Miscellaneous essays on Chritian morals : experimental and practical ; originally delivered as lectures in the Broadmead chapel, Bristol, England

Front matter

I

V

X

Contents

Pas.-

L— The New Year , .9

II. — Spring, and its Moral Analogies 18

II. Spring, And Its Moral Analogies

" Thou renewest the face of the earth.'''' — The seasons of external nature, in the course of the j^ear, are a considerably interesting part of what makes up our condition during our sojourn on this earth ; and good men, from the Psalmist downward, have not been content that the effect of these seasons upon them should be confined to .the mere externid material condition, but have been desirous that the ^cissitudes of nature should minister to the welfare of the mind.

The spring season especially has been regarded as fertile of what might afford salutary instruction in a pleasing vehicle. We are now in the very midst of this genial season ; and before its flowers and bloom are past, we might do well to endeavour to draw from it something not quite so transient.

The vast importance to us, that this season should regularly and infallibly return in its time, is obvious the instant it is mentioned. But it is not so instantly recollected how entirely we are at the mercy of the God of nature for its return. We are in our places here on the surface of the earth, to wait in total dependence for Him to cause the seasons to visit our abode, as iielpless and impotent as particles of dust. If the Power that brings them on, were to hold them back, we could only submit, or repine — and perish ! His will could strike with an instant paralysis the whole moving system of nature. Let there be a suspension of liis agency, and all would stop ; or a change of it, and things would take a new and tearful course 1 Yet we are apt to think of the certainty of the return of the desired season, in some other light than that of the certainty that God will cause it to come. With a sort of passive irreligion we allow a something, conceived as an established order of nature, to take the place of the Author and Ruler of nature, forgetful that

SPRING, ATD ITS MORAL ANALOGIES. 19

all this is nothing but the continually acting power and will of God ; and that nothing can be more absurd than the notion of God's having constituted a system to be, one moment, independent of himself.

Consider, next, this beautiful vernal season ;— what a gloomy and unpromising scene and season it arises out of! It is almost like creation from chaos ; like life from a state of death. If we might be allowed in a supposition so wide from probability, as that a person should not know what season is to follow, while contemplating the scene, and feeling the rigours of winter, how difficult it would be for him to comprehend or believe that the dafkness, dreariness, bleakness, and cold — the bare, desolate, and dead aspect of nature could be so changed. If he could then in some kind of vision behold such a scene as that now spread over the earth — he would be disposed to say, '• It cannot be;" "this is absolutely a new creation, or another world !"

Might we not take an instruction from this, to correct the judgments we are prone to form of the divine government? We are placed within one limited scene and period of the great succession of the divine dispensations — a dark and gloomy one — a prevalence of evil. We do not see how it can be, that so much that is offensive and grievous, should be introductory to something delightful and glorious. "Look, how fixed ! how inveterate ! how absolute ! how unchanging ! is not this a character of perpetuity ?" If a better, nobler scene to follow is intimated by the spirit of prophecy, in figures analogous to the beauties of spring, it is regarded with a kind of despondency, as if prophecy were but a kind of sacred poetry ; and is beheld as something to aggravate the gloom of the present, rather than to draw the mind forward in delightful hope. So we allow our judgments of the divine government, — of the mighty field of it, and of its progressive periods, — to be formed very much upon an exclusive view of the limited, dark portion of his dispensations which is immediately present to us !

But such judgments should be corrected by the spring blooming around us, so soon after the gloomy desolation of winter. The man that we were supposing so ignorant and incredulous, what would he now think of what he had thought thenl

How welcome are the early signs, and precursory appearances of the spring; the earlier dawn of day; — a certain cheerful cast in the light, even though still shining over an expanse of desolation, — it has the appearance of a smile ; — a softer breathing of the air, at intervals ; — the bursting of the buds ; the vivacity of the animal tribes; the first flowers of the season; — and, by degrees, a delicate dubious tint of green. It needs not that a man should be a poet, or a sentimental worshipper of nature, to be delighted with all.

May we suggest one analogy lo this ? The operation of the Divhie Spirit in renovating the human soul, effecting its conversion from the natural state, is sometimes displayed in this gentle and gradual manner, especially in youth. In many cases, certainly, it seems violent and sudden, resembling the transition from winter to spring in the northern climates ; but, in the more gradual instances, whether in youth or further on in life, it is most gratifying to perceive the first indications, — serious thoughts and emotions — growing sensibility of conscience — distaste for vanity and folly — deep solicitude for the welfare of the soul — a disposition to exercises of piety — a progressively clearer, more grateful, and more believing apprehension of the necessity and sufficiency of the work and sacrifice of Christ for human redemption. To a pious friend, or parent, this is more delightful than if he could have a vision of Eden, as it bloomed on the first day that Adam beheld it.

But we may carry the analogy into a wider application. It is most gratifying to perceive the signs of change on the great field of society. How like the early flowers, — the more benignant light — the incipient verdure, are the new desire of knowledge, and the schemes and efforts to impart it — the rising, zealoue, and rapidly enlarging activity to promote true religion; and the development of the principles and spirit of liberty. In this moral spring, we hope we are advanced a little way beyond the season of the earliest flowers.

The next observation on the spring season is, how reluctantly the worse gives place to the better ! While the winter is forced to retire, it is yet very tenacious of its reign; it seems to make many efforts to return; it seems to hate the beauty and fertility that are supplanting it. For months we are liable to cold, chilling, pestilential blasts, and sometimes biting frosts. A f)ortion of the malignant power lingers or returns to urk, as it were, under the most cheerful sunshine ; so that the vegetable beauty remains in hazard, and the luxury of enjoying the spring is attended with danger to persons not in firm health. It is too obvious to need pointing oat, how much resembling this there is in the moral state of things; — in the hopeful advance and improvement of the youthful mind, — in the early and indeed the more advanced stages of the Christian character — and in all the commencing improvements of human society.

We may contemplate, next, the lavish, boundless diffusion, riches, and variety of beauty in the spring. Survey a single confined spot, or pass over leagues, or look from a hill ; infinite affluence every where ! and flo you know, too, that it is over a wide portion of the globe at the same time ; it is under your feet, spreads out to the horizon, meets every sense. And all this created within a few weeks ! To every observer the immensity, variety, and beauty are obvious. But to the perceptions of the skilful naturalist all this is indefinitely multipled. Reflect, what a display is here of the boundless resources of the great Author. He flings forth, as it were, an unlimited wealth — a deluge of beauty, immeasurably beyond all that is strictly necessary ; an immense quantity that man never sees, not even in the mass. It is true, that man is not the only creature for which the gratification is designed. 3

But it is man alone, of the earth's inhabitants, that can take any account of it as beauty, or as wisdom, and power, and goodness. Such unhmited profusion maywell assure us that He who can afford thus to lavish treasures so ftir beyond what is simply necessary, can never fliil of resources for all that is or ever shall be necessary.

May we not venture to think that this vast superfluity of pleasing objects, conferred on this temporary abode of our feeble and sinful existence, may be taken as one of the intimations of a grand enlargement of faculties in another state? We may assume that in any world to which good men shall be assigned, there will be an immense affluence of the wonderful works of the Almighty, and shall there not be such an enlargement of capacity and perception that there shall be a less waste of those admirable works ? We would be willing to suppose that there may be a less proportion of them placed beyond the power of attention ; less that should seem to answer no end to the devout contemplator.

We may observe, again, on this profusion and diversity of beauty, — what an ample provision it is for those faculties in our nature, which are not to be accounted the highest and noblest. The mere organs of sense receive immediately their pleasing influences. Through those combined susceptibilities of our blended constitution of body and mind, which we call taste, we have pleasurable perceptions of beauty, grace, harmony, grandeur. And the imagination has a large share of the enjoyment. All this is most evidently an intended adaptation. It is good, therefore, that man should have the exercise, the cultivation, and the pleasure of these faculties. What the proper regulaiion and limits may be— and how to adjust the proportion and the balance between these and higher interests and pleasures — is a matter for conscientious judgment. But the general fact is most obvious tliat the Creator intended the exercise and gratification of faculties for which he has made such copious provision.

But it is a most serious consideration here, that the value and the final object of this exercise and pleasure are lost, if they do not tend to and combine with religion; if a man observes, and admires — and enjoys, and is enchanted with the fine feeling, and all the while forgets the adorable and beneficent Author, or feels no veneration or grateful aspiring of soul toward Him. Our relation to Him is our supreme and most vital interest, and the interest of every other relation is meant to be coincident, subordinate, and contributory. The disregard of this great law comes under the condemnation of "loving the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever." Much of this impiety there is, among the admirers of the beauties of nature and of the spring. It were no mere shape of imagination, if we were to represent such a lamentable spectacle as this, namely, — a man of cultivated mind, vividly perceptive faculties, refined taste and poetic fancy, straying among the vernal fields and groves with a fond enchantment, with a sentiment for each flower and blooming shrub, and singing bird, and gay insect ; — diffusing his soul in fine sympathy with all that smiles around him, but with no recognition of Him that creates and animates the scene ! All that scene is no more than a reflection of a few rays of the divine glory. But this admirer looks not toward the bright Reality. He takes this faint reflection as if it were itself the essential beauty and glory, and cannot see how it fades and perishes when impiety like this comes between it and heaven. In some instances, as by a judicial retribution, the man is permitted to consummate his impiety by making nature his god ; — fancying some kind of mysterious, all-pervading, yet not intelligent spirit, which ejects the Divinity and takes his place.

The spring has always been regarded as obviously presenting an image of youthful life. The newness, liveliness, -fair appearance, exuberance of the vital principle, rapid growth — such are the flattering points of likeness. But there are also less pleasing circumstances of resemblance, the frailty and susceptibility, so peculiarly liable to fatal injury from inauspicious influences, blights, and diseases. Those who have to watch over infancy, childhood, and early youth, can often see, in smitten plants and flowers, the emblems of what they have to fear for their charge. There is the circumstance, that the evil in the human disposition can grow even faster than the good. As in spring, the weeds, the useless and noxious vegetables, the offensive or venomous animals, thrive as well as the useful and salutary productions ; and that too. not only without attention to assist them, but in spite of efforts to repress or extirpate them. There is the circumstance, that is yet to be proved, whether the early season will have its full value ultimately; whether fair and hopeful appearances and beginnings will not end in a mortifying disappointment. How many a rich bloom of the trees comes to nothing ! How many a field of corn promising in the blade, disappoints in the harvest! Under this point of the analogy, the vernal human beings are a subject for pensive, for almost melancholy contemplation. There is one specially instructive point of resemblance. Spring is the season for diligent cultivation ; so is youth. What if the spring were suffered to go past without any cares and labours of husbandry ! But see how the parallel season of human life is, in numberless instances, consumed away under a destitution of the discipline requisite to form a rational being to wisdom, goodness, and happiness ; through the criminal neglect of those who have the charge and the accountableness, and the almost infallibly consequent carelessness of the undisciplined creatures themselves. One shall not seldom be struck with the disparity between these two provinces of cultivation. The garden shall be put in neat order, the fruit-tree trimmed and trained; the corn-field exhibiting a clean shining breadth of green ; the children and youth bearing every mark of mental and moral rudeness. On the contrary, it is delightful to see the spring season of life advancing under such a cultivation, of

SPRING, AND ITS MORAL ANALOGIES. "Zo

the instructor's care, of conscientious self-tuition, and of divine influence, as to give good hope of rich ensuing seasons. A part of the pleasure imparted by the beauty of the spring is, whether we are exactly aware of it or not, in an anticipation of what it is to result in. Though as we have said, there is much for uncomplacent presentiment in beholding the bloom, animation, and unfolding faculties of early life, yet they who are affectionately interested in the sight, are insensibly carried forward in imagination to the virtues and accomplishments which they are willing to foresee in the mature and advanced states. It maybe added, as one more point in this parallel, that the rapid passing away of the peculiar beauty of spring, gives an emblem of the transient continuance of the lively and joyous period of human life.

They are not all pleasing ideas that arise in the contemplation of the vernal season. There is one of a profoundly gloomy character, that of the portentous general contrast between the beauty of the natural^ and the deformity of the moral world. A correspondence seems to be required in things which are associated together. Survey then the fair scene and think what kind of beings, to correspond to it, the rational inhabitants ought to be ; not a few, a small intermingled portion, but the general race. Would not the conception be, — innocence, ingenuousness, all the kind and sweet affections, bright refined thought, spontaneous advancement in all good, piety to heaven ? But now look on the actual fact— and that, without going so far off as those fine tracts of the earth where man is the most cruel and ferocious of the wild beasts that infest them. See in these more civilized regions, the coarse debasement — the selfishness — the hostile artifices— the ill tempers andmalignantpassions — thepractices of injustice — the obstinacyin evil habits — the irreligion, both negative and daringly positive ! Within the memory of many of us, how much of the vernal beauty of Europe, every year, has been trodden down under the feet, or blasted by the ravages of hostile 3* armies ! how many a blooming bower has given out its odours mingled with tJie putrid effluvia of human creatures killed by one another ! Such is the correspondence of the inhabitants to the beautiful scenery of their dwelling-place! The fair luxury of spring serves to bring out, more prominently, the hideous features of the moral condition !

But even if we could keep out of view this directly moral contrast, there are still other circumstances of a gloomy colour. Amidst this glowing life of the vernal season, there are languor, an j sickness, and infirm old age, and death ! While nature smiles, there arc many pale countenances that do not. Sometimes you have met, slowly pacing the green meadow or the garden, a figure emaciated by illness, or feeble with age ; and were the more forcibly struck by the spectacle as seen amidst a luxuriance of life. For a moment, you have felt as if h11 the living beauty faded or receded from around, in the shock of the contrast. You may have gone into a house beset with roses and all the pride of spring, to see a person lingering and sinking in the last feebleness of mortality. You may have seen a funeral train passing through a flowery avenue. The ground Avhich is the depository of the dead, bears, not the less for that, its share of the beauty of spring. The great course of nature pays no regard totlie particular circumstances of man, — no suspension, no sympathy !

To a person in the latter stages of life, if destitute of the sentiments and expectations o^ Religion., this world of beauty must lose its captivations ; it must even take a melancholy aspect ; for what should strike him so directly and forcibly as the thought, that he is soon to leave it? It may even appear too probable that this is the last spring season he shall behold ; while he looks upon it, he may feel an intimation that he is bidding it adieu ; his paradise is retiring behind him, and what but a dreary immeasurable desert is before him? This will blast the fair scene while he surveys it, however rich its hues and the sunshine that gilds it!

On the contrary, and by the same rule, this fair display of the Creator's works and resources will be gratifying, the most and the latest, to the soul animated with the love of God, and the confidence of soon entering on a nobler scene. " Let me," he may say, " look once more at what my Divine Father has diffused even hither as a faint intimation of what he has somewhere else. I am pleased with this as a distant outskirt, as it were, of the paradise toward which I am going." Though we are not informed of the exact manner of a happy existence in another state, assuredly, there will be an ample and eternal exercise of the faculties on the wondrous works of ihe Almighty, and therefore a mode of perception adapted to apprehend their beauty, harmony, and magnificence. It is not for us to conjecture whether good spirits corporeally detached from this world, are therefore withdrawn from all such relation to it, or knowledge of it, as would admit of their retaining still some perception of the material beauty and sublimity displayed upon it by the Creator. But it may well be presumed that in one region or other of his dominions, the intellectual being will be empowered with a faculty to perceive every order of phenomena in which his glory is manifested. If we think of an angel traversing this earth, though he has not oicr mode of apprehending this fair vision of spring, it were absurd to suppose that therefore all this material grace and splendour is to him obliterated, blank, and indifferent. We shall not then believe that any change which shall elevate the human spirit, will by that very fact destroy, as to its perception, admiration, and enjoyment, any of the characters on the works of God.

We close the contemplation by observing, what an immensity of attainable interest and delight, of one class only, besides the sublimer, there is, that may be lost, — and all is lost, if the soul be lost 1

III. Autumn, And Its Moral Analogies

" IVe all do fade as a leaf.'''' — Our lives have been prolonged once more to witness the wide progress of decay over the field of nature. The infinite masses of foliage, which unfolded so beautifully in vegetable life, in the spring, and have adorned our landscape during the summer, have faded, fallen, and perished. We have beheld the "grace of the fashion" of them disclosed, continuing awhile bright in the sunshine, and gone for ever. Now we are admonished not to see the very leaves fade, without being reminded that something else is also fading; this is a fact more intimately realized to us than any thing in the external world can be, but of which we have a most marvellous faculty, if we may so call it, of being insensible. Is it not so ■? How many of us can — or can any of iis — say, they have had during the recent season, as distinct and prolonged a reflection on the fact, that our own mortnl existence is fading, as we have had a per ception of the fading and extinction of vegetable life It would seem as if the continued pressure of ill health, or the habitual spectacle of sickness and decline in our friends, were necessary in order to keep us reminded of the truth which is expressed in the text.

We should do well to fix our attention awhile on this very pernicious fact, of our inaptitude to feel and reflect that our mortal condition is fading; and then to note and urge a few of those monitory circumstances which verify this our declining state. Let us look a little at the habits of our feehng, in regard to this matter.

We are very unapt to recognize the common lot and destiny of all human life — that it is to fade, and is fading. The vast world of the departed is out of our sight, — even what was the material and visible part. What is constantly in our sight is the world of the living ; and we are unapt to think of them as all appointed not to be living. Perhaps it was but very few times in the life of the Persian monarch that he was in so refleclive and moral a mood, as when, looking on his innumerable army, he thought, and wept to think, that in less than a century they would all be dead. In our own case, while we see the countless population, in all the passions and actions of life, it is but now and then, perhaps rather unfrequently, that the reflection, like a solemn shade, comes over us, — " these are all hastening out of sight, tending to dissolution and dust ! Such a living scene our ancestors beheld ; but where are now both those they looKed on and themselves ?" — Man as he is, fills the attention, and precludes the thought of man as he is appointed and going to be.

We note a circumstance which aids the deception, that the most decayed and faded portion of the living world is much less in sight than the fresh and vigorous. Think how many infirm, sick, debilitated, languishing, and almost dying persons there are, that are rarely or never out in public view, — not met in our streets, roads, or places of resort, — not in our religious assemblies! And then "outof sight out of mind " in a great degree! Thus we look at the living world so as not to read the destiny written on every forehead, and in this thoughtlessness are the more apt to forget our own.

But we are very prone to forget our own destiny, even while we do recognize the general appointment to fade and vanish. The great general appointment is brought in our view, by many things which we cannot help perceiving. There is no avoiding to observe something of the process of fading. It is obvious that many of our fellow mortals are dying ; — that many are pining in sickness, and consuming away under incurable distempers; — that many are changing in appearance, withering down, gradually declirung in strength, and smking into infirmity and feebleness. But nevertheless, we have some unaccountable power and instinct to dissociate ourselves from the general condition and relationship of humanity. "All men think all men mortal but themselves." — " /am not hopelessly sick. — / am not sinking into feebleness. — / am not witherint; within an inch of the dust." This is thoughtlessly suffered to become, in the feeling, or rather insensibiHty, of the mind, much the same tiling as if / had no such thing to apprehend ; — as if that general lot were not mine !

Have you not been sometimes struck or amazed at this, in observing others, or in self-reflection ? How is it, you have said — How comes it to be possible, that men can see the partakers of their own nature and destiny, withering and falHng from the tree of life, and calmly look at them in their fall and in the dust, with hardly one pointed reflection turned on themselves ! As if the careless spectator should say, " Well, they must go : — there is no help for them ! unfortunate lot ! but it is nothing to me, except to pity them for a moment, and be glad that I am vmder no such disastrous decree !" So little is there of ominous sympathy felt, while men see neighbours, acquaintance, friends, relatives, one by one, fading, falling, and vanishing ! It might seem as if they were not considered as having belonged to the great human fraternity ; as if they had not been exem])lijicaticms of what man is. and is appointed to, to admonish and alarm those who continue to live, — but ill-fated exceptions to the cominon lot, to give the rest an occasion of triumph, that they exist under quite a different law! " They were not of us. for if they had been q/"us, they would not have gone ft om us." Or as if each survivor, especially if in health, and not old, believed the antediluvian privilege of longevity had devolved to him, regarding those who had departed as of the frail race of seventy years ! If the actual vanishing of individuals from the grand community is taken so lightly by those who remain, it is no wonder that seeing persons decline and fade into old age and infirmity should have little sympathetic power to remind others of their own frail mortality ; at least those who are a stage or two less advanced in life, even though it were but a difl'crence of ten or fifteen j'^ears. Thus men are under some kind of spell and beguilement on their feeling which denies them the sense of being involved in the conmion lot.

It is true, it were absurd to imagine there should on the supposition of the most perfectly rectified and expanded state of human feehng, be such a kind of community-sentiment as if they were almost to feel their own infirmity and decUne, in mere sympathy with that of others. But still this self-defensive unconcern, this not being forcibly admonished that our lot is of apiece with the common lot, is an unnatural, pernicious, and irrational state of mind. Are not, for example, young persons all the worse, in point of wisdom, and the right purpose and use of life, from allowing themselves to regard their condition as so entirely disconnected with old age, — so unrelated to it, — as if centuries and centuries had to pass away, before they should become old ? Are not those who are in strong health as if they were on a different planet from those who are feeble or sick? Are not the living, as if it never could be, that they should come to be in the state of the dead?

We are apt to regard life much more as a thing that we positively possess than as a thing that we are losing; and in a train to cease possessing. We are considering life in the sense of the duration of living. We thoughtlessly permit an imposition on our feelings, as if life were a substantive property, which we possessed years since and equally now possess. To be alive is the same consciousness 7igio as then ; and so we forget the essentially different condition we are in. Life in the case of a being that should be certainly immortal might be considered as an absolute possession. But with us, life is expenditure : we have ii but as continually losing it ; we have no use of it, but as continually wasting it. Suppose a maif confined in some fortress, under the doom to stay there till his death ; and suppose there is there for his use, a dark reservoir of water, to which it is certain none can ever be added. He knows, suppose, that the quantity is not very great ; he cannot penetrate to ascertain how much, but it may be very little. He has drawn from it by means of a fountain a good while already, and draws from it every day ; — but how would he feel each time of drawing, and each time of thinking of it ? not as if he had ape-