Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

atoning death of the Redeemer, as the sole and all-sufficient ground of the hope of its salvation-looking forward, with a realising eye, to the glories of a future world, amid the clouds and darkness of present sufferings,-and directing, as a primary power, the whole movements of the conduct. There, the flame of devotion burns, prayer delights to make known its request, praise to offer up its incense of thanksgiving, holy contemplation to unfold its pinions, and to soar amid scenes yet remote. There, also, the duties of temperance and selfdenial, the rigid restraint, within their due and appropriate bounds, of the several faculties and affections of the soul,will meet with the requisite share of attention. There, in short, goodness, in all its constituent principles-whether it regards God or man, whether it relates to the understanding, the heart, or the life, to the habits of the mind, or the regulation of the conduct-proves its existence, vindicates its character, and evinces its celestial origin.

XV.-ON THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE.-Kirwan.

EVERY thing human admits of change and vicissitude; states and empires, arts and sciences, customs and manners, laws and governments, feel, without ceasing, this inevitable principle acting upon them. God, from the throne of his immutability, sports with all the works and enterprises of man; and, willing to show us the little value we should set on things perishable, has decreed that there should be nothing permanent on the face of the earth, but the very vicissitude that marks and agitates it.

My brethren, the true source of all our delusion is, a false and deceitful security of life. Thousands pass their accounts around us, and we are not instructed: some are struck in our very arms-our parents, our children, our friends; and yet we stand, as if we had shot into the earth an eternal root. Even the most sudden transitions from life to dust, produce but a momentary impression on the dust that breathes. No examples, however awful, sink into the heart. Every instant we see health, youth, beauty, titles, reputation, and fortune, disappear like a flash. Still do we pass gaily on in the broad and flowery way-the same busy, thoughtless, irreclaimable beings; panting for every pleasure as before; thirsting for riches and pre-eminence; rushing on the melancholy ruins of one another; intriguing for the employments of those whose ashes are scarce cold; nay, often, I fear, keeping an eye on

the very expiring, with the infamous view of seizing the earliest moment to solicit their spoils.

Great God! as if the all-devouring tomb, instead of solemnly pronouncing on the vanity of all human pursuits, on the contrary emitted sparks to rekindle all our attachment to a perishable world! Let me suppose, my brethren, that the number of man's days were inscribed on his brow! Is it not clear that an awful certainty of that nature must necessarily beget the most profound and operative reflection? Would it be possible to banish, even for a moment, the fatal term from his thought? The nearer he approached it, what an increase of alarm! what an increase of light on the folly of everything but immortal good! Would all his views and aspirings be confined, as they now are, to the little space that intervenes between his cradle and his grave; and care, and anxiety, and miserable agitations, be his lot, merely to die overwhelmed with riches, and blazing with honours?

There is some allowance, perhaps, to be made for youththat boiling season of life, when all the passions are impetuous, and the attractions of the world so intimately felt, and so naturally obeyed. But to see men, as they decline from their meridian, burning fiercer and fiercer for that world; shocking the wrinkles on their brow by an insatiable desire for more wealth and distinction; sacrificing their glorious reversionary hopes for acquisitions and attainments that are on the point of being torn from them; promising themselves a kind of immortality here, as long as they behold a single being one step nearer to the grave,—is such a horrible perversion of reason and religion, as places it out of the ordinary exertion of the power of God to enlighten and save then.

This much we all know, that, whatever length of days we promise ourselves, go we must; and, what is perhaps equally certain, at the moment we least expect it. Even examples of instant death, in all the vigour of health, in the very bosom of security, are far from being uncommon. The scythe is suspended over our heads by a slender and imperceptible thread, which many causes, internal and external, often dissever without allowing us a breath for recollection. But, admitting that a misfortune so terrible is the lot of the fewer number, are we, therefore, more secure from surprise? There is not one individual in ten thousand, when obliged to lie down under illness however alarming, who can bring himself to believe it will prove fatal.

No! wedded to this miserable scene of existence, cur hopes

are afloat to the last; our eyes are opened, only when they are ready to close for ever. Perhaps an instant of reflection to be made the most of; perhaps to be divided between the disposition of worldly affairs, and the business of eternity! An instant of reflection!-just God !-to bewail an entire life of disorder to inspire faith the most lively, hope the most firm, love the most pure! An instant of reflection, when reason is half eclipsed, and all the faculties palsied by the strong grasp of death! Oh, my brethren, terrible is the fate of those who are only roused from a long and criminal security, by the sword of Divine Justice already gleaming in their eyes!

But if no danger is to be apprehended while the thunder of heaven rolls at a distance, believe me, when it collects over our heads, we may be fatally convinced that a well-spent life is the only conductor that can avert the bolt. Let us reflect that time waits for no man. Sleeping or waking, our days are on the wing. If we look to those that are past, they are but as a point: the great feature of all nature is rapidity of growth, and of declension. Ages are renewed, but the figure of the world passeth away. God only remains the same. The torrent that sweeps along, runs at the base of His immutability; and He sees, with indignation, wretched mortals, as they pass, insulting Him by the visionary hope of sharing that attribute which belongs to Him alone.

-

It is to the incomprehensible oblivion of our mortality, that the world owes all its fascination. Observe for what man toils. Observe what it often costs him to become rich and great;dismal vicissitudes of hope and disappointment-often all that can degrade the dignity of his nature, and offend his God! Study the matter of the pedestal, and the instability of the statue. Scarce is it erected,-scarce presented to the stare of the multitude-when death, starting like a massy fragment from the summit of a mountain, dashes the proud colossus into dust! Where, then, is the promised fruit of all his toil? Where the wretched and deluded being, who fondly promised himself that he had laid up much goods for many years?Gone, my brethren, to his account!—a naked victim, trembling in the hands of the living God! Yes, my brethren, the final catastrophe of all human passions is rapid as it is awful. Fancy yourselves on that bed from which you never shall rise; and the reflection will exhibit, like a true and faithful mirror, what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue. Happy they who meet that great, inevitable transition, full of days!

Unhappy they who meet it but to tremble and despair! Then it is that man learns wisdom, when too late; then it is that everything will forsake him, but his virtues or his crimes. To him the world is past; dignities, honours, pleasure, glory!past like the cloud of the morning!-nor could all that the great globe inherits, afford him, at that tremendous hour, as much consolation, as the recollection of having given but one cup of cold water to a child of wretchedness, in the name of Christ Jesus!

XVI.-THE INFLUENCE OF SATAN.-Dr. Chalmers.

It would appear, from the records of inspiration, that, on the one hand, the Spirit of God is employed in making, for the truths of Christianity, a way into the human heart, with all the power of an effectual demonstration; that, on the other, there is a Spirit now abroad, which worketh in the children of disobedience: that, on the one hand, the Holy Ghost is calling men out of darkness into the marvellous light of the Gospel; and that, on the other hand, he who is styled the god of this world, is blinding their hearts, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ should enter into them: that they who are under the dominion of the one, are said to have overcome, because greater is He that is in them, than he that is in the world; and that they who are under the dominion of the other, are said to be the children of the devil, and to be under his snare, and to be taken captive by him at his will. How these respective powers do operate, is one question. The fact of their operation, is another. We abstain from the former. We attach ourselves to the latter, and gather from it, that the prince of darkness still walketh abroad amongst us; that he is still working his insidious policy, if not with the vigorous inspirations of hope, at least with the frantic energies of despair; that, while the overtures of reconciliation are made to circulate through the world, he is playing all his devices to deafen and to extinguish the impression of them; or, in other words, while a process of invitation and of argument has emanated from heaven, for reclaiming men to their loyalty, the process is resisted at all its points, by one who is putting forth his every expedient, and wielding a mysterious ascendency, to seduce and to enthral them.

To an infidel ear, all this carries the sound of something wild and visionary along with it. But, though only known through the medium of revelation, after it is known, who can

fail to recognise its harmony with the great lineaments of human experience? Whence the might, and whence the mystery, of that spell, which so blinds and so infatuates us to the world? What prompts us so to embark the whole strength of our eagerness and of our desires, in pursuit of interests, which, we know, a few little years will bring to utter annihilation? Who is it that imparts to them all the charm and all the colour of an unfading durability? Who is it that throws such an air of stability over these earthly tabernacles, as makes them look, to the fascinated eye of man, like resting-places for eternity? Who is it that so pictures out the objects of sense, and so magnifies the range of their future enjoyment, and so dazzles the fond and deceived imagination, that, in looking onward through our earthly career, it appears like the vista, or the perspective, of innumerable ages? He who is called the god of this world. He who can dress the idleness of its waking dreams in the garb of reality. He who can pour a seducing brilliancy over the panorama of its fleeting pleasures, and its vain anticipations. He who can turn it into an instrument of deceitfulness; and make it wield such an absolute ascendency over all the affections, that man-become the poor slave of its idolatries and its charms-puts the authority of conscience, and the warnings of the word of God, and the offered instigations of the Spirit of God, and all the lessons of calculation, and all the wisdom even of his own sound and sober experience, away from him.

But this wondrous contest will come to a close. Some will return to their loyalty, and others will keep by their rebellion; and, in the day of the winding up of the drama of this world's history, there will be made manifest, to the myriads of the various orders of creation, both the mercy and vindicated majesty of the Eternal. Oh! on that day, how vain will the presumption of the infidel astronomy appear, when the affairs of men come to be examined, in the presence of an innumerable company; and Beings of loftiest nature are seen to crowd around the judgment-seat; and the Saviour shall in appear our sky, with a celestial retinue, who have come with Him from afar, to witness all his doings, and to take a deep and solemn interest in all his dispensations; and the destiny of our species,-whom the Infidel would thus detach, in solitary insignificance, from the universe altogether, shall be found to merge and to mingle with higher destinies;-the good, to spend their eternity with angels-the bad, to spend their eternity with devils;—the former to be re-admitted into the

« AnteriorContinuar »