The equal dealings of providence demonstrated with regard to the happy
and the miserable here below. That from the nature of pleasure and
pain, the wretched must be repaid the balance of their sufferings in
the life hereafter.
My friends, my children, and fellow sufferers, when I reflect on the
distribution of good and evil here below, I find that much has been
given man to enjoy, yet still more to suffer. Though we should examine
the whole world, we shall not find one man so happy as to have nothing
left to wish for; but we daily see thousands who by suicide shew us
they have nothing left to hope. In this life then it appears that we
cannot be entirely blest; but yet we may be completely miserable!
Why man should thus feel pain, why our wretchedness should be requisite
in the formation of universal felicity, why, when all other systems are
made perfect by the perfection of their subordinate parts, the great
system should require for its perfection, parts that are not only
subordinate to others, but imperfect in themselves? These are questions
that never can be explained, and might be useless if known. On this
subject providence has thought fit to elude our curiosity, satisfied
with granting us motives to consolation.
In this situation, man has called in the friendly assistance of
philosophy, and heaven seeing the incapacity of that to console him,
has given him the aid of religion. The consolations of philosophy are
very amusing, but often fallacious. It tells us that life is filled
with comforts, if we will but enjoy them; and on the other hand, that
though we unavoidably have miseries here, life is short, and they will
soon be over. Thus do these consolations destroy each other; for if
life is a place of comfort, its shortness must be misery, and if it be
long, our griefs are protracted. Thus philosophy is weak; but religion
comforts in an higher strain. Man is here, it tells us, fitting up his
mind, and preparing it for another abode. When the good man leaves the
body and is all a glorious mind, he will find he has been making
himself a heaven of happiness here, while the wretch that has been
maimed and contaminated by his vices, shrinks from his body with
terror, and finds that he has anticipated the vengeance of heaven. To
religion then we must hold in every circumstance of life for our truest
comfort; for if already we are happy, it is a pleasure to think that we
can make that happiness unending, and if we are miserable, it is very
consoling to think that there is a place of rest. Thus to the fortunate
religion holds out a continuance of bliss, to the wretched a change
from pain.
But though religion is very kind to all men, it has promised peculiar
rewards to the unhappy; the sick, the naked, the houseless, the
heavy-laden, and the prisoner, have ever most frequent promises in our
sacred law. The author of our religion every where professes himself
the wretch’s friend, and unlike the false ones of this world, bestows
all his caresses upon the forlorn. The unthinking have censured this as
partiality, as a preference without merit to deserve it. But they never
reflect that it is not in the power even of heaven itself to make the
offer of unceasing felicity as great a gift to the happy as to the
miserable. To the first eternity is but a single blessing, since at
most it but encreases what they already possess. To the latter it is a
double advantage; for it diminishes their pain here, and rewards them
with heavenly bliss hereafter.
But providence is in another respect kinder to the poor than the rich;
for as it thus makes the life after death more desirable, so it smooths
the passage there. The wretched have had a long familiarity with every
face of terror. The man of sorrow lays himself quietly down, without
possessions to regret, and but few ties to stop his departure: he feels
only nature’s pang in the final separation, and this is no way greater
than he has often fainted under before; for after a certain degree of
pain, every new breach that death opens in the constitution, nature
kindly covers with insensibility.
Thus providence has given the wretched two advantages over the happy,
in this life, greater felicity in dying, and in heaven all that
superiority of pleasure which arises from contrasted enjoyment. And
this superiority, my friends, is no small advantage, and seems to be
one of the pleasures of the poor man in the parable; for though he was
already in heaven, and felt all the raptures it could give, yet it was
mentioned as an addition to his happiness, that he had once been
wretched and now was comforted, that he had known what it was to be
miserable, and now felt what it was to be happy.
Thus, my friends, you see religion does what philosophy could never do:
it shews the equal dealings of heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and
levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to
both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to
aspire after it; but if the rich have the advantage of enjoying
pleasure here, the poor have the endless satisfaction of knowing what
it was once to be miserable, when crowned with endless felicity
hereafter; and even though this should be called a small advantage, yet
being an eternal one, it must make up by duration what the temporal
happiness of the great may have exceeded by intenseness.
These are therefore the consolations which the wretched have peculiar
to themselves, and in which they are above the rest of mankind; in
other respects they are below them. They who would know the miseries of
the poor must see life and endure it. To declaim on the temporal
advantages they enjoy, is only repeating what none either believe or
practise. The men who have the necessaries of living are not poor, and
they who want them must be miserable. Yes, my friends, we must be
miserable. No vain efforts of a refined imagination can sooth the wants
of nature, can give elastic sweetness to the dank vapour of a dungeon,
or ease to the throbbings of a broken heart. Let the philosopher from
his couch of softness tell us that we can resist all these. Alas! the
effort by which we resist them is still the greatest pain! Death is
slight, and any man may sustain it; but torments are dreadful, and
these no man can endure.
To us then, my friends, the promises of happiness in heaven should be
peculiarly dear; for if our reward be in this life alone, we are then
indeed of all men the most miserable. When I look round these gloomy
walls, made to terrify, as well as to confine us; this light that only
serves to shew the horrors of the place, those shackles that tyranny
has imposed, or crime made necessary; when I survey these emaciated
looks, and hear those groans, O my friends, what a glorious exchange
would heaven be for these. To fly through regions unconfined as air, to
bask in the sunshine of eternal bliss, to carrol over endless hymns of
praise, to have no master to threaten or insult us, but the form of
goodness himself for ever in our eyes, when I think of these things,
death becomes the messenger of very glad tidings; when I think of these
things, his sharpest arrow becomes the staff of my support; when I
think of these things, what is there in life worth having; when I think
of these things, what is there that should not be spurned away: kings
in their palaces should groan for such advantages; but we, humbled as
we are, should yearn for them.
And shall these things be ours? Ours they will certainly be if we but
try for them; and what is a comfort, we are shut out from many
temptations that would retard our pursuit. Only let us try for them,
and they will certainly be ours, and what is still a comfort, shortly
too; for if we look back on past life, it appears but a very short
span, and whatever we may think of the rest of life, it will yet be
found of less duration; as we grow older, the days seem to grow
shorter, and our intimacy with time, ever lessens the perception of his
stay. Then let us take comfort now, for we shall soon be at our
journey’s end; we shall soon lay down the heavy burthen laid by heaven
upon us, and though death, the only friend of the wretched, for a
little while mocks the weary traveller with the view, and like his
horizon, still flies before him; yet the time will certainly and
shortly come, when we shall cease from our toil; when the luxurious
great ones of the world shall no more tread us to the earth; when we
shall think with pleasure on our sufferings below; when we shall be
surrounded with all our friends, or such as deserved our friendship;
when our bliss shall be unutterable, and still, to crown all, unending.