Religion, the weal of the church and the need of the times

Preface

The motives of a writer are of far less consequence to his readers^ than the staple of his thoughts^ and the style of his performance ; they may receive his impressions^ but cannot share his obligations. But though motives pass unchallenged^ every work of man must bear witness to some design. A book is a mental offsprings and must exhibit the characters of its filiation to the public eye : hence an author can hardly be supposed to affect the shades of society ; worthily, or otherwise, he claims publicity, and to his own apprehension, at least, stakes something on his enterprise. It is then too late to ponder the maxim, " quid valeant humeri ;" since, whatever be the breadth of his shoulders, he must be pre-

4 PREFACE.

pared to stand or fall under the burden which public judgment may lay upon him. It is vain for him either to sue for the favour of general readers, or to seek to mitigate the severity of critics : he must confide his progeny to those fortunes which its merits and contingencies may assign ; just as persons and things are left to make their own way through the world.

At the risk, however, of an act of self-humiliation being imputed, if not of incurring a suspicion on his sincerity, the author ventures to forestall, what to many, on reading his pages, will become sufficiently apparent : — the evidences of both imperfect trainings and imperfect practice, in the business of authorship — ^a want of order and compactness. In explanation, perhaps extenuation of these faults, he simply records the fact, that his papers were written during occasional intervals of leisure, snatched from the pressing engagements of a busy ministry. They spread over more than two years. The plan

PREFACE. 5

and trains of thought, thus interrupted, were resumed when all hut obliterated : the suture can hardly be concealed, uniting the old with the new; differences of colour and of pattern may be detected wherever the loom has slumbered.

In the earlier parts of the book, events are referred to, which have already faded from public view : disease, famine, revolutions, or commercial troubles, now seem like entries by the hand of time, concealed by an intervening leaf, bearing other entries, with the ink still wet. On some points, too, the writer's own sentiments have been somewhat altered (may he say developed ?) by the more recent course of public events. The large references to Methodism found in the book are the dictates of experience, as well as the records of affection to that Church which has formed for the writer the sphere of his own public life.

Of the topics themselves, which he has ven-

6 PREFACE.

tured to handle^ he conceives far more loftily than of his own performance. Other minds, of higher reach, may subject them to a profounder analysis, or draw them out into a greater amplitude of practical detail ; but such an admission is not one of jealousy but of desire. Small stores, and small contributions, however separately insignificant, serve to swell the ever-accumulating wealth of truth, and the homage due from universal mind to the sovereignty of rehgion.

Contents

CHAPTER Page

L— THE SPEECH OF GOD 9

n.— THE WORK OF GOD 29

Chapter I. The Speech Of God

** I have heard thy speech and was afraid." — ^Hab. iii, 2.

It may be remarked that where mere reason and philosophy end, there revelation only begins. The being of God, the powers of his nature, and the course of his rule, — facts, which these with difficulty reach, and at best but poorly scan, — revelation assumes and familiarizes, without parade of demonstration, or ak of discovery. It tacitly appeals to, and builds upon, the instincts, beliefs, and experiences of our nature, — upon the primeval traditions of which itself is the depositary, — and upon the whole range of objective being, which is but its own faithful echo. It seems to decline challenging the atheist, while it condescends to expostulate with the idolator ; as though the first, demented by so flagrant an impiety as that which disowns a God, must be recovered to the integrity of reason, ere he can become a disciple of rehgion : *' The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God."

In keeping with this, its pecuhar recognition of the first great truth of rehgion, is its assumption of its own character. Revelation is self-announcing, bold, and famihar. It leaves the whole task of objecting to its foes, and that of apology to its friends ; it calmly takes its position and proceeds to

1* its ends. It does not speak of God more famUiarly than of itself as his oracle to the world. God and the Bible are joined together as facts correlative and inseparable. It nowhere betrays the carefulness of distrust lest its claims^ should fail in argument, or to make their way through the world. The whole cause of Revelation is by itself ultimately committed, not to the Church, to the priesthood, or to traditionary or prescriptive influence, hut simply to its own truth. All its measures for maintaining itself against adversaries, and for securing its ascendency among mankind, spring from this one characteristic — ^its self-declaring truthfulness, — which may also be viewed as an implied prognostic of its final triumph. This observation may be applied to the class of sacred writers called Prophets. Judging from the tenor of their writings, these were at no pains to demonstrate the authority of their office, or the reality of their gifts, to their people. This fact implies that both were publicly recognised, and that though occasion might arise in which a public judgment was in\ited respecting the legitimate claimants to the office, no doubt existed respecting the office itself. Not only did the religion of the nation authenticate it, its history abounded in signal instances of its vindication, and its sacred lore was enriched and amplified by a series of the loftiest contributions. The very succession of the prophetic order tended to preserve in the mind of the nation the impression and appreciation of its mission ; which bias, though doubtless abused by impostors, for the sake of honour or gain, rather advanced than injured the true prophet by comparison. His character shone out all the brighter in its glories of integrity, independence and earth-despising sanctity, as the race of worldlings, time-servers, and sycophants, in the guise of prophets, were arrayed against him. Illustrious men! "of whom the world was not worthy," to whom the only earthly awards of the purest patriotism and the noblest public services, were, in general, poverty and persecution, from profligate princes and a backsliding peo-

PROPHETS. 11

pie ; of whom it is the least praise, that they were master spirits in poetry, eloquence, and sublime writing ; that their genius, if consecrated to anything but religion, or had shone anywhere but in the Bible, would have secured for them fame through all ages — as to this day it abides as the most venerable radiance of the Old Testament Church. Yet their true honour was their office. Heaven-descended truth was enshrined in them ; their gifts as men were but the ornaments of her temple, as the gold, and the cherubim, were but the garniture of the oracle, and pavilion of the Divine Majesty, — the place of his feet made glorious. The prophets were, in truth, what the Bible terms them, seers. They beheld what to all but inspired men must ever be veiled in darkness — the future — whether it respects men or things. Their vision was immediately divine, comprising far more than the discovery of another world, or even the future of our own. It penetrated the naturally imisible of being ; it darted upward into heaven itself, and the vision from God was the vision of God, but chiefly of his character as a Supreme Ruler, and of his right and power to punish the guilty.

Moreover, his wisdom is declared in the publication of his designs, — also his merciful disposition toward offenders, and the reluctance with which he proceeds to the work of destruction ; while with his threatenings are interspersed so many and pathetic admonitions to the duties of supplication and repentance. The complexion of prophecy is indeed predominantly terrible; it is the reflection of the divine countenance deeply expressive of displeasure, and it abounds in images of judicial majesty which may well strike terror into the stoutest heart. This feature of prophecy, however, is no impeachment of its veracity, nor distortion of the Divine character, but is necessarily derived to it from the condition of the world. It contains revelations of God suited to the relations which his creatures bear to him. It is a correspondence opened, not with innocency, but with guilt, — not with a loyal province of his empire, but with a race of rebels. Prophecy, as it thus stands, cannot be viewed as possessing only a local and temporary influence on the world, — as an affair of a nation or of an age only, — it is exponent of the^ divine administration generally. It is a divine mirror, foreshowing the moral images and destinies of nations through a long succession of ages ; types of debasement and ruin drawn out in the history of man, from that day to this, — and remaining yet to be fulfilled, not in a few more signal instances, respecting which theory and conjecture may go astray when they would divine the future, but as often as moral correspondences to prophecy shall present themselves to the eye of the great Ruler of nations, and the vials of his wrath shall have been poured upon them accordingly.

In this more extended, but less usual view of prophecy, its vast utility becomes obvious, its divinity brightens on our vision, and its relation to the present and the future, as well as the past, renders it profoundly stirring. With its light thus beheld filling the circle of the world's epochs, it is emphatically prophecy still ; and like the sun and moon, on Joshua's great day of triumph, hastes not to go down. The scenes of time, the grand drama in which all nations and even individuals take some part, and to whose catastrophe all contribute something, are never withdrawn from its behests : "Its line is gone forth into all lands, and its words to the end of the world." Thus is its genius not particular, but universal ; nor can its interpretation be private, but public. Every separate prophecy is related to the general system, and in fulfilment, as well as character, is blended with it. It is like a soHtary fibre belonging to one vigorous and widely spreading root. It is a member of a grand family of inspired truths, ever teeming with historic facts, and accumulating with the progress of ages the proofs of an Almighty governance, and of itself as a record of Infinite Prescience. Hence the design of prophecy is not the instruction of the Old Testament Church so much as of the

PROPHECY. 13

New. Eemote, ratlier tlian proximate ages were to appreciate this branch of revealed truth, and to perceive its force, drawn from a wider field of historic and moral accomplishment. To these, the long vista of antiquity was to appear as if formed by monumental records of prophetic truth, or as a path lettered over with the obsequies of empire, all vocal with its predestinations. To them, the past was as a vast scroll let down by a hand from heaven, to be more and more unfolded with the progress of our race; while the future also, though in many points but the reflection of the past, should be ^dewed as richer in the promise of a glorious issue, in the fully established reign of Christ, seciu-ing the peace and weal of the whole world.

If these observations be just on the scheme of prophecy, it follows, that further discoveries of this kind, as of doctrines, and moral precepts, would be superfluous. The continuity of such a dispensation is opponent to its very nature. A record of principles and of precedents only, was needed for a testimony to all generations ; just as selections only are given by the evangehsts, of our Lord's discourses, or of the leadmg personages of early antecedent times. The vision is shut up and sealed, because sufficient hght has been shed upon the administration of the Supreme Governor. Fresh and extended examples could do no more than illustrate principles, and enforce the most potent lessons. For instance, no discoveries of the destinies of modern nations, or even of the Christian Church, however authenticated, could add to om- knowledge of the actual administration presiding over the world in our day, as in ages gone by.

The perfection and the value of prophecy repose on the doctrine of the Divine ImmutabiHty, whether it respects the nature or the issues of the rule of its sovereignty. It is om's only to understand and apply the statements of God's word, to study the inspired precedents it contains, to bring its light upon the living mass of human beings, and upon the wide sphere of their agencies and interests. It is ours to inherit the wisdom of the prophets, as we do the doctrines of apostles, without pretending to their extraordinary powers ; as the spiritual seed of both, though not their official successors, to share with them and the whole Churchr whether past, present, or to come, the boon of inspiration without its gift ; to drink of the streams of which they are the fountains ; to impersonate the truth of the sacred pages in our own individual minds ; and to render these ancient oracles lively and vocal in the wisdom and habits of Christian men. To hear the Speech of God is to digest thoroughly the entu'e moral of prophecy : to compare its sayings, to analyze its descriptions, and to combine them into a sublime, living, practical science. The Speech of God is to us and all men, his providential action Scripturalfy interpreted. It rolls from the firmament in peals of thunder, and is responded to in the murmurs of the heaving, hoary deep. It is heard in the tumult of the storm, and in the melodies of the vernal hour. All nature is but the organ of his voice, and instrument of his will. The vast and the minute, the celestial and the terraqueous, the inanimate and the living portions of the system, all variously speak of him ; the physical and the moral departments of providence appropriately declare him. The existence of the human race alone is a mighty oracle of God : the nature and powers of such a creature ; his wide diffusion and perpetuated succession ; the indefinite formation of individual minds, each of which is a separate world of thought, emotion, and interest ; the immortality that dignifies the meanest, and the destinies that impend on life's short breath ; the relations that bind men together ; the singular diversities of physical and mental character, consisting with a demonstrable identity of origin and blood ; the interminable progressions of civilized mind, and the prodigious creations of social energy ; the laws of life and of death — of waste and renovation implanted in the mass, and controlling bodies, as well as individual men ; the range of dominion given to man ;

PROVIDENCE. 15

the exquisite adaptation of his instincts, intellect, and moral powers to his position as one of social dependence, of religious discipline, and of ultimate as well as present interests, are all direct and living expressions of the being and dominion of a God, whose image and subject universal man is ; while in the limitations and checks he has placed to the utter triumph of wickedness in man himself, — in the institutions of the social state, in the authority of the moral sentiments, in the rules of conventionahsm, the dictates of interest, or the antagonism of the vices themselves, — He has set bounds to the empire of evil, as he has to darkness, or the raging billows of the sea.

In fact, the various modes in which he debates with evil — that fearful power which has a perpetual ascendency over man as he is — traversing by unexpected interpositions its mightiest laws, dissolving or enfeebling its most menacing combinations, and overruhng them for the promotion of opposite ends, furnish decisive phenomena in favour of the grand regime which prophecy asserts, and which has its types in the mischiefs which are nature's brood, and the remedies which man is instructed to apply ; still, however, limited by such conditions, and subject to such contingencies, as make the sovereignty of the grand Arbiter, in all that concerns human life, most manifest. What is to us chance, is to Him more than foresight, — it is decree. His authority is illustrated, and his voice lifted up, so as to be as " the sound of many waters," or as the noise of a mighty host, by the complicated action of his creation.

His sovereignty is not the less direct because less obvious in many assignable cases, or because his hand is hidden behind the mechanism of smTOimding nature, and conveys its stroke by angelic, by human, or even by an unconscious ministry. To imagine that God's wisdom can be frustrated, or his agency intercepted, by the intervention of a system he has expressly contrived to illustrate them, is a dictate of folly equally with irreligion. It is, in fact, not by a succession of prodigies that his government is carried on, or his glory declared ; but in the disposition, actuation, and control of the several orders of his creatures, particularly of moral agents, capable of free, and, seemingly, contrary action;- not binding in bonds of necessity a nature emphatically free, but rendering all varieties of its action executive of the predestinations of his vrisdom, — so computing and apportioning their respective agencies, as to give to moral powers the balance of various physical forces, as they meet in the composition of suns and systems ; and to impress upon the Godlike nature of mind, an order of development as peculiarly its own, as are the phenomena of the material universe.

The grand claim of prophecy is not more to anticipate futurity, than to explain facts. Its office is that of a divine interpreter of providential mysteries. It withdraws us from the wide scenes of tumult and disorder, from which bewilderment and scepticism would probably ensue, leading us into the temple where the Divinity is enthroned, uttering his oracles distinctly to the calm and reverent heart : ''Be still, and know that I am God." This is the compendium of his teachings, and the perfection of our privilege. This is an immensely superior position for vision than a mountain height which could command the boundaries of all kingdoms, or a tower which contained the archives of creation. We are thus ushered at once into His presence, and see His glory, which grows the fainter as distance is measured from this holy centre; and we hear the majestic voice which worlds obey, and which all creatures equally with cherubim resound, but cannot, like them, articulate. The Temple alone contains the perfect glory, and the perfect oracle, which, in its widening expansion, is broken by intervening hills and dales into feeble echoes ; languishing, as it travels, like the dying gale, or melting as music, in the air, when drawn from the strings of an eeohan lyre. Hence, to those who possess not this divine and ever-living oracle ; and yet more, to those who proudly spurn it as imposture, history and

MORAL GOVERNMENT. Il

events speak in vain. Tliey cannot understand the language of providence, nor learn ''the manifold wisdom of God/' of which the world, and not the church only, is the chosen seat of display. To these the vision is sealed, like the words of the prophet to an ureligious and imbruted people. The interest which should be awakened by this wonderful mystery of God, is as an urgent appeal directed by his voice, through the prophet to a man, delivering him a book ; saying, ''Read this, I pray thee;'' who replies, "I cannot, for it is sealed." And again to another, with a similar request, who says, " I cannot, for I am not learned ;" or as it is still more strikingly illustrated by the great book beheld by the seer of Patmos, which it is the Lamb's sole prerogative to open, and office of his chui'ch to proclaim to the world. As the plan of creation was a book delivered into the hands of the Son by the Eternal Father, to transcribe into being, and to open a previously inscrutable mystery in the glorious scenes of a material and spirited universe ; so is the vast and awful volume of his administration, which has been consigned to him in his last and highest office as the Redeemer of men. The disruption of each seal of its hidden policy, emits a sound which vibrates through the heights and depths of his empire, and is responded to by mighty thunders, and the voices of living creatures. It is the pronunciation of a sovereign fiat — the successive issue of decrees, to which all things haste the response, "It is done," and to crown with the still higher voice of praise : " And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I, saying. Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever."

Thus it appears that to hear the speech of God, is not the exclusive honour of angels, much less of prophets, or the college of mspired men ; it is the honour and the duty of the Avhole Church of Christ; and it exalts us to the noblest fellowships, both of earth and heaven; agreeably to the sublimely catholic address of the angel to the beloved John, *' I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book." The truth of God, as bound up with the creation, government, and destinies of our world, is the common bond of his servants, and the common heritage of his children ; it identifies them with every vehicle of its delivery, and every epoch of its publication. Its recorded facts and principles contain the rudiments of a science to be expanded in higher states of being, and, like God himself, to inhabit eternity and fill the universe.

The single reflection, that it contains the pohcy of the Supreme Ruler respecting the condition and prospects of a world, may suffice to suggest how low and little all acquisition must be where the track of the Infinite is to be followed, extending over innumerable ages, and traversing every portion of the globe ; and also, how inconceivable must be the change in the future capacity and position of the human mind which shall enable it to overtake such a subject as this ; to generalize without limit, and to reason without error ; when the history of a nation, the events of a century, or even the government of the world, shall be more correctly understood, than are now the concerns of an individual man ; and when the analysis of a system so vast and complicated, shall be more perfectly attained than the constituents of an animal or a flower are by the most accomplished man of science.

But it is required that the temper of mind appropriate to the reception of divine oracles be declared : "I have heard thy speech, and was afraid." The expression is indicative of more than mere reverence for the divine majesty, even the impression with which we may conceive the mind to have been possessed by the reception of a divine message, whether conveyed by a voice, by angelic ministry, by vision, or by a certain mysterious impulse from the Divinity, as much distinguished from the mind's own laws of converse

INSPIRATION AND ITS EFFECTS. 19

with itself, as is the touch of a fellow's hand from our own, or conversation with another mind by means of the tongue, or even the expression of the face is, from the abstract mental processes going on within, and of which no being is conscious but ourselves.

When an apostle declares of the prophets, "that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," a certain purely internal and strong action of the Divine Spirit on the mind is expressed; an afflatus or breathing upon, as anciently it was expressed, when individuals were described as preternaturally influenced so as to give forth oracles from superior powers. It amounted to a possession of the mind temporally, and for an especial purpose, by the divinity, an ecstacy or entrancement, a brief introduction of the spiritual man to a more vivid and awful sense of the divine presence ; or it was a sudden and perfectly distinct conveyance of a message or a fact to the mind of the indi- -".idual, even while in company with other men, or engaged in the ordinaiy business of life. Instantly the seclusion of the mind was broken in upon by its Author ; the particular train of thought, of feeling, and of pm-pose, was interrupted, just as it might be by the entrance and communication of a fellow mortal to one when alone. It was suggestion as strong, and as perfectly an^ayed in words, as if addressed to the ear itself. It was purely a mental correspondence, which, vfhen closed, left the man in his usual condition of mental independence, and with the obligation to communicate the messao-e without mistake. But whatever mode of com-

o

mmiication the Deity chose to employ, it gave the individual intrusted with it a peculiarly sacred character, not only to his fellows, but to himself. The preliminary visitations must have been startling, and some more special revelations, overwhelming. Such were the inaugural \dsions of Isaiah, of Ezekiel, Daniel, and even the beloved John. One was compelled to utter loudly his woe, while under the burden of the vision revealing to him his corruption, as well as authenticating liis commission. Another declares tliat when he heard the voice that spake with him, he fell upon his face ; another, that when he saw that great vision of the political fortunes of the world, but particularly of his own afflicted nation, that there remained no strength in him, and that his comeliness was turned into corruption. John, when he saw him, fell at his feet as one dead ; and Habakkuk tells us, that his belly trembled, his voice quivered, and that rottenness entered into his bones. To man, as he is physically constituted, separated from every other order of being beside his own — conscious also of guilt and of moral disorder — supernatural tokens and correspondences become the subjects of scepticism, or the basis of a dark and disturbing superstition. To the one class of minds, constitutionally firm, superficially philosophic, or thoroughly irreligious, man is viewed as perfectly insulated from every nature but his own, and the system of sensible things around him, to the disallowance of every kind of unseen ministry which revelation affirms, and reason might regard as probable ; while to them, practically, the Deity himself is converted into a distant and powerless abstraction. By the other class, natm-e is not regarded with an intelligent confidence, — she is viewed as if perpetually disturbed by the magician's wand; — not so much an embodiment of existence, as the shadow of an occult and unfriendly something behind herself. Her powers are undefined, as objects seen in the twilight, or bedewed by a wintry haze. She abounds in prodigies and portents. Her auguries and divinations peer out everywhere ; imagination forms and colours its own gods, and prostrates the trembling spirit before idols of its own creation; ''men fear where no fear is." A slavish and heart-withering terror is the penalty of this device of human folly, which supplants the Deity in the trust and homage of his creatures. Even where corruptions of truth do not involve a denial of the grand fundamentals of religion, as in the church of Rome, tlic indefinite multiplication of subordinate mediators and

REMOTE FROM PHILOSOPHY AND SUPERSTITION. 21

tutelary personages, whether in priests on earth or saints in heaven, must brand every form of superstition with the features of a moral tyranny. They are unfriendly to the true Hberty and happiness of man : his only rest is in the tutelage of ONE, whose name, expressive of all perfection, is a refuge for the weakness and fears of his creatures ; whose universal presence is the extension of a sovereignty limiting the existence and powers of all agency whatever ; compeling all to league together for the peace of His people, and to take their stand within the circle described by the bonds of His covenant.

It is the glorious property of an enlightened religious fear, to disabuse the mind of every form of superstitious terror, and to supplant it with the noblest principles. It teaches us to contemn vanities, placing before us One, who is, indeed, "greatly to be feared;" not one among the many claimants for our worship, but One who demands the whole, as his exclusive right. He is not the cliief of the gods, but *' God alone." His being, though the greatest mystery, is the first and necessary truth. His existence includes all others, though excluded from them all. His essence, fundamental to nature, is yet no part of it, — whether consisting of material or spiritual substances expanded into systems, or presented in the many gradations of individual intelhgence, or possessing powers of traduction by which an endless succession of things or persons, in exact resemblance, may be derived from a first type. Nature, thus stated, is not the extension of the divine essence — the communication of Deity to whatever is : — it is a creation, not an emanation ; a work, not a bu'th. It is not a spontaneous and necessary issue, a development of some great, eternal principle, and a constituent of its perfection, — but ^performance resulting from design ; from a sovereign predestination deliberating on the " to be" or " not to be," as a question with Itself alone ; and also under what conditions and for what ends, — agreeably to the anthem of the elders, " Thou hast created all things ;