Chapter 1
Chapter 1 Piety vindicated from the charge of gloom
"Piety makes men gloomy," says the thoughtless votary of the world. This allegation, if true, would be a very reasonable ground of prejudice against true piety; but it is made, as we shall see, without proper discrimination respecting its nature and influence.
He who brings this charge, judges merely from the serious expression of countenance which many professors of piety wear, and from the voluntary relinquishment of the gaieties of life, which is observed to take place when they unite with the church of God. No estimation is made of the grand equivalent which piety gives for the renunciation of such vanities. Men look only at the cross. They take their views from the self-denial and the labors which he who bears it is called upon to meet. They have no standard to judge by but their own experience; or rather, they seem not to adopt any other; and finding their own joy, and, we may add, their only joy, to be inseparable from the pleasures and the honors of the world, they conclude, that he who voluntarily foregoes them for the sake of piety, must of necessity be condemned to a life of despondency and gloom. But has it never occurred to those who bring this charge, that since they have not themselves made a practical experiment of the influence of piety, they are not properly qualified judges in the case? By the laws of God, we are permitted to seek the highest amount of true felicity of which our nature is susceptible. Does this felicity lie in the path of the pleasurist and the worldling? Then would the Christian be unwise for traveling out of it, and deserve to feel the depression, and to be covered with the gloom which are so unjustly ascribed to him. He would be warranted, it might almost be said, in retracting his steps; in hastening away from a region, where, according to the supposition, no sun-light falls upon his path, nor fragrant flower blooms to enliven it; but where every step is planted with thorns to pierce his feet as he explores his melancholy way to the promised rest.
While such is the picture of a life of piety which fills the imagination of the gay world, their own path, they would have us understand, is one perpetual series of delights. It is implied in their allegation, that no shadows fall around their paradise, nor a thorn obtrudes from that bed of roses on which they profess to recline. We shall not stop here to settle the question, how far these scenes are a mere fancy-sketch; nor at present disallow the claim to happiness which the pleasurist and worldling prefer. If they can, in the sincerity of their souls, affirm that these pleasures make them as happy as they desire to be, we shall not just now put any questions, nor make any appeals with a view to overshadow so agreeable a prospect. The aim of the writer is rather to vindicate Piety from an unjust aspersion, namely, that she robes her followers in gloom and sadness. That she makes them serious, we do not deny; but there is a wide difference between sobriety and melancholy. Sobriety is not opposed to cheerfulness, though it is to levity. Cheerfulness abounds everywhere in the works of God; but levity nowhere, except in the bosom and on the countenance of the thoughtless; and there, it is not the legitimate expression of God’s image, but the evidence and the effervescence of sin. The lark is cheerful, as it mounts from its grassy nest, and soars away to the heavens, singing as it goes. Cheerful also is the summer morning, revealing its glad scenery, as the rising sun gilds one feature after another of the landscape. Nature in all this has a lesson for man: she teaches him that Piety, in inculcating cheerfulness while she rebukes levity, is but a faithful response to her own emphatic instructions.
They mistake, depend upon it, who interpret a serious face as the index of a heavy heart. It is excessive mirth which leaves the heart sad; since in this latter case, the depression which invariably follows, is but the re-payment which nature demands for violence done to her moral powers.
We might enlarge on this point, and show that the perpetual drawing which the pleasurist makes on the excitability of the physical constitution is directly adverse to happiness, if not destructive of health; and, on the other hand, we could easily make it appear, that the serenity and composure of the Christian—misnamed gloom and melancholy—are in unison with the physical improvement as well as the moral condition of man. It was on this principle, doubtless, that our Savior said, ’Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’ It might in this way be proved that, upon striking the balance of mere physical happiness between the serious Christian and the gay unthinking child of levity, there would be a decided advantage in favor of the former.
Thus it appears that Piety is not to be blamed for making her friends and followers serious, if thereby she make them happier. Let her not again be accused of making them gloomy. Piety make the soul gloomy! Oh! there is nothing but this in the wide universe which can really dispel its gloom. If the heart is heavy and sad from the burden of temporal affliction, or from the pressure of conscious guilt, where can it find a remedy but in piety? You may take that burdened heart to the haunts of pleasure, and try to enliven it by sallies of wit, by the fascinations of beauty, or by the excitement of the revel: vain will be your attempt: you are not allaying—you are only aggravating the disorder. There is but one influence which can effectually reach and relieve that heart, or drive from that anxious countenance its look of deep despondency: Piety can do it. It is her province alone to heal the wounds of our disordered nature, and to send the glow of spiritual health through the soul. And when she comes to perform her work of love and mercy, she first, like her great Author, enters the polluted temple of the heart, and with a scourge, drives out the intruder, and then consecrates it by her presence, and illuminates it by her own heavenly smile.
Something, it is true, must be allowed for the varying temperaments upon which piety exerts its influence. The constitutionally lethargic man might not exhibit his piety in so alluring a light as one, who by nature possesses a mirthful and elastic mind. But even in the former, a close observer will discover an attractive gleam which the Sun of Righteousness has flung upon the native dullness of the character; while in the latter, the excessive buoyancy is chastened into a reasonable and happy flow of spirits. But in all, the influence of piety is to spread cheerfulness over the soul; and, by giving it the hopes and prospects of heaven, to introduce into it some of its anticipated joys.