THE CHURCH.

"Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone."-Eph. ii. 20.

NOVEMBER, 1850.

FRAGMENTARY NOTES OF VILLAGE SERMONS.

BY THE REV. JOHN FOSTER.

(Taken by one of his hearers.)

No. 11.

"The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance.”—Psalm cxii. 6.* This, of course, means a pleasing, a kindly, an affectionate remembrance; otherwise the righteous would have no advantage over the wicked; and they are peculiarly desirous of being had in remembrance,of raising a monument or a tower that shall be a perpetual memorial of their having been on earth. It is striking how much relating to the wicked covers every page of history. There is only a gleam of something better, something commencing with heaven; while there is gross darkness all over, that seems to come from hell. And yet it is men we speak of. It is striking to observe the number of wicked characters handed down in history-Caiaphas, Judas, Simon Magus-all very conspicuous; a black list; all tyrants, persecutors, and destroyers of the world and the church; the Cæsars and Neros; and, nearer our own times, Queen Mary, the Bonners, the Gardiners, the Jeffries, of everlasting memory, in the sense of enduring to the end of time; so that a large portion of history may be called Satan's biography. The lives of his special agents have been carefully and ambitiously recorded. The lives of wicked men have been most admired. The pests of society,-the perverters of its notions, the destroyers of its peace, are the favourites of most writers and readers. Should it occur to a man to enquire, Whom does the world love to remember? Why, “very bad men," is his answer. But how carelessly does he tell us this as a matter of course. "They are bad." Is it so, indeed? But do you consider what this implies? It implies the humiliating condition of our race, our family. This would be a fit contemplation for those who look on the native tendencies of man as innocent. The main part is bad -bad in the worst sense-bad towards God. There is a strange ambition to be put on the black list, as warriors, conquerors, destroyers, disturbers of the peace of the world; there is a willingness to be added to the multitude of evil visitants of past ages. But let us aspire to be remembered as the righteous.

The word of God shews that the wish to be remembered is not wrong.

Compare Lecture xvii., Second Series, on Proverbs x. 7, "The memory of the just is blessed."

VOL. IV.

M

It is quite natural for man to wish to be remembered after death. There is something gloomy and reproachful when we say a man should be forgotten. A disposition to forget a friend, or benefactor, or relative, is the indication of a base, low, ignorant mind. The desire to be remembered after death is part of the social constitution of man,-an extension of the wish to be regarded by others. Though the death of man is an entire end of him as a being of this world, yet affection lingers behind; it does, indeed, linger. Not to be remembered, is like the extinction of a candle. To think, that however better I made a person, no one is the better for recollecting me; that I had so very little hold on any one's feelings, that no one feels the smallest interest in the fact that once I was here; this is a painful thought. Though a natural feeling, it is not discountenanced by Religion; it is countenanced by the text. A good man may wish that men should be the better for him to all eternity. Do not you? You have acquaintances, associates, friends; it is something natural to wish to be remembered by them; it accords with piety,—would be excited by piety. Now, if he is the better, he will know it, and by whom he became so; and when he goes into eternity, he will retain a friendly regard for the person who was the means of doing him good. Would it not be a matter of regret, if you thought of a person you have lost by death, to be obliged to say, "He was not the better for me?" Would not this be a very gloomy thing to think of? But if you could say, "I am sure they are the better for me. The pointed applications I made to their consciences and understandings were not in vain. I am sure they are better,”—why, then, you may add, "I may be tolerably sure they will recollect me.' None, surely, of the instruments of our being made good will be forgotten. Men cannot be possessed of good to all eternity, with perfect ignorance of the means of obtaining it; and a knowledge of the means includes a recollection of christian friends that have been beneficial to them.

It seems important that the righteous should be remembered, for the sake of others. Are you not glad it is so? What is more conspicuous in the Bible than the lives of good men? If we look round for any great reason why we should be better, nothing is more prompt than the example of good men. No pious man can depart from the world without thinking it a good thing that there were good men before him, and rejoicing that there are persons who love God and Jesus Christ the better for him too.

It is desirable the righteous should be remembered for the sake of illustrating the Divine goodness. Are not the righteous among the strongest evidences of this? If asked, What evidence is there of the Divine goodness? the existence of Christianity is one proof; you may look, too, on the woods, and hills, and fields; but you cannot end the account of the proofs of the goodness of God without mentioning the example of good men. How did they get good? Did they grow good as the plants and trees grow? No; they are all moral grafts. What do I see but proofs of God's being at work wherever I see the existence of good men? I see where God has made goodness grow, where he has wrought miracles. Not all the race could make a good man what a stronger hand has made him. What is the best thing God can do on earth? Why, to make men good. Therefore, it is desirable that a number of such things should be done as proofs of his goodness.

And for the sake of relieving the history of a lost world, it is desirable the righteous should be remembered. It is horrible that man has been a lost creature from almost the beginning of the world. But it is delightful to see a bright spot of Divine exception. We should not wonder that if any good thing were in the world, or came to it, it would immediately leave it. But God sometimes sends goodness down, and makes it stay. For

any good man would say, "I cannot keep it; it stays because God makes it stay in my mind." How delightful when it shall seem to stay of itself, by the quantity of it,-when by its prevalence it will not seem so strange that it should stay. As God says of his words, so shall it be with good men. "They shall not return till they have accomplished the thing for which they were sent."

For the sake of attracting men towards God and heaven, it is desirable that the memory of the righteous should be retained. To think who are in heaven!-God-angels-men. The glory of a solitary God would be awful. A saint would be ready to say, "I can be no associate with the Deity; I should be overawed by his majesty." But if there is a multitude of the same race in a state of exaltation, they will become an attraction towards that happy region. Accordingly, there were good men before the flood, whose memory is preserved; and since, there have been good men, whose names, character, &c., and many things they said, are kept on record-apostles and martyrs. We should be thankful to God that we can contemplate these things as objects of faith, of a realizing belief. What ages have passed away,-cities have risen and been laid in the dust, and empires, while the memory of these righteous men has endured. All the worthies of the Christian Dispensation, who followed our Lord, displayed the superiority of the christian religion over all other principles of action wherever they went, throughout all regions and tribes. The mar vellous power of this attracting principle is a glorious thing. Thrones and temples have passed away, but these Divine excitements have still stayed. Such examples are useful, as doing what we read, what they wrote, or what they said of others. Thus there is a perpetual connexion kept up between Revelation and these examples of the power of Revelation. Many saints now living will hold a place in the remembrance of posterity, as ministers, or in whatever manner they are the faithful advocates of the cause of Truth. Thus addition is made to a very important, though secondary class of arguments for the truth of Christianity. We have had some sad examples of the advocates of a good cause here in England, of an opposite character, who merely shewed what could be said in favour of it; but, as examples, they are lost to the cause. It would be well if they could go out of remembrance, their writings only being preserved; for, as to all practical purposes, they were clearly its enemies, not its friends. Christian missionaries will be long remembered, as in the East Indies, where the light is beginning to spread over whole regions. There will be left the mouldering temples of the idols,—no man would oppose this; let them stand by all means; the change will be more striking. There are temples in the East Indies on which as much time and labour has been bestowed as in building a large city. Who were the men, it will naturally be asked, who produced this change? How came it here? Christianity did not spring up of itself in these temples. Who brought it? The names of the men who sacrificed every comfort for the sake of diffusing Christianity in the heathen world, will then be remembered; and thus will it be with many in our own country. But this perpetual remembrance will not be in every case. What a vast number of righteous dead are forgotten! But then we have the pleasure of believing that there have been a far greater number of saints than we are aware of. And the darkness of oblivion will be illuminated by the lustre of souls springing out into glory at the Last Day.

Many who were witnesses for the truth are dead and forgotten, and not, in a strict sense, "had in remembrance." Be it so. There is another and a better world; they will be ever known in that new society. If, after death, friends know one another, their recognition will be far more

pleasing than any thing on earth. A pious man should depart with joy, and leave this world, if he expects to join those in heaven that he remembered. How pleasing to find that all the glories of heaven have not ob literated the impressions of friendship; though they have been many years in the sky, have passed by suns and stars, they have not forgotten their friends on earth.

But the righteous will always be remembered by God. Think of the remembrance of God! the eternal supreme Spirit! The righteous are objects of that to all eternity. Is not that sublime? Through all the train of discipline and suffering, He has kept them in perfect recollection, and never, amidst all the glories of eternity, will they be forgotten by Him who "predestinated" them and "chose them in Christ;" who sent down his converting grace to touch and change them. He cannot forget them for whose sake He formed so many vast designs,-He who watched over every moment of their life and death; and He knows where their bodies are that are to be raised again. And will God, who does not regard their bodies as of little value, forget their souls? No; and He that "died for them and rose again," will not forget them. The very sufferings He endured at the hour of death, would, on merely natural principles, tend to confirm the recollection of those for whom He died. How certain the Messiah will ever keep in view those for whom He suffered. He will dis play his vast memory when He shall come a second time. Probably it never occurred to a pious man, that perhaps he, as an individual, should be forgotten at the Last Day. There is the perfect feeling that He who will come to judge the world, will know all that rise, will perfectly recognize them. He cannot come with less memory than any other attribute.

Fishponds, May 23, 1818.

CONSOLATION FOR THE BEREAVED.

BY THE REV. W. PAYNE.

"Ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope."-1 Thess. iv. 13.

Suppose you had heard of a far-off region, where the sky was ever clear, the weather ever genial,-where no pestilential miasma polluted the atmosphere, a land of broad rivers, and flowing with milk and honey; imagine that there discontent, poverty, and crime were unknown,

that the right instead of the might obtained,-violence was not in its streets, wasting nor destruction within its borders, and that there the inhabitants descended to their graves in a green old age, as a shock of corn ripe in his season. And suppose, further, that the land you live in was almost the reverse of this sunny picture-if not in its physical, in its social and moral features, that here you had perpetually to struggle with poverty and sin. Imagine it possible for you to reach that lovely land, where "odoriferous gales dispense native perfumes," would you not like to emigrate thither? Would you not say, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest ?" But what is death to the believer but a spiritual emigration from the land of shades and shadows to lovelier regions than genius ever painted, where "the sun shall not light on us, nor any heat," and "God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes;" and "there shall be no more death; neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain ?" As Faith groups together the images under which heaven is described,1,-as the poetry of christianity embodies in facts these sublime images, is it any wonder that Faith, with

tearful eye and loving heart, says, "Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen thy salvation ?" Surveying, then, the death of our beloved friends from the high ground of christian principle, where we are, at least to some extent, free from those disturbing influences which unfit us to form a right conception, though we feel that their death to us is a calamity, we know it is to them a gain—“we sorrow not as others who have no hope."

We wish to suggest some of the reasons on account of which christians grieve at the death of the pious; also to indicate other considerations which moderate their sorrow. Our remarks apply only to the death of a consistent believer, of one to whom to live was Christ, to die gain. Who, indeed, can think on the death of an impenitent sinner with other than painful emotions? Well might the father exclaim, at the intelligence of his son Absalom's death, "Oh, my son, would to God I had died for thee, oh, my son, my son." Let every one resolve, who reads this, that, when surviving friends behold his lifeless corpse,

"Before decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,"

it will be theirs to say, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord."

1. We sorrow at the death of the true christian, because society loses an ornament. A star has fallen. The noblest specimens of humanity are to be found in the church. There you may find the choicest illustrations of the courage which dares,—the fortitude that endures,—the benevolence that succours, the meekness that suffers, the patience that waits. It is when natural excellencies are grafted upon religion that character becomes more beautiful than rose-buds bathed in morning dew. Religion etherealizes as well as immortalizes virtue. Whenever a christian person is removed from society a light is extinguished,

"A star by which the bark of man might navigate the sea of life." And as there are too many meteors which seek to allure to ruin and to death, we can but weep that a star has set.

2. The cause of Christ, by the removal of the saint, loses a supporter. No man liveth to himself. The love of Christ constraineth us. Next to the development of religion in ourselves, we desire its production in others. The formula which the good adopt is, "For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace; for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest until her righteousness go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth." Devotion to Christ is always associated with devotedness to the cause of Christ. Such persons are careful neither by their spirit nor conduct to hinder the gospel of Christ. They do what they can. Happy the church, blessed the region, where dwell such earnest souls; their worth is far above rubies; they are the light of the world, the salt of the earth; and when one sets

"As sets the morning star,"

it is as when a standard-bearer fainteth.

3. A yet narrower circle has lost a friend. The Saviour had twelve apostles one bosom friend, the disciple whom Jesus loved. The circle of friendship is necessarily a narrow one. There are many we cordially esteem as christian brethren, whom we do not dearly love as friends. In order to friendship, there must be congeniality of tastes,-identity of views and feelings,-similarity of aspirations and aim. In this world of fickleness, change, vicissitude, trial, temptation, difficulty, sorrow, death, who can estimate the value of a faithful friend? Friendship cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire; no mention shall be made of coral or of pearls; its price is above rubies.