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§ 70. THE LOVE OF LIFE.

As the life of man is the soul, the love of life, in the strict sense of the expression, is the love of the soul; and as the soul in the present state of existence dwells partly in a body, the love of life as a whole, of course includes the love of that part of life which is in the body. One who truly loves his whole life, however, will love the bodily part of it only in a subordinate degree. He will not regard his body as necessary to his continued existence and happiness, but only as a valuable dwelling-place for the present. This radical absolute love of life, which goes back into that which is purely spiritual and fastens on eternal existence, holding the body as a circumstance, and not an essential, is a passion which the gospel seeks to awaken.

But the love of life, in the usual sense, is the love of bodily life. Men whose experience has run altogether into corporeal actions and sensations, who have never been drawn backward into consciousness of the purely spiritual parts of their being, have little or no conception of any life but that of the body, and practically account death the end of existence. Of course they love that part of their life which is in the body, as their whole life. This partial, false love of life, it is one of the principal objects of the gospel to eradicate. Lust, in the usual evil sense of the word, is excessive unruly desire. Mere desire of food, money, &c., is not necessarily lust. It is when these objects are desired in a degree beyond their value, and without due reference to other interests, that the passion for them becomes lust. Now that love of bodily life which regards it as the whole man, is palpably excessive-disproportionate to the absolute and relative value of the object. It is therefore a lust in the evil sense of the word-as truly so, as the passion of the drunkard, the whoremonger, and the miser. Its proper place is among the low, degrading, sensual passions.

In order to ascertain its exact place on the scale of sensuality, we must take a comprehensive view of the philosophy of life. Happiness, which is the ultimate object of all love, is produced by the conjunction of desire with its object. It is not the desire of food, nor food itself, but the desire and food united, that produce the pleasure of eating. Desire and its object may be called the subjective and objective means of happiness; and these two classes of means are concerned in every form of pleasure of which man is capable. As we love happiness, so we subordinately love the means of it. The epicure loves food on the one hand, and his appetite on the other, in proportion as he loves the pleasure which he finds in their union.

Now all the objective means of sensual happiness-the outward material for the gratification of amativeness, alimentiveness, and the rest of the animal passions are procurable by money. Hence money is the representative of all earthly good, and the love of money is equivalent to the love of the world as a whole. It is a concentration of all the various passions for individual worldly objects. While the love of food, beauty, music, equipage, &c., are specific passions, the love of money is generic, including them all. Hence

the apostle calls the love of money the root of all evil,' meaning that it is the central generic passion, to which all evil desires for worldly objects are to be referred as branches.

But this relates only to the objective means of sensual happiness. If appetite, as well as an external object, is necessary to pleasure, and if men love the subjective as well the objective means of happiness, the question still remains-What is the central, generic affection, to which all the affections for the various specific sensual appetites are to be referred ? In other words, what is the root of all sensual self-love, as distinguished from the love of the world? We answer, it is the love of life, in the usual sense of the expres sion. As bodily life is the stock on which all sensual appetites grow, so the love of bodily life is the stock on which all other kinds of sensual self-love grow. The love of life is to the subjective class of means of happiness, just what the love of money is to the objective class. As money is the representative of all worldly valuables, so the life of the body is the representative of all susceptibilities to happiness from those valuables. As the love of money is the root of all evil' objectively considered, so the love of life is the root of all evil' subjectively considered. Life cannot make a man happy in the present state of the world, without money; and money cannot make a man happy without life. Money and life are the necessary complements of each other-the father and mother of sensual happiness; and the love of money and the love of life are the two foci of all sensual affections.

We may go a step farther. Strictly speaking the love of life takes precedence of the love of money, and, in fact, includes it; for life is more absolutely essential to happiness, than money. Life is the 'post in the middle.' Money is the circumstance. Dying men often love life intensely, after their love of worldly valuables is gone. The love of money, traced to its root, is the love of life. So that, on the whole, love of bodily life stands at the head of the whole list of sensual passions, subjective and objective. It is the CENTRE-LUST in carnal human nature.

The direction of Christ's labors, as a reformer, was exactly in accordance with these views. The strength of his rebukes and exhortations was laid out, not on the various specific forms of sensuality and vice, but on the two generic lusts-the love of money, and the love of life. To those who proposed to follow him, his word was-Leave your money, and follow me to the cross.'

In his warfare with the love of life, he manifested in the first place most unequivocally that his hostility was not against bodily life itself, but against the disproportionate love of it. He took upon him the profession of physician, and went about healing all manner of diseases. But in the mean time he taught his disciples that none but those who could hate and forsake their own lives could follow him to the end. 'He that loveth his life,' said he, 'shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it.' Finally he proved that he was in earnest by dying himself. His cross gave a deathblow to the centre-lust. Before that blow was given, his followers might have begun to imagine, from seeing his power over diseases, that he was about to put an end to the death of the body immediately, and establish his

kingdom in this world. Nothing could have been better fitted to mortify such imaginings and longings of the flesh, than his own submission to death. He passed the dark valley,' and raised his standard in the resurrection; leaving his followers no alternative but to pass the same way into the king dom for which they hoped.

During the whole period of the apostolic age, the church was in a school, the principal lesson of which was-Through much tribulation we enter into the kingdom of God.' Persecution, like a schoolmaster, stood over believers with the rod of martyrdom. Paul lived thirty years just within the jaws of death-dying daily, and yet living. All the apostles and prominent teachers of the church lived in continual hazard of the fate of Stephen, and many of them at last experienced it. The whole church which had the honor of casting down the accuser and beginning the kingdom of God in the first resurrection, are described as those who were 'beheaded for the witness of Jesus.' Rev. 20: 4. It was their glory that 'they loved not their lives unto the death.' Rev. 12: 11.

God has placed the whole human race in circumstances which indicate that one of the principal objects of his administration is to mortify the centre-lust. The uncertainty of life at all times, the certainty of death at last, the diseases which assail all from time to time, the terrible agonies which are the peculiar lot of women, and the perils of war which specially fall on men, make life universally a school in which all may learn the same great lesson which Christ prescribed to his followers, and which the primitive church learned in the fires of persecution. If we are willing to be taught that lesson, we need not look back to the martyr age,' as though that were the only time of the death-trial. It has been the martyr age' over the whole earth, ever since Adam sinned. The persecution of him that hath the power of death' has raged against the whole human race six thousand years; and every man, woman and child, has opportunity almost daily to see his victims bleed, and to learn to face his terrors.

We see then that whoever is nourishing in himself and others the love of bodily life, as though it were the whole or the principal life of man, and rep resenting it as not only innocent but commendable for men to make it an important and even paramount business to take care of their health, and prolong their lives, is laboring to contravene the manifest policy of God in the administration of the world-to introduce not only a different but an opposite gospel from that of the cross of Christ, and to stimulate into the highest possible prurience that very central lust which is the parent of all others, and which more than all others needs to be disciplined and crucified.

The physiological reformers of our times seem to think there is no danger of men's loving their lives too much. One would conclude from their writings, that health is the one thing needful the great salvation;' and that in the place of Christ's saying, 'He that loveth his life shall lose it,' we ought to substitute He that loveth not his life with tenfold more fervor than men generally do, shall lose that and every thing else that is valuable.' Self-denial and cross-bearing, with them, instead of being a denial and crucifixion of the actual life, is eating and drinking by rule; mortifying some of the grosser propensities, and enduring a life-long struggle to preserve health by obeying

the natural laws:' i. e., it is a denial of the branches of sensuality, for the benefit of the root. Now we fully believe that a man who has passed from the ordinary sensual regimen into the strictest chastity of Grahamism, if he has done it for the sake of saving his bodily life and health, and has contracted in the process (as it may be presumed he has) an extraordinary affection for his life, is really a more sensual man than he was before. The special sins of the glutton and the whoremonger may have been suppressed, but the centrelust is stronger than ever. We hesitate not to say, that in our view it would be far better for a man to have bad health and to die before his prime, (if that is the legitimate result of seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,' without caring for the questions- What shall we eat, what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed ?') than to spend his days in serving and disciplining his body, and in studying ways and means to make it feel the best and hold together longest. We are not sure but that war, (which it is so fashionable to deprecate in these days,) so far as it reduces the love of life, and produces in some a semblance, at least, of the noble martyrspirit, has a better moral tendency than those reforms which stimulate the love of life, and convert immortal men into body-tenders.

It behooves those who believe that health for the body as well as for the soul, is to be obtained by faith, and who are looking for another manifestation of Christ's healing power, and a final victory over disease and death, to take heed that they fall not into the error of the physiologists. God will not serve the lusts of the flesh; and when he sees that his gifts of healing are drawing attention away from the soul to the body, and are feeding and fattening the love of life, he will certainly withhold them. In this matter it will be found true that he that loveth his life shall lose it.' The way to shut out the power of health, is to crave and seek for it, as though it were the one thing needful.' And the way to admit and attract that power, is to love life and health only according to their true value, and 'seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." We fully believe that a glorious victory over disease and death is coming. But we also believe that it will not come till the love of life and health, and the fear of death, have been thoroughly and permanently reduced, either by suffering or by faith, to their proper dimen

sions.

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As the sorrow of the world worketh death,' while godly sorrow worketh repentance unto life,' so the sufferings of the world increase self-love, but godly sufferings increase faith and love toward God, and teach men to 'count not their lives dear unto them.' Though, under the devil's reign, it is, as we have said, always the martyr-age,' yet it must be remembered that they only are the true martyrs who voluntarily and joyfully submit to suffering and death for Christ's sake. When disease and the shadow of death come upon believers, let them not count it the only way of escape, to turn their backs upon the enemy and seek from the Lord or from medicine a recovery of health. There are two ways to victory. Death is theirs as well as life. See Rom. 8: 35-39, 1 Cor. 3: 22. And death, on many accounts, may be far bet ter' than life. Phil. 1: 21-23. Let them joyfully consent to conquer either way, and leave the choice to God. Let them turn and face death. They will be quite as likely to regain health in a spirit of calm willingness to

die, as in a spirit of anxiety and fear. And if God deals with them as with sons, he will surely hold them in the presence of the king of terrors,' till they learn not to fear him. There is no joy sweeter to the spirit than that of him whose faith has fairly triumphed over the love of life, so that he can look death full in the face without a shudder. It is not the anxious love of life, but the free and joyful spirit of martyrdom, that will finally drive disease and death out of the universe of God.

§ 71. THE ABOLITION OF DEATH.

ONE of the most interesting points of thought in relation to the last dispensation of Christ, a point which stands prominent on all the testimony of scripture concerning it, is this:—In the dispensation of the fullness of times, THIS WORLD is to be given to Christ. Nothing but a conquest thus extensive, can fulfil the predictions of scripture, and give propriety to the great drama which will then be finished. The angel swears, that the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.' What are the declarations of God to the prophets, concerning the catastrophe of this world's history? A few extracts from them will sufficiently answer this question.

"It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say,— Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.— And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isa. 2: 2-4.

"And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." Dan. 2: 44.

"And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand, until a time and times and the dividing of time-[the forty-two months of the Gentiles.] But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." Dan. 7: 25-27.

"The Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one." Zech. 14: 9.

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