When a man pleads in his favour, the dili- | characterises the real Christian; instead of comgence business demands, the self-denying prac-plaining that we do not possess those consolatices it imposes, the patience, the regularity, the tions, which can be consequent only on such a industry indispensable to its success; when he mutation of the mind. argues that these are habits of virtue, that they are a daily discipline to the moral man; and that the world could not subsist without business, he argues justly;-but when he forgets his interest in the eternal world, when he neglects to lay up a treasure in heaven, in order that he may augment a store which he does not want, and, perhaps, he does not intend to use, or uses to purposes merely secular, he is a bad calculator, of the relative value of things. Business has an honourable aspect as being opposed to idleness, the most hopeless offspring of the whole progeny of sin. The man of business comparing himself with the man of dissipation, feels a fair and natural consciousness of his own value, and of the superiority of his own pursuits. But it is by comparison that we deceive ourselves to our ruin. Business, whether professional, commercial, or political, endangers minds of a better cast, minds which look down on pleasure as beneath a thinking being. But if business absorb the affections, if it swallow up time, to the neglect of eternity; if it generate a worldly spirit; if it cherish covetousness; if it engage the mind in long views, and ambitious pursuits, it may be as dangerous, as its more inconsiderate frivolous rival. The grand evil of both lies in the alienation of the heart from God. Nay, in one respect, the danger is greater to him who is the best employed. The man of pleasure, however thoughtless, can never make himself believe that he is doing right. The man plunged in the serious bustle of business, cannot easily persuade himself that he may be doing wrong. Commutation, compensation and substitution, are the grand engines which WORLDLY RELIGION incessantly keeps in play. Her's is a life of barter, a state of spiritual traffic, so much indulgence for so many good works. The implication is, 'we have a rigorous master,' and it is but fair to indemnify ourselves for the severity of his requisitions; just as an overworked servant steals a holyday. These persons,' says an eminent writer,* 'maintain a meum and tuum with heaven itself.' The set bounds to God's prerogative, lest it should too much encroach on man's privilege. We have elsewhere observed, that if we invite people to embrace religion on the mere mercenary ground of present pleasure, they will desert it as soon as they find themselves disappointed. Men are too ready to clamour for the pleasures of piety before they have, I dare not say entitled themselves to them, but put themselves into the way of receiving them. We should be angry at that servant, who made the receiving of his wages a preliminary to the performance of his work. This is not meant to establish the merit of the works, but the necessity of our seeking that transforming and purifying change which often been heard by the writer of these pages to observe, that it was the greatest misfortune which could befal a man to have been bred to no profession, and pathetically to regret that this misfortune was his own. * The learned and pious John Smith. VOL. I. H 3 But if men consider this world on the true scripture ground as a state of probation; if they consider religion as a school for happiness, in deed, but of which the consummation is only to be enjoyed in heaven, the Christian hope will support them; the Christian faith will strengthen them. They will serve diligently, wait patiently, love cordially, obey faithfully, and be steadfast under all trials, sustained by the cheering promise held out to him, 'who endures to the end.' There are certain characters who seem to have a graduated scale of vices. Of this scale they keep clear of the lowest degrees, and to rise above the highest they are not ambitious, forgetful that the same principle which operates in the greater, operates also in the less. A life of incessant gratification does not alarm the conscience, yet it is equally unfavorable to religion, equally destructive of its principle, equally opposite to its spirit, with more obvious vices. These are the habits which, by relaxing the mind and dissolving the heart, particularly foster indifference to our spiritual state, and insensibility to the things of eternity. A life of voluptuousness, if it be not a life of actual sin, is a disqualification for holiness, for happiness, for heaven. It not only alienates the heart from God, but lays it open to every temptation to which natural temper may invite, or incidental circumstances allure. The worst passions lie dormant in hearts given up to selfish indulgences, always ready to start into action as occasion calls. Voluptuousness and irreligion play into each other's hands: they are reciprocally cause and effect. The looseness of the principle confirms the carelessness of the conduct, while the negligent conduct in its own vindication shelters itself under the supposed security of unbelief. The instance of the rich man in the parable of Lazarus, strikingly illustrates this truth. Whoever doubts that a life of sensuality is consistent with the most unfeeling barbarity to the wants and sufferings of others; whoever doubts that boundless expense and magnificence, the means of procuring which were wrung from the robbery and murder of a lacerated world, may not be associated with that robbery and murder,-let him turn to the gorgeous festivities and unparalleled pageantries of Versailles and Saint Cloud.-There the Imperial Harlequin, from acting the deepest and the longest tragedy that ever drew tears of blood from an audience composed of the whole civilized globe, by a sudden stroke of his magic wand, shifts the scene of this most preposterous pantomime :— Where moody madness laughing wild Amidst severest wo, cle, secs the records of the Tyburn Chronicle gloomily contemplates the incongruous spectaembellished with the wanton splendours of the Arabian tables; beholds Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious things; beholds tyranny with his painted vizor of patriotism, and polygamy with her Janus face of + political conscience and counterfeit affection fill | It is sometimes pleaded that the labour attach- Still here's the smell of blood; The perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten it. But to return to the general question. Let us not inquire whether these unfeeling tempers and selfish habits offend society, and discredit us with the world; but whether they feed our corruptions and put us in a posture unfavourable to all interior improvement; whether they offend God and endanger the soul; whether the gratification of self is the life which the Redeemer taught or lived; whether sensuality is a suitable preparation for that state where God himself, who is a Spirit, will constitute all the happiness of spiritual beings. But these are not the only, perhaps not the greatest dangers. The intellectual vices, the spiritual offences may destroy the soul without much injuring the credit. These have not, like voluptuousness, their seasons of alteration and repose. Here the principle is in continual operation. Envy has no interval. Ambition never cools. Pride never sleeps. The principle at least is always awake. An intemperate man is sometimes sober, but a proud man is never humble. Where vanity reigns, she reigns always. These interior sins are more difficult of extirpation, they are less easy of detection; more hard to come at; and, as the citadel holds out after the outworks are taken, these sins of the heart are the latest conquered in the moral warfare. Here lies the distinction between the worldly and the religious man. It is alarm enough for the Christian that he feels any propensities to vice. Against these propensities he watches, strives and prays: and though he is thankful for the victory when he has resisted the temptation, he can feel no elation of heart while conscious of inward dispositions, which nothing but divine grace enables him to keep from breaking out in a flame. He feels that there is no way to obtain the pardon of sin but to leave off sinning: he feels that though repentance is not a Saviour, yet that there can be no salvation where there is no repentance. Above all, he knows that the promise of remission of sin by the death of Christ is the only solid ground of comfort. However correct his present life may be, the weight of past offences would hang so heavy on his conscience, that without the atoning blood of his Redeemer, despair of pardon for the past would leave him hopeless. He would continue to sin, as an extravagant bankrupt who can get no acquittal, would continue to be extravagant, because no present frugality could redeem his former debts: But surely the more important the station, the higher and wider the sphere of action, the more imperious is the call for religion, not only in the way of example, but even in the way of success; if it be indeed granted that there is such a thing as divine influences, if it be allowed that God has a blessing to bestow. If the ordinary man who has only himself to govern, requires that aid, how urgent is his necessity who has to govern millions! What an awful idea, could we even suppose it realized, that the weight of a nation might rest on the head of him whose heart looks not up for a higher support! Were we alluding to sovercigns, and not to statesmen, we need not look beyond the throne of Great Britain, for the instance of a monarch who has never made the cares attendant on a king, an excuse for neglecting his duty to the King of kings. The The politician, the warrior, and the orator, find it peculiarly hard to renounce in themselves that wisdom and strength, to which they believe that the rest of the world are looking up. man of station or of genius, when invited to the self-denying duties of Christianity, as well as he who has great possessions,' goes away' sorrowing.' But to know that they must end, stamps vanity on all the glories of life; to know that they must end soon, stamps infatuation, not only on him who sacrifices his conscience for their acquisition, but on him who, though upright in the discharge of his duties, discharges them without any reference to God.-Would the conqueror or the orator reflect when the 'laurel crown is placed on his brow, how soon will it be followed by the cypress wreath,' it would lower the delirium of ambition; it would cool the intoxication of prosperity. There is a general kind of belief in Chris tianity, prevalent among men of the world, which, by soothing the conscience, prevents self-inquiry. That the holy Scriptures contain the will of God, they do not question; that they contain the best system of morals, they frequently assert: but that they do not feel the necessity of acquiring a correct notion of the doctrines those Scriptures involve. The depravity of man, the atonement made by Christ, the assistance of the Holy Spirit-these they consider as the metaphysical part of religion, into which it is not of much importance to enter, and by a species of self-flattery, they satisfy themselves with an idea of acceptableness with their Maker, as a state to be attained without the humility, faith, and newness of life which they require, and which are indeed their proper concomitants. A man absorbed in a multitude of secular concerns, decent but unawakened, listens with a kind of respectful insensibility, to the overtures of religion. He considers the church as venera. ble from her antiquity, and important from her, connexion with the state. No one is more alive to her political, nor more dead to her spiritual importance. He is anxious for her existence, but indifferent to her doctrines. These he conaiders as a general matter in which he has no individual concern. He considers religious observances as something decorous but unreal; as a grave custom made respectable by public usage, and long prescription. He admits that the poor, who have little to enjoy, and the idle who have little to do, cannot do better than make over to God that time which cannot be turned to a more profitable account. Religion, he thinks, may properly enough employ leisure, and occupy old age. But though both advance towards himself with no imperceptible step, he is still at a loss to determine the precise period when the leisure is sufficient, or the age enough advanced. It recedes as the destined season approaches. He continues to intend moving, but he continues to stand still. of engagements, the mingling pursuits, the very If we do not cordially desire to be delivered from the dominion of these worldly tempers, it is because we do not believe in the condemnation annexed to their indulgence. We may indeed believe it as we believe any other general proposition, or any indifferent fact; but not as truth in which we have a personal concern; not as a danger which has any reference to us. We evince this practical unbelief in the most unequivocal way, by thinking so much more about the most frivolous concern in which we are assured we have an interest, than about this must important of all concerns. Compare his drowsy Sabbaths with the animation of the days of business, you would not think it was the same man. The one are to be got over, the others are enjoyed. He goes from the dull decencies, the shadowy forms-for such they are to him, of public worship, to the solid realities of his worldly concerns, to the cheerful activities of secular life. These he considers as bounden, almost as exclusive duties. The others indeed may not be wrong, but these he is sure are right. The world is his element. Here he Indifference to eternal things, instead of tranbreathes freely his native air. Here he is sub- quilizing the mind, as it professes to do, is, when stantially engaged. Here his whole mind is a thoughtful moment occurs, a fresh subject of alive, his understanding broad awake, all his uneasiness; because it adds to our peril the horenergies are in full play; his mind is all ala- ror of not knowing it. If shutting our eyes to crity; his faculties are employed, his capacities a danger would prevent it, to shut them would are filled; here they have an object worthy of not only be a happiness but a duty; but to bartheir widest expansion. Here his desires and ter eternal safety for momentary ease,is a wretchaffections are absorbed. The faint impressioned compromise. To produce this delusion, mere of the Sunday's sermon fades away, to be as faintly revived on the Sunday following, again to fade in the succeeding week. To the sermon he brings a formal ceremonious attendance; to the world, he brings all the heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. To the one he resorts in conformity to law and custom; to induce him to resort to the other, he wants no law, no sanction, no invitation, no argument. His will is of the party. His passions are volunteers. The invisible things of heaven are clouded in shadow, are lost in distance. The world is lord of the ascendant. Riches, honours, power fill his mind with brilliant images. They are present, they are certain, they are tangible. They assume form and bulk. In these therefore he cannot be mistaken; in the others he may. The eagerness of competition, the struggle for superiority, the perturbations of ambition, fill his mind with an emotion, his soul with an agitation, his affections with an interest, which, though very unlike happiness, he yet flatters himself is the road to it. This fictitious pleasure, this tumultuous feeling, produces at least that negative satisfaction of which he is constantly in search-it keeps him from himself. Even in circumstances where there is no success to prevent a very tempting bait, the mere occupation, the crowd of objects, the succession inconsideration is as efficient a cause as the most prominent sin. The reason why we do not value eternal things is, because we do not think of them. The mind is so full of what is present, that it has no room to admit a thought of what is to come. Not only we do not give that attention to a never-dying soul which prudent men give to a common transaction, but we do not even think it worth the care which in considerate men give to an inconsiderable one. We complain that life is short, and yet throw away the best part of it, only making over to religion that portion which is good for nothing else; life would be long enough if we assigned its best period to its best purpose. If a Say not that the requisitions of religion are severe, ask rather if they are necessary. thing must absolutely be done, if eternal misery will be incurred by not doing it, it is fruitless to inquire whether it be hard or easy. Inquire only whether it be indispensable, whether it be commanded, whether it be practicable. It is a well known axiom in science, that difficulties are of no weight against demonstrations. The duty on which our eternal state depends, is not a thing to be debated, but done. The duty which is too imperative to be evaded, too important to be neglected, is not to be argued about, but performed. To sin on quietly, because you do not intend to sin always, is to live on a reversion which will probably never be yours. It is one of the striking characters of the Om nipotent that he is strong and patient.' It is a standing evidence of his patience that he is provoked every day.' How beautifully do these characters reflect lustre on each other. If he were not strong, his patience would want its distinguishing perfection. If he were not pa. tient, his strength would instantly crush those who provoke him, not sometimes, but often; not every year, but 'every day.' It is folly to say that religion drives men to despair; when it only teaches them by a salutary fear to avoid destruction. The fear of God differs from all other fear, for it is accompanied with trust, and confidence, and love. 'Blessed is the man that feareth alway,' is no paradox to him who entertains this holy fear. It sets him above the fear of ordinary troubles. It fills his heart. He is not discomposed with those inferior apprehensions which unsettle the soul and un-repentance; confess that the forbearance of God, hinge the peace of worldly men. His mind is occupied with one grand concern, and is therefore less liable to be shaken than little minds which are filled with little things. Can that principle lead to despair, which proclaims the mercy of God in Christ Jesus to be greater than all the sins of all the men in the world? Oh you, who have a long space given you for when viewed as coupled with his strength, is his most astonishing attribute! Think of the companions of your early life; if not your associates in actual vice, if not your confederates in guilty pleasures, yet the sharers of your thoughtless meetings, of your convivial revelry, of your worldly schemes, of your ambitious projects— think how many of them have been cut off, perhaps without warning, probably without repentance.-They have been represented to their Judge; their doom, whatever it be, is irreversi bly fixed; yours is mercifully suspended.Adore the mercy: embrace the suspension. If despair then prevent your return, add not to your list of offences that of doubting of the forgiveness which is sincerely implored. You have already wronged God in his holiness, wrong him not in his mercy. You may offend him more by despairing of his pardon than by all the sins which have made that pardon necessary. Repentance, if one may venture the bold remark, almost disarms God of the power to punish. Hear his style and title as proclaimed by himself;- The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty'—that is, those who by unrepented guilt exclude them-seen too late.' selves from the offered mercy. If infidelity or indifference, which is practical infidelity, keep you back, yet, as reasonable beings, ask yourselves a few short questions; For what end was I sent into the world? Is my soul immortal? Am I really placed here in a state of trial, or is this span my all? Is there an eternal state? If there be, will the use I make of this life decide on my condition in that? I know that there is death, but is there a judg ment?" Rest not till you have cleared up, I do not say your own evidences for heaven ;-you have much to do before you arrive at that stage-but whether there be any heaven? Ask yourself whether Christianity is not important enough to deserve being inquired into? Whether eternal life is not too valuable to be entirely overlooked? Whether eternal destruction, if a reality, is not worth avoiding ?-If you make these interrogations sincerely, you will make them practically. They will lead you to examine your own personal interest in these things. Evils which are ruining us for want of attention to them, lessen, from the moment our attention to them begins. True or false, the question is worth settling. Vibrate then no longer be tween doubt and certainty. If the evidence be inadmissible, reject it. But if you can once ascertain these cardinal points, then throw away your time if you can, then trifle with eternity if you dare.* * An awakening call to public and individual feelings has been recently made, by an observation of an eloquent speaker in the house of commons. He remarked · Only suppose if they could be permitted to come back to this world, if they could be allowed another period of trial, how would they spend their restored life! How cordial would be their penitence, how intense their devotion, how profound their humility, how holy their actions! Think then that you have still in your power that for which they would give millions of worlds. 'Hell,' says a pious writer, 'is truth Be In almost every mind there sometimes float indefinite and general purposes of repentance. The operation of these purposes is often repelled by a real though disavowed scepticism. cause sentence is not executed speedily,' they suspect it has never been pronounced. They therefore think they may safely continue to defer their intended but unshapen purpose.Though they sometimes visit the sick bed of others; though they see how much disease disqualifies for all duties, yet to this period of incapacity, to this moment of disqualification do they continue to defer this tremendously important concern. What an image of the divine condescension does it convey, that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance! It does not barely invite, but it conducts. Every warning is more or less an invitation; every visitation is a lighter stroke to avert a heavier blow. This was the way in which the heathen world understood portents and prodigies, and on this interpretation of them they acted. Any alarming warning, whether rational or superstitious, drove them to their temples, their sacrifices, their expiations. Does our that himself and the honourable member for Yorkshire, then sitting on a committee appointed on occasion of a great national calamity, were the only surviving members of the committee on a similar occasion twenty-two years ago! The call is the more alarming, because the mortality did not arise from some extraordinary cause, which might not again occur, but was in the common course of human things. Such a proportion of deaths is perpetually taking place, but the very frequency which ought to excite attention prevents it, till it is thus forced on our notice. clearer light always carry us farther? Does it in these instances, always carry us as far as natural conscience carried them? | able doom, our instant transition to that state of unutterable bliss or unimaginable wo to which death will in a moment consign us. Such a mental representation would assist us in dissipating the illusion of the senses, would help to realise what is invisible, and approximate what we think remote. It would disenchant us from the world, tear off her painted mask, shrink her pleasures into their proper dimensions, her concerns into their real value, her enjoyments into their just compass, her promises into nothing. The final period of the worldly man at length arrives; but he will not believe his danger. Even if he fearfully glance round for an intimation of it in every surrounding face, every face, it is too probable, is in a league to deceive him. What a noble opportunity is now offered to the Christian physician to show a kindness as far superior to any he has ever shown, as the concerns of the soul are superior to those of the body? Oh let him not fear prudently to reveal Terrible as the evil is, if it must, and that at a truth for which the patient may bless him in no distant day, be met, spare not to present it to eternity! Is it not sometimes to be feared that your imagination; not to lacerate your feelings, in the hope of prolonging for a little while the but to arm your resolution; not to excite unproexistence of the perishing body, he robs the ne-fitable distress, but to strengthen your faith. If ver-dying soul of its last chance of pardon? Does not the concern for the immortal part united with his care of the afflicted body, bring the medical professor to a nearer imitation than any other supposable situation can do, of that Divine Physician, who never healed the one without manifesting a tender concern for the other? | it terrify you at first, draw a little nearer to it every time. Familiarity will abate the terror. If you cannot face the image, how will you encounter the reality? Let us then figure to ourselves the moment (who can say that moment may not be the next?) when all we cling to shall elude our grasp; when every earthly good shall be to us as if it had But the deceit is short, is fruitless. The never been, except in the remembrance of the amazed spirit is about to dislodge. Who shall use we have made of it; when our eyes shall speak its terror and dismay? Then he cries close upon a world of sense, and open on a world out in the bitterness of his soul, 'What capacity of spirits; when there shall be no relief for the has a diseased man, what time has a dying man, fainting body, and no refuge for the parting what disposition has a sinful man to acquire soul, except that single refuge to which, pergood principles, to unlearn false notions, to re-haps, we have never thought of resorting—that nounce bad practices, to establish right habits, to begin to love God, to begin to hate sin? How is the stupendous concern of salvation to be worked out by a mind incompetent to the most ordinary concerns. refuge which if we have not despised we have too probably neglected-the everlasting mercies of God in Christ Jesus. Reader! whoever you are, who have neglected to remember that to die is the end for which you The infinite importance of what he has to do were born, know that you have a personal in-the goading conviction that it must be done-terest in this scene. Turn not away from it in the utter inability of doing it-the dreadful combination in his mind of both the necessity and incapacity-the despair of crowding the concerns of an age into a moment-the impossibility of beginning a repentance which should have been completed-of setting about a peace which should have been concluded-of suing for a pardon which should have been obtained;-all these complicated concerns-without strength, without time, without hope, with a clouded memory, a disjointed reason, a wounded spirit, undefined terrors, remembered sins, anticipated punishment, an angry God, and accusing conscience, altogether, intolerably augment the sufferings of a body which stands in little need of the insupportable burthen of a distracted mind to aggravate its torments. disdain, however feebly it may have been represented. You may escape any other evil of life, but its end you cannot escape. Defer not then its weightiest concern to its weakest period. Begin not the preparation when you should be completing the work. Delay not the business which demands your best faculties to the period of their debility, probably of their extinction. Leave not the work which requires an age to do, to be done in a moment, a moment too which may not be granted. The alternative is tremendous. The difference is that of being saved or lost. It is no light thing to perish! CHAP. XIX. Happy Deaths. Though we pity the superstitious weakness of the German emperor in acting over the anticipated solemnities of his own funeral-that eccentric act of penitence of a great but perFEW circumstances contribute more fatally to verted mind; it would be well if we were now confirm in worldly men that insensibility to and then to represent to our minds while in eternal things which was considered in the presound health, the solemn certainties of a dying ceding chapter, than the boastful accounts we bed; if we were sometimes to imagine to our sometimes hear of the firm and heroic deathselves this awful scene, not only as inevitable, beds of popular but irreligious characters. Many but as near; if we accustomed ourselves to see causes contribute to these happy deaths as they things now, as we shall then wish we had seen are called. The blind are bold, they do not see them. Surely the most sluggish insensibility the precipice they despise. Or perhaps there is must be roused by figuring to itself the rapid less unwillingness to quit a world which has so approach of death, the nearness of our unalter-often disappointed them, or which they have |