the infinite and the divine, and no mortal measure 
 can span its compass. To make Jesus merely a greater 
 Enoch, or Isaiah, or Peter, is to do violence not merely 
 to the history of His sinless and heavenly life, but to 
 every description of Him in the Bible which does not 
 speak specifically of His human nature, His growing in 
 wisdom and stature. 
 
 We may, then, assume His divinity while we proceed 
 to consider the appropriateness of His name as " Won- 
 derful." And surely each attribute, each office, each 
 quality is the more wonderful when you throw around it 
 the vesture of the infinite, when you clothe it with the 
 7 
 
i 4 6 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 divine. It is more wonderful when you multiply it by the 
 measurelessness of deity, by the limitless and the eternal. 
 
 Christ is the Wonderful then for the offices, and the 
 variety of them which He assumes and discharges. 
 
 He is the second Adam, for as the first was the father 
 of the dying and introduced death into the world, so He 
 is the Father of the living, for He is the resurrection 
 and the life, and " whosoever believeth on Him shall 
 never die." He stands, therefore, as a new Adam at the 
 head of a regenerated race. 
 
 He is " the Amen, the faithful and true witness." All 
 that He has testified of God, of heaven, of hell, of sin 
 and judgment, shall be verified. Heaven and earth may 
 pass away, but not one jot or tittle of all He has ever 
 uttered. 
 
 He is the sinner's Advocate ; for " if any man sin, we 
 have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ, the 
 righteous." 
 
 He is the Angel of the Covenant ; for through Him a 
 covenant of mercy is made and confirmed between God 
 and man. He is " the arm of the Lord to be revealed " 
 to all nations, the exhibition of His power and grace 
 combined. He is " the Author, and at the same time, He 
 is the Finisher of our Faith. He originates and He per- 
 fects it. He leads us to the strait gate, and He brings 
 us to the gates of glory. He says, at first, " Come unto 
 me ye that labor and are heavy laden," and at last, " Come 
 ye blessed of my Father." 
 
 He is the Branch, that is to grow up out of His place, 
 that is to build the temple of the Lord, and that is to give 
 salvation to Judah and safety to Israel, and is to be 
 known as " the Lord our Righteousness." So He was 
 foretold and so was it fulfilled. 
 
 i 
 
" THE W02WERFUL" 1 47 
 
 He is the Bread of Life. It is the truth that is sym- 
 bolized to us by His broken body and flowing blood, that 
 is our nourishment. Our souls would die if they could 
 not look to a crucified Saviour and be fed. 
 
 He is the Captain of our Salvation. He leads the 
 way as we march through temptations and trials to the 
 noblest conquest. He marshalls all the means that are 
 necessary to secure our salvation, and then as our Cap- 
 tain makes the traces of His own footsteps our path to 
 triumph. 
 
 He is the Chief Shepherd ; for while his servants watch 
 for souls as those that must give account ; while they are 
 diligent to lead their flock, He is diligent to lead them. 
 He watches over all. 
 
 He is the Consolation of Israel. He consoles His 
 Church in all her trials and disasters. He makes light 
 arise upon her darkness. He gives the oil of joy for 
 mourning and the garments of praise for the spirit of 
 heaviness. 
 
 He is the Chief Corner-stone, the foundation on which 
 prophets and apostles, evangelists and martyrs, and the 
 whole structure of the Church from first to last reposes. 
 
 He is the Counsellor. "In Him are hidden all the 
 treasures both of wisdom and knowledge." He can give 
 that counsel which can meet all the wants and emergen- 
 cies of life, the counsel that is always suited to all our 
 wants. 
 
 He is that David, beloved one, of whom David was 
 the type, that should save the flock of God and be their 
 Shepherd. He is the Boot and Offspring of David, his 
 descendant and his original — to whom David could say 
 at once, my son and my king. He is the Day spring from 
 on high that hath visited us, that chases away our night 
 
i 4 S LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 of ignorance and despair, and brings ns the dawn of 
 heaven. He is the Sun of BigJiteousness that rises on us 
 with healing in Sis beams. He brings ns the noonday 
 of hope and life, He makes this desert, this wilderness, 
 this rale of tears, radiant with the light of heaven. And 
 yet He is the Star that should come out of Jacob, and 
 the Sceptre that should arise out of Israel. He is the 
 bright and the morning star, the Star of Bethlehem, for 
 He leads our way in the darkest night to the hope of sal- 
 vation. He is the light of the w'orld, without which the 
 gloom of ignorance and guilt, and foreboding, and con- 
 demnation, and error, and delusion, would have covered 
 the nations. He is the true light that lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world, the true fountain of enlight- 
 ened reason, and piety, and devotion, without whom we 
 should ever, living and dying, only stumble on the dark 
 mountains ; the true light in which there is no admixture 
 of falsehood or error. He is the brightness of the Father's 
 glory, the revealed image of Him who dwells in light 
 which no man can approach unto, the truth and holiness 
 and love of God transcribed in living expressions upon 
 the tablet of that human nature which Christ assumed, 
 for " he that was in the bosom of the Father, he alone 
 hath declared Him." He is the desire of all nations, the 
 one whom all nations need and long for, for " the whole 
 creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until 
 now," and " the earnest expectation of the creature wait- 
 eth for the manifestation of the sons of God." He is 
 God's elect one, chosen for this, that " He shall not fail 
 or be discouraged, till He have set judgment in the 
 earth, and the isles shall wait for His law." He is a 
 witness to the people, the faithful and true Witness who 
 testifies to a sinful, guilty, and dying world the things of 
 
« THE WONDERFUL? 149 
 
 God. He is our forerunner, who has gone before us, en- 
 tering into that which is within the veil, the object of 
 our hope, and requiring us to meet no foe, but what He 
 has already met and vanquished. He is our leader, who 
 marks with His blood-stained footsteps the path of our 
 cross and self-denial. He is our example, the pattern for 
 our lives, the perfect standard, the one who could say, " I 
 have given you an example that ye should do, as I have 
 done unto you." He is our Lord, the Lord of all, the 
 Lord of glory, the Lord God of the holy prophets, the 
 Lord God Almighty, and yet our servant, for He " came 
 not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give 
 His life a ransom for many." He is " the chief among ten 
 thousand, the one altogether lovely ;" He is " the Rose of 
 Sharon and the lily of the valley," for in Him greatness 
 and humility, majesty and loveliness are combined. He 
 is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and yet the Lamb, the 
 Lamb of God ; for while His power is resistless and ter- 
 rible, and He can prevail where no others can, yet " as a 
 lamb was he led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before 
 his shearers is dumb, so opened he not his mouth." And 
 with all His meek innocence, He is our Passover, our 
 Paschal Lamb, whose blood of sprinkling, like that of the 
 Passover of old on the door posts of the dwelling, stays for 
 us the hand of the avenging and destroying angel of jus- 
 tice. He is the way, the truth and the life. By Him 
 we come to God, by Him we have the promise, and 
 through Him we live. He is that eternal life, the foun- 
 tain of living waters, " of which if a man drink he shall 
 never thirst, but live forever." He is our Shiloh, our 
 peace, the Prince of Peace, who could say, " Peace I 
 leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the 
 world giveth give I unto you •" for it is through Him 
 
150 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 that the offending rebel is reconciled to his offended Sov- 
 ereign ; through Him that he attains to " that peace that 
 passeth all understanding." He is our high priest and 
 Intercessor, for He " enters for us into the holiest place," 
 and presents the sacrifice in the name of His whole peo- 
 ple. He is Himself the voluntary sacrifice for our guilt, 
 He is our ransom, He is our Deliverer, He is our Jesus, 
 Saviour, He is our Bedeemer, " the propitiation for our 
 sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole 
 world." He is the Good Shepherd " that lays down his 
 life for the sheep." He finds us captives, He breaks our 
 chains, He pays our forfeit, " not by corruptible things as 
 silver and gold, but by His own precious blood." He 
 pledges His life to secure our ransom. Thus He becomes 
 the horn of our salvation, the strength and security of it. 
 He becomes our Mediator, standing between us and God, to 
 open the way for our petition, and hand us down our 
 pardon from the throne, screening from our eyes through 
 the veil of His own flesh, that terrible majesty which no 
 man can see and live. Thus, too, He becomes tJie door 
 through which alone we can enter the home of heaven, 
 the dwelling of our Father from which by sin we are self- 
 exiled, and within which alone we find peace, and pardon, 
 and blessedness. Thus, too, He becomes the Resurrection 
 and the Life, the Prince of Life, and bestows upon His 
 followers immortality, and makes " death to be swallowed 
 up of life." He is the Bock, the Bock of Ages. Who- 
 soever builds his hopes on Him is safe. 
 
 He is, moreover, our prophet, for he speaks to us the 
 word of G-od, he draws the veil of eternity and lets us 
 look beyond the grave, at the judgment and the scenes 
 behind that are to follow it. He is our King — " the 
 King of Israel," "the King of saints," " the King of kings," 
 
" THE WONDERFUL:' 1 5 1 
 
 to whom we owe perfect and entire allegiance. He is 
 our Laivgiver — his life and example and instructions and 
 commands are our highest law, and to present them 
 secures the acknowledgement of their justice. He is our 
 Judge ; his words judge us now, and in the Last Day the 
 world shall be arraigned at his bar. 
 
 Thus do we see how appropriate, from the varied titles 
 and offices of Christ, is the language of the text, in which 
 he is described. He is truly " the Wonderful" in whom 
 all these things meet. 
 
 But he is " the Wonderful," in the second place, because 
 of the life which he led of self-denial and benevolence. 
 Look at that life, incomparable and unparalleled in all 
 the records of time. See how every thought, word and 
 deed was made to point to the specific end of his mission, 
 the glory of G-od and the salvation of the race. The 
 Lord of Angels takes the form of a servant ; the Maker 
 of the world had not where to lay his head. He whose 
 word stills the troubled elements of nature, and hushes 
 the tempest to repose, sleeps fatigued in the vessel, or sits 
 down weary to rest himself at Jacob's well. If he could say 
 " before Abraham was, I am," almost in the same breath 
 he speaks of tearing down the temple of his body. The 
 King of kings becomes the man of sorrows. The pro- 
 prietor of the universe accepts the hospitality of the hum- 
 ble family of Bethany. He who controls the seasons, 
 and could perfect or blast the harvests, hungers and 
 thirsts. He whose eye could take in the universe at a 
 glance, comes down to the falling sparrow and the fading 
 lily for his lessons. The poor Syrophenician woman ; the 
 centurion ; blind Bartimeas ; the little children, whose 
 bearers, as they presented them for a blessing, were re- 
 buked by his disciples ; the poor widow of Nain — and 
 
i 5 2 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 that other who cast but two mites into the treasury while 
 the rich cast in of their abundance ; and that other still 
 who prevailed on the hard and unrelenting judge ; the 
 beggar at the rich man's gate ; the penitent prodigal ; the 
 poor humbled publican ; the weeping sisters at the tomb 
 of their brother Lazarus — none of these are beneath the 
 notice of that Eye that sees through the darkness of the 
 grave, his own resurrection, and the bringing home of 
 innumerable sons and daughters unto glory. Thus the 
 whole life of Jesus is a continuous miracle, a wonder of 
 self-denying benevolence. There is no turning aside, no 
 digression through human weakness, but he presses on 
 straight forward to the accomplishment of his life-work. 
 Every step in his career was wonderful. The powers of 
 earth and hell, the Scribes and Pharisees combined with 
 the hosts of darkness — Pilate and Satan in league — do 
 not force him to swerve from his career. Persecution 
 fronts him as he goes. Treachery delivers him to the 
 enemy. Death with all its lingering tortures of cruci- 
 fixion stares him in the face, but still he presses on, and 
 the last words of prayer for his murderers sealed the per- 
 fect and beautiful consistency of a life devoted to God's 
 glory and the good of man. 
 
 But Christ is " the Wonderful" from the lessons which 
 he taught. He is the great Teacher, and all the records 
 of the world present us none who can boast of what his 
 forerunner John declared himself unworthy to do. No 
 one that has ever lived could say, " I am worthy to un- 
 loose his sandals." " He spake as never man spake" — 
 was the testimony of his prejudiced hearers. Human 
 lips never uttered before or since a sermon to be com- 
 pared with that upon the Mount. His parables are 
 cyclopedias of truth, every sentence a volume. He spake 
 
« the wonderful: 1 
 
 53 
 
 as one having authority, and not as the Scribes. Throngs 
 followed him by thousands, and yet he shunned observa- 
 tion and rebuked praise. ~Eo shady grove or porticoed 
 temple, like that of Athenian philosophers, was selected 
 as the special site of instruction ; the seashore, bordered 
 by the harvest field, the mountain side, the desert, the 
 streets of the city, were hallowed by words too powerful 
 and sacred to need halls or temples of human fabric to 
 lend them a sanction. He spoke beneath the dome of 
 heaven, and no encircling walls were to confine a speech 
 that was to go abroad through all the earth, and its 
 sound to the end of the world. And the place where he 
 spoke was typical of the truth he uttered. It was open 
 to all. It was free to all. It acknowledged no peculiar 
 respect for birth, race or clime. The great Teacher, 
 first of all, glanced over the partition walls of nations 
 and religions, and taught what he alone had compre- 
 hended — the religious unity of the race. 
 
 And then look into this truth which his prescient mind 
 directed in purpose to Jew and Samaritan, to the age 
 that then was, and the ages that were to come. It is the 
 truth of heaven. It is solid instruction. It is fact, not 
 theory. The earnest glance of this Teacher pierced 
 through all speculation, all sophistry, and swept them 
 aside, that he might gather the wheat into the garner. 
 From what lips but his did such words, such truths, such les- 
 sons, ever proceed — -just what we want to know, just what 
 we should know, truths that take hold on eternal things, 
 that open the volume of our immortal destiny, that reveal 
 God to us as King, Father, Judge, and Proprietor of all — ■ 
 that open bright prospects of pardon and hope and bless- 
 edness for the penitent, and gloomy abysses of despair 
 unutterable for the guilty — truths that dawn upon our 
 7* 
 
154 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 night like a heavenly morning, that kindle the whole 
 soul in all its faculties to a new life — truths that seem by 
 an electric power to reach at once distant continents and 
 far-off ages, that have nations for an audience and centu- 
 ries to echo their tones that ring on like the pealing thun- 
 der along the hills, till they lose themselves in eternity — 
 truths that do not sleep in the soul that receives them 
 like dry logic, or fruitless science, but are a seed, a leaven, 
 a life within ; that renovate the whole nature ; that like 
 Christ, their Author, cast out demons, and restore a man 
 to himself, to his home, and his God. Where is the 
 teacher whose words work such a transformation, make 
 fishermen apostles, change the persecutor into the herald 
 of the cross, burn into the hearts of thousands with such 
 intensity that the martyr's flames are unheeded ; that in 
 some obscure dwelling sink deep in the soul of its humble 
 occupant long centuries after they were uttered, and 
 make men of feeble, unlettered simplicity like the im- 
 prisoned Madiai, calmly defiant of tyrannic power, might- 
 ier in the strength of their discipleship to Jesus, than all 
 the terrors of sovereign and intolerant authority ? 
 
 Wonderful Teacher! No man ever spake like this 
 man. The person, the utterance, the manner, the circum- 
 stances, are all passed away. The eloquence of the occa- 
 sion has fled. We may indeed conceive the charm of 
 that personal presence— his finger points to the lily while 
 he declares that Solomon was never arrayed like it. 
 The sower was on the hillside before Him when he made 
 his seed to typify the word of God. He sat by Jacob's 
 well when he spoke of the living water. All this has 
 passed away, but the eloquence of truth remains. Through 
 the middle ages Aristotle had his commentators and in- 
 terpreters in the schools and universities of Europe. His 
 
" THE WONDERFUL." i 55 
 
 name now has lost its power ; but millions are listening 
 to-day to hundreds and thousands that speak in the Sa- 
 viour's name, and reiterate his lessons. And the time 
 will come, it is coming now, when on continents and 
 islands, on every shore and in every clime, Christ's truth 
 shall spread, and he become the Teacher of a renovated 
 world ; a ransomed race shall be his disciples. 
 
 But He is " the Wonderful," for the ends that He 
 seeks to accomplish. What these are, as they reach be- 
 yond time and interweave themselves with the interests 
 of God's universal government, it is not for us to declare. 
 But we may speak of what is now revealed, the mystery 
 of godliness, " God manifest in flesh." The Gospel is a 
 wonder, its author is the Wonderful. He sought no 
 selfish aim. The world has seen ambition and grasping 
 avarice and self-seeking intellect elsewhere ; for a won- 
 der, it saw in Him of these no trace. His object was 
 one that lofty minds mav have dreamed of, but it towered 
 above all they could hope to realize, like the Alps above 
 molehills. He fixed His purpose on the renovation of 
 the human heart and race, the re-building of its ruins, its 
 redemption from sin's thraldom, its translation to an 
 angel's sphere. And if the steps that He took to this 
 end were arduous, they were firm and wise ; they were 
 fact, not fancy ; they were cut in the granite, and a race 
 might mount by them. Let a man look at that end 
 which the Saviour had in view, for which He laid aside 
 His glory, for which He took our nature, for which He 
 taught, suffered and died, for which He chose His dis- 
 ciples and sent them abroad with His great commission, 
 and he will call that mind "wonderful" which originated 
 the vast and glorious plan ; how much more when it 
 solved the problem of devising means for its accomplish- 
 
156 LIFE LESSONS-. 
 
 ment, when it called into being the mechanism and mo- 
 tives, and opened the way by which it might be secured 
 — when life is sacrificed and death with ignominy and 
 torture are welcomed to secure its accomplishment. An- 
 gels may wonder, but we will adore. 
 "We can join with the poet : 
 
 "And who is great? 
 Alas ! the teeming earth has seen but one. 
 The lowly Bethlehem shadowed his infant brow, the 
 
 manger there 
 Pillowed his infant head. Yet who like him 
 Has come from palaces and walked the land 
 "With such a crown upon his golden hair ? 
 Is greatness from the glory of our sires 
 Or the emblazoned page of heraldry ? 
 His Father was the God of all the earth — 
 His generation from eternity. 
 Is it from life, or life's great deeds, that stir 
 The heart to admiration, prayers, and tears ? 
 His was a life devoted to the world — 
 A life that battled with eternal death. 
 Is it from glory ? His was that of good — 
 Not marshalled by the clarion and the trump, 
 But by the silent gratitude of earth. 
 Is it from eloquence ? His wondrous lips 
 Stirred the great elements, and mount and sea 
 Trembled before his words, and wind and storm 
 Sank at that magic utterance — Be still. 
 He spake, and thrones before his startling voice 
 And kings that filled them in their robes and crowns, 
 Shook like an aspen in the coming storm. 
 Is it from power ? His sceptre was o'er all, 
 And the wide world bowed to his lifted hand. 
 Is it from lofty love — that love for man 
 That dares the tempest of a maddened earth, 
 The malediction of the human heart 
 
" THE WONDERFUL:' 1 5 7 
 
 For which it bows it to the sepulchre ? 
 
 His was the great philanthropy of God, 
 
 Alone He trod the winepress, and alone 
 
 In red Gethsemane he bowed and bled 
 
 Great drops of agony, and cleansed the world." 
 
 It is easy now to discern why the Saviour is called 
 "the Wonderful/ 7 or rather why He is "the Wonderful.' 7 
 
 It was for a wonderful end — the salvation of undone 
 and ruined men. When we look at this we find every- 
 thing full of wonders. The soul of man is a wonderful 
 thing. It has wonderful capacities, a wonderful lot on 
 earth, a wonderful destiny hereafter. Its estrangement 
 from God is wonderful, its degradation and sin are won- 
 derful, but its restoration is a still greater wonder — it is 
 a miracle of grace. It needed a wonderful mind to con- 
 trive it, a wonderful power to execute it, and the history 
 of the results that follow it, is a history of wonders. 
 The redeemed soul exclaims with Wesley : 
 
 " See a bush that burns with fire, 
 Unconsumed. amid the flame, 
 Turn aside the sight admire, 
 I that living wonder am." 
 
 It was to rescue us, to work in us a wonderful trans- 
 formation, that this wonderful Jesus-Saviour appeared. 
 It was to ransom the captive, to give sight to the blind, 
 to make the dead in trespasses and sins live, to make 
 this worm of the earth, covered with the slime of sin, a 
 white-robed angel — to bring the lost wanderer back to 
 his Father's house. We needed one, wonderful to save — ■ 
 combining almost conflicting elements in harmony — our 
 King and our Brother, our friend and our judge — human 
 
15 8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 and yet divine — sinless, yet compassionate to the guilty- 
 authorised to forgive, yet purchasing our pardon with 
 his blood. We needed One to whom kings should bow, 
 and who yet would hear and receive the beggar — One 
 infinite in perfection, yet a perfection transcribed upon a 
 human life that we might imitate — One who could suffer 
 like us and be tried like us, but whose flowing blood 
 could cleanse a world. Such a One — "the Wonderful" — 
 has been provided. To the strange depth of our guilt 
 and woe, a strange arm has reached a strange deliver- 
 ance. 
 
 Consider again what our feelings should be to this 
 wonderful Saviour. They should be those of wonderful 
 love. It is for us that His life was wonderful, His teach- 
 ings wonderful, His death wonderful. For us he com- 
 bined all those strange titles and offices in himself. For 
 us he led that strange career of self-denying benevolence, 
 humility and reproach. For us he spake as never man 
 spake. For us He laid down his life amid the torture 
 and shame of the cross. What ought our feelings to be 
 toward Him — our Friend, Redeemer, Brother, Saviour ? 
 What gratitude, devotion, attachment should we exhibit ! 
 And what sort of a remembrance should that be of Him, 
 which we cherish, when assembled at His table, and 
 handling the emblems of His broken body ! 
 
 "He that loveth me will keep my commandments," said 
 Christ. " He will, he does," should be the echo of every 
 Christian heart — the history of every Christian life. 
 Wonderful Jesus, we will obey Thee. 
 
 " Remember thee — thy death, thy shame 
 Our sinful hearts to share — 
 memory leave do other name 
 But His recorded there." 
 
"THE wonderful:' 159 
 
 Reflect, also, how wonderful and entire should be our 
 faith and trust in this wonderful Saviour. He is worthy 
 of it in all its fulness. Think of what all these titles 
 mean, and what they make Him, as an object of confi- 
 dence. He is " able to save to the uttermost." He can 
 fulfil all our hope. Think of his truth and fidelity. Pie 
 will not falsify that wonderful promise worthy of its 
 wonderful author — " Whosoever cometh unto me I will 
 in no wise cast out." Think of the wisdom of His teach- 
 ings — the sagacity of Omniscience — that can lead the 
 lost wanderer home. Where is there such a guide ? 
 Think of His power — no one can pluck us out of His 
 hand. Think of that love that pillowed on its bosom the 
 beloved disciple, that wept with the weepers at Lazarus' 
 grave, that met the abandoned outcasts with a mingled 
 truth and kindness that broke their hearts. Will you 
 not lean in humble and implicit trust on the Saviour's 
 arm ? Will you not commit your soul into the Saviour's 
 hands ? Will you not forego every vain reliance on your- 
 self, and rest your hope in the Saviour's blood ? 
 
 Consider, too, how wonderful must be the condemnation 
 of those who refuse such a wonderful Saviour ! Now you 
 have presented to your view a great and wonderful Re- 
 deemer. He is able to save to the uttermost all that 
 come to God by Him. Spurn His offer, let it alone till 
 death withdraws it forever, and what becomes of you? 
 The condemnation of the cities of the plain was wonder- 
 ful, but they will rise up in judgment to condemn you. 
 
 And, finally, ask what that world must be where He 
 that is " the Wonderful," shall be fully revealed to our 
 perfect vision. That will be glorious and wonderful 
 indeed. There we shall " behold Him, whom not having 
 seen we love, and in whom believing, we rejoice with joy 
 
i6o LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 unspeakable and full of glory. The wonders of His 
 being will be there unfolded, and to our adoring gaze 
 they will appear more wondrous still. We shall appre- 
 ciate the meaning of that name as we cannot now. 
 
 A wonderful scene indeed transpires when, unseen by 
 the outward eye, the King of kings comes down to feed 
 the famished soul with the bread of life. Pardoned 
 rebels gather to the table to meet the smile, and cherish 
 the memory of their dying, risen Lord. Hopes full of 
 immortality cluster around the sacred emblems of His 
 broken body. But there is another scene to come, of 
 which this is but a feeble type. From the east and the west, 
 from the north and the south, shall come the thronging 
 myriads of ransomed spirits, to sit down with Abraham, 
 and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of G-od. And 
 " the Wonderful " will be there, the Redeemer with His 
 redeemed, and at that table of infinite love and perfect 
 holiness, Eternity itself will be the feast-day of the soul. 
 Every want will be met, every desire satisfied. Even 
 now the Saviour Himself is giving out His invitation to 
 meet Him there. Will you not accept it ? 
 
XIX. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE— WHAT IT IMPLIES. 
 
 "Be ye therefore perfect." — Matt. v. 48. 
 
 IT is an old saying, too little regarded by many, that 
 we have but one life to live. It is common sense, it 
 is wisdom, it is religion, therefore, to make the most of it. 
 To accomplish this is the true philosophy of life. 
 
 What rule, standard, model, then, shall we adopt ; for 
 there is an infinite variety. You turn with disgust and 
 loathing from the type of life set before you in the 
 drunkard, the glutton, and the sensualist. You do not 
 want a trough for a table, a sty for a dwelling, or a gutter 
 for a bed. And yet, perhaps, you are lured by feasts, 
 pageants, Brussels carpets and four-story palaces. You 
 have a taste for flutter and fashion. You adore ease and 
 comfort. 
 
 But is there not something better than all this ? Which 
 would read best on a grave-stone, a rich merchant, a 
 smart lawyer, a greedy pleasure seeker, or an earnest 
 and devoted Christian? Who commands the most re- 
 spect, even from a godless world, the man that prays, or 
 the man that jests ? And which is the greatest and no- 
 blest achievement, to train the soul for heaven and enrich 
 it with memories of goodness and self-denial ; or to eat, 
 drink, sleep, and drift with the fashions ? 
 
 I have no hesitation in saying with the poet, "A Chris- 
 
 (161) 
 
i6z LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 tian is the highest style of man." Plaster the body with 
 tinsel ; teach it genteel manners ; store the mind with 
 learning ; educate it to exquisite taste ; make a man upright 
 and moral, a true friend and kind neighbor, and you yet 
 fall vastly short of the Christian standard. You have 
 fashion's idol, but the soul of piety is not in it. You may 
 have the golden candlestick but no light ; the frame, but 
 not the picture. 
 
 It is well to be moral and upright, but principle with- 
 out religion has simply the force of education and habit. 
 These plant it like a cedar post in the earth, but re- 
 ligion makes it live and grow, and turns it into a cedar 
 of Lebanon. There can be no solidity of character, it is 
 true, without morality. A man becomes like a tree with 
 a hollow trunk, fair without, but ants, squirrels, and rot- 
 ten wood inside, and reeling till it falls prostrate beneath 
 the tornado. And yet moral principle is to Christian 
 faith only as the dry channel of an aqueduct to the living 
 fountain that can fill it and supply the thirst of thousands. 
 Aspiring merely to morality, I level the arrow of effort 
 at a height like that of the " Crow's Nest," but concen- 
 trating my energies on a life like Christ's, I lay my hand 
 on a crown of hope beyond the stars. 
 
 Piety implies morality, and morality of the highest 
 standard. Without this, it is but like a body bled to 
 death, or a frame with the bones expunged. But a 
 Christian life requires not only fair morals, but a re- 
 newed heart ; not only just dealings with men, but truth 
 and duty to the God of truth ; not only integrity and 
 justice, but charity, humility, and holy consecration. 
 Morality says, " do no man any wrong." Religion says, 
 " do all men good." Morality says, " keep off the stains 
 of vice." Eeligion says, " put on the robes, not of virtue 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 163 
 
 only, but of angelic holiness." Morality bids, " pay your 
 debts to your neighbor." Religion urges, " accept as a 
 bankrupt sinner the free grace of God in Christ, and live 
 as one bought with a price, no longer your own." 
 
 We feel that it would be a great thing to bring the 
 mass of men up to even the lower standard. They suffer 
 themselves to be governed by their pleasures and their 
 tastes, till a slave-driver's whip and chains could not im- 
 pose a more hopeless bondage. They have no higher 
 aim in life than just self-gratification. They can hate, 
 envy, cheat, deceive, offend, riot, carouse, all within the 
 limits of a morality that keeps their names out of the 
 newspapers, and their persons from the police courts. They 
 drift through life with no more moral pilotage than what 
 is necessary to keep clear of the rapids of vice or the 
 snags of the law. 
 
 Some, again, belong to that class whom Cowper de- 
 scribes, " whose ambition is to sink." All that consti- 
 tutes the dignity of the human soul — reflection, conscien- 
 tiousness, soberness of purpose, — is thrust aside to give 
 place to recklessness, frivolity, amusement. The soul is 
 disfigured, like an Indian tattooed for his war-dance. 
 To say a funny thing, however stupidly foolish, to master 
 the legerdemain of fashion, to win some frivolous game, 
 to gain admission to some gay circle, this is the height 
 of their aspirations. It seems as if the instincts of but- 
 terflies and peacocks had been lodged by mistake in 
 human bodies, or as if the owners of soul were ashamed 
 of their property, and panted to supplant the image of 
 God by some gross caricature. 
 
 To bring such persons up to a decent moral standard, 
 would be carrying them — not above the tops of the Alps 
 or the Andes, it is true, but it would be lifting them — out 
 
164 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 of mines and caves to the light of day, out of quagmires 
 to the solid ground. A strictly moral man ought to be 
 sober enough to see that there is something serious in 
 life, that it means more than an empty pageant or a reel- 
 ing dance. He ought to be prepared to say, " this valley 
 of existence bounded by the mountain ranges of an eter- 
 nity past and an eternity to come, with only the gates of 
 death and the bar of judgment for its outlet, is not the 
 place for an heir of immortality to doze and carouse, jest 
 and banter. The great heavens over us stretch them- 
 selves out to an immensity which they beckon the am- 
 plitudes of our expanding thoughts to fill. This soul 
 itself, the wonder of creation's wonders, within whose im- 
 palpable grasp whole centuries are gathered up, and 
 millions of memories are stored, which by a path which 
 no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not 
 seen, travels back from the seen to the unseen, from na- 
 ture to God, which soars aloft till poised on the brink of 
 its own doom, it speculates on eternal ages when every 
 earthly memorial of itself has vanished — this soul, capa- 
 ble of knowing G-od, and filling an angel's sphere, is too 
 great and glorious a thing to be kicked about as the foot- 
 ball of fashion, too capacious to be measured by the 
 jester's standard." 
 
 But Christianity is not content with this. It demands 
 more. Its aim is loftier, more comprehensive. It de- 
 mands, to attain its objects, the enlistment of all the powers 
 of the soul. For some men, to attain a fortune, may be 
 a high aspiration ; for others, the fame of successful gen- 
 eralship ; for others still, a reputable character ; but he 
 who aims just to live a truly Christian life, aspires to a 
 higher and more arduous as well as a holier attainment. 
 
 Such a life implies the subordination of all selfish pas- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. x 6 5 
 
 sions and lusts to the divine will. This is the true mas- 
 tery. A man does not own himself till God owns him, 
 and that ownership is solemnly acknowledged. He is a 
 slave to his baser nature, even though his chains are in- 
 viting as diamond rings and bracelets of gold. While a 
 passion against which reason revolts domineers over him 
 — while a lust which conscience rebukes scoffs at con- 
 science, he is a bond-slave of satan. He is ruled by a 
 tyrant as vile and base as his own deformity. To over- 
 come this tyrant, it is not enough to make a declaration 
 of independence. A more than " seven years' war 77 must 
 follow it, a life-long struggle to establish the ascendancy 
 of virtue and the law of God. He who maintains it to 
 the end, who " falls but fights anew" — till even death 
 becomes his standard-bearer and waves over his pros- 
 trate dust the flag of triumph — he is the true hero. " He 
 that ruleth his own spirit is better than he that taketh 
 a city. 77 The man who turns his own soul into a battle- 
 field for God, resolved never to shrink or flee till the 
 victory is won, is braver than the veteran of a hundred 
 fights. How easy to love those that love you! How 
 hard to turn your other cheek to the smiter ! How easy 
 to glow with indignation at even imagined wrong ! How 
 hard, but how noble to forgive as you would be forgiven 
 yourself! A Hannibal in boyhood vows upon the altar 
 eternal hostility to the Roman people. Jesus on the cross 
 prays for his murderers, "Father, forgive them. 77 All 
 ambitions are mean and contemptible by the side of that 
 which would enthrone the purity, meekness, humility and 
 charity of the Gospel within the soul. 
 
 A Christian life implies, moreover, a humbling accep- 
 tance of Christ 7 s Redemption as the only ground of hope 
 for the sinner. It costs something for proud human na- 
 
i66 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 ture to stoop to this. It cost something to strip off the 
 robe of pride, of trust in our own fancied goodness, and 
 falling prostrate in the dust confess that in ourselves we 
 have nothing to avert the descending stroke of divine 
 justice, and that as helpless suppliants, as guilty wretches, 
 all our appeal must be simply to sovereign mercy. Yet 
 this a Christian life requires, and the man who stoops to 
 this, humbles himself only to be exalted. He is not only 
 pardoned, but he is delivered from his own pride. He 
 has the greatness of one who forms a low estimate of 
 himself. ' He has attained to this — to see his own heart 
 as it appears before God — to know the weakness and 
 depravity of his fallen nature. It is a knowledge beyond 
 any that is taught in the schools — beyond the knowledge 
 of the student, or the artist, or the historian, or the phi- 
 losopher — it is the knowledge of his need, and the knowl- 
 edge of his Redeemer. 
 
 A Christian life implies, again, a consecration to a holy 
 service, to the work of God. In whatever it is engaged, 
 it serves him. To stand by the anvil, to follow the 
 plough, to serve at the counter, to sweep the streets, be- 
 comes a hallowed employment, for it is cheerfully per- 
 formed at the mandate of duty ; it is done to glorify him 
 by whom it is imposed. It is done because it is due — 
 because he that does it confesses that he is not his own, 
 but the creature of God, the redeemed of grace, a pen- 
 sioner on the divine beneficence, and so with holy aims, 
 he strives to put God's will in all things in place of his 
 own, turning life into a prayer, and making each daily 
 blessing a note in the sweet music of adoration, each 
 hardship a step by which he climbs up toward God. 
 
 A Christian life is one that necessarily seeks to do good. 
 And herein it finds a field for glorious achievement. Not 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 167 
 
 in days like these may any one speak in scorn of the blood- 
 stained banner that waves over the soldier of freedom 
 and native land, but the expansive aims of a true philan- 
 thropy reach abroad to take the whole world in the 
 embrace of their sympathies. One cannot love God with- 
 out loving his brother also, and when you look on the 
 humblest hero of charity, out of love to God seeking to 
 teach the ignorant or uplift the degraded, what a shriv- 
 elled and contemptible caricature of greatness is the 
 richest miser, the greatest warrior, the most surprising 
 genius, a Croesus, a Pharaoh, a Csesar, by his side. 
 
 A Christian life is the only one worth living on earth. 
 Any other soon foams away to dregs — and such dregs ! 
 what they are, let a Dives, a Chesterfield, a Byron tell ! 
 Back of all the show and pageant, behind the close-drawn 
 curtain, there are just " the tawdry ornaments, the tallow 
 candles, the wires and pulleys," which the English noble- 
 man described. A bubble's life is dignity to this. An 
 actor's part is sincerity to this. To be true, earnest, 
 effective — to make existence here anything else than 
 tragedy or mockery, rubbish or crime, we must adopt the 
 Christian's standard. 
 
XX. 
 
 THE FIRST AIM OF LIFE. 
 
 " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." — Matt. vi. 33. 
 
 SOME of the gravest mistakes of human life grow out 
 of one fundamental error — putting first something 
 that should be put second, or putting second what should 
 be first. There can properly be only one thing put first, 
 and that is, religion — the fear of God. It is the founda- 
 tion of character, and effort, and happiness. Nothing 
 else will endure and sustain the superstructure of a true 
 life. 
 
 Few, perhaps, will dispute this in words, but they do 
 in deeds. They seem to me like one who in the winter 
 time, when he proposes to build himself a magnificent 
 palace, goes, not to the granite quarry, but, to the moun- 
 tain glacier, and hews out, perhaps, enormous blocks of 
 beautiful ice, and lays them deep and firm as a founda- 
 tion. On this, he piles all his life-wrought materials, 
 and within the structure he places all his treasures. 
 Every thing he has, and his life itself, are staked on the 
 durability of the ice blocks. For months there is, per- 
 haps, no sign of yielding, but, at last, it may be suddenly, 
 the whole structure sinks into a mass of rubbish. 
 
 Is this fancy ? Is it not rather parable coined out of 
 fact ? "What is the foundation on which thousands build ? 
 
 (168) 
 
THE FIRST AIM OF LIFE. 169 
 
 What lies at the base of all their schemes and efforts ? 
 Are they not building 011 to-morrow's uncertainty, on 
 some dream of success, on some fond imagination, ice- 
 blocks all, that will melt under the heat of trial, and 
 leave all that rests on them to sink to ruin ? 
 
 No one can build, no one has a right to build, till he 
 can build on the Rock of Ages. We are all building, 
 whether we know it or not, for eternity. We may put 
 up wigwams or hospitals, tents or temples, but our aims 
 and deeds, whatever they are, are the soul's palace, under 
 the shelter or shadow of which it will dwell forever. The 
 question with what we build is a grave one, but the ques- 
 tion on what we build comes first. It matters little 
 whether I use hay, wood and stubble, or marble and 
 granite, if in either case they rest on quicksand. A great 
 genius with splendid attainments makes a more imposing 
 ruin, but a ruin nevertheless. He seems to me, without 
 religion, like a magnificent arch supported on a wooden 
 frame, with the keystone left out. It may stand for 
 years, but its fate is just as sure as that of the props that 
 support it. 
 
 Your first great duty is to shape your life to the great 
 end for which it was given. Let religion draw the out- 
 line and then fill it up wisely and well. See that its 
 scope is right. You may journey at railroad speed, but 
 if you go the wrong way, there is no progress. You 
 may toil long and hard, but if you weary yourself with 
 vanity, it will amount to nothing. A life made up of 
 rambling and zigzag will do very well if it ends where it 
 began. One who spends his life in gazing at rockets 
 will see little of stars and sun. Thousands live extem- 
 pore, watching for the next meteor of politics, gain or 
 fashion. Their future, so far as they note it, is just a 
 8 
 
i 7 o LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 mirage of fancy, all this side the grave. They never ask, 
 why am I here, what is my proper business, what is the 
 great end I should ever keep in view ? They ramble on 
 with little thought of where their last yesterday will 
 leave them. Life has no more shape to it than the gravi- 
 tation of indolence, taste or circumstance gives it. 
 
 Or, if there is a plan, how often is it a false one ! It 
 would make a meteor of what should be a star. It would 
 debase an heir of heaven to a millionaire, a tidewaiter, 
 or a fop. It would draw off talent and probation and 
 even the river, " the streams whereof make glad the city 
 of God," into currents to turn the machinery that saws 
 logs and weaves cotton. It would put the Bible under 
 foot that it may stand on it and so reach higher to grasp 
 the prize which the Bible forbids to seek. It would sub- 
 stitute gold for grace, and gain for godliness. It would 
 fill God's temple with money-changers. It would sacri- 
 fice the soul's everlasting birthright to pamper the lust 
 of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. 
 
 This is a " Comedy of Errors " beyond any that the 
 genius of the great dramatist ever invented ; comedy that 
 runs into deepest tragedy, that begins with a jest and 
 ends with a sigh, that lulls to heedlessness and wakes to 
 remorse. 
 
 All this would not be of so much account if you could 
 satisfy yourself that there was no God to judge you, no 
 future existence for the soul, no high and glorious destiny 
 to which God invites it, no capability by God's grace of 
 turning this life into an introduction to the everlasting 
 blessedness of heaven. But if any one to gratify you 
 should attempt to prove this, with what horror would 
 you regard him ! You would feel that his argument was 
 atheism and his logic despair. With a shudder you 
 
THE FIEST AIM OF LIFE. 
 
 171 
 
 would say, " to corruption thou art my father, and to the 
 worm thou art my mother and my sister." 
 
 Ah ! it is not in man calmly and complacently to look 
 upon such a doom. The soul shrinks from it as the flesh 
 does from torture. We feel that we were made for 
 something better. The instincts of our being crave im- 
 mortality. There are moments when the bounds of time 
 seem to us like the shell of the bird ere it spreads its 
 wings. We can rise heavenward. The stars seem but 
 the milestones of everlasting progress. The soul aspires 
 to freedom from its fleshly chain. This life is the child- 
 hood of being, this world the perch whence we are to 
 soar away. 
 
 Shall man then, when the light of revelation confirms 
 all this and more, be content with a meaner ambition 
 than the heathen artist who said, " I paint for eternity ?" 
 Shall you, a child of God, be content with the heritage 
 of a slave ? Will you, with lips that can lisp " Our 
 Father," pawn your birthright for a prodigal's portion ? 
 Will you, who may be even now a king and priest unto 
 God, kindle the fires of Baal and do sacrifice to mam- 
 mon ? With joys even now offered, sweeter than Eden's 
 fragrance, and with treasures in the love of God richer 
 than gems and gold from uncounted mines, will you 
 choose rather the sands of the world's deserts, and its 
 apples of Sodom that are ashes to the taste ? 
 
 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. 
 Sixty centuries empannelled on the jury give in that ver- 
 dict. It pronounces him a fool who presumes to live 
 without God and has no hope. He has not truly began 
 to live who has not yet met the claims of his Maker. He 
 may count his years by the score ; his success by honors ; 
 his wealth by thousands ; but these are all only autumn 
 
i 7 2 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 leaves, without one living bud among them all, if the 
 heart is still given up to the world. 
 
 Take all the materials which time and earth can af- 
 ford ; exhaust mine and prairie ; summon enterprise and 
 energy ; call in genius, and taste, and talent, and learn- 
 ing ; blend with all every social grace, every moral vir- 
 tue and every refinement of art, and out of all these build 
 up the completest human life that your resources will al- 
 low, yet without the grace of God it is but a tower of 
 Babel. There are the walls of a temple, but there is no 
 God within. There is an altar, but the living coals are 
 not on it. There is a priesthood, but it is rather of 
 Mammon's hierarchy than of Aaron's lineage. There is 
 the majestic organ, but unhallowed fingers cannot sweep 
 its keys. A crowd throngs its courts, but they wait on 
 the tables of the money-changers. Its spire may point to 
 heaven, but the sordid dust of worldliness tracks all its 
 aisles, and the cobwebs of vanity are hung about its pil- 
 lars. Many a splendid career is only the mausoleum of 
 a dead soul. 
 
 Now, put religion at the foundation, and even with 
 commonplace materials build on that. A man begins to 
 live as one that is to live forevermore. Fearing God 
 alone, he rises above all human fear • knowing he is to 
 give account, he tries every deed, and he puts into the 
 walls of life nothing that will not stand the fires of the 
 last day. Counting himself not his own, he is grandly 
 generous, living to do good, and not to please himself. 
 Capable of divine joy, he scorns the silly pleasures that 
 would crowd their Dagon idols into God's temple. He 
 prays, he toils, he lives for God. The plan of his life is 
 fixed, clear, definite, and like a tree — every fibre of its 
 roots drawing in nourishment, and every leaf of its 
 
THE FIRST AIM OF LIFE. 
 
 73 
 
 branches drinking in the dew — it shapes everything to 
 its own pattern. Light and darkness ; sunshine, storm ; 
 plenty, want ; all feel the transmuting power of its subtle 
 chemistry, and yield to the control of a consecrated pur- 
 pose. Such a life will be good and great. You may 
 plant it in the lowliest valley, you may hide it where few 
 eyes gaze, but it will bloom with an Eden beauty ; it will 
 overtop worldly surroundings, as a cedar of Lebanon 
 would shrub-oaks, and the very children that gather to 
 sport beneath its spreading branches will bless it for its 
 green leaves and its cool shade. It is a tree fit to trans- 
 plant to the Paradise of God. 
 
 Such a life will be an evergreen. The frosts that strip 
 the forest that winter may howl its dirge through the 
 leafless branches, cannot harm it. It will bear fruit in 
 old age. Its end will be peace, and the blessing of those 
 that were ready to perish will crown its memory. 
 
 Begin life aright then. If you would not have weeds 
 for your harvest or bricks for your toil, give God your 
 heart, and think of the life that never ends. Put your- 
 self in thought far away beyond these shifting, cheating 
 scenes ; soar aloft above this fire-doomed earth, and its 
 shows and pomps ; see the great globe with all its cities 
 and palaces shrinking to an atom ; leave time behind 
 you ; take your place among the angel choir that sweep 
 their golden harps before the throne ; and ask yourself 
 then what this life should be, fitting for an angel's child- 
 hood, for the service which the redeemed shall be glad 
 to render forevermore. 
 
 If that sphere is ever to be yours, you should begin to 
 live for it now. You should be robing yourself every 
 day for that great Assembly that are draped in the spotless 
 white of heaven's purity. You should put off sin and put 
 
i 7 4 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 on righteousness. You should learn the lesson of prayer 
 and praise. You should seek to know Him whom to 
 know aright is life eternal, and with whom you hope to 
 dwell forever. You should allow no toys of sense to al- 
 lure your eye, or divert your purpose. You should say, 
 "with one life only to live on earth, I will not squander it 
 on trifles ; I will not turn it into an episode of folly ; I 
 will not crowd it with bitter memories of sin ; I will not 
 build any immortal hope on shadows ; but I will so live 
 that my farewell of earth shall be my welcome to heaven. " 
 Make your present life then the title page of your im- 
 mortality. Let there be no word or letter in it which 
 shall belie the contents of a volume that shall record an 
 angel's career. The soul's identity demands, if you as- 
 pire to heavenly blessedness, that you shall not burden 
 memory with the everlasting incongruities of a life of sin 
 on earth. If there is anything which in the light of the 
 throne you would not like to recall, shun it now. If there 
 is anything which can fit you for the high sphere of an- 
 gelic service, now is the time for preparation. If exis- 
 tence has any sphore in which wisdom can be called into 
 service, in which your highest interests demand a thoughi>- 
 ful anticipation of future destiny, that sphere is the one 
 in which you are moving now. In view of a final judg- 
 ment, by the light of a blazing world, under the eye of 
 the great Judge, face to face with eternity, the soul must 
 yet sit in judgment on itself. Why not act to-day with 
 reference to what you know will be its final sentence ? 
 
XXI. 
 
 THE CONFLICT OF LIFE. 
 
 "Fight the good fight of faith."— 1 Tim. vi. 12. 
 
 WHO that has ever witnessed the volunteer soldier 
 going forth to take his place in the ranks in de- 
 fense of his country, has not felt his sympathies strongly 
 enlisted in his behalf? There was so much to touch the 
 heart — his youth, his inexperience, the fearful scenes be- 
 fore him, the fearful perils he must encounter, the possi- 
 ble fate that may in a moment quench all his young, 
 bright hopes, the exposure and the vices and diseases of 
 campaign life, the sad, perhaps final farewell of parents, 
 of brothers, or sisters, or weeping friends, the grandeur 
 of the cause in which he is engaged, the solemn pledge 
 which he may be called to lay, embalmed in his heart's 
 blood, on the altar of his country — all conspire to make 
 him an object of no common interest. 
 
 And yet, more sublime, more impressive, more affecting 
 than this, is the sight of an immortal spirit, entering amid 
 the perils of a sinful world upon the great conflict of life, 
 from which he is to come forth crushed or triumphant, 
 the coward of guilt, or the hero of God. And this con- 
 flict is before us all. We must share in it, not as mere 
 spectators, but as actors. Our own eternal interests are 
 staked upon its issue. 
 
 175 
 
i 7 6 LIFE LESSON'S. 
 
 There are some aspects of life as a conflict subordinate 
 to the main one which the Bible presents, which ought 
 not perhaps to be overlooked. It is very rare that any 
 man gets through the world without a struggle of some 
 kind. Even indolence, reposing on the lap of luxury, has 
 to conquer the nausea of existence, and plant ever new 
 batteries of amusement and diversion to kill time, and 
 murder the hours as they march upon him. He that will 
 not work has to suffer in his encounter with poverty, 
 hunger and rags. Sometimes he must have a sharp and 
 life-long fight with conscience and his better convictions 
 that steadily harass him. His coveted ease is at best 
 an armed neutrality. While he rests upon his arms he 
 is beset by guerrillas of vice and anxious alarms. 
 
 But most men sooner or later learn to submit to the 
 struggle of life, and enter upon it more or less manfully. 
 Sometimes that struggle is narrowed down to procuring 
 the means to keep soul and body together. There are 
 thousands whose life is just a hand to hand fight for 
 crusts, rags, and shelter from the storm. They grow 
 thin and frail and grey before their time, in toil and 
 weary strivings to earn the pittance that keeps them 
 from absolute starvation. It is a very dismal business, 
 and yet the grace of God sometimes makes it glorious, 
 turns it into the school of faith, makes it the furnace of 
 trial, that purges away the dross, and refines the gold of 
 character. 
 
 Others struggle for wealth or competence. Day by 
 day, with unremitting toil, they contend with the diffi- 
 culties that obstruct business success. They fight with 
 their own weariness or indolence, endeavor to master the 
 methods of gain, tunnel the track of their enterprise 
 through the heart of rocky obstacles, besiege the forces 
 
 :>+/> 
 
THE CONFLICT OF LIFE. 
 
 77 
 
 of fraud, competition and design that stand in their 
 way. 
 
 Others struggle for political eminence. They fight 
 their way by argument, intrigue, bribery, compromise — ■ 
 in the street, in the caucus, and on the platform. And 
 when they come out at last scarred in honor, bleeding in 
 reputation, with conscience well-nigh shot away, with 
 confidence in them riddled and in tatters, we feel that 
 all their honor and perquisites are but the shroud to 
 wrap about their infamy, the tribute of respect to mere 
 success. 
 
 So others struggle for respectability. They envy that 
 position to which some around them have attained. As 
 a general aspires to the palm of victory, so they aspire 
 to possess a rich garment, or win social recognition, or 
 attain genteel manners, and with all the ardor of a pur- 
 suing army, they prosecute the campaign of life, and 
 hope soon, by forced marches or persevering assaults, to 
 carry their position against a gold chain or a piece of 
 broadcloath, a flower or a feather. And sometimes 
 there is a generalship displayed in the movements that 
 would do honor to the ablest military strategist, a per- 
 severance and an engineering tact rare even in military 
 science. 
 
 No doubt in these and other ways, a great deal of in- 
 tellectual drill and discipline is secured. Even children, 
 with faculties sharpened by contact with want and crime 
 and schemes of fraud, become premature veterans. They 
 are trained to perfection as unscrupulous intellectual or 
 selfish machines, and they fight out the battle of life, 
 with the tact of guerrillas or the desperation of pirates. 
 
 But all this is quite aside from the real conflict of life 
 assigned us in the providence of God. Our business 
 
i 7 8 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 here is to contend with sin and temptation and the pow- 
 ers of darkness, and to carry our souls unharmed through 
 the assaults of this present world, following close in the 
 footsteps of Jesus, the great Captain of our Salvation. 
 We need bread, and we must work for it. We want 
 established character and confidence, and we must strug- 
 gle to maintain integrity, and vindicate our good name 
 by a consistent life. We want the comforts of social 
 existence, the means of intellectual improvement and 
 enjoyment, and for those we must strive and toil ; but 
 these things imply only the skirmishes incidental to life's 
 great battle. Pervaded by a holy purpose — endured or 
 performed by a faith that looks through them to their 
 spiritual significance as discipline, they become an essen- 
 tial and integral part of the conflict, and yet he that 
 looks only to the attainment of worldly good, and expends 
 no thought on what lies beyond, has not as yet obtained 
 the first proper conception of the real meaning of the 
 conflict itself. 
 
 In the first place, we have to contend with the de- 
 pravity of our fallen nature. Within our souls are our 
 most powerful and dangerous foes. He that is victorious 
 and well armed within is truly a conqueror, and may des- 
 pise all outward assault. But if within his own bosom are 
 lodged traitor passions that rule there, if his unsubdued 
 lusts carry him away at will, and sway the desires and 
 aims of the soul, then all his wrestlings against external 
 temptations are vain. He is delivered over helpless to 
 their grasp. He is like a shorn Sampson in the hands 
 of the Philistines. 
 
 First of all, therefore, he must conquer his own heart 
 for truth and God. The kingdom of heaven must be set 
 up within. All secession and treason must be driven 
 
THE CONFLICT OF LIFE. 
 
 179 
 
 out, that the law of God may rule there. The code of 
 selfishness must be expunged from the soul's statute-book. 
 The anarchy of a lawless will — saying we will not have 
 God to rule over us — must be subdued. 
 
 This is a great work, and the soul unaided will never 
 accomplish it. Native resolution is unequal to the task. 
 The instruction and guidance of worldly wisdom alone 
 never yet effected it. The soul matched simply against 
 itself is lost. It must have help from above. The grace 
 of God must come to its rescue. " This kind goeth not 
 forth save by prayer and fasting." The revolution with- 
 in that throws off the usurped authority of Satan and 
 the powers of darkness, can be carried forward only by 
 a divine energy. He that would fight successfully the 
 great conflict of life, must first of all recognize his de- 
 pendence on a higher power. He must place himself 
 under the shadow of the Almighty. He must take the 
 weapons of prayer, and call mightily on Him who by the 
 gift of the Spirit can change the nature of the soul and 
 transform it into His own image. 
 
 And then he must still pray on. He must guard 
 against everything that would repress his progress in 
 holiness, or obscure his hopes, or separate his soul from 
 God. He must keep the great and glorious example of 
 his Master in his eye. He must be vigilant lest he be 
 surprised by temptation. He must be aware of the foes 
 that lie in ambush within and around him. He must 
 study his own imperfections and infirmities, as a careful 
 general will study and repair the weak points in the for- 
 tress which he is charged to defend. He must allow no 
 selfish aim, no worldly suggestions, to creep in and throw 
 open the gates of the soul to the powers of darkness. 
 He must strive to keep the soil of his heart as sacred 
 
 
180 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 from all unhallowed intrusion, as that where Moses met 
 with God, and put off his shoes from his feet. 
 
 It is no easy task to perfect holiness in the fear of the 
 Lord — no easy task to bring the soul up from its low aims 
 to a heavenly standard — no easy task to crush its spiritual 
 foes beneath its feet. Sometimes, indeed, the battle is 
 more desperate than at others. Strong men have wrestled 
 and struggled mightily against mighty foes. See Peter, 
 with all his impetuous zeal, overcome and led to deny his 
 Master. See Demas betraying his trust, " having loved 
 this present world." Note the sin of Noah, the distrust 
 of Abraham, the impatience of Moses, the fall of David, 
 the stumblings of Solomon. Read what history tells us 
 of Cranmer's weakness when threatened with the flames, 
 and Bacon's intellectual greatness tarnished with the 
 corruption of his bribes. 
 
 I have seen and known those who seemed in a position 
 not unlike that of Christ, when the Great Tempter for a 
 sinful compliance promised Him all the kingdoms of the 
 world, and the glory of them, and I have seen them make 
 what I feared was the fatal choice. There, on one hand 
 was the humble obedience and blessedness of a child of 
 God, and on the other were the prizes of worldly distinc- 
 tions, and these proved more powerful and carried the day. 
 
 But more common foes are those which assume a less 
 imposing shape, or which sometimes wear a prophet's 
 mantle. The ancient seer thought he did well to be 
 angry. Men would resist a plain, unmasked open-faced 
 devil ; but if only the schemes of their selfish gratifica- 
 tions are wrapped about with spiritual professions, they 
 are willingly and easily misled. They will sometimes 
 fight Satan's battle under God's banner, and think they 
 are doing God service. 
 
TUB CONFLICT OF LIFE. 181 
 
 But generally the evils we have to combat in the con- 
 flict of life are plain enough to him that will understand. 
 The good fight is the fight with sin — sin within and sin 
 without — whatever would overcome us or keep our souls 
 from God. This implies indeed opposition to all evils 
 that come properly within the sphere of our effort — the 
 chronic depravity of the world, the phases of iniquity 
 which corrupt morals, and make gain godliness, and 
 blight the influences of the Gospel, and sometimes we 
 must come to a hand-to-hand fight with these. It may 
 be that, in fidelity to our own convictions, we must like 
 Paul fight with beasts at Ephesus, or attack sin in its 
 strongholds, like John before Herod, or endure reproach 
 from those who blindly or wilfully misrepresent us. And 
 yet we are to fight our way through with the patience 
 of Job and the charity of Jesus, so that abuse shall leave 
 no scar on our even temper, and disappointment shall 
 generate no bitterness of spirit, and our zeal shall not 
 prove a sword on which we fall ourselves. 
 
 For it is far more difficult to guard against the thrusts 
 of the Tempter, than to strike blows at solid, organized 
 wickedness outside of us. A man may invoke heaven's 
 vengeance on some outrageous wrong, and yet have the 
 very essence of that wrong enshrined in his own soul, as 
 I have heard of a parent swearing to his child that he 
 would punish him if he swore. The real battle of life is 
 not in the street, the market, the caucus, the hall of legis- 
 lature — it is in a man's own soul. There, with no eye on 
 it but God's, the fight begins and goes on. As there is 
 success or defeat there, the issue of life itself is decided 
 for good or evil. The conqueror within will be the 
 conqueror without. Who that has lingered over the 
 wrestlings of Luther, that has watched his anxious strug- 
 
i8z LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 gling spirit in the monastic cell, and as he climbed St. 
 Peter's stairs at Rome, or flung his inkstand at the dark 
 shadow on the walls of the Wartburg ; who that has 
 gazed upon Saul in the agony of his blindness and self- 
 accusations, waiting for Ananias ; or read Bunyan's 
 " Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners," that makes 
 us feel how real to him were the Slough of Despair, 
 the Hill Difficulty, and the Yalley of the Shadow of 
 Death — does not feel that these men, by the grace of 
 God were made victorious in the great inward struggle 
 of life, before ever they were prepared to strike those 
 blows whose echo rings yet in the ears of the world ? 
 
 Practically, then, the good fight is fought within the 
 soul. Paul fought with the beasts within before he 
 fought with the beasts at Ephesus. He struggled against 
 his own proud heart, before he grappled or was fitted to 
 grapple with the great dragon of Pagan idolatries. In 
 the full impetus of his course he speaks of pressing for- 
 ward to the mark. He kept his body under, and brought 
 it into subjection. He found a law in his members 
 warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him 
 into captivity to the law of sin. Here was the fight 
 which in the eye of heaven was the Thermopylae of his 
 life's campaign. Without having been a victor here, he 
 had never made Felix tremble on his judgment-seat, or 
 disputed daily in the school of one Tyrannus, or preached 
 the Gospel to Caesar's household. But victorious within, 
 he was armed and strengthened for a life-long struggle 
 with principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness 
 in high places. Victories at Philippi, at Ephesus, at 
 Rome, were but the natural sequents of victories won 
 over the lusts and vanities and passions of his own 
 heart. 
 
THE CONFLICT OF LIFE. 183 
 
 This good figlit is the one to which we are all sum- 
 moned. You may not feel that there is any to be fought. 
 Satan may be besieging you unmolested and at his leisure. 
 He may have not yet completed his battery or fortifica- 
 tions. He may not yet have succeeded in cutting off the 
 hope of retreat. He may not have yet solemnly and 
 formally summoned you to surrender. He may not yet 
 have brought you hopelessly under the range of your 
 own habits ; he may not yet have planted his mortars so 
 as to burst their deadly shells in the magazine of con- 
 science. You may be led by the quiet unconcern of your 
 own spirit to feel that for you there is no struggle. 
 
 But this would be a great mistake. The struggle 
 must — it will come. The sooner the better. Every 
 hour's delay to resist diminishes the hope of successful 
 resistance. Even now, is not the foe dangerously near ? 
 Have you not already been yielding too long ? What 
 effort have you put forth to save your soul? What 
 struggle against an evil nature within you has been yet 
 noted by the great cloud of witnesses ? Have you yet 
 passed from darkness to light ? Are you ranged under 
 the banner of God and truth ? Are you trampling on 
 one after another of those unhallowed desires and feel- 
 ings and tastes and habits which Christ cannot approve ? 
 
 If not, it is time that the good fight was begun. It is time 
 that you measured the strength of the foes that withstand 
 your progress toward heaven. A little longer — and you 
 might in vain have worlds given you to purchase the 
 peace of the conscious assurance, "I have fought the 
 good fight 1" 
 
XXII. 
 
 LIFE AN EDUCATION. 
 
 " Reaching forth unto those things which are before." — Phil. hi. 13. 
 
 AN old heathen philosopher was once asked what it 
 was necessary that boys should learn. " Those 
 things/' he replied, " which they will need to know when 
 they become men." 
 
 There was sound philosophy in his answer. It em- 
 bodies the true principle of education. The sports and 
 plays of childhood must not crowd out the lessons that 
 fit one for manly duties — the lessons that train the mind, 
 the heart and all the energies and affections of the soul. 
 If they do it they make one first a plaything, and then a 
 wreck. They fling upon society another instalment of 
 human rubbish. They multiply indolence, crime, and- 
 misery. The entire neglect of intellectual, moral and 
 religious training for one generation among the most 
 cultivated people, would throw them back hopelessly and 
 inevitably into barbarism and heathenism. 
 
 But the usefulness, happiness, and success of the individ- 
 ual for his whole after life, are usually determined by his 
 early training. A mistake here casts a shadow over all 
 his years, that can scarcely be deepened by the shadows 
 of the grave. Leave his mind unfurnished by wholesome 
 truth, and it ever remains, instead of a parlor or a work- 
 
 (184) 
 
LIFE AN ED UGA TION. 1 8 5 
 
 shop, a cobwebbed garret. The vacant apartments of 
 thought are occupied by vermin and rubbish. Leave 
 the passions unsubdued, and they turn the soul into a 
 tiger's cage, and a man grows up a self-willed, capricious, 
 violeut, tyrannic being, uncomfortable himself and un- 
 comfortable to everybody else, always in trouble, and 
 practically an Ishmael, domineering or impetuous, a tyrant 
 or a criminal. Let the individual be left to his appetites, 
 let him be indulged in having whatever he craves, and he 
 will always be governed by his impulses, and his thirst 
 for pleasure, till nothing will satisfy him ; content will 
 be impossible. He will be uneasy, restless, wretched — 
 in heart like " the wandering Jew," in life " like a wave 
 of the sea, driven of the wind and tossed." 
 
 It is a fearful thing — the tragedy of the soul here — to 
 drift upon the years and duties of manhood, with the wis- 
 dom of a child, but the will and passions of a man. A 
 catastrophe of some kind is sure. It may be spread out 
 over scores of years, or it may be concentrated in some 
 sudden gust of passion or desperation. Sometimes life 
 becomes a long drawn 'agony, a protracted spasm of un- 
 satisfied appetite, due simply to the fact that the mind 
 was left to neglect. It grew up uncared for, and became 
 like a garden of weeds, or an uncultured thicket. 
 
 We know this. We see it. The picture of the reality 
 before our eyes, painted on canvas woven out of human 
 hopes and fears, and colored in blood. We know also 
 the elements of a happy life — a life whose even flow 
 knows neither stagnation nor cataract, firm in duty, beau- 
 tiful in integrity and virtue, rich in inward peace and 
 smiling memories and pure affections, contented with its 
 lot, cheerful in hope, genial in spirit, and abiding con- 
 sciously under the smile of God. Such a life is no mush- 
 
186 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 room. It is no morning glory. It is no accident. It is 
 as much the result of training and God's grace, as th 
 harvest is of the seed and sunshine. 
 
 Even thus — with life bounded by three score years an 
 ten — we feel how important is the education — how im 
 portant all the influences that shape character, how much 
 depends on the way one lays out in early days the plans 
 for days to come. But prolong existence — make it a 
 thousand years ; make it a hundred thousand — and who 
 does not see that if years to come are shaped by the pres- 
 ent, the arithmetic of morals is unequal to solve the prob- 
 lem of the importance of these years that are passing 
 now. 
 
 And who can doubt that the future is shaped by the 
 present? All observation assures it. All experience 
 confirms it. The maxims of life assume it. The truth is 
 engraved on the history of character, of nations as of 
 men. " As the twig is bent the tree 's inclined." The 
 scarred sappling never forgets its wound. Educate a 
 child in vice, accustom him to falsehood, and hateful as 
 they are, the chances are that he will cling to them, and 
 they will cling to him. He does not, cannot shake off 
 the serpent coil. 
 
 When the foundations are laid, it is not easy to go back 
 of them or tear them up ; the bounds of the structure are 
 defined. All that is added must be built on it. It is so 
 with character. Manhood completes the plan of youth — 
 rarely does more than what that foreshadows. But if 
 time is the soul's childhood, eternity is its manhood. 
 The foundations of the structure are laid here, and its 
 bounds are defined. What we shall be for ever we be- 
 gin to be now, and the shape which the soul takes in 
 time it carries with it beyond the grave. 
 
 ! 
 
LIFE AN ED UGA TION. 1 87 
 
 Now it is the inward disposition of the soul that de- 
 cides its happiness or misery. It is so here. The body 
 makes little difference. A soul possessed of heaven's 
 own peace, is little shaken by the world's jars, or by the 
 trembling of its clay tenement. A soul morally diseased, 
 or ruled by selfish passions, or at variance with God 
 and holiness, would be wretched in a body of iron nerves, 
 or under features cast in the finest mould. The elements 
 of our real life — the light or darkness in which we walk 
 — the joys or griefs we feel — are not visible in the out- 
 ward form. So that we inevitably conclude that — in the 
 body or out of the body, it matters not — the happiness 
 of our being depends mainly on the soul. Death will 
 take away nothing from, and add nothing to, what is 
 stored up in the soul. It will only rob the spirit that 
 leaned on material things, and diverted itself by sensual 
 indulgence or worldly association or outward forms, of 
 the staff on which it leaned, and fling it back on itself, 
 on its own spiritual bankruptcy, on its own meagre and 
 dull society and weariness of existence, from which it 
 once fled to the giddiest follies of show and pageantry. 
 This refuge will be denied it. It can no longer go forth 
 like the evil spirit of which we read, even into dry places, 
 seeking rest which is never found. The dry places will 
 be wanting. The soul can no more divert itself by eye, 
 ear, or taste, but only sit down to the banquet of its own 
 thoughts, and pluck the fruits from trees of its own 
 planting. 
 
 Here, a wicked man will contrive, by the body's help, 
 to get on with a kind of comfort. He will go out of 
 himself. Intolerant of his own company, and wretched 
 in it, he rushes to books, shows, balls, theatres, pugilistic 
 encounters. He turns his back on himself and goes 
 
188 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 abroad. But crumble off the instruments by which the 
 soul converses with the external world, let it sink into 
 itself, and then do you hasten and insure the result of 
 making a man's happiness or misery correspond to his 
 moral being. The image in the mirror will not be more 
 true. Then the passions which, like envy, gnawed the 
 bosoms that cherished them, will have no check. 
 
 Now put this disembodied spirit on the track of an 
 endless existence, without any positive infliction, but only 
 just left to itself. Character, poured liquid into the 
 mould of seventy years, has become cast iron. Habit is 
 second nature, and confirms nature. How long must one 
 wait before the soul, self-alienated from God, and thus 
 excluded from every holy and pure joy flowing from 
 divine communion, with tastes and longings and appe- 
 tites that crave their old indulgence but are denied it 
 forevermore, with habits of diverting and engrossing 
 itself in what the crumbling body denies it access to 
 henceforth — how long before it will sink under the into! 
 erable burden and count conscious existence itself a curse 
 and a perpetual torture ? 
 
 Will it help the matter to take note how long it takes 
 a man to become disgusted with himself and the world 
 and his own existence here — or rather how soon he runs 
 through the world as he runs through his fortune — how 
 soon with sun and moon and stars and flowers and feasts 
 and dance and jests to help adjourn the crisis, it comes 
 upon him ? Was Lord Chesterfield, the prince of wits 
 and gentlemen, a fool ? Did he rush on a blind fate ? 
 And yet hear him, as if he had caught the echo of Solo- 
 mon's " vanity of vanities/' declaring that as for the rest 
 of his life's journey, he meant to sleep it out in his car- 
 riage ! 
 
LIFE AN ED UCA TION. 1 89 
 
 A man wants more than his wit, or fortune, or nobility, 
 or philosophy, to reach hopefully, and peacefully, and 
 cheerfully, the close of his three score years and ten. 
 Old age that follows a reckless youth and a stormy man- 
 hood is apt to cling to a life it loathes, and to grow in- 
 tolerably disgusted with an existence which it dreads to 
 relinquish. Those former delights charm no more. The 
 full soul loathes the honeycomb. The creature of fash- 
 ionable folly is satiated, cloyed. Nothing but religion 
 can turn the shadows of its declining years into the dawn- 
 ing twilight of immortal day. 
 
 If, then, it is folly, manifest and inexcusable, to plunge 
 in youth into those follies and fashions, and indulge those 
 tastes and form those habits, which will turn later life 
 into an arid desert, and fill the soul with restless pas- 
 sions and discontent, how much greater and grosser the 
 folly that wastes this springtime of existence, makes no 
 provision for immortality, and flings the soul unfurnished 
 upon the stern realities and sad experience of the life to 
 come. 
 
 You cannot doubt — no man can — that the need of the 
 disembodied spirit is that which gives to the soul here 
 the peace of God and the blessedness of a renewed and 
 holy nature. You cannot doubt — no man can — that the 
 spiritual education which the soul receives on earth will 
 cast its long shadows of curse or blessing over the im- 
 mortality to come. You cannot doubt — no man can — ■ 
 that before every man is the awful possibility of an illim- 
 itable existence hereafter, when every added year shall 
 press with a crushing weight of satiety and loathing on a 
 soul left to itself, with no resources of divine or holy 
 communion, but ever tossed on the restless waves of crav- 
 ing yet unsatisfied desires, and bitter or aching memories. 
 
190 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Will you then, an heir of immortality, pay less regard 
 to the eternal years to come than to just this fleeting 
 hour ? A child, wilful and ungoverned, may rush into 
 those paths of heedless pleasure which lead through the 
 gates of dissipation to an infamous and wretched old age, 
 if not to an early doom, and to a grave of shame — but 
 will you with your eyes open, scorn the claims of that 
 religion, by the power of which alone, your soul can be 
 received, and your spirit be fitted for the joys and service 
 of the spirit world ? Will you, building for eternity, lay 
 the foundation of your immortal destiny on the sands 
 and pebbles of time — on the indulgence of wanton or 
 capricious tastes, on show and pageant and fashionable 
 folly and heartless, godless mirth, which, ere you die, 
 may sink beneath you, and leave you at the mercy of 
 your own vain thoughts and accusing memories ? 
 
 What will you need most as a member of the great 
 heavenly family, as a citizen of the New Jerusalem, as 
 one of that great throng who cast their crowns at the 
 feet of Him that sitteth upon the throne, and rejoice in 
 the light of his presence and the joy of his smile forever- 
 more ! What will you need most in such a sinless and 
 blessed world as you must imagine that of the saved to 
 be, with angels and the Redeemed for your associates, 
 and with no access thenceforth to the sensual delights 
 that amused and diverted on earth ? 
 
 Will you need that holy education for which the Scrip- 
 tures are the text-book — lessons from the life and lips of 
 Him who said " learn of me ?" — the penitent believing 
 spirit that humbly relies on the grace of Christ, knows 
 no will but God's, and by discipline has been brought to 
 a loving and cheerful obedience ? 
 
XXIII. 
 
 CULTURE OP A HOLY LIFE. 
 
 " The boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars."— Ps. lxxx. 10. 
 
 IF you had presented you from some kind and generous 
 friend, some very precious shrub or plant which he 
 had brought you from a distant land, and you had planted 
 it in a favored spot in your garden, how carefully 
 would you watch over it, and study how you might pro- 
 tect it from exposure, and encourage its growth ! It 
 might not yet have produced fruit or flower ; it might, 
 indeed, be little more than a sightless homely root, but 
 assured that it was capable of a bloom as exquisite as 
 nature can boast, or a fruit as luscious as the tropics can 
 produce — how deeply would you be affected by anything 
 which tended to injure it ! 
 
 Need I say that if the seed of God's truth has been 
 planted in your heart, and the Spirit of God has caused 
 it to germinate, you have there in that invisible garden 
 of which God has constituted you the keeper, a plant 
 that outrivals in worth anything that is brought from 
 distant continents or the islands of the sea.. Let it grow 
 as it ought, and its bloom is richer than that of the rose ; 
 its fragrance is sweeter than that of orange bowers ; and 
 its fruits have no parallel even in the fabled gardens of 
 the Hesperides. It comes from far. It is an exotic 
 
 091) 
 
192 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 
 
 from heaven. It is watered by the blood of redemption 
 It is fanned by the breath of the Spirit, and its garnered 
 harvests are the treasures of immortal blessedness be- 
 yond the grave. 
 
 Such a plant as this demands your care. No worm 
 should gnaw its root ; no mildew should blight its vigor ; 
 no tempest should rend its limbs. No culture of other 
 plants should interfere with your culture of this. Better 
 let them be overgrown or dwarfed, or left to perish, than 
 allow this to suffer from neglect. 
 
 It is possible that you have no such plant to care for 
 or cherish. You may possibly never have spent a 
 thought on procuring it. There are many things planted 
 in the garden of your heart, but this is not there. There 
 are domestic affections, love of father, mother, brother, 
 sister, child, or friend — but not love of God. There is 
 delight in pleasure, not delight in holiness ; desire for 
 gain, not desire for heaven. What does this mean? 
 Are you giving up God's garden to waste ? Are you 
 surrendering to grass, if not weeds, soil that might pro- 
 duce the very fruits of heaven itself? Have you allowed 
 a barren fig-tree to grow where a tree of life ought 
 to be ? 
 
 I go in the spring time into the little yard where you 
 have what you call your garden. It is perhaps a very 
 small patch of ground — possibly only a rod or two 
 square. I look and see how carefully you have filled it 
 up. You have not been content with the seed that came 
 first at hand. You have deliberated and asked yourself 
 what is it best to put in the narrow plat. You wanted 
 to make the most of it, if it was small, and so you 
 selected the choicest seeds and roots. There is no wild 
 flower there. There is no unsightly or fruitless plant there. 
 
CULTURE OF A HOLT LIFE. i 93 
 
 Do you deal so carefully with that little plot of 
 ground, and so carelessly with the garden of your own 
 soul — broad enough for the harvests of coming years, 
 rich enough to support the tree of life? There is no 
 other soil like it. Western prairies are deserts to it. 
 Mind, as mind, furnishes no parallel. The heart is in- 
 comparably richer than all. It might under fitting cul- 
 ture produce the fruits of everlasting life. 
 
 And have you left it to its own rank and, perhaps, 
 noxious growths ? Have you suffered your own natural 
 desires to spring up there almost unchecked ? God for- 
 bid that such a record should last one day longer ! 
 
 But I will venture to suppose that there is something 
 there beside the seeds of selfishness and irreligion, and 
 the growths of worldliness. You have a conscience. 
 Have you cultivated that? A man who will not be 
 suspected of fanaticism at least, has said of himself : — 
 " A little boy in petticoats, in my fourth year, my father 
 sent me from the field, home. A spotted tortoise, in 
 shallow water, at the foot of the rodora, caught my 
 attention, and I lifted my stick to strike it, when a voice 
 within me said, 'It is wrong.' I stood with uplifted 
 stick, in wonder at the new emotion, till rodora and the 
 tortoise vanished from my sight. 
 
 " I hastened home and asked my mother what it was 
 that told me it was wrong. 
 
 " Wiping a tear from her eye, and taking me in her 
 arms, she said, ' Some men call it conscience, but I prefer 
 to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you 
 listen to it and obey it, then it will speak clearer, and 
 always guide you right. But if you turn a deaf ear, or 
 disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and leave 
 you in the dark without a guide.' " 
 9 
 
i 9 4 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Is not conscience something to be cultivated ? Guard 
 it inviolate — there is not a more tender and yet more 
 precious plant on which you can bestow your care. 
 
 But has not the seed of God's holy truth been planted 
 in your soul ? Have you not heard words from heaven 
 unspeakably more valuable than any seed sent from 
 China, or India, or our western coasts — words that in 
 other hearts, under the dews of grace and the breath of 
 the Spirit, have ripened into penitence and love, and 
 self-denial, and Christ-like charities — words that have 
 become the mottoes of Brainerds and Howards and Mar- 
 tyns — the watchwords of missionaries and martyrs — the 
 light of youth and the staff of age — the sword of the 
 warrior or the banner of the victor ? You have heard 
 these words. Have you allowed them to take root in 
 your heart, the very soil God designed for them, or are 
 they to-day devoured by the crows or left parching in 
 the sun ? 
 
 Perhaps you have some faint feeble desire after a bet- 
 ter portion. So have I seen the little tender plant under 
 heaps of rubbish, struggling with natural instinct to find 
 its way underneath fragments or through crevices up to 
 the light. Under years of worldliness this feeble desire 
 is almost buried, but a mother's hand planted it, and a 
 mother's tears watered it, perhaps, and it is not quite 
 dead yet. Will you let it die? Will you thwart it 
 still ? Oh, beware how you crush it to the dust ! Let 
 it perish — and perhaps it is near it now, and what spring 
 time shall ever revive it ? 
 
 But is there indeed a germ of genuine penitence in 
 your soul ? Is love to God rooted there, however feebly ? 
 Does the purpose — no dried leaf, no dead fossil — live 
 there to serve your Maker — to glorify the great Being in 
 
CULTURE OF A HOLT LIFE. i 95 
 
 whose hand your breath is ? Then it is more than whole 
 burnt-offerings and sacrifices. He that will not break 
 the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax will account 
 more of that than of the cattle upon a thousand hills. 
 The broken and the contrite heart he will not despise. 
 The germ of faith, of the new life of the soul, is unspeak- 
 ably precious. From the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop 
 on the wall, there is no other like it. Its value is beyond 
 the power of words to express. It is the one thing that 
 turns life's desert sands to more than golden drift. It 
 sanctifies the dross and drudgery of life. Its roots 
 should run their fibres underneath all your plans and 
 draw into themselves the love and energy and strength 
 of the soul, till the crude moisture of the sod is changed 
 into the golden fruitage of a second Eden. 
 
 Your great business here is to nurture that germ, to 
 cultivate that shoot, to train it up into a tree of life that 
 shall bear fruit for God and heaven. You can neglect 
 it. Many do. You can leave it unprotected to the rob- 
 bers of the air and street, the crows of the wilderness or 
 the vultures of gain. You can take no pains to bring 
 the waters of the river of God into channels flowing by 
 its roots ; you can let the fiery arrows of the tempter 
 whistle through it and strip its boughs. You can indeed 
 — -just by neglect — make it the worldling's bye-word, a 
 half-decayed stump that does little more than mark the 
 place where a Christian ought to grow ! But is this 
 worthy of a soul endowed of God as yours is ? worthy 
 of such capacities as yours — worthy the seed sown that 
 was brought from heaven — worthy the blood by which it 
 was watered — worthy the harvest you would hope to 
 reap when death comes to tell you that the seed time of 
 life has forever fled ? 
 
; 
 
 l 9 6 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Nothing is plainer than that if a man wants to have 
 the plant of piety grow in his soul, he must cultivate it. 
 It is not enough to attend on ordinances. These are 
 needful. They are like light and warmth to the plant. 
 But light and warmth are not enough. Plant your corn, 
 and give it unshadowed to the sun. Will it grow? 
 Yes, but if let alone it will grow spindling, and the 
 weeds will overtop it, and its rich green will change to 
 sickly hue, and there will be no corn on the stalk. I 
 will, in fact, be stubble and nothing more. So, if you 
 would grow in grace, you must keep the soil of the plant 
 stirred and loose, you must cut down the weeds — root 
 out tares — and see that the parched earth is fed with 
 moisture. 
 
 You must meditate on duty, and sin, and God. The 
 hour of meditation is like that evening hour when all 
 nature with open lips drinks in the dews. The patriarch 
 went forth to meditate at evening tide. His soul could 
 harmonize with the scene. That solemn hush of the 
 world, when nature seems to shut her eyelids, and sink 
 to silent repose, has its meaning. The constant glare of 
 the sunshine would kill a plant. You want rest-from the 
 glare of business and fashion. You want your hour of 
 sacred repose. Step aside from the busy throng, and 
 think what you are, a sinner — what you need, grace — 
 whose you are, Christ's — what you hope to be, a re- 
 deemed spirit before the throne. Let the world's echoes 
 die away, till you can hear the still small voice. With- 
 draw from all human presence till you feel that you are 
 alone with the Omnipotent. Go up into the mount — 
 higher — higher — till you tread the world beneath your 
 feet, or look down on it as a tinselled cheat, or see it lost 
 in the overpowering glories of eternity, like a spot on 
 
CULTURE OF A HOLY LIFE. 
 
 197 
 
 the disk of the sun. Then may the dews of grace fall, 
 as the dews of heaven do in the still hour, refreshing, 
 cheering, joyous. 
 
 Store your mind with God's own truth. This supplies 
 the vital sap of the soul. Let every fibre of your spirit 
 drink it in, and you shall grow in grace and knowledge 
 at once. " There is but one book," said the dying novel- 
 ist, when he was asked what he would hear read. There 
 is but one book that is full of God, or which can fill us 
 with all His fullness. Read it. Ponder it. Not Plato 
 or Bacon, or Addison, but He that spake as never man 
 spake — speaks there. Go up with Him to the mount, and 
 hear His sermon. Sit with Him at the table and listen 
 to His words. Walk with Him in the fields and read 
 His paragraphs syllabled in flowers, and tares and fig- 
 trees. Take David's harp and sweep its strings to the 
 music, "The Lord is my shepherd." Sit at Isaiah's feet 
 and bow and adore, while he unveils the glorious great- 
 ness of Him " who weigheth the mountains in scales and 
 the hills in a balance." Or go visit Paul in the chill 
 prison where he writes for his cloak, but puts forth the 
 jubilant song of the triumphant warrior who has " fought 
 the good fight," and even with his manacled hand is 
 already grasping his crown. That is reading the Bible. 
 That is the work of the soul taking wing on the pinions 
 of holy thought, soaring up to God on the lofty aspira- 
 tions of the saints, on " winged words" plumed by God's 
 own Spirit inbreathed into his own prophets and apostles. 
 
 You may find good books if you seek them — books 
 that will cheer you, instruct you, refresh your spirit — 
 books that, as William Wirt once said of Baxter's 
 " Saint's Rest," are " like a piece of old sandal wood, 
 fragrant as ever after it has exhaled its fragrance for 
 
198 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 . 
 
 centuries.' 7 But among all these there is no Bible. 
 They are precious indeed ; they are like the bayous 
 formed by the overflowing of the " Father of Waters/ 7 for 
 they are fed from the " River of Life." They are buckets- 
 full drawn from the well of truth, but Christ alone is the 
 living fountain. He is the vine ; they are the branches. 
 Watts may sing his sweetest songs ; Toplady, like the 
 dying swan, may breathe into your soul the music of 
 " Rock of Ages cleft for me" ; Doddridge may trace for 
 you the " Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," till 
 the feeble germ has expanded to a cedar in the garden 
 of God, and Baxter, with his " Dying Thoughts," may 
 hold you spell-bound at the very gates of glory or on the 
 edge of the mouth of the pit — but not one of them all 
 can speak like the prophet with his fire-touched lips — 
 can transport you to behold Patmos visions — can awe 
 you with the blended authority and grace of Him, whose 
 dying agony evoked the sympathy of the rending earth 
 and the darkened sky. 
 
 Read His words. Read God's utterance through the 
 pens of all the inspired writers. It is like the breath 
 of spring to winter's blasted herbage. The soul freshens 
 and blooms under it, and he that bears the best and 
 noblest fruit of a devoted Christian life is he that is 
 most devoutly conversant with the Divine word. 
 
XXIV. 
 
 THE LIFE POUNDED ON CHRIST. 
 
 "If any man build on this foundation." — 1 Cor. iii. 12. 
 
 THE Christian life is presented by Paul under the 
 figure of a house, the foundation of which is laid 
 in Jesus Christ — the experience of the truth of Christ as 
 our atoning sacrifice and Redeemer. No man can lay 
 any other foundation than this, that is, there is no possi- 
 ble basis of a Christian life which does not rest in the 
 experienced power of the Gospel. Men may go and con- 
 struct a life of what are called " good works " without that 
 experience which implies of necessity a change of heart, 
 but if so, they are only like the foolish man, of whom our 
 Saviour spoke, who built his house upon the sand. They 
 have, in reality, no foundation. They build on a mere show 
 of one — sand or shadow, — and all their work, however 
 costly, however laborious, however pleasing to the eye, is 
 no better than " the baseless fabric of a vision." It is a 
 mere picture to look at — made to perish. The man that 
 has it may regard it with much self-complacency. He 
 may sometimes, like the Pharisee in the parable, admire 
 himself in admiring it. But it is mere show ; it will be 
 swept away and perish. 
 
 It is essential to a building that is to stand that it have 
 a solid foundation. This is true of the structure of a 
 Christian life. You cannot build it up on the mud and 
 
 (199) 
 
200 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 rubbish of an unrenewed nature. Men that have begun 
 to build without being- converted, without having dug 
 deeper than the eye of man reaches, find, at last, that 
 they might have as well ended where they began. They 
 have put them up a mere tent instead of a house, and 
 when the storm comes they are buried in the wreck. 
 That foundation on which the Christian architect builds 
 is Jesus Christ, that is, his experience of Christ as his 
 Saviour. You may call it what you will, conversion, the 
 new birth, repentance, experience of religion, or some 
 other name, the substance of it is the same ; it is Christ 
 in the heart ; Christ the wisdom of God and the power 
 of God to salvation ; Christ our atoning sacrifice ; Christ 
 our Redeemer from the curse of the law. There may be 
 moral men, amiable men, benevolent and charitable men, 
 who do not have this ; but you cannot call them Chris- 
 tian men. Their life, admirable in some respects, is not 
 a Christian life. The structure they build may be a 
 splendid Pantheon or museum, but it is not a Christian 
 temple. They have not the foundation for it, the plan 
 for it. They may show skill and taste. They may use 
 labor and diligence, but the Christian corner-stone is 
 wanting, and when the test hour comes they will find 
 it so. 
 
 The necessary basis for us on which to build, is one 
 which implies an entire change of ruling purpose. A 
 man comes out of the darkness into the light. He seen 
 himself no longer an irresponsible, independent, isolated 
 being, but a creature and subject of God. He sees what 
 he was made for, and how he has neglected to live for it. 
 He sees himself a sinner, with the prospect of retribution 
 before him — a transgressor of God's law and God his 
 judge, — and, thus enlightened, he finds Christ a Saviour 
 
 
BUILDING ON CHRIST. 201 
 
 opening the way of pardon, pointing hiin to heaven, set- 
 ting before him a hope full of immortality. He sees him- 
 self arraigned before the judgment-seat, without a refuge 
 save in the blood of the covenant, and now time shrinks 
 to a span, and eternity spreads out into an ocean, and the 
 infinite littleness of earth is contrasted with the infinite 
 greatness of heaven, and he begins with new plans to live 
 as under God's eye, and as he directs. He has found the 
 way of peace and pardon. He has entered into a new 
 world of invisible realities. Christ is everything to him, 
 life, pardon, hope, fruition, blessedness. Christ is his 
 Friend, Example, Teacher, Redeemer, Mediator, Inter- 
 cessor. Christ's word is his law, and Christ's smile his 
 reward. He can say with Paul, " for me to live is 
 Christ." All that he is or has or can do, belongs to 
 Christ. Christ is his strength, his refuge, his portion. 
 What a structure may be built on this foundation ! 
 What noble piles have some men, by the grace of God, 
 reared on it — monuments of piety which have come down 
 to our day, and before which we stand and gaze with ad- 
 miring wonder. Select out of all the cities of the old 
 world the grandest structures of architectural genius that 
 have challenged admiration ; bring together at a single 
 view all that Thebes, Palmyra, Babylon, Nineveh, Jerusa- 
 lem, Athens or Rome could exhibit in their palmiest days, 
 all that has combined beauty, and vastness, and artistic 
 proportion, and when all has been exhibited, I will show 
 you something better, something greater, something more 
 admirable. By the side of the dome of St. Peter's, I will 
 bring the life of the ingenious dreamer, the humble tinker 
 of Bedford, and in the life of Wilberforce, I will show 
 you a loftier art than graced the achievement of the 
 builder of St. Paul's. The man that has built himself up 
 9* 
 
202 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 a life like that of Baxter, has done more than the skill of 
 Sir Christopher Wren ever achieved. When Howard 
 wrote beneath his name that characteristic sentence, 
 11 Christ is my hope," he pointed out the only foundation 
 on which a life like his can be built. Let me pass along 
 through the streets of the great cities of the world, where 
 splendid piles of architecture in granite or in marble 
 throw their huge shadows across my path, and yet I shall 
 feel that they are a poor sight, a meagre achievement, 
 by the side of what meets my eye when in my walks in 
 humble life, I see the forms of love, and self-denial, and 
 godly devotion, built up by unnoted hands on the rock 
 of our Christian faith. Walk along the path of the cen- 
 turies from eighteen hundred years ago down to this pres- 
 ent, and pass in review " the noble army of martyrs," and 
 Christian confessors, building up out of these hard years 
 of probation, with all their temptations, hardships and 
 discouragements, lives of heroic faith, that have stood, and 
 still stand like pillars of witness, to tell the world what 
 can be built on the Gospel corner-stone. Buried in an ob- 
 scurity that no antiquarian disturbs, and which will never 
 be dispelled, unless God gives tongues to the stone walls 
 of dungeons, or the rocks of the wilderness, or the scat- 
 tered dust-atoms of heath, moor and glen — there are, 
 waiting a resurrection, biographies of unknown men, who 
 in toil, and hardship, and self-denial, under the conscious- 
 ness of God's all-beholding eye have accomplished their 
 lifework, and left in the bosom of their unfrequented val- 
 leys the memories of holy faith and love and communion 
 with heaven more precious and beautiful, if we should 
 dig them out even in fragments by our careful research, 
 than anything which buried cities like Nineveh have 
 yielded to the museums of art. If an angel could become 
 
 
BUILDING ON CERIbT. 203 
 
 a pedestrian on our planet, we may well believe that 
 while he might pass with a mere glance the houses and 
 palaces of kings, he would find in lives that will have no 
 headstone to record their memory, that, over which he 
 would pore like Old Mortality cutting out afresh the 
 moss-grown letters on the tombstones of the martyrs. 
 
 But much as we must admire what some of Christ's 
 disciples have done — much as we may wonder at the 
 structures of penitence and self-denial and charity and 
 beneficence and holy devotion, that have been built by 
 good men on the rock Christ Jesus, who will say that all 
 has been achieved that may be ? Who will venture to 
 assert that there is not strength in those foundations suf- 
 ficient to bear up manifold more than ever yet has been 
 placed upon them ? Surely not these men, who, after all 
 they have done, lament their shortcomings — not the Pauls 
 and the Baxters and the Howes and the Paysons and the 
 Brainerds, who could all feel their own deficiencies, con- 
 fessing — " not as though I had already attained" — even 
 while exclaiming, "I can do all things through Christ 
 that strengthened me !" 
 
 And what may not, and what ought not, that man to 
 accomplish in living, who builds on the received princi- 
 ples of the Gospel of Christ — the man who takes to his 
 heart the great truth that Jesus saves him from sin and 
 death through the sacrifice of himself, and who regard- 
 ing him as his example is impelled by love and gratitude 
 and conviction to strive to be like him ? Tell me if there 
 be anything in the whole world that ought to make a 
 man so holy, that should exert upon him so benign an influ- 
 ence, as what he finds in the self-denial and condescen- 
 sion and purity and heavenliness of the Son of God ? Is 
 there not that glory and radiance in the face of this doc- 
 
204 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 trine of an atoning Redeemer, that, shining upon us, 
 ought to change us into the image of the heavenly from 
 glory to glory ? And where on earth will you go to find 
 stronger or more eifective motives than those which grow 
 out of the conviction that we are not our own, but are 
 bought with a price — motives that ally eternity with 
 time and come bearing down upon us with the force of 
 the infinite ? What ought the life of that man to be who 
 feels himself indebted for being, for saving grace and 
 immortal hope, to the love of God in Christ — whose daily 
 if not hourly song of thanksgiving is — ■" He hath taken 
 me out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and hath 
 set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings, and 
 he hath put a new song into my mouth, even praise unto 
 our God." 
 
 What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy 
 conversation and godliness, — ye who confess yourselves 
 to be indebted for everything to the Holy One who re- 
 deemed you — ye who can well be supposed to forget the 
 lighter vanities of earth in view of that far more exceed- 
 ing and eternal weight of glory — ye whose treasures are 
 spiritual, and whose hope immortal, and whose home a 
 house not made with hands ; how contemptible in your 
 eyes should appear all the mightiest motives of ambition 
 or of worldly good, before the word and ordinance of 
 Him who " hath the key of life, who openeth and no man 
 shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth !" 
 
 When I consider the several doctrines, the reception 
 and adoption of which are implied in a Christian pro- 
 fession — our fall by nature — our state of condemnation 
 under the law, the infinite greatness and holiness of our 
 Sovereign, whom we have disobeyed — the wonderful con- 
 descension of Christ — his atonement for the sins of men, 
 
 
BUILDING ON CHRIST. 
 
 205 
 
 the complete justification that attends faith in his finished 
 work — the hope and peace that flow from the conscious- 
 ness of submission in everything to the divine will — the 
 immortal portion of the believer in the kingdom of God, 
 after he has been judged and been declared " accepted in 
 the Beloved" — when I consider these several doctrines 
 in their grandeur and the mutual relation they bear to 
 one another, all having an evident reference and adapta- 
 tion to the death of Christ, I seem to see them all like 
 so many huge foundation stones resting upon and fitted 
 to one another, and all connected with the chief corner- 
 stone, and I feel that he who would build upon them in 
 justice to their true proportions, will rear such a struc- 
 ture of religious doing and enduring, of heavenly-minded 
 beneficence, and of saintly purity and love, as can find 
 nothing but the merest and feeblest symbol of it in all 
 the shapes of beauty and of grandeur into which the 
 marble has been piled, and I feel that no architect, of 
 however exalted a name, can be compared for a single 
 moment with him who in the humbleness of the obscurest 
 lot — true to the plan of his great Teacher — cuts the years 
 of his probation into living stones that will but shine in 
 a brighter and more lasting beauty, when the fires of the 
 last conflagration shall have helped Time to do his work 
 of destruction on the crumbling palaces of the kings and 
 the nobles of the earth. 
 
 Can you conceive of a nobler ideal than is set before 
 you in the life to which the doctrines of Christ as our 
 Redeemer point the way — and can you wish for yourself 
 anything better, or more blessed, than to realize that 
 ideal, so that your life shall stand out at last in the full 
 and finished proportions of a temple — ever resounding 
 with praise — ever sanctified by the indwelling of the 
 
206 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Shekinah of the divine presence — bearing the imprint of 
 consecrated purpose upon every fragment even to the 
 topstone laid with shoutings of " grace, grace unto it?" 
 
 When I hear men talk in the pride of human reason, 
 and under the guise of a human philosophy concerning a 
 perfect manhood, I cannot but revert to the better philos- 
 ophy of the Christian system, for I find there the only 
 true and proper basis on which that perfect manhood can 
 rest ; I find there the only power that can use the Ar- 
 chimedes lever of morals, and lift man out of the mud 
 and slough of his native corruption and set him on the 
 solid foundation, the rock Christ Jesus. I know that the 
 motives of the Gospel have done and can do this, and I 
 know by the testimony of holy men, as well as from their 
 direct tendency and efficiency, that their power is not 
 exhausted. What they have done, that they can do, and 
 more. Time holds in her repository of the future more 
 perfect types of a sanctified humanity, perhaps, than any 
 she has yet shown us. If nature has not exhausted her- 
 self of all her Sir Christopher Wrens and Michael An- 
 gelos, grace may, we will hope, yet present us with other 
 Howes and Bunyans, other Dwights and Paysons — men 
 that shall rise to a saintlier greatness while they rest on 
 the Rock of Ages. And should you not be among them ? 
 
 But let us consider what sort of use is made of this 
 incomparable foundation. All sorts of structures are 
 built upon it — " gold, silver, precious stones, hay, wood, 
 stubble." You have only to glance at the Christian 
 world to see what this means. Some use this foundation 
 well, others ill. Among the multitudes truly converted, 
 as we have reason to believe, there are great diversities 
 of character. Some go on toward perfection, while others 
 stop short and never seem to advance in the Christian life. 
 
BUILDING ON GHRI8T. 207 
 
 There are some who build with worthless material, 
 and in a most clumsy and unworkmanlike manner. If 
 they use anything, it is the hay, wood and stubble. They 
 throw upon this foundation all sorts of rubbish and be- 
 come the architects of confusion and ruin, rather than of 
 order. Their lives, if you examine them with a Christian 
 scrutiny, are piles of loose material, without fashioning 
 or fitting of part to part. You could not select a word 
 more aptly expressive, as applied to them, than stubble. 
 They contribute nothing to what should be the structure 
 of a Christian life, but refuse material, straw and chaff 
 that can be shaped to no useful end. What would you 
 think of a carpenter who should go out into the harvest 
 field, instead of the forest and the quarry, and glean up 
 the trampled straw to fashion it into a building ? You 
 would pronounce him mad. You would call it trifling 
 and mockery ; and so it would be. A spark of fire fall- 
 ing on his gathered rubbish would set it on fire, and turn 
 it to ashes. But if that was spared — imagine him with 
 saw and chisel attempting to put the material together. 
 His foundation is furnished him and he will make a stub- 
 ble palace. The very idea is absurd ; but not more ab- 
 surd than the course of some, who profess to live for God 
 — to shape their life into a structure of holy devotion, 
 yet only scrape together a mass of straw and chaff. It 
 is obvious that their profession — as to the breadth of 
 it — is a mistake. They are largely after the world. 
 Their ambition is to accumulate so much property, repre- 
 sented by such and such pieces of paper — in other words, 
 stubble. All their energies are tasked and devoted to 
 the accumulation of wealth. Let us conceive of them at 
 the close of their career. Their probation is ended. 
 Their life's work is finished. The structure of their toil 
 
LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 is complete, and what is it? A heap of incongruous, 
 chaffy, worthless material ! On a Christian foundation 
 they have built up a worldly life. Vain and unworthy 
 aims have intermingled with it. To be rich or envied or 
 honored of men — to enjoy the pleasures or indulge in the 
 fashions of the world, has absorbed their efforts. Day 
 after day they have seemed to forget that they were con- 
 secrated architects. You might imagine that their high- 
 est aim was to gather straw like the Israelites in Egypt 
 to make brick. Men look at them as patterns not of 
 Christian living but of industry and business tact. They 
 admire their skill, not their devotion. They quote them 
 as authority in trade, not in religion. It is possible that 
 even this may be too favorable a judgment. They may 
 be more intent on ease and luxury and pleasure than on 
 industry and exertion. Now what will be their view of 
 themselves when they come to die ? In that honest hour 
 how will they estimate what they have sought to accom- 
 plish ? It is sad and mortifying to consider. Will they 
 not wish that the last years of their life had been denied 
 them — that they had been taken out of the world be- 
 fore they had dishonored their profession by heaping on 
 it all sorts of vanity and confusion ? Will they not be 
 constrained to feel, if they do not say, like a celebrated 
 French marshal, " My life has been a failure ?" 
 
 And now shall I give you the image of such a life ? — 
 a life that we will suppose has at some time or other felt 
 the powers of the life to come ? Paul has done it for 
 you. It is a foundation of rock covered with stubble — 
 and so covered that perhaps it would require some labor 
 to clear away the rubbish and let men see what lies be- 
 neath. Am I severe in this? No more so than the 
 Apostle — not half so severe as the unfortunate builders 
 
BUILDING ON CHRIST. 209 
 
 are on themselves. You would shudder to hear the sen- 
 tence which they have sometimes pronounced on their 
 own life. With all their years of skill and toil they have 
 only labored to cover up with chaff and all sorts of un- 
 worthy things the only ^precious thing they had — the 
 experience of the grace of God. 
 
 But let us turn to others. Few will say, " I have done 
 all I could. I have made of my life all that could have 
 been made of it." The best men shrink from this. Those 
 who do not, create strong suspicion that they do not 
 know themselves. Still there are those whose lives are 
 precious — Time's richest jewels. They are gold, silver, 
 precious stones. In attempting to express the value of a 
 truly faithful Christian life, words fail me. I know of 
 no expressions worthy of those that are gems in the Re- 
 deemer's crown, and having turned many to righteousness 
 shall shine as the stars forever and ever. Take some 
 humble private individual like Harlan Page, noiselessly 
 pursuing his career of unostentatious Christian action — 
 full of faith and prayer — ever studious of saving souls 
 — dropping a word here or there like a harvest seed — 
 studying opportunities — sparing no effort — tasking every 
 energy for his Master — and when his last work on earth 
 is done, when his last word is spoken, and his last prayer 
 uttered, in the ripeness and symmetry of a perfected 
 Christian character going home to the reward of his 
 Master's smile — and tell me if gold or silver or any of the 
 precious things of earth are fit symbols of its unspeakable 
 worth, of its untold blessings ? You might divide it up 
 into infinitesimal fractions, and every one of these frac- 
 tions would be of greater positive value than the lives 
 of some men of world-wide fame — and some who profess 
 to be Christian disciples. 
 
2 1 o LIFE LE880NS. 
 
 There are again some lives that are, if we may say so, 
 valuable and worthless at the same time, and, like credi- 
 tor and debtor pages, balance off one another. Some 
 men from lack of discretion, or from uncontrolled im- 
 pulse, undo at one time what they do at another. A man 
 may engage with great zeal in the work of God in a time 
 of revival, only to borrow an authority and influence for 
 his irreligious, or at least worldly example, afterward. 
 You can quote him on both sides of the same question. 
 It is like light and darkness commingled. His life is a 
 dim twilight in fact — for night and day meet together in 
 him. One rash act, or a series of such, counteracts all 
 his better effort. He is at last but a cypher — not always 
 on the right side at that. There are some men of this 
 stamp that we should rather pity than harshly rebuke. 
 The fault seems rooted in their constitution. Their 
 character is, like a ship under sail, impelled by a breath, 
 or like an immense mass of rock, such as you may have 
 read of, poised by nature so delicately that a child's hand 
 could set it in motion. Still it is a man's duty, in spite 
 of the flaws and crooks and contortions of nature, to 
 yield to the power of grace — to control himself and be 
 consistent at least, if not discreet. And still how often 
 on the mind of others will some act of a Christian pro- 
 fessor counteract all the good influence he has ever ex- 
 erted before ! His extravagance of dress, perhaps, is an 
 outward denial of his former words — a visible symbol 
 of a false heart. His gay, vain, trifling manner seems 
 to say — " My profession of being serious is a jest too." 
 His conversation and prayers — his conduct and profes- 
 sion look two different ways. His taste for worldly 
 pleasures seems to say — " There are no joys at God's 
 right hand " — his thirst for gain — " There are no trea- 
 
 
BUILDING ON CHEIbT. 211 
 
 sures in heaven." His readiness to judge others harshly — 
 " I do not expect to be judged by the measure I mete," 
 his readiness to take advantages unwarranted by fair 
 dealing — " The rule is absurd of doing to others as you 
 would have them do to you." Now if in such a life you 
 discover only a spasmodic piety — a sort of galvanic dis- 
 tortion of muscles instead of healthy action — you must 
 not be surprised. There is life enough to be galvanized — 
 not enough to act. 
 
 Hence it is that you may find the Church of Christ 
 itself so various and diversified — gold, silver, precious 
 stones — hay, wood, stubble. Walk through the streets 
 of a great city, and you will see the diversified character 
 of its dwellings representing the diversified phases of 
 Christian life. Some are palaces, some are hovels. Some 
 are built of stone — some are mere tinder. Some excite 
 your admiration, others your aversion, if not disgust. 
 Perhaps you will say it must be so. But why? Here is 
 the foundation on the Eternal rock. Why not build 
 upon it that which shall endure ? 
 
 But the matter is not merely speculative. We are 
 builders, all of us. Some have this foundation — some 
 not. If you are building without it, all you build is 
 sure to perish, and your own soul will be buried in the 
 ruins. Is it not time to know on what you build — - 
 whether you have yet experienced on your heart the 
 power of the Gospel — whether your soul has been con- 
 secrated to God and His service ? How sad the thought 
 that you have only lived to destroy your immortal hope — 
 that you have enjoyed a probation only to be proved a 
 reprobate — built up a structure of irreligion which shall 
 fall upon your head and crush you to despair ! There 
 is no other foundation to build on than the rock Christ 
 
212 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Jesus. Everything else is sand or mire. Scht ^e out 
 your life of pleasure — it is the baseless fabric of a vision. 
 If you know not what it is to feel the power of the Gospel 
 in changing your own heart — you are living to no good 
 purpose — you are wasting — infinitely worse than wasting 
 — all your toil. 
 
 But suppose you have the foundation. You have been 
 converted to God. You know what it is to have passed 
 from death unto life. What are you doing now? What 
 are you building on this foundation — what have you built 
 already? Have you followed the plans of the Great 
 Architect? Are you building for eternity? Are you 
 gathering and rearing an edifice of durable material? 
 What will remain of your work when life is over ? The 
 man that does his work as a Christian, will rear that 
 which can never perish. Worldly men scratch their 
 names on the sand of the sea-shore, and the next wave 
 washes out what they have done. But if you perfect your 
 own soul in righteousness — if you live a life of devotion 
 and prayer — if you leave the impress of a hallowed in- 
 fluence on the minds of others, your work will endure. 
 The fires of the last day will not consume it. It will 
 attest in the judgment your fidelity to your Master. 
 
 But if it be otherwise — even if your own soul is saved, 
 which is barely possible, your work will perish. You 
 will see it all melt away and vanish. It will consume 
 like the stubble. It will be a pile of ashes. The winds 
 will scatter and drift it away. And where will you be — 
 if saved, yet saved so as by fire — like a man escaping 
 from the flames and leaving all behind ? 
 
 Remember what a firm and noble foundation is yours. 
 It is the Rock of Ages. It will sustain a devoted, faith- 
 ful life. Let your career, then, be worthy of it. 
 
XXV. 
 
 THE LIVING TEMPLE. 
 
 " Ye are the temple of God." — 1 Cor. iii. 16. 
 
 ONE of the finest passages in the writings of that 
 grand old Puritan, John Howe, is the one in which 
 he describes the desolating, ruining effect of sin upon the 
 soul of man, which he compares to the unsightly remains 
 of a decayed and neglected temple. It was destined to 
 a noble use — the worship and service of the Most High. 
 But it has become desecrated and polluted. Even in its 
 ruins, however, something of its old grandeur clings to 
 its crumbling walls and its fallen pillars. " The stately 
 ruins are visible to every eye, that bear in their front 
 (yet extant) this doleful inscription — Herb God once 
 dwelt. Enough appears of the admirable frame and 
 structure of the soul of man to show the divine presence 
 did sometime reside in it ; more than enough of vicious 
 depravity, to proclaim he is now retired and gone.' 7 
 
 What thoughtful mind does not feel the truth of this ? 
 The soul of man is the most wonderful of all God's 
 works. It was intended for his special service, and was 
 made the object of his special favor. It has become pol- 
 luted and desolate, and the object of Christ and of the 
 Gospel is to purify it again for himself. 
 
 The soul of man is the most wonderful and admirable 
 of God's works. 
 
 (213) 
 
LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 Which is greatest, St. Paul's Cathedral or its archi 
 tect — St. Peter's, or the genius of Michael Angelo that 
 spanned its lofty dome ? There are human works that 
 hold us spell-bound by their beauty or their grandeur 
 while we gaze upon them. What must Solomon's temple 
 have been, which a Roman emperor strove to save from 
 the flaming torch ? What is the Taj of India with its 
 massive walls, its stainless marble, and its grand propor- 
 tions ? Yet these are all inferior to the architect's ideal. 
 In his own mind are thoughts greater than can be hewn 
 or piled in stone. 
 
 The painter, the sculptor, each produces works which 
 entrance us almost. They are called " masterpieces." 
 But what is the confession of their authors ? The rude 
 stone is not plastic enough to yield back the pattern of 
 their nobler thought. The mind, the mind is greater 
 than all. 
 
 But what are human works to God's works ? What 
 are the pillars of Karnac and Luxor to the pillars of the 
 mountains ? What is the painting of the ocean in storms 
 to the grand original ? What is a sun on the canvass to 
 a sun in the heavens? What is the cannon's roar to 
 God's thunders and earthquakes ? Without lifting our 
 eyes to the broad heavens or surveying the lofty and 
 overpowering proportions of nature's great temple, this 
 earth we tread, with its rivers and lakes, its cliffs and 
 mountains, pours contempt on temples, and palaces, and 
 pyramids, and Chinese walls. 
 
 But the soul of man rises sublime above all these. It 
 weighs the globe as it were in scales. It soars to im- 
 mensity. It travels back to an eternity past, or antici- 
 pates an eternity to come. It glows with love, or burns 
 with lofty passion. Its spiritual history is the romance 
 
THE LIVING TEMPLE. 215 
 
 of creation, before which the story of land or sea, of 
 monsters or earthquakes grows tame ; and even in 
 thought it stands on the ashes of a cindered globe, ex- 
 ultant in a destiny that has just begun when worlds 
 have ceased to be. It is grander than the mountains, 
 richer than the mine, brighter than the jewel, and 
 more glorious, when consecrated to its true end, than 
 all the array of suns and stars. It is the crown of 
 creative might. It is "the jewel in the ring of the 
 world." It is the picture for which the wealth of 
 Croesus, the power of Cassar and the splendors of empire 
 can furnish no fitting frame. Even with all these, it may 
 well seem like a gem set in clay. When its true worth 
 is developed, it pours contempt on them all. 
 
 Without man, without the human soul, what is this 
 globe, but a mere curiosity of creative might ? It is upon 
 the soul that the very wealth of infinite wisdom, power 
 and love seems lavishly poured out. 
 
 But the soul was intended for God's special service, 
 and as the object of his special favor. No one can doubt 
 it. The proof is in its constitution and workmanship. 
 He evidently designed it to be what it is capable of 
 being. And what is that ? Who can tell ? When you 
 see a persecuting Saul become the Apostle Paul, and hear 
 from his saintly lips, amid prison glooms and rigors the 
 language of angelic triumph ; when you find the gentle- 
 ness of the beloved John ripening into a heavenliness of 
 tone and feeling, and hope and joy, till it seems scarcely 
 strange that his Patmos Vision should become a daily 
 experience ; w en you find a plain man like John How- 
 ard, by the power of consecrated charity transformed 
 into an angel of mercy, so that amid the foul air of jails 
 he seems to breathe the atmosphere in which angels 
 
21 6 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 sing ; when you find even commonplace gifts and a com- 
 monplace lot transfigured into the means and features of 
 an earthly paradise by the presence, and prayer, and de- 
 votion of a spirit that has bowed at the cross ; when you 
 see the lowliest of mortals, a servant, or I had almost 
 said a drudge, bearing about with him in his daily petty 
 duties so much of heaven, that the greatest and wisest — 
 like Archbishop Seeker — on a dying bed send for him, 
 that on the fervor of his petition the departing spirit may 
 be borne as it were up to the throne ; who dare say to 
 what any one, even the humblest may not attain • what 
 virtues may not chrystallize into a crown for his brow, 
 what riches of reverence, and love, and unbought honor 
 shall not embalm his memory ? 
 
 Yet all this is only to what fallen man, by the 
 grace of God attains ! Did God create the soul with- 
 out designing this ? Did He make it capable of being 
 a " king and priest unto himself' 7 when He only meant it 
 to drag a muck-rake and gather straw ? Did He endow 
 it with affections that can soar to heaven, when He 
 meant it should scratch the dust and pick at crumbs ? 
 
 No ! The soul of man was meant for all that it is 
 capable of being. And its highest end — by the side of 
 which that of imperial aspirants is but the ambition of 
 an ant-hill — is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. 
 The soul is to be yielded up to God, that His will may 
 work in it and through it. It is to be plastic to the 
 great purpose for which He made it. In a word, it is to 
 be holy as He is holy ; it is to be His consecrated, His 
 living temple — His sacred name inscribed on its portal — 
 all the wealth of time and probation a willing sacrifice 
 upon its altar. 
 
 And how consonant and accordant is this with the 
 
THE LIVING TEMPLE. 217 
 
 majesty of God and the blessedness of man ! A living 
 temple! A human spirit within which the Eternal Spirit 
 condescending will deign to dwell ! 
 
 But is this the state of man's heart by nature ? Has 
 the soul been kept pure and unsullied ? Who does not 
 know that -it has been polluted and profaned? Stand as 
 it were by the door of your heart and watch what goes 
 in and out ? What are your thoughts by day and your 
 dreams by night? Are they of heaven or of earth? 
 Are they pure and self-denying or worldly and selfish ? 
 Do they chime together in one chorus of praise to God, 
 or are they discordant and inharmonious ? Are they of 
 the altar or the market ; of duty or of pleasure, of Christ 
 or of self? 
 
 On the answer to these questions the verdict of your 
 treatment of what God made and designed as His own 
 temple — holier, more precious than human hands ever 
 reared — depends. Have you filled it with the tables of 
 the money changers? Is the voice of your thoughts 
 rather the bleating of flocks than the anthem of praise — 
 the jingling of coin than the voice of prayer ? 
 
 Who is there among us all — where is the most devoted 
 Christian that is not forced to confess to his own shame, 
 that this spiritual temple has been polluted by the pre- 
 sence within it of that which is unholy and impure — 
 thoughts that he cannot approve, passions that he cannot 
 justify, and yet for which he is responsible? It is a 
 humbling confession. Has he betrayed his trust ? Has 
 he, the guardian of that temple, allowed it to be dese- 
 crated ? Has he surrendered it to the foul hoofs of sen- 
 sual and worldly things, till the sacred presence is ex- 
 cluded, and the great inhabitant, the Holy Spirit, has 
 withdrawn ? 
 10 
 
218 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 It was accounted even by heathens a crime of special 
 enormity to desecrate a temple. They called it sacrilege. 
 And what is sin, intruding by your own act into the tem- 
 ple of your soul, denying its altar the sacrifice of a con- 
 trite heart — but just sacrilege ? There is a temple God 
 reared for Himself. And have you installed Mammon 
 within it ? 
 
 There are, doubtless, some hearts eminent for profana- 
 tion. They are dens of malicious and murderous thoughts. 
 Lust, and passion, and appetite, and reckless, Heaven-daring 
 defiance, all are there. Avarice, and selfishness, and gloat- 
 ing revenge are combined there in infernal league. You 
 feel as you approach them that you are on the borders 
 of Pandemonium. How far does a Herod, or a Nero, or 
 a Jeffries, fall short of being a hell incarnate ? We re- 
 gard with a shudder such monstrosities of depravity. 
 We feel that in "the lowest deep" we have found "a deep 
 still lower." And then how startling the thought that 
 sin-polluted shrines, to which the scenes of Bacchanalian 
 orgies might sometimes seem almost like vestal purity, 
 were designed for a hallowed service, were meant as 
 temples of the Holy Ghost ! 
 
 It is true there are lesser degrees of depravity, but the 
 least of them all is a profanation. A sinful thought is 
 a sacrilegious intruder. A selfish aim cannot rank above 
 a money-changer. An idle fancy is a trifler in that sanc- 
 tuary, where every thought, and imagination, and emotion 
 of the heart should bow down and adore. 
 
 Alas for man ! He has become like the temple of Je- 
 rusalem when Christ entered it. Unhallowed passions 
 nestle there. The greed of gain has displaced devotion, 
 and all the activity of the intellect and will, is often only 
 to disobey his Maker. 
 
THE LIVING TEMPLE. 2 i 9 
 
 But the object of the Gospel is to cleanse and restore 
 and re-consecrate it to its proper, its hallowed service. 
 See the ruin, and see at what cost the provision to re- 
 store it is made ! What will effect the result ? Nothing 
 short of the ■ means which God has devised. It is the 
 blood of Jesus Christ that cleanseth from all sin. Noth- 
 ing else does or can. It is the Spirit of God that re- 
 news the heart. None but a divine might can rear again 
 the pillars of resolve, and restore the purity of affection. 
 Have you called for help? Have you applied to the 
 blood of cleansing ? Have you opened your eyes to the 
 greatness of the work? Have you aroused yourself to the 
 urgency of the pressing, solemn duty ? It is that work 
 without which no other work is of any avail. It is in 
 vain to cultivate taste or science. How worthless to 
 wreathe crumbled ruins with the twining ivy, or over- 
 spread them with venerable moss, while on the desecra- 
 ted altar within no sacrifice is laid, and through the 
 hollow vaults echoes no anthem of praise, no note of 
 prayer ! 
 
 Christ comes to your heart to-day. He bids you fit it 
 for His reception, for He would come in and dwell there. 
 It is His Father's house. It is a temple of the Most 
 High. You are its high priest, to offer within it sacri- 
 fices of praise. Will you devote it to the traffic of mam- 
 mon and to the revels of sin ? 
 
XXVI. 
 
 LIYING FOR THE UNSEEN. 
 
 " The things which are not seen are eternal." — 2 Cor. iv. 18. 
 
 MAN occupies a middle point between two worlds, 
 the seen and the unseen. He is himself united to 
 each and compounded of both. He is body and soul, 
 matter and spirit. On one side of him are material 
 things, on the other, spiritual. He stands on the earth 
 yet may commune with heaven. His body allies him to 
 the worm, his spirit to the angel. He is a link between 
 the visible and the invisible, the earthly and the heavenly. 
 Hence, almost as a matter of necessity, he lives in two 
 worlds, sometimes inclining more to one and sometimes 
 to the other. But something, in spite of himself, he has 
 to do with both. The most perfect materialist that ever 
 lived, the veriest miser whose heart was ever cankered 
 by his gold, the bold boasting disbeliever in all spiritual 
 realities, lives more or less in the realm of the invisible. 
 A man's own soul will be a world in itself, a world of 
 unseen things, of thoughts and fancies, of hopes and fears, 
 of speculations and anxieties, of schemes and cares ; a 
 world of light and shade, of day and night, of clouds and 
 sunshine, of storm and calm, of bald mountains and quiet 
 valleys ; a world that would still exist to the soul though 
 the whole outward and material universe were dissolved ; 
 a world which is far more real, important, enduring, in- 
 fluential for good or evil than the globe itself with all 
 
 (220) 
 
LIVING FOB THE UNSEEN. 22 i 
 
 that it contains. Is it not so ? Stop a man's ears, shut 
 him up in total darkness, and into his prison, or into his 
 voiceless solitude, he carries with him in his soul a world 
 echoing with ten thousand voices, and bright or dark 
 with ten thousand scenes of no material landscape. He 
 sees no star-roofed vault above him, but his soul makes 
 its own firmament ; he hears no human utterance, but his 
 soul listens to speech from the invisible and immaterial. 
 If he is a Herod, he will have the hell of his own 
 thoughts around him. If a Stephen, he will gaze up 
 even with sightless eyeballs into an opening heaven. 
 
 Now, there is an infinite wisdom in that order of 
 Providence which brings us into relations with two worlds 
 at once. We are connected with matter in such a way 
 that we may gain and gather out of material things their 
 spiritual significance, and use them as helps by which to 
 climb up to a region of spiritual attainment. We begin 
 an immortal existence in the use and possession of a bod- 
 ily frame, and we keep it just long enough for us, by 
 means of it, to come in contact with the spiritual truths, 
 and laws, and relations that it is most essential for us to 
 know. Sensible things are emblems out of which the soul 
 reads a meaning, because in God's plan they are figures and 
 diagrams by which we solve life's problems, the visible 
 things by which the invisible are demonstrated or ex- 
 plained. The body is a sort of scaffolding by the aid of 
 which we build up our own spiritual structure, and when 
 character is complete, and the soul is reared to the ma- 
 turity of its stature, the scaffolding is thrown down, the 
 body crumbles away, and the soul, built up and furnished 
 for eternity, stands complete and forever independent of 
 the instrumentalities by which it was reared. 
 
 Such is the use of the body, such the intent of the Ore- 
 
222 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 ator undoubtedly in linking us to the clay. Things that 
 are seen, that are material, are a kind of footstool on 
 which we may stand to reach up higher toward another 
 world, a ladder to climb by, alphabet blocks of wood by 
 the study of which we learn to spell out the laws and phi- 
 losophy of God, cuts and diagrams to illustrate to the 
 spirit's capacity the methods of providence and the les- 
 sons of life. Thus viewed, the body, the world and all 
 sensible things, have their sphere — and a wise one, — 
 and so they ought to be viewed. Their use is transient. 
 It lasts at the longest but a few score of years. Then 
 the soul has been educated and furnished to do without 
 them and they are thrown by. The unseen world of the 
 soul is now ready to begin its independent existence. It 
 has gathered from the visible all that the visible can give. 
 It has learned its alphabet ; it can throw aside its blocks 
 and its spelling-book, and read what angels do. 
 
 Now what a gross perversion it is of all the aims of 
 life, when a man lives for time, and sense, and the things 
 that are seen : when on these he concentrates his hopes 
 and fears ; when in these he chooses to live and move and 
 be absorbed ; when, given up to the visible, he forgets the 
 invisible, and seems to feel that he lives only for material 
 interests and material good ! This is sensualism, ma- 
 terialism, worldliness. It sacrifices the greater to less. 
 It idolizes the brute and crucifies the angel. It makes 
 the body its God, and the soul a hewer of wood and 
 a drawer of water, just reversing their true relation- 
 ship. It is as if a man should demolish his dwelling to 
 furnish his tent, as if he should tear down a Temple of 
 Solomon to supply the tabernacle of the desert. 
 
 Yet this is what thousands do — not only the avowed 
 materialist who denies, in the face of all evidence, all 
 
LIVING FOR THE UNSEEN. 
 
 223 
 
 spiritual existence, with, the Sadducee for his prototype, 
 ignoring God, angel and spirit, but the multitudes of 
 practical materialists, who try to live, for they can at 
 best but try, in" the region of material things alone. 
 Some grasp gold as the highest good. Some idolize a 
 ribbon or a feather, and never feel the majesty of a great, 
 good thought. Some devote themselves to sensual indul- 
 gence, forgetful that there are joys which eye hath not 
 seen nor ear heard. Some count their wealth by the 
 standard of earthly value and spurn the riches of the 
 soul's incorruptible inheritance — a treasure that no line 
 can measure and no scales weigh — and some even fly to 
 the visible world for relief from the invisible ; use pleas- 
 ure, and amusement, and games, and business as a di- 
 version and a foil to thoughts of duty. They take this 
 world, that should be made a causeway over which to 
 pass to heaven, to build up a Chinese wall that shall shut 
 out every view or approach of everlasting spiritual truths 
 and realities. All this is supreme folly. It is more ; it 
 is gross wickedness, treason to the soul and to God, false- 
 hood to all the ends and aims of life. 
 
 In the first place it is debasing ; more or less so in 
 proportion to the degree in which a man gives himself 
 up to it. I cannot look at a man who has devoted his 
 years either to sensualism, or to mere money-making, or 
 to pleasure, without a feeling of pity, in which it is hard 
 not to have contempt mingled. His heart has grown to 
 his sin, or lust, or gold like a shell to the rock. He is 
 rooted to things seen. He degenerates into a mere 
 thing. He becomes selfish, miserly, materialistic, in his 
 views. His soul is petrified. Even when the body is 
 worn out and is already crumbling back to clay, you can 
 
224 LIFE LESSORS. 
 
 talk to him only of sensual or material interests. He 
 can scheme only for lust, or gain, or some paltry plan of 
 self-gratification. His thoughts go no higher than the 
 ceiling of his room, no deeper than his furrow. It is hu- 
 miliating to look at him, to see in him how humanity 
 can become debased. A libertine, a miser, an idolater 
 of fashion, he has no taste or relish for anything purer 
 or nobler than models of clay or images of corruption. 
 He looks to the things that are seen. 
 
 Now, take his contrast ; the man like Paul that ad- 
 mits, and believes in a world of truth, and duty, and 
 spiritual reality, who converses daily with the invisible 
 and the eternal ; a man to whom all the material uni- 
 verse is but a glass through which the soul reads lessons 
 of hope, and faith, and love ; one whose eye ranges be- 
 yond the horizon of time and sense, and takes in an in- 
 finite prospect ; one who sinks the body into subservience 
 to the spirit, and who makes all the experience of life, its 
 pains and pleasures, toil and rest, trials and triumphs, 
 help to the development of a holy life and preparation 
 for final blessedness ; and who does not feel that in the 
 presence of such an one he stands face to face with a 
 worth and wealth that beggar the world ? He is carry- 
 ing out God's plan in his education. He looks to things 
 that are unseen. 
 
 And not to do this is to disregard most stupidly what most 
 concerns our happiness. It is not the outward world or out- 
 ward circumstances that can suffice to make a man happy. 
 His earthly lot is a poor test of his enjoyment. Penury 
 in rags may sometimes be more enviable than all wealth 
 and splendor. Eden landscapes cannot make Eden 
 hearts. Happiness does not bloom, like trees, perennial 
 in the tropics. It is the heart that makes the world we 
 
LIVING FOB THE UNSEEN. 225 
 
 live in. It is a man's thoughts, the forms that pass be- 
 fore the mind's eye, that leave the most abiding impres- 
 sions. It is the immaterial world of ideas that we 
 converse with most. The mind daguerreotypes all dead 
 and living forms, and far more ; its fancies, and fears, and 
 hopes, and convictions go to make the solitude of its 
 thinking hours populous. One may walk through scenes 
 like the happy valley of Rasselas and carry a Vesuvius 
 in his heart. One may look out on the placid sky, when 
 not a breath of wind stirs, or a leaf rustles, and there 
 shall be a hurricane in his bosom. Do you think a man 
 is happy because he lives in a palace and calls broad 
 acres his own ? His heart may even then be a beggar 
 cryiog, " give, give ! " The icebergs of the ocean have 
 to float down all the way from the North Pole, and then 
 they will melt away ; but a man's soul under all the sun- 
 shine of a tropical fortune may be even to the last like an 
 unimpressible iceberg. 
 
 If you wish to know any one's real condition, you must 
 look below the surface. It is not his wardrobe, nor his 
 wealth, nor his honors, that make the real world in which 
 he lives. Do you think Cain could be a materialist 
 when the dire spectre of his murdered brother haunted 
 him — a stern reality — and his own terror forced him to 
 say, " every one that seeth me shall slay me ?" Do you 
 think Esau was a materialist, when the image of the lost 
 blessing, the unseen good, moved him to bitter and re- 
 morseful tears ? Do you think a sinless Eden could have 
 made Saul happy when the evil spirit troubled him? 
 Was it any visible, material loss that drove Judas to 
 suicide? What but the impalpable image of his in- 
 gratitude sent Peter forth to weep bitterly ? Was there 
 any pit dug by human hands, any surging gulf which 
 10* 
 
226 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 human eye could scan, in which Simon Magus was 
 plunged, when the Apostle said of him, " I perceive thou 
 art in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity ?" 
 Ah ! it is true, as the poet has said : 
 
 " The mind is its own place 
 And makes a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." 
 
 The elements that a man carries with him in his own 
 bosom are to him the most real of all things. Call them 
 mere fancies ; rate them as airy shapes ; scout them as 
 phantoms. Put them in the scales and say they do not 
 weigh a feather. Make them out just nothing avoirdupois. 
 But yet remember these unseen things, these impalpa- 
 ble forms and airy shapes have more to do with a man 
 than all other things beside. Even the drunkard, raving 
 in delirium, and made a maniac by images of horror that 
 no eye sees but his own, shows how, when the thing is 
 brought to a test, the immaterial in man triumphs over 
 the material, and the mind's furniture of thoughts and 
 fancies is the most real, while all else is but as shadows. 
 Give me the man who looks at the unseen, and whose 
 conscience is in harmony with its truth and its claims, 
 and I will show you one who with Joseph can endure the 
 solitude of the prison without a murmur ; or with Daniel 
 shall calmly pray to God and not fear even the lion's 
 den, or with the dying Stephen under the shower of 
 stones shall look up with a smile to the opening heavens, 
 or with Paul and Silas shall make the midnight gloom 
 of a prison vocal with songs of praise to God. Such 
 may be, such has been, the communion of the soul with 
 its unseen Helper, the feast of the soul upon the hidden 
 manna, the refreshment of the soul from the unseen foun- 
 tains of truth and duty, of faith and love, that the flesh 
 
 . 
 
 
LIVING FOR THE UNSEEN. 
 
 227 
 
 could be mangled on the rack, or crumble to cinders at 
 the stake, almost without a consciousness of pain, and 
 while the face of every beholder has gathered fear and 
 terror, the face of the victim has been lighted up with 
 beams from the unseen glory. 
 
 But not to look at the unseen, is to disregard that which 
 is most important. You look at a diagram on the black- 
 board. What are those lines and angles, considered in 
 themselves, but just so much pulverized chalk in right 
 lines. But look through the seen to the unseen, and you 
 shall see those simple lines constructed to bring out a 
 geometrical truth, a link in that chain of mathematical 
 discovery that reaches from the fixed staple of simple 
 axioms up to the highest point of scientific attainment. 
 It marks a step in the progress of man up from barbarism 
 to that stage of civilization in which the iron and the 
 marble take form under his plastic hand, and the rude 
 forces of Nature bend to his will almost to realize the 
 fable of Orpheus charming them by the music of his 
 lyre. So we say material things in themselves are of no 
 more importance than so much bulk or dead matter, ex- 
 cept as they are the forms out of which the student of 
 Providence can educe unseen lessons. What is the 
 grandest peak of the Andes to a noble thought ? What 
 is the fairest landscape to a beautiful or generous deed ? 
 What is the majesty of the Amazon to the current of a 
 holy life moving on irresistibly in the channel of duty 
 and bearing down all obstacles, even the terrors of death 
 before it ? To talk of dollars and cents when duty is 
 concerned ; to speak of balance of trade or of revenue 
 when the principles of right action are at stake ; to be 
 absorbed in calculations of profit and loss when virtue 
 
LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 or humanity are bleeding their life away, seems to me 
 worse, if possible, than Nero fiddling while Rome burned. 
 One of the most stultifying and ludicrous exhibitions of 
 materialism that I can now recall is to be found in a mi- 
 nority report of a committee of our State Legislature on 
 petitions for closing the canals on the Sabbath. This 
 report, not pretending absolutely to deny the importance 
 of religious convictions, goes on to speak of " the tremen- 
 dous effect upon the revenues of the State, and upon the 
 prosperity if not the very being of the canal itself, which 
 might possibly be the result of granting the prayer of the 
 petitioners." It is as if one should speak of the tremen- 
 dous weight of a pebble when an avalanche threatened 
 to overwhelm him. I am sure that all material interests 
 combined — railroads, and canals, and rivers, and lakes — 
 might better be sunk in the ocean, than just help to peo- 
 ple and enrich a land given up to Sabbath desecration, 
 soon to be shaken by those earthquakes of terrible retri- 
 bution, which like that in France at the close of the last 
 century, when the Sabbath was legislated away, will 
 make men feel that Pandemonium is let loose on earth. 
 To weigh cargoes against principles, revenue against in- 
 tegrity, tolls or income against the fear of God, is as 
 absurd as to calculate the value of the self-denial of a 
 Paul, the benevolence of a Howard, or the patriotism of 
 a Washington, in specie or bank notes. The riches of a 
 community, as of an individual, are not to be found in its 
 purse or its common treasury. They are not to be com- 
 puted by stock in trade or annual income. They exist 
 in that which casts all material interests altogether in 
 the shade, in the elements of character and education 
 and capacity for true and noble deeds — not in the seen 
 but in the unseen. 
 
 
LIVING FOR THE UNSEEN. 229 
 
 It is the invisible world, of truth and duty which towers 
 infinitely above all earth-bounded schemes and interests. 
 I cannot but regard a man who, surrounded by the Eter- 
 nal and the Infinite, and possessed of a soul whose native 
 aspirations and aptitudes fit it to grasp hold of thoughts 
 as grand as God's being, and an immortal destiny, yet 
 grovels in the dust-siftings of time and sense, as I must 
 on one who should gaze absorbed upon a little bubbling 
 rill in full sight of Niagara Falls, and yet have no eye to 
 behold or admire that emblem of Omnipotence. I would 
 say to him, " Lift up your soul, man ; fling away your 
 straws and chips, and think of a house not made with 
 hands, eternal in the heavens. Fling down your crutches 
 and try your wings. Crawl no longer as a worm, but 
 soar to be an angel. Drop your microscope with which 
 you gaze at the minute atoms of chalk on God's black- 
 board, and read the meaning of those lines and angles, 
 where eternity and the laws of probation are diagrammed. 
 Aspire no more to be merely respectable. There is an 
 unseen bar where the King Invisible will judge the judges 
 you fear so much. The seen is nothing to the unseen. 
 It is the merely material shadow that marks where God's 
 truths are passing by. It is the emblem that you are to 
 look through, and then it is God's telescope to unfold 
 worlds that Herschel and Ross never discovered, and of 
 which mere science never dreamed." 
 
 But to look to the seen rather than the unseen, and to 
 the exclusion of it, is the grossest folly when you con- 
 sider that the things that are seen are temporal, and that 
 the things that are unseen are eternal. All that we be- 
 hold with the outward eye is transient and will pass 
 away. Change and ruin are written upon it all. These 
 
230 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 bodies shall crumble to dust. The dwellings of your 
 poverty or your pride will be razed to their foundations. 
 The robes you wear will become rags and be cast aside. 
 Your possessions will pass from your grasp, and all the 
 conveniences of your comfort and all the resources of 
 your affluence will vanish away. Time covers the world 
 with his ravages. He passes over empires, and his hoof 
 of destruction realizes for them the boast of Attila. 
 Pyramids and pillared marble and triumphal monuments 
 crumble under his eye, and when he has done his work, 
 a mightier hand shall sweep away his ruins and his 
 structures, and 
 
 K The great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherits shall dissolve, 
 And like the baseless fabric of a vision 
 Leave not a wreck behind." 
 
 The triumphs of art, the masterpieces of the sculptor, 
 on which he toiled to immortalize his name, the lofty 
 domes which attest the loftier aspirations of architectural 
 genius, all the material gains and achievements of busy 
 millions, and of all ages, shall live only in memory, and 
 the place that knew them once shall know them no more. 
 
 But the unseen world, and all that belongs to it, is 
 imperishable. Ages shall not annihilate or have power 
 over it. God will still be the " King, eternal, immortal, 
 invisible." The soul will live, unencumbered longer 
 with the burdens of the flesh. The elements of thought 
 and character will survive the grave. A holy life will 
 be an ark of hallowed memories and deeds that will 
 float over the deluge that buries all the scenes of its con- 
 secrated effort. The invisible laws of retribution, the 
 inviolability of justice, the everlasting beauty of holiness, 
 
LIVING FOR THE UNSEEN. 231 
 
 the unchanging blessedness of purity of heart — all these 
 will survive. The soul itself will carry with it to the 
 judgment-seat of God all the elements of that unseen 
 world within, in which it is to live forever. That world 
 is imperishable. Not an impression is lost. Not a 
 memory dies. The tastes, appetites, aspirations, loves or 
 hates, hopes or fears of the soul will follow it where it 
 can carry nothing else. It will have all those, without 
 the encumbrance or the alleviation of sensual existence. 
 The drunkard, or the libertine, or the miser, with all their 
 raging lusts or ingrained habits, but with nothing to 
 satisfy them ; the ambitious or proud man, with no mate- 
 rial means to gratify the greed of a ruling passion ; the 
 worldly man, accustomed to lean on the world for his joy 
 and diversion and gratification, but now with no such re- 
 source — all these, in that conscious guilt which no eye 
 can see, and that conscious misery the heart only knows, 
 will illustrate how much of perdition a man can carry 
 with him on earth, how thoroughly he may be mastered 
 by that undying worm of inward craving that fed on the 
 world once, but feeds on the sinner now. 
 
 But that soul which is God's living temple, and in 
 which he abides, is a world in itself of peace and joy. 
 No matter where you place it, with Daniel in a lions' 
 den ; with the outlawed confessor of Christ, in the glens 
 or caves of the earth ; in the fires of trial ; in the deep 
 waters of affliction ; in light or darkness ; in the land 
 Beulah, or in the valley of the shadow of death — its faith 
 brings God near it, into it, and it triumphs in the 
 thought, independent of earth's hindrances or its helps. 
 It lives in the unseen, and into the darkest glooms of 
 earth it brings with it the splendors of God's eternal 
 day forever shining on its path. 
 
2 3 2 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 +\,* 
 
 We may see, therefore, how fatal a policy it is for the 
 soul to yield itself up to the things that are seen, to 
 live as though it had only to do with time and sense. 
 You would, perhaps, smile to see a man offering his hand 
 to shadows, or presuming to evade their blows. You 
 would count him a simpleton or a maniac. But all the 
 worldly successes and applause of life are to the soul 
 that leans on God no more than the hand of a shadow, 
 and all the blows which the world can inflict are no more 
 than the blows of a shadow. " Fear not," said Christ, 
 " them that can kill the body, and after that have no 
 more that they can do, but fear ye rather Him who can 
 cast both soul and body into hell, yea I say unto you, 
 fear Him I" 
 
 And yet how many fly to the seen to escape the un- 
 seen, like Adam hasting to the thicket from the voice 
 of God ! How many rush into business, or pleasure, or 
 schemes of amusement, or to diverting scenes, to escape 
 from conviction or from the arrest of conscience ! That 
 unseen officer of the invisible Judge is at least no phan- 
 tom, for to escape him the soul plunges deeper into 
 material schemes and interests. Oh, beware of this ! 
 Run not away to hide yourself from the Unseen but All- 
 seeing ! You must meet God at last — meet him now ! 
 
 Once more each one is making the world in which he 
 is to live forever. How carefully should he proceed. 
 The man who builds his house to live in it for a score or 
 two of years, is careful in the building and the furnishing 
 of it. His eye will rest upon it often. It is to be his 
 home. It will minister in all its arrangements to his 
 convenience or his discomfort. You do not chide him 
 for his care. 
 
 Well, then, let us suppose that God offers you the privi- 
 
 
LIVING FOR TEE UNSEEN. 
 
 2 33 
 
 lege of making a world. He says, " Here are the mate- 
 rials for it, and here are the powers to shape them. You 
 may make it what you like. Here is soil that will make 
 gardens, water that will make rivers and oceans, granite 
 masses that will make Alps or Andes. All that is grand 
 or beautiful, magnificent or terrible, barren or frightful, 
 is here furnished to your hand. Make a world of them 
 to suit your taste, and you may have it for your own, to 
 live in and enjoy for ten thousand years." Would it not 
 be a magnificent offer ? 
 
 Well, God has done far more than this. He has given 
 you a soul, that outweighs in value and in resources all 
 the material universe, and he has given you probation 
 and its means to shape and mould it at your will. He 
 says, " Make that into a world to suit your taste, make 
 it to suit you to live in and enjoy, not ten thousand, but 
 ten thousand times ten thousand years." And you have 
 already begun to shape and mould it. What and how 
 much have you done ? Have you planted it with heaven- 
 ward hopes and aspirations — those cedars of Lebanon in 
 the garden of God, or with the thorns, thistles and bram- 
 bles of worldly cares ? Have you solemnly and prayer- 
 fully invited the guidance of God and His counsel to 
 direct you in the momentous undertaking ? 
 
XXVII. 
 
 THE STANDARD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 "Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness ."- 
 1 Tim. vi. 11. 
 
 NO one who attentively peruses the Scriptures can 
 remain in doubt of the high standard of a Chris- 
 tian life. " Follow me/' says the Saviour. That is, be 
 like me. " Be ye holy, as your Father in heaven is holy." 
 Bead over the life of Christ and you will see what the 
 life of a Christian should be. There is the standard. 
 There is no other ; not the life of a minister — not that of 
 any man, however eminent or devoted — not that of a 
 Doddridge, or Payson, or Brainerd, or Edwards, or Bax- 
 ter, or Bunyan. No one sooner than these men would 
 say, " Look not to us, but to Jesus." 
 
 Paul rebukes the tendency common with many, of 
 virtually saying to themselves, " I can do what such an 
 one does," or, " No more can be expected of me than of 
 such an one." He says, " They that compare themselves 
 among themselves, and measure themselves by themselves, 
 are not wise." It would be just as proper for a merchant 
 to measure his cloth by the old burnt fragment of a yard- 
 stick as for a Christian to measure the aim of his life by 
 the imperfect examples of a Christian brother. Christ 
 
 (234) 
 
STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 235 
 
 is spoken of as " leaving us an example that we should 
 follow in his steps.' 7 The measure of the yard in Eng- 
 land was once adjusted by the arm of the King, and then 
 the standard was placed for preservation and reference in 
 the Tower of London. Christ's life is our standard, and it 
 is safely preserved in the pages of the New Testament that 
 will last when the Tower of London is all dust. " Look- 
 ing unto Jesus," is the Christian's motto. If, therefore, we 
 can ascertain the characteristics of his life, we can see 
 what ours should be — what it must be, if he is ever 
 to own his image in us, and to acknowledge us as his 
 followers. 
 
 First, then, it was pure and holy. " He did no sin, 
 neither was guile found in his mouth." His bitterest foes 
 could find no immorality in his life — nothing on which 
 to base a charge against him. There was no impure 
 lust, no selfish or ambitious aim ; No covetousness after 
 worldly possessions ; no angry passions ; no envy, jealousy, 
 spite, or pride. His words were true, serious, faithful. 
 His deeds were kind, just, and humane. In the parable 
 of the Good Samaritan he has sketched the spirit of that 
 life that could feed the hungry, give sight to the blind, 
 weep at the grave of Lazarus, and pour consolation into 
 the heart of the humbled publican. He did not shrink 
 from the touch of the poor and wretched. All might 
 approach him. He could make his home with the humble 
 family of Bethany. He could dine with Zaccheus. He 
 did not shun contact with any one whom he could bless, 
 be they centurions, or publicans and sinners. He went 
 through the world like the sunbeam, enlightening others, 
 but contracting no impurity himself. There was no 
 aping of wealth or greatness, no over-anxiety for even 
 the necessaries of life, no respect of persons, no desire 
 
236 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 for the world's empty honors, no concern that the rich 
 and the great only despised him. 
 
 And then, as love is the fulfilling of the law, his life 
 was full of love. He prayed for all. He had glad ti- 
 dings for all. He forgave his enemies and prayed God 
 to forgive them. His life was the toil of love for 
 wretched men, and his death was its triumphant and per- 
 fect exhibition. Not a malicious or revengeful thought 
 did he cherish, not even amid the ignominious insults of 
 his crucifixion. 
 
 His self-denial, also, was the evidence and the fruit of 
 his love. Never before or since has anything like it been 
 seen or known. He left the glory of Heaven for the 
 meanness of a human lot. He left the worship of angels, 
 to incur the maledictions of men. He exchanged the 
 throne of Heaven for a cross of shame. He had the 
 power of working miracles, but exercised it for the 
 benefit of others, never for his own. And all this was 
 for no selfish end. Compassion for wretched and guilty 
 men, was the motive that led to this self-denial. 
 
 And beside all, he was eminently and uninterrupt- 
 edly devoted to glorifying God — to the accomplishment 
 of the work of his mission. " Wist ye not that I must 
 be about my Father's business ?" was his question when 
 a child in the temple. " Work while it is day, for the 
 night cometh when no man can work,' 7 was an admoni- 
 tion which his life as well as lips enforced. There was 
 no indolence, no indifference. Even when he sat down 
 weary upon the well of Samaria, he was busy for God. 
 He made the flowers of the field preach, and the sower's 
 seed furnish him emblems. He organized his disciples 
 into bands, and sent them forth to work. He communi- 
 cated his own activity to those around him. All his 
 
STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 237 
 
 talents, all his powers were devoted to the great work 
 of his mission. 
 
 Such is a most brief and imperfect sketch of His ex- 
 ample whose authority must be acknowledged by all that 
 bear the Christian name. It is the rule which we are to 
 copy. He whom we acknowledge as our Master has set 
 it for us. It is faultless. It is perfect. It is the only one 
 that fixes the measure and scope of our aims. And now 
 see what a life that must be that just copies Christ ; how 
 pure, kind, holy, loving, prayerful, self-denying, devoted ! 
 How active and energetic in the work of doing good ! 
 Take the holiest and best men that have ever lived — the 
 Apostles enduring perils of every kind, that amid hard- 
 ship, and abuse, and imprisonment, they might exhibit the 
 spirit as well as declare the doctrines of the Gospel ; 
 " the noble army of the martyrs " welcoming persecution, 
 or torture, or death for the testimony of Jesus ; the mis- 
 sionaries of the cross, leaving home and native land be- 
 hind them in order to bestow upon ignorant and wretched 
 tribes the unsearchable riches of Christ ; the prayerful, 
 and devoted, and self-denying men who in humble sta- 
 tions have made it manifest that they were men of G-od, 
 and were toiling to bless others and save their own 
 souls — take all these, and hear them every one confessing 
 their own weaknesses, and deficiencies, and failings, as 
 compared with the one only example, and then judge, if 
 ye bear the Christian name, what manner of persons ye 
 ought to be in all holy conversation and godliness, if ye 
 are not to dishonor that holy name wherewith ye are 
 called. Surely, the standard of a Christian life is a high 
 one. 
 
 We see this, moreover, when we consider its object. 
 Why does God hold up before us such an example as that 
 
2 3 8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 of Jesus ? It is that we may be transformed into the same 
 image from glory to glory. It is to make that an instru- 
 ment in our training to be like God himself. The whole 
 scope of redemption is to recover our lost race — to bring 
 men back to God. The Gospel hope reaches after 
 nothing higher than the blessedness of perfect holiness. 
 Without holiness it is impossible to please God. With- 
 out holiness no one shall see the Lord. It is only as we 
 are like Christ that we are fitted for heaven. Nothing 
 unholy or impure can be admitted there. Sin would mar 
 its beauty, and disturb its peace, and make discord in its 
 anthems. An unholy heart there, beneath the glance of 
 a holy God, would be out of place. It would feel itself 
 an alien, a stranger, an exile from all with which it could 
 sympathize. 
 
 A Christian, then, is one that is in training for the 
 holiness of heaven ; one that God is teaching and disci- 
 plining to be an angel ; one that is aiming and striving 
 to reach that eternal home, which is made glorious by 
 the presence of a holy God. Here he is a sojourner and 
 a pilgrim. All his interests, his treasure, his hope, are 
 in heaven. He fails of everything if he fails in these, 
 and he must fail, if he is not like Christ. 
 
 See, too, how the standard of a Christian life is sug- 
 gested by what the Scriptures say of those that bear the 
 sacred name of disciple : " Ye are my witnesses/' says 
 God. What can an unholy man, what can an unrenewed 
 heart, what can a worldly mind testify as to the loving- 
 kindness, and the glorious holiness, and the spotless ex- 
 cellence of Jehovah ? " Ye are the light of the world," 
 says Christ ; but what sort of a light is that which emits 
 rays of darkness, that light which is all blurred over and 
 eclipsed by worldly passions, by spots of impurity, by 
 
STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 239 
 
 conduct that challenges the reproach of men ? " Ye are 
 the salt of the earth f but what virtue has that to com- 
 municate which cannot preserve itself, and what excel- 
 lence must there be to warrant the truthful application 
 of these words ? 
 
 The Christian, moreover, has had great things done 
 for him of which his life is to be the witness. He is 
 called by God's message, he is redeemed by the blood of 
 the Son of God, he is renewed by the power of the Holy 
 Ghost. Infinite grace has called him out from darkness 
 into God's marvellous light. He has seen God in Christ 
 reconciling the world to himself. He has felt the evil 
 of sin in his own nature, and has read its odiousness in 
 the tragedy of the cross. Eternity has been unfolded to 
 him. The unsearchable riches of Christ have been ex- 
 hibited to him. Heaven has opened its gates to invite 
 him thither. To him the Apostle turns, when he says, 
 " Ye are redeemed not by corruptible things as silver and 
 gold, but by the precious blood of the Lamb of God." Is 
 such an one to be content with a low and worldly stand- 
 ard of living ? Is he to make self his idol ? Is he to 
 indulge in the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and 
 the pride of life ? Is he to live like the sin-blinded dev- 
 otee of Mammon, to indulge in passion, envy, malice, re- 
 venge, covetousness, pride ? Is he to allow himself to 
 drift along on the current of the world, comforming him- 
 self to the standards of fashion, the indolence of his own 
 nature, or the humors of the hour ? 
 
 Even the world itself, conscious of the glaring contra- 
 diction, indignantly replies, No ! Mere men of the world, 
 strangers to the spirituality of the Gospel claims, can see 
 that they are very high, and they look to the Christian 
 disciple for a conduct that shall show principles of action 
 
240 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 and aims above their own ; and however unfit they may 
 be to taunt those that come short, the very taunt shows 
 how they take the standard of a Christian life to be 
 something pure, and exalted, and holy, and heavenlike — 
 pure gold to their dross. 
 
 And if we think of the work which the Church is to 
 accomplish, we see that it can be accomplished only as a 
 high standard of Christian life and character is sustained. 
 This world is to be converted to God, and the instru- 
 ments for doing it are men ; but they must be holy men. 
 The work can be done by no others. It is not wealth, 
 or talent, or royal patronage that can do it. Genius 
 may exhaust itself in setting forth the excellence of the 
 Gospel. Material means may be multiplied beyond all 
 precedent in the work of spreading it ; but all these will 
 be only the shell of a rotten trunk, if vital piety, the very 
 heart of the Christian life is wanting. Worldly men 
 cannot convert the world. Half Christians cannot do it. 
 Any quantity of Pilates, or Agrippas, or Demases can- 
 not do it. A popular vote of the nations in favor of it 
 would not do it. The eloquence that is not enkindled by 
 charity is only as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. 
 It is the living piety of the church — back of all sermons 
 however studied, all creeds however orthodox, all rites 
 however simple — that gives them force. Our logic can 
 not argue men through the strait gate. Our warnings 
 can not startle from the lethargy of death in sin. But 
 there is a power in the life of a consistent and devoted 
 Christian which defies the indifference of the worldling 
 and the unbelief of the sceptic. They cannot sneer it 
 down. They cannot ignore it. It is a living witness 
 against them, always testifying to a reality that accuses 
 them. Here is the strength of the Church. Not the 
 
STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 241 
 
 great names of her ministers or prelates, not the increase 
 of her numbers, not the outward respect which she re- 
 ceives from statesmen, and poets, and politicians ; but 
 the living, active piety of her members, their exem- 
 plary and devoted spirit, their prayerfulness, humility and 
 Christlikeness ; these are the weapons of her warfare, 
 not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down 
 of strongholds. These make her more terrible than an 
 army with banners. These bring down to her aid the 
 omnipotence of God. Those lives, then, that do not come 
 up to this standard, say, virtually, " abandon the great 
 work for which the Saviour lived and died. Let the 
 world perish in its sin ; pronounce Christianity a failure, 
 and abandon it." But we cannot abandon it. We say, 
 rather let the Church live up to her high standard. And 
 it must be high. It must be such that men shall read 
 Christ in it ; such that he shall be preached in it ; such 
 that men who never open the lids of the Bible shall have 
 a living gospel before them. 
 
 But what is now the condition of the Christian Church ? 
 What is the state of the vast mass that compose it ? Alas ! 
 how has the gold become dim, how is the most fine gold 
 changed ! We are too deeply conscious in ourselves of 
 the discrepancy between what we are, and what we should 
 be, to question the change that has come over the Church 
 since those early days when the little band of disciples 
 gathered in an upper chamber in Jerusalem constituted 
 the whole visible strength that was to grapple with the 
 heathenisms of the world and the superstitions of ages. 
 There are some, indeed, who are exceptions to the general 
 rule ; some who have not defiled the garments of their 
 profession ; some who mourn in secret over the desola- 
 11 
 
242 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 tions of Zion ; some who live to do their Master's will. 
 But how few these are ! 
 
 Where do you find the true standard of a Christian 
 life aimed at ? Go into the walks of commerce, and 
 where are the men who carry the sense of their steward- 
 ship to God with them to their stores and their desks ? 
 Where are they who bear about with them into the 
 world the consciousness that they are witnesses for God ? 
 Almost every where you see the idolatry of Mammon ; 
 all the heart, and mind, and soul, and strength absorbed 
 in making money ; the weariness of six days of excessive 
 toil, robbing the seventh of its energy for serving God ; 
 indolence eating out devotion ; selfishness displacing 
 self-denial ; praise neglected and prayer forgotten. How 
 often do religious services become the mere routine of 
 habit, and Sabbath observance the mere tribute to a 
 practice that has lost its vitality. How might an observ- 
 ing heathen, judging us in mass, write back to his country- 
 men that our devotion consisted in the patient endurance 
 of having two sermons weekly poured down the throat 
 of the intellect, and that the activities of the Church were 
 absorbed in the process ! 
 
 In some cases, who would suspect a man of being one 
 that bears the Christian name ? He shows the same 
 tastes, sympathies, and habits as his unconverted neigh- 
 bor. In his household he is not the Christian parent ; 
 in his business he is not the Christian trafficker. Some- 
 times you see him passionate, grasping for gain, hurrying 
 as eagerly to scenes of amusement as the true disciple 
 will to the place of prayer. 
 
 In fact, there are many Christians by profession, who 
 make of this, two distinct worlds j one the world of relig- 
 ious ordinance, the other of secular profit. A man is 
 
* STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 243 
 
 the saint in the one and the worldling in the other. He 
 goes out from the sanctuary and forgets what manner of 
 man he was. He puts away his piety with his Sunday 
 wardrobe. His hand is devout when it holds a Bible, 
 but a creature of party when it casts a vote. 
 
 Can this be justified ? Is this an age when we may 
 lower the Christian standard ? Have the apostolic band, 
 " the noble army of the martyrs/' the hosts of those who 
 have " passed through great tribulation and washed their 
 robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" — 
 have all these, headed by their great Leader, preceded 
 us only that we should dishonor their illustrious example, 
 and prove ourselves unworthy to follow in their steps ? 
 Has the world become such that it no longer needs to 
 have " living epistles" of piety and devotion spread be- 
 fore it for admonition and rebuke ? Has the missionary 
 sent back word from his heathen field that the kingdoms 
 of this world have become the kingdoms of Christ ? Is 
 there no longer any call to self-denial, to importunate 
 prayer, to holy living, to enduring hardships as good 
 soldiers of Christ ? Has the order of discipline in the 
 great " sacramental host of God's elect" been recalled ? 
 Is Christ's life our pattern no longer ? Is it henceforth 
 an easy thing to enter in at the strait gate ? 
 
 Let no man deceive himself. Till the goal is reached ; 
 till we apprehend that for which also we are apprehended 
 of Christ Jesus, we are to follow after righteousness, 
 godliness, faith and love. 
 

 XXVIII. 
 
 THE TENT AND THE ALTAR. 
 
 " And there he builded an altar unto the Lord." — Gen. xii. 7. 
 
 WHAT a significant, although brief and simple, 
 record is that which teaches us that the old 
 patriarch had his altar where he pitched his tent ! It was 
 not enough to constitute his home that his family should 
 be around him. He must have the assurance that the 
 Eternal Father was present to watch over all. 
 
 A grand sight that was in the heart of the old heathen- 
 ism — that one man against the world almost — that soli- 
 tary relic of Eden memories, green yet amid the wide 
 desolations — that altar of a pure worship like the ark of 
 the deluge, the sole resting-place for the foot of pilgrim 
 piety ! See that standard for the true God set up, more 
 sublime than granite monument or obelisk, yet reared by 
 a humble home, and casting its shadow over the ground 
 where the children played ! It is to them hearthstone, 
 temple, church spire, all in one. It is the symbol of all 
 that we hold dear between the pages of the Bible. There 
 it stands, more than a fortress to guard that home ; more 
 than a sanctuary to kindle devotion ; an ever-speaking 
 witness for God, the prophetic pledge that the world's 
 great sacrifice was yet to be offered. 
 
 And what a noble character is that of the old patriarch ! 
 No worldly conformist is he — no mere time-server. See 
 how with a world against him he builds his altar ; see 
 
 (244) 
 
THE TENT AND THE ALTAR 
 
 245 
 
 how in the solid stones of the pile, he writes out as in 
 granite letters his confession of the true God ; see how 
 he sets it up before the eyes of his household, and how 
 tent and altar rise side by side. 
 
 Ah, give us such piety as that ! which, even though no 
 church or temple be near, will make its own home a sanc- 
 tuary, and bring the glory of a Horeb or a Calvary down 
 beside its lowly tent. 
 
 The example of Abraham is one to be copied. Every 
 tent should have its altar, every home its mercy-seat. 
 The father should be the priest of his own household. 
 Each family should offer with united heart, its morning 
 and its evening sacrifice. 
 
 Does not the very statement carry a convincing force 
 with it ? Who that believes in the loving Providence of 
 the great Father would call it in question ? Who but 
 feels constrained to admire the beauty, the hallowing and 
 peaceful influence of family worship ? 
 
 True, it may degenerate into an empty form. It may 
 sink into a hollow and heartless service. It may become 
 a drudgery, and repel rather than attract. But this will 
 be only when the life of piety is chilled and benumbed by 
 worldliness, when the heart is drawn off to earthly idols, 
 when the great truths of immortality and redemption are 
 neglected or forgotten. 
 
 Every community should have its altar, its place of 
 public worship and common and united devotion. Abra- 
 ham's altar was the type of both social and family relig- 
 ion — the devotion of temple and of hearthstone together. 
 He was alone in the world as the worshipper of the true 
 God. There were few or none others to join him in 
 public prayer or praise. Yet he reared an altar about 
 
246 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 which others might gather. How heartily he would have 
 welcomed them if they had come to join him in the sao 
 rifice ! 
 
 So wherever there is a Christian family, although the 
 only one in the community, there should be the nucleus, 
 the center, of a Christian church. Let the wide waters 
 of worldliness stretch like a waste around — there should 
 be an island, or at least an ark of refuge. There a testi- 
 mony should be borne for God ; there a standard set up to 
 gladden and cheer the eye of every pious beholder. 
 
 You must sometimes have felt the beauty of that sym- 
 bol of Christian worship, as journeying far away, you 
 have caught sight of some humble village church, with 
 the clustering dwellings reposing in quiet peace beneath 
 the shadow of its spire pointing like a finger to heaven. 
 There it stood the type of a common worship, the mon- 
 ument rising aloft to greet the eye of the traveler on his 
 journey and the laborer at his toil. There it stood, in the 
 silent eloquence of its very aspect, preaching every day as 
 well as Sabbath, lessons of interest above the dreams of 
 mammon or the schemes of gain — speaking of holy themes, 
 and kindling memories of the scenes it has witnessed 
 within its walls, of humble penitence and lofty praise. 
 There it stood more significant than the Pharos of the 
 Egyptian coast, more thrilling than monuments of Revo- 
 lutionary valor, with a moral grandeur in its unassuming 
 simplicity that casts contempt on marble piles. Strike it 
 from the scene and you have left nothing in the framed 
 landscape but a cheerless background, a community with- 
 out a temple, a people without an altar. 
 
 But more essential than public, is household piety, and 
 the first is vain without the last. Prayerless families 
 
THE TENT AND THE ALTAR 247 
 
 may form an intelligent, but not a devout assembly, and 
 we know full well, that sometimes when the arm of per- 
 secution has scattered the flock, religion has withdrawn 
 to the quiet retreats of the fireside, and a lofty devotion 
 has breathed its prayer or sent up the incense of its praise 
 from humblest homes. Piety has found a shelter in 
 scenes too obscure to invite the notice of persecuting 
 malice, and in forest glooms, or even the caves of the 
 earth, the tent, and the altar, have still been conjoined. 
 We love to think how the exiled pilgrims, who laid the 
 foundations of empire on these western shores, with a 
 pious impulse wiser than the statesman's sagacity, scarcely 
 waited to frame their own rude cabins to shelter them 
 from the blast, before they laid the foundations of the 
 village church, so that every civil and social institution 
 might be developed under the fostering influence of the 
 fear of G-od. Oar sympathies go with them into the deep 
 forest, where, as they mark the trees that will serve to 
 rear their own dwelling, they spare with careful foresight 
 those that can be framed for the courts of the Lord's 
 house. And when the humble fabric rises, and with it 
 the gratitude of those that rear it, and each rude cabin 
 nestles as it may beneath its shade, we think of the piety 
 of the old Jewish patriarch, and of tent and altar insep- 
 arably associated together ; but dearer to memory than 
 all this is that scene of family devotion where young and 
 old kneel together beneath the humble roof, to pay their 
 common vows and breathe their common prayer. Here 
 is the germ of the harvests of after centuries. Here are 
 training influences that shape the destiny of generations, 
 and make the household hallowed as the school for young 
 immortals — the nursery of heaven. 
 
 In this is wisdom. Let the tent and the altar go to- 
 
248 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 gether ; let them never be dissociated. For there is 
 common acknowledgment of God due from each house- 
 hold. The family bond unites individuals together by 
 the strongest of all earthly ties. Its several members are 
 associated together in the closest intimacy. They sleep 
 beneath the same roof, meet at the same table, converse 
 on the same subjects, are familiar with the same scenes. 
 They exert upon one another a mutual influence, and 
 breathe one common atmosphere of thought and feeling. 
 Insensibly they acquire kindred tastes. They reflect 
 each other's views. They adopt the same standards of 
 judgment. The same books and papers fall under their 
 eye, and the same friendships often draw them into the 
 same circles. Their interests, moreover, are kindred, if 
 not identical. The same events excite a common inter- 
 est, or enkindle like emotions. In their hopes and fears 7 
 their joys and griefs, their hearts beat with the same 
 impulse, and the reverse or success of one affects them 
 all. Daily intercourse strengthens bonds of association, 
 draws them closer and makes them dearer to one another. 
 The same blessings are largely poured into their common 
 cup, the same calamity embitters their common lot. The 
 reputation of one, to some extent, involves that of all, 
 and the honor or disgrace of one is reflected back upon 
 every other member. 
 
 Looking up, then, as they do, to the same heavenly 
 guardianship, dependent as they are upon the same 
 Providence, fed by the same hand, sustained and spared 
 by the same mercy, and cherishing the hope that all the 
 changes of time that may yet separate them on earth, 
 and all the events which may open for them widely sun- 
 dered graves, shall not obstruct their blest reunion in 
 heaven ; shall they not unite in a common acknowledg- 
 
THE TENT AND THE ALTAR. 
 
 249 
 
 ment of the same weakness and the same dependence, the 
 same duty and the same need, the same God and the 
 same Saviour ? Should there not be some token of unity 
 in religious conviction, some manifestation of their kin- 
 dred interest in the same divine truth ? Shall they meet 
 at a common table, and not kneel at the same altar ? 
 Shall they share in kindred earthly joys and hopes, only 
 to be estranged from all sympathy in those of heaven ? 
 
 But to be more specific, they have common needs, com- 
 mon wants, common dangers. They are alike mortal, 
 dependent, exposed, tempted, tried. Must not each, as 
 well as all, say, "lama sinner : I have an evil heart of 
 unbelief: I need the renewing grace and the guiding 
 spirit of God ? Must not every one acknowledge the obli- 
 gation to the same obedience, the claims of the same ho- 
 liness, the necessity of a like preparation for meeting 
 God ? Can one fall into danger and the others not suffer 
 with him ? Can one indulge in sin, and the others escape 
 the influence of his disobedience ? Example has there pre- 
 eminently a contagious power. The same modes of error, 
 like the same modes of speech, tone and language, are some- 
 times to be found j and the correction for one is that for 
 all. They must consequently look to the same Provi 
 dence to guard them, the same wisdom to guide them, 
 and the same mercy to blot out their sin ? Shall they 
 not then adopt one confession ? Shall they not lean to- 
 gether upon one arm ? Shall they not alike bow in peni- 
 tence, shall they not send up the united petition for the 
 same grace ? 
 
 But they have, moreover, common favors and blessings 
 
 from the same divine source, and these demand a united 
 
 thanksgiving. As sickness carries distress, and death 
 
 mourning, through a household, so the welfare of each is 
 
 11* 
 
250 LIFE LES80N8. 
 
 a common joy for which all are to be grateful. Life, 
 health, strength, food, raiment, shelter, the social bles- 
 sings of home, wisdom for all from the same Bible, grace 
 from the same divine fountain, redemption from the one 
 Redeemer ; do not these demand a common gratitude, and 
 a common expression of that gratitude ? Shall all other 
 emotions be shared and deepened by intimate associa- 
 tion, and these of grateful love to the Great Giver fail to 
 be thus cherished ? Who does not see the guilt of so 
 marked an exception? Who does not feel the incon- 
 sistency of such a course ? 
 
 But they have, moreover, we will fondly believe, 
 something common in their hopes. However varied in 
 some respects their condition, they have not relinquished, 
 they cannot relinquish, the cheering prospect of a com- 
 mon home in heaven. They will cling through varied 
 scenes to the sacred thought — that all earthly separations 
 or wanderings shall not obstruct their final reunion in 
 the same fold of the great and good Shepherd. Shall 
 they not then unite in those acts of prayer and praise 
 which seem at least to give some warrant for the hope ; 
 which seem to offer an outward pledge of that common 
 sympathy which alone can ever unite them in the har- 
 mony of the redeemed in heaven ? What a very mock- 
 ery of all reasonable hope that would be, which had not 
 the basis of even a common recognition, a common ac- 
 knowledgement ! 
 
 But beyond all this, family religion as manifested at 
 least by family worship, gives to the fireside a congenial 
 charm. It sheds a sanctity over all the relations of 
 family intercourse. It makes home, in a measure, what 
 it should be, some feeble type at least of the hallowed 
 home of the great family above. That common prayer, 
 
TEE TENT AND THE ALTAR. 25 1 
 
 that common praise, are telegraphic lines, as it were, 
 reaching from the hearthstone up to the throne before 
 which angels bow. The earthly household becomes the 
 type of the great household of faith. Earthly brother- 
 hood is recognized as the type of that by which all shall 
 say without one discordant tone, " Our Father which art 
 in heaven." 
 
 Family religion is the best safeguard also of the future 
 welfare of the family. The scenes of coming years on 
 which childhood is entering now, are full of danger. 
 The tempter is there. Thousands have already fallen, 
 and thousands more are exposed. Your child, the mem- 
 bers of your family, with the swift flight of time, are 
 hurrying forth to mingle in those scenes, to risk those 
 hazards. You are to guard them by your counsel ; you 
 are to arm them for the strife. And how shall they go 
 forth ? With what preparation will you let them venture 
 where so many have fallen ? Have you nothing to incul- 
 cate but worldly prudence ? Have you no sword to put 
 into their hand but that of mere intellectual training ? 
 You may have wealth to bestow upon them, but that very 
 wealth may prove a curse. You may train them to in- 
 dustrious and moral habits, but these have often proved 
 but a vain security for time, to say nothing of their utter 
 incompetence for eternal issues. Is there not something 
 more necessary ? And what is it ? Your own convic- 
 tions anticipate me when I say that more than industry, 
 intellectual training or wealth, must religious principle 
 avail — that principle which has been nurtured at the 
 family altar, and which has thenceforth been strengthened 
 by every memory of early years. If you would disarm 
 the power of temptation for them when they are called 
 to meet it, let the yery aspect of the Satanic bribe be re- 
 
252 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 buked by a reviving of those scenes where all knelt in 
 prayer around the fireside, and the words of the sacred 
 volume made the thought of sin terrible, and the glories 
 of holiness attractive. Let them carry with them, ever 
 hung conspicuous on the walls of memory, the picture of 
 life's early experience, hallowed by associations of praise 
 and worship. Let the scenes of home come back to them, 
 never without that foremost feature of the family altar ; 
 never to be conceived of except as associated with the 
 high claims of religious duty. 
 
 Surely the example of Abraham is one that commends 
 itself to every parent. The tent and the altar should 
 ever be conjoined. Every household should be the sanc- 
 tuary of a hallowed affection, the earthly image of the 
 family of heaven. Religion should be there, not in mere 
 form, but in its living spirit ; not as a mere outward cere- 
 monial, but as an inspiring principle. Let the busy world 
 be what it may, this should be an Eden lighted up with 
 the smile of God, blest with that peace which comes only 
 from Him whose advent to earth kindled the rapt songs 
 of angels. Here, at least, should be an ark floating securely 
 over a sin- deluged world. Here youthful minds and 
 hearts should find a nursery for heaven. Parental influ- 
 ence and example should bear the aspect, not of a cold, 
 formal propriety, but of a fervent, cheerful, living faith in 
 God. With his earliest thoughts, the child should learn 
 to know his Maker's goodness, should recognize with 
 gratitude His care and providence. Here each opening 
 mind should be led to unfold itself to the beams of 
 heavenly love, and the earliest consciousness should be 
 made familiar with the idea of duty to God. 
 
 But how can this be, if the tent and the altar are dis- 
 joined ? How can it be in the home where religion is a 
 
THE TENT AND TEE ALTAR. 
 
 253 
 
 stranger ? How can it be in the place where the voice 
 of prayer and praise is never heard, and a sinful neglect 
 of known duty only serves to commend irreligion. Ah ! 
 there is a teaching in silence, a sermon in neglect ! But 
 it preaches negatives. It says, " No love, no duty ; no 
 obedience, no law ; no judgment, no heaven, no hell ; no 
 Saviour, no God." And who would venture to give it a 
 tongue for such utterance, a tongue to whisper in the 
 ears of childhood the fond and fatal delusion. 
 
XXIX. 
 
 LIFE'S TEARS AND HARVEST. 
 
 "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless 
 come again, with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." — Ps. cxxvi. 6. 
 
 THE world is full of contrasts, but contrasts often 
 strangely linked together. Youth and age are 
 strung on the thread of our common life. Seed-time and 
 harvest are revolving spokes in a common wheel. You 
 never see prosperity but there is a glimpse of adversity 
 in the background. The halls of the reveler are strangely 
 kindred to the cold garret where wretchedness lies on 
 its bed of straw. It is hard work to move graveyards 
 out of sight of mammon's busiest walks. The light 
 frivolities or sinful indulgence of youth are the downward 
 steps of a staircase that lands us among rags, and sighs, 
 and blighted prospects. The sparkle of the wine-cup de- 
 generates into that phosphorescence of moral death that 
 gleams from the decanters of the grogshop. 
 
 And so, also, the true success of life stands out from a 
 background of self-denying toil, of struggle, and hardship, 
 and manly endurance. The rich harvest-field, waving in 
 its beauty to the breath of the winds, speaks of labor 
 and culture, and the hard-won victory over a stubborn 
 soil. The bow of hope that spans the close of life's pil- 
 grimage is hung on clouds of care and trial, if not of sore 
 calamity. 
 
 254 
 
LIFE'S TEARS AND HARVEST. 255 
 
 " The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
 Leads to the world where sorrow is unknown. 
 No traveler ever reached that blest abode, 
 Who found not thorns and briars in his road." 
 
 Scripture expresses the thought in words not less beau- 
 tiful : " He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing pre- 
 cious seed, shall doubtless return again with rejoicing, 
 bringing his sheaves with him." 
 
 Final success — the joy of life's ripe harvest — is the 
 goal of our hopes. No wise or thoughtful man will live 
 merely for to-day. The pilgrim who seeks a home is not 
 content to linger and loiter for the mere flowers beside 
 his way. The sower looks onward to fields white and 
 ready for the sickle. Wisdom has regard to the grand 
 issue. The triumph or the pleasure of to-day is transi- 
 tory. We want a hope that does not sink with the set- 
 ting sun. The true success of life is that which does 
 not fail the evening of our days, and leave them to blight 
 or barrenness. We want that shout of " harvest home/' 
 that will not die into silence with the failing breath, but 
 makes the passage of the grave a whispering-gallery where 
 heaven and earth talk together. 
 
 Many mistake in their ideal of what constitutes the 
 true success of life. That man who comes back from 
 the field of probation's toil, rejoicing and bringing his 
 sheaves with him — he who is heir to God's " well done " 
 — is not the world-applauded hero, not the man who has 
 piled up the largest heap of wealth, not the man that 
 has drawn most notice, but he who in proportion to his 
 talents can show the most permanent good done ; he 
 who, though he has but few sheaves, has those of wheat 
 and not tares, whose life-work has built not " hay, wood 
 and stubble," but "silver, gold, precious stones." He 
 
256 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 comes back rejoicing — with that joy that flows from 
 knowing that his work is done, and has not been alto- 
 gether vain — that he has sheaves for heaven's garner, 
 grown of precious seed, and that into the presence of the 
 great householder he can go and say humbly, but hopefully, 
 " Thy talents have gained five talents more." Here is 
 true success ; not that hailed by the acclaim of applauding 
 thousands, not that which was won by a favoring turn 
 of fortune's wheel, not that of pomp and triumphant 
 parade, but that of an approving conscience, and the 
 smile of Heaven ; that of works that will outlive their 
 author, works that will follow him. 
 
 It is not without significance that a man is presented 
 before us as going forth weeping, bearing precious seed. 
 By this we are taught that he must have a tearful anxi- 
 ety, such a deep sense of the greatness and arduousness 
 of his task as will make him weep before God, and he 
 must sow the right seed, direct his energies in that chan- 
 nel which will produce the best as well as the largest 
 harvest. 
 
 No man ever, as a general thing, accomplishes much 
 without a deep, if not burdening sense of what he under- 
 takes. It is so in temporal things. It is so in spiritual. 
 The great works of life are no holiday by-plays. A man 
 must not go to his work-shop or counting-room toying or 
 trifling. He that would carry out his business projects 
 to a successful issue, must make care and toil his" part- 
 ners. He must struggle with the tide of events, and 
 turn it into the channel of his designs. He must not 
 shrink from vigilance and anxiety. He must be prepared 
 to battle long and well with adversity. And so it is with 
 the pursuit of spiritual good, the mastery of self, the 
 
LIFE'S TEAMS AND RAH VEST. 257 
 
 victory over sin, the rebuke of surrounding wickedness, 
 the culture of grace in one's own and others' hearts. 
 The greatness of the task must be felt, felt even to 
 tears, felt to the measure of a tearful prayerfulness. 
 
 And the true work of a Christian's life aiming at final 
 success, is great enough to warrant this. It is a great 
 battle. It is a struggle to absorb the soul's entire ener- 
 gies. To win heavenfto make our calling and election 
 sure, to keep the light of holy example bright amid sur- 
 rounding darkness, to carry the standard of truth right 
 through the bustling crowds of worldliness — this is no 
 easy task. It demands that anxiety which will press the 
 energies of the whole man out into action. To do our 
 duty by ourselves — to master sin within and temptation 
 without — to do our duty by others and bring them as 
 far as we may to the Saviour, it burdened the soul of 
 an Apostle ; it might task the powers of an angel. It 
 calls for an anxiety that will flow forth in prayer and 
 tears, tears that the soul weeps and not the eye, tears 
 that God sees and not man. 
 
 And another element of success is that we go forth 
 bearing precious seed. There is care and anxiety enough 
 in the world if only directed into the right channel ; 
 there is seed enough sown if it was only of the right 
 kind. But the tares and weeds outnumber the wheat. 
 The botany of the moral is as rich as that of the natural 
 world. The thorns and thistles, the perplexities and 
 cares that men sow for their harvests are innumerable. 
 How much of the seed laboriously sown by men is worth- 
 less, or worse. It grows up to pain, and guilt, and 
 anguish, and accusing memories. Men sow to the wind 
 to reap the whirlwind. All the sorrows and calamities 
 of life almost — its disappointments, and disgusts, and de- 
 
258 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 spair — come from the seed sown. Stupidity or reckless- 
 ness never stops to ask what it is, whether precious or 
 worthless. The man who casts the seed of wasted years, 
 of selfish or worldly anxieties, into the soil he cultivates, 
 knows not what he does, and, when time shows him his 
 mistake, he sees too late that his own hands planted it. 
 Some men sow seeds of poison to embitter all their after 
 years ; some scatter seeds that spring up to mere useless 
 shrubs 1 some sow the seed of their vices, that multiply 
 and spread their curse like the Canada thistle, over- 
 running the farmer's fields. Precious seed there is, but 
 it comes from God's patent-office ; it is seed that springs 
 up into a life of piety, devotion, and usefulness ; it is the 
 seed of holy aims and strivings ; the seed of charity, in- 
 tegrity, and self-denial. It is such seed as Christ sowed 
 in the Sermon on the Mount, or by the well of Samaria, 
 or among the famished thousands of the desert ; such as 
 Paul scattered broadcast over the Roman empire ; such 
 as time sifts out of the lives of good men in faithful duties 
 done, and holy examples set, and kindly words uttered ; 
 such as the faithful parent drops into the soil of the 
 young heart springing up to all generous, and humane, 
 and heavenward strivings ; such as falls lightly as the 
 snowflake about the hearthstone where the home-group 
 kneel to pray ; such as the Sabbath teacher drops into 
 young and tender hearts, that it may grow with their 
 growth and strengthen with their strength ; such is the 
 seed precious beyond all price, the harvest of which 
 shall be rich in more than golden sheaves. As he that 
 turns a desert to a garden does a more useful work than 
 he that built the pyramids, so he that turns one soul to 
 righteousness, or keeps his own from the pollutions of the 
 world, does a work that will invoke blessings on its 
 
LIFE'S TEARS AND HARVEST. 
 
 259 
 
 author when lizards crawl over the monuments of nobles 
 and of kings. The seed he plants is that of the spread- 
 ing banyan-tree of grace, that will live on and still extend 
 when the frosts of time shall have withered the weeds 
 and sedges that bloomed and thrived, as human wealth 
 or greatness, for a summer's day. A man may toil as 
 hard to plant thorns as grapes. He may spend as much 
 labor in rearing shrub oaks as cedars of Lebanon ; and 
 so a man may sow to the flesh and of the flesh reap 
 corruption, and it may cost him as much care and effort 
 as if he sowed to the Spirit, and of the Spirit reaped life 
 everlasting. 
 
 The wise farmer is careful in the seed he selects. It 
 costs no more to plant the good than the bad. A man 
 may sweat and tire as much in sowing chaff and sawdust 
 as in sowing wheat ; and when we look at the field of 
 the world, we seem to see men who, oblivious of the na- 
 ture and bearing of their efforts, are spending, in the 
 mere pursuit of personal and selfish objects, those ener- 
 gies which, wisely directed, might lay up a treasure for 
 them in heaven. No matter how hard they toil, the 
 more miserable will be their failure if they have not the 
 precious seed ; no matter how abundant their returns, 
 if they be but weeds, and straw, and stubble ; no matter 
 what shrewdness and skill they may display in accumu- 
 lating a bulky crop, if, on God's threshing-floor, not a grain 
 of wheat can be winnowed out. You might go through the 
 community and sum up the attainments of thousands of 
 busy lives, and when you subject them to the only real 
 test of what they have accomplished for God and man, 
 they are> with all their imposing array and splendor, no 
 better than great Babylon, that golden head of the king- 
 doms, when " weighed in the balance and found want- 
 
2 6o LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 ing." An air-bubble may be as brilliant and more bulky 
 than a jewel, but it dissolves at a touch ; and so death 
 touches the splendid fortune, or the honored reputation, 
 and it breaks, with all its glitter, and disappears forever ; 
 while he that, at the cost of all he had, has sought the 
 goodly pearl, may have it shining forever in the crown of 
 his rejoicing. 
 
 Let there be, then, that attention to the seed you sow 
 which the importance of the case demands. That was 
 an ignoble boast of the ancient artist, " I paint for eter- 
 nity," by the side of him who, conscious of aspiring to a 
 harvest for the garner of heaven, can say, " I sow for 
 eternity." Not one grain of his precious seed is, or ever 
 can be, lost. It may sleep long beneath the cold clod, 
 and the wintry storms may seem to weave a snowy 
 shroud for its final burial, but its hidden life will out- 
 burst its sepulchre with the returning spring-time, and 
 then it will be seen, that, while the schemes of statesman- 
 ship were brushed by time like the spider's webs, and 
 colossal fortunes vanished like a dream, and a fame that 
 the world echoed died in whispers, the kindly counsel, 
 the holy example, the self-denying charity, the lowly be- 
 neficence of the good man were springing up to a harvest 
 over which the jubilee of angels should break enrap- 
 tured. 
 
 " He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious 
 seed, shall doubtless return again rejoicing, bringing his 
 sheaves with him." Doubtless ! You may rely upon it. 
 It is the sure result of His ordinance who has declared 
 that seed-time and harvest shall not fail. It may some- 
 times seem to be otherwise. There are those who toil 
 on prayerfully and tearfully to life's close, and see little 
 fruit of their efforts ; but many times their works follow 
 
LIFE'S TEARS AND HARVEST. 2 6i 
 
 tliem. When their dust has been given to the grave, 
 and men have read their name only on their monument, 
 some lingering memory that seemed dry and dead has 
 bloomed afresh, and the very words uttered in the weak- 
 ness of their dying breath have been the down that 
 floated a seed for eternity to a spot where it found a con- 
 genial soil, and rooted and grew up to a noble life, or to 
 generous deeds. Then at last, perhaps, it was remem- 
 bered, that long agoin humble, lowly striving, some child 
 of God had prepared the field and sowed the seed for 
 the harvest that gladdens the heart of angel reapers ; 
 that, in the calm assurance of faith, hoping against hope, 
 and struggling with discouragement, a godly zeal or 
 heavenly endurance laid the foundation for all these 
 results. 
 
 Look yonder at that little group on the Grecian shores 
 of ancient Miletus, and see how at the words of that 
 saintly man, who stands among them, the tears are start- 
 ing from many an eye ; and, at last, about to bid them 
 farewell, he kneels down and prays with them all. See, 
 how with sore weeping, they fall upon his neck, and kiss 
 him, sorrowing that they shall behold his face no more. It 
 is the Apostle Paul and the elders of the Church at 
 Ephesus, but that Apostle goes forth weeping, bearing 
 precious seed, the seed of the Word of God, and if you 
 wait a few years more, you shall hear a voice of triumph 
 issuing from his Roman prison : " I have fought the good 
 fight, I have kept the faith, and henceforth there is laid 
 up for me a crown of life." Ah ! there is the joy of the 
 laborer returning from the harvest-field, bringing his 
 sheaves with him. 
 
 Gaze yonder on the northern coast of the African con- 
 tinent, and look at that desolate home of a widowed 
 
262 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 mother and her only son. She is a Christian woman, and 
 long and well has she toiled and prayed that the heart 
 of her child might be renewed and sanctified. But the 
 years pass on, and learning, and philosophy, and hu- 
 man speculations, and passionate indulgence, possess his 
 thoughts, and every day carries him further from the 
 path of Christian hope. Tears flow in secret, and many 
 a heart-coined prayer goes up for his recovery, but there 
 is no change. The widowed mother goes sadly to her 
 pastor, and opens to him her burdens and her griefs, but 
 in a faith built upon the assurance that he that sows in 
 tears shall reap in joy, he bids h$r still hope that grace 
 will not let the child of faith and prayer be wholly lost. 
 A few years pass on, and you see that wayward, paganized, 
 ambitious youth, the venerable Bishop of the ancient 
 Church, and the admiring reverence of after centuries 
 knows him as St. Augustine. She that went forth and 
 wept, bearing precious seed may come again rejoicing in 
 the abundant harvest of her prayer and toil. 
 
 There, again, is the faithful Sabbath-school teacher. 
 Burdensome anxiety for the welfare of souls committed 
 to his care, makes him feel the arduousness of the task 
 he has undertaken. To gain their attention, to imbue 
 their minds with heavenly truth, to lead them to the 
 Lamb of God ; all this is a work to try the faith, and ex- 
 cite apprehension. But with a tearful faith in God the 
 seed is sown. No promise of a harvest, perhaps, appears. 
 The pupils are scattered abroad over the wide world, 
 and no track of them can be kept. But afar away, on 
 shipboard, in the silent watch on deck, or in the solitudes 
 of the great prairies, or in some strange and distant city, 
 the memory of those Sabbaths comes back, and the wan- 
 dering scholar thinks how like the prodigal he is, and 
 
LIFE'S TEARS AND HARVEST. 263 
 
 God's spirit carries the conviction home, and so, afar off 
 in time and place, he is brought near to God, and, at 
 length, it may be that he meets that teacher, and glad- 
 dens his heart with the story of God's gracious dealings, 
 till he who went forth weeping bearing precious seed 
 feels that he can return rejoicing bringing his sheaves 
 with him. 
 
 Take another illustration. Here is a poor, unfortunate 
 child of want and sorrow. Pain, and grief, and afflic- 
 tion have been his lot. He has suffered long and much, 
 sometimes from human coldness and harshness ; some- 
 times from disease, or the anguish of bereavement. But, 
 with all this, he has hope in God. Tears indeed are his 
 meat and drink, but the fear of sinning against that great 
 and good Being, who has left him so many mercies still 
 — fear lest he betray complaining or ingratitude, is his 
 greatest anxiety. There he lies, perhaps almost helpless, 
 on his straw-bed in a garret, but gathering up from 
 his precious Bible sweet words of counsel and of prom- 
 ise, and dropping them one by one into his memory, till 
 they root there deep and strong, and nothing can tear 
 them up. 
 
 He seems to me like the sower going forth weeping, 
 bearing precious seed, only his own heart is the field, 
 and God's word and God's rich grace are the precious 
 seed ; but I know that the harvest will come, ah ! it has 
 come already, in that calm submission, that cheerful faith, 
 that heavenly hope, that make the sufferer's bed preach 
 to the world the blessedness of a believer's portion. 
 
 Such are some of the abundant lessons which God sets 
 before us to impress upon us the truth of his word. The 
 world is full of them. He that would come back from 
 life's harvest-field rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with 
 
264 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 him, must be prepared to go forth weeping bearing 
 precious seed. It is not by shunning self-denial and du- 
 ties' hardships, that the true goal of life can be won. 
 The path of ease is not that of heavenly, any more than 
 earthly attainment. 
 
 Look where you will over this busy earth, and you find 
 no blessing of probation that has not cost effort or self- 
 denial. The richest harvests cost laborious culture. 
 Even the prizes of fame and ambition have been won by 
 persevering toil. The laborer's gains are moist with 
 sweat, and the soldier's laurels drip with blood. The 
 heroes of faith have endured hardness ; have sustained 
 the great " fight of affliction." They have passed through 
 the furnace. Some of them have run their earthly race 
 to a fiery goal. All that will be Christ's disciples must 
 be cross-bearers. They must be prepared to tread in 
 their Master's steps. They must welcome " the narrow 
 way." They must " sow in tears." 
 
 I would not advocate a sad and tearful countenance. 
 I would not clothe religion in black, or robe it in mourn- 
 ing habiliments. But I know that life and life's tasks 
 are a serious and solemn thing. I know that sin has 
 made the world a vale of tears, and no Eden can come 
 out of it till sin, by stern conflict, is mastered and sub- 
 dued. He that would be a victor must first act the 
 soldier's part. By prayer, and toil, and self-mastery — 
 leaning ever on the staff of Jehovah — we must climb to 
 the height from which we fell. 
 
 " Whoever thinks, must see that man was made 
 To face the storm, not languish in the shade. 
 Action 's his sphere, and for that sphere designed, 
 Eternal pleasures open on the mind." 
 
XXX. 
 
 WALKING IN THE TRUTH. 
 
 "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth." 
 
 3 John 4. 
 
 t& r I ^0 walk in truth I" What an expressive phrase ! 
 JL How full of meaning ! 
 
 There are some men who walk in falsehood. You 
 might write their biography in a tomb-stone epitaph, that 
 might almost make the marble blush — " a thirty, forty, 
 fifty, seventy years' lie." It is false to God, false to con- 
 science, false to the reality of things, false to the eternal 
 laws of duty and righteousness. It starts with a false 
 principle, and ends in false results. 
 
 Such is the life of the hypocrite, the man who seems 
 what he is not ; who makes his speech and manner and 
 professions a mask to deceive ; who murders truth and 
 integrity, and yet wears the robes of the murdered. In 
 his case, the atmosphere in which he lives and breathes is 
 falsehood. 
 
 So there are thousands whose life is unreal. They 
 live in their own fancies. Their life is but a dream of 
 fashion or pleasure. As they whirl by on their way to 
 eternity, they are gay, thoughtless, heedless. They walk 
 in a vain show. Their joys are hollow joys. Their 
 troubles are fanciful. Their talk is empty bubbles, the 
 froth of vanity. 
 
 12 (265) 
 
266 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 There are others again who would scorn a lie, who 
 would brand it with infamy, who are yet false to God. 
 He is their sovereign, yet they do not obey him. He is 
 their master, but they do not serve him. He is their 
 Father, but they do not honor him. To his just claims, 
 they say, how often, like the young man in the parable, 
 " I go, sir," and go not. They have been entrusted sol- 
 emnly with talents, but they are false to their trust. 
 They have means of influence and, perhaps, wealth, but 
 they are false in their use. 
 
 And thus they are false to themselves. They betray 
 their own souls. With these in their keeping, they falsely 
 surrender them to sin and Satan. Instead of guarding 
 them with a truthful fidelity, they leave them, with door 
 ajar, for Satan to enter. 
 
 It is not strange then that they should be false to their 
 convictions. They know what is good, yet do it not. 
 They feel that they should be pious, yet they linger in 
 their sins. They hear a voice within, with Sinai author- 
 ity, calling them to repent, but they are false to its sum- 
 mons. They see the flag of duty waving over them, but 
 they will not march under the banner. They are false 
 to the flag of conscience. 
 
 In common with others, they are false to the eternal 
 laws of righteousness. These are binding on us all. 
 From the seraph before the throne, to the felon in his 
 cell, there is not a moral agent in the universe of God, 
 exempt from their obligation, and there is not one who 
 does not at times acknowledge it. But how many break 
 through them, are disloyal to them, put duty under 
 bonds to pleasure, insult the awful majesty of truth, do 
 despite to the authority which legislates for eternity and 
 for the universe. 
 
WALKING IK THE TRUTH. 267 
 
 Doubtless many of these would scorn a downright lie. 
 They have been educated to despise it. They discern in 
 it something intrinsically mean and odious. But their 
 idea of it is that it must be articulated in words, or com- 
 pacted in cheats and frauds. They forget that the very 
 spirit of it is a Proteus, that like the rain-drop it may be 
 compacted in ice or expanded in vapor, like the pesti- 
 lence it may walk in darkness, as well as destroy at noon- 
 day. They forget that the very essence of all sin is false- 
 hood, a violation of truth, or truthfulness, to God, man, 
 or the soul itself. 
 
 Thus, we see that the comprehensive summary of a 
 noble and upright life is " to walk in truth." There is 
 nothing grander, purer, higher. And there is nothing so 
 exactly descriptive of the complete and perfect character. 
 To walk in truth is not only to be what we seem ; not 
 only to scorn masks ; not only to shun the hollowness of 
 all that the dying man pronounces unreal ; not only to 
 withdraw from the path hung about with shows and 
 pageants and shadows, but to walk as God's child, to live 
 as the heir of heaven, to be true at once to truth, to con- 
 science, and to God. 
 
 No doubt all this was included in the idea of the 
 Apostle. It was unquestionably his summary of a Chris- 
 tian life. His highest idea of the truth was, as Paul 
 expresses it, " the truth as it is in Jesus." He had himself 
 heard the master say, " I am the way, the truth, and the 
 life," To him the highest truth, the sum of all truth, the 
 sum itself of truth, of which all science and philosophy 
 were but darkling rays, was Christ the Lamb of God 
 that taketh away the sin of the world. To accept hi m 
 as the great teacher, the great example, the great atoning 
 sacrifice ; to be found in him, not having his own right- 
 
268 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 eousness ; to be able to say, " for ine to live is Christ," 
 " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," and to walk 
 in his steps, the steps of incarnate truth itself — this, be- 
 yond question, was what the Apostle meant by his ex- 
 pressive phrase, walking in truth. 
 
 And who doubts that the man who is true to God, ac- 
 cording to the Bible standard, true to Christ as a servant 
 and disciple, will be true in all things else ? You can 
 trust him. He lives under the all-seeing eye. He dwells 
 in the all-pervading presence. He yields unswerving 
 allegiance to the God of all truth. You want no spies 
 to watch him, no human statutes to bind him, no sureties 
 to make good his word. Potosi or California coined into 
 gold could not bribe him. The powers of earth and hell 
 could not shake his integrity. 
 
 Nay, the highest standard of Christian character and 
 virtuous attainment is presented in this walking in truth. 
 I could not ask of any man, of any Christian, any thing 
 more than to walk in the truth of his convictions and 
 professions. Let him hold these fast, and he will be a 
 perfect man. He will not say one thing and do another. 
 He will not profess to follow Christ and yet forsake him. 
 He will not assume to be a child of God, and yet by 
 worldliness, selfishness, and the love of vanity, covet the 
 adoption of the Devil. He will be ever at the post of 
 duty. He will ever enjoy that blessed music of heaven 
 which flows from the harmony between conscience and 
 act, the disposition and its allotted task. He will exem- 
 plify his religion in word and deed. He will tolerate no 
 self-delusion ; he will abide under no pretense. 
 
 To see such a man as this, is a cheering, a noble sight. 
 It is the sublimest spectacle beneath the stars. It does 
 one's heart good, it makes it glad, to look at it. The 
 
WALKING IZT THE TRUTH. 269 
 
 upheaved granite, pushing its mountain peaks up into 
 the clouds, where the lightnings play, is grand. The 
 broad landscape, where flowers bloom and trees wave on 
 the background of silver lakes or azure skies, is beauti- 
 ful ; but grander than the mountain and fairer than the 
 landscape, is the true life, lifting itself heavenward, but 
 blooming like the flower by the lowliest home. . 
 
 If to see it is so cheering — to see it afar off, in a 
 stranger that we never knew before — what must it be to 
 hear of it in those we love, and whom we have ourselves 
 taught ! those for whom we have prayed much and ear- 
 nestly, whom we have met by the fireside, in whose be- 
 half we have felt the anxiety too deep for words ! Their 
 welfare is like our own. It is a part of it. The blow 
 that smites them strikes through them to us. But to 
 hear, to be assured that they walk in truth, is to hear the 
 best news — that which our fervent affection most desires, 
 that which crowns our fondest anticipations. 
 
 How strange, how mysterious is that mutual bond of 
 sympathy and affection which binds us all one to an- 
 other! It counteracts selfishness. It keeps us from 
 scattering each like a hermit to his solitary cell. We 
 smile at other's joy, we weep at other's woe. See the 
 parent's heart, stretching the tendrils of affection far over 
 sea and land to clasp the absent child in its embrace. 
 See the mutual attachment of teacher and pupil, of pas- 
 tor and people, of the missionary and his converts ! And 
 what is it that this affection desires the most, when it is 
 pure and intelligent ? When life is at stake, when the 
 enfeebled frame is sinking under disease, how poor is 
 dress, or show, or beauty, or honor ! And when the 
 purity of the soul, its spiritual life, is exposed to hazard, 
 how vain is the pomp of its ruin, its harvests of grain, its 
 
270 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 gleanings of gold ! We shudder at that monstrous dis- 
 tortion of feeling which would have a child rich though 
 mean, great in place or rank, if dwarfed in principle. 
 We have no words for the folly of the parent that makes 
 a doll of a child, bedizzening it with silks, and ribbons, 
 and jewels, only to nurse its pride and make it the sport 
 of its own precocious passions of envy and vanity. It is 
 like burning a precious diamond for the sake of its tran- 
 sient blaze. It is reducing that which might be planted 
 as a cedar in the courts of the Lord's house, into a 
 charred firebrand, and doing it under the perverted 
 name of affection. 
 
 But take away the scales from the blinded eye. Recog- 
 nize in that object of love a young immortal. See in it 
 here on earth one exposed to temptations that may rend 
 it like demons, and fling it dehumanized into the gutter 
 or the dark pools of vice ; one that is not safe for a mo- 
 ment without the safeguards of virtue ; one that only in 
 the strength of truth, purity and piety is fit to fight the 
 battle of life and come off conqueror, and then, if you 
 love it, how every thing else shrinks into insignificance 
 by the side of that life of duty and religion in which the 
 soul grows ripe for the benedictions of men on earth and 
 the blessedness of God in heaven ! You want to see it 
 walking in wisdom's ways. You ask, with tears per- 
 haps, that God would keep it from the evil, from vice, 
 from falsehood, from being untrue to itself or to him. 
 And you are not contented, your anxiety does not find 
 relief, till you beseech for it the new heart that loves 
 God, the new life that springs from his truth. 
 
 And you are right here. Better that your child should 
 be a beggar in the streets than that it should grow up to 
 falsehood and false ways. Better that it should be hated 
 
WALKING IN THE TRUTH. 271 
 
 of men than unloved of God. But it cannot be loved of 
 Him, unless it is true, unless it walks in truth, unless it 
 is strong in truth, unless the truth has made it penitent, 
 humble, contrite, faithful, consecrated to God. There 
 are times even in this world when the cable of good hab- 
 its under the stress of temptation's storm would yield, if 
 the iron thread of Christian principle were not inter- 
 twined with it, and we know, that in the final struggle, 
 he is weak, no matter of how strong resolve, or tireless 
 energy, who is not strong in the Lord. 
 
 How then can yours be the joy which the Apostle 
 felt ? The joy, greater than which he declared he could 
 not feel ? How, as you gaze over your household, or 
 your circle of friends, or on the forms of those you know 
 and love, can you find for yourself a happiness even on 
 earth like that of the angels in heaven over the repent- 
 ing sinner ? Surely, it is only by doing what you can to 
 lead them to the fountains of eternal life, to the fear of 
 God, to the feet of Jesus. It is only by striving so to 
 draw and guide them that they shall be led to him who 
 is the way, the truth, and the life — shall indeed, in a 
 single word, walk in truth. 
 
 But to this end you must walk in truth yourself. If 
 you point to heaven, you must lead the way. Kay, if 
 you hesitate, I can conceive the very piety of your child 
 a stinging reproof, an occasion of reproach, an element 
 to embitter your anguish. To rejoice in his conversion, 
 you need to be converted yourself. Oh ! that every pa- 
 rent could say, " I have no greater joy than to heai; that 
 my children walk in truth, and this joy is mine." 
 
XXXI. 
 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 " The righteous is an everlasting foundation." — Prov. x. 25. 
 
 HAVE you ever passed along the shores of the sea 
 where the chafing waves had for centuries been 
 encroaching on the land, washing the sand away, but 
 leaving here and there a rocky ledge lifting its crest 
 in proud defiance ? What seemed solid earth vanishes 
 away, undermined and disintegrated piecemeal, while 
 what had hitherto been buried out of sight and had 
 passed unnoticed, comes out to view, and is prepared to 
 challenge all the mad force of the ocean lashed into 
 rage. 
 
 On these shores of time, where the waves of centuries 
 undermine and sweep away the greatest works of art, 
 may we not feel that we have a parable before us ? The 
 sands around us are drifting away ; the structures on 
 which we expend our art are crumbling ; empires are 
 disintegrated : fortunes are whelmed in the abyss ; the 
 iron frame yields at last. Marks of decay are traced on 
 all that we behold ; and yet time and violence, wind and 
 wave, leave to every man that which we denominate 
 his character. With each passing year it comes out 
 more clear and distinct and unchanging, until at last 
 when wealth, and honors, and vigor have yielded like 
 
 (272) 
 
CHARACTER. 
 
 273 
 
 sands to the all-devouring sea, it stands alone, like the 
 monumental pillar of probation, lifting its head above 
 the tide and wave. 
 
 The results of life are various, but the most permanent 
 of them all is character. Sometimes it is the only thing 
 that a man has left him after the discipline of probation. 
 Sometimes misfortune sweeps away all his gains, and 
 calamity leaves him friendless, and he stands alone with 
 only his character, like a pillar solitary amid the ruins 
 of a great city, surviving the wreck of all things be- 
 side. 
 
 They may disappear, but character abides. Once, 
 indeed, it was pliable, almost like wax to the seal ; a 
 breath could cover it, like a window-pane in winter, with 
 pictured frost-work, or tarnish it, like the polished steel, 
 and disfigure it by unsightly rust. A mere word will 
 sometimes sink into it, falling as lightly, perhaps, as a 
 raindrop on the primeval sands that ages have changed 
 to solid strata, and leave an impression that future ages 
 will never erase. A fleeting opinion, carelessly uttered, 
 may mar and disfigure it forever. A passing incident, a 
 look of reproof, a kindly tone, a memory of goodness, an 
 example of piety, may impress some feature that will out- 
 live the crumbling granite. The very dust and straws 
 of time may be incorporated into it ; the collisions of 
 youthful passions and interests may impress upon it last- 
 ing distortion. Sometimes you may almost pour it liquid 
 into the mould of a stronger will. But when it has taken 
 shape, when time has hardened it in the mould, or fossil- 
 ized the impression, it defies all the rasps and files of 
 discipline, and blunts the hardened chisel, and sets at 
 naught the force of fire and hammer. 
 
 What is there that falls more gently and lightly than 
 12* 
 
274 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 the snow-flake ? A breath will melt it, and you cannot 
 feel its feathery stroke as it drops lingeringly from the 
 clouds ; it sinks noiselessly and unnoticed, and is lost to 
 view in the fleecy mass with which it mingles. And yet 
 with time and pressure it hardens, and helps to form the 
 giant iceberg which, launched from the frozen coasts of 
 the North, floats downward toward the pole, towering 
 above the tallest mast and crushing the oak-ribbed ves- 
 sels that are dashed against it like egg-shells. 
 
 Is it not so with character ? How evanescent is the 
 passing emotion, the fleeting thought ! No human eye 
 notes it, no human ear hears its echo. You cannot grasp 
 it, or define it, or weigh it in the scales. It is born of 
 an incident or a breath, and it vanishes like a vapor. 
 The microscope cannot detect it, and history can rarely 
 record it. It hangs out no flag, it blows no trumpet. 
 It seems to flit by like a drifting shadow. Its step is as 
 noiseless as Time's own ; and yet, as it sinks into its place 
 in the soul, it is incorporated with other thoughts or 
 emotions more or less like itself, and the result is some- 
 times that structure of character that will resist all out- 
 ward impression of rain or sunshine, and will carry the 
 breath of polar winters with it into regions that were 
 strangers to its birth. The strokes that are aimed at it 
 only rebound against him that strikes. The masses that 
 are dashed at it are only crushed in the collision. It is 
 the frost-bound, impassive iceberg of the soul. 
 
 Thus, while fashioned, perhaps, like wax, it changes, 
 as it were, to adamant. Long before it has seen three- 
 score years and ten it becomes fixed, and rigid, and 
 changeless. You cannot mould it by persuasion or im- 
 press it by terror. The appeals of reason are lost upon 
 it ; the hopes of blessedness cannot soften it ; the unveiled 
 
CHARACTER. 2?5 
 
 realities of retribution leave it impassive. All the powers 
 of the life to come fail often to change a single feature, 
 and if there is yielding at last, it is through the appre- 
 hension of final judgment or the power of sovereign 
 grace. 
 
 A man's character is the aggregate of all the dispo- 
 sitions, tastes, purposes, and habits of his soul ; whatever 
 helps to constitute his moral identity. This, slowly made 
 up, it may be, changing imperceptibly, perhaps, through 
 years, is finally the least yielding of all things. At first 
 it may be almost as shifting as the folds of the morning's 
 mist. You cannot tell, amid the vicissitudes of childish 
 years, what form it will finally assume ; and yet at last 
 it looms up before you, outlined as clear and definite as that 
 silver-edged border of the thunder-head, pencilled on 
 the distant sky, which you can carry with you in memory 
 through years to come. You cannot tell, perhaps, how it 
 was formed, what silent, invisible influences moulded it, 
 or from what source its elements were derived. Just as 
 the morning's sun will drink up by its millions of beams 
 millions of dew-drops, gathering them from lake and clod, 
 from forest leaf and mossy bed, from steaming rotten- 
 ness and fragrant flower, so from countless sources are 
 drawn the elements of our moral life, from the examples 
 we witness, the opinions we hear, the scenes through 
 which we pass, the principles set before us or adopted 
 by ourselves, the plans we form, the books we read, the 
 pleasures we seek, the very objects of nature, of art, of 
 providence or grace, that pass before our eyes. 
 
 But when these have yielded what they have to bestow, 
 the liquid gift crystallizes, like the jewels and diamonds 
 of what we might almost call the bleeding granite ; dia- 
 monds which become so hardened and unyielding, that 
 
276 LIFE LESSONS, 
 
 the blow that would make any impression would suffice 
 to crush them to atoms. The character becomes less and 
 less pliable, and ere the ordinary period of life is past, 
 we feel that the age of a Methusaleh filled with adverse 
 and counteracting influences, would be powerless to 
 change it. If graceless then, it is graceless forever. If 
 not yet moulded, it is thenceforth forever rough and rude, 
 rugged and harsh, stern and forbidding. Mountains may 
 be levelled, ocean cliffs may be worn away by the tides, 
 the pyramids may crumble, but the character is still the 
 same. The tides of passion only plow that channel 
 deeper which is already worn, and habit only entrenches 
 itself more strongly between the cliff-bound barriers that 
 it has formed itself. 
 
 If any importance then attaches to character, the in- 
 fluences by which it may be rightly shaped should be 
 carefully studied, and the period during which it may be 
 moulded should be accounted the golden moment. 
 
 But character is important — unspeakably important. 
 It is character which gives all its worth and significance 
 to human existence ; without it, man is no better than the 
 brute — no better than a graven image. He sinks to a 
 level with the beast he drives, or the acres he ploughs. 
 The end of existence and of probation is to form charac- 
 ter — character that will glorify God. Character is the 
 one indisputable and abiding result of our earthly trial. 
 Every thing else is subsidiary to this. For it, the immense 
 mechanism of time is set in motion, the world is framed, 
 social order is established, laws are ordained and tests 
 applied. Without it the globe with its furniture would be 
 like a plowed field unsown — a house built, but never 
 occupied. What is the mere culture of acres, the build- 
 ing of cities, the minting and accumulation of coin, except 
 
CHARACTER. 277 
 
 as these bear on character ? They have no more in- 
 trinsic value or importance than a bee's construction of 
 his cells, or a beaver's construction of his dam. Sum up 
 all the other deeds and achievements of a human life, and 
 if you omit character, what remains but stubble ? There 
 is not a grain of wheat left. You have taken away the 
 digits and added up only cyphers. 
 
 What is that one work which is going forward cease- 
 lessly throughout our whole career ; which activity may 
 promote, but which indolence cannot arrest ; which begins 
 with cradled infancy, and is closed only by the summons 
 of the grave? It is not the work which builds up 
 character ? And is not this our life work ? Are we not- 
 all artists ? Is there not a striking parallel between the 
 process of the sculptor, and that which is going forward 
 in our own souls ? The first blows knock off the largest 
 fragments of the marble, and determine the general 
 contour of the statue. But not less important in some 
 respects are the latest touches of the chisel, imperceptible 
 in their effects to the careless observer, but yet giving 
 finish to the work. So, to the very last, we are perfect- 
 ing the work begun perhaps in childhood, and of all our 
 achievements, this is to us the most important, as it is 
 the most enduring. We may undertake enterprises that 
 are futile as it respects dividends, but the character gains 
 or loses by them. We may foolishly defeat our own suc- 
 cess, or undo what we have done, but the double expe- 
 rience is registered on the character. We can undertake 
 nothing, which does not leave its most important resi- 
 duum in our own hearts. Our character is for us the sum- 
 mary of the results of probation. 
 
 Character is the most valuable possession that a man 
 can have on earth. It has an unspeakable worth even in 
 
278 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 the markets of the world, and in the daily intercourse of 
 men. The loss of character is sometimes the loss of 
 every thing. How poor and contemptible is he that has 
 forfeited it! How he becomes the foot-ball of the 
 world's scorn ! How he finds his symbol in the withered 
 leaf, torn from its living stem, tossed by the whirlwind, 
 and left to sink despised and neglected to oblivion ! 
 
 Character has its value when tried by a business 
 standard. An established reputation is itself a capital. 
 It inspires confidence. It commands credit. It was by 
 the force of character that "Washington in the dark days 
 of war held together the armies of his country. It was 
 by the force of character that the elder Pitt was able to 
 evoke at a critical moment the energies of the nation, 
 and make England's name terrible around the globe, on 
 the heights of Abraham and in the jungles of India. It 
 was the character of the missionary Schwartz that secured 
 him confidence, and made him the peaceful mediator be- 
 tween hostile armies. There are no victories or triumphs 
 inscribed on the bloody record of war, that in moral 
 grandeur can surpass or equal the bloodless achievements 
 of character. It has proved itself mightier than num- 
 bers, stronger than steel, richer than gold. The eloquence 
 of Demosthenes is feeble by the side of the eloquence of 
 character. Sometimes a whole nation is lifted out of des- 
 pondency by the voice of one man in whom it has learned 
 to confide. The ranks of a shattered army are marshalled 
 anew into invincible battalions when the man whom they 
 feel they can trust is put at their head. A single well- 
 known signature will evoke millions of money in behalf 
 of the enterprise it endorses. Such are the triumphs of ' 
 character. 
 
 It is the capital often of youthful enterprise ; it is the 
 
CHARACTER. 
 
 279 
 
 pledge of business success ; it secures friends ; it con- 
 ciliates sympathy ; it commands respect. In the hour of 
 need, in the trying emergency, it surrounds one with those 
 who are disposed to lend a helping hand. He is not 
 ostracised simply because he has been unfortunate ; he is 
 not shunned as a pest ; he is not despised as a villain ; 
 calumny may assault, but can only temporarily harm him, 
 and when he rises again, as he is sure to do in the end 
 those that hissed once will be ready to applaud. He can 
 look upon his honest earnings without a blush. They do 
 not rust and canker, and eat his flesh as it were fire. 
 There is not a mean or dishonest coin among them ; but 
 even if he were to lose them all, they are but trash to 
 what still remains. His character will abide with him j 
 it will be the foundation of new enterprise, the warrant 
 of final though remote success. 
 
 Character, again, is essential to happiness. There are 
 some characters of which we cannot form the conception, 
 without associating them with gloomy passions and 
 troubled thoughts. They are built up of the elements of 
 selfishness, greed, and crime. We look upon them as on 
 some frowning, massive, windowless castle, with its damp, 
 chill chambers and gloomy dungeons, where spiders 
 weave their webs and lizards crawl. There is no cheer- 
 ful sunlight in them, no ringing tones of sportive inno- 
 cence, only the clank of chains and the echo of solitary 
 footsteps. No place is there for happiness, no room for 
 innocent delight or sweet content, and sometimes you 
 may read on the clouded brow, as if sculptured over the 
 grim portal of a tower, " Only the tyrant and his victims 
 dwell within." 
 
 There are elements of character that are like a disease 
 in the bones, eating up the marrow of life. The impure, 
 
2 8o LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 malicious, envious thought is a kind of demon within the 
 soul. It goes about with us, haunts us, dwells in us, is 
 part of our being. It denies and pollutes by its very 
 presence. It frowns fiend-like upon us, from within, re- 
 fusing to be dislodged. We are possessed as it were of 
 the Evil Spirit. In such society happiness cannot dwell. 
 
 And yet there are characters with which we associate 
 naturally whatever is peaceful, and cheerful, and happy. 
 Pure, lofty, generous, above the strife of low passions, 
 full of meekness and gentleness ; we approach them as 
 we would the shadow of Eden bowers. Their presence 
 repels all that is unbecoming, morose, selfish, dark, or 
 cruel. The light of conscious integrity and innocence 
 streams through them, and they are fanned, as it were, 
 by breezes laden with heaven's own fragrance. 
 
 It is character and not place that decides the nature 
 of the inward life. It is not the saloon that determines 
 the features of the scene, but the guests that fill it. The 
 landscape is nothing if "only man is vile." Locality, 
 scenery, climate — these are of no avail. The thoughts 
 and emotions which help to compose the character, and 
 which are also the waves and foam that it tosses up, show 
 us what it is ; and when these belong to a restless sea, 
 ridged with the rolling tempest and the blasts of passion, 
 we know that it must be a stranger to peace — -just as we 
 feel assured when these sink to repose amid their own 
 rippling music, heaven with all its stars will be mirrored 
 on its quiet bosom. 
 
 But character is important for the influence it exerts. 
 It is held up before the world like the picture before the 
 artist's eye, which he is to study. It exercises a constant 
 though silent power over others wherever it is displayed, 
 by the fireside, in the social scene, in the historic gallery, 
 
CHARACTER. 2 8i 
 
 in the walks of public life. It commends the good, or it 
 sanctions the evil. It points to heaven and leads the 
 way, or it seduces to the paths of the destroyer. Noise- 
 lessly but effectively it is ever at work. The hands may 
 be folded to repose, the tongue may be silent, but the 
 character speaks. It preaches to the present and to the 
 absent. It admonishes, it inspires, it cheers, it guides ; or, 
 on the other hand, it misleads and perverts. Who would 
 not say, Let it be formed on the true model? Who 
 would not insist, even in the obscurest sphere, on its 
 being shaped so as to bless, and not to curse ? 
 
 But character is also unspeakably important, as that 
 which alone we can carry with us out of the world. 
 Every thing else, fame and fortune, rank and station, must 
 be left behind. But our character will be our own. If it 
 is what it should be ; if it has been built up of holy aims, 
 and sacred emotions, and the experience of charity and 
 faith ; if it has been so shaped and featured that we may 
 trace upon it the image of Jesus ; if it is beautiful with 
 the image of penitence, and cheerful obedience, and sweet 
 submission ; then it is our unspeakable treasure — our 
 family likeness to the redeemed, the token of our relation- 
 ship to the holy spirit before the throne. 
 
 How solemnly, then, does it demand your care ! How 
 does its importance throw every earthly or temporal 
 interest into the shade ! Without it, kings are poor, and 
 with it beggars are rich. It constitutes, by the grace 
 of God, our title to the rank of the Nobility of Heaven. 
 
XXXII. 
 
 SOCIAL DISCIPLINE. 
 
 * Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification." 
 
 Rom. xv. 2. 
 
 THROUGHOUT the universe, there seems to be 
 every where an antagonism of opposite forces, more 
 or less harmonized, the proper balance of which is essen- 
 tial to, and secures order. In the solar system, there is 
 centrifugal as well as centripetal force, one impelling the 
 planets onward in their orbits, and the other holding 
 them within the sphere of the sun's attraction, so that the 
 course they take is directly around the sun. The one 
 balances the other. So it is throughout the starry sys- 
 tem ; and thus the " music" or harmony of the spheres is 
 preserved. 
 
 So the temperature of the earth through the varied 
 seasons is the resultant of heat from the sun's rays, and 
 the cold of the polar or of the interplanetary regions. 
 There is a perpetual conflict, and yet a perpetual though 
 constantly varying equilibrium. The air we breathe is 
 composed of well-balanced elements, either of which in 
 excess would soon destroy life. Our own nature is con- 
 stituted of reason and passion, of conscience and will, and 
 either, in preponderating excess, would unfit us for our 
 sphere of action on earth. Society itself is kept in equi- 
 poise by a balance of what have been termed the radical 
 
 (282) 
 
SOCIAL DISCIPLINE. 283 
 
 and conservative elements, although these words are often 
 grossly misapplied. 
 
 But it is when we consider man in his relations to 
 society, that we see this antagonism and equilibrium most 
 strikingly exemplified. Civil order is the result of the 
 free action of the individual, gently but firmly and per- 
 sistently modified by a regard to the common good. Let 
 that free action become license, let it fail to feel the cen- 
 tral attraction of a common interest, and a man becomes 
 like a lawless planet breaking loose from the system and 
 carrying terror and ravage in its path. On the other 
 hand, let that free action be absolutely suppressed by cen- 
 tral authority, and the system becomes a tyrannic unity ; 
 much as if the sun should draw all the planets to itself 
 and consume them in its blaze. Then is realized what 
 the despotic Louis XIV of France aspired to, when he 
 said, " I am the State." 
 
 Every thoughtful student of history knows that in the 
 order of providence, where one of these tendencies is in 
 excess, the other will be provoked into action and be dis- 
 posed to rise and meet it. When individual license runs 
 riot in crime and violence, the strong hand of a Nimrod, 
 a Charlemagne, a Napoleon, will be called in to hold it 
 in check. And so where royal prerogative, as in the 
 case of the Stuarts of England, assumes to crush the lib- 
 erties of the subject, and trample on individual rights, 
 there will be an uprising and a practical protest against 
 it, as there was in the great Rebellion under Cromwell. 
 Just as the intense heat of summer brings the cooling 
 clouds and the lightning, so the burning rays of oppres- 
 sion will marshal the vapors of popular dissatisfaction, 
 till they sweep in terrible and, perhaps, wasting energy 
 over the parched plains. 
 
284 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Thus, civil order is the balance of conflicting elements, 
 and when either of these is in excess, the popular ten- 
 dency will, perhaps slowly, settle back in favor of the 
 other extreme. The conservative of one period is the 
 reformer of another, and if the vessel of State careens too 
 much, he that was on the extreme right will be very apt 
 to go to the extreme left, while he who occupies the 
 centre will be more apt to sit still. 
 
 In a perfect state of society there would be no careen- 
 ing. Individual freedom or will and the attraction of 
 the common good would be in equipoise. And this result 
 is the high aim of the broadest and most sagacious states- 
 manship. The individual is to be so trained that he shall 
 voluntarily and intelligently keep the path of order, mov- 
 ing like the planet in its prescribed orbit. He is to be 
 free within a limited sphere, and his own will and intelli- 
 gence are to respect these limits — the limits set by a proper 
 regard to the supreme authority and the highest good. 
 
 But this training is a difficult work. It cannot be ac- 
 complished by legislation alone. It cannot be achieved 
 by popular elections, the war-cries or the success of party. 
 Xerxes' army, with all the giant trunks of the Black 
 Forest at hand, never could build up even a soldier's hut, 
 unless the materials were first reduced to shape. They 
 must be dealt with individually. And so constitutions 
 and statutes, and the most sagacious statesmanship, and 
 all the lore and jurisprudence of ages, will be of no avail, 
 unless, in the dwelling, the neighborhood, the village, 
 the school, the sanctuary, and by the fireside, men are 
 trained to self-rule, self-restraint, and the experience of 
 freedom harmonizing with authority. 
 
 The fact is that the will of man is depraved. Its force 
 is in excess. Each individual would be a law to himself. 
 
SOCIAL DISCIPLINE. 285 
 
 He is disposed to overlook the claims of the common 
 good, under the pressure of interest, passion, and self- 
 indulgence. Unless this tendency is corrected or modi- 
 fied, he will be a disturbing element in the social body. 
 Put him any where, and he will still in some way be in 
 antagonism to others. The great necessity is to provide 
 means by which he shall be held in check. You cannot 
 remove or obviate this necessity by any ingenious organ- 
 ization. It will intrude, along with human nature itself, 
 every where, in a Fourier Phalanx, a More's Utopia, a 
 Bacon's Atalantis, the happy valley of Rasselas, or any 
 earthly paradise. 
 
 To train men for society, and for harmonious social 
 relations, is a necessary step, if they are to be trained for 
 heaven. And unquestionably the providence of God 
 makes use of all varieties of social discipline, the hopes 
 and fears and sympathies of men, the penalties of social 
 opinion and usage, and civil government, as an important 
 though subordinate element of their education. He that 
 cannot live with his fellows here on earth without tram- 
 pling on them, or disregarding their well being, is by the 
 very fact disqualified for the social converse and sympa- 
 thies of the spiritual world. 
 
 And here we approach the great and important truth, 
 that God is educating us through our social as well as 
 our intellectual and moral nature. Man was not made 
 to be alone — to live withdrawn from human companion- 
 ship. The life of the solitary misanthrope or hermit is 
 unnatural. We may say with Cowper : 
 
 "Man in society is like a flower 
 Blown in its native bed. 'Tis there alone 
 His faculties — expanded in full bloom — 
 Shine out ; there only reach their proper sphere." 
 
286 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 In the constitution of human nature, there are fac- 
 ulties and susceptibilities and longings, which, like the 
 tendrils of the vine, are ever reaching forth toward 
 the props of human sympathy. We cannot stand soli- 
 tary. Isolated from society, our nature could not attain 
 development. You might as well enclose the young shoot 
 in a cylinder reaching up an hundred feet, and then ex- 
 pect it to grow. You would only dwarf it. It wants 
 light and air, and nature's glad companionship of dew and 
 sunshine, or it will pine away and die. The seed must 
 be planted in the earth or it will never germinate. So 
 our nature must be planted in the soil of society, or it 
 will never grow and expand, and bear fruit. It will be- 
 come and remain a dry seed wasting its life away, a fos- 
 sil, a mummy, or be at least a colorless cellar plant, a 
 limb with dry buds, never expanding, or giving forth 
 their fragrance. Even Pope has said : 
 
 " Heaven forming each on other to depend, 
 A master, or a servant, or a friend, 
 Bids each on other for assistance call, 
 Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all. 
 Want, passions, frailties, closer still ally 
 The common interest, or endear the tie. 
 To these we owe true friendship, love sincere, 
 Each home-felt joy that life inherits here.'' 
 
 If there is any evidence of design in the nature and 
 constitution of man, it is to the effect that he was made 
 for social service and enjoyment ; his great duties are 
 not solitary or selfish ; his highest pleasures are those 
 that he communicates or shares with others. And what 
 a grand and glorious light do the revelations of heaven 
 throw upon this theme ! The mansions above are the 
 
SOCIAL DISCIPLINE. 287 
 
 home of the blessed ; the sanctified and saved are the 
 great household of faith ; the great assembly of the just 
 is the family of God. Heaven is the communion of holy 
 and happy spirits ; there voice blends with voice in com- 
 mon praise ; there soul responds to soul in common puri- 
 fied affection ; there is no solitary blessedness ; there is 
 no selfish joy. 
 
 For such a destiny as this, who does not see that God 
 is training us now ? He is doing it in every variety and 
 form of social intercourse. He is bringing before us, 
 and holding up to our view those principles, those neces- 
 sities, those duties, through which the selfish, isolating, 
 wilful elements of our nature are subjected, and brought 
 under the control of reason, conscience and kindly affec- 
 tions. He is showing us how we must live, if we would 
 live in harmony and peace ; by what laws and rules we 
 must be guided here, if at last we would be one in spirit 
 with the ransomed before the throne. 
 
 And this earthly discipline, to him who views it aright, 
 is truly invaluable. A wise man, a truly wise man, will 
 not rebel against it, although he may, at times, be tempted 
 to say, " Good Lord, deliver us," or even to cry out, " Let 
 this cup pass from me." He knows that it is sometimes 
 better for us to meet opposition and endure misapprehen- 
 sion, than be lulled to lethargy by the monotony of ap- 
 plause. He knows that our roughnesses are chafed away 
 sometimes by the roughnesses of others, even as the rough 
 fragments of the beach are rounded to polished pebbles 
 by friction, or what may be called the social discipline 
 of the rocks. He knows that human civilization and so- 
 cial culture and the grand stimulus to self-improvement 
 would be impossible, without those social conditions 
 which involve the meeting and mutual operation, and 
 
288 LIFE LE8S0N8. 
 
 perhaps collision, of social qualities. He knows that un- 
 less we have been disciplined to terms of association, we 
 cannot associate, unless by contact with others we learn 
 to restrain ourselves and know our own place, we shall 
 be like a superfluous cog in the wheel, or a discord in the 
 general harmony. 
 
 But the highest virtues of heaven find their nursery on 
 earth in the field of our social relations. The noblest les- 
 sons that can be imprinted upon the soul may be learned 
 under the divine tuition amid scenes of social intercourse. 
 Here we learn to love, pity, forbear and forgive. Here 
 we learn to welcome self-denial for others, to anticipate 
 their wants, to guard their steps, to pray for their wel- 
 fare, to esteem their gratitude. We are taught also to 
 recognize our responsibility in their behalf. Isolate men 
 from one another, make hermits of them, and how could 
 there ever be any chance for the record of those great 
 loving and generous deeds that shine through the night 
 of ages like the jewels of time's diadem ? Where had been 
 the meekness of Moses, the love of David and Jonathan, the 
 national devotion of Esther, the brotherhood of the early 
 disciples, the fidelity of the martyrs sealing for others 
 their faith with their blood, or the missionary zeal that 
 with loftiest heroism, has gone down the deep, dark 
 mine of heathenism to rescue those exposed to perish ? 
 Nay ! taking a lower level — who would ever have read 
 with such a thrill of admiring wonder the noble deeds of 
 patriarchs and philanthropists, the self-devotion of a 
 Regulus, a Wilkenreid, a Tell, a Gustavus Adolphus, a 
 Wilberforce, a Howard, or a Washington ? God's wis- 
 dom is gloriously illustrated by so ordering our lot, that 
 the highest elements of our spiritual education are 
 brought home to our own doors, so that he who would 
 
SOCIAL DISCIPLINE. 289 
 
 learn the lessons of forbearance, charity, and generous 
 self-denial, need seek them not afar, where academic halls 
 invite the favored few ; not in senates, where giant minds 
 contest the palm of eloquence ; not on the world's battle- 
 fields, where genius and valor alone can attain distinc- 
 tion ; but by the quiet fireside, where filial duty and 
 brotherly and sisterly affection may check lawless pas- 
 sion, and impel to the heroic deeds of a self-subdued and 
 subjugated will ; by the very way-side of our pilgrim- 
 path, where we may take a brother's hand with the out- 
 gushing sympathies of fraternal affection ; amid the 
 common walks of every day life, where we may endure 
 wrong without a murmur and return good for evil ; in 
 our own lowly or limited neighborhood, where we may 
 find objects of pity and relief, and win the rich blessings 
 of those that were ready to perish. 
 
 We are in our school-room. The text-book of social 
 duty is thrown open before us, and the finger of the 
 Great Teacher is pointing out the lines. Here we are to 
 learn to curb self-will, to exercise self-denial, to take into 
 view the wants and claims of friends, neighbors and the 
 whole human race. The work of ministering angels is 
 before us, and we may learn it if we will. How, if we 
 spurn text-book and Teacher, can* we avoid the doom 
 foreshadowed in the sentence, " He that is unfaithful in 
 that which is least, will be also unfaithful in much ?" 
 
 13 
 
XXXIII. 
 
 INFLUENCE. 
 
 u He being dead, yet speaketh." — Heb. xi. 4. 
 
 NO error is more common among men than that which 
 is committed by a false estimate of moral forces. 
 Whatever is material and palpable arrests attention, but 
 that which is voiceless and unseen, eludes notice. The 
 lightning is more demonstrative than the sunbeam, and 
 the tornado than the falling dew. Yet, it would be a 
 great mistake to judge them by the degree in which they 
 are calculated to arrest attention. And so also the 
 motives and agencies that shape human action and human 
 life, and extend to the moulding of the destiny of nations, 
 are slighted by the materialistic philosopher as unworthy 
 of scrutiny. He recognises the volcano ; he respects the 
 earthquake ; he concedes the importance of mountain 
 and valley, river and lake, forest and prairie ; but the 
 unseen agencies of thought and emotion, the elements of 
 moral truth, fail to attract his gaze. He sifts the sands 
 of history, but the subtlest and yet most powerful ele- 
 ments elude his search. He retains the quartz pebbles, 
 but loses the golden grains of truth. His philosophy is 
 the sieve of the Danaidae. 
 
 Yet all around us extends that moral world, invisible 
 to the outward eye, which concerns us more deeply than 
 
 (290) 
 
 
INFLUENCE. 2gl 
 
 soil or climate. The atmosphere which pervades it is 
 influence, and it is not of less importance to the soul 
 than air is to the lungs. It may be laden with fragrance ; 
 or charged with deadly miasma ; it may bear the healiug 
 dews upon its wing, or it may sweep over us in blasts 
 deadly as the Simoon of the desert. 
 
 To the student of history, noting generation after 
 generation passing off the stage, it is singular to observe 
 how they are all linked together, so that no biography of 
 character is, or can be perfectly complete, which does 
 not recognise in it the shaping elements that have come 
 down from distant ages, or been derived from distant 
 lands. Society reaching back to the fall in Eden has a 
 strange unity, and may be compared to a living organism 
 of which influence is the life-blood. Popular opinion 
 may be compared to the heart, which receives its tribute, 
 through the arteries and veins of the social system, from 
 the very extremities, and sends it forth pulsating to find 
 its way to the remotest portions and the least conspic- 
 uous members of the whole. There is constant change, 
 but nothing is lost. Every drop is gathered up and 
 helps compose the aggregate. 
 
 There is no fact more obvious to one who observes 
 what passes around him, than the power of influence. It 
 is a power working unseen, but producing surprising 
 results. It works in a sphere susceptible oftentimes of 
 deep and lasting impression ; it fashions opinion ; it 
 moulds character ; it gives shape to the career and des- 
 tiny of men and nations. On influences, seemingly un- 
 important, and sometimes exercised without design, great 
 events in the world's history have been poised. In the 
 moral world there is something analogous to what we see 
 in the physical, when the change in direction of a few 
 
292 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 pounds pressure on its helm, guides a vessel to the desired 
 haven, or sends it shattered upon the rocks. The final 
 character and doom of man are determined, like the lines 
 on the daguerreotype plate, by influences as subtle and 
 impalpable oftentimes as those of a pencil of light. A 
 single word, unwisely spoken, has had a history as fatal 
 as that of the rash shout that startled the toppling 
 avalanche from its poise and hurried it down in ruinous 
 crash to entomb a village. The impulse of a moment 
 has changed the complexion of a life. A mother's tears, 
 not improbably robbed the ocean of a victim, and saved 
 to us a Washington. The martial inspiration derived 
 from Homer's pages, sent Alexander forth to the con- 
 quest of the world. Caesar's ambition was fired from 
 reading and envying the life of the Macedonian. Napo- 
 leon's plaything while a boy was a cannon. Who does 
 not contrast great results with feeble causes, when read- 
 ing Doddridge's " Rise and Progress," he is reminded 
 that the author was taught by his mother the stories of 
 the Bible, before he could read, from the painting of 
 Sacred Scenes on the Dutch tiles of the chimney ? 
 
 Just as a breath will obscure the polished mirror, 
 so a thought will obscure the lustre of character. As a 
 floating atom entering the eye of the body, will blind it, 
 so a floating atom of thought may injure or destroy the 
 soul's vision of heaven. 
 
 But not less striking is the fact that this influence per- 
 petuates itself. It is often the seed of a most magnifi- 
 cent or a most lamentable harvest. Even if counteracted, 
 its modifying effect is not lost. Like forces uniting at an 
 angle, it and that which comes into collision with it, are 
 both affected. We see this abundantly illustrated in the 
 history of philosophical speculation as well as in human 
 
INFLUENCE. 293 
 
 biography. The tributary is lost in the main stream, but 
 it communicates its volume and some of its peculiarities. 
 Two commingled influences yet live in their compound 
 result. 
 
 There is an important sense, in which it may be said 
 that every man is immortal, even on earth. That which 
 constitutes the essential element of his active uselessness, 
 or his active mischief — his influence — never dies. It van- 
 ishes from view. It becomes impalpable. It is swallowed 
 up in the great social aggregate, like the rivulet in the 
 river, or absorbed like the dew in the mists and vapors ; 
 but.it does not, it cannot perish. It survives all the per- 
 sonal fortunes of the individual from whom it emanates 
 on earth ; it outlasts the monument, however enduring, 
 that is raised over his dust. When the eye is closed to 
 its last sleep, and the hands are folded to their last rest, 
 it may still be said of their former possessor, " he being 
 dead, yet speaketh." 
 
 It is one thing to write a man's biography, closing it at 
 the moment when the group of mourners separate around 
 his grave ; it is quite another to write its continuation 
 from that point, for the last may be infinitely the most 
 important, most identified with the destiny of the race. 
 Then he begins to speak and act through his influence 
 alone. That has gone forth through example, opinions, 
 words and looks, thenceforth disencumbered of all mortal 
 hindrance, to work directly, with an unearthly, spiritual 
 activity, on the minds and hearts of survivors. If traces 
 its image there. It shapes the plan, decides the waver- 
 ing purpose, lures to the forbidden path, or utters the 
 word of remonstrance — the timely warning. It lives no 
 longer in a single breast, but in the hearts of all that it 
 ever reached, and when they drop away and disappear, 
 
294 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 it still survives, transmitted to others from generation to 
 generation, transmigrating incorruptible from life to life, 
 and in ever-expanding circles, affecting more widely all 
 the influences, kindred or adverse, with which it comes 
 in contact, and all the lives which it may help to mould. 
 This may seem to us, amid the every- day materialism 
 of our earthly course, almost like romance, the extrava- 
 gance of imagination, revelling amid bare possibilities. 
 And yet it is sober fact ; it is stern reality. The influ- 
 ence we exert — no matter how humble our sphere — is no 
 mere fancy, no mythic creation ; and it is almost the only 
 important thing that we can leave behind us on earth. 
 Thenceforth and forever, it becomes a power for good or 
 evil, working through the thoughts and deeds of surviv- 
 ors, and working with a continuousness and energy that 
 can never grow weary, that will never sleep, or cease to 
 work. That influence has all the intense and unwearied 
 activity of a disembodied spirit. It knows nothing of our 
 mortal frailty, cramped and hampered by material obsta- 
 cles, and exhausted by fatigue. It never grows old. It 
 never knows wrinkles or grey hairs. Three-score years 
 and ten cannot measure even the childhood of its being. 
 The age of a Methusaleh is ephemeral by the side of it. 
 We may not be able to trace distinctly its sphere of ac- 
 tivity, but we know that it has one. It has a life that is 
 indestructible and eternal. It lives in the lives it has 
 touched and moulded, in the opinions that bear its im- 
 print, in the great causes of selfishness or philanthropy, 
 of sin or godliness, with the current of which it has min- 
 gled its tributary rills. The missionary carries it with 
 him from the hearthstone of a pious home to the banks of 
 the Ganges, or the Islands of the Sea. The enterprising 
 pioneer transports it afar to the bosom of the wilderness. 
 
INFLUENCE. 
 
 295 
 
 Its scattered germs spring up amidst Greenland's snows, or 
 under tropic suns. It goes with the statesman to the sen- 
 ate, with the preacher to the pulpit, with the words that 
 types multiply to ten thousand homes. 
 
 There have lived men, intellectually or morally eminent, 
 whose influence we are able in some feeble and imperfect 
 measure to trace. We can mark it along the track of the 
 world's history, in national development, social reform, 
 and intellectual revolution. Of all the great and good 
 that lived in the infancy of time, and whose names and 
 examples have been preserved, it may be said emphati- 
 cally, that "they being dead, yet speak." Abel still 
 teaches us, as generations before us. The voice of the Patri- 
 archs comes down to our day, and the lessons of their ex- 
 perience are ringing in our ears. Joseph, and Moses, and 
 Joshua, and Samuel are holding up before our eyes to- 
 day the testimony which God called them to bear to his 
 providence and grace. Solomon's Proverbs outlived his 
 temple, and can never perish. Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and 
 Ezekiel, and Daniel still prophecy for us. The influence 
 of apostles, evangelists, teachers, martyrs, is felt more and 
 more widely as generations pass away, and is spreading 
 still, and shall spread" till it reaches every spot which the 
 foot of man hath trod. The poor widow with her two 
 mites has been preaching charity for eighteen centuries, 
 and is preaching yet. The good Samaritan, by his spir- 
 itual lineage, is still binding up wounds, and caring for 
 the wretched by a thousand hands that his spirit guides. 
 The grateful penitent on whom the Saviour bestowed the 
 eulogy, " She hath done what she could," has won count- 
 less treasures for Christ's anointing ; more precious, by 
 far than the alabaster box of precious ointment. 
 
 We can trace the influence of the old Greek philoso- 
 
296 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 pliers in the shaping of systems that have affected the 
 prospects of nations. Plato speaks still in the modifying 
 influence which his speculations exerted upon the early 
 development of Christian truth. Aristotle, when more 
 than a thousand years had passed over his grave, was 
 still moulding the scholastic thought of Europe, and 
 teaching the minds that from the chairs of the univer- 
 sities were to teach the world. Zeno and Epicurus seem 
 to rise out of their graves to call distant generations 
 still to sit at their feet. So, too, the great and eloquent 
 Chrysostom preached to admiring thousands ; but he 
 had a larger audience when centuries after his exile and 
 hardships, thousands whom he had never seen caught 
 up his words, and echoed them forth on a broader stage. 
 Augustine exerted, while he mingled with human affairs 
 in person, a powerful influence ; but we forget his episcopal 
 dignity when we think of Charlemagne reading his writ- 
 ings amid the splendor of his court, or Huss poring over 
 them in his study, or Luther exploring them in his cell. 
 
 And as it is with the good, so it is with bad men. The 
 poisonous streams of their influence roll on to swell the 
 great current of the world's thought, and mingle death 
 with its waves. How much that was pure and holy has 
 thus been neutralized ! How it makes us shudder to 
 think of the mischief originated by the blasphemer, the 
 swearer, the Sabbath-breaker, the libertine, whose exam- 
 ples have lured others to the brink of Hell, or have con- 
 stituted them their successors, to snatch the flag of wick- 
 edness from their dying grasp and wave it still ! Who 
 is not appalled when he attempts to trace the baneful 
 influence of parental faithlessness or vice, cursing a 
 whole household, or of social profligacy, contaminating 
 whole groups with the infection or moral pollution ? 
 
INFLUENCE. 297 
 
 When Tom Paine's bones, transported to England by 
 Cobbett as a speculation, were mouldering in the custom- 
 house, too poor to pay the duty, and when at last they 
 were thrown overboard into the sea, his influence, the in- 
 fluence not merely of his writings, but of his character, 
 was poisoning the whole neighborhood of his former 
 residence, and spreading more and more widely on both 
 sides of the Atlantic. The great villains of other days 
 who sought glory and power by sacrificing nations 
 to their ambition — the Alexanders, Cassars, and Napo- 
 leons of all ages — whom some men for their mere genius 
 or valor would almost deify — have not yet become 
 cyphers in the sphere of influence. They are still per- 
 verting other minds, or firing them by a false ambition. 
 Their names and examples are drifted on, like thistle 
 down in the wind, to distant lands and ages, to sow in 
 ever new fields the seed that shall multiply and perpetu- 
 ate the distant curse. 
 
 But, perhaps, among all the illustrations of the widen- 
 ing and ever-extending sphere of influence, none is more 
 striking than that which is afforded by the history of 
 literature. Here, indeed, we sometimes find " fact 
 stranger than fiction." It seems like romance to trace 
 from mind to mind, and from age to age, the impulse of 
 a thought, or a cluster of thoughts, which were almost 
 neglected in their own clay. I wonder that among all 
 our antiquarian and genealogical students there have 
 been so few who have bethought themselves to trace the 
 strange lineage of books. In the department of philo- 
 sophy, indeed, something has been done, and along the 
 line of metaphysical research and development we may 
 trace the influence of mind upon mind, theory upon 
 theory, and from Plato down to Sir William Hamilton 
 13* 
 
298 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 or Mansel ; through nominalists and realists ; Roscelin, 
 Abelard, and the schoolmen ; Bacon, Locke, and Leibnitz ; 
 Kant, Berkeley, and Hume j Reid, Stewart, Jacobi, 
 Eichte, Schelling, and Hegel, we may note the successive 
 links of a connected chain that stretches over centuries. 
 
 But in the religious world, the exploration has been 
 far more imperfect. And yet even here there are some 
 striking facts that thrust themselves almost upon our 
 notice. There is many a book like Butler's " Analogy," 
 or Pascal's " Thoughts," or Baxter's " Call," or " Pil- 
 grim's Progress," or others of less fame, that has associ- 
 ated with its history strange stories of its influence. A 
 polluted literature carries us into scenes of crime, and in 
 revels and violence, in courts and prisons we trace the 
 progress of its poisonous influence. 
 
 A single book has linked different generations together 
 It has spanned ages with its arch of thought ; it has 
 bridged the centuries so that others have come down to 
 us, or we have gone back to them ; and we have thus 
 been permitted to commune with the gifted minds of the 
 past, and receive the impulse of their earnest thoughts. 
 Sometimes, after a lapse of ages, a book has been dug 
 up, as it were, out of old libraries — the fossil strata of 
 literature — and has been made, like Paleario's little book, 
 to do fresh service in the cause of truth or the conflict 
 with error. It has been waked from the sleep of cent- 
 uries to speak in fresh tones, even if in quaint speech, 
 with the authority of a living prophet. 
 
 Towards the close of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
 two hundred and fifty years or more since, when Raleigh 
 was exploring the New World, and Bacon was yet an 
 aspirant on the track that led to fame, an obscure Puritan 
 minister, named Edmund Bunny, fell in with a work writ- 
 
INFLUENCE. Z gg 
 
 ten by the Jesuit Parsons, which had some good things 
 in it. He thought them too good to be lost ; so he took 
 the book, cut the popery out of it, recast it after another 
 pattern, and gave it to the printer. It went abroad, aud, 
 among others, two men, who afterward became eminent 
 nonconformist ministers, were seriously impressed by its 
 perusal. An old torn copy strayed away into an humble 
 cottage of Shropshire, and fell into the hands of a poor 
 man who lent it to Richard Baxter's father. Richard 
 was then a boy of fifteen years, but the book came in 
 his way and he read it, and it pleased God to make it 
 the means of awakening his soul, and leading him to feel 
 the inexpressible importance of eternal things. From 
 that hour he began a new life, and in his writings, 
 throughout a toilsome career, crowned with glorious re- 
 vivals, we see reproduced the pungency, point, and 
 fervor of that old book known as " Bunny's Resolution." 
 "Who that has ever read the " Saint's Rest," or traced the 
 ceaseless activity of Baxter's life, will venture to compute 
 the results which flowed from the reading of that old 
 torn book which the cottager lent to Baxter's father. 
 
 Baxter died in 1691 ; but among the " live books" he 
 left behind him was his " Call to the Unconverted," of 
 which 20,000 copies are said to have been sold in a 
 single year. Such was the harvest that was to furnish 
 seed for new harvests on fields that are unexhausted yet. 
 
 About twenty-five summers had passed over Baxter's 
 grave when some of his books, — one of them the " Call 
 to the Unconverted," so it is said, — fell into the hands of 
 a young student at St. Alban's. That student was Philip 
 Doddridge, and the reading of Baxter led to his con- 
 version. He became the faithful and successful pastor 
 of the church in Northampton ; educated in his seminary 
 
3 oo LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 several young men for the ministry ; wrote liis " Family 
 Expositor," which has gone into tens of thousands of fami- 
 lies ; composed not a few of the sweetest hymns that for 
 a century have been sung in Christian sanctuaries, and 
 which we are singing still ; besides producing his 
 treatise on " The Rise and Progress of Religion in the 
 Soul" — a book which in German, French, and other 
 European, as well as in heathen languages, has preached 
 to millions and resulted in the conversion of hundreds 
 and of thousands. 
 
 Thirty- three years after Doddridge died, a copy of this 
 book found its way to the table of Mr. Unwin, a corres- 
 pondent of Cowper. A young English statesman, just 
 setting out on his journey to Southern France, and in 
 want of a book, took it up, and asked its character. 
 " One of the best books ever written," replied his com- 
 panion, Milner ; " let us take it with us, and read it on 
 our journey." The young man readily consented, and 
 the reading of that book made upon his mind impressions 
 which were never effaced. He began to examine the 
 .Bible for himself, and the result was that he was led to 
 consecrate his life to the service of Christ. That young 
 man was William Wilberforce, whose name is forever 
 associated with the legislative reforms and philanthropy 
 of the English nation, the abolition of the slave trade and 
 the introduction of Christianity into India ; and whose 
 devoted piety led him to write his " Practical View of 
 Christianity," a work which has travelled around the 
 globe, and been read alike on the banks of the Ganges 
 and the Mississippi ; of which more than one hundred 
 editions have been published, and which the great states- 
 man Edmund Burke spent the two last days of his life in 
 reading, declaring that he had derived much comfort 
 

 INFLUENCE. 301 
 
 from it, and if lie lived, would thank its author for hav- 
 ing sent such a book into the world. 
 
 The volume had been published but a few months when 
 it found its way to the Isle of Wight, and fell into the 
 hands of a young curate, to whom it had been sent by a 
 college friend — a thoughtless candidate for the ministry — 
 with the request that he would read it, and tell him what 
 he must say about it. He began to read, and could not 
 lay down the book till he had read it through. A decided 
 change was wrought in his views of divine truth, and he 
 declared : " I feel it a debt of gratitude which I owe to 
 God and man, to say, that to the unsought and unex- 
 pected introduction of Mr. Wilberforce's book, I owe, 
 through God's mercy, the first sacred impression which I 
 ever received as to the spiritual nature of the Gospel 
 System." 
 
 That young curate was Legh Richmond, and his works 
 will live, and he being dead, will continue to speak, as 
 long as there is a heart to be moved by the simple story 
 of " The Poor African/' or " The Dairyman's Daughter." 
 
 But more than this ; Wilberforce's book crossed the 
 Tweed, and fell into the hands of a young Scotch clergy- 
 man, absorbed in scientific pursuits, and oblivious of the 
 sacred responsibilities of his calling ; a man nevertheless 
 of princely gifts, of whom that shrewd judge Andrew 
 Fuller said, that " if he would throw aside his notes and 
 preach extempore, he might be king of Scotland." He 
 was learned, eloquent, ambitious, and worldly, but the 
 Providence that designed him for higher service brought 
 him low on the bed of sickness, and after months of weary 
 confinement to his room, the " Practical View" fell into his 
 hands. This event proved the turning-point in his career ; 
 and when Dr. Chalmers told the story of his conversion 
 
3 o2 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 to God, he declared that Mr^Wilberforce's book brought 
 on " a great revolution in all his opinions about Chris- 
 tianity," and that he " experienced a very great transi- 
 tion of sentiment in consequence of reading his work." 
 The life of Dr. Chalmers was shaped anew by that book. 
 It made another man of him ; it consecrated his princely 
 intellect to the cause of evangelical truth ; it fitted him 
 to speak forth in trumpet tones to Christendom, and to 
 become the Moses of the Exodus of the Free Church of 
 Scotland from its bondage to State patronage and con- 
 trol. 
 
 But the book that gave a new shaping to his career 
 crossed the Atlantic. It rekindled the flame of expiring 
 devotion in the Episcopal Church of Yirginia, and the 
 evangelical character and labors of Bishops White, arid 
 Madison, and Mead cannot be depicted except with Wil- 
 berforce's book in full view in the background. Here 
 we pause. But the stream, the fountain head of which 
 was in the old torn copy of " Bunny's Resolution," and 
 which was swelled by the tributaries of Baxter's " Call," 
 and Doddridge's " Rise and Progress," and Wilberforce's 
 " Practical View," and Legh Richmond's " Dairyman's 
 Daughter," does not pause. It is flowing still, and no- 
 thing shall arrest its rising tide and swelling current 
 till the earth is covered with the knowledge of the Lord 
 as the waters cover the sea. 
 
 It is only rarely that we can attain that historic ele- 
 vation from which we are enabled with our feeble vision 
 to look down and trace the streams of influence winding 
 their way in silver light. Many of them are hidden from 
 view as they course along through overshadowed marsh 
 or obscure valleys beyond the distant hills. But they 
 are flowing, although unseen, wherever thought finds 
 
INFLUENCE. 
 
 3°3 
 
 expression or there are hearts to be impressed. The 
 rill has its mission as well as the river ; the dew-drop as 
 well as the mighty Amazon. Proper influence in the 
 lower circle is as real and as essential as that which is 
 exerted in senates and cabinet councils. We may in 
 vain essay to trace its path, but to the eye of heaven it 
 may be like the stream that winds its way through 
 desert sands and clothes its banks with herbage and 
 with flowers. But sometimes we can trace it. A mo- 
 ther's prayers and tears, sisterly fidelity, parental ex- 
 ample, filial piety ; how often have these been fountains 
 of blessing to the household ; how often have they mi- 
 nistered strength to the tempted, or filled the heart of 
 the weary pilgrim with joy, or proved the sources of 
 streams that have borne down a tide of blessing to after 
 generations ! The records of humble life, unread by the 
 great world, are filled with illustrations of the power of 
 influence. It is felt by " village Hampdens" and " mute, 
 inglorious Miltons." It issues forth from forest sanc- 
 tuaries, and district schoolrooms, and cottage firesides. 
 The history of a household, properly written, would be a 
 commentary on the plastic power of influence derived 
 from precept and example. 
 
 No thoughtful man can afford to overlook or disregard 
 facts like these. We live in a world where unseen ele- 
 ments are giving shape to human character and human 
 destiny ; where we are forever receiving and giving off 
 impressions that will still endure when the chiselled 
 lines of the granite have crumbled, and the headstones 
 of our own graves shall have claimed kindred with the 
 dust they once commemorated. Is it not a solemn world 
 to live in ? Is it not a fearful responsibility that rests 
 upon us ? And how can that responsibility be evaded ? 
 
304 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 We cannot divest ourselves of influence, however obscure 
 our sphere, and we cannot escape from it except by going 
 out of the world. It is as essential to our social life as 
 the air we breathe. We are integral parts of the social 
 organism. The blood that flows through the veins of a 
 single member circulates abroad till it has, directly or 
 indirectly, been felt in the entire system. 
 
 Who, then, can fail to see and confess the importance 
 of individual influence — of that which we exert now, and 
 that which will survive our departure from earth ? For 
 that influence we are responsible. Every day we are de- 
 termining what it shall be. It cannot be simply neutral ; 
 it must of necessity be for good or evil. It must be on 
 the side of God or against Him. It must commend or 
 discountenance religion. And is it of no account if our 
 influence may contribute to decide some wavering mind 
 in its consideration of the great question that concerns 
 its final destiny ? Who would not pray for wisdom to 
 enable him to speak those words and set that example 
 which shall guide others to the living fountain, to the 
 foot of the cross, to a throne of grace ? Who, knowing 
 that his influence will live on — " a life beyond life" — and 
 endure in some form, however imperceptible to human 
 scrutiny, for ages to come, will not confess to himself the 
 imperative importance of guarding that influence from 
 all that is contaminating, and sending it forth, like a 
 tireless and white-robed angel, on its interminable mis- 
 sion of charity and blessing ? 
 
XXXIV. 
 
 THE TONGUE. 
 
 "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." — Prov. xviii. 21. 
 
 AMONG- the means of influence possessed by men, 
 not the least worthy of our attention is the power 
 of the tongue. If it were only properly controlled and 
 employed, what a different face the world would wear! 
 If only those words were spoken that should be, what a 
 vast change would come over these scenes of human so- 
 ciety — a change such as would bring with it all that we 
 could ask to bless our sin-cursed world, and change the 
 moral waste to an Eden. Right words, the fruit of right 
 thoughts, would be accompanied by right deeds. They 
 would breathe abroad an atmosphere of peace and purity. 
 They would be employed to repress the very beginnings 
 of evil. They would meet the first symptoms of budding- 
 iniquity with indignant rebuke. 
 
 Such a result we are bound to seek. As Christians we 
 can aim at nothing short of it. 
 
 What a wonderful faculty is that of human speech ! It 
 can give form and expression to each thought of the 
 mind and each feeling of the heart. It can so shape it 
 into articulate utterance, so embody it, that it can take 
 its way directly into the soul of another, there confront- 
 ing other thoughts or mingling with them, like one do- 
 
 (305) 
 
3 o6 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 mesticated at a strange fireside. It gives a sort of 
 corporeal existence to the invisible, impalpable thought, 
 clothes its spiritual substance, as it were, with flesh and 
 bones, gives it such a personal being and identity, that 
 its lineaments and features stand out as if on the paint- 
 er's canvas, so that when we have met it once we can 
 recognize it again. 
 
 Ancient fable tells us of a certain monster known by 
 the name of Proteus. He had the faculty of assuming 
 any shape at will. He might be a tree or a stone, a ser- 
 pent or a dove, a lion or a lamb, and from each of these 
 or a thousand other forms he could easily and at once 
 pass to another as he chose. 
 
 Such a fable, however, is realized in the tongue. It 
 can give utterance to thoughts as various as the objects 
 that meet our eyes. It can be the dove or the serpent, 
 the eagle or the jackal. It can bless or curse. It can 
 whisper slander or utter praise. It can speak in tones 
 of kindness, or send forth the ravings of bitter and vin- 
 dictive passion. It can vent the oath, or pour out the 
 homage of devout and humble prayer. It can set before 
 us the sublimes t truths of heaven, or utter the blasphemies 
 of the world of woe. It can carry to other hearts the 
 sympathy of our own, or mix in their cup of anguish new 
 dregs of bitterness. It can speak in the sufferer's ear 
 in tones that seem like heavenly music, or give back 
 sounds echoed as it were from the desperation of fiends. 
 It can throw a holy charm around the hour of social con- 
 verse, or it can poison peace by the harshness of its ex- 
 pressions. Now it becomes a sort of angel guide leading 
 us by some lofty track of thought up to the throne, and 
 again it can whisper in our ear the diabolical suggestions 
 of fallen spirits. It can assume by turns every person- 
 
THE TONGUE. 307 
 
 ality, and portray before us every form of character. It 
 can cherish purity or vileness ; fan the fire of love or the 
 flames of discord ; speak words that are like drawn 
 swords, or such as find their emblem in the olive leaf. 
 Who does not know, who has not felt, the power of the 
 tongue, — in the social circle, in the public assembly, in 
 the scenes of business, pleasure or devotion. I know 
 that the power of speech is various with different indi- 
 viduals. Some have it to a greater and others to a less 
 degree. In some cases it has been trained to what seems 
 an almost superhuman effort. It can hold crowds en- 
 chanted upon a breath. It can charm them with a 
 whisper. It can hush the thronged audience-room till it 
 is silent as the grave, and then again carry the multitude 
 away by a resistless tide of sympathy till there outbursts 
 the long, loud shout of applause. The tongue of Demos- 
 thenes — how it ruled the fierce democracy of Athens, and 
 swayed them above all the gold of Philip ! The eloquence 
 of Cicero — how it carried back the decaying patrician 
 pride of Rome to the days of her early and stern se- 
 verity, or almost charmed it into forgetfulness of its de- 
 generacy and disgrace ! The tongue of Peter the Hermit 
 preaching through Europe the crusade of the Middle Ages, 
 till the leaven of his enthusiasm pervaded the mass of the 
 nations, and they cried responsive as with one loud shout, 
 " God wills it," and rushed madly and blindly to cover 
 the hills of Palestine with their bleaching bones, — White- 
 field's power of speech that could melt Franklin's cold, cal- 
 culating utilitarianism into the flow of impulsive generosity, 
 or transport the polished, courtly, critical Chesterfield, 
 till, beside himself and carried away by the spirit of the 
 scene he cried out with shuddering alarm — the eloquence 
 of our own Henry, whose words communicated their 
 
3 o8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 electric shock to other minds and decided the question 
 that ushered in the scenes of the Revolution — these all 
 illustrate the strange power which God has sometimes 
 given to the tongue of man. It is a wonderful, a fear- 
 fully wonderful gift ! 
 
 But you may say all do not possess it. In fact, few 
 do. It is rarely bestowed. But then, if you will con- 
 sider it, the great feats of the power of speech on the 
 public theatre, are but rare and transient things. They 
 come once in an age. They are oftener remembered for 
 what they were, than for what they have accomplished. 
 They were phenomena out of the wonted course of 
 things. They rose above the daily routine of life like 
 mountain summits, and, like them, too, above the sphere 
 of common appreciation. The great work that changes 
 society, remolds the nations, renews the heart, is going 
 on far below, around the mountain's base. The tongue, 
 in the house and by the way, in the store, the office, the 
 saloon, the parlor : in the schoolroom and by the domestic 
 hearth, is doing a work far mightier than it is doing in 
 the crowded court room, or in legislative halls, or even 
 in the pulpit. It speaks to fewer hearers perhaps, but 
 infinitely oftener and it is heard and comprehended bet- 
 ter. It is not addressed to the listless. Its eloquence is 
 not wasted. It is not above the capacity of the hearer. 
 It does not flow in rounded periods or elaborate sentences 
 it is true, but its idiomatic phraseology is not the less 
 forcible for all that. Each word tells. It provokes an 
 answer. It is a link in a conversation that fuses minds 
 together. One comment by the fireside may neutralize 
 the effect of a sermon. One slighting, jesting remark 
 may have force enough to break off the truth-tipped 
 point of an arrow of conviction and send a soul to hell. 
 
THE TONGUE. 309 
 
 Review your own experience. What do you remember 
 best ? What has impressed you most. In few instances 
 the preacher's words, or the conclusions of the eloquent 
 moralist. It is the words you heard in ordinary conver- 
 sation, from the lips of a friend or associate, addressed 
 to few ears beside your own — perhaps to yours only. 
 The voices of loved ones in your early home, that spoke 
 the lessons of parental anxiety, or brotherly or sisterly 
 affection ; the jests, or boasts, or opinions of some older 
 or more experienced companion ; perhaps the foul-mouthed 
 vulgarity of abandoned men ; perhaps the witticisms or 
 wild fancies of gay and reckless revellers ; perhaps the 
 short sentence that whispered in your ear, in warning 
 tones, the epitomized experience of a lifetime ; perhaps 
 the sneer, half hypocritic, half malicious, that drew you 
 to regard duty, and truth, and holiness, as hateful, obso- 
 lete notions, just fit for a dying man, or a heartless as- 
 cetic ; perhaps the words that spoke the creed of 
 Mammon, or the liturgy of his worshippers ; perhaps 
 those that expressed the low and sordid morality of the 
 worldling ; or it may be something better than these, — 
 the kind counsel of the true friend, who pointed out a 
 better path of life ; — these, and things like these, are 
 what the mind retains. They fasten on it with a grasp 
 that outlasts every other. Only the last day will reveal 
 to us the power of a word — the power of a single utter- 
 ance. To tell what a word has done, what a word may 
 do, might excite your incredulity. It is the seed of a 
 harvest, the pivot on which a life has revolved, the motto 
 and watchword of an eternal existence. 
 
 Can you tell how the career of men is shaped even for 
 time ? How often is it done by words ! A sailor's 
 yarn makes a Nelson or a Paul Jones. The fashionable 
 
3 io LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 nonsense and lofty airs of an assuming fop brings out 
 miniature Nashes, Brummels, and D'Orsays in abundance. 
 Boasts of an easy conscience and lax morality turn the 
 heads of heedless youth, and make them knaves or 
 sharpers before they are men. Sacred words, shaped to 
 profanation and blasphemy by vile men, distort the moral 
 image of the soul for time and eternity. The Judgment 
 will reveal how a sentence, a word, gave the cast 
 to its destiny. A few words from President D wight 
 secured to American science the honored name of 
 Silliman. The remonstrance of an idle classmate 
 saying to Paley — " It is a sin for you to be idle ; you 
 have talent, you can do something in the world ; I can- 
 not," gave shape to the life that procured us the " Natural 
 Theology" and " Evidences of Christianity." McCheyne, 
 of Scotland, was once passing a foundry, and stopped 
 to gaze on the bright glow of the furnace. He turned to 
 the man that fed it, and said : " Does that fire mind you 
 of any thing ?" That was all, and he went his way ; but 
 the man he addressed never rested till he had heeded the 
 admonition to " flee from the wrath to come." Henry II. 
 of England let drop in hasty passion a few words that 
 resulted in the murder of the Archbishop Thomas a 
 Becket. That deed convulsed all England, and affected 
 its condition for centuries. 
 
 But it is needless to recapitulate illustrations of the 
 truth. If character has influence, words are its repre- 
 sentatives. A whole character may be imprinted on a 
 sentence, and that sentence, like a stereotyped plate, may 
 go on imprinting its image, and reproducing itself from 
 day to day, from age to age. In one sense a word spoken 
 never dies. Like our influence, and a part of it, it lives 
 on to the judgment. As the thunder among the moun- 
 
THE TONGUE. 311 
 
 tains will roll on from crag to crag, verberating and re- 
 verberating to the last, so the word spoken will echo on 
 and on, till its tone is mingled with the blast of that 
 trumpet that shall awake the dead. The heart of each 
 that hears it is a sounding-board to transmit its tones. 
 
 Such, then, is the power of words. They are thoughts 
 incorporated ; fitted for active service, going out armed 
 to their work, bearing the sword or the olive leaf, win- 
 ning or assaulting, attacking or repelling, all they meet. 
 We marshal them, and they are a mighty host. Single, 
 they may be Goliahs ; united and multiplied, they may be 
 a phalanx. 
 
 Think how many words must go to make up the utter- 
 ance of a life ; how every one, even the idle word for 
 which we are to account in the judgment, makes and 
 leaves its impression ; how it essays to stamp some fea- 
 ture or feeling of our hearts upon others' experience ; 
 and then estimate, if you can, the power of words ! It 
 defies computation. We might better attempt to count 
 the sands on the seashore. We might as well try to 
 number the raindrops. Our words are the verbal image 
 of ourselves. If we could arrest them and look them in 
 the face, we should see ourselves reflected in a mirror, 
 and perhaps be forced to blush. How many daguerreo- 
 types of our inner being have we thus cast off, by which 
 those that gaze on them are changed into the same im- 
 age ! Surely the power of speech is wonderful, fearfully 
 wonderful, as an element of probation. The inference of 
 our responsibility for it then is plain. 
 
 I need scarcely say that power and responsibility are 
 justly proportioned to each other. The degree of the 
 first is the measure of the last. The man of ten talents 
 has a more fearful account to render than the possessor 
 
3 i2 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 of five, or two, or one. For all that we have, little or 
 much, we are held responsible to the same high tribunal. 
 For everything that confers influence, for everything 
 that can be used for God or perverted to evil, for every- 
 thing by which we may bless or curse the world, honor 
 or dishonor God, we must be held to a strict account. 
 
 The power of speech and the use we make of it, will 
 not, cannot, therefore, be overlooked. It is a talent, and 
 not a mean or trivial one, which we all possess. We may 
 have it indeed in different degrees. In one case it may 
 be rough and unwieldy, in another it may be as the pol- 
 ished Damascus blade. But whether it be like the beam 
 of Goliah's spear, or only as the pebble-stone out of the 
 brook, in either case it is summoned to do service for 
 God. We hold it in trust. We are to use it as stew- 
 ards who are to give account. It is capital on which we 
 are to trade for God, for eternity. Xot one fraction or 
 farthing of it may be wasted or misemployed. This is, 
 indeed, a high standard, but it is the true one. Devise 
 any other if you cau. Surely you will not class yourself 
 with the number of those reprobated by inspiration as 
 "fools," who say, " Our tongue is our own, who is Lord 
 over us?' 7 You will not presume to contradict Christ 
 when he says, " by thy words thou shalt be justified and 
 by thy words thou shalt be condemned." You will not 
 presume to annul that eternal enactment, " for every idle 
 word that men speak, they shall give account in the day 
 of judgment." You must admit, to the full, your respon- 
 sibility for the use you make of your tongue. 
 
 How then shall it be employed ? 
 
 Not at random. There is verily such a thing as a duty 
 of silence. In some cases we may serve God and our 
 neighbor best by saying nothing. We can be altogether 
 
THE TONGUE. 3 ! 3 
 
 the most useful and serviceable by " holding our tongue." 
 This may seem to some a very simple thing and of easy 
 attainment, and in some cases it may be. But in others 
 it is more arduous. To know when we ought to be silent, 
 and to act on our knowledge, is a great thing. Some 
 lack the first, and some the last, and some both. But 
 there is a power in silence that is most expressive to ap- 
 prove or condemn. 
 
 John Jay, when ambassador to France, was once in a 
 company of infidels at Paris. They talked on recklessly, 
 venting their spite at the Bible. Jay was silent. It 
 troubled them. He did not pronounce their shibboleth. 
 They could not go on while that grave, just, true man sat 
 there a silent spectator, a sort of solemn judge, riveting 
 at last their gaze. No wonder his bearing forced them 
 to speak, and when they asked, as if to relieve themselves 
 of their confusion and provoke his acquiescence, " Do you 
 believe in Jesus Christ?" his silence had prepared the 
 way for his confusing and confounding answer, " I do, and 
 I thank God that I do." He was silent at the right time, 
 and spoke at the right time, and when he spoke said the 
 right thing. 
 
 In other cases silence might justly be construed into 
 acquiescence. There are times when we are called upon 
 to speak. It requires study and discretion to know when 
 these occasions arise, and to know ivhat to speak. Much 
 mischief may be done by the wrong word : much good 
 by the right one. The celebrated Chancellor of the Uni- 
 versity of Paris, John Gerson, than whom an abler man 
 was not to be found among the thinkers of his century, 
 on writing out advice for a friend with whom he might, 
 if he had chosen, have communicated orally, gave as a 
 reason, that rarely had he ever entered into a lengthened 
 14 
 
3H 
 
 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 conversation, but upon review he discovered that he had 
 said something that he regretted and would wish re- 
 called. 
 
 There are some persons whose tongues seem to have 
 solved the puzzling problem of perpetual motion. Like 
 the clapper of a windmill, the lightest breath will disturb 
 their equilibrium. 
 
 In such cases the conversation may well be expected 
 to be a very shallow stream. Instead of speaking what 
 they have to say, and then like the Sandwich Islander, 
 feeling what he wrote, " that thought is done," they string 
 word upon word, until by endless repetition they exhaust 
 at once the patience of the hearer and their own credit 
 for sense. Indeed any other sounds may answer as well 
 as those they utter, and they compare, not creditably to 
 themselves, with him of whom the poet says : 
 
 " He- went a whistling for the want of thought." 
 
 There was some significance in that lesson of the old 
 Philosopher, who insisted that his pupils should first attain 
 that preliminary of wisdom, the power of silence. Be- 
 fore they asked a question they must learn to listen. It 
 involved one of the greatest pieces of self-mastery — the 
 mastery of the tongue. To converse well — letting alone 
 the matter of duty, we must learn when to be silent. 
 
 Cowper never wrote a truer thing than when he said, 
 
 "Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse 
 But talking is not always to converse ; 
 Not more distinct from harmony divine, 
 The constant creaking of a country sign." 
 
 This leads us to remark again that the tongue should 
 
THE TONGUE. 3 ! 5 
 
 never be suffered to become the instrument of passion. 
 If anger or envy stir within your heart, stifle it there. 
 You may sometimes smother a fire, that if once suffered 
 to find vent, could not be extinguished by copious streams. 
 A tongue mastered by passion is a terrible thing. It 
 seems as Scripture expresses it, to be literally " set on 
 fire of Hell." It blazes out, as in flames of the pit, with 
 curses and imprecations, oaths and blasphemies. There 
 are tongues to which vulgarity and profanity will not 
 adhere, until passion has prepared them for it. Then 
 they are possessed apparently by the evil one. The wires 
 that move the tongue seem actually worked by his fingers, 
 and we listen to speech which evidently befits such an 
 original. 
 
 In some cases again there may be a high degree of 
 earnestness, that is perfectly justifiable, but there are 
 proper limits within which even this should be confined. 
 Cowper was not the only one who could say 
 
 " Preserve rne from a thing I dread and hate, 
 A duel in the form of a debate." 
 
 Conversation which ought to be made, and which may 
 be made the charm of social life, should never become 
 its curse. And yet it will be, if evil surmisings or bitter 
 disputings are allowed to change it into the instrument 
 of personal assault, or self-exhibition indulging in taunts, 
 contradictions, reproaches, or assumptions. 
 
 There are times indeed, when sin lifts its head, and 
 wrong goes boldly forth, when words ought to be 
 swords unscabbarded, and sentences battalions, when the 
 utterances of truth and soberness should be like those of 
 Paul, when he made the guilty Felix tremble on his 
 judgment seat. There are times when words should be, 
 
3 i6 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 as it were, deeds, every one a blow in defence of trampled 
 justice, and every man then who wavers or withholds his 
 utterance, or sells his tongue to silence, is guilty of trea- 
 son to the majesty of truth. It had better be cut out 
 than left to be guilty of such ignominious dereliction of 
 duty. The delinquent might well imprecate upon it the 
 curse that David invited, should he become unfaithful to 
 the sacred city, that it might " cleave to the roof of his 
 mouth." 
 
 But while the tongue is not to be made the instrument 
 of passion, it should be the organ of kindness and charity. 
 What a power of blessing is stored up in it ! Kind words 
 are the sweetest music. There is something heavenly in 
 their tone. In the jar and tumult of surrounding pas- 
 sion, they seem to whisper like Jesus on the troubled sea, 
 " Peace be still." The burdened heart forgets its load. 
 The fevered sufferer loses something of his restlessness, 
 and feels the charm of the magic utterance. The world 
 looks the brighter, and flowers more beautiful, for kind 
 words. The humblest home — the rudest hovel becomes 
 a kind of palace of content. Heaven does not seem so 
 strange a world to us, for angels hover round our hearth- 
 stone. And the influence goes abroad with us. As the 
 oil poured on the troubled waters will calm them, inso- 
 much that where they dashed madly in foam, they sink 
 at length to a glassy surface on which heaven is mirrored, 
 so it is with the power of kind words. They hush the 
 agitated and restless social elements to repose, and spread 
 abroad a hallowed influence. 
 
 But the tongue may be made an instrument of slander. 
 No one questions the power of malice when it resorts to 
 this weapon. Its method then compares with an open 
 public charge, as an assassin does with a soldier in the 
 
THE TONGUE. 317 
 
 ranks on the open field. It is an enemy that stabs in the 
 dark. It is a foe shooting from behind a hedge. It is 
 an Indian darting his tomahawk at a sleeping victim. A 
 word that secretly assails another's character is a blast 
 of death. Though uttered in a breath, it is the breath 
 of a miasma. 
 
 Slander is the tongue's meanest work — both cowardly 
 and impure. If you dip your hands in filth, to fling it 
 at another, you pollute your hands to stain his dress, and 
 only make yourself the more contemptible of the two; 
 and if you use the tongue instead of the fingers, it only 
 transfers the outward disgrace to the soul within. 
 
 And as to the use of Tile language, which to some 
 seems congenial, it is a sin not only against God, but 
 against the tongue itself. When this is so employed, it 
 must be because all true and pure taste is corrupted, for 
 the tongue was never given to relish foul words, any 
 more than vile food. And it should be borne in mind 
 that, when it is so perverted, it is one of the most efficient 
 agents of evil, let loose on earth. A foul or obscene 
 word, though clothed about with elegant paragraphs, is 
 an apostle of depravity. It may enter the heart in dis- 
 guise, but it is as Satan entered into Eden to pollute and 
 destroy. A serpent lurks under the angel robes of elo- 
 quent expression. Many is the mind into which the 
 tongue of the vile man has introduced some foul image, 
 that has left a serpent's trail behind it, as it crawled in 
 and coiled itself about the heart's core, folding it like a 
 guardian demon — not angel — for final doom. 
 
 But preeminently the tongue should be consecrated ; it 
 should be " Holiness to the Lord." The words that we 
 speak should be words of truth and soberness. Liberty 
 of speech is a noble privilege, but God gives no liberty 
 
3 i8 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 to speak the teachings of sin. Our freedom is linked 
 with accountability. Speak as you will, but remember 
 you are to be judged. 
 
 How much holy work, if the tongue was a consecrated 
 thing, might be done for G-od by it ! Not in the pulpit 
 only, or in the hall of debate, or on the lecturer's plat- 
 form, or in the courts of justice, but in the daily walks 
 of life, in humble scenes, by the fireside, in the social 
 circle, in familiar conversation, in confidential inter- 
 course. If the Gospel of Christ dwelt in every heart, 
 and the love of Christ on every tongue, all of us would 
 become evangelists. Our words in the ears of a dying 
 world, would be as the message of a prophet, rich with 
 the peace and hope of heaven. And why should they 
 not be? Why should not yours be an example to 
 others ? 
 
 Do you not hope at last to be numbered among the 
 angel throng that surround the throne ? And if so, how 
 will your tongue be employed ? They will be clothed in 
 holiness. They will speak the praise and sing the glory 
 of Him who is glorious in holiness. Not an utterance 
 will escape them that might not be whispered in the ear 
 of God, that might not be echoed from world to world, 
 throughout the universe, or which, wherever it might be 
 heard, would not be hailed as pure and blessed. 
 
 And shall that tongue on which such an honor waits 
 degrade itself to the vileness and frivolity of earth? 
 Shall it forget its high destiny and bandy words in 
 foolish jest? Shall it — aspiring to an angel's place — 
 act rather a devil's part, and whisper sin, when it is yet 
 to sing " the new song ?" 
 
XXXV. 
 
 THE POWER OP EXAMPLE. 
 
 "Be thou an example." — 1 Tim. iv. 12. 
 
 THE power of example is unquestionable. It springs 
 as a necessity from the circumstances of our social 
 condition, and the susceptibilities of human nature. If 
 there was but one man in the world, or if all dwelt apart 
 like hermits in their solitude, example would be a word 
 without meaning. But man is a social being. He has a 
 social nature. It is this that brings us together in fami- 
 lies, societies, communities, states, confederations, nations. 
 That cluster of houses which you see afar in the quiet 
 valley, forming a humble village, has a meaning, and fur- 
 nishes you one definition of man, — as good, certainly, as 
 the famous one of Plato — a gregarious animal, one that 
 loves to live in society, in the neighborhood of others. 
 Such association makes one man with his life, words, 
 deeds, known to his neighbor. These are placed before 
 each as his book is before the student to read and study. 
 They are the book of human nature, and if we turn from 
 every other, we cannot turn from this. It meets us every 
 where, making the whole world our schoolroom, so that 
 in our houses, at our business, in the street, in the public 
 assembly, we are, in spite of ourselves, lessons to one an- 
 other. 
 
 And then another definition of man is that of an imi- 
 
 (319) 
 
3 20 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 tative animal. What lie sees others do, he learns to do 
 himself. This susceptibility to imitation is not the re- 
 sult of reason, or the fruit of consideration. It is, in 
 fact, strongest where reason is weakest, in the child, al- 
 though it never probably entirely disappears. You may, 
 perhaps, on some occasion when you have been engaged 
 in earnest speech have had your attention called to the 
 little child before you, studying you as a lesson, and per- 
 haps imitating your manner or gesture, or trying to 
 mouth your words. 
 
 This imitative faculty, especially in early life, is a kind 
 of necessity of our being. It needs to be most active, 
 then, when we are becoming fitted to the new, strange 
 world around us. Just think what a vast number of 
 sounds a child must learn to imitate, in order to express 
 its wants, and all usually acquired, to the most exact in- 
 tonation, before it is six years old! Think. how many 
 things it has learned to do at that age by means of the 
 power of imitation ! What a wonderful susceptibility 
 all this indicates! And it is necessary. Yet what a 
 danger of perversion often accompanies it ! As evil is 
 more readily learned than good, so this susceptibility in 
 a false direction is morbidly and precociously active. 
 How quickly a child falling into the evil company of 
 those a little older than itself, learns to be like them ; 
 can recite, at a second's notice, all their vulgar slang, all 
 their pet phrases, all their obscene or profane language ! 
 Their manners, their gestures, their modes of speech and 
 tone, will sometimes be copied with a surprising accur- 
 acy, and a whole company sometimes will so taint one 
 another by the power of example and imitation, that they 
 seem as like as coins struck from the same die. And 
 how fully this holds true with youth gathered in acad- 
 
THE POWER OF EXAMPLE. 321 
 
 emies, or colleges, or professional schools, few who have 
 not seen, are able to appreciate. One leading mind will 
 sometimes furnish the example that sets the fashion. It 
 has a power over the others like the sun over the plan- 
 ets ; it holds them around it, each in its orbit, like 
 attendant satellites, receiving from the power of its at- 
 traction, the law that regulates their motion. There are 
 few minds comparatively of so firm a texture as to resist 
 the influence, and make orbits of their own. You may 
 meet young men, who imagine they are very strong- 
 minded in rising above the puritanical notions of their 
 early training, and who fling off the restraints of common 
 sense, as a madman would his straight-jacket, who have 
 made a mistake just as gross as that of a drowning man 
 who imagined he had learned to swim, or that of one 
 jumping from a church-steeple that he had learned to 
 fly. The poor, pitiable fool becomes the victim of his 
 deluded and deluding fancies. He has become so con- 
 fused morally by the example of his profligate or reckless 
 associates, that he has not sense enough left to see that 
 instead of being very strong-minded, he is very weak- 
 minded, a piece of wax that every body stamps his seal 
 on, till a thousand confused images, each obliterating all 
 but the fragments of its predecessor, leave him a perfect 
 nondescript, without a single line or angle of character 
 that is sure to last long enough to bear being defined. 
 
 And you may see the power of example over this imi- 
 tative faculty of man in other things. What is fashion, 
 what is the current meaning of the word ? Something 
 to imitate, something that is imitated. There are some 
 zones of human society where the highest conception of 
 Omnipotence, or what might be taken for a God, a thing 
 " to be glorified and enjoyed forever," is — fashion. There 
 14* 
 
322 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 are persons who are incarnate lumps of fashion ; within, 
 their thoughts are fashion ; without, their clothes are 
 fashion. Fashion governs them as much as the moon 
 does the tides. And yet fashion is but one result 
 of the power of example. Men do as their fellows do. 
 They dress, speak, think, act by the rules of fashion. 
 One coward's example on the field of battle, one de- 
 serter's going over to the foe, has placed a crown on one 
 man's head and torn it from another's ; has, in fact, 
 transferred an empire. If you go into a community or a 
 city where dissipation prevails, the strength of the vice 
 is in the power of example. Men will swear, gamble, 
 drink, carouse, by falling into a society or company with 
 which it is the fashion to do so. Even men without prin- 
 ciple of their own, will be restrained by the example of 
 the good. When Lord Peterborough lodged for a season 
 with Fenelon, the piety and virtue of the latter had such 
 effect upon the nobleman that he exclaimed at parting, 
 " If I stay here any longer I shall become a Christian in 
 spite of myself." The example of a pious slave has some- 
 times been made the means of a master's conversion. 
 Many anecdotes might be given to illustrate the sancti- 
 fied and effectual influence of holy example. 
 
 The daughter of an impenitent mother was about to 
 make a profession of her faith in Christ. It wrought 
 deeply upon the mother's heart. " Well," said she, with 
 tears in her eyes, " I will resist no longer. How can I 
 bear to see my clear child love and read the Scriptures, 
 while I never look into the Bible ; to see her retire and 
 seek G-od, while I never pray ; to see her going to the 
 Lord's table, while his death is nothing to me !" " Ah !" 
 said she, to the minister who spoke with her of her daugh- 
 ter's intention, wiping her eyes, " yes ; I know she is 
 
THE POWER OF EXAMPLE. 323 
 
 right and I am wrong. I have seen her firm under re- 
 proach, and patient under provocation, and cheerful in 
 all her sufferings. When in her late illness she was look- 
 ing for dissolution, heaven stood in her face. that I 
 were as fit to die ! I ought to have taught her, but I am 
 sure she has taught me. How can I bear to see her join- 
 ing the church of God, and leaving me behind, perhaps 
 forever." From that hour she prayed in earnest that the 
 God of her child would be her God, and soon they were 
 seen walking together in " the way that is everlasting." 
 
 It is thus that the example of a holy life or an evil life 
 multiplies itself. We are addressed by it as imitative 
 beings, breathing the atmosphere and catching up the 
 opinions that surround us. Even while we gaze upon it, 
 we feel its transforming power. It is insensibly im- 
 printing its image on our hearts. We become accustomed 
 to it, and if it be hateful, gradually lose our repugnance 
 to it. It is in the study of example that we feel espe- 
 cially the force of Pope's lines : 
 
 " Vice is a monster of so frightful mem, 
 As to be hated needs but to be seen ; 
 Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
 We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 
 
 But the power of example is seen still more when we 
 compare it with other sources of influence. It is the 
 most effectual of all preachers. Words are powerful, 
 but " actions speak louder than words." These last are 
 mighty, but example is mightier. The poet has said of 
 words : 
 
 " Words are things, and a small drop of ink, 
 Falling like dew upon a thought, produces 
 That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." 
 
324 LIFE LES80N8. 
 
 Yet that word will die away on your ear ; that thought 
 will vanish with the closed book. You may forget the 
 one, you may neglect the other. But example cannot so 
 easily be set aside. The logic of a man's life is mightier 
 than the eloquence of speech. He may talk like an an- 
 gel of the beauty of virtue and the excellence of religion, 
 but if his life is that of a devil, he refutes his own argu- 
 ments faster than he can bring them forward. And so 
 on the other hand, the life may have an eloquence that 
 preaches beyond the power of language, the excellence 
 and duty of religion. A young man who was once about 
 to be ordained as a Christian minister, stated that at one 
 period of his life he had been nearly betrayed into the 
 principles of infidelity, " but," lie added, " there was one 
 argument in favor of Christianity which I could never 
 refute, the consistent conduct of my own father." It was 
 not the words that had been taught him, it was not the 
 arguments of learned men, it was not the weight of au- 
 thority, it was not the pulpit lessons of the Sabbath, it 
 was the consistent conduct of Ms oivn father that proved 
 his safeguard. There was a power in parental example 
 from which he could not break away. Home example is 
 something that a child can understand. It is the alpha- 
 bet of life's spelling-book, that it knows by heart, before 
 it can spell its first word in the primer. The catechism 
 of parental example is far more important and effectual 
 on the young mind, than any composed by great divines 
 or learned scholars, than any that is taught by question 
 and answer. And it is easier learned. There are no 
 hard words in it. It does not need an interpreter. Its 
 doctrines are plain and simple — level to a child's com- 
 prehension. It needs no illustration. It is all illustra- 
 tion itself. Its lessons are life pictures, read at a glance. 
 
TEE POWER OF EXAMPLE. 325 
 
 Little may a parent be aware of that infantile sagacity 
 that translates things before it knows the meaning of 
 words. Example sows the seeds of life's harvest, some- 
 times before a child can speak. That early home, by the 
 still quiet influence of example, moulds the character into 
 such a shape, that all the after years of probation, all 
 life's storms, all the jar and bustle of business cannot 
 change it. It is like a pen of iron and the point of a 
 diamond graving on the rock. A child knows well and 
 needs no one to tell it, that while words may speak the 
 mind's knowledge, actions declare the heart. What a 
 man is, is far more than what he says : 
 
 A word " doth never with remorse 
 
 Our minds so deeply move, 
 As when another's guiltless life, 
 
 Our error doth reprove." 
 
 Guilt and sin love to quote the failings of a good man, 
 a thousand times more than even the eloquent eulogies of 
 vice from the lips of a bad one, because more powerful 
 and effective. They never exult as they do when they 
 see that good man stumble. His fall, is the fall of that 
 majestic statue of holy example that has looked upon 
 them with a withering frown, and when it lies prostrate 
 like the fallen Dagon on the threshold of his own temple, 
 mutilated and broken, they regard this misfortune to vir- 
 tue as a personal triumph for themselves. That example 
 has been to them what the prophet Micaiah was to Ahab, 
 and if their lips were bridled, their hearts said as plainly 
 as that wicked king, " I hate him, for he prophesieth not 
 good of me but evil." Example is indeed a prophet. It 
 may even make the devil stand abashed and feel " how 
 awful goodness is." Men who are not satisfied with 
 
326 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 themselves, who feel that they are doing wrong, seek an 
 excuse for themselves in the weakness of another. If a 
 good man errs, they deem themselves privileged. They 
 will wrap themselves up in the cloak of his failings, and 
 so lay the flattering unction to their souls. They could 
 not rest content with the principles of a perverted moral- 
 ity, with any verbal apology for their sin, however well 
 expressed ; they want an example that they can quote. 
 Frequently they are only too successful in their search. 
 Good men are often weak, and blindly cling to an error 
 that thus becomes a stumbling block to others. 
 
 In the early history of the Temperance cause a man 
 who had once been addicted to intemperance, rose in a 
 temperance meeting and related his experience in regard 
 to the influence of temperate drinkers of respectable 
 standing upon the habits of the drunkard. 
 
 "Many a time/ 7 said he, "have I gone to Captain 
 Johnson's tavern and waited for half an hour, or an hour, 
 for some respectable man to come in and go to the bar 
 and call for liquor. After a while, Deacon Barnes would 
 come and call for some spirit and water. Then I could 
 go up to the bar and do as he did." Deacon Barnes 
 hearing of this, asked him if it was so. " It is," said 
 the man. " Well," said the Deacon, " you shall hang 
 on me no longer. I joined the Temperance Society yes- 
 terday." " Did you ?" " Yes !" " Well, then I will join 
 to-day, for I can do without liquor as long as Deacon 
 Barnes can." 
 
 How vain to cherish the hope of being able to de- 
 molish the arguments of the Sabbath breaker, of the 
 theatre goer, of the intemperate man, of the votary of 
 fashion, while they are fortified by the example of those 
 who esteem themselves good men, and in some cases pos- 
 
THE POWER OF EXAMPLE. 327 
 
 sibly are ! Well may we ask, is it not a divine wonder, 
 a miracle in attestation of the truth of Christianity, that 
 it has maintained itself in the world for eighteen cen- 
 turies, and made progress, when domestic traitors have 
 so often stabbed at its vitals with poisoned daggers — 
 when they have kissed, with the lips of profession, a 
 cause they betrayed by example ? 
 
 Let no man then forget in this world the preeminent 
 power of example. It is the monarch of human influence. 
 It towers high above reason and logic, and all the 
 power of words. We may expose a sophistry. We may 
 counteract a bribe. We may live down a slander. 
 We may show the infidel, that his cause in the light 
 of reason is utterly indefensible. But example is too 
 much for us. When good men sin we cry out instinc- 
 tively, " G-od have mercy on us." 
 
 Let every wise man then beware of evil example. 
 The warning is not needless ; the danger is all around 
 us. Evil examples abound. You stumble upon them 
 at every step. There is not a lie that Satan needs to 
 delude souls to perdition that might not be found in 
 the actual utterance of some life, in the language of some 
 action that is to be witnessed every day all around us. 
 
 But if others do wrong, even by multitudes, is it any 
 reason, why you should do so ? Does their sin give you 
 authority to disobey God ? What if they are gay ! 
 What if they seem to prosper ! What if wit and fashion 
 throw a spell of enchantment over their profanity 
 or their recklessness ! Will their example take away 
 your guilt — will their painted rottenness compensate for 
 your casting in your lot with them ? Will it lighten 
 that coming hour of reflection, when you stand at the bar 
 of your own conscience ? Will it sooth the anguish of a 
 
328 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 dying hour ? Will it stand you in stead, when the eye of 
 your great judge flashes its lightning through the dark 
 secrets of your soul ? 
 
 What if many do sin ; what if the majority do cast 
 off the fear of G-od ; what if it is fashionable to travel 
 the broad road ; will you therefore be the suicide of 
 your soul ? Will fashion take away the sting of the un- 
 dying worm ? Will fashion put out the flames of the 
 quenchless fire ? Will it be delightful to be damned in 
 company ? What if many would laugh at you for being 
 odd ; is their ridicule worse than God's frown ? Is your 
 own conscience such a torpid thing, that sin may trample 
 on it by mere force of numbers ? Are your convictions 
 to be voted down by majorities ? Have you enrolled 
 yourself in that democracy of darkness, where numbers 
 are instead of God ? 
 
 There are good men who err and set a bad example ; 
 there are great men whose intellectual eminence flings a 
 flood of splendor over the ruinous vices or the contempt- 
 ible follies in which they indulge ; there are men whose 
 names we would utter with a certain degree of reverence 
 against whose example we must put you on your guard ; 
 for the splendor of genius cannot atone for its errors, 
 and, if it did, good sense should warn you of the pre- 
 sumption of supposing that because you have the errors 
 you also have the genius. Great men, and even good 
 men, have been characterized by gross weakness. They 
 have shown themselves unsafe guides. The frailty of 
 Solomon is as memorable as his wisdom ; and the same 
 pages that record Peter's devoted attachment, tell us 
 how he denied his Lord. None of us has any right to 
 adopt a human standard. There is an emphatic meaning 
 in that declaration of the apostle, that they " who mea- 
 
THE POWER OF. EXAMPLE. 
 
 3 2 9 
 
 sure themselves by themselves, and compare themselves 
 among themselves, are not wise." On the principle that 
 another's example may sanction your course, there is no- 
 thing left which you may not do. You may quote ex- 
 amples for everything. If you wish to join in the gay 
 dance, you may find some professedly Christian partner ; 
 if you wish to visit the theatre, some renegade Christian 
 can show you the way ; if you wish to share the whirl 
 of nonsense and vanity, there are Demas-professors in the 
 world to keep you in countenance ; if you wish to travel 
 on the Sabbath, you may possibly find a seat by the side 
 of some one whose duty it has been at some time to en- 
 force the commandments ; if the love of the world at- 
 tracts you more than the place of prayer, there are cer- 
 tainly those who can sympathize with you in your tastes. 
 There is scarcely anything you can wish to do but you 
 can find a pretext or apology for it in the disgraceful 
 failings of such as are presumed to be good men ; but 
 shun the principle. There is only one example for you, 
 and that is the Master's. The multitude can furnish no 
 substitute. A multiplicity of criminals cannot sanctify 
 crime ; a host of evil examples cannot change the nature 
 of sin. Bear this in mind when you are tempted to go 
 with a multitude to do evil. The curse will not be the 
 less because they share it. You sin, and you must bear 
 it. If you could sin by proxy, you can not be judged 
 by proxy. You will stand at the bar of God to answer 
 for yourself. Keep, then, one thing your own ; part 
 with all else if you please, but be the owner of an inde- 
 pendent conscience. Let not your destiny lie at the 
 pleasure of your neighbor or the risk of his example. 
 You are not called on to gratify him to such an extent 
 as to become an outcast from God to keep him company. 
 
330 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Be, moreover, an example yourself. You know the 
 power of example. If you have five talents for which 
 you are to account, your example is one of them. Whe- 
 ther living as you now do, it ought to have any influence 
 in the world, is one question ; whether it does, in fact, is 
 another, or rather it is no question at all. It does ; it 
 must. It is every day and every hour at work, blessing 
 or cursing, drawing men toward heaven or toward hell — 
 in your family, among your associates, in your daily in- 
 tercourse, among all that know you. It is working where 
 you are and where you are not ; it is remembered by 
 others when it has passed from your own mind ; it is 
 multiplying itself, reproducing through others its own 
 image ; it is preaching from the pulpit of your life a 
 sermon mightier than these poor words. Your children 
 hear it, and act upon it ; your impenitent friends and 
 associates are confirmed in their sin or alarmed by it. 
 Many an eye looks to you to know what you will do and 
 how you will live, and the current of your life determines 
 that of others. 
 
 If you could once see the power of your example in its 
 bearing on the destiny of beings around you for time and 
 for eternity, words would not be needed. You would 
 be startled at yourself ; you would not dare one hour 
 longer to live in such a way as to counteract the truths 
 of the Bible in their power on others' minds. Is there 
 not something unspeakably terrible in the thought of hav- 
 ing come into the world to undo the work for which 
 Christ left heaven and sojourned among men ? To throw 
 your life into the opposing scale ; to draw men away 
 from God, or hold them with you in your sin — it must be 
 a strange stupidity that can leave you unconcerned in 
 such circumstances as these ! The most trifling acts of 
 
THE PO WER OF EXAMPLE. 3 3 1 
 
 yours may set an example that may seal the ruin of some 
 soul. The Apostle Paul studied to be an example ; and 
 it was a noble purpose in him that led him to declare — 
 " If meat make my brother to offend, I will not eat meat 
 or drink wine while the world standeth, lest I make my 
 brother to offend." 
 
 What a blessed treasure for you would be that of holy 
 example ; if every one that saw and knew you could say, 
 " There is a true Christian •/' how in the obscurest posi- 
 tion you would be preaching to the hearts of others, lead- 
 ing them to your Saviour and making Him theirs ! Your 
 journey through the world would be a path of light, be- 
 dewed at every step with tears of grateful joy from the 
 eyes of those that rose up to call you blessed ! The 
 treasure of a useful life would be stored up for you in 
 heaven, and on your track to the spirit-world would fol- 
 low those whom your example had attracted, and who 
 would join you in the music of the new song. 
 
 But if yours should prove to be an evil example, how 
 fearful the reverse ! 
 
 Well might the poet Middleton say — 
 
 " If men of good lives, 
 Who, by their virtuous actions, stir up others 
 To noble and religious imitation, 
 Receive the greater glory after death, 
 As sin must needs confess ; what may they feel 
 In height of torments and in weight of vengeance — 
 Not only they themselves not doing well, 
 But set a light up to show men to hell ?" 
 
XXXXI. 
 
 WEALTH : ITS SOURCE, POWER, DANGERS 
 AND DUTIES. 
 
 " It is required in stewards that man be found faithful." — 1 Cor. iv. 2. 
 
 WEALTH, in its original signification, is any 
 thing that contributes to the weal or welfare of 
 an individual or a community. In the latter case, it is 
 the commonwealth, so called. Individual or personal 
 wealth is whatever can be made conducive to the weal 
 of the individual ; and in its largest signification, em- 
 braces physical and mental qualities, so that a man who is 
 poor in all else may be rich in mental acquirements, in 
 powers of thought, in the means of acquiring and exer- 
 cising influence. But in its usual signification, wealth is 
 synonymous with property, and means the material pos- 
 sessions that a man calls his own, that is, what he 
 has received or acquired, and what the law secures 
 to him the right to use and employ. It may con- 
 sist in money, or houses, or lands, or manufactories — 
 fruits of industry, the profits of trade, labor, or genius. 
 The sources of wealth are various. Sometimes it is ac- 
 quired by inheritance, sometimes by slow and patient in- 
 dustry, sometimes by speculation, sometimes by gift or 
 donation, but in all cases through the constitution of 
 things ordained by God's providence. There could be 
 
 (332) 
 
WEALTH. 333 
 
 no such thing as wealth, but that God has created its orig- 
 inal material, and conferred on man the power to give it 
 shape. In making the world, the Great Creator fash- 
 ioned it so as to afford the means of industry and enter- 
 prise. It is not merely a place where man can idly set 
 his foot and stay out his appointed time. 
 
 The materials of wealth everywhere surround us. The 
 genial soil, waiting for the seed, gives promise to in- 
 dustry of an abundant harvest. The broad prairie in- 
 vites the hand of cultivation. The trees of the forest 
 need but skillful toil to take the shape of timber, and be 
 fashioned into commodious and beautiful dwellings. The 
 coal lies buried in the earth, waiting only for the hand 
 of labor to bring it forth and give it value. The iron in 
 the mine is worthless there, but invites the patience of 
 industry to turn it into wealth. Gold is buried in the 
 rocks, or mingled with the river's sands, and must be 
 sought out and gathered, to become the representative of 
 value. And thus all the materials of wealth, and the 
 strength and skill also, by which man is able to turn 
 them into wealth, are conferred by God. 
 
 The earth is his, from which we draw our sustenance. 
 The ocean is his, that we whiten with the sails of com- 
 merce. The rivers are his, that float our steam palaces, 
 and our ships laden with produce. The mine is his, from 
 which we draw the materials of our industry or comfort. 
 Our strength to labor, our powers of invention to devise 
 the means and implements of labor, the constitution of 
 mind and body, by which we can turn every thing to its 
 uses, and find enjoyment in them — all are His. He 
 opened the fountains, and planted the forests, and reared 
 the mountains, and gave the valley its rich and fertile 
 soil. His are the flowers of the field and the cattle on a 
 
334 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 thousand hills. Enterprise cannot lay its hand upon a sin- 
 gle object, that does not declare God to be its proprietor. 
 
 The primary source of wealth, therefore, is to be found 
 in the Great Giver, and all the powers of mind and body, 
 by which the original elements are transmuted into shape, 
 come from the same source. The earth, with all its stores 
 of hidden material, is the gift of God to the race. No one 
 more than another can claim its unoccupied wastes, ex- 
 cept as he improves them for the supply of his own indi- 
 vidual wants. No man has an exclusive title deed from 
 the Almighty. It is on the ground, therefore, of indefi- 
 nite lease, and that not exclusive, that enterprise goes 
 forth to claim and take possession of the waste and un- 
 cultivated portions of the earth. Here is the origin of 
 wealth, and then, with the powers that God has given, 
 man cultivates it and gives it a manifold value. The 
 plowed land is worth more than the unplowed, the 
 harvest field more than the unsown. Labor and skill 
 give increased value to the material. The ore is purified 
 in the furnace ; the cotton from the field, and the wool 
 from the fleece of the sheep, are woven into cloth. The 
 forest is cut down and furnishes timber. The fruits and 
 productions of one climate transferred to another meet 
 a demand that increases their value. Commerce, trans- 
 ferring her materials from place to place, and distribut- 
 ing them to meet the wants of man, adds to their value, 
 and thus wealth is produced. 
 
 The extent to which any man can command the produc- 
 tions of skill and industry is the measure of his wealth. 
 Yet, usually, it is bestowed on the condition of indi- 
 vidual effort. When a man attains it in any other way, it 
 is by some exception to the general rule which God has laid 
 down. The hereditary transmission of property is not 
 
WEALTH. 335 
 
 the legitimate way of acquiring it. By mental or bodily 
 effort, by " the sweat of the brow," in the expressive lan- 
 guage of Scripture, it is properly to be secured. When 
 this law is complied with, wealth, is something more than 
 a pile of dust, a mere mass of matter, that may be 
 conveyed by title deeds and bequests. It is the in- 
 dex of individual energy and effort, the sign — not always 
 infallible, it is true, from incidental losses or disadvan- 
 tages, but yet the general sign — of a man's ability and en- 
 terprise. If honestly and fairly acquired, it is the noble 
 testimonial of industry — the measure, according to its 
 extent, of a man's real capacity. It is true that this 
 wealth may in some cases be meanly hoarded up, so that 
 the very accumulation of it is a robbery, denying to it the 
 use by which it might be multiplied ; but yet, when fairly 
 acquired and fairly employed for its legitimate uses, it is 
 a sort of index of the man. 
 
 The voice of duty, therefore, while it requires us to re- 
 cognize the source of our wealth, and all our titles to it 
 in God, bids us, in the right use of our faculties, and with 
 true views as to the value of wealth, and the way in 
 which it is to be employed, make all we can — not, how- 
 ever, overtasking our powers, or interfering with the just 
 claims of body and soul upon our time and attention. 
 Industry is a Christian duty, and vigor is a divine gift, a 
 talent God has given to be employed. The faithful 
 use of our powers in their appropriate sphere, multiply- 
 ing the conveniences and comforts of life to ourselves 
 and others, giving us the means of influence and doing 
 good, has the highest sanction of the Word of God. 
 With right views and aims, we can be as truly serving 
 God and working out the end of our probation in the 
 field or in the workshop as when we are found in the 
 
336 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 closet or prayer-meeting, giving each, however, its ap- 
 propriate place. 
 
 Except as the love of selfish gain interferes, we may 
 work for God in seeking to increase the profits of our 
 business and multiplying our means to bless the world. 
 Let no man say that religion will spoil a business-man, 
 even if it does forbid by solemn ordinance all unjust 
 gain, the lie, or cheat. It bids us be industrious. " Not 
 slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord," — 
 such is the Christian's motto. Make all the money you 
 can, consistent with honesty and the higher interests of 
 yourself and your fellow-man. It is only the right use 
 of your talent which enables you to become more exten- 
 sively and widely useful. 
 
 The power of wealth for good or evil has passed into 
 a proverb. The maxims of the world confess it. One 
 of our most eminent poets has said, 
 
 "Plate sin in gold and justice's dart falls hurtless." 
 
 " Why, this will buy your priests and servants from your sides, 
 
 Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads, 
 
 Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed ; 
 
 Make the hoar leprosy adored ; place slaves, 
 
 And give them title, knee and approbation 
 
 With Senators on the bench." 
 
 And another has added : 
 
 "Gold is the strength, the sinews of the world; 
 The health, the soul, the beauty most divine ; 
 A mask of gold hides all deformities." 
 
 But to curse gold for the evil it does, is like cursing the 
 brickbat instead of the man that throws it. The Bible 
 does not say money is the root of all evil, but the love of 
 
WEALTH. 
 
 337 
 
 it. God himself created the elements of wealth and they 
 were the main part of that great work of his which he 
 surveyed when it was complete, and which he pronounced 
 good. Wealth is the implement or result of industry — 
 an instrument of influence that has in itself no moral 
 character, and can have none apart from the use to which 
 it is applied. Without therefore either praising or cursing 
 it, we speak of it simply as a thing which the good or 
 evil passions of men can employ to produce any desired 
 result. And as thus apprehended, its power is vast ; can 
 scarcely be overrated. It furnishes the capital of enter- 
 prise. It is the talent which industry can put out to 
 usury and multiply manifold. In conjunction with human 
 energy, its natural ally, it can accomplish wonders. It 
 carries forward all the processes of our complicated civil- 
 ization. It rears the manufactory, and feeds its spin- 
 dles, and turns its wheels. It provides and sustains the 
 laboratory of art. It builds the school-house, the college, 
 the church. It covers our land with railroads and ca- 
 nals, developing new wealth along their track. It tun- 
 nels the mountain, and tames the wilderness, and opens 
 the forest. It wakes the unbroken solitude with the 
 hum of busy industry, and calls up cities and villages on 
 the banks of our rivers, and along the shores of our lakes. 
 It launches the vessel it has built, and unfurls the sail of 
 commerce, and explores the coasts of distant lands. It 
 turns the world into a great workhouse of industry, a 
 mammoth Crystal Palace, rich with the products of every 
 soil and the treasures of every clime. Some few rills of 
 its great river, overflowing its banks, run into the channels 
 of benevolence, and cheer the arid waste of human misery,, 
 sprinkling the broad desert with green oases, or turning the 
 wheels of hallowed enterprise, and working the machinery 
 15 
 
338 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 that floods the world with tracts and Bibles. And beside 
 this, what motives it presents, tempting to the highest 
 achievements of effort and of daring. The hope of it 
 starts indolence from repose, and rouses to effort. Its 
 power is felt in the importer's counting-room, and in the 
 humblest hamlet of the land. It sends out the fleet ships 
 on their perilous voyage ; it explores unknown routes 
 marked by hazard and danger, and at the same time car- 
 ries on the whole mechanism of common daily industry. 
 To gain it, labor toils, art invents, genius soars, study 
 gathers up her intellectual treasures. Lured by this bait, 
 cupidity breaks over the restraints of honesty and the 
 laws of God ; avarice hoards the memorials of its own 
 cursed selfishness ; desperation no longer pauses on the 
 brink of crime, but dashes over the gulf. Public justice 
 is corrupted, and becomes rather public wrong ; a 
 bribe blinds the eye and perverts the judgment ; a bribe 
 changes the channel and current of legislation. In one 
 form or another, wealth is interfering with the whole 
 course and order of society. It erects a charitable in- 
 stitution, or sets up a grogshop. It blesses a poor fam- 
 ily with needed comforts, or spurs on extortion to wring 
 away their last crust. It gives an impulse to benevolent 
 enterprise, or becomes the tool of conspirators and vil- 
 lains. The robber on the highway dares death for it. 
 The false swearer perjures himself to attain it. The spec- 
 ulator risks all that he has, that he may attain more. 
 
 And what power it gives to individual influence and 
 opinion ! The fashion that wealth adopts and sanctions 
 has immediate and unquestioned currency. Unjust as it 
 may seem, society, in its present state of human apostacy 
 is so constituted that gold is often mightier than reason. 
 It gives a sort of authoritative imprimatur to a current 
 
WEALTH. 339 
 
 notion. It only needs to be known that wealth adopts 
 it to supply its lack of sense, or cover up its absurdity. 
 And this power may be used for good as well as for evil. 
 It may be employed on the side of truth, and to wipe off 
 the shame that the world would cast on the principles of 
 a pure morality, or of non-conformity to its false stand- 
 ards. Wealth furnishes a pedestal, on which the statue 
 of a good example, and of just principles may be set up 
 and made nobly conspicuous or even impressive. In fact, 
 its power is such through society and the world, that it 
 can scarcely be overrated. 
 
 But with the power are connected also the dangers and 
 responsibilities of wealth. These are classed together, be- 
 cause the dangers flow from a neglect of responsibility ; use 
 this powerful talent or means of influence aright, and the 
 dangers are few ; neglect it, and they are vast and mani- 
 fold. The very dangers, therefore, enforce the conclu- 
 sion drawn from a consideration of the power and influ- 
 ence of wealth — a power and influence which of them- 
 selves imply responsibility. 
 
 The dangers of wealth flow mainly from those views 
 of it which allow of its abuse. Seek it for its own sake, 
 and it is a curse. The love of money then appears, as it 
 is, the root of all evil. It lures a man to danger and to 
 crime. Seek wealth as a means of doing good, that you 
 may serve God and bless the world with it, and there is 
 little temptation to transgress in its pursuit the rules of 
 strict honesty and virtue. Seek it as a means of selfish 
 gratification, as a source of luxury, or a ground of pride, 
 and it is a snare. You are tempted to disregard the 
 [ obstacles which justice and morality throw in the way 
 of its pursuit. Then it leads to falsehood, to dishonesty, 
 to crime. It tempts you to forget a higher object in one 
 
340 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 lower and incidental. It exalts one that should always 
 be kept secondary to the importance of a primary. It 
 destroys the natural and just relations which it should 
 ever be made to sustain to other objects. A man whose 
 main and ruling purpose is to make money, degrades 
 himself from a man to a thing. So far as he can, he makes 
 a machine of himself, the whole scope of which is no 
 higher than that of the die of the mint. He rises just to 
 the dignity of a gold washer or sieve, or rather sinks to 
 that zero of the moral thermometer. The tendency of 
 his course is just to place him on a level with the tools 
 he uses, or the engine that drives his machinery. He is 
 merely the calculating, ciphering, directing furniture of 
 his establishment. He might almost as well give up all 
 claims and titles to his humanity. He would no more be 
 missed, so far as moral worth is concerned, in the com- 
 munity, than his workshop or his engines. The love of 
 money, creeping into the heart, eats out with poisonous 
 tooth all the human that is there. 
 
 But we should not overlook the result of the tempta- 
 tions to crime to which the love of money renders one 
 so susceptible. As this passion prevails, it invites to all 
 various forms of injustice and extortion. A man absorbed 
 in prospects of gain, ventures on doubtful methods, 
 indulges in questionable practices. He is entangled, 
 snared, involved in the meshes of his own dishonest 
 schemes, and becomes their victim. He lives a knave, 
 and dies a fool, and is adjudged accursed. 
 
 There are dangers, too, arising also from the possession 
 of wealth. If suddenly acquired, it has a strange ten- 
 dency to make a man's head dizzy, or his neck stiff, or 
 his heart cold and hard. Sometimes he does not know 
 what to do with it, and so becomes a spendthrift and 
 
 
WEALTH. 
 
 341 
 
 makes it a means of expediting the catastrophe of a 
 career of luxury and sin. 
 
 But however acquired, if it is not held and kept as a 
 solemn trust in stewardship for God, it tends to attract 
 the heart, and hold it fast to itself. It narrows the range 
 of sympathy ; it tempts one to treat his poorer neighbor 
 with scorn and neglect. It leads him to exalt pride 
 above humanity. He is in danger of forgetting whence 
 his affluence came, who gave it, and who continues it, and 
 who can make it worthless in a moment. He is in dan- 
 ger of forgetting God in the idolatry of his wealth ; of 
 counting himself, with the resources at his command, in- 
 dependent of the great Giver ; of living to enjoy his 
 money rather than employ it for God. There is danger 
 of its becoming his greatest curse — its very touch infect- 
 ing his soul with a kind of leprosy — his grasp upon it 
 leading him to neglect to seize upon what is infinitely 
 more important. There is danger of his regarding it as 
 his own, exclusive of the claims of God, and employing 
 it as an instrument of luxury and pride, building and 
 furnishing himself a heaven with it here, to the neglect 
 of a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
 
 In some cases wealth leads to dissipation. If the 
 father of the household escapes, his children often in- 
 herit the curse. They grow up with the idea that they 
 were not born to work and earn their bread by the 
 sweat of their brow. _Every wish must be gratified. 
 Pride and fashion have all their thoughts. They are 
 indulged with all that wealth can purchase, and before 
 they are men or women they have acquired habits of 
 expenditure that utterly unfit them to take care of 
 themselves. You see them incarnations of vanity, worth- 
 less for any useful service — their minds perhaps uncul- 
 
342 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 tured, their hearts perverted, their views of life ruin- 
 ously absurd. The chances of the future are decidedly 
 against them. You can almost see the inscription, " a 
 human wreck," written upon their forehead now. Their 
 place of destination is already dimly visible amid the 
 foam-crested breakers that line the shores of life. 
 
 All these dangers, and others that might be cited, give 
 double force to the lessons of responsibility in the pursuit 
 and use of wealth. It is to be sought and employed as a 
 talent from God for which we are solemnly accountable. 
 The language of Scripture on this subject is fearfully 
 impressive. We have already seen — in considering the 
 source of wealth — that it comes from God. We improve 
 it and add to its value, just as we do to the powers of 
 the mind, by cultivation. Our wealth is no more ours in 
 the absolute sense, than the faculties of the mind are. 
 God has a property in both which he has not relin- 
 quished, which he cannot relinquish, and for which he 
 will call us to account. 
 
 How absurd would the pretensions of that man seem, 
 who should claim that his tongue was his own, and he 
 might speak what he chose ; that his pen was his own, 
 and he might write what he chose ; that his faculties 
 were his own, and he might employ them as he chose ! 
 The assumption would be absurd. It would open the 
 door to universal license. There is a higher law that 
 regulates all these things. What an ineffacable stamp 
 of reprobation all our better feelings would set upon that 
 man who should employ great and splendid abilities to 
 build up some scheme of selfish aggrandizement, using 
 his superior talent to malign virtue, or gild vice, or se- 
 duce the inexperienced into the paths of sin ! We should 
 feel that no language could furnish a strain of condem- 
 
WEALTH. 
 
 343 
 
 nation severe enough to visit his fault. And yet, accord- 
 ing to the measure of its influence, wealth is subject to 
 the same law of accountability. Just so far as it sanc- 
 tions unworthy practices, or says by act or show that 
 worldly gratification is the chief thing, or lays its tribute 
 on the altar of luxury and pride, just so far it " plates 
 sin with gold/' and paints a demon as an angel. 
 
 Even if we are so disposed, we cannot stop short of 
 the great Scripture rule of obligation reaching to the 
 use of every thing that can extend or multiply our influ- 
 ence. Our wealth, like our power of speech, is a sacred 
 deposit, and if for every idle word that men speak they 
 shall give account in the day of judgment — so also for 
 every dollar, for every cent that they mispend or employ 
 for an unhallowed purpose. The wealth that is wasted 
 in extravagant display is a talent buried in the earth, or 
 worse than this — given over to the devil. The gorgeous- 
 ness of dress that feeds your pride, is just so much of the 
 means God lent you to see how you would use them for 
 Him, flung down to those passions that feed upon them 
 now, but at last will feed upon you. 
 
 The great question for us to ask in the use of our 
 means, is not, How can I gratify myself in the expendi- 
 ture ; but, How can I best employ them in serving God ? 
 They are His — entrusted for a while to me — but soon to 
 be called back. He tells me, as a steward for Him, to lay 
 out the portion committed to me in the way in which it 
 will do the most good, in which it will glorify Him 
 most. All selfish considerations disappear at once. I 
 am to act as God's hand, paying out for Him, investing 
 for Him, receiving for Him, and using for myself just 
 what will best fit me to serve Him. 
 
 I need not say that this is a high standard, but to your 
 
344 
 
 LIFE LESSORS. 
 
 conscience I leave it, whether it be not the true one. 
 With the Bible before me, I can discover no other. With 
 eternity in view, I think it would be folly supreme to 
 adopt any other. You are to consider, and by solemn 
 vow you are bound to consider, how you may contribute 
 to carry out the scheme of Christ in regard to a dying 
 world, and all the means of influence at your command 
 are called into requisition. Bought yourself at a price 
 which no gold or silver can be employed to compute, you 
 owe all that you are as a ransomed captive, and all that 
 you hope to be as one of the redeemed in glory, to that 
 love that was manifested in the cross of Christ. The 
 claims of God, as Creator and Preserver, are, as it were, 
 reinforced by the demands of atoning blood, and their 
 justice has been acknowledged by you before the world, 
 with God, angels, and men as your witnesses. Whatever 
 you can do to promote the most sacred of all causes, to 
 limit the empire of sin, to spread the Gospel of the Son 
 of God, to dry the tears of the mourner, to scatter happi- 
 ness around your path, or send it like the sunlight to the 
 humblest home and the most benighted heart, to bring 
 the dying to the fountain of life and draw them on with 
 you to heaven, all this you are bound to do, counting it a 
 privilege as well as a solemn duty. And by all the means 
 which God has entrusted to your charge, you are bound 
 to do it. If God has given you wealth, that is a talent. 
 You may by a hallowed purpose make it a powerful in- 
 strument of good. It may speak for you, toil for you, be 
 a missionary for you, or rather for Christ. It may teach 
 the ignorant, reform the degraded, sustain the claims of 
 Christian charity, give a new impulse to benevolent en- 
 terprise, and raise up multitudes who shall bless God 
 through you. 
 
WEALTH. 
 
 345 
 
 Suppose for a moment, that with abundant means at 
 your command, you resolve to use them as it seems to 
 you Christ would have them used — as you would choose 
 to use them if Christ was walking by your side, and day 
 by day sitting down with you at table, or conversing 
 with you by the way ! Suppose your highest ambition — ■ 
 as strong and earnest as that of the aspirant to wealth 
 and fortune — was just to accomplish the most good pos- 
 sible with the means at your command : the largest re- 
 sults of glory to God, and beneficence to man ! Is that 
 an incredible supposition? Why should it be so regarded? 
 Is it fanatic or absurd to live by a rule which you ac- 
 knowledge obligatory ? Be wise and do it. 
 
 Then, though you live in a world that sin has cursed, 
 there will bloom all around your path an Eden only less 
 lovely than our lost inheritance. Its fragrance will sur- 
 round you with the breath of heaven, and when called 
 home at last, of you it may be said, " Blessed are the dead 
 that die in the Lord ; yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest 
 from their labors, and their works do follow them." 
 
 15^ 
 
XXXVII. 
 
 POWER OF ASSOCIATION ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 ON PITCHING ONE'S TENT TOWARD SODOM. 
 
 " And Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom." — Gen. xiii. 12. 
 
 THE power of evil association is well illustrated by 
 a short chapter in the history of Lot. We are 
 told that " he pitched his tent toward Sodom." These 
 words possess great significance, and excite deep interest 
 when taken in connection with Lot's subsequent experi- 
 ence. Up to this time he had been in company with 
 Abraham his uncle. They had dwelt together, and 
 herded their flocks in the same pastures. But a strife 
 arose between their herdsmen, and in order to avoid all 
 occasion for it in future, they separated. Abraham gave 
 Lot his choice of location, from the whole land before 
 him, saying, " if thou will take the left hand, then I will 
 go to the right ; or if thou depart to the right hand, then 
 I will go to the left." The result was as is stated, and 
 this in spite of the fact put on record with it, that " the 
 men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord 
 exceedingly.' 7 From this hour the life of Lot becomes 
 sadly clouded with disaster and gloom. The storm did 
 not, indeed, come down at once, but an observant eye 
 
 (346) 
 
 
POWER OF ASSOCIATION. 34.7 
 
 might have seen its threatening masses piled up and 
 darkening in the distance, and casting their sombre 
 shadow over all his prosperity. The rich and well- 
 watered pastures, the flourishing condition of his flocks 
 and herds, the respect which his growing wealth and 
 prosperity secured for him at present, might lead him to 
 to forget or neglect the question of a holy life, and the 
 favor of God might even dazzle him blind to the coining 
 danger ; but on the wings of the wind the vengeance 
 he challenged was hastening, and, though delayed, it 
 was sure to come. It overtook him in the very scenes 
 of his prosperity, and from its fiery deluge he scarcely 
 escaped, thenceforth a poor, bereaved, desolate, old man, 
 the victim, till he dies, of the social corruption with 
 which his family had become contaminated in Sodom. 
 
 This brief history throws around the language, " he 
 pitched his tent toward Sodom/ 7 a meaning of fearful and 
 momentous interest. Here was that passage in his life 
 which was ominous of all his future disaster ; which was, 
 in fact, its procuring cause. 
 
 But the history of Lot has the force of parable. To 
 many a man it has all the significance of a personal appli- 
 cation. It reads like the parable of the Prophet Nathan 
 to the guilty King of Israel, which closed with that home- 
 thrust, " Thou art the man.' 7 Of how many may the 
 recording angel be even now writing that chapter in 
 their history, which may be summed up in the short para- 
 graph, " he pitched his tent toward Sodom. 77 
 
 Consider, first, the meaning of the words. In the 
 case of Lot they had a meaning of great weight, a 
 meaning that is not comprehended merely by the sight 
 of moving tents and a change of location. The men that 
 Lot employed to move his cords, and stakes, an 1 sheep- 
 
348 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 skin tent-cloths, had, perhaps, no conception of what it 
 meant to " pitch the tent toward Sodom/' as they were 
 ordered to do. They saw nothing in it but the securing 
 a more advantageous locality, a more beautiful country, a 
 richer pasturage, and fatter flocks. Perhaps Lot saw 
 nothing more. It may be that increased ease and pros- 
 perity and worldly comfort blinded him to every other 
 result. He may have looked on the Sodom neighborhood 
 as something of a drawback on his location, and yet 
 have been inclined to think that, perhaps, after all, those 
 neighbors were a well-meaning people, only somewhat 
 too indulgent in their gaiety ; a little too extravagant in 
 dancing and night revels, balls, and routs. He might 
 have considered these as a very pardonable result of 
 their superfluous wealth — that carving and gilding of 
 social intercourse which bespeak the perfection of gentil- 
 ity, and are almost necessary to take off that roughness 
 and boorishness of manner which, in some circles, are 
 " the unpardonable sin." And even if in some cases these 
 things were carried too far, what harm could it do him, 
 a man of fixed and religious principle, far above the 
 reach of any such perverting influence ; and as to his 
 family, he could see that they were kept under proper 
 restraint, and formed no bad acquaintanceships or asso- 
 ciations. It is barely possible that on their account he 
 was the more willing to reside in the neighborhood, for, 
 as a rich man, he would rank high among the aristocracy 
 of Sodom, at least if he was not too puritanic in his 
 way, and his children might move there in the very 
 highest circles, and ally themselves to the wealthiest and 
 most fashionable families in the place. 
 
 If any of these were the views of Lot, which is cer- 
 tainly more than possible, he had not himself any proper 
 
PO WEE OF ASSO CIA TIOK 349 
 
 sense of the meaning of that thing — " pitching his tent 
 toward Sodom." It was, in fact, pitching into tempta- 
 tion ; it was rashly braving the lion in his den ; it was 
 balancing an uncertain worldly good against an almost 
 certain spiritual loss ; it was venturing on a slippery 
 path where nine out of every ten that attempt it, fall and 
 perish, or are, at least, crippled for life. To go near 
 Sodom was to venture near a maelstrom with the almost 
 inevitable danger of being drawn in. To pitch his tent 
 there was to make the danger perpetual. 
 
 But though ancient Sodom was burned, there are other 
 Sodoms still, though known by other names. God 
 poured out his deluge of fire and burnt every trace of 
 the cities of the plain off from the planet, so that where 
 they stood nothing is left but salt deserts and bituminous 
 lakes ; still their type of corrupt human nature is not ex- 
 tinct. An English statesman has said, " Every man has 
 his price." There is no little truth as well as some 
 slander in this. But it is true that every man has his 
 Sodom, his peculiar temptation. There is some sin to 
 which he is drawn by, perhaps, a golden bait ; some as- 
 sociation, or friendship, or intercourse which corrupts 
 or perverts the mind, or chills its religious ardor. It 
 will be difficult to find any society which has not one or 
 more of these Sodoms in it. Perhaps it is some select 
 circle of wealth or fashion, where holy thoughts, like the 
 angels of God in the city of the plain, are persecuted and 
 outraged ; perhaps it is some clique of youth who are 
 madly bent on fun and frolic, and fling ridicule and 
 contempt on holy things. Possibly it is a band of veteran 
 revelers, a company of hardened and dissipated men, 
 whose jovial manners cover, like the lie on a gilt label, 
 the most poisonous drugs within. Or it may be that the 
 
350 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 Sodom is a more ideal thing, the gaining some prize of 
 pleasure or ambition, by which the soul is risked — a 
 Sodom that a man might hang up in his shop window, or 
 fold as a bank-note in his pocket-book — a sort of abstract 
 Sodom — a corporation seal that carries all the authority 
 and force of the city itself. 
 
 A man that journeys on a score or two of years in 
 the world, will pass many of these Sodoms, these gilded 
 homes and haunts and associations and symbols of iniquity. 
 And he pitches his tent near them, when he comes within 
 their iDfluence. If he is ever saved it will be as Lot was, 
 " so as by fire." He has put his foot in the trap, and if 
 he ever takes it out, it may be not as it went in. 
 
 It is a most startling description of a dangerous phase 
 in a man's life, when it can be said of him he has " pitched 
 his tent toward Sodom." Then he has begun to yield, 
 and he will find it ever harder and harder work to resist. 
 He has come into the neighborhood of evil influences 
 from which there is a strong improbability that he will 
 ever break away. He is looking in the direction of a 
 worldly and selfish gratification, and the object will rivet 
 his gaze, like the fabled eye of the basilisk, till he 
 becomes its victim. 
 
 But what reasons are there for men to pursue so fatal 
 a course ? 
 
 If you ask what sufficient and justifying reasons there 
 are, I answer, None ! There is nothing — not the largest 
 bribe, not the mines and treasures of the world, not a 
 title-deed to Sodom or this great globe itself, that is any 
 equivalent for such a sin, or can be a reason for it. Sin 
 is unreason, it is folly and madness in every shape you 
 can put it. The hope of gain tempting a man to pass 
 
PO WER OF ASS CIA TION. 3 5 1 
 
 the line of duty or the rule of conscience one hair's 
 breadth, is the venture of a soul. The wisdom of sin is 
 always and forever the wisdom of Judas, selling his Lord 
 and master for thirty pieces of silver. It is the same 
 kind of business. 
 
 But if you ask what reasons the mind considers, or 
 what the motives are which it views as reasons — -we may 
 find an answer by analyzing Lot's experience. Unques- 
 tionably in his case it was mainly the hope of gain. He 
 saw the country fertile and well watered and abundantly 
 productive, and he supposed that his flocks and herds 
 would thrive there. It seems reasonable to suppose that 
 he was a man of a good degree of enterprise and fore- 
 sight — knew as we would express it now, how to make 
 money, and he determined he would, A fat ox or sheep 
 was current coin in traffic then — when mints were more 
 difficult to be procured than they are even in these days — 
 and a large flock of such, was worth as much as heavy 
 bank deposits now. It is plain then that his main object 
 was to do a good business, as we would say. Every other 
 consideration is inferior and subordinate to this. He does 
 not pause to consider how much such society as he would 
 be thrown into ought to reduce the estimate of his profits ; 
 he does not ask how much will this eager haste to be rich 
 interfere with present duty or future peace ; he does not 
 consider the trouble and temptation and vexation that will 
 beset him in consequence of having to be thrown in 
 among such a set of vile or wicked men— or if he does, 
 these matters are lightly passed over, and he commits that 
 great mistake which many have made since his day of 
 reckoning his clear profits by what is equivalent to a 
 cash or stock account at the end of the month or year, 
 lie does not appear to have considered the question, 
 
352 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 What would God have me do ? It was a matter not of 
 prayer or religion or duty, but of the pocket. He turned 
 himself for the time being into a money-making machine, 
 tasked to the largest returns, and the result is as we 
 might expect — " He pitched his tent toward Sodom." 
 
 We shall find Lot's experience a prototype. The grand 
 reason why men are drawn into sin, or at least into irre- 
 ligious and worldly company till they become Sodomized 
 in hardness of heart, is in very many cases, the purpose 
 of making money. What friendships and partnerships 
 money makes ! What crimes it glosses over, what mean- 
 ness it covers, what infamy it hides ! Men will take off 
 their hats and make obeisance to a worm that crawls in 
 gold. They will take a human being into their company 
 and their friendship, because his rottenness, which they 
 know full well, is plastered over by the reputation of being 
 rich. They will handle pitch if it is only in a silver 
 vase not entirely smeared over — if there is a place for 
 the fingers to touch the silver. And so in business 
 transactions, character is a subordinate thing. They 
 want a man with them who can help the firm and bring 
 in round profits, whether by lies or truth. A man goes 
 often into a business not because it is one of general 
 utility, not because it is fair and honest, but because it 
 will make him rich as Sodom, perhaps as wicked too. He 
 will walk deliberately through all the labyrinths of 
 fraud, and even if he scruples at its stratagems, will pass 
 them over in silence, for his partner or his accomplice 
 bears the blame, while he only helps him wear the wedges 
 of gold and the goodly Babylonish garments. 
 
 And if these things are so, can we wonder that good 
 men often forget their religion while they hurry on to 
 make money ? They pitch their tents near Sodom with- 
 
POWER OF ASSOCIATION. 
 
 353 
 
 out knowing the character of the place — except that a 
 heavy business is clone there. They leave the Abrahams, 
 the praying men, and mix themselves up with those that 
 worship the dollar — the Judases, and Demases, and Ba- 
 laams — whom they will soon resemble. Their fami- 
 lies are becoming naturalized Sodomites, and they are, 
 perhaps, coining the eternal hopes and welfare of their 
 children into the wealth and fortune which they mean to 
 leave them when they die. 
 
 But the love of money does not stand alone among the 
 motives that blind the reason of men and lead them into 
 bad company and a worldly life. They like the gay life 
 and tone that prevails in the scenes which represent to- 
 day the ancient Sodom. And what those scenes are you 
 may easily imagine. If I was to picture them out before 
 you, sketching them by the features of their prototype of 
 the plain, I should use the smoothest brush and the fair- 
 est colors. I should not select their original at that hour 
 when the flaming vengeance of heaven is making the 
 dwellings of their pride fiery tombs. I should not wait 
 for the wicked city to take its attitude before me, when 
 its affrighted inhabitants are rushing with mad, wild 
 haste from the scenes of their revelry to some spot that 
 might serve as a refuge from this terrible tempest of 
 death. This should be left far, far and dim, in the back- 
 ground. I would select that hour when the morning sun 
 clothed every object in the glow of beauty and of prom- 
 ise • when the whole landscape smiled in the robes that 
 God had woven for it with his own infinite skill ; when the 
 laugh, and the jest, and the merry greeting went round, 
 and there was no cloud upon the brow and no burden on 
 the heart. The Sodoms of our day have the fascination 
 as well as venom of the Serpent. You may find them in 
 
354 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 scenes of festive mirth, in the gay saloon with its bril- 
 liant lights flashing enchantment over their beauty, in 
 the thoughtless crowds that follow the rounds of fashion 
 and of pleasure ; in halls where no Egyptian death's head 
 grins its ghastly smile, and no stern censor sits with 
 frowning brow ; where every object contributes its por- 
 tion to rob life of every thing sad or gloomy, and even 
 throw a spell over the thought of the grave, to keep it 
 down while vanity and sin trip on with the winged hours. 
 And it might not be amiss that music and poetry should 
 be there and lend their charms to those of the sparkling 
 bowl, while wit in all its brilliancy, and humor in all its 
 sportiveness gave tone to mirth that needed these alone 
 to finish out the picture with all its coloring. 
 
 I do not say that all these elements are necessary, but 
 let them, or any part of them, be allied to irreligion, or 
 even be divorced, as in most cases they must be, from 
 piety, and they make that Sodom, over which, as yet, no 
 fiery tempest hangs. And who knows not the motives 
 that impel to such a scene ; the native restlessness of the 
 mind panting after satisfaction ; that thirst for happiness 
 that should lead us to the living fountain, but oftenest 
 stops at the mudded pool ; that youthful ardor, whose 
 beating pulse asks the stimulus of folly to make it throb 
 even to aching, and that ambition which seeks such 
 scenes for a theatre on which to shine. And yet that 
 theatre is a Sodom. Far away in the background the 
 curling mists are wreathing terrors about the brow of 
 the storm, and now and then the lightning is gleaming 
 forth like a flash from the eye of an angry God. Higher 
 rises the cloud, darkening with wrath, till the roaring 
 torrent breaks upon the startled citizen and hems him 
 round with its fiery flood. Then you see him like a man 
 
POWER OF ASSOCIATION. 355 
 
 reading the letter that warned him of the incendiary, by 
 the light of his burning dwelling — confessing the folly of 
 those reasons for which he suffered himself to be drawn 
 into the snare. 
 
 But how is it that a man can be said to " pitch his tent 
 toward Sodom ?" I answer, by taking his course in that 
 direction which will throw him into vain and worldly 
 company. 
 
 When I see a youth neglecting to form steady habits, 
 inconstant and fickle, ready to become the victim of the 
 first temptation that crosses his path, I think there is a 
 man who will soon "pitch his tent toward Sodom." 
 When I see another neglecting the sanctuary and dese- 
 crating the Sabbath by loitering about here and there, 
 or reading all the stray things that come to hand with- 
 out regard to their character — there is a man of whom I 
 feel sure that his tent has been already " pitched toward 
 Sodom." When I see any one more anxious about the 
 fashions and modes of the day than about questions of 
 duty, more concerned to appear well in the eyes of the 
 world than beneath the eye of God, I recognize there one 
 who has pitched his tent so near to Sodom, that he is 
 aping its manners and enslaving himself to its customs. 
 When I see a man neglecting the company of the thought- 
 ful and discreet, associating with those whose shallow- 
 ness of brain is made more intensely shallow by their 
 folly, I ask how far can that man's tent be from the very 
 ivalls of Sodom. When I see a man so intent on busi- 
 ness that in his love of gain he shows no interest or 
 anxiety to meet where Christians love to pray, and even 
 feels a stranger when he comes, I fear that man has too 
 plainly pitched his tent toivard Sodom. When I meet 
 with one who puts off religious duty for the present that 
 
356 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 he may enjoy the world in all its gaiety and pleasure, I 
 feel like whispering in his ear, You have pitched your 
 tent toward Sodom. When I find a man cherishing the 
 acquaintance of some fascinating and engaging yet un- 
 principled companion, I think within myself, would that 
 some one as with the archangel's trump would blow the 
 blast of warning, " You have pitched your tent toward 
 Sodom." 
 
 Whenever you suffer yourself to come within the reach 
 or sphere of any influence that makes you less conscien- 
 tious, less devoted, less prayerful, it is a sign that you are 
 pitching your tent on the plain of Sodom. Whenever 
 you suffer yourself to be drawn off into plans and specu- 
 lations that make you love the world more and the Sa- 
 viour less, you may know that you are busy removing 
 your tent and pitching it toward Sodom. When you 
 find that the sober pleasures of religion must be spiced 
 by some new ingredient from the world to give them rel- 
 ish, you may know that your tent is pitched where you 
 already hreathe the air of Sodom. When your anxieties 
 are manifestly greater to get rich and multiply your 
 hoards on earth than lay up treasures in heaven, it might 
 be well to ask yourself if your tent is not already pitched 
 toward Sodom. A man may think he is on perfectly 
 safe ground, may compliment himself on the fairness of 
 his Christian profession, while yet in fact his tent is 
 pitched toward Sodom. He may see every thing around 
 him bright and prosperous and promising, so that he 
 almost thinks he is in a paradise, but he should remember 
 that Sodom once was " like the garden of the Lord." A 
 man may spend his thoughts on a fine location for his 
 house, a good prospect, and handsome grounds, and when 
 all is complete he may find too late that he has only been 
 
POWER OF ASSOCIATION. 357 
 
 pitching his tent toward Sodom. A man may be anxious 
 to get established in some business, and he may be so 
 eager in his plans, so forward to execute them, that over- 
 looking the question of their utility or morality, he shall 
 pitch his tent toward Sodom. The director of a railroad 
 company may have invested his funds so largely in a 
 Sunday-breakiug concern, that his anxiety for the per- 
 centage silences his remonstrance at the sacrilege of mur- 
 dering that holy day under the iron wheels, and he finds 
 that he oelongs to a Sodom corporation. A man led by 
 curiosity or pleasure enters the cars on the Sabbath, to 
 be transported to some distant scene, perhaps of folly, 
 perhaps of worship, but he often neglects to ask, is this 
 the place for any but the inhabitants of Sodom f A 
 man eager in regard to political interests yields to the 
 current around him, and becomes mixed up in its turbid 
 whirl, till he seems like one of the lot — a mere intriguer, 
 a white-washed wire-puller, and even then is not aware 
 how near he has pitched his tent toward Sodom. 
 
 But to show how men do this would be to recite all 
 the brilliant or gainful iniquity of the world. It is done 
 almost every day before our eyes. It is no laborious 
 operation, no groaning task. It is a mere operation of 
 the will, a choice, that has such power that it takes a 
 man's soul, and removes it in the twinkling of an eye, a 
 thousand miles from heaven, into the immediate neigh- 
 borhood of Sodom. It is thus the spirit of a man is 
 borne on the lightning wing of a wish with all its hopes 
 and passions from light into darkness, from Abraham's 
 bosom to the company of Sodom. Your choice does this, 
 a fleet fugitive volition of the soul. You are doing it 
 when you indulge foolish thoughts and fancies ; you are 
 doing it when you suffer yourself to read with admiration 
 
358 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 the deeds of a splendid villain or a wholesale murderer 
 like Napoleon. You are doing it when you suffer novels 
 and romances to transport you even for a few hours into 
 the company of Sodomites, who will almost inevitably 
 draw you nearer to themselves. You are doing it when 
 you suffer the glitter of gold to seduce you from the 
 search after the priceless pearl of truth and of religion. 
 You are doing it when you suffer your mind to become 
 so engrossed with the things of time and sense as to neg- 
 lect to prepare for eternity. You are doing it when 
 you suffer yourself to be drawn into conformity with the 
 vain pleasures and fashions of the world. You are doing 
 it when you neglect prayer, and the Bible, and the sanc- 
 tuary, and the Sabbath. You are doing it, perhaps, when 
 you are doing nothing else, and think you are doing 
 nothing at all, for one of the sins of Sodom was " idleness." 
 
 But an equally momentous question yet remains. What 
 will be the result of all this ? 
 
 I answer, perhaps increased worldly prosperity for a 
 while. This is not absolutely certain, but oftentimes it 
 is the case. Doubtless it was with Lot, or he never would 
 have remained in the neighborhood so many years as he 
 did. His flocks and herds throve and increased. The 
 rich and fertile and well-watered soil furnished him an 
 abundant pasturage, and the city of Sodom was at hand 
 as a good market. He must have felt convinced that he 
 was doing a good business, although we can see now that 
 his gains were a curse, the bait of that great man-hunter 
 Satan, and Lot was decoyed into his trap, with all his 
 family, and some of them could not get out. But for a 
 time he evidently prospered. It may be that he congrat- 
 ulated himself many times that he quitted the company 
 of his too Puritanic uncle who had scrupled, up to the 
 
POWER OF ASSOCIATION. 359 
 
 time of their separation, to avail himself of the advan- 
 tages of that neighborhood. And Lot's condition in this 
 respect may be a type of many others. Some men make 
 themselves rich, as they think, much more rapidly by 
 knavery and fraud and meanness. Religion stands in 
 their way and they discard it. Morality interferes with 
 a profitable lie, and is cast out of the firm. It is more 
 than possible that things go as they wish. Their gains 
 count up. They make large dividends. They can afford 
 a greater degree of splendor. They can serve mammon 
 in a princely style with his own bribes. Their houses 
 are furnished like a palace. They can procure the most 
 costly fabrics. They can lead the fashion. They can 
 compete with the aristocracy of Sodom. So far the par- 
 allel of their condition with Lot's is kept up as it respects 
 prosperity. 
 
 But perhaps there is a further parallel in the history 
 of their family. The minds of children, in the atmosphere 
 of such a home as theirs will be, drink in poison from the 
 first breath of intelligence. The neighborhood and the 
 associations are all Sodom-like. Wealth is the house- 
 hold God, and they are idolaters long before they know 
 of any other worship. They come in contact only with 
 scenes that corrupt and pervert. On the upper strata of 
 society, when they move, float like foam on a stream, the 
 lightest materials. Their minds become mere air bubbles, 
 blown up with pride ; and when mixed with the foam 
 around them, dissolvable into less than a drop of good 
 sense. It will be a remarkable escape if they pass the 
 rapids of youth without being tossed to fragments or scat- 
 tered in froth and foam. It is possible they may fall into 
 some eddy where they will revolve and revolve till they 
 are lost in the mass of drifting dust and straws that cir- 
 
360 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 cle around them. Many a parent lias enriched his chil- 
 dren to destroy them. He has given them wealth as 
 Naaman gave it to Gehazi, and a leprosy with it. In 
 giving them facilities for moving in the circles of wealth 
 and fashion, he has helped them to ally themselves with 
 the sons and daughters of Sodom. They have grown up 
 to be his grief, and to bring down his gray hairs with 
 sorrow to the grave. His ill-gotten wealth, his gold and 
 silver denied to the service of Him for whom he should 
 have been a steward, have cankered in his hand and 
 eaten his flesh as it were fire. And the prophecy has 
 been fulfilled in those that are bone of his bone and flesh 
 of his flesh. 
 
 Another result of pitching one's tent toward Sodom 
 will be a growing disposition to tolerate its sin. Some 
 men call this liberality. I call it atheistic indifference. 
 It is almost a certain result of mixing with vile men or 
 having any thing to do with the unprincipled and immoral 
 that we become, almost unconsciously, their apologists. 
 Their enormities, their sacrilege and blasphemy, their 
 profanity and obscenity, their excesses and follies, excite 
 less and less repugnance. We are not horrified as we 
 were once at them. Our own feelings and character 
 have undergone a wondrous change. Virtue has gone 
 out of us, not to come back again. Conscience is less 
 strict. Sin is less criminal. Truth and justice are less 
 sacred. We are ready to relax even the severity of 
 God, and become Universalists, as I suppose the inhabi- 
 tants of Sodom were, almost to a man. 
 
 Another result that follows, if it does not accompany, 
 the one just specified, is a disbelief in the judgments of 
 God. When there ceases to be in our minds any vivid 
 distinction between righteousness and sin, we shall see 
 
POWER OF ASSOCIATION. 361 
 
 but little need of a judgment. A man who associates 
 with unprincipled and worldly-minded men will see them 
 acting every day without any regard to that distinction. 
 A crime is with them, as with Napoleon, inferior to a 
 blunder. No sin is so great as the loss of a good bar* 
 gain ; no virtue half so meritorious as a faculty of making 
 money. It is this, according to their Gospel of Mammon, 
 and not charity, which covers a multitude of sins. Such 
 society as theirs is eminently corrupting. The atmos- 
 phere they breathe is the chloroform of morals. Without 
 pain, and before we are aware, it deadens sensibility, if 
 not life, and recovery is rare. We begin to cast off the 
 awful sense of a just and holy God. We begin to be- 
 lieve He cannot be present ; never interfering, where the 
 principles of truth and justice are weighed in the same 
 scales with cotton ; where princely villains play the part 
 of Dives, where the plains of Sodom are like the garden 
 of the Lord. Thus we cease to dread either present 
 judgment or a judgment to come. We slumber on in 
 perfect security. Every thing is fair and full of promise. 
 We dread no terrible reverse. We sleep as quietly as 
 Sodom in the days of her guilt, before that terrible morn- 
 ing broke whose early hours were to see her entombed 
 in fire. 
 
 And when the fear of God is gone, where and what is 
 man? A blazing world broke loose from its central 
 orb ; a madman escaped from his cell ; a being you can 
 neither trust nor control! Destroy that fear in your 
 mind, and you may go on in deeds of desperation that 
 will rival the guilt of ancient Sodom. There is nothing 
 to bound the audacity of your desperation when tempta- 
 tion calls. 
 
 There is but one step more to the climax of the result. 
 16 
 
3 6z LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 And that may be seen by the light of burning Sodom. 
 It is the inevitable doom of sin. You may fill your cup 
 for a long while before the drop comes that will make it 
 overflow. But it will come at last. So it was with 
 Sodom. So it is and will be with every sinner. It will 
 come, perhaps, in a moment nnlooked for. Judgment 
 will break forth like the lightnings, and while you think 
 yourself safe you will be crushed. 
 
 And what a doom will yours be ? If Sodom and Go- 
 morrah rise up in judgment against Chorazin and Beth- 
 saida, will not Chorazin and Bethsaida, from their lowest 
 deep, rise up to condemn you who deserve a lower ? And 
 if the earthly vengeance that overtook Sodom and Go- 
 morrah is too terrible to be described, what will your lot 
 be, if you sin against the light of the clear shining Gos- 
 pel, and the truth of your convictions ? 
 
 Where, then, are you now ? In the broad way, in the 
 paths of impenitence, with your " tent pitched toward 
 Sodom?" Retrace your steps. Its smiling fields and 
 glowing landscape allure to ruin. They are the crust of 
 a fire-bed. Hasten away. Leave your gains and your 
 gold, and save your soul ! 
 
 
XXXVIII. 
 
 BLESSINGS AND DUTIES. 
 
 " Other men labored and ye are entered into their labors." — John iv. 38. 
 
 GRATITUDE is instinctive. A mind properly con- 
 stituted cannot receive a favor without feeling 
 impelled to acknowledge the obligation. All the bless- 
 ings we are conscious of enjoying are so many calls made 
 upon us, in the providence of God, to seek out and ac- 
 knowledge their source. What is that source ? 
 
 There can be but one, underived and original. There 
 are ten thousand channels through which the blessings 
 reach us, but we may trace them all back to one great 
 fountain. We should not, as we drink the refreshing 
 draught, spurn the cup or the hand that offers it ; but 
 ought we not to recognize the heart that impels the 
 hand? 
 
 There are few of our privileges or comforts that are 
 of our own individual procurement. They have been 
 transmitted to us from past generations, or they are the 
 fruits of social organization. Their true history carries 
 us back to distant ages, or brings to view the sweat, and 
 toil, and blood of others, whom, perhaps, we have never 
 seen. There is scarcely a familiar utensil of our dwell- 
 ings with which thousands of busy fingers have not been 
 more or less associated. It is connected with slowly 
 evolved processes of art, with the rudiments and progress 
 
 (363) 
 
364 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 of science, with repeated experiments, with associated 
 effort reaching back through centuries. 
 
 How many of the things which contribute to your con- 
 venience, if not necessity, have come from distant lands ! 
 Yet before the vessel that brought them could spread 
 her sails and go forth upon the broad, trackless ocean, 
 the science of navigation had to be built up, aud the art 
 of ship-building had to be perfected, and the methods of 
 commerce, including the excavation of ore and the coin- 
 ing of money had to be devised. The time was when 
 the rude canoe was the highest achievement of ship- 
 building art ; when the sailor, clinging to the coast-line, 
 dared not venture out of sight of land ; when the fur- 
 nace was as yet unknown, and only the rudest forms of 
 barter were the embryo of a now world-wide commerce. 
 It has taken ages to secure the progress that has been 
 obtained. The history of navigation carries us back to 
 the invention of the mariner's compass, to the study of 
 astronomy by Newton, Copernicus, Gallileo, Ptolemy, 
 nay, by the Chaldean shepherds watching their flocks by 
 night, and taking the earliest critical observation of the 
 stars by which the sailor determines his place on the 
 broad ocean waste. It carries us back to the old crude 
 methods of ship-building, when steam was unknown, and 
 the ancient triremes were impelled by oars, and the sail 
 was only a doubtful experiment. 
 
 We must call to mind, also, the slow progress of geo- 
 graphical science, exploring bay and river, and creeping 
 venturously along the shores of the Mediterranean, and 
 peering out, by the " Pillars of Hercules," into the un- 
 known ocean ; then venturing with Columbus across the 
 broad, watery waste, and revealing a New World ; then 
 by countless voyages of bold explorers searching out a 
 
 
BLESSINGS AND DUTIES. 365 
 
 path to the Indies, and perfecting, with new faint lines, 
 the charts that map island, ocean, shallow and shore. 
 
 Take your seat by your own quiet hearthstone, and 
 think for a moment of the various relationships by which, 
 in the enjoyment of your blessings, you are linked, not 
 only to the present and the living, but to the distant and 
 the dead. Let imaginary lines be drawn from each ob- 
 ject that furnishes your dwelling, from each volume that 
 lies upon your shelf or table, from each comfort or con- 
 venience of your home, from each influence that has in- 
 structed your mind or fashioned your character, back to 
 the ten thousand objects in which they each originated, 
 or in which they had their birth, and you will find your- 
 self, like the sun, the centre of a vast system revolving 
 about you, for your convenience ; nay, the centre of innu- 
 merable rays of blessing and beneficence, only they are 
 all received instead of dispensed. You will find that 
 just as the sunbeams are so many telegraphic messengers, 
 uniting, by their lines of light, every sand-grain, and 
 dew-drop, every grass-blade, and leaf, and flower to one 
 point ; so in your own home, in your own heart, meet the 
 countless lines of influence and blessing that come 
 streaming down to you through the centuries, and con- 
 nect each of your comforts, conveniences, or privileges 
 with the names, and toil, and invention, and heroism of 
 innumerable benefactors, who, in one way or another, 
 have bequeathed to you the results of their invention, 
 their self-denial, their enterprise or their effort. 
 
 The humblest utensil of household economy has really 
 a history almost primeval, carrying you back to the long, 
 rude and abortive experiments of semi-barbarous art. 
 Invention and toil pioneered a tardy progress ; and just 
 as the emigrant is forced to thread the mazes of the forest, 
 
3 66 LIFE LE880N8. 
 
 open roads, and bridge streams, and toil on long and 
 tediously beneath the deep shadows and amid the almost 
 unbroken solitude, before Tillages and civilized art, 
 schools, and churches, and social culture can spring up 
 around him, so ages of toilsome endeavor must pioneer 
 us before we can enter in peace upon the inheritance of 
 their achievement. If you should undertake to write out 
 in full the history of one of the most common implements 
 of art — write it as the history of the steam-engine has 
 been written — you would find yourself threading your 
 way through the labyrinths of past centuries, gazing, 
 perhaps, on the rude anvils that ring out amid German 
 forests, or studying the primitive armor of Grecian 
 heroes • or, floating down the stream of time, you would 
 meet, perhaps, with some contribution from the specula- 
 tions of an Albertus Magnus or Roger Bacon, some acci- 
 dental discovery of a noted alchemist, some lingering 
 tradition of oriental usage, some accidental discovery 
 which genius stood ready to employ, till a printing press, 
 a lightning rod, a safety lamp, or a lucifer match met 
 your eye as the memorial of ages of striving and inven- 
 tive experiment. As we read of the crude efforts of 
 early art, we are not prepared to see at first their real 
 and important connection with the triumphs of modern 
 skill. And yet the stream that floats down to our doors 
 the harvests of past ages of effort, is continuous, like a 
 vast river, draining the valley of time of its ingenuity, 
 fed, in its original, by countless springs bursting from 
 distant hill-sides or from mountain snows, with tributaries 
 winding unseen through the obscurity of dark ravines 
 and interminable forests, without so much as a charted 
 line for their memorial. A wandering traveler might 
 sit down by the mossy brink of some mountain spring, or 
 
BLESSINGS AND DUTIES. 367 
 
 launch his light canoe on the surface of some calm lake 
 in the far off wilds without suspecting that it was the 
 germ of a Mississippi or an Amazon ; that there the cur- 
 rent that might at length float the navies of the world 
 had its humble birth ; and so, in the remote tracts of 
 time, the historic traveler might stumble, without know- 
 ing it, upon some rude contrivance or simple fancy, or 
 happy accident, which was the germ of a broad develop- 
 ment of civilized industry, the head fountain that gave 
 the impulse of its descending current to turn the wheels 
 of the machinery of modern art. But so it is. Others 
 have labored and we have entered into their labors. 
 The clustering comforts of our homes, all the arts, and 
 inventions, and discoveries that make them differ from 
 the Indian's wigwam, or the kraal of the Hottentot, 
 have come down to us from the labors of past and dis- 
 tant generations. 
 
 But what are all the material comforts of our civiliza- 
 tion, much as we should miss them if they were with- 
 drawn ; what are all the arts and conveniences that add 
 refinement and lend their charm to our social life, and 
 minister to our social enjoyment, by the side of those 
 higher blessings of moral and religious privilege without 
 which all beside is but as the shell without the kernel, 
 the husk and chaff without the grain ? Here our vast 
 indebtedness is again brought to view. I cannot take 
 up the work of any great master in the world of thought 
 without being constrained to confess how vast is the ob- 
 ligation imposed upon me by the privilege of committing 
 myself to his guidance, or listening to his animating words 
 that lend wings to my spirit and teach it to soar to 
 spheres of lofty meditation. I cannot turn over those 
 leaves, crowded with conceptions that enrich my own 
 
368 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 soul as I read, that, in my just estimate, beggar all ma- 
 terial wealth, without being constrained to acknowledge 
 that I have entered upon an inheritance prepared by 
 other hands, on gardens that they have planted, on vines 
 that they have trained, and fountains that they have 
 opened. I find my lost thoughts that roam at random, 
 furnished with guides that lead me to scenes where the 
 mind may feast itself on whatsoever is lofty and pure, 
 glorious or sublime. They take me to the Pisgahs of 
 vision, or to " chambers of imagery f or they lead me 
 where the unfolded magnificence of more than sun and 
 stars is spread out to my view, and I am roofed with a 
 firmament of wisdom and goodness transcending that 
 which the telescope unfolds. Those old thinkers, al- 
 ready notching their centuries, how they call me up 
 to them, or sit down by my side and speak to me in 
 words that leave the most enduring impression ! They 
 make me a different being. They expand my mind to a 
 loftier stature ; they inspire my soul with their grand 
 conceptions. With a pupil's gratitude I recognize them 
 as masters. They have built with Herculean might, 
 bridges of truth over gulfs of doubt, where else I had 
 floundered, and mired, and sunk ; they have grappled 
 with problems of being and providence that had else ap- 
 palled my feebler powers. Across the centuries they 
 stretch to me the hand of brotherhood, and cheer me, 
 like them, to do and dare. 
 
 Yet they have not enriched me alone. The social 
 world around me, made so genial, or at least so tolerable, 
 owes its culture of mind and heart to their endeavor. 
 Their thoughts have been, for generations, like the early 
 and the latter rain. Not only the lofty tree has been 
 refreshed, but the lowliest grass-blade in the humblest 
 
BLESSINGS AND B UTIES. 369 
 
 nook. Educate the leading minds of a people, and 
 through them the blessings of knowledge and culture are 
 distilled upon the whole field of social life. The quick- 
 ening power of high, pure thought diffuses itself like the 
 bracing influence of fresh air. The millions breathe it, 
 and society and the State acquire a more vigorous life, 
 in which we share, and by which we are blessed our- 
 selves. Each virtue and each grace springs up refreshed. 
 We are surrounded by the privileges and comforts of 
 general intelligence, culture and refinement. 
 
 Thus it is impossible for us to estimate how much we 
 owe — not for the wealth of mere abstract speculative 
 thought, but for practical enlightenment and permanent 
 impulse — to those who have preceded us, who have made 
 our books, fashioned our literature, and left the impress 
 of their large and sagacious wisdom on the institutions 
 that we enjoy. Perhaps they were accounted theorists. 
 Perhaps they were classed as pedants or book-worms. Yet 
 their explorations have discovered and opened mines of 
 thought, or the trees they planted have proved century 
 oaks, under which generations have sat and sung. The very 
 soil itself has a larger value, that their feet have trod it, 
 and that their thoughts are current in the minds of those 
 that tread it still. We are the richer vastly in intellec- 
 tual and spiritual wealth, that they have lived and medi- 
 tated, and spoken, but we are also richer in the domain 
 of art and material wealth. The very acres, the dead 
 soil, the hills and valleys themselves, acquire a new 
 value, that they have been pressed by the feet of the 
 pilgrims, or been hallowed by the presence of a Washing- 
 ton. We are richer that Milton wrote, that Bacon 
 and Locke speculated, and that Newton read to us the 
 lessons of the stars — richer not only in the treasures of 
 16* 
 
37 o LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 learning, but in the wealth which the State recognizes 
 and the miser hoards. 
 
 Thus, all the great students and thinkers of the past 
 have labored for us. The speculations of the philoso- 
 phers, and the glowing visions and inspiring thoughts of 
 the poet are our rich inheritance. Columbus discovered 
 for us the New World, but far more glorious in their 
 aims and hopes, the great navigators on the sea of hu- 
 man thought trusting to the unerring needle of the Word 
 of God, have opened to us, not a new world, but a new 
 firmament of worlds. How vastly enlarged, how im- 
 mensely expanded, is the field of enterprise which they 
 have set before us ! To what new and hitherto unex- 
 plored realms have we been conducted under their guid- 
 ance ! They make the tenant of the humblest hovel the 
 possible lord of a vast, a boundless domain. Who that 
 reflects for a moment on the range of intellectual vision, 
 on the fields of experience, on the wealth of motive, on 
 the inspiring power of high and hallowed example — all 
 arrayed before us through the labors of ttie great minds 
 of the past, can restrain his lips from the involuntary con- 
 fession of our vast indebtedness ? 
 
 If we consider our civil privileges, we shall find that 
 they are not of our own procurement. They are an in- 
 heritance, and how often toil-won or blood-bought ! 
 Orderly and constitutional government — government by 
 law and by rulers of our own choice — is one of the latest 
 matured harvests of time. Wisest men have studied the 
 arts of constructing States. Jurisprudence is an old 
 science. Its foundations lie deep in the early ages, when 
 Draconian codes, or the wisdom of Solons and Numas, 
 or the imported "Tables" of Roman laws commanded 
 veneration and respect. How slowly and tediously even 
 
BLESSINGS AND DUTIES 
 
 371 
 
 down to the present, has the science progressed through 
 Koman organization and statesmanship — the care of 
 Justinian and Theodosius, the labors of Ulpian and Tri- 
 bonian, the research and speculations and conclusions of 
 Grotius and Vattel, of the Cokes and Blackstones, and 
 Stowells, and Kents, and Storys, and Livingstons, whose 
 names are the lights of jurisprudence, and under whose 
 guidance it has attained to its present position ! 
 
 In civil progress experiment has followed experiment, 
 and failure has succeeded to failure, till inch by inch, we 
 have been permitted to feel that there was at least some 
 advance. All this while precedents have been accumu- 
 lating, experience has been stored up. 
 
 Who can estimate oar debt to the wisdom, valor and 
 large foresight of the heroes of the Revolution and the 
 early statesmen of the Republic ? Let their names, then, 
 be honored as they deserve. Among them were true and 
 noble, as well as able men, and history, to its latest page, 
 must recognize their worth. They took large views of 
 the future. They laid the foundations of Government 
 deep and strong. They built more wisely, in some re- 
 spects, than they imagined. If as men, on some points, 
 they proved fallible, it is not for us sharply to criticise 
 their errors. Later statesmanship, with all the lessons 
 of a larger experience before it, leaves still undimmed 
 the splendor of names like those of Washington and Frank- 
 lin, Hamilton, Adams, Jay, Jefferson, and Witherspoon. 
 
 The inquiry is pertinent, How came we by such men ? 
 The statesmen of that age were themselves the pupils of 
 the past. For their wisdom, for their sagacity, for their 
 principles, and their methods of applying them, they were 
 indebted to the experience of earlier periods. The ex- 
 amples of preceding failure and success in kindred ex- 
 
372 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 periments had not been lost upon them. If not versed, 
 all of them, in classic Icre, there were certain important 
 lessons, traced as epitaphs on the tombstones of dead em- 
 pires, which they knew by heart. For their instruction, 
 history opened her broad page ; for their warning or 
 guidance, political philosophy trimmed her lamps — some 
 of them long dimmed and half stifled in the sepulchres 
 of buried nations ; for them Locke and Sidney had 
 speculated, and for them the Bradfords and Winthrops 
 had, on the bleak coast of New England, changed the 
 ideal to the actual. It was not in vain for them that 
 Hampden had resisted the payment of an illegal tax, or 
 that Milton had pleaded so eloquently for " the liberty 
 of unlicensed printing." The Constitution which they 
 framed was, in reality — as to its elements — a mosaic 
 made up from all preceding ages and from the contribu- 
 tions of all the most eminent thinkers that had gone be- 
 fore. Fragments of the old Jewish theocracy were 
 there ; scraps borrowed from the speculations of Plato 
 and Cicero ; lessons out of Athenian history and the 
 Achaian league ; suggestions borrowed from Eoman or- 
 ganization and the Justinian Code ; ideas transplanted 
 from the history of the Mediaeval Italian republics, and 
 the towns of the Hanseatic league, and the Federal ex- 
 perience of the Swiss cantons j principles that had shot 
 up to a world-admired harvest in the little Genevan re- 
 public, that had flourished in the rise and triumph of the 
 Netherlands over the tyranny of Spain, that had been 
 scattered abroad to germinate under the ashes of Eng- 
 land's Smithfields, and amid Scottish heaths and glens, 
 that had, in fact, crossed the ocean in the Mayflower and 
 been embodied in town and church organisms, under the 
 shadow of the half-subdued forests of the Eastern colonies. 
 
BLESSINGS AND DUTIES. 
 
 373 
 
 This is not a picture of fancy. The more close our 
 scrutiny the more clearly will the indebtedness of our 
 early statesmen be confessed. They received the be- 
 quest of the world's antecedent experience and a sum- 
 mary of the results of its endeavors in that sphere in 
 which they were specially to labor. Their merit was, 
 that, trained under peculiar circumstances by that Provi- 
 dence that raised them up for their work, they used them 
 wisely and well. But no history of the construction of 
 the Constitution could be more curious or instructive 
 than the history of its component elements, and the in- 
 fluences and experiences by which they were moulded 
 and shaped. And, in the final search, whence came 
 these, but from the same wise Providence and the same 
 divine goodness that trained up for us those patriot 
 statesmen ? 
 
 So, also, the men of their age had been providentially 
 fitted for the crisis they were called to meet. The best 
 blood of England flowed in their veins. They were the 
 children of those who had fought under Cromwell, who 
 had listened to Howe and Owen, Baxter and Manton, 
 Norton and Shepard, and Hooker. They had been 
 forced to wrestle with untamed Nature, and, by sweat 
 and toil, wring their bread from an ungenial soil. The 
 war-whoop had not died out of the forests around them 
 ere many of them had attained to early manhood, and 
 some of them had been cradled in forts or to the echo of 
 the sentinel's tread. But more than all, they had read 
 the Bible ; they had read of Moses and an oppressed 
 people, of Gideon and the deliverance he wrought, of 
 David and his defiance of the Philistine. They had pon- 
 dered over Christ's words : " Render unto Caesar the 
 things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that 
 
3 74 LIFE LE8S0N8. 
 
 are God's." They had received by tradition and from 
 trustworthy records the story of the martyrs' faith and 
 the hardships of the victims of Star Chamber and High 
 Commission, till antipathy toward tyrants, secular or ec- 
 clesiastic, Straffords or Lauds, beat in every pulse. 
 
 And then came those irritating attempts to invade the 
 liberties of the Colonists, which, for a whole generation, 
 were training them for the decisive hour. Nothing 
 shows more strikingly the Providence that was working 
 out the result, that was training our fathers, and fitting 
 them to respond to the appeal that was soon to be made 
 to their endurance and their valor. 
 
 We see thus our indebtedness to them and our indebt- 
 edness also to the Providence that raised them up and 
 prepared them for their work. Thus, we go back to the 
 Pilgrims, to the Reformers,, to the Martyrs. But we 
 cannot stop even with the Reformation, its heroisms and 
 its martyrs : for these were but tributaries of a stream 
 that had been flowing all along, almost hidden, indeed, 
 while it wound feebly through the wilderness of the Dark 
 Ages, but bursting forth in its freshness from the foun- 
 tain of Calvary, and in the early centuries giving assur- 
 ance of a force and a volume which could not be sup- 
 pressed. The Author of the Gospel, the Founder of 
 Christianity, the One who gave his Apostles " a mouth 
 and wisdom," and taught them to endure the fiery trial, 
 is really the original source of all our political and social 
 blessings, and only a shallow philosophy overlooks the fact. 
 
 Thus, for ourselves we must confess that " others have 
 labored, and we have entered into their labors." ' Hands 
 that have long been folded in the grave sowed the seed 
 of which we reap the harvest. Upon us " the ends of 
 the world are come." The tree of privilege under which 
 
BLESSINGS AND DUTIES. 375 
 
 we repose, or from the loaded branches of which we pluck 
 the richest fruit, was planted long before our birth. It 
 is a patriarch of the forest, a Runnyrnede memorial, a 
 Charter Oak of centuries, that had a history already be- 
 fore its spreading shadow had fringed the shores of this 
 Western World. It sprang up long ago, when the heel 
 of mailed warriors trampled the leaves of its bed, when 
 the streams of devotion that poured forth from prison 
 and catacomb, and the streams of blood that flowed in 
 the amphitheatre, or from the block, watered its young 
 life. Justin Martyr vindicated its right to be, and Au- 
 gustine in his " City of God V registered its growth and 
 forecast its prospects. It sent out its roots till they 
 struck deep in the soil of centuries ; and one reached out 
 its fibres to drink from the soil where the blood of the 
 faithful had flowed, and another twined itself about 
 Magna Charta, and another about WicklifiVs Bible and 
 the homes of the Lollards, and another drank up the 
 dews that fell silent upon the scenes where a Claude, and 
 a Bernard, and a Savonarola labored, and another reached 
 afar to the banks of the Moldau and the shores of Con- 
 stance to imbibe the virtue that was in the lives and the 
 ashes of the Bohemian Reformers, and another reached 
 toward the Swiss Cantons and the School of Calvin, and 
 another was rooted in Wittemberg and the German for- 
 ests, and others still might be found beneath the fires of 
 Smithfield, or the flats and dykes of Holland, or about 
 the Bass Rock and the Tolbooth of Scotland, while still 
 another found its way to the bleak coasts of the Western 
 wilderness and clasped the rock made sacred by the feet 
 of the Pilgrims — thus making ages and generations 
 tributary to its growth, till the very sap of the tree 
 seemed the commingled life-blood of centuries, and the 
 
376 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 fruit it bore was enriched by the flavor of every age and 
 clime. Its bark is the sculptured register of heroic 
 names and deeds, growing larger with each new ring 
 that swells the giant trunk. We may read upon it 
 names like those of Huss and Luther, and Calvin, Wick- 
 liffe and Knox, Latimer and Cranmer, Cromwell and 
 Hampden, Sidney and Russell, Milton and Marvel, nay, 
 of our own Elliotts and Winthrops, and Mathers and Ed- 
 wardses and Hookers. Ages ago, in times of its earlier 
 feebler growth, God's saints knelt beneath its shade, and 
 Puritan's prayer and Covenanter's song echoed through 
 its branches. The blasts of persecuting power wrestled 
 in vain with its gnarled strength. The scars of its torn 
 limbs only attest its triumphant endurance, and in each 
 of them we may read the struggles and conflicts through 
 which it has been spared to cast its grateful shadow 
 about our favored homes. And never should we forget 
 how it has sheltered us, spreading its broad, majestic 
 arms like a shield over tent and altar, embowering free- 
 dom and justice, intellectual and moral culture, beneath 
 its genial shade, and proving itself a Tree of Life in the 
 Eden of our favored lot. 
 
 Who can look thoughtfully upon it without feeling a 
 sort of homage for its venerable form and massive trunk, 
 or having his heart stirred within him by reminiscences 
 of its earlier prime ; without acknowledging that it is 
 Time's memorial of the good and brave, planted by God's 
 own gracious providence, watered by prayer, cultured by 
 self-denial, and fed from every great and heroic deed 
 that has dropped the enriching leaves of spent endeavor 
 thick over its spreading roots ? Who can properly re- 
 gard it without feeling that it calls upon us not only to 
 cherish the memory of our fathers, but to lift up our 
 
BLESSINGS AND DUTIES. 377 
 
 hearts in devout thanksgiving to Him who, by the ante- 
 cedent preparation of centuries, qualified them and their 
 materials for what they were to accomplish, and then 
 wrought Himself in them mightily ? 
 
 But of our religious privileges it is preeminently true 
 that they have been bestowed as a free gift, and yet their 
 price was paid by the self-denial and the sufferings of 
 others. They come from the Great Giver, but they come 
 through the channels of human endeavor and voluntary 
 self-sacrifice. We have entered upon the inheritance of 
 others 7 toil. How little do we realize in its enjoyment, 
 how much it has cost! We have the Bible, and we justly 
 count it an unspeakable treasure ; yet in what agony of 
 soul, amid what prison glooms, what sorrow and exile 
 were many of its lines written! What fidelity, even 
 unto death, has guarded the sacred trust ! what fires of 
 persecution have been kindled around it, and what rivers 
 of blood have flowed to quench those fires ! The hymns 
 we sing — how many of them, like Henry Kirke White's 
 " Star of Bethlehem/ 7 have been coined out of sighs and 
 groans, and tears, the inward anguish of a broken and 
 contrite heart ! How many a book of devotion, like a 
 crushed flower, gives forth the fragrance of a soul bruised 
 under the strokes of affliction ! And if the trampled shell 
 may be said to " bleed pearls," how many a gem of piety 
 and hallowed trust, " of purest ray serene," that sparkles 
 upon us out of the night of worldliness and sin, has been 
 compacted of drops from the wounds of sanctified sorrow! 
 The great names of the sainted dead that, like stars in the 
 firmament of the past, cheer the twilight of a journey that 
 will end with the everlasting dawn, are largely the names 
 of those who " have passed through great tribulation. 7 ' 
 
 Is it strange that the ancient Egyptians in the blind- 
 
378 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 ness of their heathenism, adored their river Nilus as a 
 God? They could not trace it to its source. That 
 source was hidden far away in a region which human 
 enterprise had, century after century, vainly attempted to 
 explore, and which only in our own day has been dis- 
 covered to the world. Yet year after year, this wonder- 
 ful stream, ceaselessly flowing, brought down to the great 
 valley, with its periodical overflow, the sediment that en- 
 riched, and the waters that refreshed the parched fields. 
 And is there not another Nile on the banks of which 
 we dwell — a Nile more wonderful than that, the origin 
 of which was so long unknown — one that brings down 
 to us with each returning day, instead of year, blessings 
 by the side of which those for which the Egyptian deified 
 his ancient river, are but straws and dust ? Our Nile is 
 the river of Christian truth and privilege, which rolls on 
 by Our doors, that current in which are combined streams 
 of ancestral blessing, flowing sometimes from hidden 
 fountains scattered over the broad tract of past ages, 
 sometimes from the Bethels and Goshens, and juniper 
 trees and caves and mountain sides of which we read, 
 where holy men have knelt and prayed and communed 
 with heaven. On and on they flow, till the fountain 
 opened on Calvary pours forth its tide, and the united 
 streams then, like the ancient Nilus, become a river 
 that needs no other tributary, but rolls along down to us 
 its golden sands, and all the freightage of the holy ex- 
 ample and the sanctified experience and rich harvests of 
 the ages of Christian endeavor through which it flows. 
 Follow along its track now, or drift upon its current, and 
 you will find it sweeping by the side of scenes of glorious 
 memories — funeral piles and scaffolds, and the prisons of 
 the early martyrs ; along the valleys lined with glens 
 
BLESSINGS AND DUTIES. 
 
 379 
 
 and caves and the catacombs that cradled and sheltered 
 the infant church ; along scenes of exile and solitude 
 where God's suffering saints could wake the silence of 
 nature with prayer and song. You find its banks lined 
 with the most memorable scenes of history, Pentecost, 
 Patmos, Nero's prison, the Amphitheatre that rang so 
 often with " the Christians to the lions ! " the cells where 
 the Jeromes and Bedes and Bernards in days of darkness 
 kept fresh in the world the spirit of devotion ; the old 
 Bethlehem church at Prague where Huss preached at the 
 risk of his life ; Wittemberg and Geneva, and England's 
 Smithfield, fragrant with the memory of the martyrs ; 
 Spanish autos de fe the blazing fagots of which told 
 where heaven stooped to take its loved ones to its bosom ; 
 the bleak hills of the Grisons, where Italian exiles 
 preached the Saviour they loved ; the villages of the 
 Albigenses and the valleys of the Waldenses — till you 
 feel that no river known to modern exploration or 
 " ancient song " can boast such magnificent volume, such 
 historical scenes, such inspiring monuments, as this glo- 
 rious river of Christian privilege, " the streams whereof 
 make glad the city of our God." 
 
 And for us this river flows. Down to our age does it 
 come bearing the precious bequest of all the generations 
 that have gone before. They have labored and we have 
 entered into their labors. As we enter upon our inheri- 
 tance, realizing what it cost, who does not feel almost 
 like David when he refused the draught offered him from 
 the well of Bethlehem — asking with genuine humanity, 
 " Is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy 
 of their lives ? " Surely we tread upon hallowed ground. 
 Our harvests are gathered from soil that has been watered 
 by patriot blood. The ashes of martyrs are beneath our 
 
380 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 feet. Our most precious privileges have been won and 
 guarded and transmitted to us by the sleepless vigilance 
 of those who have fallen in their defense. 
 
 We owe to them a vast debt, but they have passed 
 beyond the reach of our gratitude. We may cherish 
 their memory, we may build their monuments, we may 
 charge historian and poet to commemorate their fame, 
 but that is all ; we only express our indebtedness, we 
 do not cancel it ; we cannot. But is there not one for 
 whom they were instruments, who " wrought in them 
 mightily," who made them simply the willing distributors 
 of his beneficence, who still lives, and who inherits all 
 their claims as well as maintains His own ? 
 
 Most assuredly there is : and to his cause, to his ser- 
 vice, we may devote our energies and talents, and thus 
 render back, not what we owe, but the testimonial of 
 our gratitude. And shall we not do it? Shall we not 
 feel that in such a world as this, the recipients of such 
 privileges as ours may not longer live to themselves ; 
 that selfishness is crime ; that we, the heirs of the past, 
 hold what we have in trust for generations to come ? 
 
 Ours then should be the broadest philanthropy, the 
 most ready and cheerful charity. We should ever ac- 
 knowledge the claims of the Great Giver in every object 
 of his care to which we may be the ministers of his 
 bounty, or to which we may extend the privileges pur- 
 chased for us by no mercenary hands and in no selfish 
 spirit. The lessons of duty which are read to us from 
 the page of history, urging us to gratitude by the bless- 
 ings that God's servants have toiled and suffered in His 
 name to procure for us, are properly one with the second 
 great Commandment of the law ? " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself." 
 
XXXIX. 
 
 VALUE OP TIME. 
 
 " It is turned as clay to the seal." — Job xxxviii. 14. 
 
 AS clay to the seal, so light is said to fit itself to the 
 object it meets. But the same also is true of 
 time. How readily it takes the shape we give it, but, 
 unlike the light, it keeps it. And yet the business of 
 our life is to shape time, to furnish the mould to which it 
 shall adapt itself. A good man's life is so many years 
 moulded into the forms of truth, and virtue, and religion. 
 A bad man's life is so many years allowed to take the 
 distorted shapes of sin. Time is plastic as the clay, as 
 the light ; and yet, when once shaped, it is past being re- 
 called to be shaped again. The great question of life is, 
 therefore, how shall we use our time ; how shape our 
 years, hours, and moments. 
 
 To answer this question we must consider, first, the 
 value of time as our material to work upon. 
 
 Its value is seen first from the fact that it is the neces- 
 sary material of life. All that life has of good, or great, 
 or valuable, or useful, is fashioned out of it. Time is 
 our quarry. Out of it we bring the well-spent hour, the 
 well-spent year, the well-spent life. Time for an intelli- 
 gent being, is the equivalent of existence, and we must 
 estimate it by the capabilities or possibilities which it in- 
 volves ; what it can do for character, virtue, integrity, 
 
 (381) 
 
382 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 piety, Christian hope, beneficence. Who can tell the 
 value of these ? 
 
 Time is the iron in the mine. "What shapes you can 
 give that iron ! You can melt, and mould it and ham- 
 mer it into a thousand implements, from the nail to the 
 steam-engine. It is true you can abuse it. You can 
 arm the soldier with it ; give him spear, and dagger, 
 and cannon-ball to murder with on a magnificent scale. 
 But what could you accomplish without it ? It is the 
 material to be fashioned, and you must have it, or you 
 cannot have what is made of it. So with time • that, too , 
 is liable to perversion. Like the iron, it may be ham- 
 mered into that which is useful or deadly, but without it 
 there could be nothing like life or life's deeds. 
 
 Time is valuable, again, because of the character of 
 what you can fashion out of it. It can be put to the 
 most valuable shapes and uses. The iron is worth more 
 than the clay ; the gold more than the iron ; time, more 
 than all. There is no pearl of the sea, no diamond glit- 
 tering in the mine, that can be cut into such priceless and 
 sparkling forms of beauty as these hours and years. 
 There is no jewel in kingly crown that shines like a well- 
 spent hour ; none whose loss is worth the tears which 
 that Roman Emperor Titus shed when he said, " I have 
 lost a day." How the sculptor exults when he comes in 
 possession of a block of the finest Parian marble, for he 
 is thinking what his chisel can make of it. See him 
 examine it. He looks it all over. He sees that it is of 
 the finest grain, without a single crack or flaw. And 
 yet what is it? A rude, unfashioned block of stone; 
 without sense, feature, or expression. And yet out of that 
 rude mass he will bring a noble statue, expression glow- 
 ing on every feature ; another Washington, or another 
 
VALUE OF TIME. 383 
 
 Webster, till the marble will almost speak. So tlie 
 artist values that rude block, and the world gathers to 
 admire what he has brought out of it. But time is a 
 nobler block for the skill of a higher art. No sculptor's 
 hand ever chiseled on the marble any thing more than the 
 bare image and shadow of that impress which these 
 years can be made to bear. It is for you to make the 
 artist's ideal a reality ; it is for you to touch his marble 
 and make it live and breathe ; it is for you to make his 
 fancy fact, and his imagination truth ; it is for you to 
 take his loftiest ideal of what is great, and good, and 
 pure, and make it live in time. 
 
 Would you know the value of the marble ? See what 
 has been fashioned out of it. See how human skill has 
 brought out the image of whatever the world has seen 
 of great, or good, or noble. Would you know the value 
 of time ? See the lives of Christian men that have been 
 cut out of it. Less than seventy years made a Paul, a 
 Payson, a Baxter, an Edwards. Think of that noblest 
 gallery of art, the great assembly of the spirits of just 
 men made perfect — every one of them a model, every 
 one of them fashioned to the divine image. And what 
 is all other wealth ; what other treasures of art by the side 
 of this ? A holy life, in the sight of God, is of inestima- 
 ble value. It is the only true wealth ; and if you can 
 bring it out of the seventy years of existence, what 
 must the material of these years be worth ? A cup of 
 cold water given in the name of a disciple shall not lose 
 its reward ; and how many thousand times may it, or 
 something like it, be repeated ? Out of one hour you 
 may bring forth some feature of penitence, or faith, or 
 charity, or hope. What out of a year ? what out ol life ? 
 
 The value of time, too, is seen in the permanence of its 
 
384 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 results. You may stamp it as you can the wax or the 
 clay, but the stamp made, the impression lasts forever. 
 You can mould your days and years at will, but once 
 moulded, they are fixed for eternity. A thing done is 
 " cut with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond ; it 
 is graven on the rock forever." The marble may 
 crumble, the mountains melt, the earth burn to a cinder, 
 but that deed outlives the final conflagration. How plas- 
 tic time is on our hands. Like the clay pressed upon 
 the seal, like the light laying itself upon every object, so 
 time fits itself to our every will. We can make what 
 we will of it ; we can pour it, like the molten iron, into 
 what mould we please ; the mighty thing shapes itself 
 to our thought. It lays itself upon the face of our mind 
 and fits itself to every feature. Not an atom, not a hair 
 fails of its imprint. And how that imprint lasts ! 
 Ages do not corrode a fragment or a trace. What would 
 a sculptor give for such a piece of marble ? He works 
 hard and long on the hard stone to bring it into shape, 
 and, when shaped, how the ages crumble it, turn it into 
 a pile of dust ! A careless hand knocks off one feature 
 or another, and the mutilated thing is thrown among the 
 rubbish. But time is not like the marble ; what it takes 
 it keeps — its statues are immortal. 
 
 But time is a valuable material, because what we bring 
 out of it is our own, and ours forever. It is something 
 that we shall carry with us when time itself is no more. 
 Time's offspring shall outlive its sire. The image of our 
 life hewn out of these years is our living self, our 
 character, our conscious being— every deed or thought 
 that has gone to make up what we are. This is the true 
 wealth — what a man is in himself ; all else is but trap- 
 pings, smoke, show. His gold and silver, houses and 
 
VALUE OF TIME. 385 
 
 lands, are only the dust on the lid that covers the treas- 
 ure of himself. They are foreign to him. They are 
 as his only for the hour ; his to weigh him down, per- 
 haps ; his as Pilgrim's burden was, till he reached the 
 cross. They are put into his hands just for a day, that 
 it may be seen what he may do with them, whether he 
 will make a plaything or an implement of labor out of 
 them. But they are foreign to his true treasure. They 
 are not his as his deeds and character are ; they are not 
 his as his life is, inseparable from his being. The rich 
 man crosses the threshold of the grave, and, in the 
 twinkling of an eye, he becomes a beggar ; begs for a 
 drop of cold water, too poor to buy it. The beggar goes, 
 too, but he looks, perhaps, to the eternal throne, God's 
 heir, and says, " My Father." The man that owns a 
 gold mine is not rich for it ; the man that owns the 
 world is not rich for it. Perhaps he does not own his 
 own soul ; he has lost it, and the Devil holds the title- 
 deed, and what is he without it ? But the man that owns 
 the quarry of time may be rich. He may bring up the 
 hours and days rich with beneficence and piety, every 
 one worth more than a thousand ingots of gold. And 
 they will be his when every thing else, even his body, 
 feeds the worm. He will take them with him, to death, 
 to the judgment, to heaven, to the throne of God. No 
 one shall tear them away. The deed I have done is mine 
 forever. You may steal my hoards, you may burn my 
 dwelling, you may rob me of my limbs, you may chase 
 this tenant-spirit out of its poor crumbling dwelling, and 
 leave it no home in the flesh ; but there is a wealth that 
 I shall carry with me, not wrapped in napkins, not stored 
 in safes, for that deed is mine ; all that I have hewn 
 out of time's quarry will go with me ; the things I have 
 17 
 
386 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 done, the experience that has measured out my years. 
 Those deeds of generosity, or self-denial, or faith, Or pen- 
 itence, or prayer, are my true wealth, and all else is 
 clay. They may have been done for others, but still 
 they are mine ; mine when I die, mine when I am judged, 
 mine forever. They are a part and parcel of my own 
 being ; they have grown into my immortal life ; they are 
 the elements of my soul, the features of my spirit. They 
 beat in every pulse of thought, and feeling and hope ; 
 they are threads in the white angel robe, leaves of the 
 palms that God keeps for me in heaven. Death will not 
 despoil me of them. He will take the rags and dust that 
 were ready to drop off. But of the righteous it is said, 
 " Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, yea, saith 
 the Spirit, for they rest from their labors, and their works 
 do follow them." I shall then be rich in God. 
 
 What a mine of wealth to work them is that of time ! 
 What unspeakable treasures are hid in these unexplored 
 years ; what inconceivable heights and degrees of blessed- 
 ness ; what after memories of holy living and beneficent 
 action ; what riches of penitence, humility and love ! 
 And of all that we quarry out of this mine, nothing shall 
 be lost, not a grain, not a fragment. 
 
 The value of time as material is seen again from the 
 fact that it is never given but once, and consequently, 
 when lost, can never be regained. God never gives the 
 same moment twice. His dealing with us— His provi- 
 dence says, " Use it now or never." You can do as you 
 like, but here is the alternative. It will never come 
 again. What a value does this give to a thing, to have 
 written on it " Now or never !" How do we call the time 
 of securing it the golden moment! It would be less 
 valuable if we could make it wait on our leisure. But 
 
VALUE OF TIME. 387 
 
 time is not like silver that we can lay it by, and keep it till 
 time of need. It must be used when given. It is like the 
 manna that must be gathered in time, and not be stored up. 
 
 But more than this, when gone, there is no recalling 
 it. Ask the fled year to come back. Will it? Call 
 aloud for one of its privileges, one of its hours of mercy. 
 Will it return? As well stand by the grave and summon 
 out of its coffin one of death's prisoners. That year is 
 gone and will come no more. You might redeem a cap- 
 tive, but " the redemption of the soul," of time, " is pre- 
 cious, and it ceaseth forever." There is no opportunity 
 to barter it back. Mines hold no equivalent, treasuries 
 no wealth that can bribe it into your hands. 
 
 What would not men sometimes give for a lost oppor- 
 tunity ! Even in a worldly point of view it is priceless. 
 See that man that has been thrust into the duties and 
 responsibilities of manhood, without good habits, without 
 education — without a distinct aim or a fixed character ! 
 He sees his error now, but it is too late. Oh, if youth 
 would come back again ! Oh, if he might but live those 
 years over ! He would give the Indies, if he had them. 
 He would pawn an empire, if he owned it. They seem 
 the only valuable thing that he ever had, and they are 
 squandered. They are his lost birth-right. He is an- 
 other Esau. Oh, if there were but a place for repent- 
 ance ! But there is none. He is a beggared bankrupt. 
 He feels it when too late — the martyr of a lost oppor- 
 tunity ; the victim of his own lie, when he said " Youth is 
 rich in time." 
 
 " Youth is not rich in time, it may be poor ; 
 Part with it as with money, sparing. Pay 
 No moment but in purchase of its worth ; 
 And what its worth, ask death-beds ; they can tell." 
 
388 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 If any thing were wanting to set the seal on the value of 
 time, it is this, that its loss is irrevocable. There, on his 
 solitary island, is the poor shipwrecked sailor. Years 
 ago, after his misfortune, there passed a vessel that might 
 have rescued him, but he lit no signal fire. How many 
 times since has he thought what that hour was worth ! 
 You may be that poor, forlorn object, if you let the hour 
 of probation go. 
 
 Thus we see time's value. It is the material of life. 
 It is the most noble of all material to work. No mine 
 is so rich or abundant. Its results last. They are eter- 
 nal. What we draw from it is our own, and ours for- 
 ever — the only thing that is, and when lost, it can never 
 be recovered. 
 
 But what is the skill necessary to improve time — to 
 work this mine, if you please, or shape this material? 
 Certainly, it calls for all the wisdom and skill that man 
 has — for it is work of the highest, and holiest, and 
 gravest art. 
 
 Time is not like clay that a careless hand may mould 
 and crush, and no damage be done. You cannot gather 
 this up again and put it on the wheel. It is not like the 
 iron, that can be taken out of the imperfect mould, and 
 put into the furnace, and so re-cast. It is not like the 
 marble, its fractured mass replaced by a new block. It 
 is not like gold, the value of which can be weighed by 
 ounces. It stands alone among earth's treasures, far above 
 them all. It should be dealt with by a wise and careful 
 hand. What would the sculptor think to see a rude 
 blunderer pounding away with his sledge-hammer at a 
 noble block which he had destined for the material of his 
 master-piece ? How indignantly would he reprove such 
 
VALUE OF TIME. 389 
 
 ignorance and folly ! What madness, he would say, to 
 batter and deform such noble material ! What spirit of 
 devastation and vandalism could induce to the deed? 
 And yet what is the blunderer on marble to the blunderer 
 on time, carelessly dashing off the parts that might be 
 shaped into the full proportions of a perfect frame ? Is 
 the man that lives for God and heaven to live with less 
 reflection, and act with less care in the improvement of 
 time than the artist bestows upon his stone? The 
 highest artist of all is he who fashions forms of beau- 
 ty, and truth, and love. All other art is poor and beg- 
 garly by the side of this. Yet go into the sculptor's 
 studio and see him at his work. He toils for hours, all 
 absorbed in his task, and seems scarcely to have moved 
 a muscle. You look and see how carefully he uses his 
 chisel. Here a mere grain, and there a grain, like an 
 atom of dust, is removed. Hours pass, and you cannot 
 see that he has accomplished any thing. The unpractised 
 eye can perceive no change. But, a few months hence, 
 that product of his skill will be the envy of kings and 
 courts. Oh, man, thou sculptor of time, the artist re- 
 proves thee ! Will he deal so carefully with the cold 
 stone, and will you abandon to neglect and a rude hand 
 that material which God has given, that with more than 
 Zeuxis 7 boast you may say " I work for eternity ?" 
 
 That artist gave toil and study under the best masters 
 to gain his skill, before he put his hand to that master- 
 piece. You have not taken your first lesson of the Great 
 Master, perhaps. You have not comprehended the first 
 problem in the book of life. And yet you take hold of 
 this precious, unspeakably precious material, as you might 
 of clay or earth ; you put it in all sorts of distorted 
 shapes ; you carelessly knock off the fragments of days 
 
39 o LIFE LE&SONS. 
 
 and years that you need to fill out the proportions of a 
 perfect life. To make the whole mass of your years the 
 plaything of your fancy or your pleasure, you scarce 
 ever ask, " What is that noble thing that I can bring out 
 of them ?" You show, it may be, no anxiety to leave 
 them behind in any other shape than a pile of rubbish. 
 
 But is it to be supposed that without study and effort, 
 the highest results of a hallowed ambition will ever be 
 realized? What is gained without effort? What is 
 worth gaining ? What man floats to his goal ? Every- 
 where men put forth skill and science and muscle. Great 
 men are great workers ; holy men are. 
 
 Toil and attainment are almost identical. The scholar, 
 the artist, the merchant, all strive if they gain. Shall 
 the greatest boon — the greatest wealth of life, be ours 
 by indolence ? 
 
 What is it then that is needed to make the most of 
 time ? Skill, toil, wisdom, in no common measure ! And 
 what skill, what wisdom ? That of the man who piles 
 his heaps of wealth highest ? That of him who can in- 
 trigue most successfully? That of the man who can 
 absorb the most philosophy ? That of the man who can 
 spice life with the greatest variety of pleasure ? No ! it 
 is none of these. It is that skill, that wisdom that is 
 taught in the school of Christ, that can tell heaven's true 
 coin from its counterfeit, that can appreciate the true 
 worth of life, that can know, in fact, how to live. To 
 have that skill you must have the help and teaching of 
 God — the great almighty artist himself must instruct 
 you. You must come to His word and there discover, 
 what time is worth to the heir of eternity, what proba- 
 tion is given for, and how the flying moments can be 
 made winged messengers to carry the treasures of a holy 
 
VALUE OF TIME. 391 
 
 life for you up to God's throne and store them there. 
 You must find the die to stamp the hours with, that will 
 stamp their true value ; you must know what your work 
 is on earth as a sinner in (rod's sight, bound to the judg- 
 ment, with mercy possible through a Saviour, with a day 
 of grace hasting to its close, with a dying world around 
 to be led by your words and deeds to the gates of life . 
 
 And then to all this knowledge, must be added application 
 and effort. All your years will be a dead loss without it. 
 No man has ever proved time's value, but, like holy men, 
 he has wrestled and striven. Let time take its own course, 
 let the years go as they may, and they will never float you 
 to heaven. You must watch with the rudder in your 
 hand. The Great Pilot said, " Watch and pray !" The 
 Apostle said give diligence to make your calling and 
 election sure ! 
 
 And once more, what is done must be done quickly. 
 Time admits of no delay. He will not wait neglected 
 at the door. You cannot put him off as you do others. 
 Each moment comes and knocks, and if you open not, 
 goes his way, and is seen no more till in the judgment, 
 he stands up and says, " You slighted me." 
 
 Surely , our responsibility for the use of time is great 
 and fearful. It is a solemn and weighty trust. It is 
 even a terrible thing to live. Years of existence in a 
 world where we may hew those years into a staircase to 
 heaven, are of untold value. What a man does with 
 them is an immense matter of concern, to himself, to men, 
 to angels, to God. An eternity hangs upon it. A judg- 
 ment will be decided by it. 
 
 The results of a right use of time s will be immensely 
 glorious. Only see what they are on earth. Even in 
 the short span of human life, see what some men have 
 
392 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 become. They have made time a vast mine out of which 
 they have brought all the treasures of cultivated intel- 
 lect, of hallowed piety, of generous and self-denying 
 benevolence. They have built themselves up by the grace 
 of God, " to the stature of a perfect man in Christ 
 Jesus." They have walked the earth they blessed, ma- 
 jestic to all ages, in the consciousness of highest and 
 holiest aspirations, divine patterns before men. We 
 wreath their names with blessing. We bless God that 
 they lived. There is nothing on earth so beautiful, so 
 grand, so lovely as finished Christian character, radiant 
 with every virtue, featured after the divine image. Go 
 to the grandest works of human skill and art, the piles 
 of a magnificent architecture, the temples that were the 
 work of centuries, the galleries of painting and sculpture 
 rich with works of earthly immortality, and what are 
 all those dead things to the magnificent temple of the 
 human soul, on whose front broadly traced is read the 
 plain inscription, " God dwells within ?" 
 
 But the results of an abuse of time are terrible. You 
 see this even on earth. Pile up all the epithets of misery 
 that human language possesses, and they are nothing but 
 an inch measure to the mountain of guilt and woe that 
 abused time flings on the remorseful, agonizing soul of 
 the confirmed transgressor. A hardened heart — harder 
 than the nether millstone — that the love of Calvary can- 
 not melt, nor the thunderings of Sinai rend, is made in 
 a less space than seventy years. No plummet of human 
 thought can fathom the untold depths of misery which is 
 reached sometimes in life's short span. The hideous and 
 devilish features of a Herod or a Nero are cut for 
 eternity by the chiselings of a few short years. What 
 images of distortion and enormous crime rise up out of 
 
VALVE OF TIME. 393 
 
 the graveyard of the past at the mention of some names 
 that were once the names of men ! As they start up 
 around us we seem to be standing in the midst of the 
 sculpture gallery of hell. The imprint of Satanic art on 
 every feature speaks the terrible skill with which the 
 great master can imbue his disciples. And all reaches 
 its horrid perfection in less than three-score years and 
 ten ! In so short a time the character is fixed like the 
 iron cooled in the mould, to hold forever its flawed and 
 distorted shape. There may be only that short space 
 between the awful result and the light, thoughtless inno- 
 cence of the child that plays to-day about your hearth- 
 stone. 
 
 The hour to begin to improve time should be the ear- 
 liest possible. Delay is madness, folly, suicide. Many a 
 man converted in his later years feels sadly that his life 
 is but a fragment. And how many want even that frag- 
 ment! 
 
 17* 
 
XL. 
 
 WASTED TIME. 
 
 " Redeeming the Time."— Eph. v. 16. 
 
 * c \/T ILLI0NS °* mme y for an inch of time " ex_ 
 
 JLtJl claimed Elizabeth, the gifted but ambitious 
 Queen of England, on her dying bed. Unhappy woman ! 
 Reclining on her couch, with ten thousand dresses in her 
 wardrobe, a kingdom at her feet — but all now valueless — 
 she shrieks in anguish, but in vain, for an inch of time. 
 Her three-score years and ten are gone, and an empire 
 cannot buy one moment back. It is too late. 
 
 What an impressive lesson ! How significant alike to 
 queens and beggars, to princes and subjects I What is to 
 be done, must be done while time is ours. And if we 
 linger, like the beggared queen, we may wait too long. 
 To waste time is to store up remorse. To yield it to sin, 
 is spiritual suicide. 
 
 Time may be sadly abused ! It is like a blank check. 
 One man may twist it up to light a taper, and another 
 with the patient fingers of toil and duty may trace upon 
 it lettering that will make it current for uncounted gold. 
 It is like a painter's canvas, on which you may portray 
 a man or a reptile, a John or a Judas. It is the warp 
 of life, into which you may weave threads of shoddy or 
 threads of gold. Waste time, and it matters little what 
 
 (394) 
 
WASTED TIME. 395 
 
 else you economize. Spendthrift of this, you are bank- 
 rupt forever. The practical wisdom of this life is to 
 discern its value and use it well. Those years when we 
 can earn the least are often most precious. The hours of 
 childhood trace the features of manhood, and sow the 
 harvests of age. Wasted days are often like broken 
 links in the chain of life, leaving it to fall into useless 
 heaps of rusty iron. A neglected opportunity of study 
 sends one that might have been a Paley or a Brougham 
 down to the ranks of ignoble indolence or toilsome drudg- 
 ery. Declining a calling or a business that demands 
 energy may prove the momentary mistake that expands 
 with years, till it casts the whole life in shadow. To 
 seize the right moment, or to put every moment to its right 
 use, constitutes the grand strategy of life's campaign. 
 
 How many thousands yet in the vigor of life can go 
 back, in memory, to hours which they would give bitter 
 tears to recall ! But those hours are beyond recovery ! 
 There is no redemption for them. The past, more re- 
 lentless than the grave, never gives up its dead. There 
 is no resurrection of a wasted privilege. The hours that 
 folly has imprisoned never come back, except in haunt- 
 ing memories, from the vaults of darkness. Summer 
 birds migrate back and forth with the seasons ; but the 
 flying moment never turns back, but hastens on with its 
 record to the bar of God. Spring will clothe the dead 
 earth with new life, but the dead year never blooms 
 again. You may advertise for lost moments, but none 
 ever answered the advertisement of a " lost day." The 
 time that has fled, is irrevocable for evermore. 
 
 It is this fact that helps to invest it with such unutter- 
 able value. It cannot be exchanged or transferred, or re- 
 deemed, or retained. You may pawn it for a toy, but the 
 
396 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 treasuries of Kings will not pay its ransom. You may fling 
 it into the abyss of folly, as you would a pebble into the 
 sea, but all the drag-nets of human art can never bring it 
 back. Like the key that might have unlocked the iron 
 safe stored with treasure — it is thrown away, and no 
 Chubb or Hobbs can devise its duplicate. 
 
 There are some crowded graveyards where coffin has 
 been piled on coffin, till the first buried seems trebly 
 buried. So it is with the crowded graveyard of our 
 years. Those years will never be ours again. All that 
 we can do is to plant the flowers of memory over their 
 dust, and yet every flower will wither or change to a 
 thorn if its roots strike down to the duet, of years of folly 
 and of sin. 
 
 Such considerations as these forbid every thoughtful 
 man to trifle with time, to jest it away, or heedlessly 
 surrender it at fashion's or fancy's call. It is one of 
 those few possessions which are granted us, which make 
 all the show and glitter which distinguish the rich from 
 the poor, and the peer from the peasant, of but small ac- 
 count. Masters of time, rightful owners by the rightful 
 use of it, we are more than the lords of acres. Eich in 
 time, by hoarding the moments in duty done, one may 
 look down on Rothschilds and Astors. This is our 
 princeliest heritage and most precious capital. We can 
 invest it in industry, study, application, charity. We 
 can carve the hours into deeds which our children shall 
 bless. We can build up the years into well executed 
 plans of beneficence and devotion, holy temples of the 
 heart within which the sacred presence of the Spirit shall 
 abide. 
 
 But it is as related to eternity that time assumes its 
 highest value. This is our probationary state. As the 
 
WASTED TIME. 397 
 
 fleeting days of childhood give shape to manhood and 
 its destinies, so the years of time shape the eternal future 
 of the soul. How insignificant seem the little grains of 
 sand ! Yet you see them heaped up and framed to be- 
 come the mould in which the molten iron is poured. So 
 with the grains of time. Whether you design it or not, 
 you are turning them into the mould in which liquid 
 thought, feeling and purpose crystallize, till they are 
 like the iron or the granite. A wasted, squandered day 
 is not simply so much reduction of spiritual existence and 
 activity. It is a flaw in the mould. Its imprint on the 
 character is imperfection and deformity. Years of sin 
 are not simply so much offset against the balance of a re- 
 formed life. They are such a portion of the mould itself 
 broken up. 
 
 Bend the twig and you incline the tree. One moment's 
 pressure on the sapling may do more to injure it or shape 
 it, than tempests in after years. No arithmetic can com- 
 pute the results that must flow from an error now. Each 
 of these moments may be the pivot on which a world to 
 come is poised. Thousands in the agonies of despair 
 have been able to look back to some critical juncture, 
 some memorable moment, on the issue of which the scope 
 of after years depended. There, just at that point, a 
 single moment seems like the turning point of destiny. 
 It might have opened the door to hope and heaven. It 
 might have been made the gateway to eternal blessed- 
 ness. It might have been the first round of a Jacob's 
 ladder. It might have marked the point where, turning 
 on his track, the penitent sinner should have been greeted 
 by that gratulation of angels over the new-born soul — 
 " behold he prayeth." 
 
 Is such a moment precious ? Who would run the risk 
 
398 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 of flinging it away like chaff, of dissolving such a jewel 
 in the wine cup, or leaving it to swell the rubbish of a 
 wasted life? Such a moment comes to all. It marks 
 the crisis of the soul's destiny. To you it may have come 
 to-day, and it may never come again. Yet every moment 
 that leads to it, or draws it on, is also precious. Each 
 day is preparing you for it, to use it or abuse it. These 
 tickings of the clock, these beatings of the pulse, these 
 noiseless swingings of the pendulum of time, hasten the 
 striking of the hour of doom. The impression of every 
 scene, of every lesson, of every folly is pushing you on 
 to some decision — whether you will serve God or not, 
 whether you will consecrate your life to its true end or 
 not. On, on rolls the tide of hours, days and years, 
 swifter and stronger in current, setting more resistless 
 toward the cataract. Moment flows into moment, melts 
 into the mass and is lost to view, but every drop swells 
 the* flood that bears you on — that presses you to the final 
 issue. 
 
 And then think of wasted time — for all is wasted, so 
 long as the great end of life is overlooked. What are 
 feasts and fortunes and honors, if God is not glorified ? 
 What is all industry, if you give not diligence to make 
 your calling and election sure ? What is all business, if 
 you are never busy for God, never busy to lay up treasure 
 in heaven? The sands of the desert are barren, but 
 what is their curse to that of the time-grains of a life 
 given over to vanity, frivolity and sin? Over this 
 Sahara-waste sweep the burning blasts of remorse. Over 
 it no fragrance breathes, within it no flowers bloom. 
 Only the life that is devoted to God, that breathes in 
 prayer and exults in praises, that garners the hours and 
 coins them all with the stamp of duty, with the image 
 
WASTED TIME. 399 
 
 and superscription of their great proprietor — only such a 
 life is worthy the name. Any other is but a living death. 
 Any other is but the slow steady deliberate murder of 
 time — the sacrifice of probation and privilege on the 
 altar of mammon or lust. 
 
 How long then before you will begin truly to live ? 
 An uncertain future makes a day, an hour, too long to 
 wait. And even if the future was certain, it would be 
 madness to live any part of it in a course of deeds that 
 we shall want undone. Undone ! It cannot be. Tears 
 cannot wash the past out. It is cut in the rock forever. 
 There stands the soul's changeless image. You cannot 
 re-form, or new model, or correct it. Suppose it is a Jug- 
 gernaut, a Mammon, a Gallileo, a Simon Magus ! Will it 
 do to wait till it becomes such before you begin to mould 
 and shape your years to save them from such perversion ? 
 
 You will find it a hard, an almost hopeless task, 
 
 u To improve the remnant of your wasted span, 
 And having lived a triiier, die a man." 
 
 " 'Tis well if looked for at so late a day, 
 In the last scene of such a senseless play, 
 True wisdom will attend your feeble call, 
 And grace your actions, ere the curtain fall. 
 Souls that have long despised their heavenly birth, 
 Their wishes all impregnated with earth — 
 For three-score years employed with ceaseless care 
 In catching smoke and feeding upon air — 
 Conversant only with the ways of men, 
 Barely redeem the short remaining ten." 
 
 If they do, what remains is only like scattered freight 
 picked from a wreck, the poor sad memorials of life's great 
 disaster, full of tears and vain regrets. Will you take 
 them as your sum of life ? 
 
XLI. 
 
 THE PSALM OF LIFE. 
 
 " Making melody in your heart to the Lord." — Eph. v. 19. 
 
 A SHORT time since it was my privilege to hear 
 some hundreds of children sing. With life and 
 spirit they sang the " Forward, march !" and in mellower 
 tone and with sweeter pathos, " There's a light in the 
 window for thee." 
 
 It was, indeed, a privilege to hear them. There was 
 a charm in that multitude of young voices harmonizing 
 together. I was called upon to address them, and I told 
 them, as the most appropriate thing that came to my 
 mind, that I wished they would each make their life a 
 song of praise, so that their words, and deeds, and 
 thoughts, and plans should harmonize together, and that 
 would make the true Psalm of Life. 
 
 The Psalm of Life ! or life a psalm of praise to God, 
 rendering to Him in grateful devotion the true harmony 
 of soul, of all its faculties, and thoughts, and acts, through 
 all the years of probation !* Is not this the standard, the 
 Divine standard, at which all should aim ? Does it not 
 express that which, if realized, would answer for us the 
 true end of our being ? Does it not answer to the high- 
 est and noblest ideal which the soul can cherish ? And 
 what is sin, in all its forms, in all its variety of shapes, 
 but just the discord which disturbs the harmony ; some- 
 
 (400) 
 
 
THE PSALM OF LIFE. 
 
 401 
 
 times in a single note ; sometimes in whole stanzas ; 
 sometimes in the whole song ? It puts others out. It 
 jars and grates, as it were, on the ear. It makes all 
 that hear it uncomfortable. It destroys all harmony. 
 It deals with the music of a holy life, or of a pure so- 
 ciety, as the earthquake does with a fair landscape, cov- 
 ering it with confusion and rubbish ! 
 
 To secure the true divine harmony in the heart, the 
 life must be consistent with itself, the thoughts with the 
 words, the words with the deeds, and all of them with 
 one another, and with the law and will of God. Nothing 
 short of this will ensure a perfect and harmonious life. 
 
 So to social order and happiness it is essential that the 
 views and feelings of men should accord. Not that they 
 should be precisely alike in faculty, or education, or ap- 
 prehensions of things. They may differ here as the dif- 
 ferent parts vary in music, and yet there shall be, if only 
 each, true to the keynote of Christian love, executes his 
 part, a higher melody. 
 
 But to secure this result, each individual note must be 
 correct. What if it be a little thing. A slight varia- 
 tion produces discord. And hence it is that to the gen- 
 eral order, and harmony, and happiness we must train 
 each thought and utterance of the individual soul. 
 
 The heart of man may be compared to an organ, its 
 keys swept by the fingers cf each individual will. Some 
 with rude hands, finding it disordered and untuned, force 
 it to send forth harsh and grating tones. Some pour 
 forth from it the anthems of praise, and some the peals 
 of holiday music, while others make it breathe the 
 thunder-gusts of passion, or roll to the music of the 
 devil's march. 
 
 Where the thoughts and words do not accord, you have 
 
4 02 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 the incarnate discord of the deceiver and the hypocrite. 
 When a man means one thing and says another, there is 
 an incongruity that arrests attention and invites criti- 
 cism. You can put no faith in him. You may pity, but 
 you despise him. His own soul jars within itself. 
 
 When the words and deeds do not accord, there you 
 have the discord of false professions and false promises. 
 A man says one thing and does another. He speaks fair 
 and acts foul. He puts on the sacred mantle of truth in 
 order to deceive and betray. Or he is simply reckless 
 of truth, and feels no longer bound by promises. Such a 
 man is discord incarnate in the knave, the cheat, the in- 
 triguer, the liar. His presence in society is a constant 
 jar, and he has no peace within his own soul — no music 
 there. There can be no melody in the heart. 
 
 But more than this, a man's aims ought to harmonize 
 with one another, or he will have the discord of restless- 
 ness and discontent ! Some men would have objects 
 which they cannot attain at once. They are like chil- 
 dren that want to keep the orange and eat it at the same 
 time. They want wealth, and yet do not want to toil for 
 it. They want honor and respect, and the reputation of 
 usefulness, and yet they want ease and indolence. Some 
 would be at once patrons of incongruous things. They 
 aim at forbidden fruit, and yet would retain an honest 
 purpose. Their life is a perpetual discord, disquieting 
 themselves and others at the same time. 
 
 In order to harmony, life must have one grand aim, 
 which shall act as leader, and with which all others as 
 subordinate shall accord. Else it will be a Babel of in- 
 congruous sounds. It will be like a mob instead of an 
 army, without an acknowledged commander. There will 
 be no order, no music in it. Who can doubt — who that 
 
THE PSALM OF LIFE. 403 
 
 can answer the first question, What is the chief end of 
 man? — what that leading aim that is to control all 
 others should be ? 
 
 But the life, also, should be one consistent whole. 
 Every added year, and day, like a new stanza, should be 
 set to the same music. It is certainly well for a bad 
 man to become good, but it is better that there should 
 be no need of change. What a terrible sentence that 
 is, " His bones are full of the sins of his youth." And 
 yet how often it is true ! Those early years were a wild, 
 mad glee. The later ones are a saddened dirge. Some- 
 times a man is lured by one thing, and. sometimes by 
 another. Now he would be a Pharaoh, and now a saint ; 
 now a Solomon, and now a hermit ; now a hero, and 
 now a pleasure-seeker. Now he would pray, and again 
 he would swear. Now he would be a reformer, a stern 
 censor of morals, and again he would plead the cause of 
 immorality and license. He would praise truth, and yet 
 betray her ; commend honesty, yet cheat himself ; extol 
 religion, yet trample it under foot. This is to make life 
 a discord, a Babel, a Bedlam ; to shut up together in the 
 same limits the lamb and the wolf, the dove and the vul- 
 ture, the deer and the tiger. 
 
 There are some lives that are like a combination of 
 acid and alkali. The diverse elements neutralize one 
 another. There are principle and passion, generosity 
 and revenge, pity and rage, kindly sympathies and miser 
 lusts. There are some whose incongruous views and 
 schemes remind us of the toes of the golden-headed im- 
 age of prophetic vision — a mixture of iron and of miry 
 clay. They build, perhaps, on the rock, but with hay, 
 wood, stubble. Their life is a disjointed affair, a mass 
 of fragments, a heap of commingled lumber and brush- 
 
404 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 wood, put into shape. They have pursued one thing and 
 then another, never satisfied, never reaching any thing, 
 mixing up, in fact, snatches of scores of songs with an 
 incongruity that would be ludicrous if it was not so 
 disastrous. 
 
 But the true life is that which will harmonize in all its 
 parts, so that, as timber fits to timber, deed will fit to 
 deed and aim to aim, to complete one perfect whole, and 
 like the varied notes of music, each shall have its place 
 and contribute to the melody. Is not this the just 
 ideal ? 
 
 Yet the life may be consistent in itself and yet not in 
 harmony with the will and providence of God. But this 
 also is essential. Men like to be able to put forth the 
 claim to consistency ; but there may be an unholy as well 
 as a holy consistency. A desperately wicked man will 
 naturally be regarded as more consistent than one just 
 wavering between good and evil. Satan, doubtless, is a 
 model of consistency. Every added year of wickedness, 
 like an iron harrow dragged over a field, leaves fewer 
 green things behind it to check the uniform desolation. 
 As habits become more rigid, as the purposes become more 
 fixed, character approximates to the changeless features 
 of an iron statue, and takes upon itself the immobility of 
 desperation. Consistency, merely, may be consistency in 
 evil. It may be the harmony of sin. It may be the 
 dead level of depravity. It may be a uniform black- 
 ness, unbroken by a ray of light. Deed may fit to deed, 
 word to word, thought to thought, and each to the 
 other, so that life shall be in warp and woof one uninter- 
 rupted, seamless cerement of sin and death. There shall 
 be no broken thread of penitence, no gentle shade of 
 pity, no brightness of hope. 
 
THE PSALM OF LIFE. 405 
 
 A man may thus be in awful consistency with himself, 
 but in discord with God and truth, and the laws of holi- 
 ness and heaven. He may come into perpetual collision 
 with these, and be in conflict with all with which he 
 should harmonize. The whole realm of God's providential 
 government, is to the thoughtful ear an immense organ, 
 ever pealing forth in thunder-tones the law of Sinai, the 
 notes of holiness, always proclaiming, " the way of the 
 transgressor is hard," and in its undertones you may hear 
 the echoes of the approaching judgment. A life that is 
 not holy and godly jars with these. In plain words, the 
 harmony of life requires, that it should fit into the Divine 
 system — demands that it shall not run athwart the laws 
 of eternal truth and justice. If it does so, in ever so 
 small a matter, it breaks in upon the holy order of God's 
 government, it grates in the universal anthem that goes 
 up to heaven from the Creator's works. 
 
 We see, then, that there can be no perfect melody in 
 the heart while sin is there. If word is discordant with 
 word, or deed with deed, or thought with thought ; if 
 one speaks what he does not mean, or professes what he 
 does not practice, or promises what he does not fulfill ; 
 if the elements of his moral being are at war with one 
 another, the passions with the reason, the appetites with 
 the conscience ; if, in a word, the psalm of life has not 
 been tuned to the key-note of the Gospel ; if our uniform 
 and practical purpose of consecration to God does not 
 bear down all before it ; if the aims and aspirations of 
 the soul do not all accord in " glory to God in the highest, 
 peace on earth, good will to men," there can be no proper 
 melody in the heart nor the soul. 
 
 But let this be the case, and that melody is the legiti- 
 mate and necessary result. Let the soul, by nature at 
 
4 o6 LIFE LESSONS. 
 
 discord with itself, with conscience, with its condition, 
 with the laws of holiness and God, be converted, so that 
 selfish will is subdued, so that sin is abandoned, so that 
 God is loved, and His law becomes a delight ; let the 
 soul, purified by the power of atoning blood, and at- 
 tuned to the praise of Divine Grace, be brought to feel 
 that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ 
 Jesus, that walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit," 
 and then, instead of a cage of tigers and screech-owls, 
 it shall be the orchestra of the Divine Spirit, where all 
 the faculties and affections of the soul shall unite in the 
 chorus of " Holiness to the Lord." The grace of God 
 shall breathe through it, and wake from its trembling 
 strings a music beyond that of ^Eolian harps. There 
 will be a sweet concert of thought and deed ; an unmur- 
 muring submission to God's providence ; a holy joy in 
 doing His will ; and those outpourings of Christian love, 
 in kindly and charitable purpose, which are the very 
 music to which God's ministering angels, on their earth- 
 ward mission, clap their joyous wings. 
 
 A holy life is more than a Beethoven's strains or a 
 Handel's "Messiah." There is a glorious music in it 
 unmatched by the masters of human song. The noted 
 organ of Freiberg is said to transport the listener and 
 make him forget all else while he listens— now to the 
 roar of the cataract, and now to the thunder-peal of the 
 storm, and again to the rippling music of the waves as they 
 die away upon the strand. But that organ of the human 
 soul which can pour forth the trumpet song of Miriam, 
 or the lyrics of David, or breathe forth the loving 
 words of the Patmos exile, or the heavenward aspira- 
 tions of the Apostle to the Gentiles ; which finds expres- 
 sion in the meekness of Moses, or the devotion of Isaiah, 
 
THE PSALM OF LIFE. 
 
 407 
 
 or the heroism of Judson, or the fervor of Baxter, or the 
 humanity of a Nightingale, a Dix or a Howard — this 
 organ of the human soul, its keys touched by the fingers 
 of the Divine Spirit, its music the chants and anthems 
 of heaven itself, its harmony, sweeter than sweetest in- 
 cense, ascending to the listening ear of the Lord God of 
 Hosts, is more wonderful than any whose keys have been 
 shaped by human fingers, more glorious than any that 
 far-famed minster or cathedral can boast. 
 
 And yet in the lowliest lot, and by the humblest fire- 
 side, where the luxuries of earthly music are unknown, 
 there may be such outbreathing of sweet content and 
 gentle charity as shall make the loss of other music un- 
 felt, and shall invite the ear of angels to listen to the 
 song ; for there are deeds, and affections, and heaven- 
 ward aspirations too grand for note-book or organ peal — 
 a music of life infinitely above the reach of the highest 
 art. If God Himself dwells within the soul, it shall be 
 full of heaven, and heaven is more than music. 
 
 " A life of duty lends to all it sees 
 
 The beauty of its thought ; 
 And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies 
 
 Make glad its way unsought. 
 In sweet accordancy of prayer and praise 
 
 The singing waters run ; 
 And sunset mountains wear in light above 
 
 The smile of duty done. 
 Sure stands the promise ; ever to the meek 
 
 A heritage is given ; 
 Nor lose they earth who single-hearted seek 
 
 The heritage of heaven." 
 
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