Imatges de pàgina
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antiquity gained by her elaborate discourses? her reasonings so artfully framed? Did Plato, with that eloquence which was styled divine, overthrow one single altar where monstrous divinities were worshipped?

Experience hath shown that the overthrow of idolatry could not be the work of reason alone. Far from committing to human wisdom the cure of such a malady, God completed its confusion by the mystery of the Cross. Idolatry (if rightly understood) took its rise from that profound selfattachment inherent in our nature. Thus it was that the Pagan mythology teemed with deities, who were subject to human passions, weaknesses, and vices. When the mysterious Cross displayed to the world an agonizing Redeemer, incredulity exclaimed, it was foolishness! But the darkening sun, nature convulsed, the dead arising from their graves, said, it was wisdom!

VII.-ON DEATH.-Blair.

CHILDREN of men! it is well known to you that you are a mortal race. Death is the law of your nature, the tribute of your being, the debt which all are bound to pay. On these terms you received life-that you should be ready to give it up, when Providence calls you to make room for others; who, in like manner, when their time is come, shall follow you. He who is unwilling to submit to death, when Heaven decrees it, deserves not to have lived. You might as reasonably complain that you did not live before the time appointed for your coming into the world, as lament that you are not to live longer, when the period of your quitting it is arrived. What Divine Providence hath made necessary, human prudence ought to comply with cheerfully. Submit, at any rate, you must; and is it not better to follow of your own accord, than to be dragged reluctantly and by force? What privilege have you to plead, or what reason to urge, why you should possess an exemption from the common doom? All things around you are mortal and perishing. Cities, states, and empires, have their periods set. The proudest monuments of human art moulder into dust. Even the works of nature wax

old and decay.

In the midst of this universal tendency to change, could you expect that, to your frame alone, a permanent duration should be given? All who have gone before you have submitted to the stroke of death. All who come after you shall

undergo the same fate. The great and the good, the prince and the peasant, the renowned and the obscure, travel alike the road which leads to the grave. At the moment when you expire, thousands throughout the world shall, with you, be yielding up their breath. Can that be held to be a great calamity, which is common to you, with every thing that lives on earth; which is an event as much according to the course of nature, as it is that leaves should fall in autumn, or that fruit should drop from the tree when it is fully ripe?

The pain of death cannot be very long, and is probably less severe than what you have at other times experienced. The pomp of death is more terrifying than death itself. It is to the weakness of our imagination that it owes its chief power of dejecting the spirits; for, when the force of the mind is roused, there are few passions in our nature that have not been able to overcome the fear of death. Honour has defied death; Love has despised it; Shame has rushed upon it; Revenge has disregarded it; Grief has a thousand times wished for its approach. Is it not strange that reason and virtue cannot give strength to surmount that fear, which, even in feeble minds, so many passions have conquered? What inconsistency is there in complaining so much of the evils of life, and being at the same time so afraid of what is to terminate them all! Who can tell whether his future life might not teem with disasters and miseries, as yet unknown, were it to be prolonged according to his wish?

At any rate, is it desirable to draw life out to the last dregs, and to wait till old age pour upon you its whole store of diseases and sorrows? You lament that you are to die; but, did you view your situation properly, you would have much greater cause to lament, if you were chained to this life for two or three hundred years, without possibility of release. Expect, therefore, calmly, that which is natural in itself, and which must be fit,-because it is the appointment of Heaven! Perform your duty as a good subject to the Deity, during the time allotted to you; and rejoice that a period is fixed for your dismission from the present warfare, Remember, that a slavish dread of death destroys all the comfort of that life which you seek to preserve. Better to undergo the stroke of death at once, than to live in perpetual misery from the fear of dying.

VIII. ON AUTUMN.-Alison.

LET the young go out, in these hours, under the descending sun of the year, into the fields of nature. Their hearts are now ardent with hope,-with the hopes of fame, of honour, or of happiness; and, in the long perspective which is before them, their imagination creates a world where all may be enjoyed. Let the scenes which they now may witness, moderate, but not extinguish their ambition;-while they see the yearly desolation of nature, let them see it as the emblem of mortal hope;-while they feel the disproportion between the powers they possess, and the time they are to be employed, let them carry their ambitious eye beyond the world;-and while, in these sacred solitudes, a voice in their own bosom corresponds to the voice of decaying nature, let them take that high decision which becomes those who feel themselves the inhabitants of a greater world, and who look to a being incapable of decay.

Let the busy and the active go out, and pause for a time amid the scenes which surround them, and learn the high lesson which nature teaches in the hours of its fall. They are now ardent with all the desires of mortality; and fame, and interest, and pleasure, are displaying to them their shadowy promises, and, in the vulgar race of life, many weak and many worthless passions are too naturally engendered. Let them withdraw themselves, for a time, from the agitations of the world; let them mark the desolation of summer, and listen to the winds of winter, which begin to murmur above their heads. It is a scene, which, with all its powers, has yet no reproach;-it tells them, that such is also the fate to which they must come; that the pulse of passion must one day beat low; that the illusions of time must pass; and that "the spirit must return to Him who gave it." It reminds them, with gentle voice, of that innocence in which life was begun, and for which no prosperity of vice can make any compensation; and that angel who is one day to stand upon the earth, and to swear that time shall be no more," seems now to whisper to them, amid the hollow winds of the year, what manner of men ought they to be, who must meet that decisive hour.

There is " 'an even-tide" in human life-a season when the eye becomes dim, and the strength decays; and when the winter of age begins to shed, upon the human head, its prophetic snow. It is the season of life to which the present is most analogous; and much it becomes, and much it would

profit you, to mark the instructions which the season brings. The spring and the summer of your days are gone; and with them, not only the joys they knew, but many of the friends who gave them. You have entered upon the autumn of your being; and whatever may have been the profusion of your spring, or the warm intemperance of your summer, there is yet a season of stillness and of solitude, which the beneficence of Heaven affords you, in which you may meditate upon the past and the future, and prepare yourselves for the mighty change which you are soon to undergo.

If thus you have the wisdom to use the decaying season of nature, it brings with it consolations more valuable than all the enjoyments of former days. In the long retrospect of your journey, you have seen, every day, the shades of the evening fall, and, every year, the clouds of winter gather. But you have seen also, every succeeding day, the morning arise in its brightness; and, in every succeeding year, the spring return to renovate the winter of nature. It is now you may understand the magnificent language of Heaven; it mingles its voice with that of revelation; it summons you, in these hours when the leaves fall, and the winter is gathering, to that evening study which the mercy of Heaven has pro vided in the book of salvation: and while the shadowy valley opens, which leads to the abode of death, it speaks of that hand which can comfort and can save, and which can conduct to those "green pastures, and those still waters," where there is an eternal spring for the children of God.

IX. THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE.-Horne.

It would be in vain to dissemble, that, in the present state, as is the offence such is not always the punishment. Notoriously profligate sinners often partake not, to appearance, the common evils of life; but pass their days in prosperity, affluence, and health, and die without any visible tokens of the Divine displeasure. But to take off, in some measure, the force of the objection, it must be remarked that, besides those judgments of God which lie open to the observation of mankind, there are others, even in the present life, of a secret and invisible kind, known only to the party by whom they are felt. There is a court constantly sitting within, from whose jurisdiction the criminal can plead no exemption, and from whose presence he cannot flee; there is evidence produced against him which he can neither disprove nor evade; and there a just

sentence is not only passed, but forthwith executed on him, by the infliction of torments, severe and poignant as the strokes of whips, or the stings of scorpions: torments, exquisite in proportion to the sensibility of the part affected; torments, of which he sees the beginning, but is never likely to see the end.

Trust not to appearances. Men are not what they seem. In the brilliant scenes of splendour and magnificence, of luxury and dissipation; surrounded by the companions of his pleasures and the flatterers of his vices; amidst the flashes of wit and merriment, when all wears the face of gayety and festivity,— the profligate often reads his doom, written by the hand whose characters are indelible. Should he turn away his eyes from beholding it, and succeed in the great work during the course of his revels; yet the time will come, when, from scenes like these, he must retire and be alone: and then, "what is all that a man can enjoy in this way for a week, a month, or a year, compared with what he feels for one hour, when his conscience shall take him aside, and rate him by himself?"

There is likewise another hour which will come, and that soon;-the hour when life must end; when the accumulated wealth of the East and the West, with all the assistance it is able to procure, will not be competent to obtain the respite of a moment; when the impenitent sinner shall be called-and must obey the call to leave every thing, and give an account to his Maker, of the manner in which he has spent his time, and employed his talents. Of what is said by such, at that hour, we know not much. Care is generally taken that we never should. Of what is thought, we know nothing. O merciful God! grant that we never may!

X.ON INFIDELITY.-Thompson.

Ir is amidst trials and sorrows that infidelity appears in its justest and most frightful aspect. When subjected to the multifarious ills "which flesh is heir to," what is there to uphold our spirit, but the discoveries and the prospects that are unfolded to us by revelation? What, for this purpose, can be compared with the belief that every thing here below is under the management of infinite wisdom and goodness, and that there is an immortality of bliss awaiting us in another world? If this conviction be taken away, what is it that we can have recourse to, on which the mind may patiently and safely repose in the season of adversity? Where is the balm which I may

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