MORAL PROGRESS.
Importance of progress. Physical improvement a means rather than an
end. The same true of intellectual improvement. The general homage
which is paid to inoffensiveness. Picture of a modern Christian family.
Measuring ourselves by others. Our Saviour the only true standard of
comparison. Importance of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Blessedness
of communicating. Young women urged to emancipate themselves from the
bondage of fashion, and custom, and selfishness.
After all I have said of the importance of physical, intellectual and
social improvement and progress, it is _moral_ progress for which we
were, pre-eminently, created. The great end of Christianity itself--to
use the words of a learned and eloquent divine--is, to make men better
than they were before: but whether or not this expresses the entire
truth, one thing is certain--that wherever Christianity fails to make
man better, it fails of accomplishing its whole intention respecting
him. Perhaps the apostle expressed the idea I would inculcate, in the
fewest words and in the clearest manner, when he required his converts
to "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ."
Mere physical improvement--or even physical perfection, were it
attainable--would hardly be worth the pains, if it were any thing more
than a means to an end. We might study the subject of health, and
practice its excellent rules with the utmost zeal and faithful
conscientiousness; and yet it would hardly prove a blessing to us, if
it only gave us the more efficiency in the service of the world, the
flesh and the devil. And the same, or nearly the same, may be said of
intellectual improvement and progress. Though the general tendency of
both--when conscience is properly trained and the heart set right--is
beneficial, yet it is not necessarily so, without a right heart and
correct conscience. Satan is not wanting--so to speak--in intelligence
or physical energy.
Physical and intellectual development and progress, therefore, are
little more than means to secure an end. If they prove to be what it
was the original intention of the Creator they should be, they are
eminently conducive to our highest interests, both as respects this
world and the world which is to come. If otherwise, they do but
accelerate, and in the end aggravate, our doom. They tend but to make
our condemnation the more sure, and the more dreadful.
I have urged, elsewhere, the importance of conscientiousness in every
thing we do: let me especially recommend you to make continual progress
in excellence or holiness, a matter of conscience. Do not be
continually measuring yourself--above all, your spiritual self--by your
neighbors. If you are the true disciple of Christ, and if you are what
a Christian should be in this land of Christianity, you will not
indulge yourself in comparisons with any but the Saviour himself. You
will be daily and hourly striving to possess more and more of his
spirit; in the belief that without the spirit of Christ, you neither
are nor can be his.
It is painful to think of the great number of individuals who go
through life--often through a long life--and yet accomplish so little
for themselves and others. That they are free from outward immorality
or blame--as much so at least as their neighbors--seems to satisfy
them. Some of the best families I know, are trained in this way. They
are excellent people; they are disciples of Christ, if there are any
such in the world: we cannot say aught against them, if we would. They
seem to discharge all the external duties of our holy religion with a
most scrupulous exactness; and they seem--the whole family--to bear the
image of Christ. Whatever is true or lovely, is theirs; or appears to
be so.
And yet, if you examine closely the matter, you will find that much of
all this is the result of circumstances. They possess, by inheritance,
a happy temper--or they are in circumstances which make virtue easy to
them.
But the spirit and genius of Christianity require a great deal more
than mere inoffensiveness--though that is, of itself, certainly, a
great deal. They require continual progress from glory to glory. But
this progress can only be made amid self-denial and cross-taking.
"Whoso taketh not up his cross," daily and hourly, is not a true
disciple of the great Teacher. It is even through "much tribulation"
only, that we can enter into the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour.
Now, to what self-denials, what tribulations, what taking up of the
cross, do these easy, lovely families of which I am speaking, ever
subject themselves? Trained happily, they are generally healthy--and
therefore they have few trials from sickness. They live in the midst of
abundance, and always have done so--abundance of food, clothing, &c.,
and of what they regard as of the best quality. They have more than
heart can wish: their eyes, as it were, stand out with fatness. They
know nothing of want: they know nothing even of inconvenience--except
for some hapless moment, when a neighbor gets a little ahead of them in
the fashion of their dress, their equipage, or their tables. Then a
feeling of envy--peradventure a half expressed feeling of
detraction--appears to mar, for a short time, their peace.
I have said that these inoffensive people--these do-no-harm
Christians--know nothing of want. When and where have they cut
themselves short of any thing to which they were lawfully entitled, for
the sake of doing good to others? They have, indeed, performed works of
charity and mercy, as much as other people of their own property and
standing in society. But they have given, always, of their abundance.
They have never so given as to impoverish the giver--so as to make
themselves feel the least privation. They have visited the sick: but
when has the time they have given, seriously incommoded them? Have they
not had time enough left for their own purposes? Have they not, in this
respect, given of their abundance? Perhaps they have clothed the poor,
to some extent; but have they denied themselves to do it? Have not
their closets, and houses, and the neighboring livery stable, been well
furnished and supplied, notwithstanding? Have they not given, in this
respect, wholly of their abundance--and not, like the good woman
mentioned in the gospel, of their penury?
It is exceedingly painful, I say again, to find professedly good people
among us living, as Watts calls it, at such a poor, dying rate; the
professed disciples of a Master who became poor for their sakes, by
giving up, not only the luxuries of life, but even many of its
necessaries--and yet not giving up or denying themselves a single thing
all their lives long.
Can such people expect to make advances in holiness--to grow in grace
and in the knowledge of Christ--and yet not act like him, or follow
him? For be it always remembered--the benefits of doing good are to
those _who do it, more than to those to whom it is done_. This is the
ordination and arrangement of Providence. "It is more blessed to give
than to receive." How sad a mistake, then, is made by those who
seem--from their conduct--to think there is little happiness in giving;
and that their charities abridge, by so much, their happiness, instead
of adding to it.
Young woman, should it be your lot to belong to one of these happy and
excellent families--for I do not deny that they are among our best
people, after all, though they are very far from having, as yet, come
up to the self-denying, self-sacrificing spirit of the Lord that bought
them, and become willing to be poor, and to suffer not a little want of
time, money, &c. for even their own apparent necessities, temporal or
spiritual--I say, if in the providence of God, you have been accustomed
to see almost the whole time and labor of a family, with the avails of
a handsome, or at least respectable property, used up year after year
by that family, in eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and dressing
_comfortably_--in mere passive enjoyment, in one word--while the
blessedness of active enjoyment, in the doing of good to others, has
been hardly known--be it yours to break the chain that binds this
circle of selfishness, and go forth to the work of impoverishing
yourself, as did your Lord and Master. Think not to make any
considerable moral progress, otherwise! The soul must have food, as
well as the body. This continual indulgence of the body, while the soul
is unfed, or only fed just enough to keep it from starving, will never
do for you. If you yield to the influence of this fashionable kind of
excellence, and strive not to rise higher, I will not say that you will
live to little purpose; but I will say, that you will have but very
little of real, valuable, immortal life, till you pass beyond the
bounds of time and space. Whereas, you ought to begin your heaven here.
For "this is the will of God, even your sanctification;" and it was the
prayer of Paul concerning some to whom he wrote--"The God of peace
sanctify you wholly."
Will you not, then, O young woman! in view of these considerations,
seek for deliverance from the spell that binds thousands and millions
of otherwise good people to a narrow, selfish circle, in which they
continually wander--coming round and round again, every night, to the
same spot, or nearly the same, but making no considerable progress?
Will you not study, and labor, and pray, for more and more of the
spirit of Him, who not only stripped himself of every glory to which
he, had been accustomed, but, instead of retaining that which was his
divine right, deprived himself of every thing which is calculated to
make life comfortable in the common sense of the term, and only sought
his happiness in perfecting holiness in the fear of God, by living and
dying for his brethren--the whole human family? Will you not henceforth
study to be more and more conformed to the Divine image--and to act
less and less in conformity with a world whose predominating motive to
action, is selfishness?
End of Project Gutenberg's The Young Woman's Guide, by William A. Alcott