RELIGION IN THE PROFESSIONS:--I. THE PHYSICIAN--
II. THE LAWYER--III. THE DIVINE.
There are many symptoms of the reviving power of religion in our
day. Some of the great questions which enter into the very heart of
society are connected with the claims of truth upon the one hand,
or the pretensions of those who would suppress it upon the other.
The high courts of Parliament are convulsed by religious discussions.
When wars arise, or are threatened, they often owe their origin to
topics connected with religion. Periodicals which began their career
in indifference or antagonism to the truth, are now obliged to do
obeisance to it, if they would command the attention of men, and
some even of those whose opposition was once a mixture of sneers
and acrimony, have now to borrow weight and influence from doctrines
which will be found ascendant when every form of error shall have
vanished away. In a word, empires, countries, households, individual
souls, are alike proclaiming that the kingdom of our Father who is
in heaven must come--that His will must be done on earth as it is
done in heaven.
Nay more, there is a kind of Christianity even among our infidels
--that is, they owe not a little of what they hold to the very
system which they disparage and affect to ignore. The truth is thus
producing effects even in spheres from which men would gladly banish
it, but into which it is making its way, like a rising tide, in spite
alike of the indifference and the hostility of men. The friends of
truth are thus encouraged. The collected light of the past and the
present is projected into the future. Our nation, and the progress
of truth within our borders, is a type of the world. In due time,
religion will rule all; either the sceptre of love will guide, or
the rod of iron will dash the nations.[29]
THE RELIGIOUS PHYSICIAN.
In no respect, perhaps, is this progress more apparent than as
regards the Medical Profession. In ancient times, it was proverbially
true, or alleged, that wherever there were three physicians, there
were two atheists;[30] that is, the majority of that profession were
then deemed atheists, or atheistic. How changed now! Many are, no
doubt, still living without any recognition of God. They refuse to
be illumined by the light which irradiates others, and grovel amid
the grossness of material things, instead of soaring, as they might
do, to the spiritual, the heavenly, the eternal. But others, led
by the Supreme Wisdom, do soar to these. With religion for their
directress, they are skilled in the remedy of the soul as well as of
the body. They can occasion the melody of spiritual joy and spiritual
health, as well as promote the blessedness which originates in the
well-being of the body. An accomplished physician of our day has
said, and said with truth: "Every medical practitioner, whether he
desires to have it or not, has a cure of souls as well as of bodies.
He is literally an inheritor of some of the duties of the very
apostles, and called to be an imitator of the Lord Jesus Christ."[31]
Now, as no sphere could be named where Religion is confessedly more
required, let us consider it for a little in connection with the
Medical Profession.
* * * * *
DANGER--
I. Conversant daily with death, or walking from hour to hour along
the verge of the grave, and in sight of eternity, there is some
danger lest these great realities should lose their power--that is,
lest the mind should become indifferent to all that is most solemn
in the lot of man. And what is the antidote? There is none, except
a constant realizing of eternal and spiritual things. The mind
must be kept constantly under their influence, or the proverb as
to the atheists will be at least practically realized. Deprived
as Physicians often are, of the repose of the Sabbath, and all
opportunities for worshipping the Father of our spirits, they need
a double portion of religion in the soul.[32] If it be not possessed,
then for the same reason as soldiers and seamen are profligate and
abandoned, till their profligacy be proverbial, do those who tend
our bodies sink into deeper spiritual darkness than others. Though
familiar with death, they are not warned, as other men are, of
the need of preparing for what follows the all-decisive change.
Accustomed to devote their thoughts and their care--sometimes,
perhaps, with feverish anxiety--to the body, they are in danger of
forgetting its immortal occupant. Many do forget it, and gaze on
the power of that ruthless destroyer who has baffled all their skill,
with as little thought as a sexton on a coffin, or on the fragments
of the dead which he dishumes with his mattock. Regarding the body as
the man, and overlooking all beyond it, a gross materialism becomes
dominant in the mind; and unless a divine, a living, and spiritual
religion occupy the soul, as the antidote to this danger, the most
skilful physician may just become practically the most thorough
materialist.
Nay, far more: such a physician must often see the mind of the
dying utterly dependent on the state of the body. It is delirious
or calm--it is soothed or agonized--it is torpid or restless, just
according to the stage of the disease. This at least is commonly the
case; and accustomed to that spectacle, the physician who watches,
perhaps with deep sympathy for the sufferer, over every new phase
of the disease, almost in spite of himself regards the patient as
a piece of mere materialism. It is upon the material part that his
thoughts are fixed, or his skill brought to bear. He thus magnifies
his office, and hence his danger; hence the grossness of some of
the more vulgar minds among physicians; hence the perils even of
the purest and the most scientific.
THE ANTIDOTE.
But hence, also, the need and the preciousness of pure and undefiled
religion. Hence the mercy implied in the revelation of a spiritual
Teacher, the very Spirit of God, to ward off that danger, and give
reality and prominence to the things of the soul. Hence a loud call
to those who know that there is a spirit in man, to realize its
existence and seek its welfare. Hence the need of solemn impressions
of the truth of God, in all that is said to fix our thoughts upon
the soul, its condition and its destiny. Hence, in short, if any
man needs a personal religion--that is, a religion for himself, a
Saviour for himself, repentance, faith, love, hope, holiness, all
for himself--it is the man who lives on the confines between life
and death--who has to do with the body when affection clings to it
most closely; and who is apt to forget the inmate while attending
to its abode--the immortal, while concentrating his skill upon the
transient dust.
SIN, AND DISEASE.
Or farther; no intelligent physician can practise for a single month
without having the connection between sin and disease forced upon his
notice. He may be too thoughtless to attend to it, or too gross to
think of it at all; but whether he think of it or not, the fact is
unquestionable--there is a necessary, a divinely-appointed connection
between crime and disease. The bloated drunkard and the wasted
debauchee, the premature death of many a youth, the madness of many
a maniac--all proclaim the beneficent decree of God, that suffering
shall follow sin. Now, can it be rational for men to be daily
cognisant with that connection, and do nothing to counteract it?
Maintaining a daily conflict with pain, shall they ignore its origin?
Are they benevolent or merciful, who assail the bodily disease, but
neglect the divine antidote for the soul? Nay, am I not conspiring
against the immortality of self-deluded man, if I know a cure for
that mortal ailment which has seized on the very vitals of his being,
and yet hide it from his view? Rather let me press it kindly on his
notice; and that I may learn to do so with tenderness and tact, let
me make sure that it has attracted my own, that my soul is illumined
by its radiance and animated by its hopes.
INSANITY.
Physicians, moreover, have often to deal with the insane; and,
though it be one of the grossest of all libels against the Gospel
of peace, to allege that it ever produces insanity, it is no less
true that exaggerated, distorted, and false views of some doctrines
of revelation may intensely agitate the soul. Extreme degrees of
remorse for sin committed, and felt in its sinfulness against God,
may convulse the whole man, till reason totter on its throne. With
such cases the physician may be called to deal; and if he be ignorant
of the power of religion, or prejudiced against it, not a cure, but
an aggravation of the malady, may be expected to result. Religion is
now among the universally accredited means of cure in well-ordered
Institutions for the insane; and he who is ignorant of the soothing
power of God's pure truth in the conscience of a believer, is ill
adapted to apply that remedy with effect. Hence the need of personal
religion in those who watch for the diseased; hence the need of the
Spirit's teaching, that he who is a guardian of the body's health
may know how to promote the soul's; and /that/ no physician will know
till the Saviour be a Saviour to him, and the great question, "What
must I do to be saved?" be practically adjusted.
A PHYSICIAN'S POWER--
And when we think of the position in which the patient is commonly
seen by the physician, the reasons why religion should reign
paramount in the latter become more cogent still. The afflicted
are, in some sense, at the mercy of the physician. The skill of
the medical attendant is the sheet-anchor of the sufferer. Actions,
words, and looks, are carefully watched and scrutinized, as if
destiny were in them. The physician has given relief from pain: he
has, perhaps, brought back the patient from the verge of the grave;
and hence the one feels that the other is, for the time, the very
life of his life. Now, for what purpose should all that ascendency be
employed? Should it be used merely to amuse the sufferer, or beguile
his thoughts for a little away from the prison-house into which
sickness has converted his chamber? Ah, no; but for higher, holier
ends: if that physician have religion in his own soul, he will use
his influence as a means of medicating the soul of the sufferer,
by turning his thoughts to Him who kills and makes alive; and where
that is neglected, opportunities the most precious are lost--a talent
which might reproduce itself more than a thousand-fold is guiltily
hid in the earth.
ITS USES.
Nor should we fail to notice the influence for good which may be
exerted over the relatives of the diseased in times of sickness
and sorrow. When the ploughshare of trial has torn up the heart,
a physician can drop in the seed which bears fruit unto holiness,
if he love souls, or be wise to win them. Grief is indulged before
him, which is pent up in the presence of others; fears are expressed,
dark forebodings appear, which none but the physician is permitted to
witness. Confessions also are sometimes made, or secrets disclosed,
which throw the door for doing good more open still; and, amid all
these things, only one explanation can be given, if the opportunity
be not seized--that physician has no love for souls; he does not know
their value; eternity is a name to him. True, there is a professional
etiquette to which many defer, and which it would be wrong, in its
own place, to violate. But that etiquette is worldly or morbid which
stands in the way of loving men's souls, or seeking to do them good;
and such love will watch for ways for displaying itself amid a crowd
of obstacles.
THE GREAT PHYSICIAN.
It has been the conviction of some Christian physicians, that
none but a Christian can discharge aright the high duties of their
profession. In its widest sense, we adopt the maxim; it is specially
true in regard to the necessity which exists for subordinating all to
the high interests of that life where "there shall be no more death.
"--It is in this way that the Saviour's example is best copied and
the Saviour's glory best promoted. What physicians only attempt, He
accomplished. They strive to prolong life; He is the life itself.
They are often physicians of no value; He dispenses the balm that
is in Gilead; He is the physician there. "This great Physician!"
one exclaims, "this great sufferer! this vanquisher of death! this
possessor and granter of an endless life, the Lord Jesus Christ, God
over all, is the true Head of our profession;" and blessed is that
physician who has learned, from his Head in glory, to watch for the
souls, while he sheds blessings upon the bodies, of men.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Nor are we merely theorizing here. Some physicians, in all countries
and ages, have been alive to this view of their profession.
Boerhaave, for example, was a physician in such practice, that
princes, ambassadors, and even Peter the Great, had to remain
for hours in his ante-chamber before they could be admitted to an
interview; and yet it was his constant habit to devote the first hour
of every day to prayer and meditation on the Word of God--a practice
which he recommended to others, as the source of that vigour which
carried him through all his toils. Harvey, the discoverer of the
circulation of the blood, tells us that he never dissected the
body of an animal without discovering something in which he had to
recognise the hand of an all-wise Creator. William Hey, a surgeon
of eminence, is described as one of those who fear God in youth, who
walk with him through life, and to whom the hoary head is therefore
a crown of glory. Arrested by the words, "If any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature," and affected by the love of God in the
Saviour, he devoted himself, /first/ to that which God puts first
--the soul. The holy duties and holy pleasures of the Sabbath rest
were zealously cultivated by Hey; in short, he escaped from the
dangers of his profession, because he was afraid of them, and adopted
the divine means of safety. His "support and comfort were found in
believing views of the atonement made by Jesus;" and, resting there,
he was blessed and made a blessing. And Jenner, the discoverer of
vaccination, is to be ranked in the same class--but we need not
particularize. As we examine the records of the past, physician
after physician rises up before us qualified to minister to the soul
as well as the body; and some of them actually doing so. Driven by
the perils of their profession, they sought the wisdom of "God only
wise," and were guided by his Spirit in the path whose end is glory.
Let us, however, single out one example of a devout physician, and
contemplate the ascendency of pure and undefiled religion in his life
and death.
DR. JOHN CHEYNE.
Dr. John Cheyne was born at Leith in the year 1777, and obtained
a medical decree at Edinburgh in 1795. After various attempts to
establish himself in practice, he settled in Dublin in the year 1809,
and rose step by step from an income at the rate of three guineas
for six months, till he was in receipt of £5000 /per annum/, on an
average of ten years. When failing health forced him to withdraw from
practice, he had received in fees for four months no less a sum than
£2,230.
But while thus rising to a high point in his profession, Dr. Cheyne
was not oblivious of the soul. To a friend he once wrote: "You may
wish to know the condition of my mind. I am humbled to the dust by
the thought that there is not one action of my busy life which will
bear the eye of a holy God. But when I reflect on the invitation
of the Redeemer, 'Come unto Me,' and that I have accepted this
invitation; and, moreover, that my conscience testifies that I
earnestly desire to have my will in all things conformed to the
will of God, I have peace, I have the promised rest--promised by
Him in whom was found no guile."
A CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN.
Moreover, Dr. Cheyne, with the calmness which only the truth as it
is in Jesus, and good hope through him, can inspire, gave directions
for his own funeral, in a spirit which evinces the great firmness of
his faith. In the act of triumphing over death, he ordered a column
to be erected near the spot where his body lies, on which were to
be inscribed these texts, as voices from eternity: "God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
on him might not perish, but have eternal life;" "Come unto me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;"
and, "Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man
shall see the Lord." And while Dr. Cheyne thus strove even from the
tomb to beckon sinners to the Saviour and to glory, he was careful
to conceal his own name, and withhold it from the column. He was not
less careful, however, to say, as speaking to the passer-by, "The
name, profession, and age of him whose body lies beneath are of
little consequence; but it may be of great importance to you to know,
that, by the grace of God, he was brought to look to the Lord Jesus
as the only Saviour of sinners, and that this 'looking unto Jesus'
gave peace to his soul." Nor was this all; the appeal is yet more
cogent to the reader. "Pray to God," it says, "pray to God that you
may be instructed in the Gospel; and be assured that God will give
the Holy Spirit, the only teacher of true wisdom, to them that ask
him."
There, then, is the case of one physician whom no materialism could
harden, and no familiarity with death blind to the glories of life
and its Lord. He was careful to roll back every reproach from the
pure truth of God; and whether that reproach originated with the
superficial and the prejudiced in his own profession, or the ignorant
in other spheres, his fine mental powers, his love of souls, his felt
interest in the things of eternity and the favour of God, evermore
urged Dr. Cheyne to act like one who knew the grace of God in truth.
Now, what has been may be--what has been in such a cause, /ought/
to be; and were men not too often the willing victims of the evil
heart of unbelief, we should find more of the guardians of our health
walking in the steps of Luke, the beloved physician, than is now the
case. A godless physician beside a dying man's couch must exercise a
torpedo-like influence on the soul, deadening or disturbing all that
is heavenly. On the other hand, the man who can wisely and tenderly
prescribe for the soul, or at least point to its great Physician,
while caring for the aching or the wasted body, is a brother born
for adversity indeed. Countless as are the opportunities which that
wise and Christian physician may enjoy for warning the careless, for
cheering the despairing, or pointing the dying to the Life, he is
not the friend, but the heartless enemy of man, who neglects to
embrace them, and tell of Him who is both our righteousness and our
strength. If no words of reprobation be too strong for him who sees
a fellow-creature writhing in agony without assisting him when he
has the power, what shall we say of the unfeeling, the inhuman being,
who lets a fellow-sinner perish in his guilt for ever, unheeded and
unwarned?
RETRIBUTIONS.
One sentence more. Various solutions have been attempted for the
phenomenon which has long been common--the ungodliness or the gross
lives of many physicians. Without challenging any of the explanations
which have been offered, there can be no doubt that that phenomenon
has a moral cause. Men neglect the most solemn warnings. While
tending the sick and the dying, they see sin and its effects linked
together in bonds which cannot be broken; and yet they continue in
sin themselves. Unchecked by what /should/ check, passion carries
them forward in their downward career, and the coarseness of
the lives of some physicians appears a righteous retribution for
warnings slighted--for lessons not learned--for God not heard--and
the divinely-appointed connection between sin and misery not
recognised. Where, on earth, can a scene so appropriate for religion
as a dying man's chamber be found? And shall the physician leave
it without blame, if he not merely drop no hint of the glory which
awaits the ransomed, the woe of the unsaved; but, moreover, proceeds
to add sin to sin in his own life? The man who does so, voluntarily
and sinfully comes down from the highest vantage ground on which
a mortal can stand. The patient feels as if his life were in the
physician's hand; a word from him would sink like an oracle into
the soul, but that word is not spoken--not one hint is given, and
in the high reckoning of eternity is not such a man guilty in the
deepest sense?
* * * * *
THE LAWYER.
II. Perhaps the Lawyer is exposed to yet greater spiritual peril
than the physician, and his need of a better wisdom than man's is
proportionably great. The circumstances in which he is generally
consulted render it specially needful that the law of God should be
in his heart, and shine as the pole-star of his mind. Men resort to
him, smarting under a sense of injury; and the lawyer needs prudence
to repress the rising or the rankling desire for revenge. They seek
his guidance when threatened by the oppressor; how discreet, then,
should he be in his counsels! They may even ask his aid to accomplish
some nefarious project--to overreach and defraud; or, to defend
some fraud already committed. How prompt, then, should lawyers be
to repress such iniquity, that the land may not mourn because blood
touches blood! Every trial in this world's concerns--every dread of
loss, of bankruptcy, or imposition, may send the client to the door
of his legal adviser; and, amid all these things, if there be a man
on earth who needs the control of steadfast, unfaltering truth--a
counsellor who is ever near--a wisdom which cannot err--a charity
which "seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no
evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things"--the lawyer is that man.
MORAL DANGERS.
And yet there is much in his position to bias or to pervert
his judgments. Accustomed, at least in some departments of his
profession, to various sinister influences, and often more bent
on discovering what can be said for a cause than what is true, the
mind may be so warped as to lose the power of dispassionate decision.
It may acquire such a habit of tampering with the truthful, or be so
much more anxious to carry a point than to establish a fact, that a
kind of subtle Jesuitism may be the result--a habit of perplexing all
that is simple, or shrouding in mystery all that is plain.
Moreover, an advocate, while he pleads for the life or the liberty
of a client, may not merely feel himself free, but bound, to use
every means, to accomplish his object, even though some of them may
be tortuous or equivocal. Nay, it may become a point of honour to
conceal or perplex the true, and attempt to establish the false. In
this manner, the endeavour to keep as near to falsehood as a regard
to character, or rather to success, will allow, may foster a habit
of mind subversive of all that is lofty or pure in truth. And
where shall we find an antidote to that but in the truth which
came from heaven--where but in the authority of Him who is the Lord
of conscience--where but in the Judge of all, whose law written on
the heart, though only partially legible now, taught even a heathen
to say, "/Fiat Justitia, ruat coelum?/"
SPECIAL PLEADERS.
"THE LICENCE OF COUNSEL."
The baneful effects of this moral peril are recognised, in common
language, by the discredit always thrown upon a Special Pleader,
now almost a synonyme for meanness, chicanery, and deception. There
are, no doubt, many who are above the baseness of fraud, and the
dishonesty of a conscious attempt to deceive; but it may fairly be
questioned whether it be common to find men, in certain departments
of the legal profession, so thoroughly elevated above temptation as
not to be exposed to moral peril. Nay, we speak too guardedly on this
subject--others have spoken out. "There are many," an eminent lawyer
has said, "whom it may be needful to remind, that an advocate, by
the sacred duty of his connection with his client, knows, in the
discharge of that office, but one person in the world--that client,
and none other. To serve that client, by all expedient means; to
protect that client, at all hazards and costs to all others (even
the party already injured), and, amongst others, to himself, is the
highest and most unquestioned of his duties. And he must not regard
the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction, which he
may bring upon any other. Nay, separating even the duties of a
patriot from those of an advocate, he must go on, reckless of the
consequences, if his fate should unhappily be to involve his country
in confusion for his client."[33]
INIQUITY SYSTEMATIZED.
Now, this is plain, but it is also perilous. The expedient is here
allowed to supersede not merely the patriotic, but also the truthful.
If the object aimed at, which may be to screen successful villany, or
shelter even a murderer from punishment, can be accomplished--all is
reckoned fair. Truth may be compromised; honest witnesses browbeaten
or bewildered; and the beautiful transparency of one upright man's
intercourse with another turned into mockery, or treated with
derision. Lawyers not a few have proved, by their offences against
truth and the sacred obligations of man to man, that it is only too
congenial to their liking thus to trample truth in the dust. They
feign "pity, indignation, moral approbation, or disgust or contempt,
when they neither feel anything of the kind, nor believe the case
to be one that justly calls for such feelings; they are led also
occasionally to entrap or mislead, to revile, insult, and calumniate
persons whom they may, in their heart, believe to be respectable
persons and honest witnesses," and such putting of bitter for sweet,
and sweet for bitter, must involve a woe. It cannot fail to warp the
conscience and becloud the mind; and the man who does not feel the
danger of such ways, is already their dupe or their victim. One
has pertinently asked the learned and the noble who patronize these
outrages against truth, while yet they profess to be Christians,
how they can reconcile the two. There is a religion which says that
'lying lips are an abomination to the Lord;' and how can men, it is
asked, avoid the solemn scriptural denunciation, "Woe unto them
that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light,
and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for
bitter; ... who justify the wicked for reward, and take away the
righteousness of the righteous from him."[34]
LORD BACON.
Perhaps the most remarkable illustration of the injurious effects
of such habits upon the heart and mind is found in the case of Lord
Chancellor Bacon--
"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind."
This is not the place to tell of his learning, his world-wide fame,
his greatness as a philosopher who revolutionized science, and
certainly introduced a new era in the history of man. His eloquence
as a pleader, and the stately majesty of his thinking, place Bacon
high among "the starry lights of genius." He is in philosophy what
Shakespeare or Milton is among poets.
And yet, that man so gifted and transcendant, was guilty of actions
which equal in turpitude aught that is recorded in the history of
human weakness. Whether we are to ascribe it to the discipline of his
profession, fostering some inborn tendencies to what is disreputable
and degrading, we do not tarry to inquire; but looking at the fact
which history renders too unquestionable, we have in this illustrious
philosopher but unscrupulous man, a painful exhibition of man's
native weakness when the heavenly lamp is shaded or extinguished.
Some have explained the low morality of Bacon by supposing that
he was an infidel, and some of his reputed works rather favour the
supposition.[35] But his productions as a whole forbid us to adopt
that solution, and we are consequently left with an example of a most
painful kind, to prove the worthlessness of powers the most colossal,
of learning and originality unsurpassed, of gifts the most varied
and transcendent to keep man in the path of virtue, when the heavenly
guide is abandoned. We can only enumerate in a catalogue some of the
incidents in the life of Bacon which establish these conclusions.
"MEN OF HIGH DEGREE ARE A LIE."
At a critical period, he received from the Earl of Essex, when that
nobleman was in favour with Queen Elizabeth, a gift of land which was
worth at least £1800. Yet against his benefactor, Bacon afterwards
enlisted his great powers, to convict him of high-treason; and that
merely to purchase the Queen's favour, and promote the philosopher's
advancement. "Bacon spent the ten days which elapsed between the
commitment of Essex to the Tower and his arraignment, shut up in
his chambers in Gray's Inn, studying the law of treason; looking out
for parallel cases of an aggravated nature in the history of other
countries, and considering how he might paint the unpardonable guilt
of the accused in even blacker colours than could be employed by the
ferocious Coke, famous for insulting his victims."[36] The man whom
Bacon thus laboured to condemn had heaped favour after favour upon
him, and been meanly fawned upon in return, yet during the trial,
Lord Campbell says, Bacon "most artfully and inhumanly compared Essex
to the Duke of Guise," and adds, in regard to the Earl after he was
condemned, and an interview which Bacon had with the Queen upon the
subject, "Why did he not throw himself on his knees before her and
pray for a pardon? Because, while it was possible that he might have
melted her, it was possible that he might have offended her, and
that, a vacancy in the office of Solicitor-General occurring, (for
which Bacon was a suitor) he might be again passed over."
But not contented with having pled for the condemnation of Essex,
Bacon, in order to ingratiate himself farther with the Queen,
published an attack upon the fallen man, regarding which the great
philosopher's biographer says: "No honourable man would purchase
Bacon's subsequent elevation at the price of being the author of
this publication.... The base ingratitude and the slavish meanness
manifested by him on this occasion, called forth the general
indignation of his contemporaries.... He had before his eyes no
just standard of honour, and in the race of ambition, he had lost
all sense of the distinctions between right and wrong."
THE TORTURE.
EMPLOYED BY LORD BACON.
It were a weariness to trace all the instances of Bacon's meanness in
place-hunting, and his fulsome adulation of those who appeared likely
to promote his views. He even went so far as to prosecute a clergyman
named Peacham, for a sermon alleged to contain treason, but never
either preached or published. Bacon was then Attorney-General. He
tampered with the judges, says Lord Campbell, and had the unhappy man
put to the torture, to wring a confession from him, without success.
"He was examined before torture, between torture, and after torture.
"--These are Bacon's own words, and according to the biographer of
the Chancellors, there is reason to believe that he even presided at
the rack. He thus outraged the law and the constitution of England
to gratify James I., then upon the throne. But the Lord Chancellor
of the day was aged and infirm. Lord Campbell says, "he could
not much longer hold the seals, and Bacon was resolved to be his
successor." That was his aim, and is not Lord Campbell right in
adding, "there are stronger contrasts of light and shade in the
character of Bacon, than probably of any other man who ever lived?"
The instances of meanness, of subserviency, of adulation to those
from whom he expected favours, as proved by his own letters, convict
this philosopher and sage of conduct which would have degraded a
menial; while to the whole he could add a malignity never surpassed,
all under pretence of acting a Christian part. His biographer says
that he poured oil of vitriol into the wounds he had inflicted,
and it was in perfect keeping with this that that Attorney-General
of England, in consequence of some offence which he had unwarily
given, flung himself on the floor, kissed the feet of such a man as
Buckingham, the profligate favourite of James, and vowed never to
rise till he was forgiven.
BACON'S BRIBES--
But he could not always proceed unchecked. Nemesis was not forgetful
of the right. Bacon had reached the summit of his ambition; he was
Lord High Chancellor of England, and in that character soon became
notorious for the bribes which he accepted for his judgments. This
more than European philosopher, this author of a new logic, and of
works which brought the learned from all parts of Christendom to
converse with him, was known to take bribes as a judge! A committee
of the House of Commons was appointed to investigate such corruption.
The Chancellor shuffled, equivocated, denied, but at last confessed,
because the evidence was such as no partiality could escape. A great
number of charges of bribery were established. The whole have been
supposed to amount to £100,000. Bacon was about to be impeached.
He broke down under the load of infamy, and appealed to the King to
interpose; but all was unavailing, and the Lord High Chancellor of
England, one of the profoundest thinkers of modern times, gave in
to his peers, "His confession and humble submission." It says, "I
do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption;
and do renounce all defence and put myself upon the grace and mercy
of your Lordships." When visited at his house, where he lay in
shattered health, to ascertain the genuineness of his signature to
the confession, he exclaimed, "My lords, it is my act, my hand, my
heart. I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed;"
and he subsequently surrendered the great seal, the bauble for
which, Macaulay says, he had sullied his integrity, had resigned
his independence, had violated the most sacred obligations of
friendship and gratitude, had flattered the worthless, had persecuted
the innocent, had tampered with judges, had tortured prisoners, and
had wasted on paltry intrigues all the powers of the most exquisitely
constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the
children of men.
HIS DISGRACE.
Bacon's sentence from his peers was, a fine of £40,000; he was to be
imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure; to be for ever
incapable of holding any public office, place, or employment, and
never to sit in Parliament, or come within the verge of the court.
The king was eventually moved to rescind the judgment, but Bacon was
then too old to profit by the clemency--he was on the eve of passing
away to meet the just and merciful Judge of the skies.
Now, this glimpse at the rise and fall of this great lawyer,
proclaims aloud the insufficiency of all but the grace and truth
of God to keep man morally erect. Not gigantic intellectual powers
--had these sufficed, Bacon would have been steadfast as a rock. Not
worldly success--Bacon sat at the right hand of royalty, and kept
the conscience of a king. Not great trust--the Lord High Chancellor
of England was the foremost subject in that respect. Not celebrity
--with that, Bacon might have been satiated. Not greatness--without
goodness, that is a tinkling cymbal. What then? The answer which
experience, history, and the Word of God combine to give, is this,
"I am what I am by the grace of God that is in me." The man who
dims the light of that lamp which was kindled in heaven, has already
tottered to his fall.
But truth would have "fallen in the streets," had all lawyers acted
thus. There have been some, however, who repelled such things with
high-toned integrity and honour, and we now turn to a contrast to
Lord Chancellor Bacon--to one
"In whom
The British Themis gloried with just cause."
SIR MATTHEW HALE.
Sir Matthew Hale was one of those upright men whom all the good
delight to honour. With his conscience quickened by habitual contact
with the Word of God, and his whole soul familiar with the heavenly
standard, he repudiated all that was disreputable in his profession.
Pure religion presided over his practice; and while honouring God, he
was honoured by him. As soon as Hale was convinced of the injustice
of any cause, he immediately declined to advocate it, and utterly
refused to plead against the truth. He at least frowned upon all
that was false and unfair. As a judge, he repressed every attempt
to ensnare or mislead a witness. He felt that, when such things are
done under the very shadow of the judge's bench, where the great
ends of truth and justice should be inviolably promoted, gross guilt
may be expected to reign in other spheres. He, therefore, shunned
as a sin all that savoured of finesse; and, braced for duty by the
truth of God, no influence, no entreaty, not even a monarch's smile,
could induce him to swerve from the path in which a good man ought
to go. In short, his pleadings as an advocate were characterized by
the same integrity, and the same Christian consistency as the other
actions of his life. Indeed, to act otherwise, or to be one thing as
a lawyer and another as a man, is one of the numerous conventional
snares laid for conscience which tend to meanness as surely as they
encourage immorality. It seems a truism, "It is as great a dishonour
as can be inflicted, for man to say otherwise than he knows to be
true, for the love of a little money;" and yet what crowds are thus
degraded!
Need we add, religion repudiates all these fetches? Common as it
may be to sacrifice conscience for gain or for professional success,
the man who has sat down at the Saviour's feet, and is taught by the
Saviour's Spirit, will be ready with the cry: "Into their assembly,
mine honour, be not thou united."
SIR WILLIAM JONES.
Side by side with Sir Matthew Hale we may place Sir William Jones,
who was as eminent for personal religion as he was for his profound
acquaintance with the Oriental and other tongues. Lawyer as he was,
his was a mind of decided godliness, and a life of much consistency.
The atonement of the Saviour was the anchor of his hope, and the Word
of God a light to his feet and a lamp to his path. He said of it: "I
have carefully and regularly perused the Holy Scriptures, and am of
opinion that the volume, independently of its divine origin, contains
more sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer
strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books,
in whatever other languages they may have been written." Now, that
is much--but not too much--from one who had mastered eight-and-twenty
languages, and was familiar with the riches of them all. It stands in
instructive contrast with the flippant ungodliness of those who never
devoted one earnest hour, or poured forth one earnest petition, to
know the mystery which was hid for ages, but which is opened up in
the revelation of Jesus. It shows that there is nothing essentially
or necessarily godless in a lawyer's profession; and it leaves the
unprincipled men who sell their very consciences for gold, without
excuse, amid their systematic violations of honour, of integrity,
and truth.
* * * * *
MINISTERS OF RELIGION.
SPIRITUAL DEATH.
III. It may appear strange to occupy a sentence in saying that
Ministers of Religion should be Christian men; and yet the dark
history of the past makes it necessary to say it. Nay, so necessary
is it, that Luther made no over-statement, when he averred that
religion is never in such danger as among reverend men. Habituated,
as they are, to handle divine things, they are scarcely less
habitually in danger of doing so deceitfully. To be called upon
professionally to engage in sacred duties at all times and in all
states of mind--to be constantly contemplating truth in some of its
countless forms for professional uses, without applying it to the
heart, and life, and practice of the person contemplating it--to
expatiate upon the glories of redemption and the Redeemer, topics on
which the most phlegmatic heart may glow, without taking any personal
interest in them at all;--these, and countless other dangers, beset
the ministers of religion; these account for their frequent falls,
and the disgrace which is thereby brought upon the holy name they
bear. To urge conversion while we are not converted--to commend the
love of Christ when we do not feel it--to preach repentance which
we do not practise, and faith which we do not hold--to tell of a
Saviour whom we know only by rumour--of a Spirit whom we habitually
grieve--of a heaven to which we are not going, and an immortality
which is to be only one of woe to us;--to what can all that lead but
self-deception of the direst kind--to searedness of conscience--to
hearts hardened, and salvation rendered hopeless? Of all dangers,
those of an irreligious minister must rank among the greatest. We do
not limit the grace of God; but he who has learned to preach about
a Redeemer whose power /he/ never felt, about a Prophet who does not
teach /him/, about a Priest who does not atone for /him/, about a
King who does not rule /him/, seems not far from destruction. At the
same time, constant exposure to that danger lessens the sense of it;
and consciences which were uneasy at first, gradually settle quietly
down, like a ship which has foundered at sea--and all is peaceful,
because all is death.
Moreover, ministers of religion are not usually exhorted, warned,
or unmasked, as other men are; and hence their dangers are enhanced.
Professional devotion is apt to be all that they have; and they may
thus pass through life with a lie in their right hand. They can at
last tamper with truth without compunction or alarm; and the most
solemn functions have often furnished materials only for mirth.
But it is far from our object to do more than refer to this subject.
Let us only observe how insufficient mere professional punctilio is
to keep the heart of man, how easily all the withes of formality are
snapped when temptation assails. Religion has little to fear from the
open enemy; it is the pretended friend, the professed defender, but
real assailant, who weakens it.
TRUTH ENTHRONED.
Yet while we do not dwell on the duties of the ministry, we cannot
omit the opportunity which a reference to the sacred office affords
for showing the necessity of enthroning the Word of God in the heart
of man; and for having every thought, and word, and deed, subject to
its control. It has been often said that without the Bible, London
or New York would soon become what Paris, Vienna, Rome, and Naples
are. In as far as the Bible is neglected in the protestant cities,
the saying is fast hastening to its fulfilment; and the clerical
profession supplies too many instances by which the remark may be
farther verified.
THE REV. DR. DODD.
It might be supposed, then, that fenced round as minister's of
religion are by professional barriers, kept as they are, or should
be, in daily contact with the truth of God, and the things of
eternity, all would be pure, and lovely, and of good report. But
example after example can be quoted to show how far it is often the
reverse, and the case of the Rev. Dr. Dodd will amply illustrate the
remark. He was a prebendary of Brecon, and chaplain in ordinary to
George III. As a preacher he was celebrated and popular; he was often
called on to plead the cause of the London charities, and took an
active part in promoting their interests. He published a commentary
on the Scriptures, which Dr. Adam Clark, no incompetent judge,
pronounced "the best in the English language." To that work he added
various others, chiefly of a devotional kind, some of which still
hold a prominent place among productions of their class. But neither
the mental powers which produced these works, nor the eloquence which
he displayed, nor the spirit of devotion which appeared to some to
breathe through his volumes, nor his rank as a royal chaplain, nor
the claims and regards of those who were dependent on him, nor his
high position in society, could restrain Dr. Dodd within the narrow
way. He contracted expensive habits of living, occasioned, it is
said, by licentiousness of manners. Dr. Johnson, his earnest and
indefatigable friend, says, "His moral character was very bad;"
and in an evil hour, Dodd forged a bond for £4,200, upon his former
pupil, the Earl of Chesterfield.
THE WAGES OF SIN.
The fallen man, no doubt, hoped that he would be able to meet the
demand when that transaction reached the stage which made that
necessary, so as neither to expose himself, nor really defraud his
former pupil. Dodd was unable, however, to meet the emergency, for
difficulties were increased, not diminished, by such a step. The
forgery was detected; the Earl of Chesterfield would not interfere;
the law took hold of the culprit, and the sad spectacle was presented
to the nation of one who had formerly stood so high, dying a
criminal's death. The man who had commented on the Word of God,
forgot to apply it to the regulation of his own life. Extravagance,
licentiousness, and fraud, were the stages by which he descended from
his elevation. He began by slight degrees to overstep the restraints
of the Word of God; and when he had once succeeded in setting it
aside, the descent was rapid, the ruin utter. He who attempted to
deceive his fellow-men, and for a time succeeded, had first deceived
himself; but his sin found him out, and on the 27th of June 1777,
the Commentator on the Bible, the author of several devotional works,
died at Tyburn by the hands of the public executioner. The jury who
tried him recommended him to the royal clemency. The city of London
petitioned the crown in his favour; and another petition prepared
by Dr. Johnson, and signed by three-and-twenty thousand, was also
presented. But all was unavailing; the adviser of the crown would
not recommend even a respite, and though Dr. Dodd cherished the hope
of pardon till the last, there never was a foundation for the hope.
Justice took its inexorable course.
A DEATH OF INFAMY.
The view which many took of this culprit's case, may be represented
by a letter from Boswell to Dr. Johnson. He says--"I own I am very
desirous that the royal prerogative of remission of punishment should
be employed to exhibit an illustrious instance of the regard which
God's vicegerent will ever show to piety and virtue. If for ten
righteous men, the Almighty would have spared Sodom, shall not
a thousand acts of goodness done by Dr. Dodd counterbalance one
crime? Such an instance would do more to encourage goodness than
his execution would do to deter from vice." But neither this nor the
speeches, the petitions, nay, not even the letters which Dr. Johnson
wrote for Dr. Dodd to royalty itself, availed, and just before
passing to execution he confessed that "his life for some few unhappy
years past had been dreadfully erroneous." In one of his letters to
the king, the fallen man, in language which Dr. Johnson had prepared,
"confessed his crime, and owned both the enormity of its consequences
and the danger of its example." He, at the same time, said, "I have
not the confidence to petition for impunity, but humbly hope that
public security may be established without the spectacle of a
clergyman dragged through the streets to a death of infamy, amidst
the derision of the profligate and profane; and that justice may be
satisfied with irrevocable exile, perpetual disgrace, and hopeless
penury." Every effort, however, was fruitless. Large sums of money
were ready to bribe the turnkey to connive at an escape. A figure in
wax, representing Dr. Dodd, was said to have been conveyed into the
prison to aid the same object, but neither did that succeed; and,
according to Dr. Johnson, he died on the scaffold "with pious
composure and resolution."
It was, indeed, a spectacle which might have touched the hearts of
thousands, did aught but Omnipotent grace possess that power, to see
a minister of religion conducted to Tyburn in such circumstances as
we have described. We may deem the law severe, or think that the life
of Dr. Dodd should have been spared; but his melancholy lot is not
the less instructive. His whole history tells how feeble are human
barriers against human guilt.
And the consequences of this crime did not terminate with Dr. Dodd
himself. He had married a Miss Perkins of Durham, but, left in
sorrow, poverty, and disgrace, by her husband, reason forsook
her, and she died a wretched maniac at Ilford in Essex. Is it not
true that unthinking men, in pursuit of the wages of sin, scatter
firebrands, and arrows, and death, though they say, Am not I in
sport?
THE ONLY GUIDE.
THE TRUTH OUR SHIELD.
Here, then, is a case which thoroughly exhibits the necessity of
enthroning the Bible in the heart, and keeping it enthroned. There
is some reason to fear that the minister whom Dr. Johnson describes
as having "lived a life of great voluptuousness," had never felt the
power of the truth, even before he fell into the habits which ended
in his ruin. But, however that may be, it is manifest that after
Dr. Dodd had entered on his downward career, the truth was discarded,
and the deceitful heart consulted--not the Wonderful, the Counsellor.
The truth could have kept him steadfast. It could have taught him to
dash temptation from him, as Paul shook off the viper from his hand
into the flames at Melita. But Dodd forgot the Bible, he tampered
with temptation, and he fell. We say nothing of the extravagance
which the need of so large a sum as £4,200 on the part of a clergyman
betokens. We only glance at what was most probably his purpose, to
pay the sum for which he had forged, before it became due. These
and other things might be pled in palliation, but looking simply at
the act, who does not see that neither professional punctilio, nor
external barriers, nor a thousand earthly bonds can prevent man from
sinning, when the lamp to our path is extinguished--the Word of God
set aside even in a single transaction?
GIFTS WITHOUT GRACE A SNARE.
Further: Dr. Dodd is known to have continued his professional
employments after his felonious transaction. Conscious as he must
have been of what he had done with his own right hand, he yet
continued to lead the devotions of his flock, and act as if no
crime had been committed. We do not refer to the feelings of a
minister of Christ amid such things; but we do say that the whole
transaction proclaims, in a way the most solemn and the most cogent,
that no secondary restraints will keep man from iniquity; they are
all like sand before the torrent, or flax before the flame. The
Bible, and the Bible alone, laid up in the heart, and blessed by the
Spirit there, can either make man right, or keep him so. In a word,
this example tells aloud that every human influence, every earthly
appliance, is weak against the heart of man, unless the truth of
God control it. Conscience will be warped. Reputation will be risked.
Professional standing will be presumed upon. Life will be hazarded.
The hearts of those whom we love will be broken; and only when the
Word of God is permitted to rule the soul, is the heart kept as the
fountain of the issues of life. Men regard such cases as that of
Dr. Dodd as doing injury to religion, and the infidel hails them
as a disproof. They are in truth confirmations of it, and prove
that only that truth admitted into the heart, enthroned and
maintained in the conscience as it demands to be, can rescue man
from self-degradation and moral death. Dr. Dodd fell because the
Bible was not his guide. He deserted religion and was ruined.
Another example points in the same direction, and may deepen the
impression of that of Dr. Dodd. At a recent period, a preacher of
great popularity gathered crowds around him in London; thousands
heard the truth at his lips; and he filled a large place in the
public eye. Accomplished as a scholar, eloquent as a preacher, and
graceful as a man, he wielded no limited power within a considerable
sphere. To his influence as a minister of religion he added that of
an author; and what he published was read by thousands. Not a little
originality of thought, and vigorous powers rendered him, in short,
an able advocate of the truth.
Here, then, is another man who seems to be fenced off from the world
by much that should have been constraining; that in this case also,
we may see how futile every subordinate influence proves against the
wayward heart of man.
A FELON.
THE GAMBLER'S END.
The divine referred to, elated perhaps by his success, began to
frequent the haunts of wit, and to associate with the literary,
merely as literary men. He laid aside, or he merged for the time,
those truths of God which alone can elevate, and went down to
the level of those who think they can find something to make them
blessed apart from the truth, and the favour of their God. From the
excitement of wit there is scarcely a transition to the excitement
of wine, and that followed next. By a gradual descent, that man, at
one time so ascendant, became a felon in his own eyes; he fled from
the pulpit which he had begun to desecrate, and sought an asylum in
Paris, where theatres--saloons of fashion--
"The midnight revel and the public show,"
became his haunts. For years his friends could find no trace of him;
and when he was discovered, it was as one who lived by gambling--a
degraded, wretched outcast. While he lived in that self-outlawed
condition, a friend who had learned the truth from the fallen man's
lips, actually resorted to a /hell/, to make sure of the sad change
which had come over his former teacher, and to his horror he found
what he sought. He saw that minister of Christ taking part in the
orgies of a Parisian pandemonium, and hastened with an aching heart,
from that last retreat of the infatuated. That victim of his own
heart was at length taken ill at Bordeaux; a surgical operation was
declared to be necessary, and to escape from the pain, he blew out
his brains with a pistol.
Need anything be said to enforce the moral of such a case? Everything
but the Word of God controlling[*12] the heart is feeble against
passion, as a spider's web against a storm. Everything else is
fleeting as the sand of the desert, or veering as the mimic figures
which tell the changes of the wind. The Word of the Lord alone
endureth for ever, both in itself and its moral ascendency.
BLIND LEADERS.
Nor is it only in insulated cases, among ministers of religion, that
such mournful truths are pressed upon our attention. In times of
religious declension, such sad demonstrations of the insufficiency
of all but grace and truth to tame the passions of men, may be seen
almost upon a national scale. There is a man, for example, whom the
grace of God has arrested amid a life of waywardness and guilt, and
rendered a signal monument of mercy. In terms of his own confession,
there was scarcely a sin which he had not committed, and as a fiery
duellist, he was, in the eyes of God, a murderer. But the truth
was at last felt in the conscience, and that man once so bold in
iniquity, sought the society of those from whom he expected help on
his way; with what result his biographer shall tell: "Other proofs,"
we read, "of the degraded state of the dominant party in the Church
(of Scotland) might be mentioned, particularly a Presbytery dinner
to which Mr. James Haldane was invited in Edinburgh, upon a special
occasion, and to which he had gone, hoping for useful, perhaps
spiritual, or at least rational conversation, on the topics in which
he was now chiefly interested. Instead of this, the company were
treated to bacchanalian songs, the folly of which was aggravated
into something approaching to wickedness, by an admixture of
ridiculous, if not profane allusions to their own sacred calling
and functions. The burden of one song was the prescription of 'a
bumper of Nottingham Ale' in the pulpit, at the different stages
of a Presbyterian discourse. If, in the hey-day of youth and folly,
while God was not in all his thoughts, he had been disposed to turn
away from the convivial excesses of his associates at sea, how was
he likely now to appreciate such approaches to the same intemperance,
in connection with eternal realities, amongst the professed heralds
of the Cross, whose duty it was to warn men to flee from the wrath
to come?"[37][*13]
SPIRITUAL DEATH.
Painful and profoundly instructive as the incident now mentioned
is, we have yet more humbling evidence of the danger to which
men are exposed by their familiarity with sacred things. In the
autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Hamilton of Strathblane, we read,
"Many of the ministers of Scotland were genuine Socinians. Many of
them were ignorant of theology as a system, and utterly careless
about the merits of any creed or confession. They seemed miserable
in the discharge of every ministerial duty.... When they preached,
their sermons generally turned on honesty, good neighbourhood, and
kindness. To deliver a gospel sermon, or preach to the hearts and
consciences of dying sinners, was as completely beyond their power,
as to speak in the language of angels. And while their discourses
were destitute of everything which a dying sinner needs, they were
at the same time the most feeble, empty, and insipid things that
ever disgraced the venerated name of sermons.... They had no more
religion in private than in public. They were loud and obstreperous
in declaiming against enthusiasm and fanaticism, faith and religious
zeal.... But though frightfully impatient of everything which bore
the semblance of seriousness and sober reflection, the elevation
of brow, the expansion of feature, the glistening of the eye, the
fluency and warmth of speech at convivial parties, showed that their
heart and soul were there; and that the pleasures of the table,
and the hilarity of the light-hearted and the gay constituted their
paradise, and furnished them with the perfection of their joy."[38]
It is thus that men are degraded by the perversion of what was meant
to ennoble. It is thus that of all the piteous spectacles which
our world presents, few are more sad or distressing than that of
a godless minister of religion; such a man
"Is branded to the last,
What atheists call him--a designing knave,
A mere church juggler, hypocrite, and slave.
* * * * *
The sacred function in his hands is made,
Sad sacrilege! no function but a trade."
--When the standard-bearer falls, who will fight? When the Cross is
torn down by those who should point to it, who will believe?
THE UNCHANGING WORD.
And such is the process by which God, in his providence, often makes
it plain that his own revealed truth alone can either reclaim man
from guilt, or keep him steadfast in the path to glory. We, indeed,
are prone to suppose that there is nothing fixed in that Word, that,
like the chameleon, it takes on the hue of every mind that studies
it. But the Holy One, on the other hand, demonstrates that his
Word is the only fixed thing which our world knows. Like himself
it is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; it either makes man
right and keeps him so, or it detects and unmasks him as hopelessly
incorrigible and clean gone in guilt. It tells of the anchor for
the soul both sure and steadfast;[*14] and when man drifts away from
that mooring, whatever be his position, he is rushing fast to ruin.
MONUMENTS OF GRACE.
Every view of truth, then, calls upon man, whatever be his sphere,
to make sure that it is planted in his heart by the power of the
Spirit of God. Without that, the physician may degenerate into
an atheist or a materialist, whose hopes terminate at the edge of
the grave. Without the presiding power of truth in the soul, the
lawyer, nay, the very judge, may become a corrupter of public morals,
as multitudes have done--a patron of the false and the degrading.
Without truth enthroned in the heart, and a thorough transition from
darkness to light, even ministers of religion are only blind leaders
of the blind; they are clouds without water, carried about of winds;
they are tree whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead,
plucked up by the roots. And all these things press upon men the
necessity of enthroning truth. Time asks it: eternity asks it:
patriotism asks it: pure religion asks it; and he is willing to
throw poison into our wells who resists such multiform appeals.
GOD'S WITNESSES.
But it would not be difficult to show, at greater length than we
have tarried to do, that in every sphere there have been men who
feared God, and held forth a testimony for his truth, often amid open
profanity or the oblivion of all that is sacred. Like Cornelius of
old, devout men have adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour alike
in the Army and the Navy. Among the accomplished devotees of Science,
all do not forget God in the investigation of those laws by which He
rules the world, or of those wonders which embody his wisdom and his
power. Among those who cultivate the Arts, there have been many who,
like the sculptor Bacon, might have caused it to be written on their
tomb: "What I was as an artist, seemed to me of some importance while
I lived; but what I really was as a believer in Christ Jesus, is the
only thing of importance to me now." In every sphere, we repeat, God
has had his witnesses, testifying to the power of his grace, it may
be in sackcloth, as regards men, but yet in the sunshine of God's
favour. And who shall tell what unthinking men forego, by neglecting
to do as these believers did--to make the religion of Jesus their
guide, and Jesus himself their Alpha and their Omega! He is the rock
that is higher than we. He is a sun and shield. He is life to the
dead, and wisdom to the unwise. It is by His might that we conquer,
and by His righteousness that we are saved. It is by His spirit
that we are sanctified--and are they the wise who ignore all this?
MAN'S IDOLATRY.
Amid such meditations as these, it is one of the deepest lessons
which meet us in the history of man, that there is room in his heart
for every god but the true One. From the sun in the firmament down
to the meanest reptile that crawls, all have been adored. The foulest
human passions have been exalted to the rank of divinities, and
worshipped in gorgeous temples with costly parade. Even after God
has dwelt on earth as "God with us," we find men in millions clinging
to every god but Him--not merely the dead, but fragments of their
bones, are adored, as possessing power to bless. Now, were the lamp
of life admitted into the heart, it would instantly dispel such
debasing delusions from minds of every class. It would guide man
away from the rank to which sin degrades him, to that for which the
gospel is designed to fit us; and the peace of God which passes all
understanding is the portion of those who have thus hailed the truth
of God and discarded the lies of men; who have welcomed the religion
of Jesus to the soul, and dismissed the religion of nature as a blind
guide, the religion of Rome as a dark, debasing superstition, the
religion of unconverted men as fit only to lead us more assuredly to
woe.