that we almost forget maturity and its cares, and are children once more.
Let them come back now, and with them all their tender associations--with
them thoughts of early home; brothers, sisters, father, and more than all
of her, who stood to us in Mary's place, and blessed us with a Christian
Mother's love!
But can the association rest there? No! Upward to Him, so holy in
childhood, so glorious in maturity--to Him, Friend and Saviour, Messiah,
from whom our best blessings flow, let our gratitude rise, and to God,
through Him, let our devotion be exalted! We have no hymn to the Virgin
Mother, no Ora pro Nobis for the beatified Madonna. Simple faith is better
than romantic tradition. To us heaven is fairer for possessing that Mother
and that Child.
_Christmas Day._
New Things.
NEW THINGS.
Measured by any human standard, how daring was the vision of the Christian
seer! From Patmos, his watchtower of rock in the Aegean Sea, midway between
the hemispheres of ancient civilization, he surveyed the ruling powers of
the world, declared their doom, and the rise of a new kingdom, even the
City of God. The predominant forces of the existing age took visible shape
before his inspired imagination. Jewish bigotry, Pagan idolatry, Roman
despotism, led on by the master spirit of evil, stood before him, as so
many fearful monsters. Equally vivid were the forms of divine agency by
which they were to be subdued. From Him who sat upon the throne revealed
in heaven, came the decree, "Behold, I make all things new." Our pen need
not lose its cheerfulness in writing of this opening year, with such
imagery in view.
How much of that vision has been proved true? Enough surely to save it
from the charge of presumption, enough to ascribe its daring rather to a
devotion mindful of divine guidance than to a wilfulness impatient of
delay. The former things have passed away. The old temple is remembered
only for the sake of its spiritual archetype. The despot's purple has
faded before the bloodstained robes of the martyrs. The idols to which
men bowed on both the Aegean shores, the European and the Asiatic, have
fallen. Even the crescent, that has for a time displaced the cross, and
which now in the city of Constantinople gleams from the dome of St.
Sophia, forms no exception to the statement, for it marks no idolatrous
shrine, but like the orb which it represents is but a partial reflection
of the great source of light, before which it must one day grow pale.
Gradually, but none the less mightily, the new power went on its way, and
ere long from beyond the Mediterranean on the Carthaginian shore, there
came a great response to the exile of the Aegean. When Augustine wrote his
"City of God," the philosopher of history confirmed the vision of the
seer, as he celebrated the triumphs of that word which planted the cross
above the throne of the Caesars. Tempting indeed is the historical survey
this presented, but we must not yield to the enticement. We must quit this
grand prospect of the nations, and speak of the Gospel, as sent chief of
all for the renewal of the soul and the redemption of the home.
World-regenerating power as it is, its first prerogative is its
life-renewing office.
This principle we are prepared to lay down at the outset, that in the
order of Providence Jesus Christ is the spiritual head of the human race,
and that men and nations find redemption and true life from God through
Him. What was said of old, needs to be said now "Behold I make all things
new"--now in the ears alike of those who have never heard Christian
truth, and of those who have lulled themselves to slumber beneath its
familiar sound. Nay, the most sincere Christians need constant renewing in
the light of first principles and by the spirit of true life. Their piety
is apt to harden into formalism--their charity to narrow into some kind of
clanship--their industry to sink into a low worldly prudence apart from
all divine aims.
It is not easy for any of us to begin the New-Year without a pleasant
sense of freshness or renovation, as if some former burdens had passed
away and many things had become new. This is well, and needs only to be
made better. As we renew our friendships, we should not fail to renew our
relation with the Great Friend, and invoke his blessing upon the opening
months.
* * * * *
We need first of all to review our principles. These we regard as
constituting the essentials of our faith. However right they may have
been, we are very apt to lose sight of them, or gradually, perhaps almost
unconsciously, allow others to creep into their place. The word of Christ
to us now is as of old, "Believe." What do we believe? What to us is the
greatest reality? Many things are true--what to us is the truth? Many
words are important--what to us is _the_ word? Answer not in the language
of decent custom or technical phrase, but from the heart. We have all said
at some time more or less definitely, "We believe in God, the Creator of
the world, in Jesus Christ his Son and express image, in the Holy Spirit,
the witness within the soul." When we believe thus truly, then we have
the true principles of living. We own the Divine government, acknowledge
its representative, honor its form of life. But our belief becomes an
empty word, unless with enlarged knowledge and experience, it is
constantly renewed; and as we pass into new fields of thought, action,
observation, we subdue this added territory to the rightful sovereignty,
and interpret all things in the light of Divine truth. Have we done
this--are we doing it? Or have we left our faith behind us, and in our
world of business or pleasure, do we find ourselves either utterly without
God, or with Him only in the most vague and distant idea? True faith is
not overcome by the world, but overcomes the world.
We learn a great many things as our years pass, and there is a
knowledge--do we not know it? that increaseth sorrow. Such is all the
knowledge that shuts out the light of God; and leads man away from a
filial faith in the Eternal Parent and the heavenly home. Such stores
indeed increase our nominal domain, but only as he would enlarge his
estate who were to conquer Sahara and pitch his tent among desert sands
where no living water is.
Faith--the faith that God is Father of men--that he is in Christ, and
through Him will visit us in the soul and the life, makes all things
new--constantly leads us into new experience of Divine truth, and makes
old things appear in a new light. This is no narrow creed for the recluse
or the mystic. It is for men of all tempers and conditions. Nay, they need
it most, whose pursuits are most likely to chain them down to the earth.
For them indeed occasional leisure and recreation has no small solace.
But, the best solace for world-weariness is the rest of the soul in God;
the mind's trust in the greatest of realities, the Being of beings. All
pleasure that deadens this trust but adds to the weariness which it would
charm away and is the serpent's whisper, that promises the peace which
comes only from the heavenly dove. Above all our prudence, all our labors
and expedients, we are compelled to look for the true light. Revive,
increase our faith, and straightway all things are new. God reveals new
features of his Providence, and things familiar have a new expression, and
speak no longer only of the earth.
* * * * *
Who can recur thus to first principles and find from them better light and
peace, without carrying the renewing influence into the sphere of the
affections? Here the Divine Word has a voice for us--a voice too much
neglected because identified either with a perplexing theological system
or a shallow sentimentalism. God is love, and he that loveth not knoweth
not God. This truth came from Him who made the soul, and knows well its
wants. Bring it near to us and feel its renovating power. There seems
always indeed to be a peculiar peril in moralizing upon the affections,
and they are very apt to be chilled by the precepts that most insist upon
their vitality and warmth. But the Christian Gospel is little disposed to
waive its imperious claims from fear of the metaphysician or the
sentimentalist. It says Love God and the brethren, and bids us make this
truth practical. As the years pass, instead of having less affection, we
ought to have more. A true life always has more, as it enlarges its
experience and its faculty--not indeed more of that superficial
sensibility which is the burden of so many moon-struck rhymesters and the
great staple of the common romancers, but more of that divine charity,
that vital good-will, which holds filial communion with the Father, and,
striving to be perfect even as he is perfect, carries the light and warmth
of its presence into every sphere of life. In fact, the highest human
wisdom is affectionate as it is mature. The novice in thought may be sharp
and crabbed, but the sage is tolerant and kind. He who sees the truth in
its reality, sees that it is the form which contains and expresses
goodness. If there be a kind of intellectual power that is bitter and
malicious, it is sure to be only some shape of low cunning or some
perversion of the better reason--some perversion that shows Lucifer's
fall, if it shine with something of his light. The Master and they who
learned of him were full of love as of wisdom. Such is the plan of God's
moral government based upon the nature of his own being.
The Father calls us to be followers of him as dear children, and in the
sober thought of mature years to cherish more than the impulsive affection
of childhood. He demands that our whole life-plan should be guided, nay,
pervaded with good-will. If there be less sensitiveness upon the surface
of the character, there should be a deeper sentiment within. He is ready
to help us win the grace, which he commends. Through devout thought,
whether of meditation or prayer--through every act which brings us near to
himself, whether of self-denying humanity or of common neighborly
kindness, he is ready to impart to the soul something of the fulness of
his Spirit, and renew our being in its central spring.
We need this influence in our near affinities and remoter relations. The
ice gathers about us, and should be melted away. The most intimate ties
become dull and indifferent through custom, and the nearest friends,
because of their nearness, lose interest as if estranged. In the same
Divine fountain we refresh every home feeling and social sympathy.
Realizing anew our relation to God, we are ready to see more of his
goodness in all things around, and regard every aspect of humanity, as a
call upon us to appreciate his love for us by our own for his creatures.
The point of view is at once changed, and we look upon our fellow-beings
no longer in the spirit of harsh critics, exacting all things and owing
nothing, but as ourselves dependants upon Divine favor, and owing mercy
even as we have received. Every human tie is in peril, when this sentiment
is forgotten. When its force is felt, every sphere of life has a blessing.
Home wears a new smile, and its mutual deference repeats the great law of
Heaven. Strifes among kindred and acquaintances cease. The sternest censor
of the follies and vices of mankind mingles mercy with his judgment, and
considers with thoughtful compassion the infirmities at which the cynic
scoffs. Because he opens his heart, he does not shut his eyes, but with
judgment keen, yet tender and forbearing, in a spirit wise and benign,
nay, Christlike, he looks upon the strange drama of human life, and whilst
he cannot wholly solve its problem, sees enough of God in the universe and
among men to submit the ultimate solution to the Divine Power, and finds a
very sure way of helping on the Divine plans by a life of justice, energy
and good-will. Who of us does not need more of this spirit, more sense of
God's love to us, as the great source of kind affection to one another?
* * * * *
For want of it, and of the filial faith in which it has its root, we
wither up, and our best strength is lost. Nay, our very work
languishes--our labor, whatever it may be, loses its zest. There is no man
of generous mind, who has not at some time accepted his life-work in a
spirit truly religious, feeling that its burdens are to be borne in a
Christian temper, and its duties done with reference to exalted aims. But
how often the better purpose languishes, and we pursue our toil away from
the fountains of true life, separating the spheres which God has joined
together, robbing our daily life of the freshness and power, which our
youthful zeal possessed without care, and which need only to be truly
cared for to be preserved, nay, to grow in vigor. It is not always so with
us, but too often; and there are none who do not need renovation in
respect to their life-plan and work. Some things we should do, that we
have not done--some things, that we have done, should have been left
undone. There is much efficacy in a sober and honest review of our
personal career, of what we have achieved, suffered, gained, lost, and of
what has been our use alike of our successes and disappointments. God has
given to us something of his own power of judgment, and we are the better
either by the rebuke or the encouragement of the "Ill-done" or the
"Well-done," pronounced by ourselves upon ourselves. More power still
comes from bringing all the higher resources of our being upon our labor,
refusing to become the serfs of a slavish routine of task-work, and
keeping our hours and weeks fresh alike by the faculties that we exert,
and the aims to which we look. Happy, indeed, the man, whatever be the
sphere of his action, whose being is renewed rather than exhausted by his
toil. Only a filial faith and love can insure this blessing. A cheerful
temper is much, but not all; and no merely animal spirits can suffice to
renovate the mind under so many vicissitudes and disappointments as most
lives present. A man's _spirit_ is the chief fact in determining his
_spirits_, and the spirit can be kept fresh and strong only by communion
with the God who gave it. They who take the work of life as given by God
in kindness, and as to be done faithfully and cheerfully, filially, keep
and enlarge their power. Whatever their sphere, they wait upon the Lord,
and they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength--they shall
mount up with wings as eagles--they shall run and not be weary--they shall
walk and not faint.
* * * * *
Thus following the leadings of Divine Providence, we find the true
fountain of life. All things are ever new, and in our faint human
experience we are able to know something of the bliss of that Infinite
and Omniscient, to whom all things are known--to whom there is no past or
future, yet whose is the fulness of an ever-renewing life, the great I Am,
from everlasting to everlasting. Existence becomes more serene, yet more
earnest; less impassioned, not less affectionate; less impulsive, but far
more interesting. There are two kinds of renewal, distant as are earth and
heaven. The one comes from the novelty of a constant variety, the other
from the freshness of an ever truer life. Just across the sea the exile of
Patmos could have found an excellent example to place in contrast with the
spirit of renewal which he urged. The Athenian--and he is in this respect
more favored with followers than in his Attic refinement--spent his time
in seeking for some new thing. Common life was stupid, its business was
contemptible and fit only for slaves. Different the spirit, as the lot of
this novelty hunter from that of the Christian with his ever renewed mind.
The one finds what is new by skimming over surfaces, the other by drawing
from inexhaustible depths. The one scatters his forces as he seeks to
refresh them, the other concentrates his powers in the very process of
renovation. The one yields to a passion for mental dissipation that burns
and wastes like a fever, the other follows a law of life, whose pulses
beat in ever serener health--nay, beat in ever-renewing vigor, and sound
no funeral marches to the grave. In short, the one indulges in a mental
distraction that has in itself the principle of exhaustion; the other is
nurtured by the Divine aliment which gives a life that is eternal.
Are not our own experience and observation full of illustrations of the
truth that has been presented. Are not history and biography constant
witnesses of the ever-renovating power of a genuine faith, and love, and
work, and also of the fate of worldly passion to exhaust its own springs
of enjoyment. How signal an illustration we may take from the destiny of
two men of the last century, who, more than any others, moved France and
England--the nations to which they spoke. Mirabeau, a man of robust frame
and singular native eloquence, was cut down in the very meridian of his
day by a disease which was an expressive close and consequence of the
fitful fever of his life of passion. His last words, in their gorgeous
rhetoric, showed with what opiates he had drugged his soul: "Sprinkle me
with perfumes, crown me with flowers, and thus let me sink into the
eternal sleep." Within that very month, a far different death-scene was
presented across the British Channel. An old man of nearly four-score
years and ten, rests peacefully upon his bed, surrounded by a company of
friends, who feel quite as much joy as grief, as they look upon his face
and hear his words. Although of frame naturally delicate, and of gifts by
no means brilliant, he has moved the hearts of myriads by his appeals, and
won a name better than that of founders of empires. The very week previous
he had continued his round of labors, and his strength was not abated as
he pleaded his Master's cause. He sank to his rest in God with the words
of the anthem,
"I'll praise my Maker with my breath,"
on his lips, and the strain which was broken by the touch of death seemed
to his companions to be finished by a voice from the spiritual world,
saying:
"Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
My days of praise shall ne'er be past,
While life, and thought, and being last,
Or immortality endures."
Mirabeau and Wesley! Thus different are the ends of wilful passion and
unswerving fidelity. All lives, according as they are true or false, renew
this contrast.
* * * * *
"Behold, I create all things new," saith the Lord. For good or for ill,
this decree must be applied to us. In some way we are all changing as the
years pass. Our lives are wasting away, unless they are renovated by a
truer spirit, and thus winning ever more than they lose. What do we most
need that time may be ever newer and happier, and the hours move on
neither with lagging weariness nor drunken haste, but in the Divine order
marked out for them by their Lord?
Are there not some things to be put off, as well as some things to be put
on? Answer honestly as we look the New Year in the face--answer as to a
messenger from God. What weight are we carrying, that we need to lay
aside? What evil habit is fixing itself upon us, shutting out the light of
God, chilling the better affections, deadening the nobler powers, and
threatening, perhaps, beneath its insidious smile to take from existence
more of its beauty and joy and strength? Let each consider well his own
besetting sin, and put it off. With the falling burden, scales fall from
his eyes--he sees God anew. For him the former things have passed
away--all things are become new. What makes our being fresher and happier
than the conviction that the coming years are better than the past!
Off with the old burdens, and put on the new armor. There is something for
each of us to do--something for each one of us specific and peculiar as
our own individuality--something for all of us as universal as our common
humanity. The specific thing and the universal good pursue as if for life
itself. God bless us in the striving, and crown us in the work. Each year
in its sober experience give us new hopes for ourselves and the future of
our race.
_New Year._
Solicitude of Parents
SOLICITUDE OF PARENTS.
Our thoughts turn now more particularly to the circle of home relations,
and we propose to give some plain views of them with an especial eye to
the temptations of city life. The duty of parents is the topic first in
order.
Few if any words are given in the Scriptures to persuading parents to love
their children, or to wish to provide for them. The affection is taken for
granted, and they who have it not are set aside by themselves as monsters.
If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house,
he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.
It is not upon the parental sentiment itself, but upon its due direction,
that Christianity rests its emphasis; as well it may, for what sentiment
has gone more astray from the true mark, and in mistaken kindness hurt
those whom it would most bless. "What man," asks our Saviour, "would give
his son a stone instead of bread, or a serpent instead of a fish?" Not
one, if he really knew it or saw it. Yet what is more frequent than such
wrong indirectly done?
* * * * *
Take the first and most obvious form of parental solicitude, the form
literally connected with the question just cited--we mean the physical
maintenance of children. It would be wasting words in this or any
respectable assembly, to try to prove that parents should provide food and
clothing for their offspring. Yet here, and every where, in our mode of
making this provision, many very grave questions may arise. Kind feeling
is not enough. Without knowledge and forethought, we may hurt where we
wish to help--we may kill where we wish to cure. At every step we need
better counsel than any instinctive fondness, or childish caprice, or
worldly fashion. The Creator has a lesson for us in the use of all his
gifts, and if we do not heed it, what we give as bread may turn out a
stone, and what seems to us a fish may sting like a serpent.
In providing food, clothing, air, exercise, for our children, we are to
study those solemn and inexorable laws which God has enacted for the rule
of the body. In this lower court of creation there is no pardoning power,
and the wrong done to the constitution in childhood is a wrong for a
lifetime. We apprehend that in no one point is our American society more
in error and more at variance, not only with natural laws, but even with
the best European standard, than in the physical education of children.
They are fed often on the trash of the confectioner, instead of the simple
aliments nearest the hints of nature, and by improper dress and hours they
are forced into a precocious maturity of mind and body, equally hurtful to
both.