The source and fullness of created good is the knowledge and enjoyment
of God. "Give what thou wilt, without thee we are poor; and with thee
rich, take what thou wilt away." The wicked are like a ship's crew at
sea, carried by the winds upon unknown waters, without peace or safety
until they can renew communications with the shore. A man alienated from
his God is without his proper relations, and separated from the fountain
of happiness, is like a child unconscious of his father--an orphan,
forced along, the sport of accident, with no hope for the future, but
darkness that may overshadow his pathway to the tomb. If we were at once
deprived of all knowledge of God where would we find hopes for support
in the gloomy hours of adversity? What sadness would reign over the
world! What black despair! O, what a chasm it would make to strike the
Infinite One out of existence! "The angels might retire in silence and
weep, or fly through infinite space seeking some token of the Father
they had lost. With unbounded grief and despair they might wing their
way farther and farther, with their harps all unstrung, and every song
silent, and the soul-harrowing words, 'We have no Father, no God, a
blind chance rules,' might be all that would break the awful silence of
heaven. Let the glorious words once more be heard, 'God reigns, he
lives, he reigns,' and what joy would fill the heavens and the earth."
The child of sorrow would lift up his head and say, "Our Father who art
in heaven." The heavenly songsters would string anew their harps, and
send the good news far and wide, "He lives, he reigns, God over all,
blessed forever."
"We are not able to estimate the effect it would produce to blot the
knowledge of God from the universe. We can not appreciate the state of
that mind which labors under the impression that God is retiring.
Perhaps we have one momentary example of the sad gloom that takes
possession of the man under such circumstances. It is seen in the
Savior's dying words, 'My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?'"
In our nature and condition there are two sources of misery--the mind,
or conscience, disturbed by sin, and the body affected by disease and
death. Sinful emotions cause disquietude, uneasiness, sorrow and misery,
bitterness, recrimination, reciprocated treachery, infuriated rage,
malignant and stormy passions; envy, jealousy, suspicion and unlawful
desires distract the mind and quench its joys. Who can be happy in such
a condition? Disquieted and corrupted affections cause the greater part
of the unhappiness or misery of the race. The angels of light could not
be happy in such a murky sea. Our great ancestors were doomed to toil in
a world of disappointment and sorrow for yielding to such a guide. Haman
occupied a high position at the court of Persia, yet he made himself
miserable because "Mordecai the Jew sat at the king's gate." And Ahab,
on the throne of Israel, "refused to eat bread" because he could not get
possession of the vineyard of Naboth. Men can not be happy with such
passions reigning in the mind, and yet they are found in almost every
bosom, unless it has been purified by the influence of the gospel of
Jesus the Christ. The great idols of this world are fame, pleasure and
wealth, and the love of these is the strong passion of the heart. But it
is the most prolific source of individual, social and public misfortune,
the most mischievous, contentious and demoralizing passion. The
ambitious, the voluptuous, the rich and the great are not necessarily
happy. Alexander wept upon the throne of the world because there was not
another world for him to conquer.
In the midst of seminal pleasures and corrupt passions men are always
miserable. The influence of the Gospel of Christ is the only remedy for
such diseases. It saves men from aggravating selfishness and holds in
check their fierce passions until they are extinguished. Virtuous
affections are invariably the great sources of human happiness. They are
fountains of living waters, which purify the mind and make their
possessors happy. They are as rivers of water in a thirsty land.
In the teachings of Christ we learn all that pertains to true happiness,
in what it consists and how to obtain it. There we are admonished of
mere worldly blessings, because the desire for them is generally so
intense that it becomes a source of corruption, and in our successes we
often forget our highest interests. The Savior left in the background
the commonly received notions of men touching the sources of true
happiness. He said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit," referring not to
those who are temporally poor. The wicked are poor as well as the
righteous. O, how dreadfully miserable are the wicked poor! a miserable
life here, followed by a miserable hereafter. Many poor persons are
haughty, ungodly, dishonest, profligate and unhappy. Neither does it
mean voluntary poverty, or to turn mendicant monks and friars. It means
the humble, those who are deeply sensible of their spiritual or mental
and moral wants; in other words, those who feel that there is a place in
their spiritual nature for the blessings of the Gospel of Christ. It is
opposed to self-righteousness. The poor in spirit come to God through
Christ, and, putting all their trust in him, submit to the divine will
under all the trying dispensations of his providence.
The poor in spirit are always sensible of their need of salvation, but
the proud in spirit are "clean in their own eyes." Their goodness is
like the morning cloud and the early dew, yet they say, Stand by
thyself; I am holier than thou. "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed
are the meek. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
righteousness. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
What a sublime rebuke to the spirit of this world! It is a grand
contrast to the uneasy desires of greedy covetousness; to the
disposition of the gay; to the degradation of the impure; to the
senseless pleasures of the ambitious, when new fires ignite their hopes
only to plunge them into deeper darkness. The Bible's happiest soul is
he who has most of its peculiar mind and character. Not on account of
earthly riches, for he may be one of the Lord's poor, who, like his
blessed Master, has "no place to lay his head." Not because he has
sought and obtained honor from men, but because he sought and "seeks the
honor which cometh from God only." Not because he has much of this
world, but because he is a Christian. He may not have the greatest
capacity, but he has a state of mind that prepares him to rightly
estimate and enjoy all that is worth enjoying. "To the upright there
ariseth light in the darkness." They are wisely guided, comforted and
encouraged in the most gloomy wilderness. They are not oppressed with
doubts; sorrow does not crush them. Darkness gives place to light, and
the seeming evil turns to good. They often sip honey from the most
bitter flowers. They yield not to fear, for they believe in God, and are
assured, by a thousand contrasts, that "all things work together for
good to those who love God." One of the never-failing sources of
happiness for which we are under obligations to Jesus the Christ is the
mind and character which he requires of us. "A good man shall be
satisfied from himself."
"Man was created for an active life. Effort is the true element of a
well regulated mind. Undisturbed soil becomes hard and unproductive. Its
bosom is shut up against the dews and the rains, and also against the
warm rays of the sun. So it is with the mind when it is closed up and
deprived of healthy action; this man lives for himself alone, and only
the baser passions spring up in his breast. His soul is too narrow for
Christian benevolence; sympathy and emotion are disabled and all his
nobler faculties languish. Action, from intelligent and benevolent
principles, is a great fountain of happiness. Few streams of bliss equal
those which flow from charitable exertions. Benevolence and well-doing
are great inducements to future exertions, because of the fact that they
are their own reward in a thousand different ways. The seed thus sown
brings back an hundred fold, and a rich harvest to others, which adds to
the abundance of our own happiness. But where shall we go for those
principles of action? Shall we search for them in nature? Can reason
alone discover them? Are they found in the teachings of philosophy? Are
they gathered from observation? Does not our world need Revelation to
make known the true aim and end of our being?" Cicero said, "Those who
do not agree in stating what is the chief end, or good, must of course
differ in the whole system of precepts for the conduct of human life."
He also says there was so great a dissention among the philosophers,
upon this subject, that it was almost impossible to enumerate their
different sentiments. So it came to pass that exertions for benevolent
ends were seldom, if ever, put forth by pagans in pagan lands--they knew
nothing of the happiness springing from such a source.
Great efforts from great motives are the glory and blessedness of our
nature. In the Bible only men have learned what great motives and
efforts are. There we find food to sustain them and wisdom to guide
them. Nowhere in the pages of infidel philosophy can we find such an
injunction as this: "Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, do all to the
glory of God." Where else do we find this Christian maxim: "None of us
liveth to himself, and none of us dieth to himself; but whether we live,
we live unto the Lord, and whether we die, we die unto the Lord." He or
she alone is the happy one who is taught to consider the nature and
tendencies of human conduct, and whether it will stand the test before
God, and advance the ends of his truth and love in the world; who makes
the Lord's will the ends of his or her life and lives to please God and
show forth his praise. Such a life is necessarily a happy one, because
it is one _full_ of goodness. There is daily joy in such daily activity.
No man can be wretched while acting from the principle of communicative
goodness. Such are happy whatever their sphere or occupation may be.
Their aims are high. Their objects sustain them and their impulses
encourage or strengthen them. Their anticipations are joyous and their
reflections are tranquil. They look backward with delight and forward
with hope. Their conscience approves them. They have not buried their
talents. They are not encumberers of the ground.
They live to bless the children of men. When they die they will to them
their counsel, their example and prayers. Benevolent habits are a great
source of happiness, for which we are indebted to the religion of
Christ.
It is vain to attempt to persuade ourselves that human misery does not
exist. We can not get away from it by arming ourselves with stoical
insensibility. Evils lie all about us; we ourselves are made to feel
them. If we open our eyes upon the pages of time we see a continuous
series of beings who appear for a short time and then pass away. Their
beds are bedewed with tears, and soon the emblems of death are hung
about their doors. O, what wonderful scenes lie between the cradle and
the grave! What hours of sadness and gloom! Here, in the midst of life,
we realize disappointments, losses, painful diseases and heart-rending
discouragements, defeated hopes and withered honors. Here are good
reasons for the interposition of redeeming love. Does the God who loves
us sympathize with us in our woes? We are liable at every step in life
to great individual and domestic calamities. No hour can be free from
the fear that what we value the most on the earth may be snatched away
to-morrow.
Trees and flowers grow to their full stature, fill up their measure of
time, and pass away. Beasts and birds are more rarely cut off with
disease. Their lives are not embittered with the expectation of death;
the knowledge of the past and the present is all they have; they have no
knowledge of the morrow; they live contented in their ignorance and
indifference, and, at last, sink into the deep, unending night, "being
made to be taken and destroyed."
But this is not the history of man. He perishes from the cradle to the
tomb--"suffers a hundred deaths in fearing one." He is conscious of the
dangers that beset him. He is hedged in on every side. Death is
constantly destroying his fondest hopes and causing him the sorest
grief. It bursts the ties that bind heart to heart, and the dearest
fellowships are severed, and the joys of a blessed life are wrapped in
the gloom of death. All there was of earthly bliss in the bygone now
makes up his anguish. Is it possible that life and death walk
"arm-in-arm?" Yes; even while we are happy in the enjoyment of one, the
other comes and casts the fearful mantle over all our earthly prospects.
Seal up this blessed volume of life, and I know not from whence the
light is to spring which would cheer this gloomy picture. Without this,
man would be in a grade of blessedness beneath the brutes that perish.
It would be better to be anything than rational without the religion of
Jesus Christ and the intelligence of the Bible. The Scriptures inform us
that these things have a cause, that they come from God's dealings with
his creatures, that the unseen hand which permits these trials is
benevolent and wise. Sorrow has its design, and it is neither unkind nor
malignant. These things have a moral cause; they are the great rebuke of
God for sin. They are also a part of the discipline of a Heavenly
Father, designed to co-operate with the Gospel in bringing back all
those who are intelligently exercised thereby to their forsaken God.
The antidote for all these ills culminating in death was the tree of
life. When man sinned against his God he was put away from the tree of
life. If he had remained with it he would have been beyond the reach of
the motive of life, and beyond the restraining power of the fear of
death. He would have lived forever, subject, like fallen angels, to
mental suffering during the ages to come. But being placed beyond the
reach of the tree of life he may be redeemed by the love of life to a
higher state. When the rebellious see and realize this great truth,
being exercised by the chastening hand of God, they are often subdued to
submission, to peace, and under the heaviest calamities they often look
upward and say, "It is the Lord, let his will be done." And this, of
itself, is a source of unbounded bliss.
We often submit to present pain when counseled to do so by those in
whose wisdom and goodness we trust. As Christians we extend this
principle to all the sufferings of this life. Doing so, we have that
feeling of quiet submission growing out of permanent confidence in God
which supports us under all the trials to which we have been subjected
by an all-wise Father. This principle is wonderfully fruitful in
consolations to the bereaved and mourning--it is the joy of all
Christian hearts. "The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice." What shall
we say of the hopes and prospects of bereaved souls? Is it blind
conjecture that there is an existence beyond the shadows? Is there no
life to come? No great resurrection? No comforter to arrest the current
of mourning and lamentation?
How natural it is, when reminded of our loss, to exclaim, Shall we not
meet them again? Is this parting to last forever? Is there a God? Has he
not answered this agonizing inquiry? When we sit down upon the brink of
those waters which have swallowed up our living treasures and weep and
call upon the waves of eternity to give back our dear ones, when, from
the shores of time, we look and gaze and listen, does no voice reach us?
_Yes!_ To the ear of faith there is a voice. It is the voice of our God.
We listen. The words come ringing in our hearts, "For if we believe that
Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will
God bring with him." _Our grief is allayed._ We believe and are
comforted. We look forward to a happy meeting. A reunion for eternity
hovers before us like a bright star, lights up our pathway, and leads us
forward in a living hope.
Nowhere in the Bible is human sorrow clothed with cold indifference. The
counsels of that book and its promises are so adapted to the sorrowing
that those who have passed through the furnace of affliction know best
their value. There is no such relief from sorrow found away from the
faith of God and the Bible.
There is an hour when we _ourselves_ must die? Shall we trifle with the
will of God till then? Can we trifle with death when it comes? "The
sting of death is sin." Death never fails to bring along with it a keen
sense of guilt to the guilty unless they are cut off in a moment, and
then who knows the anguish that may be experienced just beyond? What is
there to soothe the sorrow of the dying sinner?--of that wicked soul who
never obeyed his God nor did anything to make the world better for his
existence? Let none of us live at a distance from our God. Let none of
us approach death without the necessary preparation for mutual
association with him. Let none of us bear the burden of a guilty
conscience in that hour. May none of us be so cruel as to leave the
hearts that love us in doubt respecting our condition in death. May we
never tread its dark waters without the light of the glorious promises
and facts of the religion of Jesus the Christ. Let us keep our souls
pure in obeying the truth through the Spirit. Let us live with and obey
God, do good and be happy.
INDEBTEDNESS TO REVELATION--No. II.