THE TRUE CHRISTIAN A CITIZEN OF HEAVEN. MARCH 14. 81 For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's. HE who has hallowed God in his soul and given himself to religion, he is Christ's. IF we have become the servants of God, we are no more strangers and foreigners, but "fellow citizens with the saints:" we are "come unto Mount Zion, the city of the living God." Once our guilt and corruption formed an insuperable barrier; but now, having found Christ, who is the only way to the Father, we have entered through the gates into the city, and become denizens of that city, where light, and beauty, and grandeur, and pleasure, meet together. We are partakers with the saints of the presence of their Sovereign, participate the safety which they find in his protection, and share the happiness which they enjoy under his government. Do their eyes behold the King in his beauty? We also have access to his palace. Is there a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God? We also have tasted of the stream, and dwell in peaceful freedom on its banks. This is the happy state in which we are now in the kingdom of grace, before we ascend to the kingdom of glory. It becomes us to prepare for that state to which we are hastening. If we are already, by our consecration to Christ and his cause, citizens of his kingdom, we are to take heed lest we fall. As our pleasures are immortal, let us keep in view the kind of pleasure which can be relished in heaven, While we regard ourselves as pilgrims, and life a journey; while we meditate on the goodness of the road, the beauty of the prospect, the excellence of the company, and the superiority of the final accommodations, let us resolve to be prepared for that moment which will call us home. Life here is but a passing shadow.-All flesh is grass. Has God restored us from sickness again and again? Let us not, therefore, presume upon life. What is it but a reprieve for a few years! The suspended interval dwindles into a point. Year succeeds to year, and we regard it not. While we anticipate the approaching moment, it has even passed us. Sickness, infirmity, age, in our own persons, unite with the dissolution of our connexions, to apprize us that we are "strangers and pilgrims on earth." While we loiter, a voice from heaven says, "Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest." "A house not made with hands," raises its turrets at the end of our pilgrimage. The spirits of the prophets, the apostles, our fathers, already inherit it: they wait to receive us, they long for our arrival, they prepare to "cry unto us that our warfare is accomplished." Already some of the enjoyments of life melt into distance, and fall into the shades of the prolonged perspective. Yet a little season, and the fading visions of time shall float in broken images before our closing eyes. The sun dips below the horizon. The shadows of the evening descend around us. The mist has thickened upon our connexions. Many of our friends have gone before, and left us to the approach of,night alone. The voice of our departed years returns upon us in solemn admonitions. The voice of God calls us home. Let us no longer delay. Earth recedes. Time vanishes. Eternity is at hand. "Arise, let us go hence !" 82 FONDNESS FOR DISSIPATION. MARCH 15. Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you. LABOUR and rest, exertion and relaxation, retirement and society, gratifications of sense and gratifications of mind, should alternately relieve each other. Religion pretends not to emancipate us from our natural limitations and weaknesses, nor to turn us into spiritual essences, exalted above all that is corporeal and terrene. It wishes not to new mould our nature, nor to destroy it; but to improve and refine it. It allows man every innocent pleasure, when enjoyed seasonably and moderately. But how apt are many to overleap the bounds which divide the harmless from the culpable; and let the license to recreate themselves degenerate into a fondness for dissipation. One cause of the fondness for dissipation is, want of business. Evil always stands ready to rush in and occupy the unoccupied spaces in a man's mind. Idleness is very diligent in planning mischief. We ought to have a definite object always before us, and then we shall be happy in being virtuously active.-Another cause is, disrelish for true pleasures. The votary of vice has rashly flung from him all substantial comforts. If he could relish domestic happiness, friendly intercourse and mutual improvement-if he could relish nature, humanity and himself-if he could read, reflect and enlarge his mind-if he could raise his soul to christian faith, to the love of God and to rational devotion, then he would no longer need dissipation as the aim or solace of life.-Another cause is, want of inward peace. Discontent with themselves, their condition, domestic connexions, station and influence, drives some to dissipation.--Let us dare to descend into ourselves, to discover our besetting sins and to analyze our motives. Let us dare to meet the evils of our lot, for by opposing we end them. If disorderly passions have poisoned our domestic comforts, let us recollect, that dissipation, instead of curing those evils, increases them. We must throw water and not fuel upon a raging fire. The consequences of dissipation are terrific. One is, it renders man a stranger to himself. Amid the objects and persons, which occupy and delight or distract and stun him, he loses sight of himself, his appointments and his hopes. Amid noisy transports and wild rioting, where is the space for clear consciousness or calm reflection? He has lost his dignity and his self-controul. He has lost all relish for religion and truth. The fibres of sin have struck their deep hold into the elements of his character, and God and eternity have been banished from his thoughts. Another consequence is, neglect of duty. By this vice the merchant ruins his credit; the scholar paralyzes his mind; the public officer betrays his trust; the parent sacrifices his children, and all, destroy health, peace of mind, and social instruction. It is difficult to overrate the clustering miseries of dissipation. It throws a blast over all the fairest flowers of youth; produces a disrelish for patient industry, persevering goodness and laudable self-government. It is a disease of the soul, fatal to all the virtues which dignify human nature, and destructive of all the restraints which protect human life.-The arguments against it are as many as its miseries. HOW TO REMEDY A FONDNESS FOR DISSIPATION. MARCH 16. 83 Hear instruction and be wise and refuse it not.—He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul.-In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death. A FONDNESS for dissipation is a disease of the mind which may be cured; which may be avoided. I. Remember, at the moment of danger, your destination to an immortal existence. You are made in the image of God, to enjoy, obey and love him forever. Why were you entrusted with immortal powers, if it was not that you should live like an immortal being? The earth ought to be to you the gate of heaven. Here you are to lay the foundation of your future destinies; to acquire that taste, that disposition and those facilities, which retain their value and utility in another stage of action. The sons of God, those in heaven and those on earth, prefer reason to sensuality, seriousness to levity, employment to inaction, silence to noise, inward satisfactions to outward endowments. Sacrifice not, then, your eternal hopes to your present momentary gratification. II. Cherish equanimity. Without calmness of mind, your heart will not be opened to the influences of religion; nor can you reduce to order those appetites and passions which war against your soul. Harbour no thought, speak no word, and do no action, which shall ruffle a true christian serenity of mind. Let your heart be pure and your conduct useful, and you will feel no need of dissipation. III. Make your avocations pleasant. Dignify your office. Human duties are delightful, when considered as the appointment of God for the great purpose of educating and elevating the immortal mind. Every situation is near to God. Learn to enjoy domestic happiness; be to your family what God is to the world. Acquire a taste for nature, for innocence, for rational devotion and extended beneficence. Thus assert your dignity as a man and a christian. God has made our duty and pleasure to go hand in hand. IV. Anticipate the baneful effects of dissipation. It hastens old age then heaps tenfold burdens on it. It robes your last days in mourning, and extinguishes the light which religion sheds on the grave. When the sources of sensual delight fail, the gates of heavenly peace have become barred. Lay up treasures to yourself at present, treasures of wisdom and virtue, on which you may cheerfully live, when the prime season of gathering is past. and V. When you are allured to the path of dissipation, think of the account you are to render at death. God is a moral judge and he can have no sympathy with crime, indolence or folly. There are no mansions prepared in heaven for voluptuousness. Sin peoples the future with terrours, as it ought. Prevent now, therefore, the remorse, pain and hopelessness which are attached to a life of dissipation. Spare yourself the fruitless wishes which attend a sense of spiritual poverty. Save yourself, by conquering every evil propensity, by redeeming your time and by employing it as an intelligent man, as a faithful christian, as an heir of immortality. Who conscience sent, her sentence will support; And God above assert that God in man. 84 CONNEXION OF REASON WITH RELIGION. MARCH 17. Brethren, be not children in understanding :—but in understanding be men Many ages REASON, like justice, was antecedent to revelation. past have been, and many countries at present are, dependent solely on it for their guide, defence and happiness; and God has made it sufficient for all these. It is man's great prerogative. It is the first, the most genéral and the most natural medium, through which God has communicated himself to mankind, and by which he designs to form them to virtue here and happiness hereafter. It is abused, when it decides without examination; when passion is put in its place; and when it makes conclusions without embracing all which belongs to a question. Bereft of reason, we cannot distinguish truth from érrour, virtue from vice, the voice of God from the voice of imposture. Reason and revelation therefore are allies, and the more closely they unite, the more brilliant their mutual splendour, and the stronger their reciprocal energy. Together, they banish what is called the pride of reason; this belonging strictly to those, who canton out to themselves a little Goshen in the religious world, where, they conclude full day shines upon them, leaving all other regions in gloom.-Reason and revelation are both the unmerited gifts of God; and one gift cannot justify us in pride any more than another. Every gift deserves our gratitude. Have we cause to rejoice or to lament that, in the flexuous and intricate path to the temple of truth, we have more than one experienced guide; and more than one anchor in the tempestuous ocean of life? shall we less prize the broad daylight, because we can at times find the right path by the milder moon or the glimmering stars? Does one light annihilate the value of another, one instruction the value of another? Do reason and revelation supplant each other? NoThey are both, in essentials, the same, two daughters of heaven, whom the Father of men has sent to lead his children in the way of truth and immortality. Right reason is so far from being an exile from the inquiries of religion, that it is the greatest insurance of many propositions of faith. We have seen the faith of men strangely alter, but reason can never alter; every moral truth supposing its principles eternal and unchangeable. Our great care is to see, that we argue dispassionately, that our deductions are evident, and that our judgment is unbiassed; for scripture is to the understanding what the grace of God is to the heart, that instructs and elevates our reason, and this softens and purifies our hearts; and we may as well choose the things of God, without our wills, and delight in them without love, as understand the scriptures, or make use of them without reason. Follow, value, revere and love them both. Put not asunder what God and nature have joined together. Mistake not the voice of your heavenly Father, be it louder or lower, whether conveyed to you by this or that organ, by nature or by religion. God cannot contradict himself. Reason and revelation never can militate. While reason proves religion true, religion cannonizes reason. Happy the man who renders to God a christian, i. e. a truly reasonable service. How just our pride, when we behold those heights! Reason points out, and ardent virtue gains; MAN ABLE TO DO HIS DUTY. MARCH 18. She hath done what she could. 85 PERFECTION is a word to be understood in a comparative sense. Constantly approaching it constitutes our happiness. God is just and merciful. He knows our frame, and requires of us no more than we can perform.-Yet let us not carry our ideas of divine mercy and human frailty to that dangerous extremity, to which some have stretched them. Let us not separate grace from justice; suppose that weakness will justify indolence; or suffer our knowledge that we cannot do every thing, to degenerate into an imagination that we can do nothing. That man is a creature surrounded by temptations which he possesses not the power to resist, that he has passions within him which are not to be governed by him; and that, however clearly, in his closet, he may perceive both the intrinsic propriety of virtue and the prudence of them that practice it, yet that, when he quits the cool shade of retirement and comes into the world, it is not in the power of either conscience or faith to break the spells or dissolve the enchantment of the riches, honours and pleasures of the world; this is the language of those, who, along with morality, renounce religion. While many of the professors of christianity indulge a romantic notion, that supernatural assistance is necessary to produce their reformation; they cannot, they contend, enter upon virtuous courses, until they are called by God. Calls of what other kind from those they are continually receiving do they expect to receive? Are not the calls of God perpetually in their ear? He speaketh once, yea twice, but men regard it not. What is every conviction excited in their minds, by whatever circumstance, of the folly and deformity of vice, of the comeliness and discretion of virtue; what is every inspiring example of rectitude that passes before their eyes; what is every fit of sickness that causes their earthly tabernacle to totter, and warns them to provide themselves an eternal tenement; what is every mournful memento of mortality, which moves along the streets, while they are walking in it; what is every instance of rewarded virtue and corrected vice, which human life exhibits to their view; what is every painful consequence of their own misconduct, which themselves have experienced, in their property, or in their reputation, or in their health, or in their mental sensations; what is every proof presented to them by the past, or by present times, of the necessity of mutual justice and humanity to the happiness of human society; what are all these but divine calls to duty? but the various voices of God inviting man to virtue ?-It is needless to say more on this subject. There is in every man's breast a consciousness, which it is not in the power of his sophistry to stifle, that he can do well if he will, without any other sort of assistance from the Author of good, than what has been granted to him ever since he was born, and what he receives every day of his life. All bounteous Lord! thy grace impart : O teach us to improve Thy gifts with ever grateful heart, And crown them with thy love. |