Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Religion is man's greatest good; it pays the most respect to his most important interests; brings the soul to the knowledge and possession of her proper enjoyments, and points her upward to her eternal inheritance. Without religion, the wealth of Cræsus cannot save a man from the deepest poverty; with it, the beggar Lazarus possesses boundless wealth, and shall be eternally blessed.

With this idea, the object before me becomes important, in no ordinary degree; and as I see crowds passing by my window, of all ages and conditions; their high destiny and immortal powers, of which they appear to be scarcely conscious, rises upon me in solemn prospect: I cannot but reflect where these persons, and all the mulitude that I see move about these streets, will be after the mighty lapse of ten thousand ages. Stupidity may laugh, and infidelity sneer, at such a suggestion, but a heathen monarch wept at the thought that all his army, the greatest ever assembled, would die in a hundred years.* And a greater than a heathen monarch wept over a city, doubtless less guilty before God than this. Yes, after the full period of ten thousand ages has rolled away, not a soul now in this city shall be extinct, or, shall fail to make one of the number destined to eternal ages of happiness or misery.

I cannot but reflect how important these days are to the thousands I see about me, perfectly unconscious of their value, because thoughtless of the great purposes to be answered by them, and of the great work to be done in them. As it is with the whole of life itself, so it is with the business of every day;

they have an ulterior relation to our eternal state. I am fully aware that the effusions of the holy spirit are not at the option of men it is not in the power of man to cause a reformation in this city. But when I consider the boundless fulness of gospel provision, the explicit and earnest invitations of the gospel: when I know that God is long suffering, "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance :" when I consider how this city has been distinguished by great and special blessings of providence; shielded in war, delivered from

* Xerxes the Great.

pestilence, prospered in peace, and rising to greatness, I cannot but advert to the stupidity and wickedness, which were never more visible and triumphant than at the present time, with alarm and foreboding. And let it be called prophesying, or by any other opprobrious name, God will not suffer such blessings to be answered by such ingratitude with long impunity. There will be changes, and the sword of divine displeasure is, I fear, already drawn; in what way it will strike, or how it will fall, infinite wisdom only knows.

Be it that God's own work is in his own hands, and that he will carry it on when and where he pleases: Christians ought to know that God works by means, otherwise of what use is a gospel ministry? The almighty and ever blessed God has promised to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him. But let any one, to whom a thought so improbable as a general reformation in this city, may occur, who may feel a desire for the salvation of this great people; let him look round him and ask, why it is that sinners are surrounded as with a wall so adamantine, so impenetrable, so impervious to conviction? Why are the impediments so numerous? Why is it so awfully improbable that we . shall see a general reformation here? Why does it appear so discouraging, so hopeless, so morally impossible, as almost to paralize the conception of desire, or the secret wrestlings and agonizings of prayer? There surely is a cause, nor is that cause invisible in its operation. Religion is every where the There is "balm in Gilead, and a physician there." God is no more hostile to cities than to villages: his spirit is as free, and his offers of salvation as full, to the people of a crowded city as of the open country. Nor are the people in cities more averse to religion than in the country.

same.

Human nature is, indeed, much the same in all places; but if there is any difference, the people of large cities have more sensibility, are certainly more alive to the finer feelings, and to the impulse of public sensations, and are more quick and susceptible to sentimental impressions. They are naturally no more wicked, no more inaccessible to conviction, no more ardent in worldly pursuits, no more insensible to the solemn

themes of evangelical truth, or to the condition and prospects of the soul, than the inhabitants of the country at large.

The difference which sinks the scale of the city to a depth so hopeless, in this comparison, is owing, in a great measure, to a difference in the means used to promote religion; in short, to a difference in what is denominated the means of grace.

If the reader will recur to the first numbers of the Triangle, first series, he will there find stated the cause to which I here allude. The strain of doctrine there described, and which has, in a measure, formed the current of opinion and tone of feeling in a very great body of people in this city, suffice it to say, has not been attended with many indications of reformation, and has, to all appearance, presented no barrier to the overwhelming flood of vice which threatens the city.

It will be easy to contradict this assertion, but not easy to show that it is not true: "cum res ipsa loquitur:" and I shall dismiss this subject with expressing my firm belief, that these doctrines continuing to be disseminated, enforced, and maintained in the manner and form they have been, for years past, there will be no reformation. I have no expectation that God will honour them with that mark of his approbation; and as for the merit they claim, in point of moral suasion, or the prospect of any effect they will produce in that way, I should expect as much effect from the Arabian proverbs delivered in their native tongue. They are not the doctrines of the frequent and great reformations which have been in our days, and in our country. They are not "the sword of the Spirit."

The more these doctrines prevail and gain credit, the more men are contracted by selfishness, which always brings intolerance in its train: the more noise is made about depravity, and the greater the ostentation of setting human nature low, the more is the hearer and the convert flattered in his pride and quieted in his conscience, and made to sleep, by a potent antidote, against even the thunders of truth: the more that is made of faith, the less of personal holiness, and that true moral excellence, which gives religion its beauty and heaven its felicity. So that, in leading the sinner to contemplate his own depravity, they furnish him with excuses instead of overwhelming him

with conviction; and in leading the Christian to consider the gracious promise of God, they puff him up with pride, and embolden him audaciously to demand salvation, and exhort him to 'keep Christ to his word."

66

No. V.

INVESTIGATOR.

'AMONG all the words which give offence to the advocates of the triangular scheme, the term Metaphysics stands foremost. They abhor it even more than they do morality, virtue, or even disinterestedness.. This prejudice against some, and so many of the best words in our language, is not a mark in their favour and especially when it is considered that their antipathy does not stop at the word itself, but goes far beyond, and aims at the very things these words are used for.

:

Concerning these offensive words I have said something in former numbers; but as somewhere on this ground, they have erected one of their strongest fortresses, from which they keep up a perpetual and running fire of random shot, I shall sit down before it in this number: nor do I expect to find it as impregnable as the den of Cacus. About the word disinterested, I think I have already discharged my duty. It is a term, and conveys an idea, well understood, in all our best writers. Addison and Johnson use it frequently in the same sense we use it. A man sees two men in a quarrel, and fiercely contending. He steps in between them, and says, "Gentlemen, I have no interest in the result of this contention; I am well disposed towards you both. Permit me, then, to act as a mediator between you." This man will be likely to have influence with both these men, because they perceive that he is entirely disinterested.

I therefore said that no word in our language was better understood, or more immoveably fixed in its true import. I have

not seen a more handsome illustration of this word than I lately read in Cox's life of Melancthon, where he sums up and finishes the character of that great man by observing, that he generally acted under the influence of a purely "disinterested benevolence." But some of our great divines would tell Cox a different story. Those men, who have eaten freely of the Amor sui, pretend that it is either a phrase of false import, or else of no import at all.

The word morality has not fared better. They have condemned all its family for moral, moral agency, moral fitness, moral depravity, and the like, are all considered as Amalekites, and proscribed. Especially the phrase moral virtue, made up of two most offensive words, they regard as bad as the union of Herod and Pilate. The word moral we derive from the Latin moralis, which is from mos, a law or custom. Morality is conformity to law, and used in this sense. But has the Christian no morality? Alas! some professing Christians have not much. But what did Christ say? "Think not that I come to destroy the law," &c. He goes on to show, that he insisted on a purer mortality than even the Pharisees, who make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but what is within ?—Extortion and excess. The great command of the law is love: and says the eloquent Dr. South,* "Love is not so much an affection of the Christian, as it is the very soul of the Christian; he does not so much feel it, as he is in it."

Moral virtue is a conformity to the divine law, or in other words conformity to God. For as God is love, he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him. Perfect morality, therefore is perfect love to God, by which I understand perfect moral virtue. This is also sometimes called charity; and as much as St. Paul insisted on faith, he had no diminutive opinion of it." "Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity."

But the principal object of this number is Metaphysics, a term, against which an odium has been excited, and by means of which incalculable mischief has been done. Before I enter

"An old divine."

« AnteriorContinuar »