is sometimes so resplendent as to make a man walk through life amid
glory and acclamation; but it is apt to burn very dimly and low when
carried into the "valley of the shadow of death." But faith is like the
evening star, shining into our souls, the more gloomy is the night of
death in which they sink. Surrounded by friends and the comforts of
life, morality appears sufficient; but when the storms of life blow upon
us, then we see how necessary to us is a faith in God's Word and his
promises. Its light only is capable of dispelling the gloom of our
surroundings.
Never yet did there exist a full faith which did not expand the
intellect while it purified the heart, which did not multiply the aims
and objects of the understanding while it fixed and simplified those of
the desires and passions. Faith often builds in the dungeon and
lazar-house its sublimest shrine, and up through roofs of stone, that
shut out the eye of heaven, ascends the ladder of prayer, where the
angels glide to and fro. Faith is the key that unlocks the cabinet of
God's treasures, the messenger from the celestial world to bring all the
supplies that we need. It converses with angels and antedates the hymns
of glory. To every man this grace is certain that there are glories for
him if he walks by faith and perseveres in duty. Faith is a homely,
private capital, as there are public savings-banks and poor funds, out
of which in times of need we can relieve the necessities of individuals;
so here the faithful take their coin in peace.
A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism.
He is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could
not have happened unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases
him must be the best. He is assured that no new thing can befall him,
and that he is in the hands of a Father who will prove him with no
affliction that resignation can not conquer or that death can not cure.
In the darkest night faith sees a star, in the times of greatest need
finds a helping hand, and in the times of sorest trouble hears a
sympathizing voice.
Judge not a man by his outward manifestation of faith, for some there
are who tremblingly reach out shaking hands to the guidance of faith;
others who stoutly venture in the dark their human confidence, the
leader which they mistake for faith; some whose hope totters upon
crutches; others who stalk into futurity upon stilts. Faith is not an
exotic that grows in but one clime. The snows of an eternal Winter can
not quench its fire, neither can the glow of a tropical sun destroy its
life and freshness. In the palace of the king or the hut of the peasant,
in the homes of the rich or the cabins of the poor it emits its
fragrance with equal powers to please. It is as necessary to the learned
as to the ignorant, and comforts alike the declining years of the sage
and him who never knew the value of education.
As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works. He who
has strong faith will show his faith by his works. If he has faith in
himself he shows it by ambitious plans, resolves, and endeavors. A true
faith is necessary to enable us to make the most of life and its
possibilities. We need a faith in our fellow-men. In all the ordinary
business transactions we must exercise this virtue or accomplish
nothing. Did you ever reflect what this world would be were all faith
destroyed? Faith and confidence are synonymous terms. What a wilderness
would this be were the confidence which exists between husband and wife
destroyed or did not mutual confidence exist between the members of the
same family circle! Home would cease to be home; family ties would prove
to be bonds of straw; communities could not be held together; the vast
fabric of society would dissolve, and smiling countries would once more
be the abode of savages. Too great a confidence bespeaks a trusting
simplicity suited only for childish years. But an utterly incredulous
nature, refusing to believe unless supported by the evidence of his own
senses, as certainly portrays the selfish, narrow, and bigoted nature as
that fields of waving grain are proof positive of fertile soil, the
shining sun, and the early and later rain.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: WORSHIP.]
[Illustration]
Prayer is the key to open the day, and the bolt to shut in the night.
But as the sky drops the early dew and the evening dew upon the grass,
yet it would not spring and grow green by that constant and double
falling of the dew, unless some great shower at certain seasons did
supply the rest, so the customary devotion of prayer twice a day is the
falling of the early and the latter dew. But if you will increase and
flourish in works of grace, empty the great clouds sometimes, and let
fall in a full shower of prayer. Choose out seasons when prayer shall
overflow like Jordan in times of harvest.
Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of
its own feeling. Perfect prayer, without a spot or blemish, though not a
word be spoken and no phrases known to mankind be uttered, always plucks
the heart out of the earth, and moves it softly, like a censer, to and
fro beneath the face of heaven. A good man's prayer will, from the
deepest dungeon, climb heaven's height, and bring a blessing down.
Prayer is the wing wherewith the soul flies to heaven, and meditation
the eye wherewith we see God.
He that acts toward men as if God saw him, and prays to God as if men
heard him, although he may not obtain all that he asks, or succeed in
all that he undertakes, will most probably deserve to do so; for, with
respect to his actions toward men, however much he may fail with regard
to others, yet if pure and good, with regard to himself and his highest
interests they can not fail. And with respect to his prayers to God,
though they can not make the Deity more _willing_ to give, yet they
will, and must, make the suppliant more _worthy_ to receive.
Between the humble and contrite heart and the Majesty of heaven there
are no barriers. The only password is prayer. Prayer is a shield to the
sword, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan. Prayer has a right to
the word "ineffable." It is an hour of outpouring which words can not
express—of that interior speech which we do not articulate even when we
employ it. The very cry of distress is an involuntary appeal to that
invisible Power whose aid the soul invokes. Our prayer and God's mercy
are like two buckets in a well; while one ascends the other descends.
For the most part, we should pray rather in aspiration than petition,
rather by hoping than requesting; in which spirit, also, we may breathe
a devout wish for a blessing on others upon occasions when it might be
presumptuous to beg it. Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness: not
the definition of helplessness, but the feeling it; not figures of
speech, but compunction of soul. When the heart is full, when bitter
thoughts come crowding thickly up for utterance, and the poor common
words of courtesy are such a very mockery, how much the bursting heart
may relieve itself in prayer!
The dullest observer must be sensible of the order and serenity
prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a
beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the keynote
to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony. Family
worship embodies a hallowing influence that pleads for its observance.
It must needs be that trials will enter a household. The conflict of
wishes, the clashing of views, and a thousand other causes, will ruffle
the temper, and produce jar and friction in the machinery of the family.
There is needed some daily agency that shall softly enfold the homestead
with its hallowed, soothing power, and restore the fine harmonious play
of its various parts. The father needs that which shall gently lift away
from his thoughts the disquieting burden of his daily business; the
mother, which will smooth down the fretting irritation of her unceasing
toil and trial; and the child and domestic, that which shall neutralize
the countless agencies of evil that ever beset them. And what so well
adapted to do this as, when the day is done, to gather around the holy
page, and pour a united supplication and acknowledgment to that
sleepless Power whose protection and security are ever around their
path, and who will bring all things at last into judgment?
And when darker and sadder days begin to shadow the home, what can cheer
and brighten the sinking heart so finely as this daily resort to the
fatherly One, who can make the tears of the lowliest sorrow to be the
seed-pearls of the brightest crown? The mind is thus expanded, the heart
softened, sentiments refined, passions subdued, hopes elevated, and
pursuits ennobled. The greatest want of our intellectual and moral
nature is here met, and home education becomes impregnated with the
spirit and elements of our preparation for eternity.
The custom of having family prayers is held in honor wherever there is
real Christian life, and it is the one thing which more than any other
knits together the loose threads of a home, and unites its various
members before God. The religious service in which parents, children,
and friends daily join in praise and prayer is at once an acknowledgment
of dependence on the Heavenly Father and a renewal of consecration to
his work in the world. The Bible is read, the hymn is sung, the petition
is offered, and unless all has been done as a mere formality and without
hearty assent, those who have gathered at the family altar leave it
helped, soothed, strengthened, and armored as they were not before they
met there. The sick and the absent are remembered, the tempted and the
tried are commended to God, and, as the Israelites in the desert were
attended by the pillar and cloud, so in life's wilderness the family who
inquire of the Lord are constantly overshadowed by his presence and
love.
We, ignorant of ourselves, may ask in prayer for what would be to our
injury, which the Father denies as for our own good; so find we profit
by losing of our prayers. Or we may even pray for trifles, without so
much as a thought of the greatest blessings. And, with sorrow be it
said, we are not ashamed many times to ask God for that which we should
blush to own to our neighbors. It is by reason of the worthlessness of
so many of our petitions that they remain unanswered. Good prayers never
come creeping home. We are sure we shall receive either what we ask or
what we should ask. Prayer is a study of truth, a sally of the soul into
the infinite. No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
It is for the sake of man, not of God, that worship and prayer are
required. Not that God may be rendered more gracious, but that man may
be made better, that he may be confirmed in a proper sense of his
dependent state, and acquire those pious and virtuous dispositions in
which his highest improvement consists. When we pray for any virtues we
should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it. The form of your
life, every petition to God, is a precept to man. Our thoughts, like the
waters of the sea, when exhaled toward heaven lose all their bitterness
and saltness, and sweeten into an amiable humanity, until they descend
in gentle showers of love and kindness upon our fellow-men.
God respecteth not the arithmetic of our prayers, how many they are; nor
the rhetoric of our prayers, how neat they are; nor the geometry of our
prayers, how long they are; nor the music prayers, how melodious they
are; nor the logic prayers, how methodical they are: but the divinity of
our prayers, how heart-sprung they are—not gifts, but graces prevail in
prayer. We should pray with as much earnestness as those who expect
every thing from God, and act with as much energy as those who expect
every thing from themselves.
It is possible to have a daily worship which shall be earnest,
vivifying, tender and reverential, and yet a weariness to nobody. Only
let the one who conducts it _mean_ toward the Father the sweet obedience
of the grateful child, and maintain the attitude of one who goes about
earthly affairs with a soul looking beyond and above them to the rest
that remaineth in heaven. It is not every one who is able to pray in the
hearing of others with ease. The timid tongue falters, and the thoughts
struggle in vain for utterance. But who is there who can not read a
psalm or a chapter or a cluster of verses, and kneeling repeat in
accents of tender trust the Lord's prayer? When we think of it that
includes every thing.
[Illustration: RELIGION.]
[Illustration]
Religion is the moral link that binds man most closely with his God—the
spiritual garden where the creature walks in companionship with his
Maker. This sentiment is the highest that man is capable of cherishing,
since it binds him to a being fitted as no other being is to impart to
the soul the highest moral grandeur that created beings can enjoy. It is
the upper window of the soul, which opens into the clear, radiant light
of God's eternal home. Its influence in every department of the mind is
salutary and holy; no faculty can rise to its most exalted state without
the sanctifying power of this sentiment. Neglect it not; the highest
beauties of your souls, the finishing touch of your character, the
sweetest charm of your life, will be given by due attention to this,
your first and last duty.
If men have been termed pilgrims, and life a journey, then we may add
that the Christian pilgrimage far surpasses all others in the following
important particulars: In the goodness of the road; in the beauty of the
prospect; in the excellence of the company, and in the rich rewards
waiting the traveler at the journey's end. All who have been great and
good without Christianity would have been much greater and better with
it. True religion is the poetry of the heart; it has enchantment, useful
to our manners; it gives us both happiness and virtue.
True religion hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained.
It enlarges the heart, is simple, free, and attractive. It enables us to
bear the sorrows of life, and it lessens the pangs of death. It is the
coronet by token of which God makes you a princess in his family and an
heir to his brightest glories, the sweetest pleasures, the noblest
privileges, and the brightest honors of his kingdom. It is a star which
beams the brighter in heaven the darker on earth grows the night.
When the rising sun shed its rays on Memnon's statue it awakened music
in the heart of stone. Religion does the same with nature. Without
religion you are a wandering star. You are a voiceless bird. You are a
motionless brook. The strings of your heart are not in tune with the
chords which the Infinite hand sweeps as he evolves the music of the
universe. Your being does not respond to the touch of Providence, and if
beauty and truth and goodness come down to you like angels out of heaven
and sing you their sweetest songs, you do not see their wings, nor
recognize their home and parentage.
True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind,
admit of all real joys, and even procure for us the highest pleasures.
While it seems to have no other object than the felicity of another life
it constitutes the chief happiness of the present. There are no
principles but those of religion to be depended on in cases of real
distress, and these are able to encounter the worst emergencies and to
bear us up under all the changes and chances to which our life is
subject. The difficulties of life teach us wisdom, its vainglories
humility, its calumnies pity, its hopes resignation, its sufferings
charity, its afflictions fortitude, its necessities prudence, its
brevity the value of time, and its dangers and uncertainties a constant
dependence upon a higher and all-protecting power.
All natural results are spontaneous. The diamond sparkles without
effort, and the flowers open naturally beneath the Summer rain. Religion
is also a natural thing—as spontaneous as it is to weep, to love, or to
rejoice. There is not a heart but has its moments of longing—yearning
for something better, nobler, holier, than it knows now; this bespeaks
the religious aspiration of every heart. Genius without religion is only
a lamp on the outer gate of a palace. It may serve to cast a gleam of
light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness.
Religion is not proved and established by logic. It is, of all the
mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most
inexplicable. It is of instinct, and not of reason. It is a matter of
feeling, and not of opinion. Religion is placing the soul in harmony
with God and his laws. God is the perfect supreme soul, and your souls
are made in the image of his, and, like all created things, are subject
to certain mutable laws. The transgression of these laws damages your
souls—warps them, stunts their growth, outrages them.
You can only be manly or attain to a manly growth by preserving your
true relations and strict obedience to the laws of your being. God has
given you appetites, and he meant that they should be to you a source of
happiness, but always in a way which shall not interfere with your
spiritual growth and development. He gave you desires for earthly
happiness. He planted in you the love of human praise, enjoyment of
society, the faculty of finding happiness in all of his works. He gave
you his works to enjoy, but you can only enjoy them truly when you
regard them as blessings from the great Giver to feed, and not starve,
your higher nature. There is not a true joy in life which you are
required to deprive yourself of in being faithful to him and his laws.
Without obedience to law your soul can not be healthful, and it is only
to a healthful soul that pleasure comes with its natural, its divine,
aroma.
Some well-meaning Christians tremble for their salvation, because they
have never gone through that valley of tears and of sorrow which they
have been taught to consider as an ordeal that must be passed through
before they can arrive at regeneration. We can but think that such souls
mistake the nature of religion. The slightest sorrow for sins is
sufficient if it produces amendment, but the greatest is insufficient if
it do not. By their own fruits let them prove themselves, for some soils
will take the good seed without being watered by tears or harrowed up by
afflictions.
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life—by indifference,
which is the most common; by philosophy, which is the most ostentatious;
and by religion, which is the most effectual. It has been said,
"Philosophy readily triumphs over past or future evils, but that present
evils triumph over philosophy." Philosophy is a goddess whose head is,
indeed, in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; attempts more than she
accomplishes and promises more than she performs. She can teach us to
hear of the calamities of others with magnanimity, but it is religion
only that can teach us to bear our own with resignation.
Whoever thinks of life as something that could exist in its best form
without religion is in ignorance of both. Life and religion is one, or
neither is any thing. Religion is the good to which all things tend;
which gives to life all its importance, to eternity all its glory. Apart
from religion man is a shadow, his very existence a riddle, and the
stupendous scenes around him as incoherent and unmeaning as the leaves
which the sibyl scattered in the wind.
We are surrounded by motives to religion and devotion if we would but
mind them. The poor are designed to excite our liberality, the miserable
our pity, the sick our assistance, the ignorant our instruction, those
that are fallen our helping hand. In those who are vain we see the
vanity of the world, in those who are wicked our own frailty. When we
see good men rewarded it confirms our hopes, and when evil men are
punished it excites our fears. He that grows old without religious
hopes, as he declines into age, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly
crowding him, falls into a gulf of misery, in which every reflection
must plague him deeper and deeper.
It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of
all influences. It has been termed the social religion, and society is
as properly the sphere of all its duties, privileges, and enjoyments as
the ecliptic is the course of the earth. No external advantage, no
culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the
elegant, or even depths of affection can bestow, that delicacy and that
grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind which has experienced
the discipline of religious thought and feeling. All else, all
superficial aids to etiquette, manner, and refinement as expressed in
look and gesture, is but as gilt and cosmetic.
Your personal value depends entirely upon your possession of religion.
You are worth to yourself what you are capable of enjoying, you are
worth to society the happiness you are capable of imparting. A man whose
aims are low, whose motives are selfish, who has in his heart no
adoration of God, whose will is not subordinate to the supreme will, who
has no hope, no tenable faith in a happy immortality, no strong-armed
trust that with his soul it shall be well in all the future, can not be
worth very much to himself. Neither can such a man be worth very much to
society, because he has not that to bestow which society most needs for
its prosperity and happiness.
Christianity teaches the beauty and dignity of common and private life.
It makes it valuable, not for the cares from which it frees us, but for
the constant duties through which we may train the soul to perfect
sympathy with the design of the Creator. It shows that the humblest lot
possesses opportunities which require the energies of the most exalted
virtues to meet and satisfy. It impresses upon us the solemn truth that
life itself, however humble its condition, is always holy; that every
moment has its duty and its responsibility, which Christian strength
alone, the crown of power, can do and bear. It teaches that the simplest
experience may become radiant with a heavenly beauty when hallowed by a
spirit of constant love to God and man.
Another of the lessons of Christianity is that of the inestimable worth
of common duties as manifesting the greatest principles. It bids us to
attain perfection, not striving to do dazzling deeds, but by making our
experience divine. It shows us that the Christian hero will ennoble the
humblest field of labor, that nothing is mean which can be performed as
a duty, but that religion, like the touch of Midas, converts the
humblest call of duty into spiritual gold.
[Illustration: GOD IN NATURE.]
The day is Thine, the night also is Thine;
Thou hast prepared the light and the sun;
Thou hast set all the borders of the earth;
Thou hast made Summer and Winter.
—PSALMS.
[Illustration]
The height of the heavens should remind us of the infinite distance
between us and God, the brightness of the firmament of his glory,
majesty, and holiness, the vastness of the heavens and their influence
upon the earth, of his immensity and universal providence. Hill and
valley, seas and constellations are but stereotypes of divine ideas,
appealing to and answered by the living soul of man. The works of nature
and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so
large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and
read the first principles and most necessary parts of religion, and from
thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge.