Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

their children immersed in pleasure and sensuality, profligate and licentious, influenced by no good principles, or mainly instigated by the spirit of gain? Can they wonder if they find their children disobedient and irreverent to themselves, and injurious and cruel to others? Can they wonder if they see them live disliked and die unpitied? Surely these are but the consequences which might be expected from such an education. It was formed upon a plan which tended to cherish and cultivate vice; and the pains taken could not be expected to be otherwise than productive in a soil which is of itself so fruitful of evil, that we see the wisest and most judicious methods of instruction and the most pious education not always able to eradicate it.

6. The consideration of the subject of my discourse should lead us also to deep humiliation on account of our great corruption, and to earnest prayers for the grace of Christ to pardon and to cleanse us.-Persons who have superficial views of their duty, and low apprehensions of the evil of sin, are ready to look upon themselves as tolerably moral, while they are free from gross vices: and therefore they regard themselves as needing no repentance but what is occasional, no habitual watchfulness, no constant prayer, no daily endeavours to obtain the grace of God. But let those little sins which are every hour committed; those seeds of vice which are continually springing up in the heart, those ebullitions of a corrupt fountain from which the life is never free, be taken into the account, and we shall perceive the need we have to be earnest in our prayers to be sanctified and to be pardoned. Alas! when nothing appears wrong to the superficial observer, all may be wrong within. The state of the heart, the general system, may be totally wrong and corrupt. Every principle of action may be polluted. The fear of man, the love of applause, the desire of self indulgence, the thirst of lucre, may be the springs and the only springs of action. One may succeed another,

VOL. 1.

28

occupy the whole heart, and influence the whole conduct, without its being directed for one hour by the pure principle of love to God, or real benevolence to man. Here in the heart is the lamentable power of corruption seen! Here we have need to be cleansed! The tree must be made good, before good fruit can be expected: the fountain must be made sweet, before its waters can be so. Here, therefore, we must begin. We must pray to God to give us a new heart. We must be engrafted into Christ Jesus the living vine; and, by union to him receive a new power to bring forth new fruit.

7. And as we see evil arrive at its perfection by small gradations, so let us remember that good advances in the same manner.-We should not depise little things, either in what is good or bad; for, as the apocryphal writer observes, "he that despiseth little things shall fall by little and little." The character is formed very much from the repetition of little acts; and a progress in religion is made by small successive steps, none of which ought to be despised. And be not discontented, because you cannot at once arrive at those things which are most excellent. To attempt too great a height at once often tends to discouragement. Try to do a little, and that little will prepare you for more. Take the first step, and that will prepare the way for a second. Use the same rules of prudence in religion which you find useful in the ordinary affairs of life. In this respect imitate the children of the world, who are often wiser in their generation than the children of light. Above all, seek to obtain that holy principle which respects God, and which acts out of love to his name and gratitude to him for his goodness. This will rectify the whole of your conduct, and each successive step you will then take will lead you nearer and nearer to Him who is the Source of all good.

SERMON XX.

THE NATURE AND VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE.

Psalm lxxxix. 47.

Remember how short my time is. Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain?

THE Psalmist composed the psalm of which the words just read are a part, under very great depression of mind. Disappointed in hopes which appeared to be founded on the promises of God, and reduced to a state of the lowest misery and distress, he surveys, as was natural, the miseries of human life, and considers its shortness and its vanity. Impatient of the sufferings alloted to him, he at length breaks out into the prayer of my text, "How long, Lord, wilt thou hide thyself? For ever? Shall thy wrath burn like fire? Remember how short my time is. Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain?" "Oh spare the rod of thine anger! Consider how short my life is, even at the longest; how much more so under thy punishment! For we consume away in thine anger, and perish under thy wrathful displeasure. Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain, as they appear to be, if their life, vain and short as it is, is still to be abridged

and rendered more miserable by thy severe chastisements?"

The affections upon which such an address is founded, are very natural to a person in the situation of the Psalmist. It is not to be wondered at if he should see every object through a gloomy medium, and, beholding the shortness of life and the vanity of it, should be ready to conclude that all men were made "in vain," or "for nought" as it is rendered in the old translation.

In another point of view, however, short as human life is, it does not appear to be in vain. On the contrary, the most important purposes may be answered by it. We shall therefore divide this discourse into two parts, correspondent to these two different views of the value of the life of man.

I. If we consider life, then, as it is in itself, and form our estimate of its value only by the degree of temporal enjoyment it is capable of affording, it will appear to be very vain indeed; and man will almost seem to be made for nothing.

1. Consider how short life is!-It is represented in Scripture by every image which can denote things fugitive and transitory. It is a dream; as a watch in the night; as a shadow that departeth; as grass which in the morning groweth up and is green, and in the evening is cut down, dried up and withereth. All that is certain of life is what is already past. And how short does that part of it appear! Ten or twenty years, when we look forward to them, appear to be of long duration: but when we review them as already spent, every mind is struck with the justice of the reflection, how soon are they gone! And at the end of the longest life, long as it may appear to the young and thoughtless, yet the man of fourscore years, who from experience knows how to make a better estimate of its duration, will tell you, that to him it appeareth only as yesterday that is past.

2. Consider its uncertainty.-Short as the period of life is when extended to its natural termination, how often do we see that period shortened, perhaps torcibly; broken suddenly, without warning, in the midst of apparent health and strength, which promised the continuance of many years! Thus man dies, and his expectations perish. His schemes and plans for the successful completion of which years were still wanting, as years had already been spent in promoting them, are all cut off in a moment; cut off as it were by accident, and not through any want of prudence or attention on his part; without any regard to the useful or beneficent designs which he was employed in advancing. Alas! how little does death consider our plans! The deep-laid schemes of villainy, or the righteous purposes of the just; the enjoyment of long-sought pleasure just within the reach, and the honest endeavour to provide for a numerous and indigent family, are, with equal abruptness, broken off and forever terminated by his resistless stroke. Who can say of any project that he has formed, that he shall accomplish it? Who can say, to-morrow I will do this, or will go there? For who knoweth what to-morrow may bring forth?

3. Survey also the sufferings to which life is exposed in this short existence. Take notice of the natural calamities which belong to man; the diseases of which the seeds are sown in his frame; the various accidents to which he is liable, and from which no prudence or foresight can exempt him. Look at the history of man, and see what he suffers from his own species. Observe the dreadful effects of wars and the barbarous desolations of which we read in history. collect what cruel tyrants there have been in the world, who have been permitted to sport, as it were, with the pangs of their fellow-creatures. Think how many have been undone by unjust laws, judges, or witnesses; what terrible proscriptions and cruel persecutions have wasted mankind. Indeed, the history of the world is little else than the history of a series of distressing and

Re

« AnteriorContinuar »