not give for thanks, nor to have his name published in the papers as one
of six who had given fifty thousand to do so and so; but he gave because
it was _in_ him to give, and we all know that it is an old rule in
medicine, as well as morals, that what is _in_ a man must be brought
out. Then, again, he had heard it reported that there had been One of
distinguished authority who had expressed the opinion that it was "_more
blessed to give than to receive_," and he very much believed
it--believed it because the One who said it must have known, since for
man's sake _he_ once gave away ALL.
And so, when some thriftless, distant relation, whose debts he had paid
a dozen times over, gave him an overhauling on the subject of
liberality, and seemed inclined to take him by the throat for further
charity, he calmed himself down by a chapter or two from the New
Testament and half a dozen hymns, and then sent him a good, brotherly
letter of admonition and counsel, with a bank note to enforce it; and
when some querulous old woman, who had had a tenement of him rent free
for three or four years, sent him word that if he didn't send and mend
the water pipes she would move right out, he sent and mended them.
People said that he was foolish, and that it didn't do any good to do
for ungrateful people; but Mr. H. knew that it did _him_ good. He loved
to do it, and he thought also on some words that ran to this effect: "Do
good and lend, _hoping for nothing again_." He literally hoped for
nothing again in the way of reward, either in this world or in heaven,
beyond the present pleasure of the deed; for he had abundant occasion to
see how favors are forgotten in this world; and as for another, he had
in his own soul a standard of benevolence so high, so pure, so ethereal,
that but One of mortal birth ever reached it. He felt that, do what he
might, he fell ever so far below the life of that _spotless One_--that
his crown in heaven must come to him at last, not as a reward, but as a
free, eternal gift.
But all this while our friend and his little companion have been
pattering along the wet streets, in the rain and sleet of a bitter cold
evening, till they stopped before a grocery. Here a large cross-handled
basket was first bought, and then filled with sundry packages of tea,
sugar, candles, soap, starch, and various other matters; a barrel of
flour was ordered to be sent after him on a dray. Mr. H. next stopped at
a dry goods store and bought a pair of blankets, with which he loaded
down the boy, who was happy enough to be so loaded; and then, turning
gradually from the more frequented streets, the two were soon lost to
view in one of the dimmest alleys of the city.
The cheerful fire was blazing in his parlor, as, returned from his long,
wet walk, he was sitting by it with his feet comfortably incased in
slippers. The astral was burning brightly on the centre table, and a
group of children were around it, studying their lessons.
"Papa," said a little boy, "what does this verse mean? It's in my Sunday
school lesson. 'Make to yourselves _friends of the mammon of
unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into
everlasting habitations_.'"
"You ought to have asked your teacher, my son."
"But he said he didn't know exactly what it meant. He wanted me to look
this week and see if I could find out."
Mr. H.'s standing resource in all exegetical difficulties was Dr.
Scott's Family Bible. Therefore he now got up, and putting on his
spectacles, walked to the glass bookcase, and took down a volume of that
worthy commentator, and opening it, read aloud the whole exposition of
the passage, together with the practical reflections upon it; and by the
time he had done, he found his young auditor fast asleep in his chair.
"Mother," said he, "this child plays too hard. He can't keep his eyes
open evenings. It's time he was in bed."
"I wasn't asleep, pa," said Master Henry, starting up with that air of
injured innocence with which gentlemen of his age generally treat an
imputation of this kind.
"Then can you tell me now what the passage means that I have been
reading to you?"
"There's so much of it," said Henry, hopelessly, "I wish you'd just tell
me in short order, father."
"O, read it for yourself," said Mr. H., as he pushed the book towards
the boy, for it was to be confessed that he perceived at this moment
that he had not himself received any particularly luminous impression,
though of course he thought it was owing to his own want of
comprehension.
Mr. H. leaned back in his rocking chair, and on his own private account
began to speculate a little as to what he really should think the verse
might mean, supposing he were at all competent to decide upon it. "'Make
to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,'" says he:
"that's money, very clearly. How am I to make friends with it or of it?
Receive me into everlasting habitations: that's a singular kind of
expression. I wonder what it means. Dr. Scott makes some very good
remarks about it--but somehow I'm not exactly clear." It must be
remarked that this was not an uncommon result of Mr. H.'s critical
investigations in this quarter.
Well, thoughts will wander; and as he lay with his head on the back of
his rocking chair, and his eyes fixed on the flickering blaze of the
coal, visions of his wet tramp in the city, and of the lonely garret he
had been visiting, and of the poor woman with the pale, discouraged
face, to whom he had carried warmth and comfort, all blended themselves
together. He felt, too, a little indefinite creeping chill, and some
uneasy sensations in his head like a commencing cold, for he was not a
strong man, and it is probable his long, wet walk was likely to cause
him some inconvenience in this way. At last he was fast asleep, nodding
in his chair.
He dreamed that he was very sick in bed, that the doctor came and went,
and that he grew sicker and sicker. He was going to die. He saw his wife
sitting weeping by his pillow--his children standing by with pale and
frightened faces; all things in his room began to swim, and waver, and
fade, and voices that called his name, and sobs and lamentations that
rose around him, seemed far off and distant in his ear. "O eternity,
eternity! I am going--I am going," he thought; and in that hour, strange
to tell, not one of all his good deeds seemed good enough to lean
on--all bore some taint or tinge, to his purified eye, of mortal
selfishness, and seemed unholy before the ALL PURE. "I am going," he
thought; "there is no time to stay, no time to alter, to balance
accounts; and I know not what I am, but I know, O Jesus, what THOU art.
I have trusted in thee, and shall never be confounded;" and with that
last breath of prayer earth was past.
A soft and solemn breathing, as of music, awakened him. As an infant
child not yet fully awake hears the holy warblings of his mother's hymn,
and smiles half conscious, so the heaven-born became aware of sweet
voices and loving faces around him ere yet he fully woke to the new
immortal LIFE.
"Ah, he has come at last. How long we have waited for him! Here he is
among us. Now forever welcome! welcome!" said the voices.
Who shall speak the joy of that latest birth, the birth from death to
life! the sweet, calm, inbreathing consciousness of purity and rest, the
certainty that all sin, all weakness and error, are at last gone
forever; the deep, immortal rapture of repose--felt to be but
begun--never to end!
So the eyes of the heaven-born opened on the new heaven and the new
earth, and wondered at the crowd of loving faces that thronged about
him. Fair, godlike forms of beauty, such as earth never knew, pressed
round him with blessings, thanks, and welcome.
The man spoke not, but he wondered in his heart who they were, and
whence it came that they knew him; and as soon as the inquiry formed
itself in his soul, it was read at once by his heavenly friends. "I,"
said one bright spirit, "was a poor boy whom you found in the streets:
you sought me out, you sent me to school, you watched over me, and led
me to the house of God; and now here I am." "And we," said other voices,
"are other neglected children whom you redeemed; we also thank you."
"And I," said another, "was a lost, helpless girl: sold to sin and
shame, nobody thought I could be saved; every body passed me by till you
came. You built a home, a refuge for such poor wretches as I, and there
I and many like me heard of Jesus; and here we are." "And I," said
another, "was once a clerk in your store. I came to the city innocent,
but I was betrayed by the tempter. I forgot my mother, and my mother's
God. I went to the gaming table and the theatre, and at last I robbed
your drawer. You might have justly cast me off; but you bore with me,
you watched over me, you saved me. I am here through you this day." "And
I," said another, "was a poor slave girl--doomed to be sold on the
auction block to a life of infamy, and the ruin of soul and body. Had
you not been willing to give so largely for my ransom, no one had
thought to buy me. You stimulated others to give, and I was redeemed. I
lived a Christian mother to bring my children up for Christ--they are
all here with me to bless you this day, and their children on earth, and
their children's children are growing up to bless you." "And I," said
another, "was an unbeliever. In the pride of my intellect, I thought I
could demonstrate the absurdity of Christianity. I thought I could
answer the argument from miracles and prophecy; but your patient,
self-denying life was an argument I never could answer. When I saw you
spending all your time and all your money in efforts for your
fellow-men, undiscouraged by ingratitude, and careless of praise, then I
thought, 'There is something divine in that man's life,' and that
thought brought me here."
The man looked around on the gathering congregation, and he saw that
there was no one whom he had drawn heavenward that had not also drawn
thither myriads of others. In his lifetime he had been scattering seeds
of good around from hour to hour, almost unconsciously; and now he saw
every seed springing up into a widening forest of immortal beauty and
glory. It seemed to him that there was to be no end of the numbers that
flocked to claim him as their long-expected soul friend. His heart was
full, and his face became as that of an angel as he looked up to One who
seemed nearer than all, and said, "This is thy love for me, unworthy, O
Jesus. Of thee, and to thee, and through thee are all things. Amen."
Amen! as with chorus of many waters and mighty thunderings the sound
swept onward, and died far off in chiming echoes among the distant
stars, and the man awoke.
A SCENE IN JERUSALEM.
It is now nearly noon, the busiest and most bustling hour of the day;
yet the streets of the Holy City seem deserted and silent as the grave.
The artisan has left his bench, the merchant his merchandise; the
throngs of returned wanderers which this great national festival has
brought up from every land of the earth, and which have been for the
last week carrying life and motion through every street, seem suddenly
to have disappeared. Here and there solitary footfalls, like the last
pattering rain drops after a shower, awaken the echoes of the streets;
and here and there some lonely woman looks from the housetop with
anxious and agitated face, as if she would discern something in the far
distance.
Alone, or almost alone, the few remaining priests move like
white-winged, solitary birds over the gorgeous pavements of the temple,
and as they mechanically conduct the ministrations of the day, cast
significant glances on each other, and pause here and there to converse
in anxious whispers.
Ah there is one voice which they have often heard beneath those
arches--a voice which ever bore in it a mysterious and thrilling
charm--which they know will be hushed to-day. Chief priest, scribe, and
doctor have all gone out in the death procession after him; and these
few remaining ones, far from the excitement of the crowd, and busied in
calm and sacred duties, find voices of anxious questioning rising from
the depths of their own souls, "What if this indeed were the Christ?"
But pass we on out of the city, and what a surging tide of life and
motion meets the eye, as if all nations under heaven had dashed their
waves of population on this Judean shore! A noisy, wrathful, tempestuous
mob, billow on billow, waver and rally round some central object, which
it conceals from view. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in
Mesopotamia and Egypt, strangers of Rome, Cretes and Arabians, Jew and
Proselyte, convoked from the ends of the earth, throng in agitated
concourse one on another; one theme in every face, on every tongue, one
name in every variety of accent and dialect passing from lip to lip:
"Jesus of Nazareth!"
Look on that man--the centre and cause of all this outburst! He stands
there alone. The cross is ready. It lies beneath his feet. The rough
hand of a brutal soldier has seized his robe to tear it from him.
Another with stalwart arm is boring the holes, gazing upward the while
with a face of stupid unconcern. There on the ground lie the hammer and
the nails: the hour, the moment of doom is come! Look on this man, as
upward, with deep, sorrowing eyes, he gazes towards heaven. Hears he the
roar of the mob? Feels he the rough hand on his garment? Nay, he sees
not, feels not: from all the rage and tumult of the hour he is rapt
away. A sorrow deeper, more absorbing, more unearthly seems to possess
him, as upward with long gaze he looks to that heaven never before
closed to his prayer, to that God never before to him invisible. That
mournful, heaven-searching glance, in its lonely anguish, says but one
thing: "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God."
Through a life of sorrow the realized love of his Father has shone like
a precious and beautiful talisman in his bosom; but now, when desolation
and anguish have come upon him as a whirlwind, this last star has gone
out in the darkness, and Jesus, deserted by man and God, stands there
_alone_.
Alone? No; for undaunted by the cruel mob, fearless in the strength of
mortal anguish, helpless, yet undismayed, stands the one blessed among
women, the royal daughter of a noble line, the priestess to whose care
was intrusted this spotless sacrifice. She and her son, last of a race
of kings, stand there despised, rejected, and disavowed by their nation,
to accomplish dread words of prophecy, which have swept down for far
ages to this hour.
Strange it is, in this dark scene, to see the likeness between mother
and son, deepening in every line of those faces, as they stand thus
thrown out by the dark background of rage and hate, which like a storm
cloud lowers around. The same rapt, absorbed, calm intensity of anguish
in both mother and son, save only that while he gazes upward towards
God, she, with like fervor, gazes on him. What to her is the deriding
mob, the coarse taunt, the brutal abuse? Of it all she hears, she feels
nothing. She sinks not, faints not, weeps not; her whole being
concentrates in the will to suffer by and with him to the last. Other
hearts there are that beat for him; others that press into the doomed
circle, and own him amid the scorn of thousands. There may you see the
clasped hands and upraised eyes of a Magdalen, the pale and steady
resolve of John, the weeping company of women who bewailed and lamented
him; but none dare press so near, or seem so identical with him in his
sufferings, as this mother.
And as we gaze on these two in human form, surrounded by other human
forms, how strange the contrast! How is it possible that human features
and human lineaments essentially alike, can be wrought into such
heaven-wide contrast? MAN is he who stands there, lofty and spotless, in
bleeding patience! _Men_ also are those brutal soldiers, alike stupidly
ready, at the word of command, to drive the nail through quivering flesh
or insensate wood. _Men_ are those scowling priests and infuriate
Pharisees. _Men_, also, the shifting figures of the careless rabble, who
shout and curse without knowing why. No visible glory shines round that
head; yet how, spite of every defilement cast upon him by the vulgar
rabble, seems that form to be glorified! What light is that in those
eyes! What mournful beauty in that face! What solemn, mysterious
sacredness investing the whole form, constraining from us the
exclamation, "Surely this is the Son of God." _Man's_ voice is breathing
vulgar taunt and jeer: "He saved others; himself he cannot save." "He
trusted in God; let him deliver him if he will have him." And _man's_,
also, clear, sweet, unearthly, pierces that stormy mob, saying, "Father,
forgive them; they know not what they do."
But we draw the veil in reverence. It is not ours to picture what the
sun refused to shine upon, and earth shook to behold.
Little thought those weeping women, that stricken disciple, that
heart-broken mother, how on some future day that cross--emblem to them
of deepest infamy--should blaze in the eye of all nations, symbol of
triumph and hope, glittering on gorgeous fanes, embroidered on regal
banners, associated with all that is revered and powerful on earth. The
Roman ensign that waved on that mournful day, symbol of highest earthly
power, is a thing mouldered and forgotten; and over all the high places
of old Rome, herself stands that mystical cross, no longer speaking of
earthly anguish and despair, but of heavenly glory, honor, and
immortality.
Theologians have endlessly disputed and philosophized on this great fact
of _atonement_. The Bible tells only that this tragic event was the
essential point without which our salvation could never have been
secured. But where lay the necessity they do not say. What was that
dread strait that either the divine One must thus suffer, or man be
lost, who knoweth?
To this question answer a thousand voices, with each a different
solution, urged with equal confidence--each solution to its framer as
certain and sacred as the dread fact it explains--yet every one,
perhaps, unsatisfactory to the deep-questioning soul. The Bible, as it
always does, gives on this point not definitions or distinct outlines,
but images--images which lose all their glory and beauty if seized by
the harsh hands of metaphysical analysis, but inexpressibly affecting to
the unlettered human heart, which softens in gazing on their mournful
and mysterious beauty. Christ is called our sacrifice, our passover, our
atoning high priest; and he himself, while holding in his hands the
emblem cup, says, "It is my blood, shed for _many_, for the _remission
of sins_." Let us reason on it as we will, this story of the cross,
presented without explanation in the simple metaphor of the Bible, has
produced an effect on human nature wholly unaccountable. In every age
and clime, with every variety of habit, thought, and feeling, from the
cannibals of New Zealand and Madagascar to the most enlightened and
scientific minds in Christendom, one feeling, essentially homogeneous in
its character and results, has arisen in view of this cross. There is
something in it that strikes one of the great nerves of simple,
unsophisticated humanity, and meets its wants as nothing else will. Ages
ago, Paul declared to philosophizing Greek and scornful Roman that he
was not ashamed of this gospel, and alleged for his reason this very
adaptedness to humanity. _A priori_, many would have said that Paul
should have told of Christ living, Christ preaching, Christ working
miracles, not omitting also the pathetic history of how he sealed all
with his blood; but Paul declared that he determined to know nothing
else but Christ _crucified_. He said it was a stumbling block to the
Jew, an absurdity to the Greek; yet he was none the less positive in his
course. True, there was many then, as now, who looked on with the most
philosophic and cultivated indifference. The courtly Festus, as he
settled his purple tunic, declared he could make nothing of the matter,
only a dispute about one Jesus, who was dead, and whom Paul affirmed to
be alive; and perchance some Athenian, as he reclined on his ivory couch
at dinner, after the sermon on Mars Hill, may have disposed of the
matter very summarily, and passed on to criticisms on Samian wine and
marble vases. Yet in spite of their disbelief, this story of Christ has
outlived them, their age and nation, and is to this hour as fresh in
human hearts as if it were just published. This "one Jesus which was
dead, and whom Paul affirmed to be alive," is nominally, at least, the
object of religious homage in all the more cultivated portions of the
globe; and to hearts scattered through all regions of the earth this
same Jesus is now a sacred and living name, dearer than all household
sounds, all ties of blood, all sweetest and nearest affections of
humanity. "I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die for the name
of the Lord Jesus," are words that have found an echo in the bosoms of
thousands in every age since then; that would, if need were, find no
less echo in thousands now. Considering Christ as a man, and his death
as a mere pathetic story,--considering him as one of the great martyrs
for truth, who sealed it with his blood,--this result is wholly
unaccountable. Other martyrs have died, bravely and tenderly, in their
last hours "bearing witness of the godlike" that is in man; but who so
remembers them? Who so loves them? To whom is any one of them a living
presence, a life, an all? Yet so thousands look on Jesus at this hour.
Nay, it is because this story strikes home to every human bosom as an
individual concern. A thrilling voice speaks from this scene of anguish
to every human bosom: This is _thy_ Savior. _Thy_ sin hath done this. It
is the appropriative words, _thine_ and _mine_, which make this history
different from any other history. This was for _me_, is the thought
which has pierced the apathy of the Greenlander, and kindled the stolid
clay of the Hottentot; and no human bosom has ever been found so low, so
lost, so guilty, so despairing, that this truth, once received, has not
had power to redeem, regenerate, and disenthrall. Christ so presented
becomes to every human being a friend nearer than the mother who bore
him; and the more degraded, the more hopeless and polluted, is the
nature, the stronger comes on the living reaction, if this belief is
really and vividly enkindled with it. But take away this appropriative,
individual element, and this legend of Jesus's death has no more power
than any other. He is to us no more than Washington or Socrates, or
Howard. And where is there not a touchstone to try every theory of
atonement? Whatever makes a man feel that he is only a spectator, an
uninterested judge in this matter, is surely astray from the idea of the
Bible. Whatever makes him feel that his sins have done this deed, that
he is bound, soul and body, to this Deliverer, though it may be in many
points philosophically erroneous, cannot go far astray.
If we could tell the number of the stars, and call them forth by name,
then, perhaps, might we solve all the mystic symbols by which the Bible
has shadowed forth the far-lying necessities and reachings-forth of this
event "among principalities and powers," and in "ages to come." But he
who knows nothing of all this, who shall so present the atonement as to
bind and affiance human souls indissolubly to their Redeemer, does all
that could be done by the highest and most perfect knowledge.
The great object is accomplished, when the soul, rapt, inspired, feels
the deep resolve,--
"Remember Thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter."
THE OLD MEETING HOUSE.
SKETCH FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF AN OLD GENTLEMAN.