Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

to its holy duties, whether of devotion, religious reading and study, teaching, public worship, or Christian conversation, with a fidelity that will so warm and baptize your heart in its spirit, as to make its weekly return to you a joyful antepast of Heaven. Every morning and evening through the week, will also witness your more private devotions of the family and the closet.

In all your intercourse with your fellow-beings, you will habitually regard and treat them as the subjects of an influence proceeding from your words and actions, to effect their everlasting character and condition.

You will form the habit of valuing property, intellect, learning, power, influence, and all other things, chiefly as they may subserve the interests of eternity; regarding this world with all its possessions and pleasures, as swiftly passing away.

You will also study an habitual resignation to losses, disappointments, sickness, afflictions, and whatever evils may befall you by unavoidable causes, assured that all these things are ordered by a wise benevolence and "work together for good to them that love God."

Proceeding in this way, the longer you live the more habitually will you look upon eternity as your home; upon God as your portion; upon Christ as your Saviour; upon yourself as a pilgrim and sojourner here; and upon Heaven as your per

PERMANENCE OF HABIT.

117

In a

fect and happy rest forever. You will look upon all mankind as your brethren, moving onward to the same eternity with you; and you will seek to do them good to the extent of your ability, both in respect to temporal and eternal interests. word, influenced by faith in the verities of the gospel, you will endeavor to form all your habits of conduct upon the great principles of eternal morality.

Having surmounted first difficulties, your path will become easier and more pleasant.

It will become natural and easy for you to do right, unnatural and difficult to do wrong. You will find that "wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace." For if it is a painful truth, that they who are accustomed to do evil through the period of youth, will not easily learn to do well in old age, it is a happy truth, that they who are accustomed to do well through the period of youth, will not easily learn to do evil in old age. No. Their habits have become their inwrought character, their second nature, and they will go with them to the grave and forever.

Having in the days of your vigor formed the habit of referring your cares, wants, trials, blessings and hopes to God; of living to do his will, and of confidently reposing all your temporal and eternal interests in his hands; of thus reducing the senti

ment, "My Father, thou art the guide of my youth," to a living habit,—it will be neither in you to change, nor in God to cast you off. You may be called, like Joseph, David, Samuel, Daniel, Nehemiah, and many others whom the Lord has made perfect through sufferings, to pass through great and severe trials; but the trial of your faith will only serve to elevate your character and make your last end like Job's, more glorious than the first. Through all the way you will hear the voice of your almighty and well-known Friend, saying to you, "Fear not, for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee; for I am the Lord thy God." And finally death itself, to the wicked. so dreadful, will be your eternal gain. Having by a righteous life accomplished the end of your existence upon earth, and having glorified God in turning many to righteousness, you will "shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars forever and ever."

[ocr errors]

CHAPTER VI.

RELIGION.

INTERNAL AND EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE.

"If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine."

PROBABLY all men have their seasons of solicitude respecting the future state. Even the most besotted heathen, the most brutal atheist, and the most hardened scoffer, have their solemn moments when thought wanders beyond the grave. They sometimes feel that their foundation is insecure, that it is at least possible they may exist in some other mode beyond this life, and that it is more than possible their present conduct may then visit them with fearful retributions. At such moments, they earnestly desire to know whether there is really to be anything hereafter, and if anything, what?

I am not one of those who would ascribe all infidelity and all errors in religion to an intended self-deception. I believe that a man may sincerely think he wishes to know and obey the truth, when wandering in the mazes of error. For some time

my own mind was painfully sceptical respecting important religious truths, of which I have not now a shadow of doubt; and instead of wishing to disbelieve them, it was my sorrow that I could not see my way clear to recognize those doctrines of which others seemed so well assured, and which gave them such substantial hopes. I had a conviction that believers were better men than I, and more than half suspected that they were on a safer foundation; and yet I could not see things as they did. I could not bring myself to their belief.

Such I apprehend to be the condition of many minds; perhaps to some extent of nearly all, excepting those established in the Christian faith. Indeed, men do not ordinarily wish to practice a direct deception upon themselves, in any matter. And especially in so important a subject as religion, where an essential error may occasion an irretrievable loss, it is impossible to conceive that any man should wish to deceive himself.

Still let me not be supposed to exonerate essential error from all guilt. Our Saviour pronounced it sinful; but the sin lies farther back than is generally supposed. A wrong step has been taken at the outset, of which fact the subject is not well apprised, which is the procuring cause of all his mental darkness and moral errors. I shall hope to make this appear in the progress of the chapter.

Allow me then to presume, that whatever may

« AnteriorContinuar »