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  WRITINGS OF NEHEMIAH ADAMS
  by Nehemiah Adams
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A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by Nehemiah Adams,
compiled for study and devotional reading.

  Chapters: 53

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. Bertha and Her Baptism
    2. Probabilities of an Ordinance For Children
    3. The Grandather's Letter
    4. Public and Private Baptism
    5. Is There Only One Mode of Baptism?
    6. Scenes of Baptism
    7. Testimony of the Christian Fathers
    8. Terms of Communion
    9. The Road-Side Baptism
   10. The Children of the Church
   11. Maternal Associations
   12. Baptism of the Sick Wife and Her Children
   13. Catharine
   14. More Than Conqueror
   15. The Fear of Death Alleviated
   16. The Search For the Departed
   17. The Silence of the Dead
   18. The Redemption of the Body
   19. Endless Punishment
   20. A 00     Introductory
   21. A 01     Scriptures teach penalty  disobedience
   22. A 02     Redemption Christ represented having
   23. A 03     The fall angels, man confirmatory proof
   24. A 04     terms used regard resurrection dead
   25. A 05     The Scriptures teach law  God
   26. A 06     The Sentence passed upon the wicked
   27. A 07     duration future punishment expressed
   28. A 08     Correspondance
   29. The Sable Cloud
   30. Death and Burial of a Slave's Infant
   31. Northern Comments on Southern Life
   32. Morbid Northern Conscience
   33. Resolutions for a Convention
   34. The Good Northern Lady's Letter from the South
   35. Questions and Answers
   36. Ownership in Man - the Old Testament Slavery
   37. The Tenure
   38. Discussion in Philimon's Church at the Return of Onesimus
   39. The Future
   40. Various Treatises
   41. Dissimive Cousel and their Decision
   42. Christian Reconsecration
   43. The Worldiness of Nominal Chirsitan
   44. Duty of Christians to Unite with Some Church and Unite where they statredly Worship
   45. Duty of Daily Sercret Prayer and Daily Study of Bible
   46. Revivals of Religion
   47. Divine Sovereignty in Human Salvation
   48. Christian's Duty to Work for Saving of Souls
   49. Duty of a More Strict Observance of Sabbath
   50. Power and Office of the Holy Spirit
   51. Power of Prayer
   52. - Adams, Nehemiah - Library
   53. S.   THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

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  CHAPTER 1: BERTHA AND HER BAPTISM
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Bertha and Her Baptism, by Nehemiah Adams The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bertha
and Her Baptism, by Nehemiah Adams This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere
at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it
away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with
this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Bertha and Her Baptism Author:
Nehemiah Adams Release Date: January 23, 2007 [EBook #20428] Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
BERTHA AND HER BAPTISM *** Produced by Graeme Mackreth, Curtis Weyant and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images produced by the Wright American Fiction Project.) BERTHA
AND HER BAPTISM. By the Author of AGNES AND THE LITTLE KEY; or, BEREAVED PARENTS
INSTRUCTED AND COMFORTED. BOSTON: S.K. WHIPPLE AND COMPANY, 161 WASHINGTON
STREET. 1857. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by S.K.
WHIPPLE & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts. STEREOTYPED BY HOBART & ROBBINS, New England Type and Stereotype
Foundry, BOSTON. PREFACE. This book, and that which is also named in the
title-page, were written at the same time, and as one book; but they were
afterward separated, as more properly constituting two volumes, the part which
was the original of the present volume now being greatly enlarged. Thus the two
books grew in the author's mind together, from one and the same root,--the death
of a little child. CONTENTS. Chapter 1. Probabilities of an Ordinance For
Children, 9 Chapter 2. The Grandfather's Letter.--the Nature, Grounds and
Influence, of Infant Baptism, 16 Chapter 3. Public and Private Baptisms.--the
Subjects and Mode of Baptism, 76 Chapter 4. is There Only One Mode of Baptism?
121 Chapter 5. Scenes of Baptism.--Reasonableness, Beauty and Power, of Infant
Baptism.--Use of Special Vows.--Husbands at Baptisms.--Neglect of Baptism, 130
Chapter 6. Testimony of the Christian Fathers.--Apostolic Practice of Infant
Baptism.--Ministerial Usages in Baptisms, 143 Chapter 7. Terms of
Communion.--Non-Intrusion.--Denominational Courtesy and Kindness, 184 Chapter 8.
The Road-Side Baptism, 198 Chapter 9. The Children of the Church.--Are They
Members of the Church? 216 Chapter 10. Maternal Associations.--Constitution and
Rules For Them.--a Christian Mother's Questions to Herself, 255 Chapter 11.
Baptism of the Sick Wife and Her Children, 272


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  CHAPTER 2: PROBABILITIES OF AN ORDINANCE FOR CHILDREN
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BERTHA AND HER BAPTISM. Chapter First. PROBABILITIES OF AN ORDINANCE FOR
CHILDREN. 'Tis aye a solemn thing to me To look upon a babe that sleeps, Wearing
in its spirit-deeps The unrevealed mystery Of its Adam's taint and woe.--MISS
BARRETT. Heaven lies about us in our infancy.--WORDSWORTH. It is generally
believed that, of those who have gone to heaven from this world, by far the
larger part have been infants and young children. Born here, they were by one
man's disobedience made sinners; born of the Spirit, at their early translation
to heaven, they hold an important place in the plan of salvation by Christ. Very
beautiful, as well as sublime, is the thought of so large a contribution, to the
heavenly world, of human beings in the dawn of their existence, enhancing, as we
may suppose, the happiness of heaven by such large admixture of exotic, youthful
nature, and illustrating, by their redemption from a helpless state of sin and
misery, the unsearchable riches of wisdom and grace. Has God done anything, in
this world, to mark his regard for that class of the human race constituting,
thus far, the greater part of the redeemed? We naturally look for something
reminding the world of his interest in these subsidiaries of his kingdom. Has he
confined his notice to those that are full-grown, and who have, thus far, the
larger part of them, withheld from him the fruit of his vineyard? God has a
church on earth, with ordinances, symbols, covenant signs: among them is there
not some sign, symbol, or ordinance, recognizing those who, more than any other
of the race, have, till now, been swelling the numbers of that church in heaven?
Like those elements of astronomical calculation which require and lead men to
expect undiscovered planets in a certain quarter of the firmament, analogy, and
the known intercourse of God with mankind, and our moral sense, incline us to
look for some symbolic recognition of this earthly constituency of heaven by him
who ordained and is redeeming to himself a church from among men. Words of
interest and love toward them on the part of God, we all know, are not wanting
in the Bible. Acts of loving-kindness, also, proving the sincerity of those
words, and reaching even to a thousand generations of them that love God, are
everywhere seen in sacred history. But is there no great, conspicuous symbol of
these things,--no type, no rite? Symbols appear to be inseparable attendants of
God's manifested favor to men. He cannot enter into covenant with an individual,
much less a people, but there is at least a stone set up, or a threshing-floor
is bought for him, an altar is built, or they pour out a horn of oil. He invites
Ahaz to ask of him a sign of his promise: "Ask it," he says, "either in the
depths, or in the height above;" and, when that man refuses, God gives him a
sign. Emblems, seals and types, in the early dispensation, burst forth like
images in the waters of everything along the banks, and even of things far off.
Everything has its memorial, its rite; are the children, is the parental
relation, forgotten? Here let us consider that God began with the first parents
and the first children of the human race to set forth that great law of his
administration, the connection of children with parents for good or evil. Every
descendant of Adam is an example under that law. Thus it was for nineteen
generations,--from Adam to Abraham. When, therefore, God reÎstablished his
church at the call of Abraham, it was no new thing to connect parents and their
children in covenant promises and blessings. It had its origin in the very
nature of man. Abraham, and the covenant made with him for all believers and
their children, are, indeed, a striking illustration of a principle recognized
and applied by the Most High; but the principle itself is older than
Abraham,--it is coÎval with the moral constitution of man. In making a covenant
with Noah, God included his children; so with David, making mention of his
house, "for a great while to come." As soon, therefore, as religion was
established in the earth, by securing its perpetuity through the conservative
influences of one selected line of descent, the child was taken, as being the
object of the covenant, and the means of its perpetuation, and received its
seal. God designed to perpetuate religion in the earth, thenceforward, chiefly
by means of the parental relation; for the parent represents God to the child
more than any other fellow-creature, or thing, can do,--more than any instituted
influence, whether of prophet, priest, church, or ritual. Setting up his church
for all future time, with Abraham for its founder, God included children with
parents who covenanted with him, as the objects of special regard and promise,
and he appointed a rite to mark and seal that covenant. Thus it was from Abraham
to Christ, during three times fourteen generations. But the day of types and
symbols was succeeded by another era, in which the church of God comes forth
with the glory of God risen upon her, and all the nebulous matter of types and
ceremonies is gathered together into two permanent sacraments; for human nature
was not beyond the need and help of outward signs. Now, in the earlier of the
two ages of the church, the child was recognized by a rite of the church; the
child, with that rite inscribed on him, was the sign-bearer of the church's
perpetuity. Yet, in the age following, the child was as dear to the parent as
ever; the Christian parent was as much concerned to have religion flow through
his seed, as were his predecessors; the salvation of the child was regarded with
the same solicitude, and the principle of perpetuating religion by the family
constitution was still the same. But did God withdraw from the children of his
servants, from the most hopeful of all the sources of his church's increase on
earth and in heaven, all token of his regard in any sacramental act? Is parental
affection, under the reign of Immanuel, debarred the enjoyment of one of its
most valuable privileges, the sealing of the child to be the Lord's by the use
of a divinely-appointed symbol? Had no ordinances and symbols been allowed after
the institution of Christianity, this question would not arise; the inference
would have been that human nature, under the Gospel, will no more need the aid
of rites in religion. But there are Christian rites, expressly and solemnly
instituted. Is not that most important relation of a believer's child to God
perpetuated; and is it not still to be sealed by the use of one of the Christian
ordinances? In considering this question, and the many interesting topics
connected with it, the writer will be allowed to take his own way, following an
historical order in the occurrences which may be supposed to have made the
subject interesting and clear to the minds of two parents.


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  CHAPTER 3: THE GRANDATHER'S LETTER
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Chapter Second. THE GRANDFATHER'S LETTER. THE NATURE, GROUNDS, AND INFLUENCE, OF
INFANT BAPTISM. If temporal estates may be conveyed By cov'nants, on condition,
To men, and to their heirs; be not affraid, My soule, to rest upon The covenant
of grace by mercy made. GEORGE HERBERT,--"The Font." --No finite mind can fully
comprehend the mysteries into which his baptism is the
initiation.--COLERIDGE,--"Aids," &c. Christian faith is the perfection of human
reason.--IBID. MY DEAR DAUGHTER BERTHA:--I am glad that you think of taking your
little namesake to the house of God for baptism. You wish to know my views about
it in full. My new colleague having relieved me of many cares and labors, I
shall hope to write more frequently; but not often so long a letter as I fear
this will be; for I wish to tell you of some conversations which I have had on
the subject in question. This will show you the common difficulties, in which,
perhaps, you share, and my way of removing them; and also set before you the
privileges and blessings connected with the baptism of your child. A man and his
wife--sensible, plain people--came to our house one evening last July, when the
"vines with the tender grape gave a goodly smell," through that trellis which
you and Percival have such pleasant reason to remember. We were all sitting
there in the moonlight, when this Mr. Benson and his wife came up the door-way,
and were welcomed into our little group. After a few words of mutual inquiry and
answer, he said: "Wife and I, sir, thought that we would make bold to come and
trouble you a little to tell us about baptizing our boy. He is getting to be
four months old, and we are not willing to put it off much longer. Still, we
would like to know the grounds of it a little better. People, you know, do not
think much about it till it comes to be a case in hand. "But I do not know,"
said he, looking round on your mother and the children, "but that we do wrong to
take this time for it. It will be rather a dry subject for these young friends
to hear." Pastor. Not at all. They owe too much to what was done for them when
they were little children, to dislike it. Besides, there is nothing dry about
it, as I view the subject. It is one of the most beautiful things in religion.
Mrs. Benson. It is next to the Lord's Supper, I always thought, if people take
the right view of it. Pastor. It makes you love God the Father in some such way
as the Lord's Supper makes you love the Saviour. I think, sometimes, that the
baptism of children is our heavenly Father's Sacrament. Mr. B. I like that; but
there is so much to study and learn about the "Abrahamic covenant," that I feel
a little discouraged. I have had books lent me on the Abrahamic covenant, and I
began to read them; but they looked hard; so I told my wife that perhaps you
would make the thing more clear, and bring it home to our feelings, and that we
would come and get your ideas about it. Pastor. How glad I am that you came! But
tell me what you take the Abrahamic covenant to mean. Mr. B. I suppose it means
that God told Abraham to circumcise his children, and infant baptism comes in
the place of it, and we must do it if we are Abraham's spiritual children. But I
wish to see the use of it. I am willing to do it, but I should like to feel it
more; and I want to know how baptism comes in the place of circumcision, and a
great many other things. Pastor. I think that you may possibly have what may be
called some Jewish notions about the Abrahamic covenant, though I trust you are
right in the main. That phrase sounds foreign and mysterious, and I never use it
except in talking with people who I know have the thing itself already in their
hearts. I called Helen to me, and told her to say the hymn which she had
repeated to me the last Sabbath evening. She cleared her voice, leaned against
me, and twisted her fingers in my hair behind, and, with her eyes fixed there,
she said this hymn: "Begin, my tongue, some heavenly theme, And speak some
boundless thing; The mightier works or mightier name Of our eternal King. "Tell
of his wondrous faithfulness, And sound his power abroad; Sing the sweet promise
of his grace, And the performing God. "Proclaim salvation from the Lord For
wretched, dying men; His hand has writ the sacred word With an immortal pen.
"Engraved as in eternal brass The mighty promise shines; Nor can the powers of
darkness rase Those everlasting lines. "He who can dash whole worlds to death,
And make them when he please, He speaks, and that Almighty breath Fulfils his
promises. "His very word of grace is strong As that which built the skies: The
voice that rolls the stars along Speaks all the promises. "He said, 'Let the
wide heavens be spread;' And heaven was stretched abroad. 'Abra'am, I'll be thy
God,' he said; And he was Abra'am's God. "O, might I hear thy heavenly tongue
But whisper, 'Thou art mine!' Those gentle words should raise my song To notes
almost divine. "How would my leaping heart rejoice, And think my heaven secure!
I trust the all-creating voice, And faith desires no more." Pastor. What a happy
man Abraham must have been when the Almighty made this engagement and promise:
"I will be a God to thee!" That was the "Abrahamic covenant," in part. "Does
covenant mean that?" said Mrs. B. "What?" I inquired. "Why, sir, what you have
just said,--engagement, promise?" "Nothing more," said I. "But what a happy man,
I say, Abraham must have been! 'A God to thee!' To have the Almighty say to one,
'I will be a God to thee!' You know that this is everything." "That is a fact,"
said Mr. B., wiping his eyes; "for, when I went to my store, the morning after I
became a Christian, I went along the street, saying to myself, 'Now I have a
God. God is God to me. Thou art my God.' "Yes," said his wife; "Deacon B., the
post-master, heard you, as you went by his side-window, and he made an excuse to
bring me up a paper, that forenoon, and asked whether you had not met with a
change in your feelings on the subject of religion." "Did he?" said Mr. B.
"Well, I did not mean to be heard, and yet I was willing that everybody should
know how happy I was in having one whom I could call my God. How I had lived so
long without God for my God, amazed me." Pastor. You make me think of a man who,
one night, on reaching his house, after having attended a lecture in a
school-room, was filled with such surprising views and feelings, with respect to
the greatness and goodness of God, that he saddled his horse, rode three miles,
waked up the minister, and, as he came to the door, took hold of each arm, and
said, "O, my dear sir, what a God we've got!" He would not go in, but soon
hastened back. It was the substance of all that he wished to say; he desired to
pour out his soul to some one who would understand him. He was like a thirsty
land when at last the great rain is descending. Mr. B. I suppose many people
would have thought him crazy. "I suspect the minister did, at first," said Mrs.
B. "And yet I suppose," said I, "he was never more rational. Just think what it
is for a poor sinner all at once to feel that the eternal God is his; that He
will be a God to him! We hear of some people dying at the receipt of good news;
and I have seen some so happy at this experience, of having a God to love and to
love them, that, if the thing itself did not, as it always does, bring peace and
inward strength with it, nature could not have sustained it." "Joy unspeakable,"
said Mr. B. "And full of glory," said his wife, waiting a moment for him to
finish the quotation. "Now, my dear friends," said I, "that man on horseback, at
his minister's door at midnight, had, at that moment, the first part of what is
meant by the 'Abrahamic covenant.' How little way do these words go toward
expressing the thing itself, and a man's feelings under it! There was a time
when God made Abraham far more happy even than he did you on your way to the
post-office that morning." Helen came along, just then, with a fruit-basket of
apples, and I said to her, as she was going round with them, "Say again that
verse in your hymn, which has these words in it, 'Thou art mine.'" So, while Mr.
B. was paring his apple, Helen stood before him, and said: "O, might I hear thy
heavenly tongue But whisper, 'Thou art mine!' Those gentle words should raise my
song To notes almost divine." Mr. B. put his apple and knife down, and took his
red bandanna handkerchief from under his plate, and, wiping his eyes, said:
"Hymns always make me feel a good deal, especially Watts's. I've read that hymn
in meeting before the exercises began." Pastor. You know, by happy experience,
what it is when that heavenly tongue whispers, "Thou art mine." Mr. B. I do,
sir, if I know anything. Pastor. Now, my dear friends, there is something
awaiting you, which you seem not to have experienced, but which is as good as
that. "We would like to hear about it," they both replied. "How should you like,
Mrs. B.," said I, "to have your little boy become a sailor?" "O dear!" said she,
"I should have no peace from this time, if I thought he was to be a sailor."
"But that," said I, "may be God's chosen occupation for him,--the way in which
he will employ him to bring him to himself, and then use him to be a preacher to
seamen, for example, and so to scatter the truth in many parts of the earth. We
are not our own, Mrs. B., and this dear boy was not given you, as we say, to
keep. 'For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were
created.'" "I want him brought up at college," said Mrs. B., looking at your
mother, who, she probably thought, would understand her motherly anticipations
about her boy so far ahead. "Well," said I, "let us send him to college. I
suspect that you would feel a good deal the morning he left you, would you not?"
"O," said she, "I should so want him to be good first! If he should not be a
good man, I would not have him get learning to do harm with it, and make himself
more miserable hereafter." The little gate, with its chain and ball, swung to at
this moment, and a woman and girl came up the walk. It was Mrs. Ford, who used
to be your dress-maker, and her daughter Janette, now about thirteen. It was a
farewell call from Janette, who was going to the neighborhood of Philadelphia,
into a coach-lace manufactory. "So Janette is going to leave us, to-morrow, Mrs.
Ford?" said your mother. "Yes, madam, and I feel sorely about it; so young, and
such a way off, and all strangers except the foreman, who spoke to me about her
coming! O, sir," said she, changing her undertone, and turning to me, "what
should we do without that promise, 'I will be a God to thee and to thy seed
after thee'?" I looked at Mr. and Mrs. B., and we all smiled, while I said: "Now
we have got the second part of the 'Abrahamic covenant.' So now we have the
whole of it. Mrs. Ford, when you came in, we were talking about baptizing
children, and about the 'Abrahamic covenant.' What do you understand by that
covenant?" "I understand by it, sir," said she, slowly gathering her words into
proper order; "why, I think I understand by it, that God promises to be a God to
a believer's child, as he was in such a wonderful way to Abraham's people."
Pastor. Well, that is the substance of one part of it, at least. Did you know,
Mrs. Ford, that when you came in we were just entering Mrs. Benson's son at
college? Mrs. Ford. Not this Mrs. Benson, of course. Whom do you mean, sir?
Pastor. This Mrs. Benson;--her little son. Mrs. Ford. O, I understand! Well, you
will send him to P., I suppose, it is so near. "We had not fixed on the
college," said Mrs. Benson, with a laugh. "Janette," said I, "how do you like
the thought of going off so far from us all?" Janette pulled the ends of her
plain cotton gloves, and her heart was full, so that she could not speak for a
moment. I was sorry that I had asked the question, and therefore added: "You
will not go where God cannot take care of you and bless you the same as at home,
will you, dear?" She lifted her white apron to her eyes, while Mrs. Ford said
for her: "I tell Janette that I gave her up to God in baptism; and when her
father lay sick, he said, 'That child was given to God in his house; I leave her
destitute, and with nothing but her hands, but I leave her to a covenant-keeping
God.'" "Now," said I, "here is a dear daughter going to a strange place to learn
a trade. She knows not a soul in the place but the foreman who has hired her. A
boy is going to college, another to sea, another to a distant city. Here is a
daughter, who receives particular attentions from certain young friends, and the
probability is that she will be asked in marriage; and here is a son, who with
his parents are in doubt with regard to his future occupation and course of
life. God only knows the feelings of parents at such times. What prayers are
made in secret,--what vows! One wrong step may embitter life. A right step may
lead to prosperity and great happiness. I sometimes wish that we could gather
our children together, in some of these emergencies and critical periods of
their lives, and offer up prayers and vows, as parents and friends, in their
behalf. There would not be many meetings more interesting than these, Mr.
Benson. How the parents of such children would love everybody that came at such
times to pray for their children; and what prayers would go up to God!" "Can we
not have some such meetings?" said Mr. Benson. "Every parent would like it, I am
sure." Pastor. Well, we do have some such meetings occasionally, I remember.
"Our minister loves to use parables," said Mrs. Benson, looking at your mother,
"so as to make us understand the meaning better, and remember it." "I must ask
you to explain," said Mr. Benson. Pastor. As often as we bring a child to the
house of God for baptism, Mr. Benson, we have such a meeting, if Christians will
but understand it so. We come with the parents, and say, "Lord God, here is this
dear child, with a momentous history pending upon thy favor and blessing. In all
future time, in the critical moments and eventful steps of its life, or in its
early death, or in its orphanage, be thou a God to this child." If God should
to-night, Mrs. Ford, say to you, "I will be Janette's God," would you not send
her away with a light heart? "He should have her for life, dear child!" said
she; "and I do feel that he is a God to her." "He is," said I, "if you have
really made a covenant with him about your daughter." "I have, sir," said Mrs.
Ford. Pastor. Did the covenant have any seal? Some good people, you know, think
it enough to covenant with God about their children, without using any special
act to mark and seal it. Now it is only in consecrating children to God that
they omit the seal from the covenant. We practise adult baptism, joining the
church, confirmation, and we partake of the Lord's Supper, feeling the propriety
and the use of acts and testimonies in the form of an ordinance. What seal had
your covenanting with God about your child? Mrs. Ford. I see it now clearer than
ever. As we stood with this child in our arms, we both said, afterwards, we made
a public profession of religion anew; and, when the minister said those sacred
names over her, I felt more than before that I was having transactions with God
about the child. But people used to say to me, "Why not wait and let Janette be
baptized when she is old enough to understand it?" How little they knew about
it! Just as though, I told them, if I had money to put into the savings-bank for
Janette, I would wait and let her put it in herself (it is so pleasant to put it
in when you know all about it!), instead of laying it up for her in the funds,
and let it count up while she is growing. Pastor. Those friends who advised you
so, think, perhaps, too much of the ceremony itself, and not so much of what it
signifies. Now the pleasure of being baptized is nothing compared with having
God enter into a covenant in your behalf when you knew nothing about it. Mrs.
Ford. They said to me, also, "What right have you to do it, instead of letting
her have the choice and privilege of doing it herself hereafter?" I told them
that, if we acted on that principle, in the treatment of our children, there
would be a long list of useful things, which we do for them, to be postponed.
Pastor. We can benefit another without his consent. The question is, whether it
is a benefit to a child for God and its natural guardians to make a covenant
together in its behalf. Mr. Benson. It surely is so, if God truly is a party to
such a covenant. But where is the proof that he is? That is my trouble. They
tell me that this covenanting with God for a child, and sealing it with an
ordinance, ceased with Abraham, who was a Jew; that it was a Jewish custom,
which died out. Pastor. Abraham a mere Jew! God's covenant with a believer and
his children a Jewish covenant! Never was there a greater mistake. Paul tells us
expressly it was not so. Get me a Bible, Helen, and bring me a lamp. I read
these words: "And the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to
Abraham and his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith."
His relation to the world was independent of dispensations; it grew out of that
faith which he had in common with all believers to the end of time. "And he
received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith
which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them
that believe, though they be not circumcised." Christ also says: "Moses,
therefore, gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the
fathers.)" Abraham was not a Jew when God covenanted with him, any more than
you, madam, were Mrs. Ford, when, at the age of sixteen, as you have told me,
you entered into covenant with God. That covenant had chief respect to your
immortal soul, and yet it reached in its influences to all the conditions of
that soul while here in the flesh. So God covenanted with Abraham as a believer,
not as a mere national ancestor; yet temporal and spiritual blessings came in
rich measures upon his immediate descendants. But we read, "So then as many as
be of faith are blessed with faithful," that is, believing, "Abraham." "And if
ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."
Can anything be plainer than this? Mrs. Ford. My father was a minister, you
know, sir, and he used to preach a great deal on this subject. Pastor. Let us
hear your understanding of these passages, Mrs. Ford. "I am afraid," said she,
"I cannot tell you just what he used to say. But my idea of it is this: Though
Abraham was the founder of the Hebrew people, he was no more a Jew than a
Gentile in his covenant with God, for it was as believer the great believer,
that God made a covenant with him. So that he was not circumcised as a Jew, but,
as the Bible says, to have a seal of the righteousness which he had by faith.
God made a covenant with him as a believer, to be his God and the God of his
children, as the children of a believer, not a Jew; so that all believers are
blessed with believing Abraham, by having the same covenant extended to them.
Then, I take it, God gave him a sign and seal as a pledge, and to remind him of
it, and to keep his children in remembrance." She paused, and I said: "Please to
go on." You remember, Bertha, how you used to make this Mrs. Ford discuss
doctrinal matters when she was sewing for you. Mrs. Ford. I remember that father
said that God took the rainbow as a sign and seal of his promise, to Noah and
all future generations, that there should never be another universal deluge. So
he appointed a children's ordinance to mark his covenant with believers to the
end of time. Only there was this difference; the way of signing and sealing the
covenant not being coupled with the laws of nature, but conforming to the kind
of symbols successively in use, it was changed, at the time that the Sabbath was
changed, and the whole of the old dispensation; but father used to say, Is the
commonwealth and citizenship broken up because the legislature adopts a new
state seal? Does that destroy all the old public documents? Pastor. Good! So the
United States' mint is from time to time changing its dies; lately it has
abolished copper, and substituted equivalent coins of different composition. But
money does not perish. A cent is a cent still, red or white. So, whether the
seal be blood or water, the great ordinance which it seals remains the same.
"And now I will tell you," said I, "how it seems to me God's covenanting with
parents for their children came to pass. He wished to give Abraham a token and
seal of his love to him. So he took his child, the thing which he loved best,
and would see oftenest, and thought of most, and made the child, as it were, the
tablet on which to write his covenant with the father. That was one reason.
'Because he loved the fathers, therefore he chose their seed.' But this is the
least of the reasons in the case. "Here is one of vastly greater importance. God
wished to perpetuate religion in the earth. He knew that the family constitution
would be the principal means of doing this, parents teaching and commanding
their children, and so transmitting religion. Because he knew that Abraham would
do this, he gave it as a reason for his love and confidence in him, in not
concealing from him his purpose to destroy Sodom. 'Shall I hide from Abraham
that thing which I do? For I know him that he will command his children and his
household after him, and they shall keep the ways of the Lord.' So, in order to
remind Abraham of what was expected by the Most High in making his children the
presumptive heirs of grace, and to remind the children of it when they came to
years of understanding, God gave him and them this mark and seal." "Well, then,"
said Mr. Benson, "it seems to me Abraham was better off than we, if he had God
in covenant with him for his children, and we have not. I sometimes wish that I
could have God covenant with me about my boy, as Abraham had about Isaac." "I
should like," said Mrs. B., "to hear him say, 'I will be a God to him,' and then
tell us to do something of his own appointment that should be like our signing
and sealing a covenant together, as the Lord's Supper enables us to do with
Christ." "If we have no such blessed privilege," said I, "then, as Abraham
desired to see our day, I should, in this respect, rejoice to see Abraham's day.
I cannot forego the privilege of having God in covenant with me for my children
as he was with Abraham for his; and I crave some divine seal affixed to it. "You
said, Mrs. Benson, that you would like to have God promise to be the God of your
child, and then command you to do something which would be like God and you
signing and sealing it together. But do you think, Mrs. B., that this is
necessary? Why is it not enough for God to make a promise, and you make one, and
let it be without any sign or seal?" "People don't do things in that way," said
Mr. Benson, with a decided motion, two or three times, with his head. "They call
a wedding a ceremony, it is true, and some say, 'So long as people are engaged
to be man and wife, the ceremony makes little difference.' But it does make all
the difference in the world,--this mere ceremony, as they call it. They never
like to dispense with it themselves, at least; because, you see, it makes all
the difference between unlawful, sinful union, and marriage. It makes married
life; which could not exist, without the ceremony, among decent people. It gives
a title and ground to a thing which could not be without it. So, I begin to see
and feel, it is with regard to what some call the ceremony of baptism. But
excuse me, wife, I took the answer out of your mouth." "Well," said Mrs. Benson
to me, "I must wait upon you, sir, to answer the question further." "Mr. Benson
has the right view of the subject," I replied. "We make too little of signs and
seals, from a morbid fear and jealousy of those which are invented by man and
added to religion. But God's own seals are safe and good. We cannot make too
much of them. "God never did anything with men, from the beginning, without
signs and seals. The tree of life was one, and so was the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. Adam and Eve knew better, at first, than to say, 'So long as
we love and obey God, of what use are these symbols?' By not regarding symbols
afterward, they brought death into our world and all our woe. Even before that,
God had appointed a symbol of his authority, and a seal of a covenant between
him and man forever, in the appointment of the Sabbath. The mark on Cain's
forehead, the rainbow, the lamp passing between the severed parts of Abraham's
sacrifice, Jacob's ladder, the burning bush, the passover, and things too
numerous to mention, show how God loves signs and seals. "There are many good
people, at the present day, who say to me, I am willing to consecrate my child
to God in prayer, and bring him up for God; but I do not see the necessity of an
ordinance. Why bring the child to baptism? I can do all which is required and
signified, without the sign." "What do you say to them?" said Mrs. Ford. Pastor.
I tell them they are on dangerous ground. Will they be wiser than God? He knows
our natures, and what to prescribe to us in our intercourse with him. I would as
soon meddle with a law of nature, as with God's ordinances. I might as well
neglect a law of nature, and think to be safe and well, as to neglect one of
God's ordinances, and expect his blessing. People, moreover, may as well object
to family prayer, and say that they try to live in a spirit of prayer all day.
Why do they have special seasons for retirement, if they walk with God? Why do
they hardly feel that they have prayed if company, or a bedfellow, on a journey,
keeps them from using oral prayer? It is a bitter grief, also, when no funeral
solemnities lead the way to the grave with a beloved object; yet, where in the
word of God are they commanded? As Mr. Benson said, "Who is willing to dispense
with the wedding ceremony, except in cases where sadness and trouble seek
concealment?" People cannot give full evidence that they are Christians unless
they make a public profession of religion. They cannot properly remember Jesus
without partaking of his body and blood. Depend upon it, my dear friends, God
sets great value on ordinances, and our observance of them. God has given us two
sacraments, and he who dispenses with them because he undervalues them, or
undertakes to say that they are not necessary to him, or to any in this age of
the world, is in peril. The only danger from forms and ordinances is when they
are of human origin. We must take care and not let our revulsion from Romanism
carry us to the extreme of neglecting or setting aside the ordinances of God's
appointment. "There are three that bear record on earth, the Spirit, and the
water, and the blood; and these three agree in one." A man may, with equal
propriety, dispense with the blood, and its symbol the wine, or with the Spirit,
as with the water, if God has appointed it with the other two as a witness
between him and us. You notice that the Spirit is named with the two inanimate
things, the blood and the water. Take care, I say to my friends, lest, in
setting aside the water, you shut out that divine Spirit, who, knowing how to
deal with our nature, chooses the blood and the water to be used by us in
connection with our most spiritual religious exercises of the mind and heart. We
have no more right to interfere with God's ordinances than with the number of
the persons in the Trinity. "All this affects me so," said Mr. Benson, "that I
shall not fail to offer my child to be baptized, if I am allowed to do so. Now,
there is my difficulty. Why do you think, and how do you show, that baptism must
now be used as God's sign and seal of his covenant with believers for their
children? When circumcision was dropped, some insist that the covenant was
dropped with it, and, therefore, that there is no warrant in Scripture for
baptizing children." "Why," said Mrs. Ford, "if the coming in of Moses'
dispensation did not abolish the arrangement with Abraham, why should its going
out? I am inclined to think that Abraham and his seed are, to Moses and his
dispensation, something like that vine to the trellis, running over it to the
top of the piazza, bending itself in, you see, to accommodate itself, but having
a root and a top, the one below, the other above, the short frame, which only
guides it up to the roof. In the eleventh of Romans does not Paul say that Jews
and Gentiles have one and the same 'root'? I always supposed that root to be
Abraham and his covenant." I did not quote Latin to my friends, but I thought of
the old law-maxim, Manente ratione, manet ipsa lex--which, if your scholarship
is not at hand to translate it, Percival will tell you, means, "The reason for a
law remaining, the law itself also remains." It is used in such cases as the
following: When one would insist that a law was intended to be repealed by the
operation of another law, not directly or expressly aimed to repeal it, it is a
good reply. If the original reason for enacting the old law can be shown still
to exist, it is strong presumptive evidence that there was no intention to
repeal that law. I explained this, in as simple language as I could, to my
excellent friends, and told them, "If God's covenant, which circumcision sealed,
were Mosaic, and therefore national, Jewish, we should presume that it ceased
with the Jewish nation; or, if it continued, that it was restricted to their
posterity. But why should God bestow his inestimable blessing on the father of
the faithful, and take it away from the faithful themselves? We love our
children, as Abraham did his. It is as important to us that God should be the
God of our seed, as it was to Abraham. My heart yearns after that covenanting
God in behalf of my children." "I will give up thinking of Abraham as a Jew,"
said Mrs. Benson. "What was he, then?" said I, "or what will he be to you, from
this time?" "He was the head of believers," said she, "just as Adam was the head
of men. As Mrs. Ford said, he was the great believer; and I am persuaded that
all who are of faith have his privileges, and more too; but certainly all that
he had." "But, my dear," said your mother, "you have forgotten the question.
Supposing that the covenant still remains, why do you take baptism for the seal
of it? The old way of sealing it is given up. What authority do you show for
using baptism in its place?" "I take the initiating ordinance of religion for
the time being," said I, "whatever it may be. Is not baptism the initiating
ordinance, as circumcision was? When they built our long bridge, and the
ferry-boats ceased running, did the town put up a great sign over the gate,
saying, 'It is enacted that this river shall continue to be crossed'? Did they
add, 'This bridge is hereby appointed as the way of getting over the river'? Or,
did not people take it for granted, when the bridge was opened and the
ferry-boats were withdrawn, that the bridge was designed to be the way by which
they were to pass over the river? "Now, suppose so impossible a thing as this,
that hereafter baptism should, by divine revelation, be changed for anointing
with oil, and nothing were said about children. I would anoint the child with
oil, instead of baptizing it with water. We are to use the initiatory rite of
the church for the time being." "But," said Mrs. Benson, "is there any
resemblance between circumcision and baptism?" "There need be none," said I.
"Resemblance does not give it efficacy, but God's appointment of it. If marking
the flesh in some way should be appointed to succeed baptism, we need not look
for a likeness between it and baptism before we complied with the divine
requirement." "I do wish," said Mrs. Benson, "that the authority to baptize
children were more expressly stated in the Bible, to satisfy all who were not
brought up as we have been." Pastor. The overwhelming majority of those who now
receive the Bible as the word of God find it there. Mrs. Benson. But why did not
Paul receive a revelation about it, as he did about the Lord's Supper? Pastor.
Did that make the thing any more authoritative with us than the original
appointment? We will not prescribe to God how to teach us. We will not make up
our minds how he ought to have made a revelation, but we will take that
revelation and try to understand it. "I agree to that," said they all. Pastor.
It appears to me that God prefers, on certain subjects, that the world shall
reason by inferences. It is a wise way of educating children and youth, to leave
some things to be learned in this way, and not by setting everything before
them, like too many examples in the arithmetic wrought out. We have changed the
Sabbath from the seventh to the first day in the week. It gives me a sublime
idea of our Sabbath, that by some great, silent alteration, it has come to pass
that all the world keep the day of Christ's resurrection, instead of the day
which commemorated the work of creation. I feel toward it as I do with regard to
the noiseless changes of the seasons, and the conformity of our habits and
practices to them. I left New York late in winter for the Azores, and, before I
expected it, the warm southern airs came one morning into my cabin window. So
the Christian Sabbath, with its beautiful associations, flowed in upon the world
without a formal proclamation. I feel thankful to God for so regarding our
intelligent natures, as to leave some things, relating to ordinances, modes, and
forms, to be inferred, bringing great changes over the moral and spiritual
world, and leaving us to adjust ourselves and the administration of the
appointed ordinances to them. We can add nothing, we take nothing away from an
express, divine command; but, as the first disciples were left to infer that a
Sabbath was as necessary after Christ brought in the new creation as before, and
adjusted it to the celebration of the Saviour's rising from the dead, so we
infer that God's covenant with believing parents for their children is as
desirable now as ever; that all the original reasons for it now exist; and,
therefore, we take the initiating ordinance of religion now, as the church in
former ages did, and apply it to the children. All church-members did it before
Christ; all church-members may do it now. God saw fit to make every adult
member, at least, of the Jewish family, a church-member; if he has changed and
restricted the terms of church-membership now, that is a sufficient reason for
not making the sealing of children as universal now as it was before. That is to
say, in both cases, it is a church-member's privilege. Without detailing the
conversation at this point, let me say, I take it for granted that Abraham, as
my great spiritual ancestor, my representative before God, my commissioner to
receive for me and transmit my privileges and blessings, continues in that
relation unless expressly set aside. Christ did not set him aside. How
wonderfully he is brought forward under the new dispensation, when it is said to
us, "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to
the promise." But, pray, why should Abraham be intruded in connection with
Christ, if he with his covenant is like a lapsed legacy, or a superseded act of
Congress? Why comes he here, in connection with the Saviour, and tells me that
if I am Christ's, then am I his, Abraham's, seed? Hear this: "Christ hath
redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, that the
blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." Wonderful
elevation of Abraham and his blessing, as the great type of all that Christ was
to procure for us! If Abraham and his covenant ceased with the Jewish people,
how does the blessing of Abraham fully come upon us, the Gentiles? But give me
his covenant for my children; then I see that Christ is executor of the
testament made with Abraham for his children; and I am one of the heirs; as
indeed I am, even if I have no children, but if I have, all of Abraham's
privileges and his covenanting God are mine and theirs. So that, I said to my
friends, I go to the Bible not to say, "Must I baptize my children?" but, "Am I
forbidden to baptize them?" All my predecessors in the church of God, before
Christ, had the privilege of bringing their children into the bonds of the
covenant with themselves. If they felt as we do about it (and strict usage, and
the rich experience which they had had of its benefits, must have made it
inestimably precious to them), it is incredible that a sudden and total
discontinuance of it, at the beginning of Christianity, should not have
occasioned great clamor. The formalists, at least, would have remonstrated at
the seeming violation, by this new order of things, of natural affection. For,
as Doddridge well observes, "What would have been done with the infants, or male
children, of Christians?"--that is, of converted Jews, as well as others. They
could not circumcise them; but their teachers, being spiritually-minded men,
knew that circumcision was a seal of faith, not merely of nationality, and must
not the converts have required some sign and symbol still for their children?
Now they had long been used to the baptism of proselytes and their children; so
that baptizing their own children, as a substitute for circumcising them, could
not have been a violent change with those whom Peter's vision of the sheet had
taught that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs. And when he, in one of his
first sermons, said to the whole house of Israel, "Ye are the children of the
covenant," and "The promise is unto you and to your children," we can account
for their utter silence as to any revocation by Christianity of the right and
privilege of applying the initiatory ordinance of religion, for the time being,
to a believer's child. "But," said Mr. Benson, "the Saviour said, 'He that
believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved.' The apostles said, 'Repent and be
baptized, every one of you.' Show us, now, why this does not prove that
repentance and faith were not thus made essential to baptism. According to these
passages, none could be baptized who had not repented and believed. This would
exclude infants. 'Believe, and be baptized;' how do you dispose of that, sir?"
"Very easily," said I. Mrs. Benson exclaimed, "O, sir, if you can, all my
difficulty is at an end!" "Well, then," said I, "in the first place, there is no
such requirement in the Bible. You see the expression very often, but it is not
found in Scripture. But tell me exactly what your difficulty is." "Why," said
she, "my husband has just stated it. People tell us the Bible says, 'He that
believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved.' So they insist that no one should
be baptized who is not old enough to believe." I told her that I could remove
her difficulty in very few words. "Suppose," said I, "that Abraham is preaching
to full-grown men in Canaan, and is trying to proselyte them from their idolatry
to the worship of God. He would say to them, 'Believe and be circumcised,' would
he not? for God ordained that certain proselytes should be circumcised." "Yes,
sir," said two or three voices at once. "Well, then," said I, "must it follow
that children could not be circumcised because Abraham said to men, 'Believe and
be circumcised'? How will that reasoning answer? Is it true? No. Little Isaac
refuted it, for he was circumcised even when his father was saying to his pagan
neighbors, 'Believe and be circumcised.'" "True enough, all who believed, in
Christ's day and the apostles', needed to be baptized, because they were not
children, but were grown up, when Christian baptism began. Had an apostle,
however, lived to see the jailer's family, and that of Lydia, and of Stephanas,
grown up, and any in those families had remained unconverted, and then he had
said to them, 'Believe and be baptized,' there would be some force in saying
that believing and baptism must always go together." "One other thing always
troubled me," said Mr. Benson, "and that is, that there was no seal of the
covenant for any but male children. Now, if the initiatory rite of Christianity
be used for the same purpose as that given to Abraham, why not confine it, as
formerly, to males?" "How interesting it is," said I, "and it is full of
instruction, to see God paying regard to the world's knowledge and progress, in
all his measures, and doing nothing prematurely. There is a very striking
illustration of this in the account of the fall. "God knew the history of the
tempter during his agency in Paradise; for angels had sinned and fallen from
heaven. But the existence and agency of fallen spirits had not been disclosed in
the Bible,--the time for the disclosure had not come,--and therefore it is said,
with beautiful simplicity, 'Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of
the field which the Lord God had made;' and the narrative has respect only to
the external appearance of the tempter, the serpent, because it would have been
premature as yet to bring in the story of fallen angels, or make allusion to
them. "So, for reasons belonging to the early ages of the world, woman was
included in man, who acted for her.[1] "But, however the arrangement began, God
regarded that organic law of society, and, in giving Abraham a seal of a
covenant for his children, he restricted it to the sons, they in all things
standing and acting as the representatives of the house, according to the
existing custom. God did not go far beyond the world's advancement, in his
ordinances, but, with condescension and in wisdom, suited the one to the other.
But, as things were then generally represented by types, so the male child was a
type and representative of the more full and complete form, which was reserved
till the fulness of time, and till the world should know the fulness of Him that
filleth all in all. For 'in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, male
nor female.'" [Footnote 1: A curious reason for this, in the minds of some,
appears to be that, when man was created, woman was included in him. For, they
say, in the first chapter of Genesis, and in the account of the sixth day,
before woman was made, the plural word them is used: "male and female created he
them." They say that the blessing was pronounced on the man and woman in Adam.
For they think it improbable that Moses would anticipate his history so much as
to bring in woman, and, withal, her blessing, too, at the sixth day, when the
narrative teaches that she was made some time afterwards. Hence, they say, it
was that woman was for ages treated as included in man. There is something
pleasing in this fancy, but it seems like one of Origen's allegories, he being
the father of allegorical interpretation. It had its origin in an ancient
Rabbinical sentiment.] So I discoursed with my visitors till between ten and
eleven o'clock, and when they rose to go, we all stood up together and joined in
prayer. We commended Janette to her covenant-keeping God, whose name had been
inscribed upon her. We remembered the little boy who had been the occasion of
all this pleasant conversation, and prayed that his consecration might be
accepted, and the sign and seal of it be owned and blessed to him and his
parents. As I walked down to the gate with my friends, I said to them, that,
when God was covenanting with Abraham, he bade him look up into the heavens, and
count the stars, and told him that his seed, like them, should be innumerable.
So I told them frequently to look up to those old heavens, and remember that the
covenant-keeping God is there, the same who, in blessing Abraham, included his
seed; and that, because Abraham was so good a man, God calls his posterity "the
seed of Abraham my friend." And so we said good-night. In reading over what I
have written, there are a few things more which I feel disposed to add, because
I know that Percival will make good use of them in talking with others in your
congregation. I feel, more than I can express, that the state of mind in parents
which will make them prize and use the ordinance of baptism for their children
is the great want of our day. Bringing children to church, and baptizing them,
unless the parents are themselves in covenant with God, is as wrong as it was
for those earthly-minded Corinthians, whom Paul rebukes, to eat the Lord's
Supper. They made a feast, or a meal, of the supper; and some use baptism just
to give a child a name,--to "christen" it, as they say,--in mere compliance with
a custom. But the abuse of a thing is no valid argument against it. The last
supper is the subject of far more perversion; it gives occasion to a vast amount
of superstition and folly. The procession of the host, the elevation of the
host, the laying of the wafer on the tongue, the solemn injunctions against
spitting for a certain time after receiving it, are no valid arguments against
the Lord's Supper, and no Christian is led by them to disregard the words of the
Lord Jesus, "This do in remembrance of me." Much of the practical benefit of the
Supper comes through the feelings which it awakens, the conduct which it
promotes. So with infant baptism. The child must be truly consecrated to God,
beforehand, and afterwards; and the ordinance must be used as a sign and seal on
our part, as it is on the part of God,--an act and testimony, a memorial, a vow.
Hannah lent her child to the Lord from the beginning, and then brought him to
the temple, with her offerings. We must take the child from baptism as though
God had placed it a second time in our hands, to be trained up for him. But,
still, the ordinance is God's, and not man's. He has a work to do in us by means
of it, while it also helps our feelings, fixes them, makes them vivid, and
imposes solemn obligations upon us by its signified vow. So it is with the
Lord's Supper. In each case it is God's memorial, and not ours; and its benefit
does not consist so much in showing forth the state of our hearts at the time of
administration, as in sealing to us the promises of God. True, our feelings are
awakened and strengthened, ordinarily, by the ordinances; but that neither
explains nor limits the meaning of them. We are wrong if we suppose that the
Lord's Supper has done no good unless our feelings are vivid at the time of
partaking. If we were sincere, our act had the effect to engage and seal
blessings from God of which we were not aware, and may never be able to trace
them back to that transaction. So with regard to baptism. Some call this
sacerdotalism, and are afraid to allow that the sacraments have any influence or
use, except as a testimony from us to God. Romanism has driven us to the
opposite extreme in our ideas of sacraments. We do not vibrate back again too
far toward Romanism, if now we conclude that God employs his sacraments,
properly received by us, as seals from him of love and promises. Many Christians
derive less comfort and help from the Lord's Supper than they may, because they
regard it as profitable only so far as they can offer it to God with vivid
feelings on their part; and, when their frames are not as they desire, they
conclude that the ordinance is unprofitable. But let us also consider who
appointed this ordinance. It is the appointment of Christ, not ours; and at his
table we are his guests, not he ours. The Saviour is well represented as saying
to us, "Thou canst not entertain a king! Unworthy thou of such a guest; But I my
own provision bring, To make thy soul a heavenly feast." There is a divine side
to sacraments, as there is a divine side in conversion. While we are active in
regeneration, there is a work of God wrought in us, distinct from our faith and
repentance, yet inseparable from it. So, while sacraments are vows on our part
to God, they are, primarily, gifts, pledges, seals, on his part to us.
Therefore, when one says, "I can bring up my children, I can be a Christian,
without the use of sacraments," it is a proper reply, "But can God do his part
toward your children, and toward you, without them?" For, not only is prayer
"the offering up of our desires to God for things agreeable to his will," but
there is the additional truth, which is well expressed in those lines of a hymn:
"Prayer is appointed to convey The blessings God designs to give." So with
sacraments; they convey gifts from God, not primarily gifts from us to God. He,
then, who declines to have his children baptized, on the ground that it is
useless, may, in so doing, interrupt the communication of a divinely-appointed
medium between God and his child. For he need not be told that the faith of
parents brought blessings from the Saviour, when on earth, to their children,
nor be reminded that the benefits of circumcision were bestowed on the ground of
the parental relation to God. One further illustration occurs to me of the power
which resides in the sacraments themselves, in distinction from their being a
testimony from us to God. Let me call to your remembrance notices which you
sometimes see, of young people going, in a frolic, before a clergyman or justice
of the peace, to be married, when they intended nothing but sport, and found,
afterward, that they had brought themselves into difficulty, and were legally
held to be married. You see by this that covenants do not, by any means, derive
all their efficacy from the feelings of a contracting party. Covenants and their
seals are the most sacred of all human transactions, and cannot be lightly
regarded, or trifled with. God reveals himself often under the name of the God
that keepeth covenant. So that we may not set aside the sacraments, nor
undervalue them. This leads me to say, furthermore, that children, who doubt
whether their parents sincerely and truly offered them to God in baptism, the
parents being in an unregenerate state, as it afterward appeared, when they came
with their children to the ordinance, may be greatly comforted and encouraged by
taking this view of the divine sacrament of baptism as having a force and
application in their behalf, by the goodness of God, irrespective of their
parents' character. God will not let his sacraments depend, for their efficacy,
on the character either of the administrator or of the parents. For, if the
character of an administrator affected the baptism, it might so happen that one
could never really be baptized, since every successive hand which applied it
might prove, in turn, to be that of an unworthy person. If a child is baptized
on the profession of parents who afterward show that they were not sincere, the
child shall not suffer thereby, if he recognizes the transaction, and makes it
his own act. In the case of a converted husband or wife, while one companion
remained a heathen, the children were, nevertheless, counted "holy," because the
Gospel leaned to the side of mercy, and gave the children the benefit of the
believing parent's faith, instead of attainting them through the heathen parent.
So, when a child is baptized in error, he shall not suffer, nor even lose
anything, if he will accept the covenant with its seal. No one can justly reply
to all this, that, therefore, every one even though not of the church, may offer
his child for baptism. No; for these are exceptional cases, in which it is true
that a covenant, even if it be not fulfilled, has force, and things may enure
under it which one who does not make the required profession cannot receive. The
covenant, if but the outward conditions be complied with, places all, who are in
any way related to it, under various contingencies, which sometimes, to some of
the parties, may be productive of good. We see illustrations of this in the
great tenderness and love which we feel toward a child whose parent has brought
a stain upon himself and his family. We find an echo, in our hearts, of those
kind words of the Most High, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the
father;" and, if that son behaves himself worthily, every good man is doubly
careful to protect and help him. In this way the broken, or unfulfilled,
covenant operates, with God and with man, to the good of some related to it. But
shall we, therefore, break our covenant? Shall the unworthy be promiscuously
admitted to its privileges? "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" In
speaking of the influence of sacraments, I am aware that we approach enchanted
ground. The human heart loves a religion of forms and ceremonies, which
professes to renew and save without self-denial, breathing around us the
quietism of ordinances, and lulling us to drowsy forgetfulness of duty in the
luxurious enjoyment of an irresponsible religion. While, therefore, we cannot
too carefully guard against the abuse of ordinances, we must not forget that
God, who made man, body and soul, chooses to convey some of his gracious
operations to us by the help of the two simple sacraments, and that they are
intended to act upon us, in the hands of his Spirit, in the first instance; not
merely serving as offerings to God. It is not that there are fewer children
baptized now than formerly (if such indeed be the case), that awakens sorrow and
apprehension; but that parents are deficient in the feelings which make us prize
and use baptism. This is the evil sign, and it is greatly to be deplored. One
must have intelligent views of the Scriptures as a whole,--of both
Testaments,--most fully to understand and value infant baptism; for its roots
were planted in the Old Testament. I always feel deep respect for a
church-member who comprehends this subject in its wide relations, and is not
swayed by the popular demand for an express sign at every step, but can reason
inferentially as well as when proofs are demonstrative and palpable; and who has
in his mind the whole system of redemption, with its various economies,
interdependent, and none made perfect without the rest. When all our
church-members come to understand and feel the power of this subject in this
manner, what times of enlightened religious prosperity, and a high state of
religious culture, it will indicate. I pray and wait for the time when all our
PÊdobaptist churches, of every name, will conspire to promote spiritual views of
children's baptism, holding it forth as the expression of spiritual feelings,
and discountenancing formalism in connection with it. Though I was never an
Episcopalian in my preferences, and though the appointment of godfathers and
godmothers may, like every good thing, relapse into mere form, I honor it for
its excellent and pious design of surrounding the parents and the children with
admonition and help. For there are sponsors, I am happy to know, who are not
mere formalists, but who make it a rule to have an interview with their
godchildren on or near their birthdays, or the anniversaries of their baptisms,
and, in an affectionate, faithful manner, they endeavor to fulfil the vows which
they took upon themselves at the baptism. Blessings on such faithful Christian
friends! Happy the children who have them for helpers of their faith and piety.
Let us all, as church-members, be sponsors, at least by prayers and a kind
interest for it, to every child of a Christian brother or sister, when we
witness its baptism. Suppose a church-member, after witnessing the baptism of an
infant, its parents, perhaps, entire strangers, goes to his place of private
prayer, and, moved with disinterested love toward those parents and the child,
supplicates the blessing of God upon them. Could Christian love be more pure
than this, or prayer more pleasing to God? In the revelations of eternity such
prayers will not only be rewarded openly by Him who saw those doors shut with
that secret love and piety, but blessings upon parents and child without measure
may be traced to such petitions as their procuring cause. How good it is to
perform such acts, knowing that they can never come abroad in this world! Should
every Christian who witnesses the baptism of a child, afterward pray for that
immortal soul in secret, with special petitions, what an increased privilege and
blessing it would be esteemed to offer a child in baptism, and in God's house,
before a witnessing church, rather than at home! I hope, my dear daughter, that
you and Percival, as private Christians, will do good to your own souls, and to
the souls of baptized children, and to their parents, by making it one of your
private rules to pray in secret, on the Sabbath, for every child whose baptism
you witness. The effort to promote and enforce infant baptism, by ecclesiastical
enactments merely, is absurd. We must fertilize the soil, not spread glass
sashes over the plants. Give Christians right views and feelings about their
covenant privileges and duties; disabuse them of their mistakes about the
severance of the Old Testament from the New; teach them to look at Abraham, not
as a decayed peer, or an old Jew, but as the founder of the church of all ages,
to whom Almighty God virtually said, 'On this rock I will build my
church,'--Abraham being the first foundation stone, waiting for apostles to be
added with him, and, as our great representative, bearing in his hand the
covenant made with him for us, as well, as for the other great branch of the
family of God; show them that baptism is now the initiating ordinance, and that
the old covenant was never repealed, though the seal be changed; let them see
what it is to have God in covenant with them to be the God of their seed; and,
withal, let us correct, or modify, the intense anti-papal jealousy of the
Christian rites, which makes us all, unconsciously, verge to the opposite
extreme, thus missing the divinely-appointed intention and use which there is in
our two simple ordinances; and then, with the revival of such spiritual views
and feelings, and, as a consequence, with greater reference in the prayers of
Christians, public and private, to the subject, the practice of children's
baptism will increase, as surely as accessions to the Lord's table increase when
people come to have Christ in them the hope of glory. We, ministers, can do very
much to promote a love for the ordinance in many ways. We ought to make it
convenient and pleasant by all the expedients within our power. I like the
practice which you speak of, in your church, of the mother remaining with the
child in the anteroom till the introductory services and the loud organ-playing
are over. Does your pastor pour water into the child's face and eyes, and then
begin the words of baptism? I presume not; but I have seen it done. We should
not touch the child's head till near the close of the baptismal formula; and
then so that the child will not see the arm move toward it. Much can be done by
these simple expedients to promote a quiet and pleasant attendance upon the
delightful rite. I like the practice, in your church, of chanting low some
appropriate words of Scripture before and after the baptism. I am constrained to
say, though with diffidence, that I fear some of my good brethren give erroneous
impressions by what they say of the church-membership of children. They push it
to extremes. They discuss the question, What shall be done with baptized
children, who, on arriving at years of understanding, refuse to enter into
covenant with God? Church censures are asserted by some to be proper in such
cases, even to excommunication, or interference in some judicial way by the
church. So long as I believe in regeneration by the Holy Spirit, I cannot feel
that baptized children, as such, are, in any sense whatever, in which the term
is generally received among men, members of the church of Christ; while, in
another and most important sense, they do belong to the church, hold a relation
to it, and are a part of it. Strictly speaking, and in the highest spiritual
sense, they are not even "the lambs of Christ's flock;" for lambs have the
nature of sheep; but the children of believers are, by nature, children of
wrath, even as others. And yet, in another sense, they hold a most important
relation to the flock of Christ, as no other children do. In its most important
sense, they are not to the church even what they are to the state; they have no
place whatever in the invisible church,--the church which is saved,--till they
are born again. If children are regenerated by the act of baptism, of course it
is otherwise; but, not believing this, I am clear that the baptized child of a
believer differs from any other unregenerate child, who is not baptized, only in
this: that God looks upon it with peculiar interest and love, and that it is
surrounded with special and peculiar privileges, opportunities, promises, and
hopes, with regard to its being brought to repentance and saving faith in
Christ; and by baptism it is initiated into special relationship to the people
of God. The church also has special duties with regard to it. Some of my
brethren give great occasion to those who resist children's baptism, to argue
against it as Romish in its nature and effect, by not discriminating clearly in
using the words members and membership in connection with children. Read almost
any modern book against infant baptism, and you will find that its main force is
directed against the practice as a "church and state" institution, and as making
persons members of the church by means of sacraments. Let us who are really free
from such imputation, assert the truly spiritual nature and object of this
ordinance. I wish to see it divested of all that does not belong to it, made
eminently spiritual, expressed in terms which cannot easily be misunderstood,
and appealing to the natural affections, the understandings, the consciences, of
spiritual men and women, as, in its sober and legitimate use, God's great
appointment, from the call of Abraham to the millennium, for the increase and
perpetuity of his church.[2] [Footnote 2: This subject is discussed by itself,
and more at large, in another part of this book.] You are aware that the great
question, which has made most of the trouble in the Christian church from the
beginning, relates to the meaning and use of sacraments and ordinances, or what
we call Symbolism. The tendency of the human mind, even in Paul's day, as
indicated by him, with other things belonging to it, under the name of "the
mystery of iniquity, which doth even now work," was, to increase the number of
sacraments and ordinances, and make them bear an essential part in the work of
regeneration. The right to multiply or extend them, and the claim that they
possess a saving efficacy, characterizes one great division of the professed
Christian church, while those who are called Protestants and the Reformed,
regard them chiefly as signs; though of these, some seem to have much of that
appetency after undue reliance on forms which Paul seeks to correct in the
Epistle to the Galatians, while others go to an opposite extreme, and undervalue
the two divinely-appointed sacraments, which they think have no efficiency as
used by the Spirit of God, but only as signs used by us to represent something.
Between these divisions of the Christian church lies the battle-ground of great
ecclesiastical controversies from the beginning, as the Netherlands were, for a
long time, the battle-field of Europe. Archbishop Leighton seems to strike the
balance between formalism and sacramental grace in ordinances, as well as any
writer, in commenting on these words of Peter, "The like figure whereunto, even
baptism, doth also now save us." He says: "Thus, then, we have a true account of
the power of this, and so of other, sacraments, and a discovery of the error of
two extremes. (1.) Of those who ascribe too much to them, as if they wrought by
a natural, inherent virtue, and carried grace in them inseparably. (2.) Of those
who ascribe too little to them, making them only signs and badges of our
profession. Signs they are, but more than signs merely representing; they are
means exhibiting, and seals confirming, grace to the faithful. But the working
of faith and the conveying Christ into the soul, to be received by faith, is not
a thing put into them to do of themselves, but still in the supreme hand that
appointed them; and he indeed both causes the souls of his own to receive these
his seals with faith, and makes them effectual to confirm that faith which
receives them so. They are then, in a word, neither empty signs to them who
believe, nor effectual causes of grace to them that believe not." Let me make
the distinction very clear to your mind, for it is of great practical
importance. The "mystery of iniquity" in Paul's time, and since his day, did
not, and does not, consist in making too much of God's ordinances in their
purity and proper use. That cannot be done, any more than you can intelligently
love the Bible too much, or the Sabbath. But, to pervert them, or to make
additions to them, or to rely upon them wholly, is Romanism. But can men make
too much of having a seal on a deed? Is the deed good for anything without the
seal? Can they make too much of having three witnesses to their wills? Those
three witnesses, instead of two, make an otherwise worthless writing, a man's
last will and testament. Thus, a true sign, ordinance, or seal, among men, has
inherent efficacy of some sort. Shall we deny it to the ordinances and seals of
Heaven? He who lays claim to the covenant, but rejects the seal, deceives
himself. They must go together. But will you not think me older even than I
claim to be, because I am so garrulous? I have many things to say, but will not
say them with pen and ink, hoping to see you shortly. Farewell, my dear
daughter, to you and your beloved husband, with abundant kisses for your little
namesake, who, I pray, may be spared to you, if God has any work for her to do
on earth. Dedicate her sincerely and entirely, beforehand, to God, and then in
his house, with baptism, before the assembled brethren in Christ; and let your
subsequent treatment of her be a repetition of the whole. Baptizing a child,
with right views and feelings, leads to much prayer for it. Renew the
consecration of your child daily, in little, sudden acts of prayer, as well as
in more deliberate offices of devotion. Thus surround it with an atmosphere of
faith and consecration, not forgetting the public transaction in which you
covenanted with God, before many witnesses, for the child, and He, my dear
daughter, with you, in its behalf. For, a covenant implies two parties; and God
is one, and you are the other; and Jesus is the mediator, who said of children,
"Of such is the kingdom of God." "He that came down from heaven," had seen, in
heaven, how largely that world is peopled with them. "Of such is the kingdom of
heaven." Peace be with you. All send love. Your affectionate Father.


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  CHAPTER 4: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BAPTISM
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Chapter Third. BERTHA'S BAPTISM.--CHANTING AT BAPTISMS.--PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
BAPTISMS.--WEEK-DAY BAPTISMS.--A DAUGHTER'S LOVE.--BAPTISM OF A DEAF-MUTE
INFANT.--FIDELITY OF A BAPTIZED CHILD.--SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM.--THE
MODE.--IMPROBABILITY OF IMMERSION, IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.--ON BEING BURIED IN
BAPTISM.--NEW VERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES.--OUR DIVISION INTO SECTS.--A MOTHER'S
PLEA FOR INFANT BAPTISM. Where is it mothers learn their love? In every church a
fountain springs, O'er which th' eternal Dove Hovers on softest wings. O, happy
arms, where cradled lies, And ready for the Lord's embrace, That precious
sacrifice, The darling of his grace! KEBLE. We took Bertha to church when she
was two months old. The minister, being fond of music, had, for some time,
requested the choir to chant select passages of Scripture at baptisms. So, as we
came up the aisle with the child, the choir breathed out those words, "And I
will establish my covenant between thee and me, and thy seed after thee, in
their generations, for an everlasting covenant; to be a God unto thee, and to
thy seed after thee." "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid
them not; for of such is the kingdom of God." "And he took them up in his arms,
put his hands upon them, and blessed them." And, as we turned away from the
font, they added, "So shall he sprinkle many nations." "The Lord shall increase
you more and more, you and your children." "But the mercy of the Lord is from
everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto
children's children; to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember
his commandments, to do them." How I loved that choir, and the congregation!
for, many a face did I see bathed in tears, and others beaming with smiles and
love, as, with respectful, half-turned looks, they seemed to give us their
blessing. "Do you not think, more than ever," I said, to the beloved grandmother
of my child, after church, as we watched the little sleeper in her cradle, "that
people lose very much in having their children baptized at home?" "It makes a
different thing of it," she replied. "I felt that all the congregation loved
Bertha and you. How many prayers you obtained for her and for yourselves, which
you would have missed by a private baptism!" "Besides," I remarked, "'God loveth
the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.' I think that for that
reason, and on the same principle, namely, that he is more honored, he regards
our public dedication of children with more favor than a private baptism,
except, of course, where sickness makes the public service impossible. But it is
some trouble to mothers, and no doubt many shrink from it." "The trouble is more
in anticipation than reality," she replied. "That pastor's room, where they stay
till the introductory services are over, makes it more convenient and agreeable.
But all the trouble, even if it were far greater, is nothing compared with the
satisfaction of having taken your offering and come into His courts. You have
paid your vows unto the Lord, in the presence of all his people. You will
remember those prayers, those words of Scripture which were chanted, and your
feelings as you took the child into your arms to be presented to God, and as you
heard those adorable names pronounced upon her and then received her back into
your arms, as it were, from the hands of God." "What do you think," said I, "of
the practice of having children baptized in the church on a week-day? It enables
the parents to attend meeting on the Sabbath with more composure than when they
bring their children on the Sabbath." "But O," said she, "what is that, compared
with the privilege of bringing the child before the whole church of God, in his
house, on the Lord's day, and so identifying its baptism with the most solemn
acts of public worship? I do not like those week-day baptisms. Where they have
the communion lecture in the afternoon of a week-day, there may be reasons of
convenience for bringing the children for baptism then, rather than on the
Sabbath; but there is a great loss of enjoyment, and also of impressiveness, in
the ordinance, in doing so, I think. I was at a place, several years ago, when
fourteen children were baptized on a Wednesday afternoon, in the church. I went
to see it, but it was not solemn at all. I could not help thinking what an
impressive and useful sight that would have been on the Sabbath, before all the
people, and how much more good, probably, it would have done the parents, even
if they had given up half the Sabbath in going and returning with the children."
"If people," said I, "thought more of the spiritual meaning and privileges of
baptism, and viewed it as they do in times of sickness and death, they would
think less of inconveniences and discomforts, and see that the ordinance is
something more than giving a child a name." * * * * * Some time after this, I
called upon a cousin of ours, a young married lady of our congregation, who,
within a year, had come to us from another place, she having been married to an
educated, intelligent member of another congregation, and who, from his great
love for her, had come with her to our place of worship from another
denomination, this having been made a condition of their marriage. For she felt
that she could not be debarred the privilege of sitting at the Lord's table with
her mother, three sisters, and brother, as she would be if she united herself
with her friend's church. The idea of going to any table of Christ on earth
where they could not come, thus seeming to disfranchise her whole family whom
Christ had gathered into his fold, and some of them into heaven, did violence to
her feelings. At one time, it seemed likely that the engagement of marriage
would be terminated, on this ground alone. Some one of the gentleman's
persuasion, who thought that she "ought to follow Christ in ordinances," and
"take up her cross" in this instance, whispered to her that she was, perhaps, in
danger of denying Christ, from love to her kindred, and he said to her, "He that
loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." This had the
opposite effect from that which was intended, for it showed her, in the
strongest light, the error of supposing that love to Christ could ever require
her to separate from herself, at the table of Christ, such friends of Jesus as
the members of her dear Christian home,--a home which had been like that of
Bethany to many of the Saviour's friends. She felt more sure of being actuated
by right motives in giving up her marriage, and not withdrawing fellowship from
her mother and the family, than she would be in sacrificing that fellowship to
gratify a new affection. Her next younger sister was baptized after the father's
death. She was a deaf-mute. The mother was a very beautiful woman. She had borne
severe trials for her religion with a spirit of patience and Christian propriety
which won the love and esteem of the community. She went to the altar of God, a
widow, with the little deaf and dumb child, and presented it for baptism. It was
as though the impending calamity of its father's death had shut up some of the
senses of the child, and God had placed it in the mother's hand as a silent
memorial to her, for life, of his chastising love. She left her fatherless flock
in the family pew, and went with her nursling, not merely to give it to God, but
to receive for it the seal of his covenant, bowing submissively to his
inscrutable appointment, and imploring the God of Abraham to be still her God,
and the God of this her seed. That scene had not failed to make deep impressions
upon the other children; and now it was proposed to one of them that she should,
by connecting herself in marriage, disavow her mother's right to cling, in those
hours of anguish, to that asylum of the fatherless, infant baptism,--that very
present help in trouble, the covenant of God with believers and their offspring.
The little child, moreover, had become a Christian, and had sat with her sister,
side by side, at the communion-table, for several years. "Forbid it," she prayed
with herself, "that I should go where I cannot be allowed to follow Christ till
I have separated this dear one from my side." She once wrote a letter on the
subject to the gentleman, which he showed, after their marriage, to some of his
friends. There will be no impropriety in its appearing here. It ran thus: "MY
DEAR MR. E.: Though I am not willing to deny that Roger Williams was, as you
say, raised up to illustrate some important principles, and to help on the
general cause of truth, I must say that he strikes me as a very unreasonable man
in much of his behavior. Our puritan fathers did not come to this wilderness
with French, atheistic, idolatrous love for a goddess of liberty. They came
here, it is true, for liberty of conscience and freedom to worship God. With a
great sum they purchased this freedom. But infidels could as well claim to be
absolved by the laws from all recognition of God, under the plea of liberty, as
Mr. Williams and his friends could make his demands for toleration. To insist
that our fathers, in their circumstances, should have opened their doors wide to
every doctrine, and to the denial of everything professed by them, is
unreasonable. They came here with an intense love for certain truths and
practices, which persecution had only served to make exceedingly precious to
them. To have proclaimed at once universal toleration of every wind of doctrine,
would have proved them libertines in religion. Because they did not so, reproach
is cast upon them by some, who seem to me to be free-thinkers on the subject of
religious liberty. If other men wished to found a community with doctrines and
practices adverse to those of the New England fathers, the land was wide, and it
would have been the part of good manners in Mr. Williams to have gone into the
wilderness at once, to subdue it and to fight the savages, all for love and zeal
for his own tenets, instead of poaching upon the hard-earned soil of those who
had laid down their all for what they deemed to be the truth. It seems to me
unphilosophical in some of our historians to reflect, as they do, upon our
forefathers for not being so totally indifferent to what they deemed error, as
to allow it free course. Their strict, and, if you please, rigid ways, were the
necessary defences of their principles, which were just taking root here. They
did right in passing stringent laws to protect them; and religious liberty was
no more violated in doing so than is the liberty of our town's people here, who,
by the law of the State protecting game, cannot take fish, or kill birds, during
certain seasons. "Besides, I never saw any proof that Mr. Williams was himself
the great apostle of toleration. I remember reading to father, during his
sickness, some remarks of the late John Quincy Adams, in which he vindicates the
New England fathers for banishing Roger Williams as a 'nuisance.'[3] Mr. Adams
surely cannot be accused of bigotry, nor of being an enemy to the cause of
freedom; and his remarks seemed to me more just than the eulogies, by historians
and orators, of Mr. Williams. Father once showed me an old book of Mr.
Williams's, which we have now, called 'George Fox digg'd out of his Burrowes,'
in which Mr. W. inveighs against the Quakers for their want of 'civil respect,'
and for using 'thee' and 'thou,' in addressing magistrates and others. He says,
on the two hundredth page, 'I have therefore publickly declared myself, that a
due and moderate restraint and punishing of these incivilities (though
pretending conscience) is as far from persecution, properly so called, as that
it is a duty and command of God unto all mankinde, first in families, and thence
unto all mankinde societies.'--It is also a matter of history that the colony
settled by Mr. Williams refused their franchise to Roman Catholics, though even
then the Roman Catholics of Maryland were tolerating people of his own faith,
and Quakers also. Mr. Williams always seemed to me like one of our pious,
zealous 'come-outers.' He even forsook his own denomination in three months
after he had been baptized, and for forty years denied the validity of their
sacraments, and the scripturalness of their churches and ministry. Such a man
would even at this day be excommunicated by every society, unless it were some
association for the encouragement of radical notions of liberty. I no more see
in him the impersonation of religious freedom, than in some other good people
who go or stay where they are not wanted. I am not disposed to deny that you and
your friends, with their principles, of which you, erroneously, I think, claim
Mr. Williams as the great exponent, 'have a mission,' as you say, to perform;
but I do not feel called upon to join in it. Some of your writers seem to
me--shall I say it?--a little too sure of having just the right pattern and
patent-right in ordinances, and somewhat too complacent in not being liked by
other denominations, and perhaps a little disposed to look for persecution. Now
I was pleased with a remark of Matthew Henry's, on Mark 10:28, that 'It is not
the suffering, but the cause, that makes the martyr.' But we were brought up
under different associations, and cannot see just alike in all things. I cannot,
however, contradict, by any step which my feelings would incline me to take, the
Christian citizenship of those who are dear to Christ, and are so precious to
me. As much as I love you, I think you should feel perfectly free to leave me in
my happy home, if you cannot allow me to retain my fidelity to my own
conscientious convictions of truth, and to the sacred rights of those whom
nature and grace have conspired to make inseparable from my own Christian hopes
and joys." [Footnote 3: "Can we blame the founders of the Massachusetts Colony
for banishing him from their jurisdiction? In the annals of religious
persecution is there to be found a martyr more gently dealt with by those
against whom he began the war of intolerance; whose authority he persisted, even
after professions of penitence and submission, in defying, till deserted even by
the wife of his bosom; and whose utmost severity of punishment upon him was only
an order for his removal as a nuisance from among them?"--Discourse before Mass.
Hist. Soc., 1843, pp. 25-30.--[ED.]] The gentleman agreed to allow her the
largest liberty, and they were married. He knew that she had a mind and heart
that were more precious than rubies, and that the heart of a husband could
safely trust in her. The sequel will show, however, how good it is to be matched
as well as mated, and, in the conjugal relation, to be "perfectly joined
together in the same judgment." The object of my call, that evening, was to
rejoice with her, and to be the bearer of some congratulations at the recovery
of their infant, whose death had been expected for some time. The child was now
perfectly restored. As I stood in the entry, not having rung the door-bell, and
was hanging up my hat and coat, some one in the parlor said: "What good can it
do the child or us to sprinkle a little water on its head?" "Good-evening, Mr.
M.," said the husband, as I went in. I was interrupted in my expression of a
fear that I had intruded upon their conversation, by their assurances to the
contrary. "I am glad you came in," said Mr. Kelly, "for perhaps you can help us.
You heard, I suppose, what I was saying as you came in. If I am not mistaken,
Mr. M., you yourself are not very strenuous about infant baptism, for I have
heard of your making inquiries on the subject." "Not only have all my doubts
been removed," said I, "but the baptism of my child has been the source of the
richest instruction and comfort." "I am glad to hear you say so," said Mrs. K.
"But," said Mr. K., "you do not, of course, derive your warrant for it from the
word of God. That is our only guide, you know. There is no more authority in the
Bible for baptizing children than there is for praying to saints. You are
probably aware that the practice originated in the third century of the
Christian era." Mr. M. It originated with a man by the name of Abraham, I
believe, sir, two or three thousand years before Christ. Mr. K. O, then, you go
to Judaism for it! Mr. M. Judaism comes to me with it, and hands it over to me.
There was something good in Judaism, we all think. Judaism was not a Mormonism,
as certain ways of speaking of it not unfrequently would make us think it to
have been; it was not an exploded folly, but the form which the church of God
bore for two thousand years. But it began before Judaism; it is older than
Moses. Judaism received it from Abraham. It is like a great river rising in a
desert place, and seeming to lose itself in a lake, but flowing out again into
another lake, and thence to the sea. So Judaism was only a great lake, which
took and seemingly held this river of baptism for a time, but its current went
on and flowed into another lake, the Christian dispensation. But you cannot say
that a river which makes a chain of lakes, rises, for that reason, in the first
lake. No, its head spring, in this case, was antecedent to the lake. Mr. K. Did
Abraham or the Jews baptize children, Mr. M.? I answered, "Every male child of
Abraham's descendants, who should not receive the sign of consecration to God,
was to be cut off from among the people. Proselytes of the covenant and their
children were baptized, very early." Mr. K. But where is the command to apply
baptism to children? Mr. M. Where, my dear sir, is the command to discontinue
that which was enjoined upon the founder of the race of believers for all time?
I believe in the perpetuity of Abraham's relation to us as the father of the
faithful, as I believe in Adam's relation to us as the representative of the
race, and in the Saviour's relation to us as our representative. God seems to
love these federal headships, as we call them. Abraham did not receive
circumcision being a Jew, but, as the apostle says, "as a seal of the
righteousness which is by faith, which he had while he was yet uncircumcised."
We have Scripture for that, Mr. Kelly. And "the law, which was four hundred and
thirty years after," did not disannul that covenant "that was confirmed before
of God in Christ." How can you call circumcision a Jewish ordinance, when the
Bible so explicitly denies it to be of Jewish origin? Mr. K. O, I do not
understand this Abrahamic covenant. I take the New Testament for my guide. Mr.
M. You think well of the book of Psalms, I presume, as a help to prayer and
pious feelings? Mr. K. Yes; but in all matters of faith and practice, the New
Testament, like the doings of the latest session of the legislature, is the rule
for New Testament believers. You might as well have tried to govern the ancient
Jews with the New Testament, as enforce the laws of the Old Testament on us. Mr.
M. Is the privilege of having God stand in a special relation to my child an Old
Testament ordinance, in the same sense with ceremonial observances? Mr. K. Not
exactly that, but it is a superstition to baptize children, now that
circumcision is done away, and believers' baptism is enjoined. Mr. M. Believers'
baptism is enjoined, but children's baptism is not therefore prohibited. Mr. K.
But where is it enacted? Mr. M. If the original form of dedicating children is
essential, why is not the original form of the Sabbath essential, the very day
which was first appointed? How dare we change a day which God himself ordained
from the beginning, until he makes the change as peremptory as the institution
itself? Have we any right to infer, in such an important matter? Where is the
express, divine command,--not precedent, example, usage, but where is the
enactment,--making the first day of the week the Christian Sabbath? Mr. K. So
long as we may keep the thing, observing one day in seven, it makes no
difference which day we keep, if we can all agree on one and the same day. We do
not all agree to retain circumcision in any way. Mr. M. So long as we may retain
the thing signified by circumcision, it makes but little difference what form is
used to express it. Mr. K. The apostles, who changed the Sabbath from the
seventh to the first day, knew the mind of Christ. Mr. M. And so the men, who
first practised infant baptism, knew the minds of the inspired apostles, and
they knew the mind of Christ. But to go a step further back, the only ground for
inferring that the Sabbath is rightly changed from the seventh to the first day
of the week, is the incidental mention of Christ's meeting his assembled
disciples a few times after his resurrection on the first day. On that slight
ground we are all content to rest our present observance of the Sabbath. Now, I
say that the mention of the baptism of households eight times, in one form and
another, is as good a warrant for infant baptism, as those two or three
Sabbath-evening meetings were for the institution of the Lord's-day Sabbath. Mr.
K. I cannot agree with you, Mr. M., in putting circumcision on the same level
with the Sabbath. Mr. M. I myself see a resemblance in the changes made in the
two cases. I have no wish to proselyte you to my views. I have only answered
your polite inquiries. Mr. K. O, I know that; we shall be good friends still;
but I see no grounds for baptizing children on the faith of their parents. Mr.
M. We look at the thing from different points of view. I see it as clearly as I
see that the church of God is essentially the same in all ages, with its variety
of forms. This matter of children's baptism is with me a spiritual thing, and is
independent of dispensations. You know that a river may have, in one district of
the earth through which it flows, one name, and in another district another
name, while it is the same river. Now, the divine recognition of believers'
children, as standing in a special covenanted relation with God, is the
headspring of infant dedication by the use of a rite. The object of this
recognition is, that He may have a godly seed. God does not perpetuate religion
directly by natural descent, it is true, but he seeks to promote it by descent
from a pious parentage, and he therefore endows that parentage with special
privileges and promises. The inclusion of children with their believing parents
has been the great means of perpetuating religion in the earth. It is a stream
which washed the shores of Judaism under the name of circumcision; now it washes
the shores of the Gentiles under the name of baptism. For the Saviour or the
apostles to have re‰ppointed infant dedication, with the use of the cotemporary
initiating ordinance, would, to my mind, be as superfluous as for the allied
powers to have agreed that the Danube should still run through Austria. Mr. K.
Your principle of interpretation, Mr. M., has brought in all the darkness which
has covered the earth in the Romish apostacy. There will be no end to human
inventions in religion, if this principle prevails. Mr. M. But, my dear sir,
there certainly has been an end at the very beginning; for what inventions in
Protestant worship have non-prelatical PÊdobaptists made? Surely that practice
has not been prolific of superstitions. I often hear this alleged, Mr. K., and
we are called Romish and Popish because we baptize infants. But will it not be
best for Christian sects to allow each other entire liberty of conscience, and
not accuse each other of tendencies to Romanism, when all are zealously
Protestant? Here is a piece, which I cut from a newspaper lately, which
describes the baptism by immersion of some females and others, one Sabbath in
January, the thermometer below zero, a place being cut through the ice for the
purpose, and a boy watching with a pole to keep the floating ice from the
opening. Shall I call this Romish, superstitious, fanatical? Shall I say, How
can we, consistently with such practices among Protestants, say anything about
the doctrine of penances? No. I prefer to think that those who do these things
are as good Protestants as myself, and I will not impeach their rigid adherence
to their belief, by imputing Romish tendencies to their modes of worship and
their ordinances; for no people are further from Romanism in their principles
than they (unless it be some of us PÊdobaptists, Mrs. Kelly). Mr. K. Well, there
is no quarrelling with you; but let me say that when another sect sees you
employing an ordinance which has no warrant in the Bible,--sprinkling water upon
people, on proper subjects and improper subjects for baptism, when we know that
the word baptize means to immerse, and that believers only are properly
baptized,--how can we be silent? Would you be silent if Episcopalians should set
up Latin prayers, or the confessional; or the Methodists turn their love-feasts
into the old Passover? Mr. M. We must tolerate the mistakes and errors of those
who, in the main, are confessedly good, and are conscientious in what we deem
their errors. When the noble array of great and good men in the Episcopal Low
Church, and among the Methodists, fall into such mistakes as you have specified,
there will be opportunity for other Christians to express themselves. But you
are rather rhetorical in your reasoning, to compare the practice of infant
baptism by Owen, and Watts, and Doddridge, and Leighton, and Baxter, and all
like them, with Latin prayers and a return to the Passover. Mr. K. There is not
a case of sprinkling in the New Testament. You are too well-informed to deny
this. Mr. M. Mr. K., there is not one instance of baptism, in the New Testament,
where there does not appear to me to be an improbability of its having been
administered by immersion. By this time Mrs. K., who had been called away to
attend to her child, returned, and hearing my last remark, said, with a
significant look at her husband: "We shall require you to prove that, Mr. M."
"Most willingly," said I. "Do you think, cousin Eunice, that the multitudes who
came to John and the apostles to be baptized, brought changes of raiment with
them?" "No," said she; "and there were no conveniences for making a change of
dress in those places, I presume." Mr. M. Were they immersed in the clothes
which they had on? Mrs. K. That does not seem probable. Some of them, at least,
had valuable garments, we may suppose, and few, if any, would wish to have their
apparel wet through, or to keep it on them, if wet. Mr. M. They were not
immersed without clothing, of course, promiscuously, and, therefore, I believe
that they were all baptized by sprinkling or pouring, their loose upper garments
allowing them to step into the water, or very near it; and John, standing there
(and the apostles, also, when they administered baptism), and laying on the
water with his hand, or, which is not impossible, with the long-accustomed
bunches of hyssop. The Episcopal mode of administering the Lord's Supper,
enables me to conceive how baptism by sprinkling could be administered rapidly.
As six or more people are kneeling, the Episcopal minister gives each his
portion of the bread, and repeats the formula, not to each one, but once only
while his hand is passing over the six. So, I imagine, John repeated whatever
form he had (and the apostles theirs) to companies, while, in rapid succession,
he applied the water to them. It is impossible to account for the performance of
such incredible labor as John must have undergone, unless we adopt some such
supposition as this, or confess that John's baptism was, throughout, a miracle.
But "the people said, John did no miracle." If the apostles sprinkled three
thousand in this way, by companies, in one day, as they could easily have done,
we can see how the same day there could be "added unto them about three thousand
souls," even if "added" meant being baptized. That the apostles had assistance
in administering baptism at this early period, is not probable. They had not yet
proposed to have helpers in taking care of the poor, much less to share with
them the first administration of Christian baptism. If any church were to
require me to believe, before admitting me to the Lord's table, that the
apostles immersed three thousand people at the day of Pentecost, after nine
o'clock in the morning, in the midst of necessary labors, and at that driest
season of the year, or in tanks, I could no more believe it than I could confess
that the earth is flat. Mrs. K. But "John was baptizing in Enon, near to Salim,
because there was much water there." Mr. M. "Much water," in those countries,
was on a smaller scale than in North America. They would have needed all the
lake-shore or river banks that could be found, to witness the baptisms, and to
pass in and out of, or to and from, the water, conveniently, while John stood to
receive them in or near the water. A fountain or small body of water would not
have accommodated those multitudes; not because the water would not suffice, for
a small running stream would be enough, and would have afforded "much water;"
but think what inconvenience there would have been in baptizing a crowd around a
small stream. Baptism by immersion, among us, though a few gallons of water only
are needed, is more conveniently done where there is "much water;" because the
spectators can spread themselves along the banks, and then there is no
confusion. The most convenient and rapid way of baptizing multitudes by
sprinkling would be, for the administrator to stand in the water, and let the
people pass by him. Besides, those multitudes who came to John's baptism needed
"much water" for themselves and their beasts. Mrs. K. But the Saviour went down
into the water, and came up out of the water. Mr. M. So did John, in the same
sense; and so did "both Philip and the Eunuch;" but John and Philip did not,
therefore, go under the water. But Mr. Kelly will tell you that down in to, and
up out of, might as well have been translated to and from, in the case of the
Eunuch. If you insist that going down into the water involves immersion, it
follows that Philip went under the water with the Eunuch, and there baptized
him. Mr. K. We shall set those matters right in that new version of the Bible
which you were complaining of the last time I saw you. Down into, and up out of,
are required by the word baptize, which means immerse. Mr. M. No, my dear sir,
not always, even in the New Testament. The word had come, even in the Saviour's
time, to signify purification, or consecration, irrespective of the mode. The
Pharisees, in coming from the market-places, except they wash, eat not. The word
is baptize. But they did not bathe at such times; they "baptized" themselves by
washing their bodies. We read of the baptism of beds, which was merely washing
them. The Israelites were baptized unto Moses. There the word means, simply,
inaugurated, or set apart, with no reference to the mode; for, they were not
immersed, but bedewed, if wet at all; they were not buried in that cloud, for
the other cloud that led them was in sight; they were not buried in the sea,
which was a wall to them on either hand. There is a good illustration, it seems
to me, of the change in words from their literal meaning, in the passage where
Christ is called the "first-born of every creature." He was not born first,
before all men, but he has the "preÎminence" over all creatures, as the
first-born had among the children. Here is an illustration, from the New
Testament, of the way in which baptism may cease to denote any mode, and refer
only to an act of consecration. As to that new version of the Bible, Coleridge
says, that the state ought to be, to all religious denominations, like a good
portrait, which looks benignantly on all in the room. So the Bible now seems to
look kindly upon all Christian sects; and, for one, I love to have it so. But,
some of you, good brethren, who are in favor of this new version to suit your
particular views, are trying to alter the eyes of the portrait so that they
shall look only on you, and to your part of the room. We think that you ought to
be satisfied with the present kind look which you get from them. There is one
comfort--you will make a new picture to please yourselves, and we shall keep the
old portrait. "Please do not be too severe on my husband for that mistake of
his," said Mrs. K.; "I think that he is getting better of it, in a measure." Mr.
K. I will make you a present of the book when it arrives, and, perhaps, you will
agree with me. But I am surprised to hear you say that you do not believe the
Saviour to have been immersed by John. Mr. M. It was not Christian baptism, at
any rate, if he were; for the names of the Trinity are essential to Christian
baptism, and those names had not been thus applied. Besides, John could not have
plunged and lifted those thousands without superhuman strength and endurance,
which we know he did not possess. The same reasoning applies, in the baptism of
the three thousand at the day of Pentecost, both as respects what I have said of
raiment, and the time and strength of the apostles. The baptism of the Eunuch
was, to my mind, most probably by sprinkling, making no change of raiment
necessary. "See, here is water,"--a spring, or stream, by the road-side, quite
as likely (and, travellers now say, more probably) as a pond. Yes, sir, Philip
went down into the water just as much as the Eunuch did, if we follow the Greek
literally. I think that down refers to the chariot, the act of leaving it to go
to the water. But the English version, as it now stands, makes strongly for your
view of the case in the mind of the common reader. Saul of Tarsus was baptized
after having been struck blind, and while he was in a state of extreme
exhaustion from excitement, without food; for, during three days, "he did
neither eat nor drink." He was baptized before he ate; for, we read, "And he
arose and was baptized; and, when he had received meat, he was strengthened." It
does not seem to me probable that they would have put him into a river, or tank,
before giving him food. But it seems to me natural and suitable for Ananias to
draw nigh, and impress the trembling man with the mild and gentle sign of
Christianity, the rite giving a soothing and cheering efficacy to the words of
adoption, and in no way disturbing him in body or mind. I have always regarded
the baptism of Saul as a strong presumptive proof with regard to baptism by
affusion. So with the midnight scene of baptism in the prison at Philippi. The
preparation of one or more large vessels, to immerse the household, is not
congruous with the circumstances narrated, as I read them. But the quiet and
convenient act of baptism by sprinkling, falls in harmoniously with the other
parts of the transaction. For my part, I have always wondered how any one can
fail to see that there are so many improbabilities of immersion in every case of
baptism, in the New Testament, as to counteract any weight which the word
baptize carries with it, more especially since the word and its derivatives are
employed, in the New Testament, in cases where the mode of using the water is
evidently not intended. Mr. K. "Buried with him in baptism." Mr. M., you will
confess that this is an impregnable proof-text. You have never been "buried with
him in baptism." Mr. M. But I am "risen with him," Mr. K. With all humility and
tears, I must say to you, "If any man trusteth to himself that he is Christ's,
let him also think this with himself, that as he is Christ's even so also we are
Christ's." Your application of the passage, just quoted by you, disproves your
interpretation of it. If we must be buried in water, when we are baptized, then
no one is risen with Christ who has not been immersed. You thus disfranchise
four fifths, to say the least, of God's elect. No, my dear sir, being buried
with Christ in baptism does not mean immersion. People in the frozen ocean, the
sick and dying, who are sprinkled with water in the name of the Christian's God,
are "buried with Christ in baptism into death;" that is, profess to be dead and
buried to sin, as Christ was dead and buried for it. Besides, follow out the
passage, and there is no allusion to the form of baptism, as I can perceive, but
to something else. "Buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ
was raised,"--from the water?--yes, if water baptism be now in the writer's
mind; but no,--"like as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the
Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." The word buried,
therefore, in this passage, refers to the completeness of the Saviour's death
for sin (as we say intensively of a deceased person, he is dead and buried), and
of the completeness of our renunciation of it. We are dead and buried to sin, as
Christ was for it; and we rise to newness of life, when we profess to be
Christians, as Christ rose from the dead, not from the water. Mr. K. How is it
with infants? Are they dead and buried to sin when they are baptized? If being
buried, in this passage, means being dead and buried to sin, then infants are
regenerated by baptism. Mr. K. gave his wife a pleased look, as though he had
placed me in a dilemma. "Mrs. Kelly," said I, "how do you suppose that nursing
children ate the first passover?" "I suppose that they ate it through the faith
of their parents," said Mrs. K., looking narrowly into the stitches of her
crochet-work, to control a smile. "That passover, however," said I, "was the
means of saving those children, who, many of them, were the first-born in their
respective families. Yet they were saved by the passover through the faith of
their parents. Do not understand me as urging the comparison to an extreme; I
only say that there we have an example of parents acting for the child in a
matter of faith. The infant child was incapable of believing, and even where the
first-born was grown up, the parent acted for him in the ordinance, by
sprinkling the door with blood. I do not prove infant baptism by this, but I use
it to show that parents may use an ordinance for their infants. Mr. K. asks if
baptized infants are buried with Christ in baptism into death,--that is, die
unto sin and rise to newness of life. The parents profess by the baptism that
they will use means to effect this in their children, through the grace of the
Holy Spirit. I should like to ask Mr. Kelly if he believes that every person who
is immersed, is buried into death, spiritually, with Christ, or is actually dead
to sin forever; or, whether it is only a profession of one's hope and intention.
For we have all known some, who had been buried in water, that did not prove to
have died unto sin." Mr. K. Of course it is a symbol; and all we insist on is,
that Paul must have had immersion in mind, as the form of baptism, when he spoke
of being buried by baptism. Mr. M. When Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ,"
do you suppose that the idea of a cross was in his mind? Did he intimate that
sanctification is effected by a piece of wood, with a transverse beam, used as a
gibbet? Or did he simply mean, I am dead to the world, and the world is dead to
me, yea, and put to death (not merely dying in a natural way), through the power
of the Saviour's sufferings and death on my behalf? The burial of Christ,
following his death for sin, and so completing the idea of dying, is enough to
have suggested the figure, I think, of our being not only dead with Christ, but
buried with him, by a Christian profession; that is, we utterly cease from the
world and sin, professedly, as Christ not only died, but went into the tomb. But
what does "risen" refer to in that passage,--the water or death?--"from whence
also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God." Mr. M.
Why, how do you understand it? Mr. K. I prefer, if you please, that you should
answer. Many understand it thus: "You are buried in water, to denote death to
sin; you are lifted up out of the water (as Christ was lifted up by the
Baptist), to live a new life." If this be so, what is "the operation of God,"
which is spoken of there? Does it need any such "operation" for an immersed
person to rise out of the water? No, my dear sir, our interpretation makes plain
and thorough work of the whole passage. Our idea of that controverted passage
(your great proof-text) is this: You, Christian professors, were, all of you,
baptized, on profession of your faith;--when you made a Christian profession,
you signified by it your dying unto sin, as Christ died for it, so that, I may
say, you were dead and buried to sin. But, as Christ came to life again, so you
rose with him, not to sin, but to live a new life. Hear Dr. Watts on the
passage: "Do we not know that solemn word, That we are buried with the Lord,
Baptized into his death, and then Put off the body of our sin? "Our souls
receive diviner breath, Raised from corruption, guilt and death; So from the
grave did Christ arise, And lives to God above the skies." I do not believe that
the mode of baptism is alluded to at all in this text. Mr. K. I cannot agree
with you, sir. The contrary is perfectly clear to my own mind. "Mr. M.," said
Mrs. Kelly, "do you think that you and Mr. K. would ever think alike on this
subject?" "Never," said I. "People almost always end where they began, when they
discuss this topic; only they do not always leave off in such good-nature as Mr.
K. and I intend to do. I never knew a person to change his views to either side,
unless he began as an inquirer, and not as an advocate." "What is the reason,"
said Mrs. K., "that good people are left to differ so about unessential things
in religion, when they all hold to the same way of being saved?" "I suppose,"
said I, "that, as poor human nature is, for the present, more is effected, on
the whole, by letting us divide into sects, and giving us each some external or
speculative discrepancies to excite our zeal. It is a sad reflection upon us, if
this be so, and our sectarian behavior illustrates that hardness of our hearts,
in view of which, perhaps, God suffers us to divide as we do. But, still, you
see how wisely God has ordained that good people shall not differ about
essential things--that might be fatal to the success of his truth; but they are
left to divide about forms, and ordinances, and some doctrinal matters which do
not involve the question of the way to be saved. In that they all agree." Mrs.
K. How pleasant it would be if they would all think alike! Mr. M. Perhaps it
might not be best at present. They should tolerate each other's views, meet and
act together where they may; but I do like to see a man heartily attached to his
own denomination, without bigotry. I have not much partiality for those schemes
of union which require and expect each sect to give up its peculiarities, and
which seek to amalgamate us. It is unnatural. Let each be thoroughly persuaded
of his own faith;--different temperaments and habits of thought are suited by
different modes and forms;--but let us treat each other as Christians, and with
urbanity and kindness. That is the most sublime spectacle of union. It comes
nearer to fulfilling the prayer of Christ, "that they all may be one," when we
differ strongly, and yet keep the unity of the spirit. I am doubtful whether,
even in heaven, there will not be such innocent diversity of views about things
successively beyond our knowledge or comprehension, as to stimulate inquiry and
discussion; but that we shall ever be capable, as we are here, of alienation, in
consequence of these varying opinions, is impossible. Mr. K. Do you not think,
Mr. M., that we shall all think alike about baptism in the millennium? Mr. M. I
suppose that you expect that we shall all give up infant baptism. But my
expectation is that, as we approach that day, the last prophecy of the Old
Testament will be as truly fulfilled as it was at the coming of Christ, and that
the hearts of the fathers will be turned to the children, and the hearts of the
children to the fathers. Parental piety and discipline will be greatly promoted,
and an attendant of it will be, I suppose, a greater use of the ordinance of
infant baptism, demanded by the pious feelings of parents, as pious feeling in
the regenerate craves the ordinance which commemorates the love and sufferings
of the Redeemer. The feelings of pious parents will require the ordinance of
infant baptism, as an expression of their earnest desire to have fellowship with
God as the God of the believer and his offspring, the covenant-keeping God. It
is to the increase and prevalence of this feeling that I look now for an
increasing observance of infant baptism; for, without such feeling, the
ordinance is an empty name. Where that feeling exists, it soon modifies the
speculative views of a parent. As our conscious need of an atoning Saviour soon
dispels the former difficulties about the doctrine of the Trinity, so a longing
desire to have special covenanting with God for a dear child, makes the subject
of God's everlasting covenant with Abraham, as the great believer, and the
father of believers, plain. Now, before I forget it, please let me tell you of
an objection to infant baptism, which I lately met with, drawn from the effect
of the prevalent practice of it in a community. The objection is, it prevents
us, in a measure, from fulfilling Christ's command, "Go, teach all nations,
baptizing them." For, going into the Roman Catholic or Greek churches, or an
Armenian country, and making converts, the missionaries cannot baptize them,
for, alas! they were baptized in infancy, and to re-baptize is against the law
of the countries. Now, this seems to me no great calamity; for if the converts
themselves recognize their baptism, and adopt it as profession of their faith,
it is like a man's acknowledging the hand and seal on an instrument, made
irregularly at first, but now, under competent circumstances, declared to be
equivalent to his own act and deed at the date of this declaration. He would not
need to re-write the document, nor to use wax or wafers again, except in witness
of his acknowledging the original act. "Though it be but a man's covenant, yet,
if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto." But, however it may
be in such countries and communions as I have named, certainly it cannot be a
calamity if the practice of infant baptism becomes such a spiritual and
practical thing, that young persons are generally converted, so that adult
baptisms disappear. I love to notice, when several persons join our church, how
few of them receive baptism, showing that their baptism in childhood has been
followed by conversion. The fewness of adult baptisms, with us, compared with
cases of infant baptism, is a good sign. They will be fewer and fewer, in
proportion as our parents make and keep covenant with God for their children.
Mr. Kelly was at this moment called out, but requested me to remain and finish
the conversation with Mrs. K. She resumed it, saying: "Had I better read any
more on the subject? My feelings lead me strongly to take our little one to
church. I feel that I should be strengthened by the solemn act of doing what the
covenant of your church says, 'avouching the Lord Jehovah to be your God and the
God of your children forever.' I do wish to feel that I have done something like
bearing testimony before God, in a special way, that I give my child to him, and
engage God to be his God." Mr. M. I should candidly examine whatever Mr. K.
wishes you to read or hear on the subject, and not be afraid of the truth, let
it lead where it may. But what first made you think of baptizing your little
boy? Mrs. K. I always loved the ordinance. But, when I thought that Henry was
going to die, I was watching him all night, and, as I was praying, it occurred
to me that I wished I could see the church praying for him; and that led me to
think of the church praying for a child when it is brought into the house of
God. I felt that night that, if I could speak to the pastor, I would ask him to
request the prayers of the church for him as for one who, if he got well, should
be brought into the house of God, and be publicly consecrated, and I with him,
again, as his mother, to the Lord. I had given him and myself to God; but I felt
the need of some more special act, on which I could fall back in my thoughts,
and of which God would graciously say to me, "I am the God of Bethel, where thou
anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me." Mr. M. How kind it
was in God to remind Jacob of that pile of stones, and to call himself the God
of Bethel! O, how he loves marked exercises of consecration and love! Mrs. K. My
husband always said, "Let him offer himself for baptism when he grows up, and
understands the meaning of it." I told him that when I was admitted to the
church I was not baptized, but I had this pleasant feeling, that I had a baptism
in infancy by my dear good mother to think of now, and to seal by my own
acknowledgment. If Henry had died without being baptized, or should now be
hindered from it, I should never cease to grieve. Mr. M. You think, however,
that he would be saved, nevertheless. Mrs. K. O, saved! that is not all. I do
not think merely of his getting into heaven. Though we are saved wholly by
grace, is there not something implied in "washing our robes, and making them
white, in the blood of the Lamb?" I do not believe in justification by works nor
by sacraments, yet I do believe in their wonderful effect, through grace alone,
upon our character and future condition. I do believe, Mr. M., that there is a
difference between children whose parents, impelled by love to God, make public
offering of their children to him, with solemn vows, and daily perform their
vows, treating their children as baptized in the name of the Trinity, and
children whose parents either carelessly baptize them, or feel no such spiritual
desires for them as to seek the use of any public ordinance, nor any special
private consecration. I believe that God regards them differently. He has placed
his mark on the baptized. I must go with my son to God's house, as Hannah did,
and with her feelings. How strange! She prayed for that son, and then, as soon
as he was weaned, she gave him away to God; for it is beautifully said, you
know, "And the child was young." Well, I think I understand that. I could leave
Henry in the temple, if the service of God's house required him; for, when he
was sick, I gave him up to God, and as long as he liveth he shall be the Lord's.
How did cousin Bertha feel about the baptism after your little boy died? Mr. M.
It was often the chief topic of her conversation. Her father wrote a full
statement of his views, which helped her greatly. We have read it over since we
lost our child. I will send it to you, if you wish. You can read it, with Mr.
K.'s books, and I wish you to show it to him if he cares to see it. All this was
done. Kind feelings prevailed; there was not much discussion, and, one Sabbath
morning, little Henry Kelly was brought to church. But the mother was without
the father. He was called to a distant place on business; but he allowed his
wife to act her pleasure in the case during his long absence. More of this in
its place.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 5: IS THERE ONLY ONE MODE OF BAPTISM?
========================================================================

Chapter Fourth. IS THERE ONLY ONE MODE OF BAPTISM? Were love, in these the
world's last doting years, As frequent as the want of it appears, The churches
warmed, they would no longer hold Such frozen figures, stiff as they are cold;
Relenting forms would lose their power, or cease, And e'en the dipped and
sprinkled live in peace; Each heart would quit its prison in the breast, And
flow in free communion with the rest. COWPER. Opening my entry door, on my
return, several faces looked out to welcome me, all in the house having waited
till a late hour, with surmises as to the cause of my long absence, and then all
dispersed, except the venerable, and not yet aged, grandmother of little Bertha.
With her it was always pleasant to talk. Mr. M. Have you had no company this
evening? I was in hopes that the Moores would come in, as they promised to do.
Mother. They have been gone nearly an hour. Mr. Moore wished to read husband's
letter, so Bertha lent it to him. Mr. M. Father will be glad to know how much
good his letter is doing. Cousin Eunice would be glad to see it, and I wish to
read it again, for I find that I am likely to need more instruction, if I am to
discuss the subject as I did this evening with Mr. Kelly. Mother. Was he at
home? I hope you did not get into a controversy about baptism; for, of all
things, nothing dries up religious feelings like that. Mr. M. The subject has
taken too practical a hold upon my feelings to have that effect. I find myself
more and more led to believe that God gave his church an appointed form of
baptism, and that that form was sprinkling; for I search the New Testament in
vain for a single case where immersion seems to have been practised. I believe
that, under the operation of early tendencies, of which Paul writes to the
Thessalonians, the church began to prefer immersion as more sensuous, making a
stronger appeal to the passions. But I believe, with the New Testament for my
guide, that immersion was not practised by the apostles themselves. The word
baptize had, even in the Saviour's time, to go no further back, come to mean a
thing done irrespective of the mode. How would it sound, "I have an immersion to
be immersed with, and how am I straitened?" &c. "Are ye able to be immersed with
the immersion that I am immersed with?" I believe that sprinkling was the
original mode of Christian baptism. And it seems to me unlikely that God would
appoint an ordinance, and not appoint, by precept or example, the mode of it. I
believe that the mode of baptism was appointed, as well as the rite itself, and
I see no instance of baptism in the New Testament by immersion. Pouring, whether
more or less copiously, has this probability in its favor, in addition to the
impression which the narratives make, viz., The Lord's Supper typifies the death
of Christ. Burying in baptism, then, would be superfluous; it is more likely
that the form of this other sacrament would represent something else, and that
is, the Holy Spirit's cleansing influence, because Christ speaks of being "born
of water and of the Spirit," thus associating water with the Spirit. We moreover
read of "the water and the blood," water thus being distinguished from blood.
Now, the Holy Spirit is always named in connection with being poured out. We are
baptized with, not in, the Holy Ghost. It would do violence to our feelings to
hear one speak of our being immersed in the Holy Spirit. So that I fully believe
in sprinkling as the original New Testament mode of baptism. And, still, I am
inclined to agree with your friend, the professor, who spent New-year's evening
with us, and has just published a book on baptism. Mother. What ground does he
take? Mr. M. He writes somewhat in this way: As to the mode, I believe it to be
unessential; for it seems to me contrary to the genius of Christianity to make a
particular form of doing a thing essential to the thing. What else is there in
Christianity, if we are to except baptism, in which modes are regarded or made
essential? It is not so, he says, with the Lord's Supper, surely; the upper
room, night, sitting or reclining, unleavened bread, a particular kind of wine,
and all such things, are not regarded by any as necessary to the ordinance. It
is very interesting, he says, to notice, that, whereas the old dispensation
prescribed the mode of every religious act, minutely, and a departure from it
vitiated the act itself, Christianity threw off everything like prescriptive
modes altogether. Considering the attachment of the human mind to forms and
ceremonies, he knows of nothing in which Christianity shows its divine origin
and supernatural power more, than in its sublime triumph, so immediately, in the
minds of great numbers, over forms and ceremonies. We can hardly conceive, he
says, what a revolution a Jew must have experienced in giving up Aaron, and
altars, and times, and seasons, and all the minute regard for his religious
ceremonies, at once. Even if it were the original practice to baptize only by
immersion, he cannot think that Christianity could have enjoined it as the only
proper mode of applying water, in signifying religious consecration. Bread and
wine, eaten and drunk decently and in order, in any way whatever, constitutes
the Lord's Supper; water, applied to the person, by a proper administrator, in
the name of the Trinity, constitutes Christian baptism; but, had the New
Testament required us to recline, and lean on one arm, and take the Lord's
Supper with the other arm, insisting that this posture is essential to that
sacrament, or had it specified the quantity of bread and wine, he thinks it
would have been parallel to the uninspired requirement of a particular mode in
applying the water in baptism. "Baptize," he further remarks, it is said, means
immerse. Suppose that it does. Supper means a meal; therefore, one does not "eat
the Lord's Supper," unless he eats a full meal; for, if baptize refers to the
quantity of water, supper refers to the quantity of food and drink in the other
sacrament. He then seems to exult, and says, "I am glad that I am not in
conscientious subjection to any mode of doing anything in religion, as being
essential to the thing itself." Mother. What answer can be made to this? Mr. M.
It is a very common ground, and a convenient one, to answer the argument from
baptizo, and the early practice of immersion in the Christian church after the
apostles. No doubt the early Christians satisfied themselves with this
reasoning, in departing from the apostolic practice of sprinkling. But I prefer
to adhere strictly to the New Testament model. There is no immersion there. Now,
is it allowable to depart from the original mode? This could not be done in the
first initiating ordinance of the church,--circumcision. A departure from the
prescribed rule would have vitiated the ordinance. But, does not Christianity
differ essentially from the former dispensation in this very particular, that it
does not make the mode of doing a thing, essential? Yet, it may be said, Human
ordinances are all strictly binding in the very forms prescribed. For example:
"Hold up your right hand," says the clerk, or judge, to a witness; "you solemnly
swear--." Let the witness, instead of holding up his right hand, if he has one,
and can move it, capriciously say, "I prefer to hold up the left, or to hold up
both. I wish to show that modes and forms are unimportant." He would be in
danger of contempt of court. If so small a departure from the mode of swearing
would not be allowed, much less would he be permitted to kneel, or to lie on his
face, unless he were some devotee. No; there is a prescribed form, and he must
yield to it. It is also said, that, if there were cases in the New Testament in
which it were doubtful, at least, whether immersion were not practised, we might
argue in favor of mixed modes. But immersion is baptism, in my view, because a
person who is immersed is sure to get affused; and, affusion with water is all
of the baptism which seems to me essential. Leaving those who first departed
from the apostolic mode of baptism by sprinkling, to answer for themselves, no
one, of course, will deny that those who conscientiously think that they ought
to be baptized by immersion, are acceptable with God, as well as others who are
of a contrary persuasion. Paul speaks of "divers baptisms." There began to be
such in his day. He speaks also of the "doctrine of baptisms" (plural), showing
the same thing. But I came near forgetting one thing, which I wished to say,
which is, that, in reading the Bible last evening, I found a new encouragement
in taking infants to the house of God. Mother. I should like to hear anything
new on that point. I thought that everything had been exhausted which referred
to that subject. Mr. M. I mean that it was new to me. Luke says that the parents
of Jesus brought him to Jerusalem "to present him to the Lord," and that,
arriving there, they brought him into the temple to do for him after the custom
of the law. Now, I always carelessly thought that this meant circumcision.
Mother. Of course it does; I always thought so. Mr. M. No; for he had already
been circumcised, when he was eight days old. "And when eight days were
accomplished for the circumcising of the child, they called his name Jesus."
Then the next verse speaks of a subsequent act: "When the days of her
purification were accomplished they brought him to Jerusalem." Mary could not
have come to Jerusalem on the eighth day; but, on the second occasion, she was
present; for Simeon addressed her. So that we have the example of the infant
Saviour, in bringing our infants into the temple; and, if we are scrupulous as
to following the Saviour in ordinances, we may as well begin by following him
into the temple, with our infants. Mother. It is beautiful to think of Jesus,
even in his infancy, as an example, and that he was forerunner to the infants of
his people, while yet in his mother's arms.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 6: SCENES OF BAPTISM
========================================================================

Chapter Fifth. SCENES OF BAPTISM--HENRY KELLY.--THE YOUNG PARENTS AND THEIR
BABE.--THE LOST MARINER'S FAMILY.--THE FEEBLE-MINDED YOUTH.--THE REASONABLENESS,
POWER, AND BEAUTY, OF CHILDREN'S BAPTISMS.--HUSBANDS SHOULD COME WITH THEIR
WIVES AND CHILDREN.--MOSES IN THE INN. Since, Lord, to thee A narrow way and
little gate Is all the passage; on my infancy Thou didst lay hold, and antedate
My faith in me. GEORGE HERBERT. The parent pair their secret homage pay, And
proffer up to Heaven the warm request, That He, who stills the raven's clamorous
nest, And decks the lily fair in flowery pride, Would, in the way his wisdom
sees the best, For them and for their little ones provide, But chiefly in their
hearts, with grace divine, preside. BURNS. In all men sinful is it to be slow To
hope: in parents, sinful above all. WORDSWORTH. In a few Sabbaths from this time
we had a most interesting scene at our church. Little Henry Ferguson Kelly was
brought, and offered up in baptism by his mother. We all felt deep respect for
her as a woman of decided character, and a devoted Christian. We saw that she
wept much during the service. The father was not there. She held the little boy
upright on her arm, and he turned his face over her shoulder, looking all about
the church, above and below. He then undertook to apply his little palm to his
mother's cheek, with several decided strokes, to rouse her usual attention,
which he seemed to miss. She took his hand in hers, and held it, and he then
rested his cheek, and his chin, alternately, upon her shoulder. A sweet little
girl, two months old, was also brought by a young couple to be baptized. Few
things are more interesting than the sight of a young couple, with their
first-born child, standing before God. A world of thought and feeling passes
through their minds in those hallowed moments. Not much more than a year had
gone since they stood before God to take the vows of marriage from those same
lips, perhaps, which now lead their devotions, and bless them out of the house
of the Lord. The little child is an offering which gathers about itself more of
rich joy and gratitude, recollection, present bliss, and anticipation, than any
gift of God; it is itself an ordinance, a little rite, a sign and seal of
covenants and love to which earth has no parallel. The light of nature almost
teaches us the propriety of infant dedication, in the use of the prevailing
religious rite. The only wise God manifested his goodness and wisdom, in
establishing his covenant with the children of those who love him, as really as
in creating a companion for Adam. There were other sights, on this baptismal
occasion, besides Henry Ferguson and his mother, and the young couple with their
child. A woman, in the habiliments of the deepest mourning, went up the aisle,
leading with her finger a little boy between two and three years old, followed
by a noble son of fifteen, and his sister of twelve. Our pastor's rule, as to
the limit of age within which children may be admitted to baptism, is this: So
long as a parent, or guardian, or next friend, has the immediate tutelage of a
child, so as to direct its instruction and government, and thus continues to
exercise parental authority, he may properly offer the child for baptism; and
therefore, as children differ as to degrees of maturity within the same ages, no
express boundary of time can be prescribed to limit those baptisms which are by
the faith of another. The father of these three children had been lost at sea on
a whaling voyage. The seaman's chest had come home, and so the last star of hope
as to his return had set. The mother had become a Christian; she felt the need
of a covenant-keeping God for her children. There she stood, a sorrow-stricken
woman, and her household with her, to receive for them the sign of the covenant
from the God of Abraham. There was another sight in that group: A man and woman,
honest, good people, in humble circumstances, had had bequeathed to them, by a
widowed sister of his, who was not a professor of religion, a feeble-minded
youth of about ten years; and this uncle and aunt had adopted him as their
child. They also came, the husband leading the boy along, with his arm over the
boy's shoulder to encourage his hesitating steps, and the wife behind them. He
was a member of a Sabbath-school class; by no means an idiot, yet deficient in
some respects. He was entrusted with affairs about a farm which did not require
much responsibility. Little Henry Ferguson began to coo and crow, as they came
successively and stood, in a half-circle, round the table with the silver basin
upon it. The feeble-minded youth was mostly occupied with the actions of Henry,
who, on seeing his face covered with uncontrollable expressions of interest in
him, began to reach after him, and respond to his pleased looks; nor did he
cease his efforts to go to him, till he felt the minister's hand upon his
forehead from behind, when he turned his large, beautiful eyes into the face of
the minister, with silent wonder at being apparently spoken to with so unusual a
manner and tone. A hush went through the congregation. The young couple next
presented their little Alice, and gave place to the widow's household. Was there
a dry eye in the house? Signs of weeping came from all sides. Mortimer was led
by his arm in his mother's hand, and was baptized. Sarah loosened her straw
bonnet, and let it fall back from her head, to receive the simple rite; when the
widow lifted the little boy, who had never known a father's love, and the
pastor, after waiting a moment to control his emotions sealed him in the name of
our redeeming God. After an involuntary pause for a few moments, owing to the
deep emotion in the congregation, poor Josey was led forward. Minister and
congregation seemed to make but slight impression upon him; Henry Ferguson was
the charm throughout; he even turned his head, while the minister's hand was on
it, to smile at the child. The promise was not only to those believing parents,
all of them, and to their own children, but to him that was afar off; his new
parents having availed themselves of the large covenant of grace, to invoke its
promised blessings upon him, on the ground of their faith. "May these parents,"
said the pastor in his prayer, "remember, in all times of solicitude and trouble
with this dear dependent child, that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, in whose
name he is baptized, can have access to his mind, 'making wise the simple;' and
may that blessed Spirit make him his care." Part of the time, while the hymn
following the baptism was read and sung, I found myself pursuing some thoughts
which the interesting scene just witnessed had suggested. Why, I asked myself,
could not these parents have been satisfied with dedicating these children at
home, without this public and special act of consecration? I was at no loss for
an answer. The same reason applies as when one seeks admission to the church of
Christ, by a public profession of religion, either by appearing before a
congregation and assenting to a covenant, or to be confirmed, or to be immersed
in water. Offering a child in baptism is making a public profession of religion
with regard to it. Some say to us, What need is there of joining a church? Why
may I not be a Christian by myself? We know what we say, in reply to such
questions. We are aware how much the public act helps the private feelings and
conduct, besides being required by our feelings when they are deep and strong. I
thought of this illustration: In the wakeful moments of the night, upon a lonely
bed, one feels a special nearness to God. He can think of God, as he lies upon
his pillow, both with prayer and meditation; but suppose that he rises from his
bed and kneels at the bedside, and, with oral prayer, prevents the
night-watches, and cries? His voice at that midnight hour affects his mind; the
darkness and stillness impress him with a sense of the presence of God, and
though his ejaculations on his pillow were acceptable, has he not probably done
that which, through Christ, is peculiarly acceptable to God, and is profitable
to himself as his child? He who was always in communion with the Father, the man
Christ Jesus, nevertheless, sometimes withdrew into a mountain, and continued
all night in prayer, and, rising up a great while before day, he went into a
solitary place, and there prayed. These special acts of worship, no true
Christian needs to be told, are good and acceptable to God, and profitable for
men. We do not refrain from them, pleading that they are nowhere commanded in
the New Testament, or, that, so long as we pray at stated times, or strive to
live in a praying frame, these special devotions are superfluous. So, while it
is our duty and privilege to dedicate our children to God in private, it is
acceptable to him, and profitable to us, if we take them, and bring an offering,
and come into his courts. The baptism of the feeble-minded youth furnished me
with an illustration of the suitableness of parents and guardians doing for
children, in religion, that which they are constantly doing for them in common
things, that is, conferring privileges and blessings upon them without their
consent. There seemed to be such an illustration of the riches of free grace, in
the baptism of this poor child, such a comment on that passage, "I am found of
them that sought me not," it corresponded so much with the kindness and love of
God our Saviour towards man, that we all felt instructed and softened by it,
and, at the same time, we all had feelings toward that helpless boy, such as we,
perhaps, never could have had but for his baptism. Never will a member of that
witnessing congregation see him, without a feeling of tenderness and something
bordering on respect; he will not be merely "Silly Joe" to them; that element of
truth in the heathen superstition, which leads heathens and pagans to regard an
idiot as something sacred, will have its verification with regard to him; the
children of that assembly will be restrained from rudeness and cruelty, in their
sports with him, by that transaction, while the prayers offered for him at the
time, and the many ejaculations which the sight of him will occasion in the
hearts of good people, will make his baptism one of his richest blessings. O,
what a loss it is to have a child baptized at home, or anywhere and at any time
except among the public services of the Sabbath in the sanctuary of God!
Necessity, indeed, controls our choice, many times, in this thing; and we are
accepted of God irrespective of time and place, in yielding to his providence.
Since my mind has been deeply interested in this subject, leading me to converse
with parents and with ministers, and to make observation with regard to it, I
have seen and heard many things relating to the providences of God, in
connection with the baptism of children, which, while we ought to be slow in
confidently interpreting providences, make us do as Mary is said to have done,
in regard to things relating to her child,--she "kept these things and pondered
them in her heart." We cannot say, for example, that the death of that little
girl, whose father refused to let his wife enjoy the privilege of going, alone,
with the child, to the house of God for baptism, or to invite the pastor to his
house for the purpose, was a judicial consequence of his conduct; but we know
that his own thoughts trouble him, and that he has a sorrow bound upon his
heart, which he will carry with him to his grave. Neither is it certain that the
little one, who was raised to life from a sickness which baffled the physicians,
was spared to her pious mother for her Christian behavior, in taking it, a few
months before, to the house of God, and offering it in baptism, with no help
from her husband, but with many sad thoughts that the father of the child--he on
whose arm she and the child needed to rest--refused her gentle and affectionate
pleadings with him, to support and cherish her at an hour so precious to her
heart. Nor will we say that the kind and obliging husband, not a professor of
religion, who served his wife so manfully, and with such a cheerful spirit, on
such an occasion, would not have acquired, in other ways, the respect and love
of the people, or that he could trace to it, absolutely, great prosperity in
business, through the assistance of prominent members in that church. Sure we
are that no such motive influenced him; but it is equally true that we cannot
link ourselves to God's service, nor to his friends, in any way, without
receiving his blessing. "Come thou with us, and we will do thee good." "Blessed
is he that blesseth thee." In the eyes of estimable people, and of all whose
good opinion and best wishes are most desirable, the man who overcomes any
little pride, or sensitiveness, or fear of man, and goes with his pious wife and
child to the house of God, and offers the child, for her, to be baptized, is
more of a man than before, gains reputation for some desirable qualities,
excites respect for self-reliance, the quiet performance of a duty from which
certain feelings might lead him to shrink, and in the increased love and esteem
of others, to say no more, he has his reward. God was angry with Moses for
delaying, if not neglecting, to circumcise his child. His wife was a Midianite;
her associations with the ordinance were not like those of Moses, and perhaps he
had yielded too much to her known feelings. At least, the child had not been
circumcised, and we are told, "The Lord met him in the inn, and sought to slay
him." Some accident there, or a sudden and alarming illness, made him feel that
God had a controversy with him. Zipporah was not slow to interpret the
providence. If Moses had said with himself, So long as I consecrate my child to
God by prayer, the seal of the covenant cannot be essential, God taught him his
mistake. As soon as the rite had been performed, we read, "So he let him go." It
may be noticed, here, that the unworthy manner in which Zipporah performed the
rite, did not make it invalid. They who fear that their baptism was not
solemnized, in all respects, as it should have been, may draw instruction and
comfort from this narrative. There have been instances, within my knowledge, in
which one or both of the parents of a child have yielded to some untoward
influences, and have withheld the child from being baptized. While I cannot, and
would not, interpret certain events connected with this omission, on the part of
some from whom better things might have been expected, nothing has ever
impressed me more than the dealings of God with such parents. I have been made
to think by such coincidences, more than once or twice, of Moses in the inn. It
will not be amiss to say, that those who are neglecting to bring their children
for baptism, within a suitable time, unless providentially hindered, will do
well to examine their feelings and motives, with that quickened conscience,
which the solemn providences of God toward them may be intended to excite. He is
"a jealous God;" and he keepeth covenant "to a thousand generations."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: TESTIMONY OF THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS
========================================================================

Chapter Sixth.
TESTIMONY OF THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS
HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS.--"P∆DOBAPTIST CONCESSIONS."--THOMAS SHEPARD'S VIEWS. BAPTISM OF HIS CHILD. THE FATHER'S RECORD.--GREAT INFLUENCE OF THE FAMILY RELATION IN HEATHENISM AND PAGANISM.--THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF AMERICA.--DISSUASIVE FROM ALTERCATION.--QUESTIONS TO A MINISTER ON HIS PRACTICE IN BAPTISMS.--LIBERALITY.--PAUL AN EXAMPLE.
Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.--Psalms 90:1-17.
The Lamb hath but one bride, the one church of all times.--ANON.
That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.--THE APOSTLE PAUL.
Schoolmen must war with schoolmen, text with text. The first's the Chaldee paraphrase; the next The Septuagint; opinion thwarts opinion; The Papist holds the first, the last the Arminian; And then the Councils must be called to advise, What this of Lateran says, and that of Nice; The slightly-studied fathers must be prayed, Although in small acquaintance, into aid; When, daring venture, oft, too far into 't, They, Pharaoh like, are drowned, both horse and foot.
FRANCIS QUARLES.
Being determined to possess myself of suitable information on the subject of baptism as practised by the early Christian fathers, I called the next evening to see my pastor, when the following conversation took place:
Mr. M. I wish, sir, to know the plain and simple truth about the evidence from ecclesiastical history with regard to infant baptism. The internal evidence, confirming the scriptural argument, fully satisfies me, yet, as a matter of interesting information, I should like to know how it was regarded in the age next to that of the apostles. You know we often read, and hear it said, that infant baptism is an error which crept into the Christian church about the third century. Now, did it creep in; or did the apostles practise it?
Dr. D. If infant baptism crept into the church, and if it be an unauthorized innovation, one thing seems very strange, that, in this Protestant age, when we are all so jealous of Romish and all human inventions in matters of religion, the ablest and soundest men of all Christian denominations but one, are firmly persuaded of its scriptural authority, and are increasingly attached to it. In the great reformations which have arisen from time to time, this practice would have been swept away, had it been an error. It is more than we can believe that Protestant denominations should all, with one exception, adhere to an unscriptural practice, at the present day especially.
Mr. M. Well, sir, leaving the scripturalness of the ordinance out of question, what support does the practice get from church history? How far back to the times of the apostles can we trace it? Did any practise it who could have received it from the apostles, or have known those who did?
Dr. D. You must come with me into my study, and we will examine the authorities.
I will not burden your attention and memory with many citations. Two or three indisputable witnesses are better than a host. I rely chiefly on the testimony of ORIGEN for proof that the practice of infant baptism was derived from the apostles, though I will show you that his testimony is confirmed by other witnesses.
ORIGEN was born in Alexandria, Egypt, A.D. 185, that is, about eighty-five years after the death of the apostle John. To make his nearness to the apostles clear to your mind, consider, that Roger Williams, for example, established himself at Providence in 1636, say two hundred and twenty years ago; yet how perfectly informed we are of his opinions and history. But Origen, born eighty-five years only after the death of John, knew, of course, the established practices of the apostles, which had come down through so short a space of time. "His grandfather, if not his father, must have lived in the apostles' day. It was not, therefore, necessary for him to go out of his own family, to learn what was the practice of the apostles. He knew whether he had himself been baptized, if we may judge from his writings, and he must have known the views of his father and grandfather on the subject. He had the reputation of great learning, had travelled extensively, had lived in Greece, Rome, Cappadocia, and Arabia, though he spent the principal part of his life in Syria and Palestine."
I would place implicit reliance on the testimony of such a man, under such circumstances, to any question of history with which he professed to be familiar, even if I differed from him in matters of opinion. But such a man would not state, for veritable history, that which the world knew to be false.
Now, what is Origen's testimony as to the fact, simply, of the apostolic usage with regard to infant baptism?
In his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Book v., he says:
"For this cause it was that the church received an order from the apostles to give baptism even to infants."
In his homily on Leviticus 12:1-8, he says:
"According to the usage of the church, baptism is given even to infants, when, if there were nothing in infants that needed forgiveness and mercy, the grace of baptism would seem to be superfluous."
In his homily on Luke 14:1-35, he says:
"Infants are baptized for the forgiveness of sins."
It was the practice, then, in Origen's day, to baptize infants. He tells the people of his day, to whom he preaches and writes, why it was that the church had received a command from the apostles to baptize them, not proving to them the fact of history, but, taking that as well known, explaining the theological reason for it, as he understood it.
It is now 1857. Eighty-five years ago, the length of time after the apostles to the birth of this man, brings us back to 1772. There is good Dr. Sales, who was born in 1770. Suppose that he should say that steamboats came from England at the time that the Hudson river was discovered, and that they had plied there ever since?
No man in his right mind (not to say a scholar like Origen), however singular his opinions, would assert, for veritable history, that which was as palpably false as such a fiction respecting steamboat navigation upon the Hudson would be. Yet Origen asserts that the practice of infant baptism was received directly from the apostles. Everybody could contradict him if he were in error.
Mr. M. But we know that he was in error in saying that forgiveness of sins was a consequence of baptism.
Dr. D. Very well. The erroneous opinions, or practices, of men, with regard to the shape of the earth, did not prove that there was no earth in their day. On the contrary, their theories and speculations are proof, if any were needed, that the earth then existed, surely. A man who boldly advocates a theory, fears to assert for fact that which all the world knows to be false.
Mr. M. If infant baptism were then practised, and had been received from the apostles, why should Origen assert it in his books, and in preaching, since everybody must have known it sufficiently. Does not this prove that it was not generally believed?
Dr. D. Why, my dear sir, am I not every Sabbath telling how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures? People do not need to be informed of it as a truth of history, but they need to be reminded of it, and to be exhorted in view of it. So of every doctrine, and everything connected with religion. We tell the plainest, the most familiar, truths to our church-members, continually; and the common repetition of those truths is, rather, a proof of their general acceptation than otherwise.
Mr. M. In a court of justice, such testimony as that of Origen would certainly be conclusive, in the case of a patent-right, or maritime discovery. But you said that there were other testimonies of equal weight.
Dr. D. TERTULLIAN was born at Carthage, not far from A.D. 150, that is, about fifty years after the apostles. He wrote, therefore, within a hundred years of the apostle John. But he was a man of peculiar views, extravagant in his opinions, an enthusiast in everything. He proves that the practice of infant baptism was established, by arguing against the expediency of baptizing children, and unmarried persons, lest they should sin after baptism. His argument, with respect to both these classes of persons, is the same. His language is, "If any understand the weight of baptismal obligations, they will be more fearful about taking them than of delay." He argued that baptism should be deferred till people were in a condition to resist temptation. These are his words:
"Therefore, according to every person's condition, and disposition, and age, also, the delay of baptism is more profitable, especially as to little children. For why is it necessary that the sponsors should incur danger? For they may either fail of their promises by death, or may be disappointed by a child's proving to be of a wicked disposition. Our Lord says, indeed, 'Forbid them not to come to me.' Let them come, then, when they are grown up; let them come when they understand; let them come when they are taught whither they come; let them become Christians when they are able to know Christ. Why should their innocent age make haste to the forgiveness of sins? Men act more cautiously in temporal concerns. Worldly substance is not committed to those to whom divine things are entrusted. Let them know how to ask for salvation, that you may seem to give to him that asketh.
"It is for a reason no less important that unmarried persons, both those who were never married, and those who have been deprived of their partners, should, on account of their exposure to temptation, be kept waiting," &c.
As these extracts prove that the institution of marriage existed in Tertullian's day, so they prove the existence then of infant baptism. Nothing can be more conclusive. How pertinent and useful to his object would it have been, could he have assailed the practice of infant baptism as a human invention! He would not have failed to use that line of attack, had it been possible. Now, as certain articles in the newspapers, in a distant part of the country, remonstrating against the street-railroads, for example, prove that street-railroads exist there, so does Tertullian's argument against infant baptism prove that it was practised within one hundred years after the apostles.
Mr. M. Is not this stronger, if anything, than Origen's testimony, being so much nearer the apostolic age?
Dr. D. For that reason it may have more weight; but Origen's testimony, being direct and positive, is most easily quoted. He was near enough to the apostolic age for all the purposes of credible testimony.
There is another historical testimony, if you wish to hear of more, which has great weight.
THE COUNCIL OF CARTHAGE, one hundred and fifty years after the apostles, and composed of sixty-six pastors, has given us full testimony on the subject. A country presbyter, by the name of Fidus, had sent two cases for their adjudication. One was, "Whether an infant might be baptized before it was eight days old?" Here is the answer:
CYPRIAN, and the rest of the presbyters who were present in the council, sixty-six in number, to Fidus our brother, Greeting:
"---- As to the case of Infants: whereas you judge that they must not be baptized within two or three days after they were born, and that the rule of circumcision is to be observed,--we are all in the Council of a very different opinion." "This, therefore, was our opinion in the Council, that we ought not to hinder any person from baptism, and the grace of God. And this rule, as it holds for all, is, we think, more especially to be observed in reference to infants, even to those who are newly born."
This was written, within a hundred and fifty years from the time of the apostles, by sixty-six ministers of Christ, some of whom, we may suppose, must have had grace enough to show a martyr-spirit in resisting so gross an invention as the baptizing of infants would have been, if apostolic example had restricted baptism to those who were capable of faith. Did Paul reprove an abuse of the Lord's Supper, among the Corinthians, and would he not have given an injunction against so Jewish a superstition as the baptizing of children in place of the antiquated circumcision would have been, if it were not commanded, had the churches in his day seemed inclined to practise it?
Mr. M. All these things amount to a demonstration, in my view.
Dr. D. You would like to hear something from AUGUSTINE, whose "Confessions" you have read with so much interest.
In his writings, on Genesis, Augustine says, about two hundred and eighty-eight years after the apostles, "The custom of our mother, the church, in baptizing infants, must not be disregarded nor accounted useless, and it must by all means be believed to be (apostolica traditio) a thing handed down to us by the apostles." "It is most justly believed to be no other than a thing delivered by apostolic authority; that it came not by a general council, or by any authority later or less than that of the apostles." He also speaks of baptizing infants by the authority of the whole church, which, he says, was undoubtedly delivered to it by our Lord and his apostles.
Augustine was a man of distinguished piety and learning, whose testimony is every way worthy of implicit confidence. But, connected with his history, we have another substantial evidence with regard to the subject. He conducted a famous controversy against the Pelagians, who denied original sin. They were confronted with the argument from infant baptism. "Why," it was said, "are infants baptized, if they need no change of nature?" It would have been a triumphant answer could they have shown that it was an unscriptural practice, not countenanced by Christ or the apostles. But Pelagius said, "Men slander me as though I denied baptism to infants, whereas I never heard of any one, Catholic or heretic, who denied baptism to infants." Pelagius and his friend Celestius, who was with him in the controversy, were born, the one in Britain, the other in Ireland. They lived for some years in Rome, where they knew people from all parts of the world. They had also lived in Carthage, Africa. One finally settled in Jerusalem, and the other travelled among all the churches in the principal places of Europe and Asia. But they had never heard of the man, not even a heretic, who had denied infant baptism.
Here is another interesting proof. IrenÊus, Philastrius, Augustine, Epiphanius, Theodoret, wrote catalogues of all the sects of Christians which they had ever heard of; but, while they make mention of some who denied baptism altogether, and with it, according to Augustine, a great part of scripture, they mention no denial of infant baptism by any sect whatever.
Mr. M. I suppose, then, that the only way of disposing of this argument is by rejecting all testimony except that of the New Testament. Some say they can prove anything from the fathers; so they insist that the Bible alone must be our guide.
Dr. D. They are right in making that the only and sufficient rule of faith and practice. But how do these good people and the rest of us know that the books of the Old Testament, as we have them, were the very books to which Christ and the apostles referred as the word of God? If infidels refuse to receive the Bible, saying, 'There is no proof that these are the identical books known to Christ, and quoted by him and the apostles,' What shall we say? The Bible itself gives us no specific direction how to prove its genuineness. It is interesting to observe that we go to uninspired men to prove that we really have the Bible as Christ and the apostles sanctioned it. We go to Josephus, neither inspired nor even a Christian; to the Talmud, to Jerome, Origen, Aquila, and other uninspired men, to find a list of the books which we are to receive as given by the inspiration of God. And, as to the New Testament, we go to Eusebius and other uninspired writers, and find that the Christians of their days regarded these books as of divine authority. It is on such evidence as this that we rely for the authority of those sacred writings, which tell us what are the doctrines, precepts, and rites, of religion. Now, we see from this that uninspired testimony to divine things has its use. It is neither wise, nor any proof of intelligence, to refuse a proper place to such testimony. We do not ask Josephus nor Eusebius how to interpret these books for us, nor does their erroneous opinion with regard to matters of faith disparage their testimony as to the existence and authenticity of the sacred canon. Neither can we properly say, "The early Christian fathers had wrong notions, some of them, about infant baptism; therefore they cannot be allowed to testify whether infant baptism was practised." However heretical they may have been, they could not alter the well-known facts of history, in the face of enemies and friends.
Mr. M. Are you not accustomed to rely much, in your scriptural argument for infant baptism, on the baptisms of households by the apostles?
Dr. D. I am; and that reminds me of an interesting passage, which I will read to you from this book:[4]
[Footnote 4: Taylor on Baptism.]
"Have we eight instances of the administration of the Lord's Supper? Not half the number. Have we eight cases of the change of the Christian Sabbath from the Jewish? Not, perhaps, one fourth of the number. Yet those services are vindicated by the practice of the apostles, as recorded in the New Testament. How, then, can we deny their practice on the subject of infant baptism, when it is established by a series of more numerous instances than can possibly be found in support of any doctrine, principle, or practice, derived from the practice of the apostles?"
But you will ask him (said Dr. D.), how he proves that there were infants or young children in the households baptized by the apostles.
This is his answer:
"Is there any other case besides that of baptism, where we would take families at hazard, and deny the existence of young children in them?
"Take eight families in a street, or eight pews containing families in a place of worship; they will afford more than one young child."
Mr. M. How does he make out eight cases of household baptism by the apostles?
Dr. D. Let us examine his list:
1. Cornelius.
2. Lydia.
3. The jailer at Philippi. "Thus the church at Philippi, just organized by the apostles, and consisting of but few members, offers two instances of household baptism."
4. Crispus. "Compare Acts 18:8, and 1 Corinthians 1:14-16, by which it appears that this Crispus was baptized by Paul separately from his family, which was not baptized by Paul. Yet Crispus 'believed on the Lord with all his house.' If his house believed, it was baptized. It was, then, a baptized household. But if we believe that the family of Crispus was baptized because we find it registered as believing, then we must admit the same of all other families which we find marked as Christians, though they be not expressly marked as baptized." He is not proving, here, you notice, that there were children in any of these households; he thinks he proves that elsewhere, by the doctrine of chances. He is now showing the grounds for supposing that certain "households" were baptized. He applies his argument respecting Crispus to
5. Aristobulus's household.
6. Onesiphorus's household.
7. Narcissus's household.
8. Stephanas's household. This household was baptized by Paul separately from its head, who was not baptized by Paul; this case being just the reverse of that of Crispus.
"Eight Christian families, and therefore baptized." Now comes the question of probability as to there being children in those households not capable of faith.
Begin anywhere, in any congregation, on the Sabbath, and count eight pews, the proprietors and occupants of which are the heads of families; and the chance of there being no minor children in them is almost too small to be appreciated. Should we read, in a secular paper, that a foreign missionary had baptized eight households in a pagan village, the general belief would be that it was a missionary of some PÊdobaptist denomination, and that children were baptized in those families.
I must read to you (said Dr. D.) something on the other side of this argument. I found the following, not long since, in a deservedly popular and useful Dictionary and Repository, written and signed by a gentleman of excellent character and standing. He says:
"Infant baptism was probably introduced about the commencement of the third century, in connection with other corruptions, which even then began to prepare the way for Popery. A superstitious idea, respecting the necessity of baptism to salvation, led to the baptism of sick persons, and, finally, to the baptism of infants. Sponsors, holy water, anointing with oil, the sign of the cross, and a multitude of similar ceremonies, equally unauthorized by the Scriptures, were soon introduced. The church lost her simplicity and purity, her ministers became ambitious, and the darkness gradually deepened to the long and dismal night of papal despotism."
"Probably introduced about the commencement of the third century, in connection with other corruptions." Recall what I read to you from Origen, born A.D. 185; from Tertullian, who flourished within one hundred years after the apostles; from Cyprian and the Council of Carthage; from Augustine and his antagonist, Pelagius, who expressly said that he had never heard of any one, not even the most impious heretic, denying baptism to infants.
In contrast with such a passage as the one just read to you, I am reminded of the host of writers, on our side of the question, who, almost all of them, make such candid and full concessions, that they furnish their brethren of the opposite side with many of their arguments against us. I remember reading a book of "PÊdobaptist Concessions," containing a formidable array of points yielded by our writers, so that a common reader might ask, What have you left as the ground of your belief and practice? But the thought which arose in my mind was, Notwithstanding all these concessions, they who make them are among the firmest believers in baptism by sprinkling, and in infant baptism. That cause must be affluent in proofs, and deeply rooted in the scriptural convictions of men, which can afford to make such concessions to its antagonists. These refuse facts, which we afford to others for so large a part of their foundation, show how broad and sufficient ours must be.
The quotation which I read to you, speaks of Popish tendencies as having already begun. This is true; and more may be added. In the second epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul tells us that the mystery of iniquity was already at work. On the subject of religious days and festivals, the first Christians very soon began to be superstitious, incorporating heathen festival days into Christian observances, under the plea of redeeming and sanctifying them, with some such feelings and reasoning as that with which people, now, would transfer secular music to sanctuaries, saying that the enemy ought not to have all the best music. It is true that this sensuous, and, afterward called, Romish, tendency, corrupted everything. The pure stream of apostolic doctrine and practice was like the Moselle, which you saw from the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, pursuing its unmingled course distinctly for some distance in the turbid Rhine, till at last it yields to the general current. Infant baptism, as we learn from ecclesiastical authorities with one consent, proceeded from the apostles; yet soon it began to be practised with many superstitious absurdities; and, moreover, immersion, making such powerful appeals to the senses, suited the taste of the age far better than sprinkling, so that not only did it become the common mode, but the subjects were completely undressed, without any distinction, to denote the putting off the old man and the putting on of the new, and the putting away of the filth of the flesh.[5] Public sentiment finally abolished this practice. After a considerable time affusion, or sprinkling, returned, and became the prevailing mode, without any special enactment, or any formal renunciation of the late mode. The Eastern church, however, retained immersion, while the Greek and Armenian branches use both immersion and sprinkling for the adult and child. But the sick and dying were always baptized by sprinkling, which is sufficient to prove that sprinkling was regarded as equally valid with immersion. It is natural to say that it was superstitious to baptize the sick and dying, by sprinkling, if we hold that only immersion is valid baptism. The sick and dying cannot be immersed; now, is it superstition for a sick person, giving credible evidence of piety, to be admitted into the Christian church, and receive the Lord's Supper? In order to do this properly, the subject must be baptized; hence, we derive one powerful argument that sprinkling is valid baptism. Our Lord would never have made the modes of his sacraments so austerely rigid, that the thousands of sick and feeble persons, ministers in poor health, climate, seasons of the year, times of persecution and imprisonment, and all the stress of circumstances to which Christians may be subjected, should be utterly disregarded, and one inconvenient, and sometimes dangerous, form, of applying water, be insisted on, inflexibly, as essential to the introductory Christian rite. If the early Christians baptized the sick by sprinkling, they of course supposed that it was valid baptism. If it was valid at all, and in any case, of course it was Christian baptism, even if other modes were most commonly used.
[Footnote 5: See "Coleman's Ancient Christianity," chap, xix., sec. 12. He refers to Ambrose, Ser. 20. Chrysostom, Hom. 6. Epistle to Col., &c., &c.]
Mr. M. I suppose, then, that you would not object to administer baptism in any other mode of applying water than sprinkling, or pouring.
Dr. D. One mode was, I believe, practised at first; and the New Testament teaches me that this was affusion. The application of water in any way, by an authorized administrator, to a proper subject, in the name of the Trinity, may be valid baptism; but I prefer the New Testament mode, as I understand it, and am happy to allow others the same liberty of judgment which I enjoy. It would be an extreme case which would lead me to administer the ordinance in any other way than by affusion.
But, said Mr. D., you began by inquiring respecting the practice of infant baptism in the early ages. I presume that your mind is settled with regard to the connection of the practice with God's everlasting covenant with believers and their offspring. I lately read a statement of this point, which pleased me much, in the writings of the famous Rev. Thomas Shepard, the early pastor of the church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He says:
"There is the same inward cause moving God to take in the children of believing parents into the church and covenant, now, to be of the number of his people, as there was for taking the Jews and their children. For the only reason why the Lord took in the children of the Jews with themselves evidently was his love to the parents. 'Because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed.' So that I do from hence believe, that either God's love is, in these days of his Gospel, less unto his people and servants than in the days of the Old Testament,--or, if it be as great, that then the same love respects the seed of his people now as then it did. And, therefore, if then because he loved them he chose their seed to be of his church, so in these days because he loveth us he chooseth our seed to be of his church also."
Though the title of the treatise from which I read is called the Church-Membership of Children, to which expression I have very great objections, and feel that it has done harm, yet this good man held the doctrine of infant church-membership in a sense which is free from all reproach of making people members of the church otherwise than by regeneration. His belief on this point comes out under the following illustration:
"These children may not be the sons of God and his people really and savingly, but God will honor them outwardly with his name and privileges, just as one that adopts a youngster tells the father that if the child carry himself well toward him, when he is grown up to years he shall possess the inheritance itself; but yet in the meanwhile he shall have this favor, to be called his son, and be of the family and household, and so be reckoned among the number of his sons."
One of the chief reasons which brought this excellent man to New England, was that he could not in Old England enjoy the ordinance of infant baptism in its purity. Let me read the following, addressed by him to his little son, who afterward became pastor of the church in Lynn, Massachusetts, and was a burning and shining light. His words will show you that he had no superstitious notion about the church-membership of children, though he represented the common belief at that day, and that he did not count baptism in infancy a saving ordinance; yet you will see how he uses it to plead with his son to be reconciled to God. He writes:
"And thus, after about eleven weekes sayle from Old England, we came to New England shore, where the mother fell sick of consumption, and you my child was put to nurse to one goodwife Hopkins, who was very tender of thee; and after we had been here diverse weekes, on the seventh of February, or thereabout, God gave thee the ordinance of baptism, whereby God is become thy God, and is beforehand with thee, that whenever you shall return to God he will undoubtedly receive thee; and this is a most high and happy privilege; and therefore blesse God for it. And now, after this had been done, thy deare mother dyed in the Lord, departing out of this world into another, who did lose her life by being careful to preserve thine; for in the ship thou wert so feeble and froward, both in the day and night, that hereby shee lost her strength, and at last her life. Shee hath made also many a prayer and shed many a tear in secret for thee; and this hath bin oft her request, that if the Lord did not intend to glorify himselfe by thee, that he would cut thee off by death rather than to live to dishonor him by sin; and therefore know it that if you shalt turn rebell agaynst God, and forsake God and care not for the knowledge of him, nor to beleeve in his Son, the Lord will make all these mercys woes, and all thy mother's prayers, teares, and death, to be a swift witness agaynst thee at the great day."
The practice of infant baptism, and a belief in what is called the church-membership of children, surely had no injurious effect upon a parent who could speak thus to his child. Yet Shepard took as high ground as any with regard to this subject. He derived appeals from baptism to his child, which were both encouraging and admonitory in the highest degree.
O, said Dr. D., what a people the descendants of Abraham might have been forever, had they kept that covenant of which circumcision was the seal. Had they remembered only this, and had they adhered to it, "I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee," and had they been a covenant-keeping people, their peace, as God says to them, would have been as a river; an endless, inexhaustible tide of prosperity and blessedness.
And now, if Christian parents will but lay hold on that covenant as they may, that Abrahamic covenant, still in force for them who are Christ's, and so Abraham's, seed, and heirs according to the promise, we should soon see, in family religion, in the early conversion of children, and in their large Christian culture, those promises of God fulfilled which have respect to the great increase, chiefly by this means, of his church in the latter days. This is one thing which makes me love and prize infant baptism so much; its being an expression and exponent of parental love, faithfulness, and zeal, in those with whom it is preceded and followed by the entire consecration of their children to God, their feelings and conduct toward them agreeing with the covenant made for them with God.
But, in saying this, let me guard you against the erroneous notion that infant baptism is primarily a parent's covenant, an expression of his feelings toward God. No, it is God's covenant, an expression of his feelings toward the children of believers. That is the chief thing which gives it value. For, it is not because parents love their children, that God commands that they be offered in baptism; but because God loves them, and has promised to be a God to them, as he is to their parents. People, however, sometimes treat the ordinance as though it were their act toward God, and not primarily his act toward them. They, therefore, are liable to use it with far less effect than if they were receiving in it, and by it, God's own transaction with them and the little child.
Mr. M. In thinking of Pagan and Mohammedan nations, lately, at the Concert of Prayer for Foreign Missions, I was struck with this thought, how error has been transmitted from father to child, and what an awful power for evil lies in transmitted family influence, when it is corrupted. This led me to think whether God did not have this in mind when, in establishing his church in Abraham, he connected children with parents in his covenant, and gave a sign and seal to be affixed to their children as a constant admonition to parental faithfulness. All his former dealings with the world seem to have failed, because of its great wickedness,--fire, plagues, good examples, great riches, and power conferred upon the good; and then he added, as a special means, the family constitution, and by it he secured a seed to serve him to an extent sufficient to keep the world from extinction, and to be the repository and source of divine knowledge. I began to think that, if we would keep religion from dying out, we must fall in with God's great plan; for Satan makes use of it, and holds generation after generation in bondage by means of the family constitution. So I set myself at work to find out ways by which we might promote family religion; and I could find no better plan than the old one, of promoting scriptural and spiritual views of the dedication of children. Then I thought how much discredit has been cast upon that ordinance, which is intended to be the great sign and declaration of parental piety and faithfulness; and that family religion had, proportionably, declined, with the indifference of Christians to this powerful means of promoting the eminent zeal and efforts of parents in behalf of their children's spiritual good. Youths of fifteen to twenty-one years of age are, in a large proportion, the causes of prevailing wickedness,--Sabbath-breaking, profaneness, and other things. They need just what the ordinance of baptism, properly observed and fully carried out by covenanting parents, would do for them. But, in being present at the formation of new churches, I have mourned to see that, instead of declaring infant baptism to be the duty of believers, as was formerly done in our older churches, a compromise with modern lax views is made, by merely permitting infant baptism, saying, in the confession of faith, that, "Baptism is the privilege only of believers and their children."
But the idea of getting up a zeal in favor of infant baptism, or a public sentiment in the churches which should enforce it as a duty, seemed to me unprofitable; but it occurred to me, whether something could not be done to interest Christian parents in the subject, by showing them the infinite privilege of having God for their God, and the God of their seed, and then the naturalness and propriety of using an ordinance to express and to assist it. People need instruction on the subject; instruction which will commend itself to their Christian feelings. We cannot legislate them into a spiritual observance of the Lord's Supper, much less of baptism.
Dr. D. No; and I trust that our denominations who practise infant baptism, will never urge it otherwise than in connection with parental piety, and as a helper of parental obligations.
Mr. M. But ought we not to stir ourselves up with regard to parental duties? and, if so, must we not necessarily insist on the dedication of children to God, and upon baptism as the acceptable way of signifying it, and the powerful means of helping us to perform our duties?
Dr. D. Surely we ought; and in doing it we have the satisfaction to know that we are laboring for something more than to establish a mode of applying an ordinance. In urging the baptism of children, if we do it not for the sake of the ordinance, but for the things which it signifies and promotes, we advance the cause of piety in the parents.
Mr. M. Would that some one would blow a trumpet in the churches on this subject. I do feel that if parents would appreciate the influence of such a state of heart as would lead them to offer their children to God in baptism, as an expression of their previous and subsequent views and feelings toward their children, we should see a new state of things in the rising generation. How striking it is that the Old Testament closes with such a passage as that last verse of Malachi. It is the promontory of the Old Testament, looking across the coming ages, yearning toward the new dispensation, and, as it were, making signals, concerning the forerunner of that new era, with those words: "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." May we not conclude that this is God's most acceptable way of effecting the revival of religion from one period to another?
Dr. D. I have no doubt of it.
Mr. M. I spoke to our good Deacon Goodenow about it, lately; but he said he had a great horror of a controversy about baptism, and he was afraid that, to say much upon this subject, would involve us in one. I told him that I would not be for reflecting upon other denominations; that my motto, with regard to them and us, is, "Live, and let live." I would only appeal to our own people, and encourage them to take up the subject afresh, in a spiritual manner; that is, to dwell upon the privilege and duty of being in covenant relations, with our children, to God, baptism being the ordinance of ratification, and its memorial.
Dr. D. Your reference to controversy about baptism makes me think of one which I listened to in a rail-road station, last winter, while waiting in a snow-storm, several hours, for the cars. Two students of divinity, as I took them to be, were discussing their respective tenets with regard to baptism. I was reading a book, but could not help hearing what they said. One was decrying infant baptism as a "rag of Popery," "the last relic of Rome in Protestantism," "a device of Satan to fill up the church with unconverted members," and much more to that effect.
His friend, in reply, undertook to give his impressions of immersion. He spoke of India-rubber bathing-dresses;--a tank in which he saw two or three men and as many women, one of them a young lady, immersed, to his apparent disgust;--of Elder some one breaking the ice at some cape on New Year's Sabbath, and immersing several carriages full of females, who went back dripping wet, to the carriages, and rode an eighth of a mile to the vestry;--of several females immersed, in a southern State, going into a creek with white garments, and with white fillets about their heads, and coming out yellow; and he asked his fellow whether infant baptism could be any worse than such things.
Mr. M. What did his friend say?
Dr. D. O, it was the common talk on both sides, painful and revolting. I could not help saying to them, as the cars were coming up, and we were parting, "But, if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another."
Mr. M. They probably left each other as little convinced of the opposite opinions, respectively, as when they began.
Dr. D. More confirmed and set against each other's views, I have no question. There has been far too much of this. Ridicule and sarcasm are Satan's favorite weapons. Good people ought not to use them against each other, whatever be the temptation. Perhaps, as human nature chooses variety, and we are differently affected by different presentations of truth, men must be divided into sects; but intolerance, bigotry, exclusiveness, in us or in others, cannot stand before the spirit of the age. We may work better, divided into denominations, forbearing with one another, and loving one another in Christ, and for his sake.
Mr. M. Are you often called upon by persons who are troubled on the subject of baptism?
Dr. D. I do not spend much time in discussing the mode. When a young person is troubled on the subject, I am always careful, first of all, to find out whether there is any secret bias, for any reason, toward another denomination; in which case, I pause at once; for you might argue forever in vain. There is iron on board the ship, which controls the needle in the compass. I always make it easy and pleasant for such to follow their evident inclination and wishes.
Mr. M. Are they generally ready to go?
Dr. D. No, they say they do not like strict communion; but I cannot help them. I will not be a sectarian, even for infant baptism.
Mr. M. Are you in favor of admitting people to our church who do not believe in infant baptism?
Dr. D. Young people, who say that their minds are not made up on the subject, or those who have not had their attention directed to it, cannot be required to signify their cordial assent to it; but it is enough if they are not opposed. In the case of parents who steadfastly decline to practise infant baptism, after waiting a proper time to instruct them, I advise them to join another denomination more in accordance with their views. We do better to be apart, and it is no reflection upon either side to say this. A PÊdobaptist church ought to maintain its principles by requiring assent to its standard of faith; yet, where there is no church of a different denomination, within convenient distance, I surely would not exclude a child of God from the Lord's Supper for differences of opinion and practice about baptism. I would admit, by special vote, to occasional, or even to stated communion, in such a case.
Mr. M. Do you ever re-baptize?
Dr. D. Where a person was baptized with water, in the name of the Trinity, by an authorized person, of any denomination, I would not re-baptize. The alleged heterodox or immoral character of the administrator, at the time of baptism, does not invalidate it; otherwise, one might be baptized many times, and, the administrators proving unworthy, the subject could never get baptized. Christ would never let his ordinances depend thus upon uncertainties. Let a person but recognize his baptism, if performed in infancy, by entering publicly into covenant with God, and that will be sufficient. I endeavor to show people how wrong it is to lay undue stress on the ordinance, forgetting whether they have that which is signified by it, and which alone gives it value.
Mr. M. True, sir, but it has its importance, and stress is to be laid upon the due observance of it.
Dr. D. I mean that where I find the conditions of valid baptism complied with, I try to turn away the thoughts from any superstitious or ceremonial dependence upon the sacramental act. You remember the answer in the catechism to the question, "How do the sacraments become effectual means of salvation?"
Mr. M. How I used to say that, at my mother's knee, with my hands folded behind me, to keep them still: "The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not from any virtue in them, or in him that doth administer them, but only by the blessing of Christ, and the working of his spirit in them that by faith receive them."
Dr. D. I was thinking, the other day, and not for the first time, by any means, what a noble man was Paul. He was unwilling that people should call themselves after him, as their leader, and therefore he was glad to leave the act of baptizing to his associates. Some, however, infer from this that he disparages baptism. "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." Baptism, in its place, has its importance, and so has preaching; but whether he should be the baptizer, or delegate the administration to Silas, or Mark, was not of so much consequence as that he should preach. How he put things in their right places, according to their proportions, exalting the great, vital things, sinking others to their subordinate, though useful, spheres, and becoming all things to all men to save them. With his contempt of formalism, I hardly know of a greater trial of patience than he must have had in consenting to circumcise Timothy. He there shut the window-shutters, and lighted an exhausted lamp, for a time, though he knew the sun was up, to gratify some who had not opened their eyes to the morning. How far from a contentious, ambitious spirit, was he, even with his intense convictions. There are many good people, in all communions, who are longing for the time when all the old walls of separation between true Christians will have as many gates in them, at least, as heaven has,--on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. But I rejoice even in our liberty, if we choose to exercise it, of separation, without molestation, though we lose much good to ourselves, and much influence, and, in times of general religious interest, it leads to early discussions about modes and forms. How many times have I seen a growing attention to religion in a community checked by debates and discussions as to ordinances.
Mr. M. If more pains were taken to instruct our own people as to the oneness of the ancient and the Christian church, and to show them how the consecration of children is a part of religion, as reÎstablished by the Most High, it seems to me great good would follow.
Dr. D. If you will draw out your thoughts on the subject, and let me see them, we may prepare something which may be useful. You view the subject on the popular, practical side. Let us see what the results are to which you have come.
Having agreed to make the effort at my leisure, I may report hereafter as to my success. And now I will ask my reader's attention to an interesting letter, which, on my return home, I found awaiting me.


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  CHAPTER 8: TERMS OF COMMUNION
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Chapter Seventh.
TERMS OF COMMUNION.
Him first to love, great right and reason is, Who first to us our life and being gave; And after, when we fared had amisse, Us wretches from the second death did save; And last, the food of life, which now we have, Even He himselfe, in his dear sacrament, To feede our hungry soules, unto us lent.
Then next to love our brethren, that were made Of that selfe mould, and that self maker's hand, That we;[6] and to the same againe shall fade Where they shall have like heritage of land,[7] However here on higher steps we stand; Which also were with selfe-same price redeemed That we;--however of us light esteemed.
SPENSER.--"An Hymne of Heavenly Love."
----PRAIRIE,----, 185-.
MY DEAR BROTHER: Here we are, at our journey's end. We have had a most romantic journey, arriving in health, though wayworn, much of our ride having been in wagons. My wife says, Give my love to brother, and tell him of the scene at "the hill Mizar." Your letter, which we found awaiting us, made her think that you would be deeply interested in the story. This, by and by.
[Footnote 6: As we.]
[Footnote 7: The grave.]
As we were leaving C., one morning, in the great mail-wagon, a man and his wife, with an infant in her arms, took seats with us, bound far beyond our own home. The parents had been delayed by the birth of the child during the journey from New York. They proved to be truly excellent people, and they made our journey with them very agreeable.
The father, Mr. Blair, had been greatly tried during his stay at the hotel where his wife was sick. There was only one church in the village. The administration of the Lord's Supper occurring while he was there, he went to avail himself of a stranger's privilege at the table of Christ. He found, however, that the ordinance was not to be administered till the afternoon, and, moreover, the hymn-book, and some things in the sermon, disclosed to him that the church was one which closed its doors against communicants who had not been baptized by immersion, on profession of their faith.
He was strongly inclined to partake of the ordinance, without saying anything respecting his baptism. But, on the whole, he concluded that it would be respectful to intimate his situation to one of the church, peradventure they had a rule favorable to such a case as his, or, at least, had agreed to shut their eyes, and ask no questions, in such circumstances.
He, therefore, introduced himself to a venerable man, who, he inferred, was a deacon. He frankly told him who he was, and that he wished to partake of the Lord's Supper.
The good man said to him, "I am sorry that you said anything about it; but, so long as you have, I don't see how I can consistently encourage your partaking of the ordinance."
Stranger. On what ground, sir?
Deacon. Why, we do not hold you to have been baptized.
Stranger. I was baptized in infancy, by believing parents, and have been a professing Christian fifteen years.
Deacon. That is not believers' baptism, as we view it. The Lord's Supper, in our communion, is for baptized persons only. We hold to no baptism but by immersion.
Stranger. I certainly would not intrude, and I will not ask you to act inconsistently with your principles. But I am a wayfaring man. I have not had the opportunity to partake of the Lord's Supper for several months. The life and health of my wife have been remarkably preserved in this village. Here is the birthplace of my first-born, a place never to be forgotten by us. I wish to make a Bethel of it. I wish to come to my Saviour's table with my thanksgivings, and pay him my vows, which my lips have uttered, and my mouth hath spoken, when I was in trouble. I rejoiced when I heard that this was your sacramental Sabbath.
Deacon. Your church would not admit an unbaptized person to the Lord's table, however much he might plead for admission.
Stranger. O, my dear sir, how unfair that reasoning is. This is placing me on a level with one who rejects baptism. I profess to have been baptized to the best of my knowledge, and to have fulfilled the requirements of Christ. Should a man come to our church, and say, I have reason to believe that I have been baptized, though I cannot bring evidence to satisfy you, except so far as you have confidence in me, his case would be parallel with mine. Such a man we would not exclude.
Deacon. Perhaps we shall not agree, if we continue to discuss the point. I am sorry that our rules operate to your inconvenience. We wish to see everybody on New Testament ground, and we think that the surest way to bring them there is to stand there ourselves. By departing from the literal command to immerse, and by baptizing infants, the church of Christ became corrupted with traditions and human inventions. We are at the antipodes to all this; we refuse everything which is not in black and white on the surface of the Bible, and so we are the more consistent Protestants.
"Considering the day and the occasion," said my friend to us, "I forbore to argue, or to press the good man by asking him if the 'seventh-day Sabbath' people had not the advantage of him as to greater consistency in their Protestantism; or, whether the church-membership of females was anywhere in black and white on the surface of the Bible. As to his going to the antipodes, to get clear of Romish principles and practices, I was strongly tempted to say that, to avoid being one of the acids, it surely was not necessary, nor best, to become an alkali. But having often reflected how God uses one and another sect, and its set of principles and practices, to correct evils, by their sharp antagonism, and to restore a balance to ecclesiastical disorders by allowing some to go, for a while, to an opposite extreme, I did not find it in my heart to inveigh, nor to upbraid. It also seemed good to be in a land of liberty, where even Christians could, from a sense of duty to Christ, if they chose, fence out their acknowledged brethren and sisters from their table. There are great inconveniences, and, now and then, hardships, resulting from it; but our friends, of course, suppose that greater good, on the whole, than evil, is the consequence, apart from considerations of duty. But I know of a congregation, in a small place, who have had public worship for several years, but have not had the Lord's Supper administered, because they cannot agree as to terms of communion."
"Well," said I, "tell us what you did in the afternoon."
"In the afternoon," he continued, "I went to meeting, and, when the ordinance was to be administered, I took a seat in a pew alone. I watched to see which aisle the good deacon would serve, and concluded to sit there, so as not to seem clandestinely seeking from another deacon, who would not know me, my inhibited bread; for I wished to be honorable in the transaction, and, besides, I desired that my friend should see me, and, if he had changed his mind, give me the symbols. So I sat where he would pass, in a pew by myself, but he did not look at me."
"How did it make you feel?" said I.
"In some respects," said he, "I never enjoyed my thoughts more at the administration of the Supper. I had no feeling of resentment or ill-will. The exclusion of four fifths of the Christian family from the Lord's table by one portion of it, for such a reason, seemed to leave me in such good company, that I said to myself, 'They that be with us are more than they that be with them.' I rejoiced in Robert Hall, John Bunyan, and others like them. I thought of that interesting piece in Bunyan's works, 'Water Baptism no Bar to Communion.' I questioned whether this church and its sister churches would not hear a mild reproof from the lips of Christ,--'I was a stranger, and ye took me not in.' Certainly they could not say with Job, 'If I have eaten my morsel alone.' Using the table of Christ for a wall or bars against acknowledged Christians,--that table, that Supper, which, of all places and scenes, is most suggestive of communion and fellowship,--seemed to me so great a mistake, that I could not in charity regard it as a sin, because, as such, it would be so criminal. I always believed, before, that the mode of baptism was not essential to Christian fellowship; but that afternoon I saw it, I felt it; I worked out the sum myself, and saw the demonstration, I felt very happy in belonging to the great host of God's people who can commune together, however much they differ."
"While I was sitting there alone, put aside, one might say, by my brothers and sisters, whom I had, as it were, run in so cordially to meet, one thought came over me, as they were feasting with Christ, which made me weep. I thought of the possibility of being set aside in the great day. I said, to myself:
'I love to meet thy people now, Before thy face with them to bow, Though vilest of them all; But, can I bear the dreadful thought, What if my name should be left out When thou for them dost call?'"
"This did me good. Yet, while I was sitting there, I seemed to see the Saviour approach me, with a smile. His look seemed very significant, as though he would say, 'I understand it.' Those words came to my mind: 'Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and, when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him.' I surely said and did this."
"Never before," said he, "had I such views of the condescension and gentleness of Christ toward us, erring creatures. Here was a church erring, it seemed to me, in a point which must peculiarly wound the heart of the Redeemer, whose last discourse with his disciples had this for its burden, that ye love one another. And yet there were, in that church, many with whom Christ was communing with a love that seemed to them unqualified. So he treats us all. I never had a greater flow of charity toward all my fellow-Christians than on that occasion. I resolved that I never would be a sectarian in anything, while I also felt more strongly than ever attached to my own views, and confident of their truthfulness, and in love with their beauty."
When he had finished his narration, his wife asked me what I thought with regard to her husband's proceedings. I asked her to state particularly what she had in mind. She then expressed a doubt whether it were proper for us to intrude upon fellow-Christians, when we know that their principles forbid their communing with us. She said that she remonstrated with her husband, as soon as he told her that the ordinance was not free to all evangelical Christians, and that she tried to dissuade him from appearing to obtrude himself. She did not view it as uncharitableness, but only as a denominational rule.
I asked her what her husband said in self-defence;--for we loved to hear her conversation.
She said that he turned it off by saying, "Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry."
She said that soon they experienced the utmost kindness from the members of that church, who, learning the occasion of their sojourn in the village, poured upon them their hospitality. Several wished to remove her to their dwellings. They had a "Busy Bee," and made up everything in an infant's wardrobe for her. She opened her travelling-bag, and took out a white enamelled paper semi-circular box, containing a pin-cushion, made of straw-colored satin, in the shape of a young moon, with these words tastefully printed in pins: "Welcome, little stranger!" She held it up to us in one hand, while with the other she wiped her eyes. Never, she said, had kindness affected her so much;--she believed that it hindered her in gaining strength, her feelings were so continually wrought upon by ingenious devices of loving-kindness. It became known that the husband had proposed to commune, and what the issue had been. This only served to make them all the more generous. They felt it deeply, and bore it as a necessity which they evidently regretted; but, with much self-respect, they refrained to make any apology, or explanation; "and, for this," said the wife, "I respected them." There was one elderly maiden-lady, however, who once was so far excited when the subject was alluded to, while several of them were sewing in the wife's room, that, after moving about in her chair, evidently struggling with her emotions, she ventured at last to say, "O, if I could get hold of that old fence, how I should love to shake it!" They all smiled; and one sensible and well-educated woman immediately gave a pleasant turn to the conversation.
I fully agreed with the wife in her very dignified and proper view of the whole subject. Is there not something extremely charming in the highly lady-like sentiments and expressions of a Christian woman, as contradistinguished from those of a gentleman? He, with all his urbanity, is apt to show the smallest possible vein of testiness, or, at least, the clouded look of high-bred sense of honor. It seems to me there is no power which woman exerts over us, in softening and humanizing our feelings, more beautiful and effectual, than in her delicate forbearance and charity in taking the kind view of an irritating subject, without compromise of principle, but just the view which reflection, and gentler moods, and the softening hand of time, invariably present. She arrives at it at once, by intuition; our slow and phlegmatic sense goes through a process of mistake and rectification, to reach it.
It occurred to me to test this good lady's feelings a little further, by reading to her an item from a newspaper, which I had met with in the cars a few days before, and which I had transferred to my pocket. It had disturbed my equanimity a little. It was an extract from the annual circular letter of a conference of ministers to their churches, in one of the New England States, in 1855, in which mention was made of "the monstrous and soul-damning heresy of infant baptism."
I asked the lady how we ought to feel at such a demonstration. She said, "I presume I know how you gentlemen would be likely to feel and act under the impulse of the moment; but the true way to regard and treat it, as it seems to me, is, with pertinacious forgetfulness." She would not let it disturb her feelings; and she quoted George Herbert:
"Why should I feel another man's mistakes More than his sicknesses, or poverty? In love I should; but," &c.
Susan said that she was reminded of visits made to her mother's house, by some who would persuade her mother that she belonged to an "unbaptized church;" thus seeking to put in fear the children who were about to make a profession of religion. Her mother replied to these visitors, that there was far more apprehension in her own mind whether they themselves were properly baptized, if but one mode is valid.--As to Mr. Blair's effort to commune at that table, she said that she would never seek nor receive as a boon from men, that which her Saviour had purchased for her, and for them, with his own blood.
Our conversation was here interrupted by the exclamation of my wife, "Do look at that beautiful sight, that cascade, on the hill."


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  CHAPTER 9: THE ROAD-SIDE BAPTISM
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Chapter Eighth. THE ROAD-SIDE BAPTISM. How beautiful the water is! To me 'tis
wondrous fair; No spot can ever lonely be, If water sparkle there. It hath a
thousand tongues of mirth, Of grandeur, or delight, And every heart is gladder
made When water greets the sight. MRS. E.O. SMITH. Sweet one! make haste, and
know Him too; Thine own adopting Father love; That, like thine earliest dew, Thy
dying sweets may prove. KEBLE. We were about to turn a corner in a defile of the
mountains, and a large perpendicular buttress of the ridge stood out, so as
nearly to close up the road. It presented a surface of about twenty feet
directly in front, as we drove up, and, from the top, which was nearly a hundred
and twenty feet from the ground, a cascade fell into the air for about forty
feet, and, without touching anything, became dishevelled, and disappeared in
mist. It was one of the most beautiful objects which I ever saw. It was pure
white, relieved against the wet and very black rock. It waved to and fro in the
air like a streamer; it had a slow pulse, lifting it and letting it drop, like
the appearance of a waterfall seen from the window of a car in motion, only this
was irregular and quite slow; it was soft and fleecy; it made no audible noise;
it looked dangerous to see it fall from so great a height; but it was caught in
the air, to your relief, as one who falls in his dream lights upon his soft bed.
The lines of Gray, in his Bard, were suggested by the sight of this mountain,
though not by any close resemblance: "Loose his beard; his hoary hair Streamed
like a meteor to the troubled air." The ladies had other images suggested by it.
One said, "It is a beautiful hand, waving Godspeed to us on our journey." That
brought tears into the eyes of some of us, reminding us so of meetings and
partings at home, and chording well with our pilgrim condition. We concluded to
make response; and we tarried there. The rock seemed to be full of water, oozing
out from the seams, dripping over rich mosses, with jets, here and there,
leaping into the light with a bound of a few inches, and quietly expiring among
the thick weather-stains and lichens, as if satisfied with their brief
existence. The little things made me think of the sweet souls of infants passing
into time, and then immediately out of it. As we listened, we heard what Addison
describes in his version of the twenty-third Psalm: "And streams shall murmur
all around." The ladies took off their bonnets, and we our hats, and we stood
under the cascade, looking up, and feeling, or fancying that we felt, the cool
spray on our heads and faces. We drank of the rock, and we thought of that Rock
which followed Israel. It seemed good to have such an image of Jesus as such a
rock, with the strength of the hills in it, and with its inexhaustible springs,
its beautiful entablature, its cool shadow, following a company through a
desert. What thoughts and feelings did it give us respecting our adorable
Immanuel, God with us. Dear Susan, looking up, said, "Lead me to the Rock that
is higher than I." After invoking the blessing of God, and refreshing ourselves
from our little store, our friends wandered away by themselves, and left us to
enjoy the opportunity for prayer, which we supposed they also sought in
withdrawing from us. As they returned, the father had the little boy on his two
hands, and, approaching me, he looked up to the cascade, and said, "'See, here
is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?'" I was at no loss to understand
the quotation and the request. "Would you like to have the little one baptized
here?" said I. "We should," they both exclaimed. "We are going into a destitute
place at the West, and there is no church, you tell us, within several miles of
where we expect to live. It is very uncertain about our being able to procure
baptism for the child there; and where could we enjoy the ordinance more, or
make it more impressive upon our hearts, than here, so long as we have no house
of God, which we remember, however, from 'the hill Mizar'?" I told them that the
experience of Philip and the eunuch, in the desert, was, just as likely as not,
the same as ours. "See, here is water." The probability of its being a road-side
spring, in a rock, or out of the earth, was greater than of its being a pool in
the desert, large enough to immerse a man in it, leaving out of view the
inconveniences of being bathed along the way. We have both gone "down out of the
chariot," said I--(you would have smiled to see our great, strong, muddied
wain)--and we have done what the literal Greek says they did, "went down to the
water;" and when we start, we shall "come up from the water." But let us read
'the place of the Scripture' which the eunuch was reading when Philip joined
him. Susan took from her bag the blue velvet-covered Bible, which you gave her,
unclasped it, and turned to the fifty-second chapter of Isaiah, at my request,
and began to read. O, how soft and sweet was the sound of a female voice,
repeating words of inspiration in that beautiful, solitary spot! The Scriptures
had not been divided into chapters and verses for the eunuch, as for us, but we
noticed that the last verse of the chapter preceding "the place of the Scripture
which he read," not divided from it in his copy of Isaiah, was, "So shall he
sprinkle many nations;" which, we thought, proved that the eunuch had had the
idea of baptism suggested to him by those words; and quite as conclusively
proving it, as "buried with him in baptism" proves immersion. However, being
agreed on all these points, we made no long discourse about them, but dwelt upon
the Son of God as the Redeemer of Abraham's seed, and in whom all the promises
of God, including those made to Abraham, are yea, and in him amen. I said to my
friends, "The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are about to write their several and
joint names on this child's forehead. "As a lamb has the owner's mark upon his
side, this child is to be claimed by them, to be brought up for the service and
glory of its redeeming God. "You are to give him away, to be disposed of by the
Most High. You are to be, for Him, what the mother of Moses was for Pharaoh's
daughter--nurses to your own child. This dear child lay helpless and exposed,
with all of us, to destruction; the Redeemer passed that way; he heard its
cries: he had compassion upon it; he saved it from the condemning sentence of
divine justice; and now he calls you, and says, 'Take this child, and bring it
up for me, and I will give thee thy wages.' He does not commit the child to
church, nor pastor, nor Sabbath-school, but to its own father and mother, who
may and will avail themselves of all the appointed and the useful helps for its
nurture and admonition in the Lord; but he looks to you, as having the chief and
principal responsibility, to bring up this child for God. "You covenant to lay
your plans for this child, so that he may, by the surest means, live for God. To
this end you will pray with him and for him; teach him what was done for him in
baptism, and before, and afterwards; how God was beforehand with him, and was
found of him who sought him not. He is to be trained up as a Christian child,
with a view to his early conversion, and your great concern is not to be, how he
may promote his private happiness, or yours, but how he may best serve God. "To
this end, you will, from the first, watch over all his moral faculties, and
instil into him the principles of truth and uprightness; not letting him run
loose among the vanities of the world, and feed upon its miserable, corrupted
sentiments, and choose worldly and godless persons for his intimate associates,
his manners and his habits being like a garden which runs to weeds, and his
whole nature left to the perils of sin, trusting to some sudden act of
conversion to bring him right; but you will rather be diligent to 'fill the
water-pots with water,' and wait for Christ to turn it into wine. You intend,
and you promise, that you will educate this child from the beginning with all
that strictness of Christian principle which you would expect of him were he, in
his infancy, to be a professing Christian, his duty being the same, and,
consequently, yours toward him, whether he is regenerate or not,--one and the
same law of God being our rule, irrespective of conditions. "In all times of
sickness and peril, you are to feel that this child is the Lord's, to be
disposed of by him, without consulting you. If called to die and leave him, you
will remember that you received him from God, that he belonged to God at first,
and when he was placed in your care; and that God, who thus has the most perfect
claim to him, will perfect that which concerns him, even if his parents are in
the grave. "And while you thus covenant with God, the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, covenant with you, and with the child through you, to be the God of your
seed, affording you special help in training the child, bestowing special
blessings upon it tending to its spiritual good, having a particular regard for
it as something lent to him, and belonging to you; while, in another sense, it
is lent to you, and belongs to him; and he and you are to regard the child
agreeably to this beautiful transmutation of ownership and loan. The baptism
itself cannot save the child, any more than the Lord's Supper can save you; but
it is among the first of means to promote the salvation of the child, not merely
through its effect on you, or its remembered grace and goodness when the child
can be made to appreciate it; but above all, and through all, and in all, it
seals that covenant of a covenant-keeping God, assisting your efforts and those
of the child,--that promise, I say, 'I will be his God, and he shall be my
son.'" We named the little boy, PHILIP, as a memorial of the road-side baptism.
We stood under the shadow of that great rock, and worshipped Abraham's God.
"Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel
acknowledge us not." The voice of prayer was joined by chimes and symphonies
from trickling rills, and the freshening breeze in a silver-leaved maple,
leaning at an angle of thirty-five degrees, just above us in the rock, all as
quiet as the dear infant's breathing; while, now and then, the sudden flapping
and rushing of birds' wings made the monotone around us more soothing. From a
little jet of water, that formed an arc of about an inch, as it burst into life
and then disappeared in a great moss-bed, I caught my palm full, and laid it
upon the unconscious head. The little hands were suddenly lifted and dropped, as
though a slight shock had been experienced, then a smile played round the mouth,
and the sleep seemed deeper. And will God in very deed dwell on earth? Will the
adorable Trinity be present at such a scene as this? Present! "All power is
given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost." He will not appoint this ordinance, and fail to be present; the God of
redemption is a party to that transaction by which an immortal soul, with an
existence commensurate with his own, is consecrated to him by its natural
guardians, acting in the place of God, and for the child, and joining them in
covenant. "Shall we ever forget this?" said the husband to his wife, as we were
riding along that beautiful afternoon. "Never," said she; but she added,
sensible woman as she was, "the beauty and sentiment of the place seemed to me
nothing, compared with the privilege of covenanting with God, and having him
covenant with us for the child. After all," said she, "I would have been glad to
have had the baptism in our little church at home, and to have secured good Mrs.
Maberry's prayers, and those of our church, for the child, at its baptism. I
must write to her, and get her to tell the Maternal Association about it, and
ask them not to forget little Philip." "What would you have named it," said my
wife, "had it been a girl?" "O," said she, smiling, "I was thinking on the hill,
that, if it had been a girl, I should have called it Candace, for the Ethiopian
queen." "And Canda, for shortness and sweetness, I suppose," said her husband,
his eyes twinkling and sparkling with love, as he looked at her, and from her
upon us. "He's a sweet little thing, you know he is," said the mother, burying
her face in the child's bosom, and giving it something between a good long smell
and a good long kiss, or both; a thing which mothers alone know exactly how to
do. "Suppose," said I, "that, instead of little Philip, it had been you, sir,
and Mrs. Blair, who had needed to be baptized. "Here you are, on a journey. You
do not know that you will be able to avail yourselves of religious ordinances,
in your new home, for a long time to come; and, besides, regarding baptism not
merely as a profession of religion, but as an act of Almighty God, sealing you
with his appointed sign of the covenant, you have strong desires to receive it,
here in this 'way unto Gaza, which is desert,' from my hands. "'See, here is
water,' in rich abundance. But, alas! there is no pond, nor pool, no lake, nor
river!" "Even if there were," said my wife to Mrs. Blair, "I should shudder to
have you venture into untried waters, in this lonely place. Fear, at least,
would prevent any peace of mind, or satisfying enjoyment." "'What doth hinder me
to be baptized?' you would properly say to me," I continued. "'O,' my reply
could be, 'the water is not in an available shape. Had we time to scoop out a
tank in the earth, or make a stone baptistery in the rock, then you might be
'buried with him by baptism into death.' But it is impossible. This living
fountain of waters in the mountain, full and overflowing though it be, does not
allow of Christian baptism. Besides, as to suitable apparel, and all the
necessary arrangements for comfort, not to say propriety,--you see that baptism,
here is out of the question.'" "Do you think," said Mrs. Blair, "that the Head
of the church has appointed any such invariable mode of administering
baptism,--one that cannot be applied in numerous cases?" I said to her, "I
cannot believe it. The genius of Christianity seems opposed to it. Let all who
will, use immersion; we love them still, and rejoice in their liberty, but I
cannot agree that it was the New Testament method. Even had it been, I should
expect that the rule would be flexible enough to meet cases of necessity." "I
was thinking," said Mr. Blair, "that, at least, four fifths of all the people of
God have gone to heaven unbaptized, if immersion is the only valid mode of
baptism. This is rather a serious thing, if the solemn words, 'He that
believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved,' look only to baptism by immersion.
It seems to me," he added, "that the providence of God would have brought in
some great reformation from so calamitous an error in the church, if it were an
error. Some Luther, or Calvin, or Knox, or some John Baptist, would have been
raised up, as in other emergencies, to bring the church back to her duty." "How
clearly," said I, "does that seem to prove that all the people of God have, as
Paul says, 'One Lord, one faith, one baptism,' however variant their modes of
worship and administration may be." "How many baptized children, from Christian
families," said my wife, "are gathered together in heaven! I cannot think of
them as the unfortunate subjects of a superstitious or corrupt observance, at
the hands of the ministers of Jesus, in all ages of the world. There must seem
to them, as they increase in knowledge, a beautiful fitness in their having had
those adorable names inscribed upon them, with God's own initiatory seal of his
covenant. What loving-kindness it must appear to them, that God gave them the
ordinance of baptism, and became their God! How it will stand out before their
minds as a principal illustration of being saved by grace!" "And then, again,"
said Mr. Blair, "think of the millions of children in heaven who were not
baptized,--saved, the most of them, from heathen and pagan lands. How 'the gift
by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.' Baptism
is not an austere law. There is nothing austere or rigid, in any sense,
connected with it; but it makes me think of the water itself, scattered in so
many beautiful and pliable forms all over the earth, in fountains, water-falls,
dew, rain-drops; and, when it cannot 'stand before His cold,' it comes down
softly upon us, in crystal asteroids and all the geometrical forms of snow. I
love to think that God has associated that beautiful element, the water, with
religion. And now it does not seem accordant with the works and ways of Him, of
whom we say, 'How great is his goodness, how great is his beauty,' to make one
obdurate mode of bringing the water in connection with us essential to an
ordinance, whose element seems everywhere to shun preciseness." "Water is
certainly a beautiful emblem of open communion," said one of the ladies. "It
must be conscious, one would think, of violence done to its ubiquitous nature,
to be made the occasion of separating beloved friends, at the Table whose
symbolized Blood has made them one in Christ." But we had to part. I told them
that my wife and I would certainly be sponsors for little Philip, in the best
sense; we would make a record of its history, thus far, among our family
memorials; tell our children about him, and charge them in after life to inquire
for him, and lose no opportunity of doing him good. Though, as to that, I could
not help saying, no one knows in this world who will be benefactor or
beneficiary. "Our children will always be interested in each other," said his
wife, "for their parents' sake." "Can we not sing a hymn?" said the husband. We
found that our voices made a quartet. Susan was ready with her beautiful
contralto, Mrs. Blair sung the soprano, Mr. Blair the tenor, and I the base. THE
BAPTISMAL HYMN. "Lord, what our ears have heard, Our eyes delighted trace-- Thy
love, in long succession shown, To Zion's chosen race. "Our children thou dost
claim, And mark them out for thine; Ten thousand blessings to thy name For
goodness so divine. "Thee, let the fathers own, And thee, the sons adore, Joined
to the Lord in solemn vows, To be forgot no more. "Thy covenant may they keep,
And bless the happy bands Which closer still engage their hearts, To honor thy
commands. "How great thy mercies, Lord! How plenteous is thy grace! Which, in
the promise of thy love, Includes our rising race. "Our offspring, still thy
care, Shall own their fathers' God; To latest times thy blessings share, And
sound thy praise abroad." We saw them and their baggage on board the wagon that
was to take them over to the river; we waved our farewell, and sent our kisses;
and, just as they were turning a corner which hid them from our view, the father
stood up in the wagon, and held little Philip as high as he could (the mother,
of course, reaching up her arms to hold them both fast), as though to catch the
last benediction. The long, flowing white dress of the child gave the picture a
waving, vanishing effect, reminding us of our first sight of the cascade, which,
with the whole transaction to which it gave occasion, has taken a permanent
place in our sleeping and waking dreams.


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  CHAPTER 10: THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH
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Chapter Ninth. THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. Go, now, ye that are men, and serve
the Lord.--PHARAOH. We will go with our young, and with our old, with our sons,
and with our daughters.--MOSES. Hosanna to the Son of David.--THE CHILDREN IN
THE TEMPLE. The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be
established before thee.-- Psalms 102:28. The reader will now be introduced, in
imagination, to a seat in the window of a country parsonage, with
honeysuckle-vines trained over an arched lattice-work that spans the window.
There are several large maples in the yard, which is a grass-plot, where six
gentlemen are enjoying pleasant conversation, and are seated at their ease, some
in chairs, and the rest on a sofa, which, at the suggestion of a kind lady, they
had lifted from its place in the parlor to the yard. They are all of them
pastors of churches, met, for social intercourse and friendly counsel, at the
house of one of their number, with their wives, who are also together by
themselves, in a pleasant room on the north side of the house, and into whose
sayings and doings these husbands will, no doubt, be disposed to make, in due
time, suitable inquiry. Those wonderful little elves, the humming-birds, are
frequent visitors to those honeysuckles, under which I have placed my reader to
be a listener. How many vibrations those little wings make in a minute, how so
long a bill can have subtractive force sufficient to get anything from the
flower, how, when obtained, that product is conveyed to the throat, and where
these creatures build their nests, and whither they migrate, are questions which
will, perhaps, divert attention from everything else for a time, especially if
the reader has escaped for a season from a large city, and is one of those who
there "dwell in courts." Perhaps, therefore, he will choose to refresh himself,
in silent contemplation, in this arbor; and I will make true report of all that
transpires in the yard. One of these pastors, Mr. A., has been reading to his
brethren, for their judgment as to the soundness of his views, a sermon, not yet
preached, on the relation of baptized children to the church. We will call him,
and two of the ministers who agreed with his views, by their initials,
respectively, which consisted of the first three letters of the alphabet; while
the three who dissented from them had, as initials to their names, letters
remote from these. Neither Messrs. A., B., and C., nor Messrs. R., S., and T.,
had had any previous concert or comparison of views on this interesting subject;
but they found themselves thus arrayed on different sides of the question.
Omitting the sermon that gave occasion to the discussion which follows, a few
lines only will put us in possession of the whole subject. I give the opening
paragraph: "It is held by all who practise infant baptism, that the children of
believers have a peculiar relation to the church. That relation is very
generally expressed by the word membership. We have treatises, by the most
orthodox divines, on the church-membership of the children of believers; which
children they freely call members of the Christian church; and, in catechisms
and confessions of faith, the church of Christ is declared to consist of such as
are in covenant relations with God, and their offspring." The sermon being
finished, Mr. R. was first called upon by the chairman, Mr. C., for his remarks.
The question, as stated by the chairman, was, Are the children of believers, in
any sense, members of the church? If so, what is it? and, if not, what relation
to the church do they sustain? Mr. R. I presume that brother A. does not wish us
to take up time with criticisms upon his style. He seeks to know our views with
regard to the subject of the sermon. I am compelled to say, at once, that I
differ from the views expressed by the reader, if he means by the terms, members
and membership, which he employs, all which they would convey to the majority of
hearers. But I noticed that when he, and those excellent men whom he quotes,
come to define what they mean by members, and membership, in this connection,
they make explanations, and qualifications, and also protestations, showing that
no one can be, in their view, a member of the spiritual, or, what is called the
invisible, church of Christ, without repentance and faith. Rightly understood,
therefore, they are free from any just imputation of making unscriptural terms
of membership in the kingdom of Christ. And, perhaps, when those of us who
dissent from some of their propositions, fully understand the limitations which
the writers themselves affix to their use of terms, no great discrepancy will be
found to exist. It admits of a question, therefore, in my view, whether the
terms members and membership, as applied to children, really mean that which
these writers themselves intend to convey by them; for certainly they do not
mean all which their readers at first suppose. The terms in question require a
great deal of explanation, which a term, if possible, ought never to need. And,
after all has been said, a wrong impression is conveyed to the minds of many,
while opponents gain undue advantage in arguing against that which, for
substance, all the friends of infant baptism cordially maintain. If Br. A. is
asked, "In what sense are children members of the church," he resorts, for
illustration, to citizenship, and to the sisterhood in the church itself, to
show how children and females may be members of the community, and, in the case
of females, may belong to the church, while yet their privileges and functions
are limited. So, he says, the children of believers are a component part of
God's church, not entitled to the use of all its privileges till they are
renewed by the Spirit of God, yet so related by the sovereign appointment of God
to those who are members, as to be, in a subordinate sense, a part of the
church. Could the friends of infant baptism agree on some term, which would
express their common belief with regard to the relation of believers' children
to the church, better than member, I think it must have a happy effect in
promoting harmony of views and feelings, and take away from others the grounds
of several present objections. It was here agreed that, instead of the question
going round to each in turn, the conversation should be free, subject to the
rule of the chairman. Mr. A., the reader, then said that he should be glad to
learn from his Br. R. precisely what his views were of the relation of baptized
children to the church. "Let us see," he said, "how far we are agreed as to the
actual nature of this relation." "Well, then," said Mr. R., "I will begin with
this: "They are the children of God's friends. We all know how God reminds
Israel of their relation to Abraham, his friend, tells them they are beloved for
the fathers' sakes, and he remembers his covenant with those friends of his,
their fathers, when provoked by the children's sins. Toward the child of one who
loves God (not merely a church-member, but a friend of God), I suppose there are
affections on the part of God, of which our own feelings toward the child of a
dear Christian friend are a representation. This love to the child of his
friend, I always thought, is the great element in that arrangement of the Most
High which we call the Abrahamic covenant; for he who made us, knew how much a
love for our children, on the part of others, draws us together, and what bonds
are constituted and strengthened between men through their children; and that
one great means of promoting love to Him would be, his manifesting special love
and care for the offspring of those who love him. God has a people, friends; and
the children of such are the children of his dearly-beloved friends. In this we
are all agreed." "Certainly," said Mr. A., "but you will go further than this, I
presume." Mr. R. Yes, Mr. Chairman. One thing more is true of them: They are the
principal source of the church's increase. The selection of Abraham, with a view
to make of his lineage, the banks, within whose defensive influences grace
should find helps in making its way in this ungodly world, had reference, I
believe, to that power of hereditary family influence, which has not ceased, and
will not cease, to the end of time. It is beautiful and affecting to see that
recognition of our free agency, and that unwillingness ever to interfere with
it, which leads the Most High to fall in with the principles of our nature
established by himself, in placing his chief reliance on the natural love of
parents for their offspring to contribute, by far, the larger part of those who
shall be converted. In this arrangement and expectation do we not find the deep
roots of infant baptism? which thus appears to be neither Jewish nor Gentile,
but grows out of our nature itself, which also requires, which demands, some
rite, a symbolic sign and seal. God made the children of Adam partakers with him
of his curse; so that the parental and filial relation was, from the beginning
made a stream to bear along the consequences of the first transgression. No new
thing, therefore, was instituted when God, in calling Abraham, appointed the
parental and filial relation to bear, on its deep and mighty stream, the most
powerful means of godliness in all coming generations. How little do we think of
this, Mr. Chairman, and brethren; how apt we are to neglect this great
arrangement of divine providence and grace,--the perpetuation of the church,
chiefly by means of the parental and filial relation. But, if such be the divine
appointment, and the children of believers are therefore the most hopeful
sources of the church's increase, of course they may be said to belong to the
church, in a peculiar sense, but without being "members." Mr. A. I think you are
coming on very well toward my ground. I certainly agree with you thus far. Mr.
R. If I am not taking up too much time, Mr. Chairman, I should like to proceed a
little further, in order to do full justice to my views. If I am found to agree
with Br. A., it will be just as pleasant as though he agreed with me. Chairman.
Please to proceed. Two things which are equal to the same thing, are equal to
each other. Mr. R. I will, then, say, once more: The children of believers are
the subjects of preeminent privileges and blessings. Special promises are made
to them from love to their parents; great advantages are theirs, directly and
indirectly, from their relation to those who are the true worshippers of God;
forbearance, long suffering, the remembrance of consecrations and vows, prevail
with God, oftentimes, in their behalf when they have broken their father's
commandment and forsaken the law of their mother. No words of tenderness, in any
relation of life,--said Mr. R., turning to the Psalms,--surpass those, in which
are described the feelings of God toward the rebellious sons of Abraham: "But
he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not;
yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath."
"For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant." God still
remembers Abraham, his servant, in the person of every father and mother who
loves him, and is steadfast in his covenant; and "the generation of the upright
shall be blessed." Mistakes in family government, growing out of wrong
principles, too great reliance upon future conversion, and the neglect of that
moral training which is essential to the best development of religious
character, and, indeed, without which religious character is often a melancholy
distortion, or sadly defective, may be followed by their natural consequences;
and we cannot complain,--for God works no miracle, nor turns aside any great
law, in favor of our misconduct; yet it remains true that all who love and serve
him, and command their children and households to fear the Lord, enforcing it in
all the proper ways of government, discipline, example, and the right observance
of religious ordinances, public and private, may expect peculiar blessings upon
their offspring. One of the youngest of the company, the father of one young
child, here inquired, if the speaker would have us infer that the conversion of
such children is to be looked for as a matter of course. Mr. R. Ordinarily, they
will grow up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, to be followers of
Christ; the proportion of persons baptized on admission to the church, will
become small; a healthful tone of religious feeling will pervade our churches;
less and less reliance will be placed on startling measures, on splendid
talents, on novelties, to promote the cause of religion; but Christian families
will extend like the cultivated fields of different proprietors, whose green and
flowering hedges, instead of stone walls, mingle all into one landscape. "And
the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness,
quietness and assurance forever." "And my people shall dwell in a peaceable
habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places." "And all thy
children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy
children." Such, I believe, is sure to be the manner of the church's prosperity,
and therefore the children who are to be the subjects of these inestimable
blessings must be said, in some sense, to belong to the church, they being the
objects of special regard with the church and with God. Br. A. agrees with me in
all this, I presume. Mr. A. Entirely; or, rather, you agree with me. "Now, Br.
A.," said an earnest man of the company,--who, however, immediately checked
himself, and bowed to Mr. R., and said, "I dare say, Mr. Chairman, that Br. R.
was going to put the very question which I intended to ask." Mr. R. Proceed, Br.
S. I owe an apology for speaking so much. Mr. S. Will Br. A., Mr. Chairman,
please to tell us why he feels obliged to call these children "members of the
church?" For, we all know, that, notwithstanding all these glorious things,
which are spoken of them, to which Br. A. has also referred, not one baptized
child of a true believer can be, really, a member of the church, in regular
standing, till he, like the unbaptized heathen convert, has repented of his sins
and believed on the Lord Jesus. All the promises and privileges appertaining to
his relationship as a child of a believer, promote, and make more certain, his
repentance and faith; and therefore, if asked, "What profit, then, hath
circumcision, and its substitute, infant baptism?" we can reply, "Much every
way;" but it never stood, and never can stand, in the place of justification by
free grace through the personal exercise of faith in the Redeemer. Mr. C. But I
wish to ask, in the name of Br. A., and for my own sake, what objection there is
to retaining the name, member, in this connection? Mr S. My answer is, it is the
occasion of great stumbling to those who reject infant baptism, and are
confirmed in rejecting it, by misapprehending the views and feelings of many who
use the term in an objectionable sense. The discussion now became animated. Mr.
S. said that he had a further objection. It leads many, who use it erroneously,
into perplexing and fruitless positions. Assuming that the children are members
of the church, they discuss the question, as the sermon has stated, Of what
church are they members? Some reply, Of the church to which their parents
belong. Others say nay, but of the church universal. Then they feel it incumbent
upon them to provide some means of discipline for these so-called members. In
case they grow up, and neglect to come with their parents to the Lord's Supper,
must they not be disciplined? Some insist that discipline, in some of its forms,
must be administered, and, in certain cases, excommunication must take place.
Mr. T. I know it, and I wonder at it. I should like to ask, who has deputed to
any church the power to say when the divine forbearance with a child of the
covenant has come to an end? Does it terminate at the age of twenty-one in the
case of male children, and at eighteen in the case of females? David, when a
full-grown man, plead the covenant of God with his mother: "O Lord, truly I am
thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid." Or, does it cease
on the child's leaving the parental roof for another place of residence? Or, on
entering upon the married state? Or, upon the commission of some great act of
outward transgression, shall we pronounce the covenant to be dissolved? Do we
not see that we are meddling with a divine prerogative, if we assume to act in
such cases? Expostulations, warnings, entreaties, from parents, pastor, brethren
of the church, may always be in place; but further than these we cannot proceed.
"Perhaps, too," said Mr. R., "if discipline were to fall anywhere, it might more
justly descend on the parents of such a child." Mr. T. The seeming mockery of a
church punishing a youth for the neglect of that which he himself never promised
to do, would most likely have the effect to drive him to a returnless distance
from the church, extinguishing the last ray of hope as to his conversion. A fit
parallel to such proposed church-discipline of children, is found in the
practice, which was not uncommon, twenty-five years ago, in a region of our
country where great religious excitements prevailed for some time, when it was
publicly recommended, in preaching and from the press, that parents who had
labored in vain for the conversion of children, should, in certain cases, punish
them, to make them submit to God. Mr. D. Is it possible? Mr. T. Yes, sir; and
the records of those times furnish instances in which this was done. Of such
means of grace, I am happy to say, we have no such custom, neither the churches
of God. Mr. S. Nor shall we probably ever see young people disciplined by the
churches, for not repenting and believing the Gospel. It is insisted on as
theoretically proper, but they have never ventured to carry it out in practice.
Mr. C., the chairman, said, "Brethren, there is strong authority in favor of the
sermon. Since you have been talking, I have been looking over Dr. Hopkins's
works, to find this passage, which, if you please, I will read. Dr. Hopkins
says: "Though under the milder dispensation of the Gospel, no one is to be put
to death for rejecting Christ and the Gospel, even though he were before this a
member of the visible church, yet he is to be cut off, and cast out of the
visible kingdom of Christ. And every child in the church, who grows up in
disobedience to Christ, and, in this most important concern, will not obey his
parents, is thus to be rejected and cut off, after all proper means are used by
his parents, and the church, to reclaim him, and bring him to his duty. Such an
event will be viewed by Christian parents as worse than death, and is suited to
be a constant, strong motive to concern, prayer, and fidelity, respecting their
children, and their education; and it tends to have an equally desirable effect
upon children, and must greatly impress the hearts of those who are in any
degree considerate and serious." Again: "When the children arrive at an age in
which they are capable of acting for themselves in matters of religion, and
making a profession of their adherence to the Christian faith, and practice, and
coming to the Lord's Supper, if they neglect and refuse to do this, and act
contrary to the commands of Christ in any other respect, all proper means are to
be used, and methods taken, to bring them to repentance, and to do their duty as
Christians, and, if they cannot be reclaimed, but continue impenitent and
unreformed, they are to be rejected and cast out of the church, as other adult
members are who persist in disobedience to Christ."[8] [Footnote 8: Hopkins's
Works (1852), vol. ii., pp. 158, 176.] "Such words, from such a source," said
Mr. C., "are entitled to great consideration." "But," said Mr. S., "here is a
passage from his own theological instructor, President Edwards: "It is asked,'
he says, 'why these children, that were born in the covenant, are not cast out
when, in adult age, they make no profession.' He replies, 'They are not cast
out, because it is a matter held in suspense whether they do cordially consent
to the covenant or not; or whether their making no profession does not arise
from some other cause; and none are to be excommunicated without some positive
evidence against them.'" "My dear sir," said Mr. A., "Mr. Edwards is there
speaking of those who merely refuse to own the covenant, without being guilty of
scandalous sin." Mr. S. It is evident, nevertheless, that Hopkins goes further
than he, and requires that those who, at years of full responsibility, refuse to
own the covenant, shall be cut off. Modern writers on this subject, while
insisting on the church-membership of children, draw back from this position,
and are more in harmony with what, it seems to me, may be said to be the general
sense of the churches on this subject. I feel glad, when reading such passages
as those from Hopkins, that we have liberty of opinion, and are not compelled to
swear by the words of any master. I bow to such a divine as Dr. Hopkins, but he
fails to satisfy me that he is right in these views of church-discipline for
children. Mr. R., who was the oldest man of the company, now returned to the
discussion, and said: "It is clear that one cannot be dispossessed of that which
he never possessed, except as in the case of a minor, who may have his claim to
a future possession wrested from him. Of what is a child of the covenant,
allowing him to be, while a child, a member of the church,--of what is he in
possession? Not of full communion, not of access to the Lord's table, not of the
right to a voice in the call and settlement of a pastor, nor in any other church
act. From what, then, is he turned out by being cut off? He has never arrived at
anything from which he can be separated, except the covenant of God with him
through his parents, and its attendant privileges of watch and care. If, then,
we excommunicate an unconverted child, we can only declare the covenant of God
with him, henceforth, to be null and void,--an assumption from which, probably,
Christian parents and ministers would shrink. The same long-suffering God, who
bears and forbears with ourselves, we shall be disposed to feel, is the God of
this recreant child, and no good man would dare to pronounce the child to be
separated from the mercies of 'the God of patience and hope.' One who, being in
a church, breaks a covenant to which he assented, may be a just subject for
discipline, even to excommunication; but, all the promises of God to the child
being wholly free, conditioned, at first, upon his parents' relation to God, all
the disability which the child seems capable of receiving, is, that the promises
made to him he must fail, by his own fault, to receive. Who will declare even
his prospect of their fulfilment to be terminated at any given time? Much more,
who will undertake to divest him of things which he never had? The
church-membership, from which you profess to expel him, does not yet exist in
his case; he has not reached it. All the church-membership of which, if any, he
has been possessed, is, his hopeful relation to God and his people through a
parent. To excommunicate a child from this would be a strange procedure." Mr. A.
That is the strongest thing which I have heard on that side. I must confess
(said he, rising and leaning against one of the maples) that I am a little
staggered. But Mr. B. came to reinforce his faltering brother. "Here," said he,
"is the Cambridge Platform. You will all be willing to hear from that source."
"Let us hear," said two or three voices. Mr. B. read as follows: "The like trial
(examination) is to be required from such members of the church as were born in
the same, or received their membership, and were baptized in their infancy or
minority, by virtue of the covenant of their parents, when, being grown up unto
years of discretion, they shall desire to be made partakers of the Lord's
Supper; unto which, because holy things must not be given to the unworthy,
therefore it is requisite that these, as well as others, should come to their
trial and examination, and manifest their faith and repentance by an open
profession thereof before they are received to the Lord's Supper, and otherwise
not to be admitted thereunto. Yet those church-members that were so born, or
received in their childhood, before they are capable of being made partakers of
full communion, have many privileges which others, not church-members, have not;
they are in covenant with God, have the seal thereof upon them, namely, baptism;
and so, if not regenerated, yet are in a more hopeful way of attaining
regenerating grace, and all the spiritual blessings both of the covenant and
seal; they are also under church-watch, and consequently subject to the
reprehensions, admonitions, and censures thereof, for their healing and
amendment, as need shall require."[9] [Footnote 9: Cambridge Platform, chap.
iii. 7.] Mr. R. Now, please, Br. B., what does all that prove? Mr. B. Why, it
proves that, in the judgment of the Cambridge Platform, the children of
church-members are members of the churches. Mr. R. It shows that the Cambridge
Platform calls them members; but it gives us no proof that they are properly
called members. A great deal in that extract, I undertake to say, will command
the cordial assent of all who practise infant baptism, if we except the use of
the term members. It shows that, as to coming into the company of true
believers, and being one of them, the only way is through repentance and
faith,--a way common to the unbaptized. The only advantage, but one which is
exceedingly great and precious on the part of the believer's children, being,
that they "have many privileges," and "are in a more hopeful way of attaining
regenerating grace." But the term membership does not express their relation to
the church before they are converted. Mr. B. (After a pause.) I do not know but
you are right. Mr. C., the remaining advocate of the sermon, said, "Let me
refresh your memories with the famous case quoted in Morton's New England
Memorial. He says: "'The two ministers there (Salem, 1629), being seriously
studious of reformation, they considered the state of their children, together
with their parents, concerning which letters did pass between Mr. Higginson (of
Salem) and Mr. Brewster, the reverend elder of the church of Plymouth; and they
did agree in their judgments, namely, concerning the church-membership of the
children with their parents, and that baptism was a seal of their membership;
only, when they were adult, they being not scandalous, they were to be examined
by the church officers, and upon their approbation of their fitness, and upon
the children's public and personally owning of the covenant, they were to be
received unto the Lord's Supper. Accordingly, Mr. Higginson's eldest son, being
about fifteen years of age, was owned to have been received a member together
with his parents, and being privately examined by the pastor, Mr. Skelton (the
other minister of Salem), about his knowledge in the principles of religion, he
did present him before the church when the Lord's Supper was to be administered,
and, the child then publicly and personally owning the covenant of the God of
his father, he was admitted unto the Lord's Supper, it being there professedly
owned, according to 1 Corinthians 7:14, that the children of the church are holy
unto the Lord, as well as their parents.'" Mr. R. stood up, and, with an
animated look and manner, but with a very pleasant voice, said: "What, now, my
good brother, did these good ministers do, with this youth, more or less than we
all do for the children of our pastoral charge? "Of what practical use was his
so-called infant 'church-membership,' in addition to his being, as we all hold,
a child of the covenant?" They made no reply for a little while, till at last
Mr. A. said: "Well, Br. R., what names would you substitute for members and
membership?" Mr. R. "THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH;" for you have it in the last
sentence of the extract which you read from Morton;--the true, the most
appropriate, and, in every respect, the best name for those who are so
ambiguously called members. Mr. B. There is great beauty and sweetness in that
name, I confess,--"the children of the church," "the church's children." Mr. R.
A father never, except for concealment, says, "a member of my family," when "a
child" is meant. The term members, besides being equivocal, and requiring
explanation, is not so good as "children of the church," an expression which
includes and covers all that any would claim for "infant church-members." Mr. C.
I confess, I like Br. R.'s views and proposition. If, by calling the offspring
of believers, "the children of the church," we, by implication, abridged any of
their privileges, or if, by calling them church-members, we believed that they
acquired rights and privileges not otherwise appertaining to them, we ought to
prefer the words member and membership; but it is not so. No one of the writers
cited,--and the proofs we all know could be extended by quoting from other
authors,--claims the right of a child to full communion, except upon evidence,
in his "trial and examination," that he is regenerate. Indeed, the only use to
which the terms member and membership seem to be applied, is, in furnishing some
ground for urging the discipline and excommunication of the child. This, though
urged by some, is urged in vain. Mr. R. Other terms, in connection with members
and membership, have been proposed, such as members in minority, members in
suspension, future members; but all in vain. The children of believers are
certainly the children of the church, and such I devoutly hope and pray they may
come to be called. Mr. A. Seeing that the use of the term member keeps before
our minds a theoretical, hard necessity, from which every one shrinks, I think I
will alter my sermon so far as to dismiss the term, and, with it, all sense of
inconsistency in neglected obligations as to disciplining these young "members."
"Well, Br. A.," said Mr. B., "I will join you in submission." "So will I," said
Mr. C. "How good it is to be convinced, and to give up one's own will; is it
not?" "It ought to be," said Mr. A., "to those whose great business it is to
preach submission. But I think we did not differ at first, except as to the use
of terms." Mr. T. I wish to make a confession. Though I have always been of Br.
R.'s opinion, I have felt it to be invidious, and, for several reasons,
disagreeable, to call a meeting of "the children of the church,"--making a
distinction between them and the other children of my pastoral charge. Am I
correct in such views and feelings? "Come, Mr. Chairman," said Mr. A., "we have
not paid you sufficient deference, I fear; for we have hardly kept order, in
addressing one another, and not through you. Now, please to speak for us, and
tell us what you think of Br. T.'s difficulty." Mr. C. I have sinned with you,
as to keeping order, if there has been any transgression; but I have been so
much interested and instructed, that I forgot my preÎminence over you. But to
Br. T., I would say, There is a church; and it means something, and something of
infinite importance. All our labors have this for their end, to make men
qualified for worthy church-membership, on earth, and in heaven,--the conditions
of admission here and there, as we hold, being essentially the same. This
church, which we thus build up, has children, call them what we may, the objects
of God's peculiar love. On that topic I need not dwell. We ought to pay some
marks of special regard to these children, for God has done so. As to its being
invidious, it is not more invidious than to address our congregations as partly
Christians, and partly unconverted; or to invite the unconverted to meetings
especially designed for them. Meetings of the children of my church, called by
me, and addressed by me, never fail to make very deep impressions upon the
young, upon their parents, upon other children, and upon the parents of those
children. Another form of effecting the same desirable ends, is, to call
meetings of parents in the church, and their children, and to address the
parents and the children in sight and hearing of each other. In doing so, if
there are any parents in the church who are withholding their children from
baptism, we have the best of opportunities to conciliate their feelings to the
ordinance of baptism. We all know how little is effected in our minds by
abstract reasoning upon any subject, where the feelings are deeply concerned;
close argument, invincible logic, absolute demonstrations, and all measures
seemingly intended to coÎrce the will, excite resistance, and confirm us in our
prejudices. But open to a parent, who has doubts on the subject, its inestimable
benefits to all concerned, and he will be more disposed to see the grounds for
it, and the abundant proofs of its divine authority, which the atmosphere of
pure reason had not sufficient power of refraction to make him apprehend. Mr. S.
I thank the chairman heartily for those remarks. May I add a leaf from my
observation? I have noticed that in such meetings of parents, in the church, and
their children, good influences sometimes reach those who are pursuing the
mistaken course of withholding their children from baptism, under the plea that
they can consecrate their children to God as well without baptism, as with it.
They need to learn the spiritual power which God has vested in the sacraments of
his own appointment, and to be disabused of the notion that the baptism of a
child is, from beginning to end, merely a human act, of which God is only a
spectator;--they need to feel that baptism is something conferred upon a child
by God; and not merely a sign, but a seal. "Yes," said Mr. R., "it is an
ordinance of God, and the neglect of it is not merely a failure to obtain
blessings, but a disregard of a divine ordinance; not merely the withholding a
sign of allegiance, but the loss of a seal,--the government seal, not ours,
which God would affix to the intercourse between himself and our souls. If we,
pastors, feel this deeply, and so perceive the design of God in bestowing
baptism upon the children of his people, we shall convey to the hearts and minds
of doubting Christian parents, persuasive influences, which will succeed where
arguments and appeals, based on mere proofs and obligations, have failed." Mr.
A. It is gratifying, now, to think that these things, and others like them, may
be done without calling the children "members of the church." Except discipline,
it is obvious that everything in the way of watchfulness may be done for them as
children of the church, which it would be proper, or even possible to do, if
they were counted as members. Mr. R. I am aware of the analogy which many, who
plead for the term members, seek to carry out between the Old and the New
Testament church, making children members of the Christian church, because the
church in ancient days included the children. But it seems to me that there is
the same difference, now and formerly, between the relation of children to the
church, that there is between the relation of the whole religious community, now
and formerly, to the church of God. Formerly, all the members of the religious
community were, by their association under the same belief and worship, members
of the church. To make the case with us parallel, our whole Christian community
ought to be members of the church. No examination or discrimination should be
used; to belong to the Christian community should constitute church-membership.
But this, we know, is not the case. God chooses now to make up his visible
church not as formerly, but of those who give credible evidence of regeneration.
They who worship with us, but do not profess to be Christians, are hopeful
subjects of effort and prayer, whom we expect to receive hereafter to the
visible church, on profession of their faith. As the Christian church is
constituted differently from the Jewish church, in this respect, discrimination
and separation taking place between the members of a Christian congregation,
have we not analogical reason to infer that it may also be thus with regard to
children?--who once, indeed, were members of the church of God, but, under the
dispensation of the Spirit, they fall, with other unconverted members of the
congregation, out of membership in the church. Mr. C. And yet, Br. R., the fall
is not far, nor hurtful. They are entitled to all the privileges, and they
enjoy, or should enjoy, all the care and effort, which they would have under a
different name. Only they do not come to the Lord's Supper, as a matter of
course, as they did to the Passover. Mr. S. Suppose that the legislature should
incorporate a fish-market, and cede to the proprietors fifteen square miles of
the sea, within which they should have the privilege of taking fish. All the
fish, within those fifteen miles of salt water, might be said to belong to the
market; yet every one of them must be taken by hook and line ere his belonging
to the market is of any practicable value. So the children of the church may be
said to belong to the church, and are to constitute her chief resource. Rivers,
and other distant or neighboring waters, would also send fish to that market,
even if they were "far off;" but it is from the bay at her doors that the market
would derive her principal supplies. I do not see that children are members of
the church, any further than those fishes belong to that market. Go there when
you will, you see the stalls filled from those adjacent waters; supplies are
continually coming in; they are, in a sense, secured to the market by a
covenant; yet every fish is caught and handled, before he has anything like
membership in that market, as really as though he swam and were caught in
Baffin's Bay;--only he is now far more likely to be caught, and, in a sense, he
already belongs to the market by the seal of the state. Mr. A., the reader of
the sermon, not having much ideality, but much plain good sense, yet taking
everything literally at first, and from his own honesty supposing that all
figures of speech are to be cashed, as it were, for what they purport on their
face, immediately challenged his brother to carry out the illustration. He asked
him whether the constant passage, in and out, of fishes from and beyond the
ceded fifteen miles, allowed of any resemblance, in the migratory creatures, to
the children of the church, who are born and remain in the limits of the church,
and are designated, individually, by virtue of their parentage. Mr. S. replied,
that he did not mean to make a comparison to satisfy all the points of the case,
and he hoped that the brethren would take it with due allowance. Mr. T. said
that he had thought of this illustration: "All the young male children of the
Levites might be said to be members of the priesthood. They certainly 'belonged'
to the priesthood. But no one of them could officiate till he had complied with
certain conditions, nor if he was the subject of certain disabilities. He
believed that the children of God's people have, by the grace of God, as really
a presumptive relation, by future membership, to the church of Christ, as an
infant Levite boy had to sacred offices; prayer, with the child, as well as for
it, and faithful training, with a spiritual use of God's appointed ordinances,
constitute, he was persuaded, as good reason to hope that the child of a true
believer will become a Christian, and that, too, early in life, as that the
young son of Levi would minister in the levitical office." "O," said Mr. B.,
"how many cases there are which seem to disprove that. You will be obliged to
reflect severely on some good people as parents, if you take so strong ground."
Mr. T. I do not despair of a child whose parents, or parent, has really
covenanted with God for him, even though the child be long a wanderer from the
fold. But it is the same now with Abraham's spiritual seed as it was with his
natural posterity,--neglect on the part of parents may work a forfeiture of the
covenant promises; failure in family government, above all things, may frustrate
every good influence which would otherwise have had a powerful effect in the
conversion of the child. The sons of Eli were not well governed; Esau was
evidently of an undisciplined spirit. With regard to the children of several
good men, in the Bible, it may be inferred, that the public engagements of the
fathers hindered them from bestowing needful attention upon their sons. The only
thing derogatory to the prophet Samuel, of which we are informed, is, that his
sons were vile. With regard to certain cases of mournful wickedness, on the part
of the children of eminently good men, it will be found that some of these men,
occupying, perhaps, important stations of a public nature, such as the Christian
ministry, were so engrossed in their public duties as not to give sufficient
time and attention to their own families; which is a great shame and folly in
any father of a family. In vain do we plead the covenant promises, if we neglect
covenant duties. Grace is not hereditary in any sense that compromises our free
agency; its subjects are born "not of blood;" there are many of the children of
the kingdom who will be cast out into outer darkness, but among them, we may
venture to say, will not be found those whose parents diligently sought their
moral and religious culture in the exercise of a strict, judicious,
affectionate, prayerful, watch and care, praying with them in secret, which, it
seems to me, is, perhaps, the most powerful of all the means which a parent can
use to influence the moral and religious character of a child. "Is it not a
mournful inconsistency," said Mr. R., "for us to be laboring and spending our
strength and lives for the conversion and salvation of others, and not be
equally zealous for the souls of the children whom God has given us?" Mr. C. Our
habits of seclusion and study may operate to make us reserved, moody, and so
repulsive, to our own children. We ought to be interested in their every-day
affairs, and watch for opportunities to form their opinions, on moral as well as
religious subjects, and be as kind and assiduous to them, certainly, as we
endeavor to be to other children. * * * * * What more could these good men have
said, with regard to the subject, had they concluded to adopt the terms "member"
and "membership," to express the relation of children to the church? They were
not conscious of omitting or diminishing one privilege or blessing to which the
children of the church are entitled; everything which the most strenuous
advocates of "infant church-membership," so called, mention as accruing to them,
they claimed in their behalf. Did infant church-membership admit to the Lord's
Supper, as it did to the passover, the children would now, with propriety, be
said to be "members of the church." But, inasmuch as, under the Christian
dispensation, they cannot come to the sacrament which distinguishes between the
regenerate and the unregenerate, without a change of heart, they, and all those
who are associated with the church in general acts of worship, and in Christian
privileges, but are not converted persons, are, alike, under the Christian
system, removed from outward membership--only, that the children of the church
have privileges and promises which go far to increase the probability of their
future church-membership, and directly to prepare them for that sacred relation.
"THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH," then, is the sufficient name by which it seems
desirable that the children of believers should be designated. And, instead of
using the term "church-membership," applied to them, we shall include everything
which is properly theirs, we shall lose nothing, we shall prevent great
misunderstanding, and liability to perversion, by substituting the "Relation of
Baptized Children to the Church," whenever we wish to express the peculiar and
most precious connection which they hold, in the arrangements of divine grace,
with the covenant people of God.


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  CHAPTER 11: MATERNAL ASSOCIATIONS
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Chapter Tenth.
MATERNAL ASSOCIATIONS.
The mother, in her office, holds the key Of the soul; and she it is who stamps the coin Of character, and makes the being, who would be a savage But for her gentle cares, a Christian man. --Then, crown her Queen o' the world.
OLD PLAY.
The pastors now adjourned their session under the maples, and repaired to the room where their wives were sitting. The ladies had finished their deliberations, and had been strolling in the woods. But they, too, had been engaged, like their husbands, in conversation about their children, and the children of the church. "Maternal Associations" had been the chief topic. They had discussed their advantages, and had considered objections to them. The result was, that they had unanimously agreed to promote such associations in their respective churches. Their influence on young mothers, in helping them to train their children, affording them the results of experience gained by others; the privilege of stating difficult and trying cases for advice, of praying together for their children, of having those mothers, during the intervals of their monthly meetings, pray for the children of their sisters, and sometimes, specially, for a child in peculiar need of prayer, commended these associations to their judgment and affections. One lady referred to the possible disclosure of family secrets, at such meetings, which it was unpleasant to hear, and to the undesirableness of revealing the faults of a child. They agreed that these things should never be done, and that it was easy to avoid them by employing a friend, if necessary, to state the case, hypothetically, so as to conceal its connection with any member of the circle. The ladies had gone so far as to adopt a little manual, for their respective circles, which they submitted to their husbands for criticism. One of the gentlemen read it, as follows:
"MATERNAL ASSOCIATIONS.
"Maternal Associations are designed for mutual instruction and consultation, in connection with united prayer. Subjects for reading and discussion relate chiefly to the physical, mental, moral, and religious training of children. Some individual is usually prepared at each meeting to give method and tone to the conversation, which might otherwise become desultory. The faults of children who are known to the members are not made the subject of remark; but cases of difficulty are so presented as to avoid individual exposure. Associations conducted on these principles are found to be greatly beneficial.
"CONSTITUTION OF----CHURCH MATERNAL ASSOCIATION.
"Impressed with a sense of our entire dependence upon the Holy Spirit to aid us in training up our children in the way they should go, and hoping to obtain the blessing of such as fear the Lord and speak often to one another, we, the subscribers, do unitedly pledge ourselves to meet at stated seasons for prayer and mutual counsel in reference to our maternal duties and responsibilities. With a view to this object, we adopt the following constitution:
"ARTICLE I. This circle shall be called the 'Maternal Association of----Church;' any member of which, sustaining the maternal relation, may become a member by subscribing this constitution. Other individuals, sustaining the same relation, may be admitted to membership by a vote of two thirds of the members present.
"ART. II. The monthly meetings of this Association shall be held on the----of the month.
"ART. III. The quarterly meetings in January, April, July, and October, shall be held on the last Wednesday of the month, when the members shall be allowed to bring to the place of meeting such of their children as may be under the age of twelve years, and they shall be considered members of the Association. The exercises at these meetings shall be such as shall seem best calculated to instruct the minds and interest the feelings of the children who may be present.
"ART. IV. At each quarterly meeting there shall be a small contribution by the children for benevolent purposes.
"ART. V. The time appropriated for each meeting shall not exceed one hour and a half, and shall be exclusively devoted to the object of the Association. Every monthly meeting shall be opened by prayer and reading a portion of Scripture, which may be followed by reading such other matter as relates to the interests of the Association, or by conversation tending to promote maternal faithfulness and piety. These exercises may be interspersed with singing the songs of Zion, and with humble and importunate prayer, that God would glorify himself in the early conversion of the children of the Association, that they may become eminently useful in the church of Christ. It is desirable that the last meeting in the year be spent in reading the Scriptures and in prayer.
"ART. VI. Every member of the Association shall be considered as sacredly bound to pray for her children daily, and with them as often as circumstances will permit; and to give them from time to time the best religious instruction of which she is capable.
"ART. VII. It shall be the duty of every member to qualify herself, by daily reading, prayer, and self-discipline, to discharge faithfully the arduous duties of a Christian mother; and she shall be requested to give with freedom such hints upon the various subjects brought before the Association as her own observation and experience may suggest.
"ART. VIII. When any mother is removed by death, it shall be the special duty of the Association to regard with peculiar interest the spiritual welfare of her children, and to evince this interest by a continued remembrance of them in their prayers, by inviting them to attend quarterly meetings, and by such tokens of sympathy and kindness as their circumstances may render proper.
"ART. IX. Every child, upon leaving the Association, at the prescribed age, shall receive a book from the mothers, as a token of their affection, to be accompanied by a letter, expressive of the deep interest felt in their temporal and spiritual welfare.
"ART. X. The officers of the Association shall be a 'First Directress,' a 'Second Directress,' a 'Secretary,' and a 'Corresponding Secretary,' who shall be appointed annually in September.
"ART. XI. The duty of the First Directress shall be to preside at all meetings, call upon the members for devotional exercises, and regulate the reading. In the absence of the First Directress, these duties shall devolve upon the Second Directress.
"ART. XII. It shall be the duty of the Secretary to register the names of the members, and of their children, and to supply each of the mothers with a list of the same, together with a copy of the constitution. She shall also keep a record of the proceedings of each meeting, and, as far as may be convenient, of the topic discussed, and of the remarks elicited by it. This record shall be read at the commencement of the next subsequent meeting. She shall likewise receive the contributions of the children, keep an account of the same, and pay it according to the vote of the Association.
"ART. XIII. It shall be the duty of the Corresponding Secretary to write the letters addressed to the children upon leaving the Association, to conduct the general correspondence, receive the contributions from the mothers, and purchase the books to be given to the children.
"ART. XIV. Any article of this constitution may be amended by a majority of the members present at any annual meeting.
"It is recommended to the members of the Association to observe the anniversary of the birth of each child in special prayer, with particular reference to that child. May He who giveth liberally, and upbraideth not, ever preside in our meetings, and grant unto each of us a teachable, affectionate, and humble temper, that no root of bitterness may spring up to prevent our improvement, or interrupt our devotions. The promise is to us and to our children; we have publicly given them up to God; his holy name has been pronounced over them; let us see to it that we do not cause this sacred name to be treated with contempt. May Christ put his own spirit within us, that our children may never have occasion to say,
'What do ye more than others?'"
* * * * *
No criticism was made upon this production, but the pastors commended it, and rejoiced in the good which an increased attention to the subject would be sure to accomplish. They promised to preach on the subject, and, in their pastoral visits, to encourage mothers in the churches to join the Associations.
One of the ladies said that she had a paper, which she had thought best to read, if the company pleased, when they were all together, and she had therefore reserved it until the gentlemen came in.
It was a paper in the handwriting of a Christian friend, which was found in her copy of the "Articles and Covenant" of her church, after her decease. This lady had been in the habit, as it seemed, of reading over those articles and the covenant, on the Sabbath when the Lord's Supper was to be administered; and the religious education of her children, being identified with her most sacred thoughts and moments, she read these questions at the same time.
The lady who read them said that it was proposed by some to append them to the little manual already presented for Maternal Associations.
* * * * *
"QUESTIONS TO BE THOUGHT UPON.
"1. Have I so prayed for my children as that my prayer produced an effect upon myself?
"2. Have I realized that to train my children for usefulness and heaven is probably the chief duty God requires of me?
"3. Have I realized that, if I cannot eradicate an evil habit, probably no one else can or will?
"4. Have I granted to-day, from indulgence, what I denied yesterday from principle?
"5. Have I yielded to importunity in altering a decision deliberately made?
"6. Have I punished the beginning of an evil habit?
"7. Have I suffered the indulgence of an evil habit through sloth or discouragement?
"8. Have calmness and seriousness marked my looks, tones, and voice, when inflicting punishment?
"9. Was my convenience, or the guilt of the child, the measure of its punishment?
"10. Has punishment been sufficiently private, and have I tried to affect the mind more than the body?
"11. Do my children see in me a self-command which is the effect of principle?
"12. Have I, in my plans, my heart, and conduct, sought first for my children the kingdom of God?
"13. Have I commended God to my children, and my children to God?
"14. Have I aimed to govern my children on the same principle and in the same spirit which God adopts in the government of his creatures?
"15. Have I, in pursuance of the above resolution, acted in the spirit of that prayer in God's word, 'Them that honor me, I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed'?
"16. Have I aimed to secure the love and obedience of my children?
"17. Have I remembered that it is full time to make a child obey when it knows enough to disobey?
"18. Do I realize that the fulfilment of covenant promises is dependent on my fidelity? Genesis 18:19.
"19. Have these resolutions been undertaken in the strength of Christ, remembering 'I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me'?
"20. Have I labored to convince my child that its true character is formed by its thoughts and affections?
"21. Do I daily realize that each of my children is a shapeless piece of marble, capable, through my instrumentality, of being moulded into an ornament for the palace of the King of kings?
"22. Do I, by my conversation and actions, teach my children that character, and not wealth or connexions, constitutes respectability?
"23. Do I realize what circumstances are educating my children;--my conversation, my pursuits, my likings, and dislikings?
"24. Do I realize that the most important book a child can and does read, is its parents' daily deportment and example?
"25. Do my children feel they can do what they like, or that they must do what they are commanded?
"26. Have I felt that a timid child is in great danger of being insincere?
"27. Do I, as an antidote to timidity, cultivate the fear of God and self-respect?
"28. Do I realize that I must meet each child at the judgment-seat, and hear from it what my influence over it has been as a mother?
"29. Do I realize that it is in my power to exert such an influence that Christ shall see in each the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied?
"30. Do I realize that my children will obey God much as they do me?
"31. Do I impress on my children that little faults in Christian families may be as dangerous to the soul, and as evil in their tendencies, as larger faults where there is no Christian education?
"32. Do I realize the danger of retarding or hindering the work of the Holy Spirit, by evil habits, worldly pursuits, or companions?
"33. Do I make each child feel that it has a work to do, and that it is its duty and happiness to do that work well?"
* * * * *
The paper having been read, one of the pastors stated that he knew the lady who had been referred to; that she died leaving a large family of children, all of whom, he had learned, were now members of the church of Christ except the youngest, of tender age. He hoped that the Questions would be printed in the Manual for the Maternal Associations.
"I was struck with the remark in some old writer," said Mr. R., "that 'God had clothed the prayers of parents with special authority.' It made me think that, as the Saviour promised the apostles, for their necessary assurance and comfort, that they should always be heard in their requests, while engaged in establishing the new religion, so parents are encouraged to think, since family religion, the transmission of piety by parental influence, is so important, in the view of God, that they will have special regard paid to all their petitions for aid, as God's vicegerents in their families."
But the repast was now ready. It was a goodly sight, when that company of ministerial friends and their wives were sitting round that table. "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." There is a mysterious charm in eating together. It is well known that associations designed for social acquaintance and conversation, have, very generally, fallen to pieces soon after the relinquishment of the repast. Our great ordinance, for the communion of saints, is appointed to be at a table, where it originated. The flow of kind feeling, which had prevailed during the afternoon among these friends, seemed now to be in full tide, and many were the entertaining and gratifying things which were there said and done. All possible ways in which the products of an acre or two of well-cultivated land could be prepared to tempt the appetite, were there. Br. S. was informed that those fried fishes swam in Acushnit brook no longer ago than when he was rehearsing his parable of the fishes. The strawberries had been kept on the vines a day or two, for the occasion, and were in perfection. Eggs figured on the table in every shape into which those most convertible things could turn themselves; and, being praised, the lady of the house said that she must tell them of Ralph, a boy of fourteen, whom her husband had taken to look after his horse and garden, giving him his tuition in Latin and other branches, for his services. Ralph was a great amateur in fowls and eggs. No sooner did a hen cackle, but he resorted to the nest, and, with his lead-pencil, wrote the day of the month upon the egg. The lady rung her table-bell, and called him to her, telling him to bring his egg-basket. He brought in an openwork, red osier basket, with a dozen and a half of eggs in it, laid on cotton batting, each egg as duly inscribed as the specimens of a mineralogist. Ralph was highly praised.
"I suppose you think, my son," said Mr. R., "that an egg, like reputation, should be above suspicion."
"It is best to be safe, sir," said he.
"Ralph," said Mr. S., "do you know who baptized you?"
"You baptized me yourself, sir."
"Do you remember, Ralph, how you reached out your hands, at that time, and took my hand, and put my finger into your mouth, and tried to bite it with your little, new, sharp teeth?"
Ralph blushed, and smiled.
"You do not remember it, Ralph. Well, I do; and now, Ralph, you must come and preach your first sermon in my pulpit."
"It will be a long time first, sir," said Ralph.
"Your dear mother told me, when she was sick, that she thought she left you in the temple, like Samuel, when she offered you up in baptism."
"Be a good boy, Ralph," said another of the pastors; "we will all be your friends." He retreated slowly, feeling not so much alone in the world.
The company did not separate till two of their number had led in prayer, seeking, especially, the blessing of God upon their own children, and that they, as parents and ministers, might be warned by the awful fate of the sons of Aaron and of Eli, and not feel that the ministerial office gave them a prescriptive right to the blessings of grace for their children, but rather made them liable to prominent exposure and calamity, if they suffered public duties to interfere with that first, great ordinance of God, family religion.
The horses were now coming to the door. Farewells and good wishes were intermingled, the joyous laugh at some pleasantry or sally of wit made the house and yard alive for some time, the pastors had arranged their exchanges for several months to come, visits and excursions were planned and agreed upon, till one by one the vehicles departed, leaving the parsonage silent, while its occupants sat down to rest a while, and talk over the events of the day, in their pleasant window under the honeysuckle.


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  CHAPTER 12: BAPTISM OF THE SICK WIFE AND HER CHILDREN
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Chapter Eleventh.
BAPTISM OF THE SICK WIFE AND HER CHILDREN.
In having all things, and not Thee, what have I? Not having Thee, what have my labors got? Let me enjoy but Thee, what further crave I? And having Thee alone, what have I not? I wish nor sea, nor land; nor would I be Possessed of heaven, heaven unpossessed of Thee.
QUARLES.--"Emblems."
He whom God chooseth, out of doubt doth well. What they that choose their God do, who can tell?
LORD BROOKE (London, 1633).--"Mustapha."
A lady with whom we spent a summer at a watering-place, and who was then an invalid, and with whom we had formed an intimate acquaintance, was now very sick, with cancerous affections, which threatened to end her life at no distant period.
She had become established in the Christian faith, during her illness, and, being a woman of great intelligence and cultivation, it was instructive to be in her company. Many a lesson had I learned from her, in the freshness and ardor of her new discoveries as a Christian, the old themes of religious experience being translated by her renewed heart, and discriminating mind, into forms that made them almost new, because they were so vivid. She was fast ripening for heaven; she had looked in, and her face shone as she turned to speak with us.
A lady, a friend of hers from a distance, was visiting us, and, knowing that she was sick, requested me to call with her upon the invalid. Hearing that I was in the parlor, she sent for me to come up and sit with her and my friend, after they had seen each other a little while. She was in her easy-chair, able to converse, and was calm and happy.
The door opened suddenly, as we were talking, and in rushed a little boy of about six years, his cap in his hand, a pretty green cloth sack buttoned close about him, his boots pulled over his pants to his knees, and his face glowing with health and from the cold air.
"O, mother!" said he, before he quite saw us,--and then he checked himself; but, being encouraged to proceed, after making his salutations, he said, in a more subdued tone, holding up a great red apple, "See what the man, where we buy our things, sent you, mother. He called me to him, and said, 'Give that to your mother, and tell her it will be first-rate roasted.'"
As the mother smelt of it, and praised it, with her thanks, the boy hung round her chair, and wished to say something.
"Well, what is it, my son?"
He spoke loud enough for us to hear, with his eyes glancing occasionally at us, to be sure that we were not too intently looking at him, and, with his arm resting in his mother's lap, he said:
"Do, please, let me go with my sled on the pond. It is real thick, mother. Gustavus says that last evening it was as thick as his big dictionary, and you know how cold it was last night, mother. Please let me go; I won't get in; besides, if I do, it isn't deep--not more than up to there; see here, mother!" putting his little mittened hand, with the palm down, as high as his waist.
His mother looked troubled, and knew not what to say to him, but remarked to us, "O, if I were well, and about the house, I could divert him from his wish; but," said she to him, "if you will ask Gustavus to take care of you, and bring you home when he comes, you may go."
Off he went, making fewer steps than there were stairs, and we heard his merry voice without announcing his liberty.
"Here I am," said she to us, "with those three children, who come home from school twice a day, and there is no mother below to receive them. With the best of help, things sometimes go wrong, and the young woman who sews for me cannot, of course, do for them what a mother could. Nothing has tried my patience, in suffering, more than to hear the door open, and my children come in from school, and to feel that I am separated from them, within hearing, while I cannot reach them."
She controlled her feelings, and helped herself to conceal them by turning to rock a cradle which stood behind her, though we perceived no need of her doing so; yet we must all distrust our own ears in comparison with a mother's. The child was a boy seven months old.
"Do you know," said she to me, "that I am thinking of joining your church? I have had a very trying visit from my own pastor, and he says that I am too sick to be baptized by immersion, and that it is, therefore, too late for me to receive Christian baptism. It is not necessary, he says, in order to being accepted of God. I was born and brought up in that Communion, and never thought much of the subject of baptism till I hoped that I began to love God, here in my sick-room. If baptism is so important as our ministers tell us it is, in their preaching and by their practice,--for you know how important they deem it, in times of religious attention, to have people baptized in our way,--I cannot see why it is not important to me. If it is man's ordinance, and merely for an effect on others, very well; but if God has anything to do in it, I feel that I need it as much as though I were in health. So my husband asked your minister to come and see me, and he did; and he is to baptize me and my children on Saturday afternoon, and administer the Lord's Supper to me after church the next day."
I asked her what ground of objection her pastor had in her case.
Mrs. P. My minister tells me it is superstition to be baptized on a sick-bed, and that they are careful not to encourage such Romish practices.
"But, O," I said to him, "Mr. Dow, I am afraid it is because your form of baptism will not allow you to baptize the sick and dying, so you make a virtue of necessity." He colored a little, but said, pleasantly, though solemnly, "We see how important it is, Mrs. Peirce, to attend to the subject of religion in health, when we can confess Christ before men, and follow the Saviour, and be buried in baptism with him."
That made me weep, though perhaps it was because I was weak; but I said, "God is more merciful than that, Mr. Dow. I know that I have neglected religion too long, but God has brought me to him, by affliction, and now I do not believe that the seals of his grace are of such a nature that they cannot be applied to people in my condition. I feel the need of those seals, not as my profession to God, but as his professions of love to me. I believe you are wrong, Mr. Dow. You seem to make baptism our act toward God, chiefly; now I take a different view of it. My sick and weak condition makes me feel that in being baptized, and in receiving the Lord's Supper, I submit myself to God's hand of love, and take from him infinitely more than I give him."--"O, that is rather a Romish view of ordinances," said he, smiling.--"No," said I, "Mr. Dow, I am not passive in the ordinances, any more than in regeneration; my whole soul is active in receiving their influences. But there is something done for us in the ordinances, as there is something done for us in regeneration, while we actively repent and believe. Are you not so afraid of Romanism, and of 'sacramental grace,' that you go to an opposite extreme? for it seems to me a morbid state of feeling. I wish for no extreme unction, but I do believe that, in being baptized, and in receiving the Lord's Supper, something more is done for us than helping us to take up and offer to God something on the little needle-points of our poor feelings. I should feel, in being baptized, that God has adopted me, and not merely I him; and, in the Lord's Supper, that it is more for Christ to give me his body and blood, than for me to give him my poor affections." He asked me if I had not been reading the Oxford Tracts. I told him that I read the Oxford Tracts, and other Puseyite publications, in their day, and that I saw through their errors, and had no sympathy with their views.
But I told him I was satisfied that the human mind, in that development, was craving something more supernatural in religious ordinances, to make the impression that the hand of God is in them, and not that we are the principal party. So, instead of taking enlightened, spiritual views of ordinances, the Tractarians sought to improve the quality, by multiplying the quantity, of forms; and others are following them into the Roman Catholic church in the same way.
"There always seemed to me," she said, "to be a grain of truth in every great error. Is it not so? Even among the Brahmins of the East, and among savages, each superstition, and every lie, retains the fossils of some dead truth. When a new error breaks out among us, I feel that the human mind is tossing itself, and reaching after something beyond its experience. It seems to me," she continued, "that, at such times, it is good for ministers and Christians to reÎxamine their mode of stating the truths of the Bible, to see how far they can properly go to meet the new development, and, by preaching the truth better, intercept it. The cold, barren view, which many take of ordinances, makes some people hanker after forms and ceremonies; whereas, if we would present baptism and the Lord's Supper as divine acts toward us, we might meet the instinctive wants of many, and hold them to the side of truth.
"But I told Mr. Dow that I was no formalist, nor did I believe in compromising the truth to win errorists. Clear, faithful, strict doctrinal views commend themselves to men's consciences."
I came near saying to the good lady, that, if she were able to talk in such a strain, and to say so much to her minister, he, surely, could not have deemed her so enfeebled in mind as to be incapacitated for admission to the Christian church.
"I told him, also," she added, "I was satisfied that his unvarying mode of baptism was not ordained by Him who sent the Gospel to every creature.--Why, said I, Mr. Dow, what do you make of the apostles' baptizing the jailer, 'at the same hour of the night,' and 'before it was day?' It could not have been for any public effect. What need to have it done just then? Was it superstitious and Romish? No; it was to comfort the soul of the poor, trembling convert, with a sense of God's love to him. How it must have soothed and cheered him to receive God's hand of love in that ordinance, before he himself fully knew what the making of a Christian profession implied! I want that same hand of love here, in my prison of a sick-chamber,--And, I never thought of it much before, but, I said then, it seemed so clear to me that they would not have gone to all the trouble, that night, and in the prison-house, and after the terrors of the earthquake, to put a whole family into bathing-vessels. To take people from sleep, ordinarily, and immerse them in water, would be a singular act; much more when they are weak and faint, as the jailer's family must have been, from fear and excitement. In my own case, I could not be immersed, even at home; it would probably cost me my life. Sprinkling came to me as so sweetly harmonious, in that scene of the jailer's baptism, that I believed it to be the apostolic mode of baptizing, and I told Mr. D. that I should imitate the jailer; and that I should send for a minister who could imitate Paul and Silas."
"But," said I, "what brought you to believe in the propriety of baptizing your children?"
Mrs. P. Your minister enlightened me on that subject. I told him my heart yearned to have it done; for I took the same view of it which I have mentioned with regard to my own baptism--that it is something which God does, to and for the children, primarily, and it is not merely a human act. He said that it was like laying "a penal bond" on children, to baptize them, and oblige them to do or be anything without their consent. O, how many such "penal bonds" I have laid on my children, already!--the more the better, I told him. "A penal bond" to love and serve God!--I mean to add my dying charge to it, and make it as binding as I can. How imperfect such a view of baptism is! It is God coming to us with his seal, not we coming with our own invention to him. I wished to have God enter into a covenant with me, who hope I love him, to be a God to my children forever. I felt that I could die in peace, if I might feel some assurance of this; and, it seemed to me that, to have a sign and seal of it from God himself would make me perfectly happy.
She handed me a book, which her pastor had lent her, and she asked me to read a passage, to which she pointed. It was an argument against baptism in sickness. Speaking of the penitent thief, the writer says:
"The Saviour did not, as a Papist would have done, command some of the women, that stood by bewailing, to fetch a little water; nor the beloved disciple to asperse the quivering penitent."
Remembering the view which the mother of little Philip took of such things, I merely said, that the writer seemed to me to asperse a large part of the Protestant world, under the name, Papist. Christian baptism, I remarked, had not been instituted when the Saviour and the thief were on the cross.
I received an invitation from the husband, a day or two after, to be present at the baptism of his wife and children. The husband was not professedly, nor in his own view, a regenerate man, but one of the best of husbands and fathers, destitute, however, of the one thing needful.
The wife had on a loose cashmere dressing-gown, but was sitting in bed for greater support and comfort.
The pastor read to her the articles and covenant of the church. She assented to them; whereupon, at his request, I laid the church-book of signatures before her, gave her a pen full of ink, and she wrote her name among the professed followers of the Lamb.
The pastor then declared her to be admitted, by vote of the church, into full communion and fellowship, after she should have received the ordinance of baptism.
He rose, and read, "And Jesus came unto them, and spake, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen."
He continued: "My dear Mrs. Peirce, God is your God. He will have his name written upon you, by its being called over you, with the use of his own appointed sign and seal of baptism. The name in which he has chosen thus to appear to you, is not God Almighty, nor his name Jehovah; but those names which redemption has brought to view, and which impress upon us the acts of redeeming grace and love. Do not feel, chiefly, that you give yourself up to God in this transaction, though this, of course, you do, and it is essential that you do so; but feel that the Father, Son, and Spirit, come to you, and own you in the covenant of redemption, in consequence of your accepting Christ, by faith, which itself, also, is the gift of God. Professing repentance of your sins, and faith in the Lord Jesus, you are now to receive, from the Sacred Three, a sign and seal, confirming to you all the promises of grace, adopting you as a member of the whole family in heaven and earth, and engaging God to be your God.
"And now, as you are, yourself, a child of God, your children God adopts to be, in a peculiar sense, his. This is the method of his love from the beginning. Had Adam remained upright, doubtless his children would have been confirmed in their uprightness; but, inasmuch as he fell, and, by his disobedience, they were made sinners, God reÎstablished his covenant with Abraham as the father of all believers, under a new church-organization, to the end of time, promising to be the God of a believer's child."
He then read this hymn; and certain expressions in it never struck me with such force and sweetness as in that baptismal scene:
"How large the promise, how divine, To Abraham and his seed; I'll be a God to thee and thine, Supplying all their need.
"The words of his extensive love From age to age endure; The angel of the covenant proves, And seals, the blessing sure.
"Jesus the ancient faith confirms To our great fathers given; He takes young children to his arms, And calls them heirs of heaven.
"Our God, how faithful are his ways! His love endures the same; Nor from the promise of his grace Blots out the children's name."
"And now," said he, "as you belong to the church of Christ, so your children, in a certain sense, and that a very important and precious sense, belong to the church. Your little, unconscious babe belongs, in that sense, to the church. You will not, you cannot, misunderstand me. These are the children of a child of God. All your brethren and sisters in Christ count them in their great family circle. They covenant with you to pray for them, to watch for their good, and to rejoice in it, to provide means for their spiritual prosperity, and to seek their salvation. But, above all, God will ever have special regard to them as the children of his dear child.
"Receive now," said he, "the divine ordinance of baptism, whereby God signifies to you, and seals, all that is implied in being your God."
He drew near the bed, with a silver bowl, from which he sprinkled water upon the head and forehead of the dear believer, whose countenance expressed the peace of receiving, rather than the effort of giving, while her lips moved now and then during the quiet scene.
They brought Edward, the first-born, and he stood, with his hand in his mother's hand, and was baptized. There were almost tears enough shed by us for his baptism, had tears been needed. Lucy came next, and then the rosy-cheeked Roger, who had been persuaded to leave his new sled, a little while, that Saturday afternoon.
But now the little boy was coming in from his cradle. His mother raised herself in the bed, and received him in her arms. He had been weaned, but, on coming to his mother, he began to make some solicitations, which, beautiful and affecting though they were, some of us endeavored not to see, but turned to smell of some violets, and to open a book of engravings. The mother smiled, and held him off, but immediately put two fingers, one on each eye, and wept;--the marriage-ring on one of those fingers,--ah, me! how had the finger shrunk away from it. The nurse took the child and diverted its attention. The husband sat far on the bed, put one arm under the pillow that supported his wife, and held her hand in his. Recollections and anticipations, we knew, were thronging, unbidden, into that mother's soul. She had been reminded of fountains of love sealed up, and yet there were opening within her living fountains of water. She grew calm, beckoned for a little book on the table, opened it, and pointed her husband to a stanza, which she had marked, and he read it for her:--
"When I can trust my all with God, In trial's painful hour, Bow all resigned beneath his rod, And bless his sparing power; A joy springs up amid distress, A fountain in the wilderness."
That was her profession of religion, and her signal to the pastor to proceed. The father took the little boy in his arms, held him over the bed, before his wife; the pastor reached from the other side, and baptized Walter, in the name of the covenant-keeping God. The father held the child for the mother's kiss, and then took him away, fearing a repetition of the previous scene. But the wife drew her husband back to her, and left a kiss on his own cheek, amidst his tears.
"And now," said the pastor, after prayer, "God has been in this place, and has himself applied to you and your children the seal of his everlasting covenant. Do not make your faith in it to depend on the degree of equanimity or vividness in your feelings; but remember what Elizabeth said to Mary: 'And blessed is she that believeth, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.'"
"O," said Mrs. P., "is it possible that I live to see this day? I almost forget my sickness, my separation from my husband and children, in the thought that God is my covenant God, and the God of my children. My baptism is to me a visible writing and seal from God; and my children's baptism is the same. I always used to think of baptism merely as a profession on our part. O, how much more there is in it, besides that! It is God's covenant and testimony toward me. Blessed names!" said she, soliloquizing,--"Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! sweet society of the Godhead! They come together; they are like the three that came to Abraham's tent. Each has his precious gift and influence for my soul. Why was I allowed to see this day, and enjoy this?"
The pastor said, "This is just one of those things which make us say, 'His goodness is unsearchable.' There seems to be no way of accounting for this rich, free, sovereign love."
"Can I fear," said she, "to leave my children in such hands? No. God of Abraham! 'thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.' Faithful God! 'a God to thee and thy seed after thee;' what power the seal of the covenant has to make you believe it; yes, and seemingly to hear it read to you. Do speak to all our dear mothers, and tell them in health to make far more, than many do, of baptism for their children."
"And have you no blessing for me?" said the husband, as the pastor rose to go.
"Dear sir," said the pastor, "they seem to have left you alone."
He had been sitting, somewhat out of sight, at the foot of the bedstead; but, it was evident, from several signs, that his feelings were deeply moved.
The pastor took his arm, and, bidding the wife an affectionate but hasty adieu, he went with him to the sitting-room below.
"I need no arguments," said the husband, "to satisfy me, further, that you are right. You have a system of religion which, I see, is good for everything, and for everybody, and for all times, and places, and circumstances. Sir, I have been sceptical; but I must confess that a religion which can come into a family, like mine, and do what it has done, through you, sir, to mine, and to me, must be from God. Sir, I shall always respect our pastor for his consistency with his principles, and for many other reasons; but I prefer principles like yours, which can go to the sick and dying, and to little children whose mother----"
Here he began to weep. The pastor said, "To take a mother from a young family of children, like yours, Mr. Peirce, is just the thing which we should prevent, could we have the ordering of affairs."
"I feel," said Mr. P., "that God's hand is upon me. Passages from the Bible, which I learned at sea, from love to my mother, come to me now. She put a Bible in a box, and covered it up with a dozen pairs of woollen hose, knit with her own hands. I have been saying to myself, in the chamber, 'Behold, he cometh with clouds.' It is growing dark over my dwelling; God is descending upon us in a cloud. 'Behold, he taketh away, who can hinder him? Who will say unto him, what doest thou.' O, you never lost a wife, my dear sir, nor looked on a motherless family, as I begin to do. God help me, for I shall lose my reason."
"No, my dear sir," said the pastor; "think what has just taken place up stairs. You now seem to say, as Manoah did, 'We shall surely die;' but his wife said, 'If the Lord were pleased to kill us,--he would not have showed us all these things.' God has bestowed on your children, through their believing mother, his covenant, to be their God.--You are a Notary Public, I believe, sir."
"I am," said Mr. Peirce.
"Then," said the pastor, "you know the importance of seals."
"O, yes," said Mr. P. "A gentleman, last week, came near losing the sale of a large property, situate in one of the Middle States, because he had had some papers executed, here, before a court not having a seal. I told him, beforehand, that he was wrong; but he wished to know of what possible use a seal could be, when the judge and the clerk used printed forms, and the blanks were filled under their own hands. The papers came back, and he had to do his business over again, and before a court having a seal."
"But he was perfectly honest, at first, I presume," said the pastor, "only the form was defective."
Mr. P. Yes, sir; but the form, in such a case, is the warranty. You know that the power to have and use a seal is one of the things specially conveyed by a legislature.
"God has seals," said the pastor. "One is baptism. It used to be circumcision. But, as the old royal seal is broken at the coronation of a new king, God appointed a new seal, baptism, to mark the new dispensation; as he also changed the Sabbath of creation in honor of his Son's reign, and removed the memorial of his deeds of greatest renown, the Passover, for one that signifies still greater deeds, the Lord's Supper. Thus God has his seals. He attaches great importance to them. He binds himself by them. Your wife, being a child of God, it is his arrangement, from the beginning, to enter into covenant with her in behalf of her children. He stands, now, in a special relation to them, and has placed the beautiful seal of Heaven upon his promise to that dear sick mother, 'I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee.'"
"Is it necessary that the father should be left out?" said Mr. P., covering his face with his handkerchief. "They are mine, and God holds me responsible for them. I am to be left alone with them in the world. Is there not mercy for me, too? O, I had such a gleam of hope in the chamber! As I saw the water descending from your hand upon those dear heads, I thought, How much like a divine act such baptism is,--something from God. I always thought of baptism as a cross, to which I must submit; now I see that it is a token of love, bestowed upon me. So I thought of those words: 'I am found of them that sought me not.' God seems to have come to me in that baptism. I was expecting that, if I ever became a Christian, I must, in token of my submission, be buried in the waters of baptism. I would be willing to be, still, if necessary; but that gentle baptism, coming to me and mine, seems like God being beforehand with me, doing something with me and for me. It made me think of Christ inviting himself into the house of Zaccheus, to save his soul. I always felt that I must obtain religion wholly of myself; now I feel that God has begun the work in me. I am sustained and borne on. That baptism was the most powerful appeal that ever reached my heart. It seems to me, in its connection with the gospel, like a beautiful symphony of instrumental music in an anthem, which strives to interpret the words. It proved an overture to me, indeed, in the best sense. But, my dear sir, how near we came to losing all this which my wife has enjoyed."
The door opened, and little Lucy came in with two plates and two silver knives, and that great red apple which her mother had received a few days before. "Mother sends her love to you, sir, and begs that you and father will eat this."
They looked at the apple for a few moments, when the husband said, "I do not feel like eating it. Do oblige me by taking it home with you."
The pastor took it home with him, placed it on his mantel-piece in his study, where, for several days, it gave such an odor as to attract the notice of every one that came in. The hand that sent it to him, in less than a week had finished its work on earth. The apple then became a hallowed thing. There it remained till it wilted, grew soft, and finally turned nearly black.
A little, unceremonious visitant to his father's study would often climb into the chair near the shelf, and express his wonder, and repeat his questions, at the seeming mystery,--first, of not eating the apple, and suffering it to be wasted; and then, of letting it remain when it ought to be thrown away. It was not long, however, before the apple was buried in a pot of earth. In due time green shoots appeared. And when the pastor saw them, he said with himself, "The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee."
How it grew in the pastor's study, a little sacramental emblem of hallowed scenes, and of infinitely precious truths,--how a place was selected, and afterwards prepared, for it, near a garden-wall which separates the wife's little garden from her grave,--and how the husband came alone, one Sabbath, and joined the church, receiving the seal of baptism from the same hand that sprinkled the water upon the heads of his wife and children,--I cannot tell you now, nor, after so long detention, would you be willing at present to hear.
THE END.


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  CHAPTER 13: CATHARINE
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Catharine, by Nehemiah Adams The Project Gutenberg EBook of Catharine, by
Nehemiah Adams This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or
online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Catharine Author: Nehemiah Adams Release
Date: March 28, 2005 [EBook #15485] Language: English Character set encoding:
ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CATHARINE *** Produced by Robert
Shimmin, Karina Aleksandrova and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
CATHARINE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "AGNES AND THE LITTLE KEY." [Transcriber's Note:
Nehemiah Adams] THIRD THOUSAND. BOSTON: J.E. TILTON AND COMPANY. LONDON. KNIGHT
AND SON. 1859. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by J.E.
TILTON and Co., In the Clerk's Office of the District Comm. of the District of
Massachusetts. PRINTED BY GEORGE O. RAND & AVERY. ELECTROTYPED AT THE BOSTON
STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. TO THE YOUNG LADIES OF MY CONGREGATION, FRIENDS AND
ACQUAINTANCES Of CATHARINE, AND TO EVERY FATHER, HAVING A DAUGHTER IN HEAVEN,
These Pages ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. Contents. 1. More Than Conqueror, 9 2.
The Fear of Death Alleviated, 58 3. The Search For the Departed, 89 4. The
Silence of the Dead, 119 5. The Redemption of the Body, 144


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  CHAPTER 14: MORE THAN CONQUEROR
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CATHARINE I. MORE THAN CONQUEROR. Is that a death-bed where the Christian lies?
Yes,--but not his: 'Tis death itself there dies. COLERIDGE. She was not an
infant--an unconscious subject of grace. But the Saviour has led through a long
sickness, and through death, a daughter of nineteen years, and has made her, and
those who loved and watched her, say, We are more than conquerors. To speak of
Him, and not to gratify the fondness of parental love, to commend the Saviour of
my child to other hearts, and to obtain for Him the affections of those to whom
He is able and willing to be all which He was to her, is the sole object of
these pages. Listen, then, not to a parent's partial tale concerning his child,
nor concerning mental nor bodily suffering, but to the words of one who has seen
how the presence of Christ, and love to Him, can fill the dying hours with the
sweetest peace, and even beauty, and the hearts of survivors with joy. Wishing
to dwell chiefly on the last scenes of this dear child's life, the reader will
not be delayed by any biographical sketch. Nine years before her death, when she
was between ten and eleven years of age, she gave the clearest evidence that she
was renewed by the Holy Spirit. We had since that time been made happy by the
growing power of Christian principle in her conduct, the clearness and
steadfastness of her faith, her systematic endeavors to live a holy life, her
deep regret when she had erred, and her resolute efforts to improve in every
part of her character. Through a long sickness, with consumption, for two years
and three months, she felt the soothing power of unfaltering Christian hope,
which was evidently derived from a very clear perception of the way to be saved
through Christ, and complete trust in the promises made to simple faith in him.
He who gave me this child, and crowned my hopes and wishes by the manifest signs
of his love towards her, merits from me a tribute of gratitude and praise to
which I desire and expect that eternity itself may bear witness. They who read
the story, which I am about to relate, of her last few days, and think what it
must be for a father to see his child made competent to meet so intelligently
and deliberately, and to overcome, the last enemy, and, in doing so, helping to
sustain and to comfort those who loved her, will perceive that it is a gift from
God whose value nothing can increase. Bereavement and separation take nothing
from it, but, on the contrary, they illustrate and enforce our obligations. For
since we must needs die, and are as water that is spilled upon the ground, which
cannot be gathered up again, such a death as this amounts to positive happiness
by the side of a contrasted experience in the joyless, hopeless death of a
child, or friend. But without further preface, I proceed to the narrative. * * *
* * Never before had it fallen to my lot to bear that message to one who was
sick, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." In previous cases of deep,
personal interest, this has been unnecessary. But in the present case there was
a resolute purpose, and an expectation, of recovery, till within a week of
dissolution, and, on our part, a belief that life might still be lengthened.
Such cases involve nice questions of duty. Where the patient has evidently made
timely preparation to die, it is needless to dispel that half illusion which
seems to be one feature of consumption--an illusion which is so thin that we
feel persuaded the patient sees through it, while, nevertheless, it serves all
the purposes of hope. To take away that hope where no beneficial end is to be
secured, is cruel. A mistaken, and somewhat morbid, sense of duty to tell the
whole truth, and a conscientious but unenlightened fear of practising deception,
sometimes lead friends to remove, from a sick person, that power which hope
gives in sustaining the sickness, in prolonging comfort, and in helping the
gradual descent into the grave. When a sick person is resolute and hopeful, it
is surprising to see how many annoyances of sickness are prevented or easily
borne, and how life, and even cheerfulness, may be indefinitely extended. But
when hope is taken away, or, rather, when, instead of looking towards life with
that instinctive love of it which God has implanted, we turn from "the warm
precincts of the cheerful day," and look into the grave, it is affecting to see
how the disease takes advantage of it, and sufferings ensue which would have
been prevented by keeping up even the ambiguous thoughts of recovery. Sick
people have reflections and feelings which exert an influence upon them beyond
our discernment, and which frequently need not our literal interpretations of
symptoms, and our exhortations, to make them more effectual. But where there is
evidently no preparedness for death, and the patient, we fear, is deceiving
himself, no one who has suitable views of Christian duty will fail to impress
him with the necessity of attending to the things which belong to his peace,
even at considerable risk of abridging life. Waiting, therefore, for medical
discernment to signify when the last possible effort to lengthen out the days of
the sufferer had been made, one morning I received the intimation that those
days would, in all probability, be but very few. After the physician had left
the house, and I had sought help and strength from God, I lost no time, but took
my place at the dear patient's side, to make the announcement. God help those on
whom he lays such duty. The hour had virtually come in which father and child
must part, and the father was to break that message to his child. But how could
mortal strength endure the effort? Before I left my room for hers, there came to
my mind these words--"But now, thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not, for I have redeemed thee; I have
called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I
will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when
thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame
kindle upon thee." Trusting in that promise, I sat down, as it were, over
against the sepulchre, to prepare my child for her entrance into it,--nay, for
her departure into heaven. The gradual arrival of the truth to her apprehension,
through questions which she began to ask, and my answers to them, finally led
her to inquire if I supposed she could not live long. I told her that the
physician thought that she was extremely weak, and that we must not be surprised
at any sudden event in her case. She said, without any change of countenance,
"Why, father, you surprise me; I thought that I might get well; is it possible
that I cannot live long? I have thought of recovering much more than of dying...
It seems a long space to pass over between this and heaven, in so short a time.
I wonder how I can so suddenly obtain all the feelings which I need for such a
change." These expressions I wrote down immediately after the interview. I told
her, in reply, that she had been living at peace with God through his Son; that
it had hitherto been her duty to live, and to strive for it; but now God had
indicated his will concerning her, and she might be sure that God will always
give us feelings suited to every condition in which he sees fit to place us. On
seeing her again towards evening, I found that the expression of her sick
face--the weary, exhausted look of one grappling with a stronger power--had
passed away, and, in exchange, there was peace, and even happiness. She began
herself to say, "When you told me this forenoon that I could not live, it
surprised me; but I have come to it now, and it is all right. Every thing is
settled. I have nothing to do--no fear, no anxiety about any thing. More
passages of Scripture and verses of hymns have come to my mind to-day, than in
all my sickness hitherto." Wishes respecting some family arrangements were then
expressed, particularly with reference to the younger children, and these wishes
were uttered in about the same tone and manner as though we were parting for a
temporary absence from each other. The mother of my youngest child had, at her
death, given her in special charge to this daughter, and she wished to live that
she might educate her. She made the transfer of her little trust with calmness,
and then her "Good night" was uttered with a gentle playfulness, like that of
her early days. Nor was her frame of mind an excitement, or a fictitious
experience, to end with sleep. The next forenoon she renewed the conversation.
She said, "In the night I awoke many times, and always with this thought--I am
not going to live. Instead of fear and dread, peace came with it. Names of
Christ flowed in upon my mind; and once I awoke with these words in my
thoughts--'And there shall be no night there.' Now I know that I am to die, I
feel less nervous. I have a calm, unruffled feeling." She expressed some natural
apprehensions, only, about the possibility of dissolution not having occurred
when we should suppose that she was no more. I told her how kindly God had
ordered it that we do not all die together, but one by one, the survivors doing
all that the departed would desire--which satisfied her, and removed her only
fear. She asked leave to make a request respecting her grave; that, if any
device were placed upon the stone, it might be of flowers, which had been such a
joy and consolation to her in her sickness. She named the lily-of-the-valley and
rose buds. "I love the white flowers," said she. "If you think best, let them be
represented in some simple way... One great desire which I have had was to
assort some leaves of flowers into forms for you. As my bouquets fell to pieces;
I gathered the best petals, and leaves, and sprigs, and I have them in a book;"
which, at her request, I then reached for her. I turned the pages. The book was
full of beautiful relics from tokens of remembrance which kind friends had sent
to her, and among them were some curiously mottled, green and rose-colored,
petals, which she had designed for a wreath, on the first page of the little
herbarium, which it was her intention to prepare; and then, with great
hesitancy, and protesting their unworthiness, she repeated these simple lines,
which she had composed for an inscription within the wreath. I wrote them down
from her lips: TO MY FATHER. These flowers, which gave me such comfort and hope,
I pressed, in my sickness, for you; Accept them, though faded; they never will
droop; And believe that my heart is there too. They who showered these tokens of
their regard upon her, will be pleased to know that their gifts did not wholly
perish, but that they will constitute an abiding memorial of her friends, as
well as of her. "I know," she continued, "that I am a great sinner; but I also
believe that my sins are washed away by the blood of Christ." The way of
justification by faith was clear to her mind. She knew whom she believed, and
was persuaded that he was able to keep that which she had committed to him
against that day. In her whispering voice, which disease had for some time so
nearly hushed, she said, "I shall sing in heaven." Her voice had been the charm
of many a pleasant circle. But she added, "I shall no more sing-- 'I'm a
pilgrim, and I'm a stranger; I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.'" And in a
moment she added,-- "Of that country to which I am going, My Redeemer, my
Redeemer is the light." "Some people," she said, "wish to die in order to get
rid of pain. What a motive! I am afraid that sometimes they get rid of it only
to renew it. There was--" And here she checked herself, saying, "But I will not
mention any name," a feeling of charitableness and tenderness coming over her,
as though she might be thought to have judged a dying person harshly. The day
before she died, as I was spending the Sabbath forenoon by her, she breathed out
these words:-- "O, how soft that bed must be, Made in sickness, Lord, by thee!
And that rest, how soft and sweet, Where Jesus and the sufferer meet!" In almost
the same breath, she said, "O, see that beautiful yellow,"--directing my
attention to a sprig of acacia in a bunch of flowers; all showing that her
religious feelings were not raptures, but flowed along upon a level with her
natural delight at beautiful objects. To illustrate this, I have mentioned
several of the incidents already related. She spoke of a young friend, who has
much that the world gives its votaries to enhance her prospects in this life. I
said, "Would you exchange conditions with her?" "Not for ten thousand worlds,"
was her energetic reply. "No!" she added; "I fear she has not chosen the good
part." Sabbath afternoon, the mortal conflict was upon her. The restlessness of
death, the craving for some change of posture, the cold sweats, the labored
respiration, all had the effect merely to make her ask, "How long do you think I
must suffer?" That labored breathing tired her; she wished that I could regulate
it for her. "How long," said she, "will it probably continue?" I told her that
heaven was a free gift at the last as well as at first; that we could not pass
within the gate at will, but must wait God's time; that there were sufferings
yet necessary to her complete preparation for heaven, of which she would see the
use hereafter, but not now. This made her wholly quiet; and after that she rode
at anchor many hours, hard by the inner lighthouse, waiting for the Pilot. The
last words which she uttered to me, an hour before she died, were, "I am going
to get my crown." I wondered at her in my thoughts, (O, help my unbelief!) to
hear a dying sinner so confident. I said to myself, "O woman, great is thy
faith." She knew that her crown was a free gift, purchased at infinite expense;
a crown, instead of deserved chains, under darkness. All unmerited, and more
than forfeited, yet she spoke of her crown, because she believed with a simple
faith, taking Christ at his word, and being willing to receive rewards and
honors from him without projecting her own sense of unworthiness to stay the
overflowings of infinite love and grace towards her. So that, in her own esteem
as undeserving as the chief of sinners, thinking as little as possible of her
own righteousness, and being among the last to claim any thing of God, she could
say with one who would not admit that any sinner was chief above him,
"Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord,
the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all
them also that love his appearing." Between two and three o'clock on Monday
afternoon, January 19, she was quietly receiving some food from the nurse, when
suddenly she said, "The room seems dark." She then made a surprising effort,
such as she had been incapable of for some time, and reached forward from her
pillow, saying, "Who is that at the door?" The nurse was with her alone, and at
her side, the family being at the table. Coming to her room, we found that she
was apparently sinking into a deep sleep, as though it were only a sleep,
profound and quiet. I asked her if she knew me. She made no answer. I said, "You
know Jesus." A smile played about her mouth. We rejoiced, and wept for joy. I
then said, "If you know father, press my hand." She gave me no sign--that smile
being her last intelligent act.--And so she passed within the veil. I was able
to relate all this from my pulpit the Sabbath after her decease, not merely
because the period of the greatest suffering under bereavement had not come, but
chiefly because the consolations of the trying scene, and hopes full of
immortality, had not lost their new power. I was therefore like those who, on
the first Christian Sabbath morning, "departed quickly from the sepulchre with
fear and great joy, and did run to bring his disciples word." It is intimated
above that the greatest suffering at the death of a friend does not occur
immediately upon the event. It comes when the world have forgotten that you have
cause to weep; for when the eyes are dry, the heart is often bleeding. There are
hours,--no, they are more concentrated than hours,--there are moments, when the
thought of a lost and loved one, who has perished out of your family circle,
suspends all interest in every thing else; when the memory of the departed
floats over you like a wandering perfume, and recollections come in throngs with
it, flooding the soul with grief. The name, of necessity or accidentally spoken,
sets all your soul ajar; and your sense of loss, utter loss, for all time,
brings more sorrow with it by far than the parting scene. * * * * * She who was
the sweet singer of my little Israel is no more. The child whose sense of beauty
made her the swiftest herald to me of every fair discovery and new household
joy, will never greet me again with her surprises of gladness. She who, leaning
upon my arm as we walked, silently conveyed to me such a sense of evenness,
firmness, dignity; she whose child-like love was turning into the womanly
affection for a father; she who was complete in herself, as every good child is,
not suggesting to your thoughts what you would have a child be, but filling out
the orb of your ideal beauty, still partly in outline; her seat, her place at
the table, at prayers, at the piano, at church; the sight of her going out and
coming in; her tones of speech, her helpful spirit and hands, and all the
unfinished creations of her skill, every thing that made her that which the
growing associations with her name had built up in our hearts,--all is gone, for
this life; it is removed like a tree; it is departed like a shepherd's tent. And
all this, too, is saved. It survives, or I would not, I could not, write thus.
There comes to my sorrowing heart some such message as the sons of Jacob brought
to their father, when they said, "Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over
all the land of Egypt." Jesus of Nazareth has been in my dwelling, and has done
a great work of healing. He has saved my child; saved her to be a happy spirit;
forever saved her for himself, to employ her powers of mind and heart in his
blissful service; saved her for the joyful welcome and embraces of her mother,
and of a second mother, who laid deep and strong foundations in her character
for goodness and knowledge. He has saved her for me, through all eternity. She
will be my sweet singer again; she will have in store for me all the wonderful
discoveries which her intense love of beauty will have made her treasure up, to
impart, when the child becomes, as it were, parent, for a little while, to the
soul of the parent in heaven, new-born. I said to her, a day or two before she
died, "Those mothers will show you things in heaven; for we read, 'And he shewed
me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne
of God and the Lamb.'" But John mistook this heavenly saint for an angel, so
glorious was his appearance, and he fell down to worship him, but was told, "See
thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets,
and of them which keep the sayings of this book." Then what will she herself be,
when these eyes behold her again? And what will she have treasured up to tell
me? she, who always brought rare things for me from the woods and the shore,
surpassing those of her companions. If He who redeemed her, and has presented
her faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, will bestow
that nurture and culture upon her which are implied in leading her to living
fountains of waters, what will she be? and how good it will seem that she left
earth so early, since it was the will of God, to enter upon such a career of
bliss! A few years ago, I appropriated a wedding gift from a friend to the
purchase of a guitar for her, as a birthday gift in her early sickness. To
assist her in learning to play upon it, I first gained some knowledge of the
instrument. We kept it in its case in my study; and sometimes, on coming home,
and feeling in the mood of it, I wished to handle it, and instead of unlocking
the case to see if the instrument were there, I would knock upon it; and
straightway what turbulence of harmonies rang from all the strings. Now, it is
so with every thing connected with her memory; every thing associated with her,
even though outwardly sombre and dreary, like those black cases for musical
instruments, being appealed to, or accidentally encountered, sings of her still,
with a troubled and a pathetic, pleasing music. In her very early childhood, she
and two of the children were sick with a children's epidemic. The crisis had
passed; an anxious day with regard to one of the children had been followed by
entire relief from our fears. As we sat at table that evening, we heard music
from the chambers of the sick children; we opened the door and listened. This
daughter was singing, and the chorus of her little school song was, "All are
here, all are here." She did not think of the signification which those words
had to our hearts. It was one of those household pleasures which have so much of
heaven in them. I can sometimes hear her singing to me now, from those upper
skies, in the name of the four who have gone there from my dwelling, "All are
here, all are here." She bequeathed her guitar, but her voice and hand now join
with "the voice of harpers harping with their harps." We sometimes think that
they miss great good who depart from us in early years; that one who has arrived
at the entrance to the world's great feast must be sadly disappointed to be led
away, never to go in. Now, it is true that we must not shrink from the battle of
life; we must take upon ourselves, if God ordains it, the great jeopardy of
disappointment and sorrow, and the chance of life's joys; we must each stand in
his lot; we must send children forth into the harvest of the earth for sheaves,
and whether they faint and die under their load, or deck themselves with
garlands,--still, let them be laborers together with God, and let us not seek
exemption for them. But if God ordains their early translation to heaven, what
can earth afford them in the way of pleasure, granting the cup to be full and
unalloyed, to be compared with fulness of joy? Fair maidens in heaven,--and O,
how many of them has consumption gathered in!--fair maidens there are like the
white flowers, which are sacred to peculiar times and scenes. How goodly must be
their array! What a perpetual spring tide of vivacious joy and delight do they
create in heaven. It is pleasant to have a child among them. It has been my
privilege to see, in this child, an example of true preparation for death, which
begins before the expectation of dying brings the least discredit, or breath of
suspicion, upon our motives in attending to the subject of religion. Preparation
for death consists in justification by faith, extending its influence into the
whole character, to bring us under the rule of Christ. The fruit of this is
friendship with God, the confidence of love, knowing whom we have believed, with
the persuasion of our having committed to him an infinite trust, and that he
will keep it with covenant faithfulness. So when death comes and knocks at the
door, it is true the heart beats quicker, as it is apt to do whoever knocks
there; for, to give up one's hold on life, to turn and look eternal things full
in the face, to think of meeting God, and of having your endless condition
fixed, summons the whole of natural and acquired fortitude; and only they who
have an unseen arm to lean upon at such a time, endure in that trial. Then past
experience comes in with her powerful aid: "I have fought a good fight;" "the
wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps;" "remember, O Lord, how I have
walked before thee." Thus there is something to make you feel that your
justification, by free grace, has the evidence afforded by its fruits; and the
preparation to die may be likened to that of which the Saviour speaks when he
says, "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every
whit." I have seen it, have watched it, have studied it, in the dying scenes of
this child. Hers was not the experience of the sinner, pulled suddenly from the
waves by a hand which he had for a long time, nay, always, spurned; but her
dying was an arrival at the end of a voyage, the coming home of a good child to
long-expecting hearts and arms. We said one to another around her dying
bed,--yes, we had composure to say, as we watched that parting scene, that
fading cloud, that sinking gale, that dying wave, that shutting eye of
day,--"Think of such a poor, helpless, dying creature, if, in the sense intended
by those words, she should 'fall into the hands of the living God.'" And we
glorified God in her. Never did I see and feel more deeply, by contrast, the
folly of trusting to a death-bed repentance, to repair the errors of a wasted
life. It is a deliberate attempt at fraud upon the Most High; it is folly; for
the risk is fearful, and could we obtain salvation, how mercenarily!--and what a
memorial would it be in heaven of loss, instead of being "a crown of
righteousness!" They who are all their lifetime ignorant, being unfortunately
deprived of opportunity for religious instruction, may with wonder and joy
accept the surprising news of pardon, through Christ, on a dying bed, and soar
to the same heights with apostles in their praises of redeeming love. But if we
hear of salvation by Christ all our life long, and know our duty, but prefer the
pleasures of sin for a season, and think that in the swellings of Jordan we
shall find peace and safety, our conduct deserves all the opprobrious names
which are heaped upon it by inspired tongues and pens. We who are parents must
teach our children that religion does not consist merely in being pardoned, and,
if pardoned, no matter whether early or late; but that it is the first, the
constant, the all-pervading rule of life, God and his service the chief end of
man, and that the pleasures of religion are the sweetest pleasures, hallowing
all others which are innocent, and leading us to reject those, and only those,
which would be unsuitable or injurious, even if religious custom did not forbid
them. We must know this, and practise upon it, ourselves; else, how can we
expect the children to believe it? The exceeding relief which a timely
preparation for death by an early consecration of herself to God, imparted to
this child and to us, was felt in this, that she and we had no distressing
thoughts at her total inability, for a long time, to join in prayer with others,
or to be conversed with in any way that excited much feeling. The diseased
throat, where, as we all know, our emotions, even in health and strength, make
such interference with our comfort, prevented her from joining in any religious
exercises, because she would then be liable to the excitement of feelings which,
in the way just intimated, would have injured her. With such affections of the
bronchial passages, efforts of mind which are not spontaneous are sometimes
agony. Connected endeavors to follow conversation and prayer were impossible,
and she told me, on saying this, that she took great comfort from a remark, in a
book, addressed to a sick person--"Do not think, but pray." She prayed much
herself; her thoughts, too, were prayers, in certain cases. Now, in that
weakened condition, what could she have done, and what would have been her
father's feelings, had she not, in health and strength, arrived at such a state
of religious knowledge and experience as to remove anxiety for her spiritual
welfare, and to make us feel that she had Christ in her, the hope of glory? When
the cry was made, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh," she arose and trimmed her
lamp, and had oil in her vessel with her lamp. Wealth could not purchase the
relief and satisfaction which this gave to her friends;--so truly is religion
called the "pearl of great price;" so literally true are the Saviour's words,
"But one thing is needful." It is the greatest blessing which a young person can
bestow on Christian parents, to be a Christian; and what its value is to
surviving parents, ask those who sorrow as they that have no hope. When a young
Christian comes to die, he testifies that he lost nothing, but gained every
thing, with eternal life, by being a Christian in his early years. I can imagine
what this child would say to one and another of her young friends who may read
these pages, and how she would seek to persuade them, as the first great duty of
their existence, and for their best good here, and for their everlasting peace,
to choose the good part, which will never be taken away from them. Her funeral
was a scene from which many went away rejoicing in God; and not a few date new
progress in the Christian life from it, by means of the new and striking
illustration which they there had of the Saviour's power and love. The Choir
struck the key note of heaven in their opening strains, by chanting, "Worthy is
the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength,
and honor, and glory, and blessing." They gave us, too, her favorite song, by
which she was remembered in several circles, at home and abroad, before she was
sick, and the words of which, now, seem to have had a prophetic meaning from her
lips:-- "I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger; I can tarry, I can tarry but a
night;"-- which was sung at the funeral with a sweetness which added much to the
associations with it in our minds; and in the closing hymn, how strange it
seemed, at a funeral, to hear the singers, though by our own request and though
in accordance with all which had passed, bid us "Proclaim abroad his name, Tell
of his matchless fame, What wonders done! Shout through hell's dark profound,
Let the whole earth resound, Till the high heavens rebound, The victory's
won;"-- and to hear them, as they cried one to another, saying,-- "All hail the
glorious day, When, through the heavenly way, Lo, He shall come; While they who
pierced him wail; His promise shall not fail; Saints, see your King prevail;
Come, dear Lord, come." For those ministrations of love and tenderness in the
last, sad offices to the dead, which no wealth could buy, repeated now by some
of the same hands several times in my dwelling, there are no words of gratitude
adequate to the great debt of love. The mothers of my church, who met weekly
with her mother for prayer, remembered her child, and provided nurses for her,
to her own unspeakable comfort and our great relief. Friends and strangers,
touched with her protracted sickness, poured blessings around her couch; fruits,
in their season, and when out of their season, of what almost unearthly beauty!
and flowers which, with the fruits, made that sick room seem like the garden
which the Lord planted in Eden. Such have been the alleviations of pain and
suffering, the comforts, and even the pleasures, and above all the rich
spiritual consolations and joys, and the more than conquering faith of the dying
hour,--such a union in all this of Jesus and his friends,--that I have made the
case of the ruler of the synagogue mine, of whom, as he went to his afflicted
house, it is said, "And Jesus arose and followed him, and so did his disciples."
They will go wherever Jesus leads the way; and he will lead the way wherever
there is a lamb to be folded in his bosom. There were not wanting those who lent
me their sepulchre, in the city, for a season--a kindness always peculiar and
affecting, but also needful in this instance, because of the great snows which
made the roads to Mount Auburn impassable for several days. Nor can I forget
that, when Saturday evening closed upon us, words and tokens of kindness came
from the younger members of my congregation, who had provided for the last
earthly things which the precious dust of their young friend required; and so
they seemed to bid me rest from all care and thoughtfulness, upon the "Sabbath
day, according to the commandment." All which should increase my feelings of
sympathy and kindness for the sick, and especially for the sick poor, whose
rooms, and whose dying hours, and whose griefs, are oftentimes in such contrast
to those into which divine and human loving kindness seem striving to pour their
abundant consolations. As the family retired from the dying scene, and were
weeping together, a father came to my door, in that great snow-storm, to say
that his son, the young man, not a member of my congregation, whom I had several
times visited, was near his end, and would like to see me. Stranger
comparatively though he was, and impassable as the streets were by any vehicle,
and almost by foot passengers, my gratitude for the sweet and peaceful end of my
own dear child, and for her undoubted admission to the realms of bliss, was
such, that, within an hour or two, I forced my way to a distant part of the
city, to assist another departing spirit for its flight. This heart has no more
fortitude, nor has it less of natural affection and sensibility, than ordinarily
falls to the lot of men; hence those consolations must have been great, that
support and strength equal to the day, that hope concerning my child an anchor
sure and steadfast, which enabled me thus to go from her clay, just cold, to aid
a passing spirit in obtaining like precious faith with hers, and the same
inheritance. My motive in thus lifting a little of the veil, or in placing a
light behind the transparency, of my private feelings, I trust will be seen to
be, that I may comfort others with the comfort wherewith I was comforted of God.
But there awaits me a blessing, with a joy, surpassing all that has gone before.
"My daughter is even now dead; but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall
live." From her grave, which was soon made by the side of kindred dust, Jesus
will raise her up at the last day; her voice will come to that body; her
youthful beauty will be reestablished by her likeness to Christ's own glorious
body; she will lean upon my arm again; the separation and absence will enhance
the joy of meeting; we shall say, How like a hand-breadth was the separation! We
shall see reasons full of wisdom and love for the sickness and the early death.
We shall part no more. All this has more than once made me say, and sing,-- "O,
for this love, let rocks and hills Their lasting silence break, And all
harmonious human tongues The Saviour's praises speak." Young friend, you will
need him as the great Physician, the Friend in sorrow, the Forerunner in the
dark passages of life, the Conqueror of death, the Lord our Righteousness, and,
all endearing names in one, Immanuel, God with us. Parents, you will need him
for your children. Children, you will need him when father and mother, one or
both, have forsaken you, or, if alive, can only make you feel how little their
fond love can do for you. When the name of father, cannot rouse you, nor your
cold hand return the pressure of your father's hand, you will need a nearer,
dearer friend, in the person of Him who loved you, and gave himself for you. It
has been one of the richest joys of my pastoral life, that I have sent to her
mother in heaven her child, whom God had prepared for so early a departure out
of this world. This ministry of reconciliation has been blessed to the salvation
of my child. It should make me love the children of my pastoral charge more than
ever, seek to gather them into the fold of Christ, that whole families, each
like a constellation, may rise together in the firmament of heaven; and, in the
mean time, that the members of every household, as they desert us one by one,
may call back to us, and say, for the departed, "All are here." God takes a
family here and there, in a circle of acquaintances and friends, and greatly
afflicts them; and thus he teaches others. As we look, therefore, upon the
afflicted, we ought to say,-- "For us they languish, and for us they die; And
shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?" God is the same when he takes
away the child, as when he laid that gift in our hands. Perhaps, indeed, the
removal is really a greater exercise of love than the gift. It must seem good
and acceptable in the sight of God, if, when we are bereaved, we employ
ourselves occasionally in rehearsing before him the circumstances in his past
goodness, which, at the time, made it exceedingly sweet and precious. Our debt
of obligation for it is not yet fully paid; nor is it diminished at all by the
removal of the blessing. Instead of abandoning ourselves to grief, we do well if
we commune with God more frequently respecting his signal acts of favor in
connection with the lost blessing. But the memory of lost joys is always apt to
depress the mind inordinately. We question whether it is really better to have
"loved and lost Than never to have loved at all." Taking a future life into the
account, surely no doubt can remain as to that question; but one who has really
loved, will not be long in coming to the same conclusion, irrespective of the
future. Must God abstain from making us exceedingly happy, because, forsooth, we
shall be so unhappy when, in the exercise of the same goodness and wisdom which
dictated the gift, he sees it best to take it away? If we love him more than we
love his gifts, then the removal of them will make us love him more than ever.
"Though now He frowns, I'll praise the Almighty's name, And bless the source
whence past enjoyments came." We often hear it said, that every thing which
happens to us is for our good, even in this world.--Many things happen to men,
even to Christians, which are plainly not for their good in this life, though
all things will, eventually, work together for good to them that love God. Some
things, then, even here, are intended to be life-long sorrows and trials. Their
object is reproof and constant admonition. We need another state of existence to
explain the present. If that future state does not prove that earthly discipline
has had its designed effect, the sorrows of this life show that God can bear to
see us suffer, even when he foresees that no good will result to the sufferer.
For while men suffer excruciatingly under bereavements, these sufferings often
fail to make them better. God foresees all this. Hence God is able to look upon
suffering which he sees will not be for the good of the afflicted. If, now, his
design in our trials (which pierced his heart before they reached ours) is
utterly frustrated by our sins, the question will arise, whether the God who can
bear to see us suffer for our good, which, nevertheless, he foresees will not be
effected, will not be able to see us suffer as the fruit of our sins, and of our
resistance to his designs. One who has endured much mental suffering cannot have
failed to see, that God's parental relation to us is not analogous to that of
parent and child among men. It terminates in the relations of governor and of
judge; being, indeed, from the first, included in those relations. This is not
so in our earthly relationship. God sees men suffer as no earthly parent could;
he inflicts pain as no earthly parent should. All is for our profit; but if that
object fails through our perverseness, we are instructed, by our experience,
that if God can look on mental anguish and not relieve it, because he seeks an
ulterior good, the punishment of sin, the natural and just consequences of
disobedience to the great laws of the universe, may be, in their extended
impression, another ulterior good, which will warrant the same mental sufferings
after death, and forever. Could I be permitted, therefore, I would take by the
hand every bereaved father whom so great an affliction as the death of a child
has not succeeded in bringing into a state of preparation for heaven, and kindly
ask how he expects to bear a final and endless separation. "If thou hast run
with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with
horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee,
then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?" God describes to his ancient
people one of the great sorrows which will happen to them, if they forsake him,
in their separations, by captivity, from their children: "Thy sons and thy
daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and
fail with longing, for them all the day long; and there shall be no might in thy
hand." Pains of absence, sudden convulsions of feeling at the remembered looks,
form, words, and motions of a loved one, sometimes are as when men feel the
earth quaking under them; and then, again, they entirely prostrate us, for the
moment, like a tornado. Homesickness in a foreign land,--an ocean stretching
between us and the objects of our love--is an admonition to us with respect to
future, endless separations. The hopeless death of a child has sometimes had the
effect to change the long-established faith of a parent with regard to future
retribution; all the acknowledged principles of interpretation, all the results
of meditation and prayer, the theory of the divine government which has been
built up in the soul, till it became identified with personal consciousness, the
whole analogy of faith,--all, have been swept away by the overmastering power of
parental love for one who, when he died, left his friends to sorrow as they that
have no hope. Now, supposing a parent to fail of heaven, and to retain his
instinctive parental feelings, the endless separation between him and his family
will be a source of sorrow which needs only to be kept up, by an ever-living
memory, to constitute all which is pictured in the boldest metaphors of inspired
tongues and pens. A father in disgrace, or under ignominy, suffers intensely
when he sees or thinks of his children, provided his natural sensibilities are
not destroyed. A father punished, hereafter, by his Redeemer and Judge, a father
banished from the company of heaven, knowing that his family are there, and that
if his influence had had its full effect, they would all have perished with
him,--or a father with a part of his children with him in perdition, the wife
and mother with one or more of the children in heaven,--is a picture of woe
which nothing but timely repentance and faith in Christ may prevent from being a
reality in the experience of some who read these lines. Can it be true, as
Bishop Hall says, that "to be happy is not so sweet a state as it is miserable
to have been happy"? O man, if you have a child in heaven, think that, among the
sweet influences of divine love, there probably is no more powerful motive to
draw your affections towards God, than that glimpse which you sometimes seem to
have of this child's face, on which heaven has traced its lineaments of peace
and bliss; or that sudden whisper of a gentle, child-like voice, now and then
heard by the ear of fancy, persuading you to be a Christian. Do not let the
world, or shame, or procrastination, lead you to resist such efforts of almighty
love to save you. He who has had a child saved by Christ, and will not be
himself a Christian,--what more can God do to save him? The breaking up of our
homes is one of the mysteries of God's providence. The last thing, perhaps,
which we might suppose would be allowed, is, the removal of a mother from a
family of young children. This being so frequent, we cease to wonder at any
other dispensations; we conclude that separations are to be made, regardless of
any and every seeming necessity and endearment. "Sirs, I perceive that this
voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but
also of our lives." The conviction is forced upon us that there is another
world, for which we must make all our calculations. "There is a better world,"
said the distinguished William Wirt, after the death of his daughter, in
1831,--"there is a better world, of which I have thought too little. To that
world she has gone, and thither my affections have followed her. This was
Heaven's design. I see and feel it as distinctly as if an angel had revealed it.
I often imagine that I can see her beckoning me to the happy world to which she
has gone. She was my companion, my office companion, my librarian, my clerk. My
papers now bear her indorsement. She pursued her studies in my office, by my
side, sat with me, walked with me, was my inexpressibly sweet and inseparable
companion,--never left me but to go and sit with her mother. We knew all her
intelligence, all her pure and delicate sensibility, the quickness and power of
her perceptions, her seraphic love. She was all love, and loved all God's
creation, even the animals, trees, and plants. She loved her God and Saviour
with an angel's love, and died like a saint."[A] [Footnote A: Kennedy's Life of
William Wirt--letter to Judge Carr.] About the same time, he writes to his
wife,-- "I want only my blessed Saviour's assurance of pardon and acceptance to
be at peace. I wish to find no rest short of rest in him,--Let us both look up
to that heaven--where our Saviour dwells, and from which he is showing us the
attractive face of our blessed and happy child, and bidding us prepare to come
to her, since she can no more visibly come to us. I have no taste now for
worldly business. I go to it reluctantly. I would keep company only with my
Saviour and his holy book. I dread the world, the strife, and contention, and
emulation of the bar; yet I will do my duty--this is part of my religion." In
December, 1833, another daughter died; but he writes,-- "I look upon life as a
drama, bearing the same sort, though not the same degree, of relation to
eternity, as an hour spent at the theatre, and the fictions there exhibited ...
do to the whole of real life. Nor is there any thing in this passing pageant
worth the sorrow that we lavish on it. Now, when my children or friends leave
me, or when I shall be called to leave them, I consider it as merely parting for
the present visit, to meet under happier circumstances, when we shall part no
more."[B] [Footnote B: Kennedy's Life of William Wirt--letter to Judge Cabell.]
* * * * * "All my children," said the venerable John Eliot, of Roxbury, "are
either with Christ or in Christ." Happy, happy man! The little ones, blighted
soon by the touch of death, surely are with Christ; "for of such is the kingdom
of God." The cherub boy, and the blooming, broken flower, the young
daughter,--the young man in his strength, the young maiden in her beauty,--are
there. As we commune together, in the pages which follow, on themes touching
this subject, God grant that every one who has not yet gladdened the heart of
parent, and pastor, nay, of that infinite Friend, our Saviour, by the surrender
of the heart to God, and every father and mother who is yet unprepared to join
the growing circle of the family in heaven,--('how grows in Paradise their
store!')--may, as we reach the last page, find that with cords of a man, with
bands of love, He who made Pleiades, and Arcturus and his sons, has united them
in eternal fellowship with their departed loved ones, through faith in Christ.
This, while it hallows the remainder of life with the rich, mellowed beauty of
the changing leaf, and ripening grain, and shortening days, lays the foundation
of that perfect happiness for which our homes are intended to prepare us; their
joys alluring, their separations pointing, us to heaven.


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  CHAPTER 15: THE FEAR OF DEATH ALLEVIATED
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II. THE FEAR OF DEATH ALLEVIATED. Yea, and moreover this full well know I: He
that's at any time afraid to die Is in weak case, and (whatsoe'er he saith) Hath
but a wavering and a feeble faith. GEORGE WITHER. Unless we know the customs of
the wandering shepherds with their flocks, one verse in the twenty-third Psalm,
so often quoted in view of death, appears abrupt, but otherwise appropriate and
very beautiful. One of a flock is expressing his confidence in God, his
Shepherd: "When I have satisfied my hunger from the green pastures, he makes me
to lie down in them; and the still, clear streams are my drink." Then a thought
occurs which appears as though a dying man were speaking, and not a sheep: but
it is still the language of a sheep. Keeping this in mind, let it be remembered
that the shepherds wandered from place to place to find pasture. In doing so,
they were sometimes obliged to pass through dark, lonely valleys. Wild beasts,
and creatures less formidable, but of hateful sight, and with doleful voices,
made it difficult for the flocks to be led through such passages. There was
frequently no other way from one pasturage to another but through these places
of death-shade, or valleys of the shadow of death,--which was a term to express
any dark and dismal place. Now, let us imagine a flock reposing in a green
pasture, and by the side of still waters, conversing about their shepherd, their
pastures, and streams. One of them says, "In the midst of all this peace and
contentment, there is a thought which spoils my comfort. We cannot stay here
forever; we are to go, presently, beyond the mountains; they say that there are
valleys, in those regions, full of dangers. My expectation is, that we shall be
torn to pieces. My enjoyment of these pastures and waters is nearly destroyed by
my forebodings about those valleys." Another of the flock replies, "Have we not
an able, faithful, experienced shepherd? Have we not seen his ability to defend
us in past dangers? Is he not as much concerned for our defence and safety as
ourselves? While he is my shepherd, I shall not want.--Yea, though I walk
through those valleys of death-shade, I will fear no evil; for he is with me;
his rod and his staff they comfort me." The shepherd carried with him two
instruments--the staff, for his own support, and to attack a beast or robber;
and the crook, or rod. By this crook, the shepherd guided a sheep in a dangerous
pass, placing the crook under the sheep's neck, to hold him up and assist his
steps. When a sheep was disposed to stray, the shepherd could hold him back with
his crook. When the sheep had fallen into the power of a beast, the crook
assisted in drawing him away. A good sheep loved the crook as much as the
staff,--to be guided, as well as to be defended. Both of the shepherd's
instruments were a great comfort to the sheep, while passing through a frightful
and dangerous valley. The interpretation usually given to the words, "thy rod
and thy staff"--as though they meant "thy gentle reproofs and thy severe
rebukes"--is erroneous. A sheep would hardly tell his shepherd that his
chastising rod, and the heavy blows of his staff, comforted him. The meaning is,
It is a comfort to me to feel the crook of thy rod helping me in trouble, and to
know that thy staff is my defence against wild beasts. * * * * * Through fear of
death, many who are truly the followers of Christ, are, nevertheless, all their
lifetime subject to bondage. On whatever mountains, into whatever pastures, and
by whatever streams, their Shepherd leads them, they know that there is a valley
into which they must go down, and the imagined darkness and horrors of the place
make them continually afraid. A fear of death, without doubt, is frequently
permitted, as a means of religious restraint. Some, who have wondered at this
trial all their life long, find that its influence is great in keeping them near
to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls. If a flock could reason, no doubt the
shepherd would make use of the fears of the sheep, in many instances, to keep
them from going astray. If one of them were inclined to wander, it would be
natural for the shepherd to caution that sheep against the dark valley, warning
him of its terrors, and making him feel how necessary it would be to have a
shepherd there, with his crook and staff. It may be that apprehensions with
regard to death are the most powerful means, with some, of keeping them from
going astray, and of holding their minds to the contemplation of spiritual
things. It has often been observed that those Christians whose fears of death
were very great for a large part of their life, frequently die with triumph. The
reality is not such as they feared; they found support and consolation which
they did not anticipate. One of the most trying anticipations with regard to
death, in the minds of many, long before the event arrives, is, separation from
those whom we love. And yet, there is probably nothing in human experience more
remarkable, than the singular resignation, and even cheerfulness, with which
some, who have had every thing to make life desirable, have left all and
followed Christ when he came to lead them through the valley. The young wife and
mother, in her dying hours, becomes the comforter of her husband; she turns and
looks at the infant who is held up to receive her farewell, and the mother alone
is calm, sheds no tear, gives the farewell kiss with composure. "Thy rod" is
supporting her; "thy staff" is keeping at bay the passions and fears of the
natural heart. So a widowed mother leaves a large family of young children, with
a peace which passes all understanding. And the father of a dependent family,
which never could, in a greater measure, need a father's presence, looks upon
them from his dying bed, and says to them, with the serenity of the patriarch,
"Behold, I die; but God shall be with you." Nothing is more true than this, that
dying grace is for a dying hour; that is, we cannot, in health and strength,
have the feelings which belong to the hour of parting; but as any and every
scene and condition, into which God brings his children, has its peculiar frames
of mind fitted to the necessity of each case, we need not make the useless
effort to practise all the resignation, and experience all the comforts, which
come only when they are actually needed. We do not often hear the first part of
the following passage quoted; but in such rocky and thorny paths as we are often
made to pass through, how good it is to read: "Thy shoes shall be iron and
brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be." If God is our Shepherd, he
will cause us to pass, one by one, through the valley which is before us,
leaving some most dear to us on the hither side. Suppose that when a shepherd is
employed in removing his flock from one mountain to another, through a valley,
one of the flock should mourn his separation from companions, or from its young.
The shepherd would say, "You cannot all pass together; leave your companions and
the young to me; I will restore them to you on the other side." He might also
remonstrate and say, "Am I not, as their shepherd, interested in protecting and
removing them? You can add nothing to my strength and wisdom; let me take you
safety through the valley, and trust me to do the same for them." The ancient
shepherd was specially careful of the lambs; he carried them in his arms, and
sometimes folded them beneath his shepherd's coat. We can imagine the feelings
of some of a flock when, leaving them at a short distance, but within sight, the
shepherd would take a lamb, carry it down into the valley, and disappear with it
for a little while. With all their confidence in their shepherd, some of the
flock would manifest uneasiness at the separation, especially if the valley
looked dark and dangerous. If it were the only lamb of its mother, it was
natural for that mother to be distressed, and to lament. Though the young
creature had gone safely to the other side, and was at play in the new pasture,
and the mother believed it, this could not always quiet her. The good Shepherd
has taken some of our lambs through the valley. They are safe upon the other
side. They have joined the flock of Christ. Let us give our lambs to the
Shepherd's care, to bear them through the valley, whenever he sees fit that they
should be removed. We must all pass through that valley. If, from special love
to our young, he will see them safely on the other side before he calls for us,
we will intrust them to Him who claims our confidence by saying to us, I am the
Good Shepherd. One of the prophecies concerning Christ reveals that tender love
and care, on his part, for children, which characterized him while on earth: "He
shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom." The fear of
death is owing, in many cases, to the dread of dissolution. The previous
sickness prepares the soul and the body for their separation, so that, in very
many cases, it is the greatest relief to die. We are, perhaps, mistaken if we
suppose that those Christians who are in great bodily pain in their last hours,
suffer in mind. The effects of death on the frame do not necessarily disturb the
tranquillity of the soul. The body may be in spasms while the soul is at peace;
and the reverse is true;--as in nightmare, when the mind is distressed while the
body sleeps. A Christian has nothing to fear in this respect. To die will not
be--as in full health we suppose it is--a violent rending asunder of the soul
from the unyielding grasp of the body; but the preparation of the mortal frame
for dissolution, by the sickness, however rapid, also fits the mind for the
event. Even in cases of death by accidents, this appears to be true. * * * * *
But many feel that to die is to be transferred suddenly, and with violence, into
strange scenes, which must overwhelm and distract the senses. It seems to them
that it must be like being whirled instantly into a distant, unknown city, and
waking up amidst the confusion and strangeness of that place. We cannot believe
that such is the experience of dying Christians. It would rather seem that there
is, at first, a perception of spiritual forms, of ministering spirits,
whispering peace to the soul, and assuring it of safety, and bidding it fear
not. It is said of angels, "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to
minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" When can we need their
ministry more, than in the passage from this world to the world of spirits?
Perhaps the disclosure is made of some departed friends; and the fancy of those
who thought that they saw beloved ones beckoning them away, may have had its
foundation in truth. There is much of probability in that well-known piece, "The
dying Christian's address to his soul;"--and no part of it is more probable than
this:-- "Hark! they whisper; angels say, Sister spirit, come away." It is not
improbable--it seems accordant with divine goodness--that such methods should be
employed to relieve the anxiety of the departing spirit. Sometimes the dying
Christian has declared that he heard enrapturing music. It is possible that
voices were employed to soothe him to sleep, and to soften the transition, from
the full consciousness of life, to the revelations of the heavenly world.
Perhaps the effect of disease upon the organs of hearing was such as to produce
something like sounds, which, in a joyous state of mind, were pleasurable.
During the siege of Jerusalem in 1836, the wife of an American missionary sung
while dissolution was actually taking place. The tones of her voice, they said,
seemingly more than mortal, were far different from any thing which they had
ever heard, even from her. God is often pleased to use these natural effects of
dissolution on the body, to comfort the passing spirit of his child. Whether
visions or real voices are actually seen or heard, is of no consequence, so long
as the soul has a rational and assured hope. Some means are unquestionably used
in every case to make the dying believer feel that he is safe. He is not
compelled to wait in uncertainty and fear for a moment. His fears are
anticipated; he is among other friends, the moment that he grows insensible to
those who watch his departing breath. Neither are we to suppose that heaven
breaks upon the senses of the spirit with such an overpowering brightness, as to
excite confusion and pain. No doubt the revelation is gradual and most pleasant.
Perhaps the celestial city appears at first in the distance, having the glory of
God most precious; the approach to it is gradual; voices are heard afar off, and
from the convoy of ministering spirits, such information and instructions are
received as prepare it for the full vision of heaven. Every thing is calm and
serene; the light is attempered to its new and feeble vision. He who makes the
sun to rise by slow degrees, and does not pour straight, fierce rays upon the
waking eyes even of sinful men, certainly will not torment the soul of his child
with any such revelations of unseen things as will give pain. The same care
which has redeemed and saved him, will order all these things in covenanted
love. Some of the preceding thoughts are well expressed in the following
anonymous lines, written on seeing Mr. Greenough's group of the Angel and Child
ascending to Heaven:-- "CHILD. Whither now wilt thou proceed? ANGEL. Come up
hither; I will show thee. Follow me with joyful speed; Leave thy native earth
below thee. CHILD. Stop! mine eyes cannot contain Such a wondrous flood of
light. ANGEL. Come up hither. Thou shall gain, As thou risest, stronger sight.
CHILD. Lost in wonder without end, Joyful, fearful, longing, shrinking, Lead me,
O thou heavenly friend; Keep a trembling child from sinking. O, I cannot bear
this glory! Angel brother! how canst thou? ANGEL. I will tell thee all my story;
I was once as thou art now. CHILD. When some sorrow did befall me, Or I felt
some strange alarms, Then my mother's voice would call me, To the shelter of her
arms. Now what bids my heart rejoice, Clasped in arms I cannot see? Hark, I hear
a soothing voice Sweetly whispering, Come to me. ANGEL. Yes, it calls thee from
on high; Come to God's most holy mountain; Thou hast drunk the stream of life;--
I will lead thee to the fountain." Some dread the thought of being out of the
body and finding themselves spirits. This is wholly without reason. The soul
will not suffer from losing this body of sin and death; it will have as perfect
a consciousness, it will know where it is, and what is passing before it, as
seems to be the case in a vivid dream when the bodily senses are locked in
slumber. As to the natural repugnance which we have to the thoughts of burial
and the grave, it is probable that the soul of a redeemed spirit thinks and
cares as little concerning these things, so far as painful sensations are
concerned, as we do about our garments when we are falling asleep. The vesture
which we formerly wore gives us no solicitude. It is wonderful to hear the sick,
long before they die, give directions, or express desires, respecting their
burial. So far from thinking of the grave as a melancholy place, no doubt the
departed spirit will often think of it in the separate state with pleasure, as
the place where it is hereafter to receive a form like Christ's; and the thought
of resurrection adds greatly to the joys of heaven. * * * * * There is something
still which affects the minds of many Christians with fear as they think of
dying; and that is, their appearing before God. They cannot imagine the
possibility of seeing him without distraction; his infinite majesty, and their
own sense of unworthiness, make them afraid. But who is God? Is he the
Christian's enemy? Will he sit like a king on his throne, and see his subject
come trembling into his presence? Is this the God who loved him? Is this the
Saviour that died for him? Is this the Holy Spirit who awakened, converted,
sanctified, comforted him, and promised to present him faultless before the
presence of his glory with exceeding joy? God will not have done so much to
bring him to heaven, and, when he comes there, make his appearance before his
throne a matter of fear and uncertainty. He who fell on the neck of the
returning prodigal and kissed him, will not keep him at a distance when, with
the best robe, and the ring, and the shoes, he comes into his father's house.
Our first apprehensions of God will be happy beyond our present comprehension.
What an image have we, in these words, of a man helping a child, by the hand,
through a dangerous or dark way: "For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right
hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee." If "I will be with thee,"
is the reason, which he himself assigns why we should not be afraid, why should
we fear to come into his presence? As to a consciousness of guilt, there is no
doubt that he who falls asleep in Jesus, with reliance on his blood and
righteousness, will immediately, at death, receive such a consciousness of being
purified from all taint of sin, as now is beyond our conception. In the language
of Scripture, we shall be presented faultless before the presence of his glory
with exceeding joy. For the sake of Christ, in whom we trust, we shall be
received and treated as though we had never sinned; we shall say, in the full
assurance of pardon, righteousness, and peace with God, without waiting for the
question to be asked in our behalf, "Who is he that condemneth?" "It is Christ
that died." And if this be so, as it surely is, why may not Christians in this
world before they die, nay, from the first hour of justification by faith in
Christ, triumph thus in him? Why should their remaining sinfulness, their poor,
frail, erring nature, which they must carry with them to the grave, prevent them
from having the same joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we
have received the atonement? Every true believer in Jesus Christ is warranted in
having the same consciousness of pardon and peace with God, now, as after death;
the justifying righteousness of Christ is as powerful now as it will be then.
Some tell us, "Live a sinless life, and you may have this perfect peace." That
is self-righteousness. It will not be a sinless life which, in the moment after
death, will make us to be openly acknowledged and acquitted; it will be the
righteousness of Jesus Christ which is by faith; and he who has faith in that
righteousness may, living as well as dying, here as well as in heaven, say,
'There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who
walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.' There are several things which
may reconcile us to the thought of dying: * * * * * All the people of God since
the creation, with two exceptions, have died. Of the two who were excepted,
neither of them was his only begotten Son. Those whom God has loved peculiarly
have not been exempted from the stroke of death. Shall we ask exemption from
that which, all the good and great have suffered? Let me die the death of the
righteous. If he must find the grave, there will I be buried. We would not go to
heaven but in the way which prophets, apostles, martyrs trod. The footsteps of
the flock lead through the valley; we will seek no other, no easier, way. * * *
* * Surely we should be willing to follow our great Forerunner. He tasted death
for every man; and he could enter into his triumph only by dying. We should be
more than resigned to follow our blessed Lord into the tomb. Christ conquered
death by dying; we shall be more than conquerors in the same way. If we suffer
great pain, we cannot suffer more than Christ suffered on our account.
Sufferings borne in the spirit of Christ are counted as sufferings borne for
Christ. "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him." "If so be that we suffer
with him, that we may be also glorified together." * * * * * Death is a part of
the penalty of sin. We should, therefore, submit to it, giving up our bodies to
be destroyed, in fulfilment of that sentence which we have so justly
incurred--"and unto dust shalt thou return." He who hates sin, and condemns
himself for it, and is willing to have fellowship with Christ in his sufferings
for it, as it is most graciously represented that we may, will bear the
execution of God's righteous sentence with a willing mind. * * * * * Death is
the perfecting of our redemption. It is the last act of redeeming grace. When
the Saviour, who says, "I have the keys of--death," (i.e., no one can die but at
the time and manner prescribed by me,) takes us out of the world, it is to
finish the work of our personal salvation. All the circumstances attending it
will be as deliberately appointed, and as carefully watched and directed, as the
first great act of grace towards us in our regeneration. He, too, who has
provided such pastures and streams for us here, in removing us to living
pastures and to living streams, will, of course, see that we go safely through
the valley which must be passed to reach them. It will not be a new thing to
Christ to see us die. He has watched the dying beds of millions of his friends,
he has had great experience as a Shepherd in bringing them through the valley. *
* * * * See that chamber in yonder mansion, where all the comforts, and some of
the luxuries, of life, have contributed to prepare for some mysterious event.
The garden of Eden failed to possess such joys as are there in anticipation, and
are soon to be made perfect. Every thing seems waiting, with silent but
thrilling interest, for the arrival of an unknown occupant. And there is raiment
of needle-work, and of fine twined linen, and gifts of cunning device, from the
looms of the old world, and from graceful fingers and loving hearts here, every
want being anticipated, and some wants imagined, to gratify the love of
satisfying them. And now God breathes the breath of life, and a living soul
begins its deathless career, amidst joys and thanksgivings, which swell through
the wide circles of kindred and acquaintanceship. The Holy Spirit, in the
process of time, renews and sanctifies the soul through the blood of the
everlasting covenant; and having, through life, walked with God, the day arrives
when the spirit must return to God who gave it. You saw how it was received
here, at its entrance into the world. You have seen what the atonement, and
regeneration, and sanctification, and providence, and grace, have done for it,
and with what accumulated love the Father of Spirits, and Redeemer, and
Sanctifier, must regard it. And now do we suppose that the shroud, and coffin,
and the funeral, and the narrow house, and the darkness, and the solitude and
corruption, and the whole dreary and terrible train of death and the grave, are
symbols of its reception into heaven, the proper pageantry of its arrival and
resting place within the veil? Believe it not! If God prepared in our hearts
such a welcome for the infant stranger, that even its helpless feet were thought
of and cared for, surely when those feet, wearied in the pilgrimage of the
strait and narrow way, arrive at heaven's gate, it must be, it is, amidst
rejoicings and ministrations of love to which earth has no parallel. Let kings
and queens prepare a royal room for the new-born prince: "In my Father's house
are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a
place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and
receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." Could we look
into that place, as it stands waiting for its occupant from earth, we should
behold sights which would instantly clothe even death with beauty, and make it
seem now, as it will seem then, a blessed thing to die. * * * * * To miss of
dying would no doubt be a calamity. Dying will be an experience to the believer
which will be fraught with inestimably good things; that is, the act of dying,
and not merely the being dead. It is no doubt as necessary to the nature of the
soul, to its psychology, its soul-life, as the changes of the worm, chrysalis,
and butterfly, are to the insect. And thus, as in all other things, where sin
abounded, grace much more abounds, and even death, like a cross, is turned into
a ministration of infinite blessing. It is not unsuitable for a dying Christian
to consider, that he is compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses, who
themselves have died, and who are watching his departure. We ought to die with
such faith in Jesus, such confidence in God, such confident expectation and
hope, that they will rejoice to see us conquer death. Our last conflict should
be fought in a manner worthy of the company and scenes into which we are
immediately to pass. We should not anxiously seek to remove entirely from any
one, in the course of his life, his fears with regard to death, except as we may
substitute faith for those fears. God probably intends them now for the increase
of faith. Moreover, when the event of death happens, it will be mingled with so
much mercy as to make the Christian smile at his fears. The exhortation of the
apostle in view of his great discourse of death and resurrection is noticeable:
"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in
the work of the Lord; forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the
Lord." There are cases in which the clouded faculties, or delirium, prevent the
full enjoyment of a peaceful, happy death. Such cases seem painful to friends,
but the Shepherd knows when it is best to hide the face of a sheep which he
carries through the valley, and that it is sometimes better for the sheep to
pass the valley in the black and dark night, than when daylight, by revealing
the horrors of the place, would excite fear. All this may safely be left to
those hands which spoiled death of his sting, and to that love which is stronger
than death. Wherever, and whenever, and in whatever manner we may die, it will
be under the care and direction of Him who will no more see us in the power of
the enemy, than a strong and faithful shepherd would suffer a beloved member of
his flock to fall into the power of the lion. The last lines of a hymn by
Doddridge-- "Then speechless clasp thee in my arms, The antidote of death"-- are
altered, by some compilers, who substitute the word conqueror for antidote. But
the author saw the truthfulness of his own chosen language, though the word in
question be not convenient for musical expression. When we are already stung by
a poisonous creature, we take something which proves an antidote to the effect
of the sting. This medicine is not so much a conqueror, as an antidote; for the
poison is not developed. But the sting is inflicted, and before the poisonous
injury is felt, the antidote prevents it. These words of Christ correspond to
this: "Verily, verily I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never
see death." How often we behold this verified! The spectators "see death," in
his approach, in his effects; they weep and tremble, while the dear patient does
not "see" it; for something else absorbs his thoughts, fixes his attention; he
is stung, indeed, by the monster; but Christ is an antidote to death, causes it
to pass by without inflicting pain upon the mind, or in any way hurting its
victim. Dr. Watts illustrates and confirms all this:-- "Jesus, the vision of thy
face Hath overpowering charms; Scarce shall I feel death's cold embrace, If
Christ be in my arms." * * * * * The piece of paper which would suffice to write
the twenty-third Psalm upon it, would not be large enough for a common title
deed; and yet that Psalm, if it expresses our experience, is worth infinitely
more than is conveyed, or secured, by all the registries of deeds under the sun.
We are each of us to see a time when we shall feel the truth of this. If but
these first few words of the Psalm are true in my case, if "the Lord is my
Shepherd," all the rest of the Psalm is a record, a promise, a pledge, of past,
present, and future good. There are six things declared by Christ to be
characteristic of the relation which he and his people sustain to each other, as
Shepherd and the sheep: 1. "My sheep hear my voice; 2. And I know them; 3. And
they follow me; 4. And I give unto them eternal life; 5. And they shall never
perish; 6. Neither shall any pluck them out of my hand." Here we find directions
to duty, as well as promises of future good. Since it is more important how we
live than how we die, and since death is merely the arrival at the end of a
journey, the beginning, progress, and history of the journey determining what
the arrival is to be, we shall do well to dismiss our borrowed trouble with
regard to the manner of our departure out of the world, and be solicitous only
with regard to the right discharge of present duty. We read, "Precious in the
sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." The death of every child of his
is, with God, an object of unspeakable interest; his own honor is concerned in
it; its influence on survivors is of great importance; it will be among the
means by which God accomplishes several, it may be many, purposes of providence,
but especially of his grace. "No man dieth to himself." Great interests are
involved in his death, beyond his own personal welfare. Now, if we have lived
for God, he will make our death the object of his especial care, and will honor
it by its being the means of promoting his glory. Instead, therefore, of gloomy
apprehensions as to dying, we should cherish the noble wish and aim that Christ
may be magnified in our body, whether it be by life or by death. If our life has
been a walking with God, "THOU ART WITH ME" will be a perfect warrant, now, and
in death, to "FEAR NO EVIL."


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  CHAPTER 16: THE SEARCH FOR THE DEPARTED
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III. THE SEARCH FOR THE DEPARTED. No bliss mid worldly crowds is bred, Like
musing on the sainted dead. BISHOP MANT. We seek in vain, on earth, for one who
has gone to heaven. Though better informed as to the objects of our love than
they who lingered about the deserted tomb of the Saviour, and were asked, "Why
seek ye the living among the dead," we nevertheless find ourselves, in our
thoughts, searching for them; so difficult is it at once to feel that they are
wholly and forever departed. There is an affecting and beautifully simple
illustration of our thoughts and feelings, in this respect, in the search which
was made for Elijah after his translation. Fifty men of the sons of the prophets
went and stood to view afar off, when Elijah and Elisha stood by the Jordan.
Elisha returned alone, and these men could not feel reconciled to the loss of
their great master. They were not persuaded that he had gone to heaven, no more
to return; they sought leave to seek him, and to recover him: "Peradventure,"
they said, "the Spirit of the Lord hath taken him up and cast him upon some
mountain, or into some valley." Elisha peremptorily refused to grant them leave.
They were importunate; and when, at last, it would, perhaps, seem like obstinacy
in him, or like jealousy of their superior love for Elijah, to forbid the
search, which at the worst would only be fruitless, he yielded. Three days they
explored the valleys, ransacked the thickets, groped in the caves, traversed
hills, followed imaginary trails and footprints, but found him not. When they
came again to Elisha, "he said unto them, Did I not say unto you, Go not?" We
cannot become accustomed at once, nor for a long time, to the absence of our
friend. If his death was sudden, or if it took place away from home, or during
our absence, we expect to see him again; if a vehicle stops at the door, the
heart beats with an instantaneous hope which dies with its first breath,
bringing over us a deeper and stronger refluence of sorrow. We catch a sight of
articles familiarly used by a departed friend; they are identified with little
passages in his history, or with his daily life: is it possible that he is
altogether and forever disconnected from them? They are the same; those
perishable things, those comparatively worthless things, having no value at all
except as his use of them made them precious, retain their shapes and places;
but where is he? and must not he return and abide, like them? No, he is gone to
heaven. The places which knew him shall know him no more forever. Those things,
which have an imperishable value in being associated with his memory, are, to
him, like the leaves of a past autumn to a tree now filled with blossoms. The
mention of every valued possession once indescribably dear to him, would awaken
but slight emotions; even the recent history of the dwelling which he built and
furnished, would be no more to him than the rehearsal to a grown person of that
which had happened to a block house, or card figure, which amused his childhood.
We walk and sit in the places identified with our last remembrances of the
departed; but he is not there; we hallow the anniversaries of his birth and
death; but he gives us no recognition; we read his letters; they make him seem
alive; his voice, his smile, his love are there; and when we have finished,
nature, exhausted with its weeping, sighs, "And where is he?" He is gone to
heaven. Even the earthly house of his tabernacle is dissolved; that part of him
which was all of which we were cognizant by our senses, is no more. We could not
recognize it; to the earth, out of which it was taken, it has, by slow degrees,
returned,--as though every thing earthly, belonging to him, 'must needs die, and
be as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.' We travel
to his birthplace; there is the house where he was born; we meet those who grew
with him side by side; we are among the scenes which were most familiar to him;
he planted those trees; he collected those pictures; there is his portrait, he
rested here, he studied, he worked, he rejoiced, he wept, in these consecrated
places; but did we go thinking to find him there? "Did I not say unto you, Go
not?" We shall surely make him real to our thoughts, if not to our senses, where
he lies buried. But we may as well stand upon the sea shore, where we had the
last look of a sea-faring friend, and think that those waters, and those sands,
and that horizon, will restore him. They only serve to open farther the path of
his departure; they lead our thoughts away to dwell upon him where we imagine
him to be. Nowhere does heaven seem more real than at the grave of a friend; for
we know that he has not perished, and as we stand on that verge of all our
fruitless search and expectation, we are compelled to fix him somewhere in our
thoughts; but as he is nowhere behind us, we look onward and upward. Our desire
for departed friends, however natural and innocent, if it resulted as we
sometimes would have it, would prove to be unwise. Suppose that those "fifty
strong men" had found Elijah, or in any way could have prevented his translation
to heaven. With exultation, they would have led him back across the Jordan to
the company of their friends, amidst the thanksgivings of the people. But, alas!
for the prophet himself, this would have been his loss, even had it proved to be
their gain. The opening Jordan, cleft in twain by his rapt spirit, pressing its
way to the skies, had returned to its course; and now the fords of the river,
with its rocky bed, would have required his laboring feet to grope their way
back to his toil; or the arms of men, instead of the chariots of fire and horses
of fire, would have borne him again to the dull realities of life; and there,
rebuking Ahab, and fleeing from Jezebel, punishing the prophets of Baal, and
upbraiding the people of God in their idolatries, fasting and faint under
junipers, or covering his face with his mantle at the still small voice of the
Lord his God, he would again have prayed, "O Lord God, take away my life, for I
am no better than my fathers." 'Let me not wait longer for my promised
translation; let me die as my fathers did; for wherein am I better than they?'
So weary had he grown of life. Blind and weak do these fifty strong men seem to
us, in searching for this ascended prophet, this traveller over the King's road
in royal state, one of the only two who might not taste of death; the companion,
in heaven, of Enoch, with a body which fills all the ransomed spirits there with
joyful expectation, because it is a pledge and earnest of "the adoption, to wit,
the redemption of their bodies." If, amid the new wonders and raptures of the
heavenly world, he had had one moment to look down upon those "fifty strong
men," as they searched for him, he might well have used, in cheerful irony,
something like his old upbraidings of the priests near Baal's altar: "Search
deeper, ye 'strong men,' in the thickets and caves; peradventure I sleep in the
brakes, and must be awaked; call, with your fifty voices together, that I may be
startled from my trance; will ye give over till ye bring me back to Jericho?
Will ye search but three days? Shall I lose the remnant of my life on earth?"
And while they grew weary and discouraged, and concluded that, if he should be
found, it might be in the far distant hills of Moab, or the wilds of Philistia,
or they knew not where, and went back with hearts unsatisfied, and debating
whether he were yet a wanderer upon earth, or whether so impossible a thing as
they deemed his translation to heaven, without dying, had taken place, the
glorified Elijah was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with Moses, Joshua, Samuel,
and David. But even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like him. There,
with a body like unto Christ's own future glorious body, he sat, with but one
compeer--Enoch, and he, transcending all the hosts of the redeemed in the
foretasted glories of the resurrection. Adam, by whom came death, sees in him
that which he himself is to share, when by one Man, also, shall come the
resurrection from the dead. Abel, whose feet first trod the dark, cold stream,
leaving his murdered body behind him, beholds with love and wonder him who
passed the river of death ("that ancient river!") without dying. Even the Word
beholds in him an earnest of his own incarnation, resurrection, and ascension
from Olivet. To-day, our loved ones in heaven look upon him, and say, as Peter
did at this prophet's visit on Tabor, (when he spoke of tabernacles there--"one
for Elias,") "Master, it is good for us to be here." But we, like the "fifty
strong men," would find them and bring them back; and, like Peter, would build
tabernacles to retain them. The family circle is gathered together at some
birthday or festival, and, perhaps, we long for the departed, and think that
they long for us; and we would bring them back, and place them in their deserted
chairs. We are "strong men" in the power of grief, and in our wishes; but the
search for Elijah is the counterpart of our vain desires and most unreasonable
sorrow. When our friends have gone to heaven, it is not apt to be heaven, so
much as earthly sorrow, which fills our minds. Happily, we have been taught to
believe, and we do generally believe, that the souls of the righteous enter
immediately into glory; that their happiness is perfect, though not completed;
they are as happy as disembodied spirits can be; unspeakably happier than they
were here, but still not in full possession of those sources of pleasure which
they will receive when their bodies are raised, and their whole natures are made
complete. But "to die is gain;" it is "to depart and to be with Christ, which is
far better;" it is entering "into the joy of their Lord." That dreary thought of
sleeping after death till the day of judgment; the idea that Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, became insensible at death, and that the last thing which Jacob, for
example, knew, was Joseph's kiss, and the next thing which he will know will be
the archangel's trump, the interval of many thousands of years being a perfect
blank in his existence, is so unlike the benevolent order of God's providence in
nature and grace, that it cannot gain much credence with believers in the simple
representations of the Bible. What a mockery Elijah's translation seems, upon
that theory! Whither was he translated? Did the chariots of fire, and the horses
of fire, convey him to a dreamless sleep of thousands of years? Was that pomp,
that emblazonry, all that fiery pageant, a deception signifying nothing but that
the greatest of prophets was to begin a stupid slumber, which, this day, under a
heaven with not one redeemed soul in it, and in a world where there is every
thing to be done for God and men, holds him, and every other dead saint, in a
useless suspension of his consciousness, and, indeed, for so many ages,
annihilation? Poor economy in the dispensation of overflowing love to
intelligent beings,--we say it with submission,--does this seem to be; nor can
we think that, in the case of Elijah, it was this which was heralded by horses
and chariots of fire. Chariots and horses are emblems of flight; but if sleep
were descending upon the hero of the prophetic age, twilight would more
appropriately have drawn her soft veil over nature, birds would have begun their
vespers, clouds would have put on their changing, pensive colors, while cadences
of music, breathed by the winds, would have shed lethargic influences into the
scene. Inspiration does not trifle with us by really meaning such a preparation
for a sleep of ages, and yet informing us, in so many words, that "the Lord
would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind." No; going to heaven is not
going to sleep, and going to sleep is not going to heaven. Sleep and death are
used figuratively for each other, according to the laws of language, which
describes appearances without regard to scientific truth, as in speaking of the
sun's rising, for example, and the going down of the sun; but to fall asleep in
Jesus is to awake in heaven; to be absent from the body is to be present with
the Lord. This we all believe; and may we never be moved away from this
cheering, animating hope. Yet how little power has this belief and hope upon our
feelings and conduct! for our Christian graces partake of the same imperfection
which characterizes our whole nature; the soil is poor in which they grow; the
seasons are short, the climate cold; they do not reach maturity. It is
instructive to notice how men who have had the very best advantages, and the
greatest knowledge, are, nevertheless, prone to unbelief. Christ appeared to his
disciples, and upbraided them because they believed not them which said he was
risen. Their incredulity strikes us as marvellous. They were not the first, nor
the last, whose want of faith is a marvel. These sons of the prophets in
Elisha's day were equally slow to believe. They themselves had said to him,
"Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day?"
Elisha came back to them from the scene of the translation. Of course he told
them what had happened, describing minutely the whole of that preternatural
scene; he probably related the conversation which Elijah had with him as they
walked; and this inspired companion of the departed prophet, having himself no
doubt that Elijah had gone to heaven, so instructed these sons of the prophets.
But how hard it is for the things which are unseen and eternal to seize and hold
our minds! how readily we yield to surmises, rather than admit the clear
disclosures of spiritual things! Straightway these sons of the prophets, who
should have retired each to his secret place, for contemplation and prayer, and,
in the solemn assembly, should have directed the thoughts of each other and of
the people to the instructive lessons suggested by the departure of Elijah to
heaven, were making up an exploring party, to prove that their illustrious chief
had met with some disaster in being left forlorn upon some mountain, or in a
valley; that the spirit of God had entranced him, and that his weary feet,
instead of treading the pavement of heaven, were ensnared in some dark place;
and so, in pity for him, and with filial love, they would seek him, and bring
him back to Jericho! If we had clear and strong faith, our joy at the thought of
a glorified spirit, however necessary its presence to us here, would transcend
all our sorrows; the streaming beams of sunshine would irradiate our weeping; we
should think more of his happiness than of our discomfort. Instead of departed
spirits falling asleep, it is we who have a spirit of slumber. O that we might
walk by faith with glorified spirits before the throne, instead of remanding
them,--as it seems we sometimes would do, if we could,--to the ignorance and
infirmity of our condition. Our feelings towards the departed are the same as
towards other prohibited things. Many are continually seeking for pleasures
which God has taken away, or is purposely withholding from them. Let any one
look at the history of his feelings, and see if his state of mind be not one of
perpetual expectation of some form of happiness yet to arrive; an ideal of
bliss, some prefigured condition, in which contentment and peace are to abide;
while the discovery that he is not to have it, would make him inconsolably
miserable. Our search for lost joys, or for those which God is not prepared, or
not disposed, to give us, and the happiness which he desires rather to give us,
and to have us seek, are severally represented to us by this search for Elijah,
and by Elijah himself, who is, meanwhile, at God's right hand. At his right hand
are pleasures forever-more; but some, in the ardor and strength of their
affections, are seeking for that which they will never obtain, and that is,
happiness independent of God. Some tell us that they mean to make the most of
life, and to be happy while they live; therefore, begone, reflection! religion
is not for the spring-tide of youth; mirth and merry days are for the young;
soberness and the russet garb of autumn belong to the decline of life, which
certainly to them, they think, is far off;--as though every material necessary
for their last, long sleep, may not at this moment be in the warerooms and
shops; as though they could boast themselves even of one to-morrow, and knew
what the to-morrows of many years would bring forth. The Bible is against their
way of thinking and manner of life; and to push aside the Bible in our search
after any thing, is a certain sign of being in the wrong. And all this with the
mistaken belief that to love God, and to be loved of him, is not the greatest,
the only satisfying good,--the God that framed the voice for that music which
charms a circle of friends, and made those curious fingers, and gave them all
that cunning skill which sheds delight on others, and empowered that heart to
swell with such conceptions of earthly pleasure;--and that to love him, and be
loved by him, is the direst necessity of our being, to be postponed as long as
possible, and then to be accepted as a last resort and the less of two evils.
Where is the Lord God of Elijah, the God of all power and might, the God of all
grace and consolation, the God of our life, and the length of our days? Banished
from the world which these friends have made for themselves; an intruder into
the charmed circle in which the wand of fancy has enclosed them; a dreaded power
standing over them, to snatch away the only bliss which they ever expect to
enjoy. O gilded butterflies, made for a few days of sunshine, and doomed to
perish at the first touch of frost! had they no souls; were there no hereafter,
no heaven, no hell; if it would not be as desirable to be happy millions of
years from to-day, as now; if they were not including all their hopes and
efforts to be happy within a handbreadth of time, and liable to lose even
that,--the wise man might stop with saying, "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth;
and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of
thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes;" but the infinite future compels
him to add, "but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into
judgment." Such are the motives by which, in their present condition, and with
their present views, they are most likely to be affected; yet some of them, we
are glad to say, in their best moods, are also affected and influenced aright
when we tell them that, even if our existence terminated at death, the joys
which are now to be found in loving and serving God, are better than the
pleasures of sin for a season. There is not one of us who has not lost a friend,
a schoolmate, a companion of early life, one who has disappeared from our side,
a frequent associate in the business of life, or one whom we have been
accustomed to see in the places of business; and perhaps a member of our family
circle. Now, it is profitable to consider that the same thoughts which we have
of them, others will ere long have concerning us. What would make us satisfied
and happy to know respecting them? What are we glad to say of their preparation
for an eternal state? What would we have had that preparation be? In what
respects better or different? Where do we love to assign them their places? And
what is it pleasant to believe are their thoughts of us, of earth, of eternity,
of the gospel, of this life as a season of preparation for heaven? We shall soon
be the subjects of the same contemplations in the minds of others. The hosts of
that long procession, of which we are the part now passing over the stage, are
urging and pressing us from behind, and we must go down, as others have before
us,--our love, our envy, our hatred perish,--and we no more have any portion in
all that is done under the sun. We must give up happiness as the great aim and
end of existence, and, instead of it, take this for our supreme endeavor and
chief end--the conscientious performance of our duty to God, and to others. We
are never really happy till we cease to expect happiness from the things of this
world. As soon as we begin to be satisfied with God, and find that to think of
God, to love him, to trust in him, to serve him, is happiness enough, we attain
to solid peace; and then, turning and following the sun, all desirable pleasure
pursues us and solicits us, like our shadows, the more eagerly and steadily the
more that we flee from them, and the less that we turn ourselves to them. We
never can be happy by searching for happiness; but when we give up this search,
and duty becomes the motto of life, we are inevitably happy. God must satisfy
us--his personal love to us, communion with him, the contemplation of his
character, ways, and works; in short, the consciousness of having him for a
personal friend, disclosing all our thoughts to him, looking to him and waiting
for him in all things, and, as the Bible expresses it, "walking" with him. Then
he makes our wants his care; and while he leads us through strange paths which
we should not have chosen, it is to bring us, at the last, into a condition
which will make us happy chiefly from the reflection that God himself appointed
it. Disappointments, of which we were forewarned, and which we had every reason
to expect, embitter that life whose only sources of happiness are confined to
this world, and do not relate to God. Making him the supreme source of our
happiness, we give up undue sorrow for departed friends, feeling that they are
removed from all need of our commiseration, and all power to afford us comfort
and help, any further than their example and remembered words instruct us. We
shall then be chiefly concerned to know and to do the will of God, to watch over
the interests of our souls, preparing for life, with its important duties, and
storing up those recollections which are to occupy our thoughts in the review of
life beyond the grave. We shall bear in mind that we, too, are to have
survivors, to whom it will be the greatest favor if we leave a good assurance,
based upon their remembrance of our piety, that we are happy, thus constraining
them to follow us to heaven. We shall do well if we habitually say, as Elijah
said to Elisha, "The Lord hath sent me to Jordan;" and that we are one day to be
taken up and conveyed to that same heaven whither Elijah went, and from which he
came to meet Christ, and to speak with him of his decease, which he should
accomplish at Jerusalem. What if we knew that some day, not far distant, flaming
chariots and horses, over our dwelling, would wait to bring us home to God? The
ministering spirits are already designated who are to perform this office for
those who are heirs of salvation. What, then, are we searching for among the
dark, gloomy valleys of sorrow, or on the hills of earthly vision? If our
friends are with Christ, we must be prepared to be with him, or lose their
society; and that loss will be worse than the first. Sometimes we feel as though
we were sailing away from our departed friends, leaving them behind us. Not so;
we are sailing towards them; they went forward, and we are nearer to them now
than yesterday; and the night is far spent; the day is at hand. If life, or any
undue portion, be spent in grief which unfits us for duty, we shall see, in
heaven, how much better it would have been had we had more faith, and had lived
more as then we should desire our surviving friends to live, quickened and
strengthened by the assured hope of our being in heaven, and by the expectation
of meeting us there. But there is one kind of sorrow and desire for departed
friends which, in its consequences, is greatly to be deplored. Some refuse to
become decided Christians, because their friends, they think, were not believers
in the faith which these surviving friends are now persuaded is the truth. To
embrace this truth, as essential to salvation, it is felt, will be to condemn
these departed friends; and some have, in so many words, declared that they
preferred to share the fate of their companions, or children, who gave no
evidence of having accepted the gospel, as it is now viewed by these survivors.
How sad would be such a catastrophe as this: The departed friend, in the secret
exercises of his mind, and by the good Spirit of God, may have been, at the last
hour, prevailed upon to accept the offers of salvation by a crucified Redeemer.
He gave no intimation of this, owing, perhaps, to bodily weakness, or to fear
and distrust; but, through infinite mercy, he was saved by faith in the Lamb of
God. The surviving friend, persuaded of the truth, refuses to comply with it,
and loves the departed friend more than Christ, or truth and duty; and then,
dying, finds that the departed friend is saved, through that very faith, which
the other refused from idolatrous attachment to the departed; and now they are
separated; whereas, had the survivor forsaken all for Christ and the truth, he
would have had a hundred fold in this world, and, in the world to come, would
have found that friend whom he would, as it were, have forsaken for Christ's
sake and the gospel's. It is safe, it is best, for each of us to do his duty, to
walk by the light afforded us, and not to make a creature our standard, nor our
chief good. If we meet certain of our friends at the end of their search after
pleasure, having forgotten their God and Saviour, and see them disappointed, and
utterly destitute of any thing to make them happy forever, and all because they
would not forego their chase after unsatisfying pleasure,--there is many a
faithful Christian friend, whose example and advice they disregarded, who could
then reply, "Did I not say unto you, Go not?" In the name of some unspeakably
dear to you, we say, "We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I
will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath
spoken good concerning Israel." Our friends, who have gone to heaven, ought not
to be invested, in our thoughts, with such melancholy associations as we are
prone to connect with them. To die is gain. Trouble, and sorrow, and the dark
river, interpose between us and heaven; but in the prospect which has opened
before the eye of the redeemed spirit, there is nothing but widening and
brightening glory. We must not seek for consolation at their departure by
bringing them back, in our thoughts, to our dwellings, but by going forward, in
faith, ourselves, to their dwelling. There is much to encourage and help us in
doing so, in the following lines, which may be read with profit upon each
anniversary of a friend's departure to heaven, until surviving friends read them
at the returning anniversaries of our own entrance into the joy of our Lord:--
"A YEAR IN HEAVEN. A YEAR UNCALENDARED; for what Hast thou to do with mortal
time? Its dole of moments entereth not That circle, mystic and sublime, Whose
unreached centre is the throne Of Him, before whose awful brow, Meeting
eternities are known As but an everlasting now. The thought removes thee far
away,-- Too far,--beyond my love and tears; Ah, let me hold thee, as I may; And
count thy time by earthly years. A YEAR OF BLESSEDNESS; wherein Not one dim
cloud hath crossed thy soul; No sigh of grief, no touch of sin, No frail
mortality's control; Nor once hath disappointment stung, Nor care, world-weary,
made thee pine; But rapture, such as human tongue Hath found no language for, is
thine. Made perfect at thy passing, who Can sum thy added glory now? As on, and
onward, upward, through The angel ranks that lowly bow, Ascending still from
height to height Unfaltering, where rapt spirits trod, Nor pausing 'mid their
circles bright, Thou tendest inward unto God. A YEAR OF PROGRESS, in the love
That's only learned in heaven; thy mind Unclogged of clay, and free to soar,
Hath left the realms of doubt behind, And wondrous things which finite thought
In vain essayed to solve, appear To thy untasked inquiries, fraught With
explanation strangely clear. Thy reason owns no forced control, As held it here
in needful thrall; God's mysteries court thy questioning soul, And thou may'st
search and know them all. A YEAR OF LOVE; thy yearning heart Was always tender,
e'en to tears, With sympathies, whose sacred art Made holy all thy cherished
years; But love, whose speechless ecstasy Had overborne the finite, now Throbs
through thy being, pure and free, And burns upon thy radiant brow. For thou
those hands' dear clasp hast felt, Where still the nail-prints are displayed;
And thou before that face hast knelt, Which wears the scars the thorns have
made. A YEAR WITHOUT THEE; I had thought My orphaned heart would break and die,
Ere time had meek quiescence brought, Or soothed the tears it could not dry; And
yet I live, to faint and quail Before the human grief I bear; To miss thee so,
then drown the wail That trembles on my lips in prayer. Thou praising, while I
vainly thrill; Thou glorying, while I weakly pine; And thus between thy heart
and mine The distance ever widening still. A YEAR OF TEARS TO ME; to thee The
end of thy probation's strife, The archway to eternity, The portal of immortal
life; To me the pall, the bier, the sod; To thee the palm of victory given.
Enough, my heart; thank God! thank God! That thou hast been a year in heaven.


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  CHAPTER 17: THE SILENCE OF THE DEAD
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IV. THE SILENCE OF THE DEAD. Dear, beauteous Death, the jewel of the just.
Shining nowhere but in the dark, What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, Could
men outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may know, At
first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair field, or grove, he sings in
now, That is to him unknown. HENRY VAUGHAN. The silence of the dead is one of
the most impressive and affecting things connected with the separate state of
the soul. We hear the voice of a dying friend, in some last wish, or charge, or
prayer, or farewell, or in some exclamation of joy or hope; and though years are
multiplied over the dead, that voice returns no more in any moment of day or
night, of joy or sorrow, of labor or rest, in life or in death. The voices of
creation return to us at periodical seasons. The early spring bird startles us
with her unexpected note; the winter is over and gone. But no periodical change
brings back the voices of departed friends. A member of the family embarks on a
long voyage; but, be it ever so long, if life is spared, the letter is received,
in which the written words, so characteristic of him, recall his looks and the
tones of his voice. Years pass away, and the sound of his footsteps is at the
door again, and his voice is heard in the dwelling. But of the dead there comes
no news; from the grave no voice, from the separate state no message. With our
desire to speak once more to the departed, and to hear them speak, we feel that
they must have an intense desire to speak to us. We wonder why they do not break
the silence. There is so much of which they could inform us; it would be such a
relief, we think, to have one word from them, assuring us that they arrived
safely, and are happy, and, above all things, granting us their forgiveness for
the sins which now have awakened sorrow. But we wait, and look, and wonder, in
vain. When we think of the number of the dead, this silence appears impressive.
Their number far exceeds that of the living. Could they be assembled together,
and could those now alive be set over against them, upon an immense plain, to a
spectator from above we should be a small company in comparison with them.
Should they lift up their voices together, ours could not be heard. Yet from
that vast multitude we never hear a voice,--not even a whisper,--nor see a sign.
Standing in a cemetery a few miles distant from the great city, you hear the
low, muffled roar from the streets and bridges, reminding you of the living tide
which is coursing along those highways. But with eight thousand of the dead
around you in that cemetery, and a world of spirits, which no man can number,
just within the veil, you hear nothing from them. No one comes back to tell us
of his experience; no warning, nor comfort, nor counsel, ever reaches our ears.
Whatever our trouble, or our joy may be, our need or prosperity; however long
and painful the absence of the departed may have been; however lonely we may
feel, wishing for some word of remembrance and love; and though we visit the
grave day by day, and call on the name of the departed, and use every art of
endearment to pierce the veil between us,--there is the same determined, cold,
lasting silence. "To go down into silence" is a scriptural phrase for the state
of the dead. Our feelings seek relief from those vague, uncertain thoughts
respecting the dead which we find occasioned by the gentle manner in which death
most frequently occurs. The breath is shorter and shorter, and finally ceases,
yet so imperceptibly, that, for a moment, it is uncertain whether the last
breath has expired. There is no visible trace of the outgoing of the soul. Could
we see the spirit leave the body, we should feel that one of the mysteries of
death is solved. Could we trace its flight into the air, could we watch its form
as it disappeared among the clouds, or melted away in a distance greater than
the eye can comprehend, we should not, perhaps, ask for a word to assure us
respecting the state of the soul. But there is no more perfect delineation of
the appearances which death presents to us, than in the following inspired
description: "As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth
up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall
not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." We see the lying down, the
fixedness of the posture, the utter disregard, in the cold remains, of every
thing which passes before them; and these remains are like the channels of a
river, or the flats of the sea, when the tide has utterly forsaken them. The
soul is like those vanished waters, as to any manifestation that it continues to
exist. We miss the departed from his accustomed places; we expect to meet him at
certain hours of the day; those hours return, and he is not there; we start as
we look upon his vacant place at the table, or around the evening lamp, or in
the circle at prayers. No tongue can describe that blank, that chasm, which is
made by death in the family circle, or the variations in the tones of sorrow and
desire with which those words are secretly repeated, day after day, and night
after night: "And where is he?" * * * * * Is there any assignable cause for the
silence of the dead? We cannot, with certainty, assign the reason for it, and we
do not know why the dead are not suffered to reappear to us. We can,
nevertheless, see great wisdom and use in this silence, and in our perfect
ignorance respecting their state. It is the arrangement of divine Providence
that faith, and not sight, shall influence our characters and conduct.--It would
be inconsistent with this great law if we should see or hear from the dead. The
object of God, in his dealings with us, is to exalt the Bible as our instructor.
If men were left to visions and voices, in which there is so much room for
mistake and delusion, the confusion of human affairs would be indescribably
dreadful. Every man would have his vision, or his message, the proof, or the
correctness, of which would necessarily be concealed from others, who might have
contrary directions, or impressions; and human affairs would then be like a sea,
in which many rivers ran across each other. It would not be safe for departed
spirits to be intrusted with the power of communicating with the living. Though
they know far more than we, yet their information is limited; and, especially,
if they should undertake to counsel us about the future, as they would do in
their earnestness to help us, we can easily see that, being finite as they are,
and unable to look into the future, they might involve us in serious mistakes,
either by their ignorance, or by the contrariety of their information. Far
better is it for man to look only to God, who sees the end from the beginning,
with whom is no variableness, and who is able, as our anxious friends would not
be, to conceal from us the future, or any information respecting it, which it
would be an injury for us to know. Should we be informed of certain things which
will happen to us years hence, either the expectation of them would engross our
attention, and hinder our usefulness, or the fear of them would paralyze effort,
and destroy health, if not life. Borrowed trouble, even now, constitutes a large
part of our unhappiness; but the certain knowledge of a sorrow approaching us
with unrelenting steps, would spread a pall over every thing; while prosperity,
far in the prospect, would tempt us to forget our dependence upon God, and would
weaken the motives to patient continuance in well doing for its own sake. Then,
with regard to any assurance which the dead would give us about truth and duty,
we need not their help. For the dead can tell us substantially no more than we
find recorded in the Bible. They would describe heaven to us, and speak of
future punishment. But suppose that they did. What language would they use more
graphic, or more intelligible to us, than the language of the Bible? Whatever
they said, we should feel obliged to compare it with the Scriptures; if it
should be according to them, we do not need it. Besides, the appearance to us of
departed friends, would, in many cases, only operate on our fears. But the Bible
pleads with us by many gentle motives, as well as by warnings and terrific
descriptions, and sets before us numberless inducements to repent, which the
whole world of the dead, uninspired, could not so well furnish. The appearance
and words of a spirit would excite us, and make us afraid; we could not feel and
act as well, under such influences, as we can under the calm, dispassionate,
convincing, and persuasive influences of the Bible. One of the most intelligent
and cultivated of women, the wife of a missionary in Turkey, in her last
sickness, having heard her husband read to her several times, from the Pilgrim's
Progress, respecting the River of Death and the Celestial City, at last said to
him, as he was opening the book, "Read to me out of the Bible; that soothes me;
I can hear it for a long time; but even Bunyan agitates me." As much as we
suppose it would comfort us to have intercourse with the dead, it is easy to see
that the great law of the divine government, by which faith, and not sight, is
the appointed means of our spiritual good, would be violated, could the dead
speak with us. We are to trust in the mercy and the justice of God. This we
could not so well do, if we knew things about which, now, we are obliged to
exercise faith. The inspired Word, the only and the all-sufficient rule of faith
and duty, is a better guide than the voices of the dead. An interesting
illustration of this is given by one who witnessed the appearance of departed
spirits on a certain most interesting occasion. Two illustrious men, of the
Jewish line, appeared and spake with Christ. The person of the Saviour
experienced a remarkable transfiguration, assuring his human soul of the joy set
before him; the presence of the celestial spirits, also, confirming his
assurance respecting the separate existence of souls, and the whole transaction
being designed to strengthen the faith of the disciples, and of the world, in
the Saviour. But what comparative value does one of the inspired witnesses of
this scene give to this heavenly communication, these voices of the dead, and
this visit from the heavenly world? Does he build his faith upon it, as upon a
corner stone? No; but after telling us, in glowing language, respecting this
most wonderful and impressive scene, he says, "We have also a more sure word of
prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed as unto a light that shineth in
a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts." That
sure word,--"more sure" than the testimony of departed spirits, or than voices
from the other world,--is the Bible; for he immediately adds, "For the prophecy
came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost." The testimony of departed spirits, even of Moses and
Elijah, might be, after all, only "the will of man;" but in the Bible men have
spoken as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. As to its being a comfort, in any
case, that departed friends should speak to us, it is doubtful whether it would
prove to be so. Suppose them to utter words of endearment; this would open the
fountains of grief in our souls afresh. Suppose them to tell us that they are
safe and happy; it would be far better for us, in many cases, to hope respecting
this, than to know it; the knowledge of it might make us careless and too
confident about ourselves; we should be less inclined to shun the errors of
these friends, to guard against their imperfections, and to fear lest a promise
being left us of entering into that rest, any of us should seem to come short of
it. One of the most inconvenient and uneasy states of mind, is that of
insatiable curiosity--longing to know that which is concealed, dispirited at the
delay of information, refusing effort except under the spur of absolute
assurance. Far better and more healthful is that state of mind which performs
present duty, and leaves the rest to the unfolding hand of time; which disdains
that prying, inquisitive disposition which is all eye and ear, which lives on
excitement, which has no self-respect, nor regard for any thing but to know
something yet unknown. If God suffered the dead to speak to us, we should always
be on the watch for some sign; we should be unfitted for the common, practical
duties of life; we should be superstitious, visionary, fanatical, timorous. As
it is, how eager we are to pry into the future, or into things purposely hidden
from us! If it were certainly known that one had communication with the dead, or
if we had good reason to expect such communications, labor would be neglected,
faith, prayer, hope, confidence in God would decrease, the Bible would be
undervalued through a superior regard to a different mode of revelation, and we
should live, as it were, among the tombs. A morbid state of feeling would
pervade our minds, and the world would be full of enchantments, necromancy, and
cunning craftiness. Blessed be God for the silence of the dead! We are glad that
our weak and foolish hearts, so prone to love the creature more than the
Creator, are broken off, by the impenetrable veil of death, from all connection
with the departed. The salutary influences of death on survivors would be
greatly lessened, if our connection and communication with them were continued.
God is our chief good, not our friends, nor our children; he shuts them up in
silence from us, to see if we can say, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? And
there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee." The painful effect upon
our feelings, and upon our nervous system, of separations from departed friends,
is involuntary and natural; but to cherish our griefs, to spend much time in
melancholy moods, or in poring over the memorials of the departed, so as to
excite and indulge morbid feelings, is not Christian nor wise. While this is
true, and there is much immoderate and irrational grief, the disposition, with
many, is to forget the dead as soon as possible, and forever. Some need to think
far more of the deceased. They should remember that the dead are alive; that no
doubt they think of them; and that, instead of being separated farther and
farther from the deceased, by the lapse of time, they are every day coming
nearer and nearer to them, and they must meet again. It is well for us
frequently to remember that the silence of the dead is no true exponent of their
real state. Incoherent and wild as the thoughts and feelings sometimes are,
under the distracting influence of affliction and death, and all uncertain as we
are about the departure of the soul, we are not left without sure and most
satisfying information respecting the separate state. There is no annihilation.
The life of the soul is not extinguished like the flame of a lamp. Existence is
not that lingering, twinkling spark which it seems to be in the moments
preceding death. To be absent from the body, for a Christian, is to be present
with the Lord; to die is gain; to depart, and be with Christ, is far better.
When the dust returns to the earth as it was, the spirit ascends to God, who
gave it. The soul is more vigorous and active than when shut up in the body,
because a higher form of life is required in being with God and angels. We are
told that the pious dead are "the spirits of just men made perfect." All
imperfection arising from bodily organization, as well as from our fallen state
here, has ceased, and the soul has become a pure spirit, in a spiritual world,
engaged in spiritual pursuits. Memory is awake; every perceptive faculty is in
perfection; the soul that sees far distant places, in a moment, in sleep,--that
holds converse with other, but absent, minds, while the body is sealed in
slumber,--not only does not need the present body to make it capable of
perception, but when escaped from this material condition, and from dependence
upon these bodily senses, which now are like colored glass to the eyes, it will
be far more capable than before; though the spiritual body, at the last, will
advance it to a still higher condition. Its judgment is sound, its sensibilities
are quick, its thoughts are full of unmixed joy. But we probably could not
understand the nature of its employments, nor its discoveries, nor its
sensations, any further than we now do from the word of God. We have no record,
nor tradition, of any disclosures made by Lazarus, or the widow of Nain's son,
or the dead who came out of their graves at the crucifixion, and went into the
Holy City, and appeared unto many. The only way to account for this seems to be,
to suppose that they told nothing of what they had seen or heard. Had they made
any disclosures of the unseen world, those disclosures would never have been
forgotten. They would have been preserved in the memories of men, to be handed
down from age to age. Paul himself had no very distinct recollection of what he
had heard and seen in Paradise; for he says that he could not tell whether he
was in the body or out of the body. We think in words, which at the time are
intelligible, but we often fail when we try to produce them; so that Paul's
expression, very singular in each part of it,--"heard unspeakable words,"--may
refer to the impressions made on his own mind in his revelations, as not
possible to be clothed in speech. It may have been with him, upon his return to
the body, and with the risen dead, as it was with Nebuchadnezzar, who knew that
he had dreamed, and the dream had made powerful impressions on his mind, but the
dream itself had departed from him. Now, if the bodily senses, or the soul while
in the body, cannot comprehend so as to express what has been seen in heaven, it
is doubtful if we could understand it if it should be revealed by a spirit from
heaven. The Bible has probably given us as definite information about heaven as
we could possibly understand--certainly as much as God judges best for our
usefulness and happiness. But we must probably learn an unearthly language, and,
in order to this, unearthly ideas, before we can understand the things which are
within the veil. The modes of communication in heaven between people of strange
languages, whether by a common speech, or by the power given to the disciples at
the day of Pentecost, or by intuition, are not made known to us; but this
wonderful faculty of language, holding an intermediate place between spirit and
matter, has, of course, a corresponding faculty in the world of spirits. It is,
no doubt, an inconceivably pleasurable source of enjoyment. This increases the
sublimity which there is in the silence of the dead, and its impressiveness. For
what fancy can conceive of the communications, from heart to heart, in that
multitude where every new acquaintance is the occasion of some new joy, or wakes
some thrilling recollection, or leads to some interesting discovery, and gives
some fresh objects of love and praise! The land of silence surely extends no
farther than to the gates of that heavenly city. All is life and activity
within; but from that world, so populous with thoughts, and words, and songs, no
revelation penetrates through the dark, silent land which lies between us and
them. Our friends are there. Stars, so distant from us that their light, which
began its travel ages since, has not reached us, are none the less worlds,
performing their revolutions, and occupied by their busy population of
intelligent spirits, whose history is full of wonders. Yet the first ray
denoting the existence of those worlds, has never met the eye of the astronomer
in his incessant vigils. The silence of the departed will, for each of us, soon,
very soon, be interrupted. Entering, among breaking shadows and softly unfolding
light, the border land, we shall gradually awake to the opening vision of things
unseen and eternal, all so kindly revealing themselves to our unaccustomed
senses as to make us say, "How beautiful!" and instead of exciting fear, leading
us almost to hasten the hand which is removing the veil. Some well-known voice,
so long silent, may be the first to utter our name; we are recognized, we are
safe. A face, a dear, dear face, breaks forth amidst the crayoned lines of the
dissolving night; a form--an embrace--assures us that faith has not deceived us,
but has delivered us up to the objects hoped for, the things not seen. O
beatific moment! awaiting every follower of them who, by faith and patience,
inherit the promises--dwellers there "whither the Forerunner is for us entered."
* * * * * As we are soon to be utterly silent towards surviving friends, and the
world in which we now live, we should use our speech as we shall wish we had
done when we are silent in death. Any counsels, instructions, records,
explanations, communications of any kind, which we would make, we should be
diligent to perform. All the loving words, and tokens of affection, which we may
suppose we shall hereafter desire to communicate, we shall do well habitually to
bear in mind, and let them influence our feelings and conduct, day by day. In
times of sickness, of separation, of absence, at happy returns, our feelings
towards familiar friends and members of the family are such as might well be the
standard, and pattern, of our general intercourse, especially when we think that
the days will come when we shall highly prize and long for that intercourse,
which now we have such opportunity to enrich with sweet and fragrant
recollections, occasioning no pang of regret, nor sting. It is well to remember
that, one day, we must part, and to let that anticipation intensify our love,
and add charms to this daily companionship, which may soon appear to be a
privilege which we did not sufficiently prize. The time will come, when, to many
a beloved survivor, a word or sign, breaking the silence of the departed spirit,
and giving some assurance that it is happy, would, perhaps, be the means of
dispelling a life-long sorrow--would lift a crushing burden from the heart. The
time to prepare that assurance, so that it shall come with most effectual power,
is now, in days of health, when the evidences of our piety shall not be
attainted by a suspicion of constraint and insincerity, arising from late
repentance and an apparently forced submission to God. Our recollections of a
departed Christian friend, of whose salvation his pious life makes us perfectly
assured, come over us like the soft pulsations of a west wind in summer, laden
with the sweets of a new-mown field; or like the clear, streaming moonlight in
the brief interval between the broken clouds; or like remembered music, which
some accidental word of a song has startled from its place and diffused through
the soul. Thus departed Christian friends are the means of unspeakable happiness
to survivors; thus "their works do follow them;" and we should make large
account of this when we are weighing the question whether we will now, or in the
closing hours of life, so fearfully uncertain, begin to love and serve God. The
question which earth asks respecting one and another, "Where is he?" is no doubt
repeated in heaven: Have you met him in any of these streets? Did you see him on
yonder hills? Angels, returned from other happy worlds, have you heard of him?
Where is he? He is conscious, intelligent, receiving sensations from objects
around him as vividly as ever. But, Where is he? Of others, the question could
be answered by ten thousand happy voices, "All is well." With regard to many,
the silence of the dead, forbidding our inquiries, is the only thing which, in
any measure, composes the grief of friends. But as to our Christian friends, we
have no more reason to inquire with solicitude respecting them, than concerning
the Saviour himself. "I go to prepare a place for you,"--"that where I am, there
ye may be also." The dying Christian may truly say to his friends, as the
Saviour did to his: "WHITHER I GO YE KNOW, AND THE WAY YE KNOW."


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  CHAPTER 18: THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY
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V. THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. What though my body run to dust? Faith cleaves
unto it, counting every grain With an exact and most particular trust, Reserving
all for flesh again. GEORGE HERBERT. It is good to think of Michael, the
archangel, disputing with the devil about the body of Moses. The dispute was
over a grave. The Most High had himself performed the funeral rites of his
servant; for, we read, "The Lord buried him." We naturally think of the
archangel as placed in charge of the precious dust. Some great commission,
connected with the resurrection of the dead, appears to be held by the chief
spirit of the angelic world. "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God." The burial
of each and every body which is destined to the resurrection of the just, is,
therefore, not improbably an object of interest with him who, under the God-man,
will have the supervision of the last day. With a view to that harvest of the
earth, he will now see the furrows made, the seed planted, the hill prepared. He
will have a care that every thing lies down, whether by seeming accident, or by
violence, or by design, in just the place from which the arranging mind of Him
who is Lord both of the dead and of the living, has appointed it to come forth.
Every circumstance attending that event, the great object of hope in heaven and
on earth,--our resurrection,--is of sufficient importance to be the subject of
thought and preparation on the part of Christ, himself the first fruits of them
that slept. The care of the patriarchs concerning their burial places is like
one of those premonitions in an antecedent stratum of geology, or species of
animals, of a coming manifestation;--a prophesying germ, a yearning, created by
Him who, with all-seeing wisdom, establishes anticipations in the moral, as well
as in the natural, world, concerning things with regard to which a thousand
years are with him as one day. Not on earth alone, as it seems, is an interest
felt in the death and burial of the righteous. For when the leader of Israel in
the wilderness went up to the hill top to die, the two great angels, of heaven
and hell, met and contended over his grave. Denied the privilege of burial in
the promised land, Moses may have appeared to Satan so evidently under the frown
of God, as to encourage his meddlesome efforts to inflict some injury upon him,
through dishonor done to his remains. Perhaps he would convey them back to
Egypt, a gift to the brooding vengeance of the Pharaohs, who would gratify their
anger by preserving that body in the house of their gods;--thus showing their
spiteful satisfaction at the disappointment of the prophet whom Jehovah would
not permit to enter that promised land, in hope of which the great spoiler had
led away the bondmen of Egypt. Perhaps the devil would gratify the desire of
some idolatrous nation, craving new objects of worship, by leading them to
canonize this Hebrew chief; and thus make of the lawgiver and prophet of Israel
a false god. Perhaps he could even prevail on some of the Israelites themselves,
if not the whole of them, to worship this revered form; or might he but have the
designation and the custody of his grave, he would, perhaps, fix it where it
would be most convenient for the nation to assemble, at stated times, for some
idolatrous rites. But the great vicegerent of the resurrection was there. To him
the body of a saint is suggestive of the last day; it is a special assignment by
Christ, an official trust, to the archangel. Bodies of saints are, therefore,
most precious to him. Particles of the precious metal are not more precious to
the miner, pearls to the diver, ivory to the Coast-merchant, and the shell-fish
to the maker of Tyrian purple. The body of each saint is an unfinished history
of redemption; a destiny of indescribable interest and importance belongs to it.
Any subaltern angel may have charge of winds and seas, of day and night, of
summer and winter; but only the archangel is counted meet to have charge, and to
keep watch and ward, over the bodies of saints as they sleep in Jesus. "He
disputed about the body of Moses." It was a dispute characterized on the part of
the archangel more by act than word. Words are hushed in great encounters.
Debate with a pirate, a body-snatcher, would be folly; no arguments, therefore,
were wasted, on the top of Nebo, by Michael, over the grave of Moses. "The Lord
rebuke thee," was his retort; his heavenly form stopping the way, his baffling
right arm hindering the accursed design, were the invincible logic of that
dispute. O prince of angels, watchman, herald, master of the guard, at the
resurrection of the just,--comptroller, now, of that treasury which receives and
keeps their precious forms,--from whose lips that signal is to come which
millions on millions are to hear, and live,--what images of glory and terror
fill thy mind in the anticipation of that moment when thy dread commission is to
be fulfilled! Is not that "trumpet" sometimes taken into thy hand? Dost thou not
place it to thy lips, but quickly lay it aside, and patiently and joyfully watch
the swelling number of the graves of saints? Funerals of those who fall asleep
in Jesus, to thee are pleasant scenes; they are spring-work, planting times, for
thy harvest, O chief reaper! While, with bursting hearts, we turn from the
new-made mound, one more glorified body, in anticipation, is added to thy
charge. Smiling at our sorrow, in joyful thought of the change to be witnessed
in and around that sepulchre when the family circle shall there put on
incorruption, thou canst not pity us except as we pity the brief sorrows of
children. If the devil should approach that spot, to work some unknown, and, to
us, inconceivable, harm to that body,--be it the body of the humblest saint, one
of those little ones who believe in Jesus, or of those infants whose angels do
always behold the face of God,--thou, mighty cherub, wouldst be there, and, if
need be, with a band of angels, "every one with his sword upon his thigh,
because of fear in the night;" and Nebo and its "dispute" would reappear. Poor,
dying, mouldering body! hast thou the archangel himself for thy keeper? Not only
so: "God, my Redeemer, lives, And often from the skies Looks down and watches
all my dust, Till he shall bid it rise." Nor is it strange, since we read, "The
body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." "Know ye not that your body is
the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?" To rise from the dead seems to
have been something more to Paul than going to heaven, or than being in heaven.
He knew that he was to spend the interval between death and the resurrection in
heaven; but beyond even this, he had a joy which he felt was essential to the
completeness of the heavenly state. See the proof of this in the following
words: "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Since
he was destined, like all of Adam's race, to come forth from his grave, he
needed to make no effort whatever merely to rise from the dead; that was
inevitable, and irrespective of character. Besides, he represents this object
for which he strove as something which required effort, which cannot be said of
merely rising from the grave. Paul had been permitted to know, by personal
observation, what the rising from the dead implies. Caught up into Paradise, we
may suppose that he had seen the patriarch Enoch, and the prophet Elijah, with
their glorified bodies; the presence of which in heaven, we may imagine, has
ever served to enhance the happiness of that world, by holding forth, before the
eyes of the redeemed, the sign and pledge of their future experience when they
shall receive their bodies. For it is not presumptuous to suppose that the sight
of Enoch and Elijah has been, and will be, till the last trumpet sounds, a
source of joyful expectation to the inhabitants of heaven, leading them to
anticipate the final day with intense interest, as the time when they will be
invested, like those honored saints, with all the capacities of their completed
nature, which nature, while the body lies buried, is in a dissevered state. If
Paul, when in heaven, saw and felt the power of this expectation in the minds of
glorified saints, no wonder that the resurrection of the body seemed to him,
ever after, to be the crown of Christian expectation and hope. More than all, he
had seen the man Christ Jesus, in his glorified body; who on earth had said, "I
am the resurrection and the life"--himself an illustration of it, whom alone the
grave has yielded up to die no more. He is, therefore, to saints in heaven, a
far more interesting object than Enoch and Elijah, who never died. "For now is
Christ risen from the dead, and is become the first fruits of them that slept."
This sight, of Christ in heaven, must have had unutterable interest for Paul,
from the assurance that Christ will "change our vile body, that it may be
fashioned like unto his glorious body;" for "we know that when he shall appear,"
Paul himself tells us, "we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."
This knowledge, obtained in the heavenly world, may have led the apostle to
think of the resurrection as the crown of all his expectations and hopes. It is
noticeable that the writers of the New Testament, and Jesus himself, refer
chiefly to the resurrection and the last day as sources of comfort, and also of
warning. Now this is made a principal ground of belief, with many, that there is
either no consciousness between death and the resurrection; or, that none have
gone to heaven, nor to hell, but to intermediate places, seeing that final
rewards and punishments are, in so many instances, wholly predicated of the last
day. But those who believe that the souls of the righteous are, at their death,
made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory, see proof, in all
this prominence which is given to the last day, and to the resurrection, that
the sacred writers regarded the resurrection and final judgment as the great
consummation, towards which souls, in heaven and in hell, would be looking
forward with intense expectation and interest; that neither will the joys of
heaven nor the pains of hell be complete, till the account of our whole
influence upon the world, extending to the end of time, is made up, and the body
is added to the soul. When Paul comforts the mourners of Thessalonica, he bids
them to "sorrow not as they that have no hope; for," (and now he does not speak
of heaven, and of souls being already there, as the source of consolation, but)
"if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them, also, that sleep in
Jesus will God bring with him;" and he proceeds to speak of the
resurrection,--not of the speedy reunion of friends after death, but of the
departed as coming with Christ at the last day. This, instead of being an
argument against the immediate departure of souls to heaven, arises from the
desire to employ the strongest possible proof that the pious dead are not only
safe, but are greatly honored. "Resurrection" was an abounding subject of
thought, argument, and illustration in those days; the state of the dead between
death and the last day, is comparatively disregarded by the apostles, while
their minds were full of the great question of the age--the Resurrection. This
fullness of thought and constant occupation of mind about the resurrection, as
the cardinal doctrine of Christian hope, explains the apparent belief of the
apostles, in some passages, that the final day was near. This the apostle Paul
expressly denies, in the second chapter of the Second Epistle to the
Thessalonians. But a greater event, looked at in the same line of vision with an
intermediate and smaller object, will, of course, have the prominent place in
our thoughts. The less will be held subordinate to the greater; perhaps we shall
seem to underrate the less, in our exalted conceptions of that which rises
beyond and above. We shall see, as we proceed, why the expectation of the last
day seemed to occupy the thoughts of apostles as the paramount object of
expectation. It is perfectly obvious that, at the resurrection, the bodies of
the just will be endued with wonderful susceptibilities and powers. This is
rendered certain by the great mystery of godliness,--God manifest in the flesh.
The greatest honor which could be conferred upon our nature, and the greatest
testimony to its intrinsic dignity, and to its being, in its unfallen state, in
the image of God, is bestowed upon it by the incarnation of the Word. True,
there was a necessity that the Redeemer should be made like unto us, however
inferior human nature might be in the scale of creation; still, unless there had
been such intrinsic dignity and excellence in our sinless nature, as to make it
compatible for the second Person in the Godhead to be united with it, we cannot
suppose that this union would have been permanent; it would have fulfilled a
temporary purpose, and then have ceased. Perhaps we slightly err if we think of
Christ's assumption of human nature as, in any respect, an incongruous act of
humiliation. For man was made in the image of God; so that when Christ was made
flesh, without sin, he took upon himself that which, in some sense, was
congruous with his divine nature. His humiliation consisted, in part, in his
doing this; but more especially in his doing this for such a purpose--for
sinners; "in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law,
undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of
the cross, in being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time."
Had there been no inherent congruity between our nature and the divine, the
human nature of Christ, having accomplished its purpose of suffering and death,
would have been left in the grave. "But now is Christ risen from the dead;" the
body and the human soul, which were disunited when he hung upon the cross, now
constitute the same man, Christ Jesus. "The only Redeemer of God's elect is the
Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was,
and continues to be, God and man, in two distinct natures and one person,
forever." The latter part of this answer of the Assembly's Shorter Catechism is
thus substantiated by the New Testament: "When he shall appear, we shall be like
him; for we shall see him as he is." In other words, he will be, when he
appears, that which he now is--will remain the same until his second coming.
After that, he will remain as he was before: "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever." He is represented as holding an eternal relation to the
redeemed in his glorified nature: "The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne
shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters." We might,
indeed, suppose that the man Christ Jesus would have an eternal recompense for
his sufferings and death in an everlasting union with the Godhead; nor can any
one think, with satisfaction, of a severance between his two natures, and of a
consequent humiliation, or deposition, of that human nature, which, at the great
day, will, for so long a time, have sustained such a connection with the divine
nature. For our present purpose, however, which is to show the intrinsic dignity
of the human nature, it would be enough that it has been in such connection with
the Godhead, and has passed through such scenes, and sustained such vast
responsibilities. This is sufficient to prove that human nature is intrinsically
capable and great; and, indeed, it reveals to us as nothing else does, the real
dignity of our nature. Some, who have rejected the doctrine of Christ's two
natures, have written much and eloquently with regard to man's greatness in
creation. They, however, missed the very thing which chiefly proves it; for all
who believe in the Deity of Christ have a proof and illustration of this great
theme which trancend all others. This idea, of future capability and exaltation
for human nature, as proved by the Saviour's incarnation, is brought to view in
the second chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The second Psalm is there
quoted as speaking of man: "Thou hast put all things under his feet." "But now,"
the apostle says, "we see not yet all things put under him;" man, as a race, has
not reached his full destiny of glory and honor; but, in the person of Christ,
human nature has taken possession of its future inheritance. We see not yet all
things put under man, as a race; but "we see Jesus, who was made a little lower
than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor;"--a
sign and pledge of our destiny. To the mind of Paul, the sight, in heaven, of
what he was to become, set forth by the glorified person of the Son of God, his
Saviour and infinite Friend, no doubt made the resumption of the body, at the
last day, the most desirable experience of which it was possible for him to
conceive. Paradise, with all its social pleasures, gates of pearl, streets of
gold, every thing, in short, external to him, must have seemed, to the apostle,
not worthy to be compared with the glory which was to be revealed in him. An
intelligent man is far more interested in his own personal endowments, than in
the accidental circumstances of his situation. Every one, who is not degraded in
his feelings, would prefer to be enriched with natural, moral, and intellectual
powers, rather than be the richest of men, or an hereditary monarch, with
inferior talents and worth. To such a man as Paul, the possession of his
complete, glorified nature, at the resurrection, must, for this reason, have
seemed far better than all the pleasures or honors of the heavenly world. That
completed nature would constitute him a being wholly perfected, invest him with
a likeness to the Son of God, bring him into still nearer union with that
adorable Redeemer, who, Paul says, loved him and gave himself for him, and for
whom, he says, he had suffered the loss of all things. The sight of the man
Christ Jesus wearing Paul's nature in a glorified state, no doubt lived and
glowed in his memory after his return to earth, and made him think of the
resurrection as the event, in his personal history, to which every thing else
was subordinate. He shows the interest which he felt in this event, when,
writing to the Romans, he says, "And not only they,"--that is, "the creatures,"
or creation,--"but ourselves, also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit,
even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the
redemption, of our body." In his address, at Jerusalem, before his accusers and
the people, he cried out, "Of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called
in question." It was uniformly a prominent topic of his thoughts. It is by no
means impossible, nor improbable, judging from analogy, that there may be, in
the human soul, faculties which are slumbering, until a glorified body assists
in their development. Persons born blind have the dormant faculty of seeing; the
gift of the eye would bring it into exercise. So of the other senses, and their
related mental faculties. With a glorified body, then, truly it doth not yet
appear what we shall be; but the thought itself is rapture, that our souls at
present may be as disproportioned to their future expansion, as the acorn is to
the oak of a century's growth, which is infolded now, and dormant, in the seed.
The addition of a body to the glorified spirit will, therefore, be a help, and
not an encumbrance. For we are not to suppose that the soul, after having been
for centuries in a state superior to its present condition, would retrograde, in
returning to the body. A common idea respecting a body is, that it is
necessarily a clog. True, by reason of sin and its effects, it is now a "vile
body;" and Paul speaks of it as "the body of this death." But, even while we are
in this world, a body is an indispensable help to the soul. The disembodied
spirit, probably, is not capable of sustaining a full, active relation to a
world of matter; a material form is necessary to make its powers serviceable
here. This being so, there is certainly reason, from analogy, to suppose that
the addition of a spiritual body to the glorified soul will not necessarily work
any deterioration to the spirit. At all events, we cannot suppose that the bliss
of heaven will be suffered to diminish, by remanding the emancipated spirit into
connection with any thing which will subtract from the state to which it will
have arrived. There is a law of progress in the divine government, by which the
intelligent universe will be forever advancing. We are to be changed "from glory
to glory;" not from a greater glory to a less, but into the same image with
Christ. It is the opinion of some that every created being has a corporeal part,
and that God alone is perfectly a spirit. However this may be, it is evident
that the souls of believers after death, though advanced far beyond their
present earthly condition, and though they are "with Christ," and though to die
is gain, and though they are in the heaven of heavens with Christ, (which is
where the penitent thief went, and where Paul had his revelation, and where
Christ went when he died;--for Paul uses the words "third heavens," and
"Paradise," interchangeably,) are, nevertheless, incomplete as to their natures,
"waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." Where in the
Bible are we led to suppose that they are detained in an inferior region, or
that there are, at most, only two redeemed human beings now in "heaven," viz.,
Enoch and Elijah, or probably not even they? But a corporeal part, we may
suppose, is necessary to the fullest participation in the employments and
enjoyments of the spiritual world. Light requires atmosphere to modify it for
the human eye, which otherwise could not endure its brightness. So it may be
that a corporeal part is necessary to modify many of the things which are unseen
and eternal, that they may be apprehended by the soul. Let no one say that
matter must obstruct or dim the senses of the soul; that a body must act as a
veil to the spirit, and shut out much knowledge. It is not so here. Matter helps
us in the acquisition of knowledge, as, for example, glass in optical
instruments. The telescope, with its lenses, gives the eye vast compass; the
microscope gives it a power, equally wonderful, of minute vision. True, in these
cases it is matter helping matter--glass assisting the eye; the analogy is not
perfect between this and the aid which the spiritual body may afford the soul.
But, if we remember that there is to be progression in the powers and faculties
of our nature, and that if a body is added to the glorified spirit, it must be
to assist it, to put it forward in its acquisitions and enjoyments, we cannot
resist the belief that the addition of the new body to the soul will be a vast
accession of power and capability. If the eye and the mind can receive such aid
from the telescope here, who knows that the eye of the glorified body may not be
itself a telescope, increasing in its capability with the progress of its being.
We may have some view of what the glorified body must necessarily be, in
thinking of it as a fit companion to the glorified spirit. The soul having been
in heaven for ages, and having grown in all spiritual excellence, the body, to
be a help to such a spirit, to be an occasion of joy, and not of regret, must,
of course, be in advance of our present corporeal nature. What must the body of
Isaiah, and of David, be, at the resurrection, to correspond with the vast
powers and attainments of those glorified spirits? We could not believe,
certainly we could not see, how these bodies of ours could be made capable of
such union, were it not that, in the man Christ Jesus, we see our corporeal
nature capable of such transformation as to make it compatible for his human
mind, and indwelling Deity, to receive it into their ineffable union. All this
being so, we may, in some measure, conceive of the feelings with which the souls
in heaven anticipate the resurrection; and we cease to wonder why Paul speaks of
his resurrection as the great object of his desire--not merely to be in heaven,
but, being in heaven, with Christ, to be in possession of a completed nature,
like Christ's. From the grave where it was sown in corruption, it will come
forth in incorruption; sown in dishonor, it will be raised in glory; sown in
weakness, it will be raised in power; sown a natural body, it will be raised a
spiritual body. It was "bare grain" when it fell into the earth; but the corn,
with its stalk, and leaves, and the curious ear, with its silk, and its
wrappings, the multiplication of the "bare grain" into such a product, are an
illustration of the apostle's words,--"Thou sowest not that body that shall be;"
hence, he argues, say not, incredulously, "How are the dead raised, and with
what body do they come?" God giveth the grain a body as it hath pleased him; he
can do the same with regard to that part of man's nature which is committed for
a while to the earth. Let not the natural difficulties connected with this
subject make us sceptical. There are no more difficulties connected with a grave
than with a grape vine. Those distant twigs, on that dry vine, begin to bud and
blossom; grapes form upon them; it is filled with clusters. Is there any thing
in the resurrection more strange than this? Twice, inspiration says to a man,
"Thou fool!"--once, to a godless, rich man, and, once, to him who is sceptical
about the resurrection of the body. When the glorified spirit and the glorified
body meet, the moment when the investiture of the soul with its spiritual form
takes place, and the forcible divorce of the soul and body is terminated by new,
strange nuptials, there must be an experience which now defies all power of
imagination. We may have known, in this world, all the thrilling experiences of
which our natures here are capable; we shall also have seen and felt what it is
to awake in heaven, satisfied with Christ's likeness; and all the new-born joys
of heavenly sensations will have seemed to leave us nothing to be experienced
which can bring a new rapture to the heart; yet when the body is raised, and the
triumphant spirit comes to put it on afresh, it will be an addition to all the
past joys of the heavenly state. As we look on one another, and see, in each
other's beauty and glory, an image of our own; as we remember how we visited the
graves of loved ones, and what thoughts and feelings we had there, and then see
those graves yielding forms like Christ's; as we see the Saviour's person
mirrored in ours on every side, and behold the living changed in a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye, there will be an exceeding great joy, such, perhaps, as
the universe had never before known. But to each of us the most perfect joy will
be his own consciousness, existence being then a rapture such as we never
experienced. Then the bird is winged, the jewel is set in gold, the flower
blooms, the harp receives all her strings, the heir is crowned. No wonder that
Paul said, looking through and beyond heaven, "If by any means I might attain
unto the resurrection of the dead." Perhaps we now think of the last day with
dread, as a day of consternation. It is not always that we can think of the
heavens on fire, the earth dissolved, the dead arising, and the judgment
proceeding, without some feeling of dismay. But in heaven, we shall long have
anticipated that day as the day of our complete triumph. The grave will, till
that time, have imprisoned one part of our nature. The curse of the law will not
have passed away entirely, and in every respect, till all which belongs to us is
redeemed from every natural, as well as moral, consequence of sin. It will be an
expectation of unmingled joy to see this accomplished. The approach of the day
will fill us with more pleasure than the arrival of any other wished-for moment.
We shall come with Christ to judgment. "Them that sleep in Jesus will God bring
with him." We shall have a part in the glory of Christ, and be associated with
him; for, "Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?" "Know ye not
that we shall judge angels?" What curious interest there will be to receive back
from the dust of the earth the dishonored, corrupted, mouldered, wasted,
perished body. In the Saviour, even, we shall not have seen all the wonders of
the resurrection from the dead; for, "He whom God raised saw no corruption;" but
we shall be raised from corruption. To be clothed upon with that house which is
from heaven, to be a completed, perfected human being, will be, up to that time,
the greatest possible manifestation to us of divine wisdom and power. The new
body will bring with it sources of enjoyment which will be a vast addition to
the previous happiness of heaven. There will be perfect satisfaction in every
one with his own body--no consciousness of defects, of deformity, of weakness.
Comparisons of ourselves with others will not excite dissatisfaction and envy;
every one will be perfect of his kind, and will differ in some things from every
other, and will be an object of love and admiration with all. We are astonished
here with the intellectual, oratorical, vocal powers of others, with their
knowledge, their talent, their skill; but there we shall no doubt be filled also
with astonishment at our own powers and acquisitions, and thus we shall be more
capable of appreciating and enjoying the endowments of others. God is pleased to
raise up one and another, from time to time, with great powers to charm their
fellow-creatures; and thus he would lure us on to heaven, teaching us how much
we can enjoy, and how much we shall lose if we are not saved. Those who are
deprived of very many intellectual and social pleasures here, which they could
appreciate as well as their more favored friends, will soon have it made up to
them. By the likeness of their glorified nature to the human nature of Christ,
they are to be intimately associated with him forever. This, of itself, is an
assurance and pledge, that their heavenly happiness will not be measured by
their relative inferiority to their brethren in this world. To a benevolent mind
it is a great joy to think of good people, who are deprived, in this world, of
education and culture, entering upon a career of boundless knowledge, rising to
the highest pitch of mental development, and enjoying it all the more for their
former disadvantages in their probationary state. "And, behold, there are last
which shall be first." Distinctions made here by knowledge will be transient,
like gifts of prophecy, and tongues; for it is in this sense that it is said,
"whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." And when we look upon those
dear children of God who have long suffered under bodily deformity, and "have
borne, and have had patience, and have not fainted," we love to think of their
glorified bodies, and of that rich zest in the possession of them which will be
both the natural consequence, and the gracious reward, of their patience; nay,
we love to think that some special, personal beauty, some peculiar grace and
glory, may be given them by Him who so delights in compensatory acts in nature,
in providence, and in grace. Was it not the object of the transfiguration, in
part, to give the human soul of Christ such an idea of his future glory in
heaven, as to strengthen him for his agony and death? Yes; for the heavenly
visitants "spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." That
anticipation of his glorified nature was a part of "the joy set before him." Let
Christ on Tabor, and faith, do for us, with regard to present bodily sorrows and
sufferings, that which the transfiguration did for Jesus in the days of his
humiliation. "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto
his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue
all things unto himself." Through the long interval of death and the separate
state, the anticipation of the last day and of the resurrection will, no doubt,
be to the wicked a predominant source of terror. While the joyful anticipations
of it, in heaven, will be like the advancing steps of morning, when there begin
to be signs, in the tabernacle for the sun, of that bridegroom coming out of his
chamber, and of that strong man rejoicing to run a race, and every thing will be
astir with the notes of preparation for that day, for which all other days were
made, the approach of it will be, to the lost, a deepening gloom, its arrival
the settling down of interminable night. Instead of entering into their bodies
with transport, as the righteous do, they will each be like a prisoner removed
from one jail to another with new bars and bolts. If it be not unreasonable to
suppose that the appearance of the body will conform to the character, and if
the bodies of Isaiah, and Paul, and John must be seraphic, to correspond with
their experience and attainments, what must the bodies of the wicked be! They
will have spent centuries in sinning, and suffering, debased in every part, the
image of God supplanted by the image of him whose service they preferred to that
of a holy God and Saviour. What a moment will that be, when the sinner's grave
is opened by the last trumpet, and a hideous form rises to receive a frantic
spirit! "The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels."
"As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in
the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they
shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do
iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and
gnashing of teeth." "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall
awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."
There will be separations at the graves of those who lay side by side in death;
many a tomb will yield up subjects both for heaven and for hell; the differences
in character, between the regenerate and unregenerate, will there be made
conspicuous in the correspondence of the risen body to the soul, according as
the soul shall have arrived at the grave from a state of joy or of woe. Arrests
will be made, there will be forcible detentions, overpowering strength,
disregard of entreaties, remorseless rendings asunder of families, unclasping of
embraces, and an indiscriminate mixture of all classes among the wicked,
indicated by the command, "Bind ye the tares together, in bundles, to be
burned." Nor will this be worse for holy angels to witness, than it was to see
those sinners turn their backs on the Lord's supper, year after year. They could
treat their Saviour's dying agonies, and his blood, with perfect neglect and
contempt, through their love of the world and sin; now they eat the fruit of
their own way, and are filled with their own devices. Our treatment of the
Saviour will return upon our own heads. What a change will be made in the ideas
which many sentimentalists had of holy angels, when they see them executing the
terrible orders of their King! and what an illustration it will give of the
severity of justice,--the rigors of its execution being compatible with the pure
benevolence of holy angels, because of God. We are constantly admonished that
the punishment of the wicked will be a great part of the proceedings on that
day. It is called "the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." "Behold,
the Lord cometh, with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment." * * * *
* All this serves to invest the death of a dear Christian friend, in our
thoughts, with inexpressible peace and comfort. He, with his Redeemer, can say,
"My flesh, also, shall rest in hope." If we are confident that a friend is gone
to be with Christ, death is, even now, swallowed up of life; and now the thought
of what the soul is to inherit, both before and after the resurrection, and its
contrast with the experience of the lost, should make us joyful in tribulation.
True, we cannot, by any artifice or illusion, make death itself cease to be a
curse. Full of beauty and consolation as it may be,--nay, we will call it
triumphant,--yet nothing saddens the mind, for the time, more than the sight of
true beauty. In heaven things beautiful will not make us sad; nor will the
remembrance of a past joy, which so inevitably has that effect upon us here. We
are beholding a sunset. Day is flinging up all its treasures, as though it were
breaking to pieces its pavilion forever and scattering the fragments; and now,
when all seemed past, one more flood of glory streams over the scene, but only
for a moment; then comes a last touch of pathos, here and there, like a more
distant farewell, a whispered good night. Have tears never come unbidden, do we
never feel sad, at such a time? Is not the whole of life, past, present, and to
come, then tinged with sombre hues? and all because the dying day expires with
such beauty and peace. Not so when a storm suddenly brings in night upon us.
Then we are nerved and braced; we hear no minor key in the voice of the
departing day. It is perfectly natural, therefore, to weep over our dead, even
when every thing in their departure is consolatory and beautiful. It is
interesting to observe that it was even when he was on his way to raise the dead
body of his friend, and thus to comfort the weeping sisters, that "Jesus wept."
Let us more and more love the Christian's grave. Angels love it. Two of them sat
in the tomb where the body of Jesus had lain--they loosed the napkin that was
about his head, and "wrapped" it "together in a place by itself;" and when Jesus
had left the place, instead of following him, they lingered, to comfort the
weeping friends on their arrival at the sepulchre. Can it be Michael, guardian
of the dead Moses and his grave, on "the great stone" which has been rolled
"from the door of the sepulchre"? Is he thinking how he will one day hear the
command, "Take ye away the stone" which covers all who sleep in Jesus? As the
cross is hallowed by the death of the Son of God upon it, the grave is hallowed
for the believer through the Saviour's burial. There are three places which must
possess intense interest for a glorified friend. One is his home; another is his
seat in the house of God; and another is his grave. Let us cherish it. We do
well to visit such a spot. Sometimes approaching it with sadness and fear, we go
away with surprising peace; looking back for a last view of the stone, and
feeling towards the spot as we do when we are leaving little children in the
dark for the night, unutterable love, we find, has cast out fear. Those graves
are treasures which heaven has made sure, "sealing the stone, and setting a
watch." Of those who still live, we are not certain that, in the providence of
God, they will henceforth be an unmingled source of comfort; but they who are in
those graves are garnered fruits, are finished works, are each like the rod of
Aaron laid up in the ark, which "bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds." All else
which is dear to us on earth may seem changeful, or changed; the property may
have disappeared, the home may have been broken tip, the plighted faith and love
may have been recalled; the whole condition of life may have been altered: but
we visit that burial spot, and there is permanence; that fast-anchored isle has
defied the surges and roaring currents; the grave seems beautifully constant; it
has not betrayed our confidence; it is not weary of its precious charge; it has
kindly staid behind to permit and encourage our griefs when all else may have
fled. The winter's snows have fallen, the tempests have beaten, there; and now,
this April or May morning, it is as steadfast and quiet as when the slumber
there began. Great honor is paid to the dead in giving them precedence to the
living at the last day. "The dead in Christ shall rise first," that is, before
the living are changed;--they shall rise, and after that, in a moment, in a
twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, the living will be transformed; for
the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we
shall be changed. This is said in order to comfort those who mourn the death of
Christian friends,--intimating such care on the part of their Redeemer, that the
apostle is directed to tell us "by the word of the Lord, that we which are
alive, and remain to the coming of the Lord, shall not" have precedence of "them
that are asleep." It is declared that the change of the living will be effected
"in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." This must be a matter of pure
revelation; for it could not have been foretold, from any apparent
probabilities, whether it would happen instantaneously or by degrees. It is
suited to impress the mind with the power and majesty of Christ, inasmuch as
this is to be one of the great acts connected with his second coming, and as
really an exercise of his omnipotence as the raising of the dead. For he is
"Lord both of the dead and of the living." "And the sea shall give up the dead
that are in it." Many a form of a believer is waiting there for the redemption
of the body. Nor has it escaped the eye of the great archangel. Wrapped in its
rude shroud, or decomposed and scattered, or in whatever way seemingly
annihilated, personal identity still attaches to it, and the all-seeing eye
watches every thing which is essential to that identity, as easily as though the
body were in the grave with kindred dust. That the power of God in the
resurrection may be fully illustrated, and that some may be preeminent witnesses
in their own persons of that mighty power, perhaps it will appear that they were
permitted, for that purpose, to be devoured, or to dissolve and to waste away in
the sea. If they who came out of great tribulation are arrayed in white robes
among the righteous, we may look for some special sign of glory and joy in those
who receive their bodies, not from the sheltering grave, but from the sea, and
from the very frame of nature, into which their bodily organization will, in one
way and another, have been incorporated. O the unspeakable wonders and raptures
connected with the resurrection, both as it relates to our own experience, and
to the illustrations which the resurrection will afford, of the divine wisdom
and power. No wonder, we say, that Paul esteemed it the height of Christian
privilege, that he, as a redeemed human being, "might attain unto the
resurrection of the dead." It is an innocent fancy, if it be not worthy of a
better name, that the great attention which has been given of late years to new
cemeteries, now in such contrast to the old graveyards, whose reckless disorder
so perfectly expressed abandonment to sorrow and unresisting surrender to the
last enemy, is a symptomatic token of growing faith in the great, general heart
of the Christianized part of the race, with regard to that consummation of all
things, the resurrection of the dead. As at sea there is, within certain degrees
of latitude and longitude, an uphill and a downhill, made by the convexity of
the globe, we, perhaps, may have reached the meridian of the great voyage, and
may have begun to feel the inclination which will set us forward more swiftly to
the end. The power of the great consummation will be waxing stronger and
stronger. Men are looking to the cemeteries as places where great treasures went
down, or were abandoned, and they begin to think that some great restoration
awaits them. These costly and beautiful cemeteries, which men are preparing, are
like Hiram's contributions to the building of the temple; they foretell some
great thing; they have a look not only of expectation, but of design, not merely
of faith, but of hope. With a truly liberal regard to the decoration of those
burial places with costly works of general interest, in the department of art,
we shall do well to make provision, by statute, for the perpetual repair and
preservation of every enclosure, and every grave, the whole body corporate thus
pledging itself, as far as possible, to each incumbent, that his last resting
place shall be the care of the perpetuated fraternity to the end of time. And
when the prophecies are accomplished, and the stone cut out of the mountain
without hands has filled the earth, and the apostasy which is to follow the
general prevalence of religion, has deluged the world with blood, and Satan,
loosed a little season, is triumphing in his maddened career, and the graves are
full, and the souls under the altar, with their importunate cry, can no longer
wait for the avenging arm,--then shall be seen the sign of the Son of man coming
in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. As we commit a Christian
friend to the earth, and as we visit his resting place, let us think that now,
the anticipation of the rising from the dead is, to him, the great object of
personal expectation and hope. The time is not far distant, when, in heaven, we,
in like manner, shall be filled with that expectation, as we look down upon the
places where our bodies await the signal of the resurrection. Let not the image
of our friends, as sick and in pain, occupy our thoughts. "For the former things
are passed away." Their language, as they call back to us, is, "As dying, and
behold, we live." We who have children and friends that sleep in Jesus, and who
expect ourselves to be, with them, and with one another, children of the
resurrection, will soon know each other in the presence of Christ. We shall have
become reunited in the presence of each other to our loved and lost ones. The
great question then will be, How did we fulfil God's special and benevolent
designs in our trials? If we revisit scenes of deep affliction where death and
the grave usurped their dread power over us for a season, we shall remember our
misery as waters that pass away. In hope of this, we will patiently and joyfully
labor and suffer. "The night is far spent; the day is at hand." * * * * * On a
pleasant morning in April, three months from the time of her decease, the mortal
part of the dear child whose name gives this book its title, was removed from
its temporary resting place in the city, to her grave in the family cemetery. As
the hands of her father, which baptized her, laid her to rest in her sweet and
peaceful bed, and the simple stone, with her chosen "lilies of the valley and
rose buds" carved on it, was set up,--the gift of one whose consanguinity was
made by him the delicate ground of claim to do this touching and abiding act of
love,--it seemed as though, in some sense, there had already been brought to
pass the saying which is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory." But in the
night, a gentle April shower fell; and as the thoughts were carried by it,
spellbound, from the chamber where she was born, to her newly-made grave,--that
night being the first of her sleeping there,--it seemed very plain that, though
Death had been conquered, the Grave still kept possession of the field.--Christ
"will be thy destruction," O Grave, as he has been "thy plagues," O Death! The
early rain seemed to have made good haste in visiting the fresh mound and the
flower seeds already placed there, conspiring with them to cover the grave
speedily with emblems of the resurrection, as though, with confident boast and
exultation, they would, beforehand, say, "Where is thy victory?" Simple thoughts
and fancies, which we hardly dare utter, have wonderful power, in great sorrows,
to change the whole current of the feelings; for while that soft shower was
heard, falling on the grave, it seemed as if a heavenly watcher was in care of
the place; and so, leaving them together, it was easy and pleasant to fall
asleep. * * * * * And now, seeing that there is not one experience in this
volume which is not, or may not be, enjoyed, and surpassed, by every dying
saint, and by surviving friends, and as the narrative is thus saved from all
just thought either of ostentation, or of setting forth a discouraging standard
of experience, may the book find protection from those who, knowing the innocent
weaknesses, and, at the same time, the blessedness, of those who mourn, will
kindly appreciate the motives with which it is written. For more than a year the
narrative has been laid by, from indefinable reluctance at the thought of
publication. But this affliction, which was, at first, like the bulb of the
hyacinth with its white, pendulous roots in water,--those symbols of hope and
pledges of growth,--has now bloomed and become fragrant with such comforts and
consolations, that we venture to set the plant in our window, perchance it may
meet the eye of one and another as they walk and are sad. Perhaps it may, here
and there, win love and praise for Jesus. "He hath done all things well." End of
the Project Gutenberg EBook of Catharine, by Nehemiah Adams


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  CHAPTER 19: ENDLESS PUNISHMENT
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ENDLESS PUNISHMENT: SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR, AND REASONABLENESS OF FUTURE
ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. BY NEHEMIAH ADAMS, D. D., By PASTOR OF UNION CHURCH, BOSTON
; AUTHOR OF "at eventide," etc.

BOSTON: D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY, Cor. Franklin and Hawley Sts.

COPYRIGHT, 1878, By D. LOTHROP & Co.

Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, No. 19 Spring Lane.

INTRODUCTORY. I. The Scriptures teach that there is a penalty for disobedience
awaiting the finally impenitent. 4 II. Redemption by Christ is represented as
having for its object salvation from final perdition. 15 III. The fall of
angels, and of man, is a confirmatory proof of future, endless retribution. 24
IV. The terms used with regard to the resurrection of the dead, are proofs of
endless retribution. 26 V. The Scriptures teach that the law of God has a curse:
-- which it has not, if future punishment be disciplinary. 32 VI. The Sentence
passed upon the wicked indiscriminately, forbids the idea of discipline in
future punishment. 33 VII. The duration of future punishment is expressed in the
New Testament by the terms employed to denote absolute eternity. 34
CORRESPONDENCE. 46


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  CHAPTER 20: A 00     INTRODUCTORY
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Introductory Boston. Rev. S. Cobb, Editor of the Christian Freeman, Dear Sir : I
have received your printed note in your paper of the 25th ult., in which you say
:

“And now I respectfully invite you, and proffer you the columns of the Christian
Freeman for the work, to show the Scripturalness of future, endless punishment.
This will afford you an opportunity to carry your strongest reasons into several
thousands of Universalist families; and I earnestly hope that you will accept my
proposition.” The form in which you propose that I should do this, viz, by an
exposition of isolated proof texts, each to be debated by you before I proceed
to another, does not strike me favorably. I will comply with your invitation, if
you will allow me to do it in my own way, -- upon one condition, that there
shall be no notes or comments on what I write in the number or numbers of your
paper containing my communication.

Very respectfully yours, N. ADAMS.

Representations have been made in some of the public prints respecting the
nature and intention of the following article, which are wholly at variance with
my design. I am entering into no controversy, -- this being the only article
which I have at any time expected to prepare for the paper.

Having been invited to preach in Hollis Street Church a sermon, prepared for my
own congregation, on the Reasonableness of Endless Punishment, I was not at
liberty, of course, to present any other view than that which the sermon
contained, incomplete as all such presentations must be without a scriptural
argument. While I was purposing to make, on some future occasion, a statement of
the scriptural view, both of the nature and extent, of future retribution, an
invitation to write on that subject in this paper unexpectedly occurred.

I proceed, therefore, to fulfil my original purpose, and respectfully submit the
following statement, with no thought of continuing the discussion, N. A.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

Thb invitation from the editor of this paper to make a statement of views which
the '* several thousands of families “who, it is said, will read this paper,
repudiate, imposes a responsible, yet, for some reasons, a gratifying task. The
names of not a few among my ministerial brethren occur to me, in whose able and
more competent hands I would gladly place this labor, both for the gratification
of the reader, and, as I view it, for the truth's sake. I feel encouraged in
this work by the comparative regard which many in this denomination profess for
the Bible. They do not assail it, as the manner of some is who differ from us;
but their desire to make it speak in their favor secures for it an
acknowledgment of its authority. As an illustration of this remark, I refer to a
Review of Rev. T. S. King's “ Two Discourses,” by Rev.

Dr. Thomas Whittemore, in the Universalist Quarterly and General Review,
October, 1858. Dr. W. says: *' It seems to us impossible to preserve the public
reverence for the Bible, if we suffer ourselves to speak about it as Mr. King
has done.”

“ The four Gospels, according to Mr. K, are mere shreds and tatters of what
Christ taught. His manner of teaching was so peculiar, and so poetical and
fanciful, that it is quite a wonder that we have even those tatters.” 'He (Mr.
K.) speaks of God choosing to instruct the Church through a few fragmentary
flashes of poetry. Good God! What an idea of revelation! What an idea of Jesus
as a teacher! He has lost sight of * the true light which lighteth every man
that Cometh into the world.' “ (p. 377.) Inasmuch as nothing hut the clearest
conviction that this doctrine of endless retribution is revealed in the Bible
would allow us for a moment to believe and inculcate the fearful truth, which
all who believe it receive with the most solemn awe, it awakens confidence and
friendly feeling to think that the most of those who will read this article,
thus regard the testimony of Scripture, explained by the ordinary rules of
language, to be of binding authority.

I have also been led to think of this denomination as including many who are
much exercised in their minds on the subject of future punishment. It is a
welcome efibrt to show such individuals that some of their thoughts with regard
to this subject and its advocates, are, perhaps, disproportioned and
exaggerated. The most of those who believe in future, endless punishment, have
far more peace of mind with regard to it than they appear to have who deny it;
for with evangelical believers it sinks into its just proportion in the
universal government of God, as the State's Prison, Courts of Law, Offices of
Justice, blend, like the tonic element of iron in the blood, into the life of a
commonwealth with its virtuous and happy homes, its hundreds of thousands of
joyous children, its churches, its products, its whole prosperous tide of
affairs.

Though hell is not the central figure in the religious ideas of evangelical
Christians, the belief in future, endless retribution does exert its powerful
influence upon us. We know that it is capable of vast abuse, as we see
illustrated in the direful influence of its perversion by the Church of Rome.
But we find it explicitly revealed, and '* knowing, therefore, the terrors of
the Lord, we persuade men.” If it were preached still more affectionately and
plainly by us, conscious of our ill desert and of our obligations to redeeming
love, there would be a nearer approach to the apostolic model. Our prevailing
associations with this doctrine, we are happy to say, are those of deliverance,
through the atoning death of the Son of God. It is in connection with his
sacrifice for us that we always endeavor to preach it; so that we trust we may
say concerning our system of faith, as it is said of heaven, “the Lamb is the
light thereof.” While we believe that the contemplation of future misery, apart
from the cross of Christ, would be hurtful to the mind and heart, we also feel
that it cannot be of healthful tendency with our moral natures to base our
religious associations mainly on the one idea of opposition to endless
punishment. An evil thing, real or imaginary, which we inordinately, or upon
wrong principles, oppose, has a retroactive influence on our minds and hearts,
corresponding to its own baleful nature.

It is with such views that I how write, -- not, principally, with antagonists in
my mind, though my statements will meet with antagonism, -- so that if any are
persuaded by counterstatements that these views are unscriptural, they will do
me the favor, at least, to think of me as their sincere well-wisher and friend,
and as one who has the same eternal interests embarked in this question as
themselves. Let us also keep in mind that mere argumentation never convinces men
of scriptural truths, but that there must be on our part an experience, wrought
by the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer, to interpret things aright, which
otherwise will be stumblingblocks and foolishness. But, without further preface,
I proceed to my argument.


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  CHAPTER 21: A 01     SCRIPTURES TEACH PENALTY  DISOBEDIENCE
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I. The Scriptures teach that there is a penalty for disobedience awaiting the
finally impenitent. THIS is plainly declared in Romans 2:5-12; Romans 2:16, “
But after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up unto thyself wrath
against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who
will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who, by patient
continuance in well doing, seek for glory, and honor, and immortality, eternal
life; but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey
unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul
of man that doeth evil; of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile: but glory,
honor, and peace to every man that worketh good; to the Jew first, and also to
the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have
sinned without law, shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in
the law, shall be judged by the law,” “in the day when God shall judge the
secrets of m^en by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.” The parenthetic
passages omitted here, which occur before the last of these sentences, are a
direct assertion of the full accountableness of the heathen world to the
tribunal of God, for their sins against their consciences and 'the light of
nature. I take this whole passage of Scripture as a revelation of a future
judgment and retribution, in which all men are to be judged and treated
according to their works. The ideas which are presented of heaven, both by
Christ and his apostles, come to us through objects of sense. Every one supposes
that by these images, as, for example, “ sitting with Christ at his table in his
kingdom,” “new wine,” “beholding his glory,” and “gates of pearl,” ''streets of
gold,” “harps” and “crowns,” it is intended to give us the idea of the highest
pleasure of which our natures, body and soul, shall in another world be capable.
We never subtract anything from these images of heavenly joy, saying, They are
only metaphors; we rather say. Language here is intensified, to convey the ideas
of future happiness. And as we believe that we shall have bodies in heaven “
like unto “the Saviour's “ glorious body,” we are never unwilling to think that
there will be enjoyments adapted to the body with the soul -- spiritual, of
course, in both cases, and yet beautifully distinguished, but capable of
blending, as in this world. This way of representing unseen things to us is not
so much “Oriental” as the only possible way, at present, of communicating
spiritual objects to our understanding. But while the attractions of heaven
suffer nothing by reason of criticisms upon the language in which they are
presented, some do not use the same tolerance, nor apply the same principles of
interpretation, when they read or speak of future punishment. Here, they say,
all is metaphorical. Oriental; they select certain images, and ask if any
suppose that the wicked are, literally, to suffer such things, from just these
elements of pain. But the representations • of heaven are certainly obnoxious
to the very same criticisms, and similar questions may be asked concerning them.
But being of a pleasurable nature, they escape criticism. Therefore, if we are
inquired of in either case. Do you believe that these things are literally so?
the proper answer seems to be in both cases, Either these things, or things
which now can only be expressed by them. Those earthly symbols approach nearer
than anything with which we are now acquainted, to the things signified. The
condition of the wicked after death is represented through such symbols by
Christ and his apostles as a state of positive punishment. With a desire to
speak cautiously on such a point, and to follow only the most obvious leadings
of Scripture, very many are constrained to believe that while the finally
impenitent will experience the consequences naturally flowing from their moral
condition, those consequences of their sins will be kept alive by the power of
God, and that continual sin will receive continually new punishment. In the
sermon on the reasonableness of endless punishment (see the preface), I assumed,
for the sake of the argument, that future misery should consist only in the
natural consequences of evil, and then argued that it was reasonable that these
should be endless. I also deprecated any inquiry beyond the plain language of
the New Testament as to the elements of punishment. The subject forbade any
extended consideration of the nature of future punishment, nor did I undertake
to state my own belief on that point. In attempting now to show that the
Scriptures represent the future condition of the wicked to be a state of
punishment, it will be submitted to the reader whether infliction from the hand
of God be not necessarily involved from the language of the Bible.

One of those indirect proofs of a thing which sometimes are more forcible and
convincing than direct statements, occurs in the words of Christ, which I will
refer to as proving the future punishment of the wicked, in which he tells us to
“fear Him ivhich is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

* Matthew 10:28.

If God has merely the natural ability to do this, while his character makes it
morally impossible that he should ever do it, the illustration is singularly at
fault. It would never be proper to tell a child, as a reason why it should fear
its father and mother, that they have power to inflict a punishment which we
know is morally impossible. Their mere natural ability to inflict it would not
justify the exhortation, '' Yea, I say unto you, fear them.” To associate the
idea of destroying both body and soul in hell with our proper fear of God, our
heavenly Father, if he would do no such thing, would not be in accordance with
truth.

Some, to avoid this difficulty, say that the passage means merely that God can
destroy life. But so can they who kill the body. There is something more which
God alone can do, and which we need rather to fear. Others, knowing that the
original word for hell in this passage cannot mean the grave propose to render
the warning thus: that God can cast those whom he kills into the valley of
Hinnom. But so could assassins or judicial executioners. We still look for that
which God alone can do. Some say it must be annihilation. But the valley of
Hinnom is notoriously symbolical of perpetuity -- the fire always burning, the
worm ever breeding. Why, moreover, should any place be specified in which the
annihilation, which is the same thing everywhere, should occur? Or what
appropriateness is there in speaking of the soul as being annihilated there?
Destroying both soul and body in hell seems to be equivalent to that expression,
“everlasting destruction,” -- an apparent contradiction of terms, but conveying
the idea of perpetual loss and misery.

We get no relief from these difficulties with the passage if we turn to the
milder form in which the idea is expressed in Luke 12:5, “ Fear Him which after
he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you.

Fear him; “ for Gehenna, understood literally as the valley of Hinnom, presents
to the mind the most terrific image of positive miser}^ Nothing can be more
revolting or fearful. Let those who are jealous at imputations cast upon the
character of God by the doctrine of endless punishment, explain how Jesus could
even suggest the idea of the Father casting his offspring into a place, the name
of which was borrowed from the most fearful object then known to his hearers.

Until this passage is shown to imply no punishment from the hand of God, we must
regard it as an impregnable proof of future visitations of misery upon the
wicked.

Some who believe in future punishment seek to mitigate the influence of the
dread truth upon their feelings by the theory that future punishment will
consist only in the natural effects of sin. This relieves them of the necessity
to think that God will inflict anything directly upon the wicked.

One thing seems incontrovertible, viz.: the Bible does not teach us that sin is
its own complete punishment. It is true that without the elements of misery in
themselves, the Bible tells us, sinners could not be made miserable; nor would
outward inflictions constitute punishment, unless there were something within
for the fire to kindle. But it admits of a question whether, if the sinner
should be left entirely to himself, undisturbed by any external power, adding
new energy to sorrow, or opening new sources of it, he could not in time adjust
himself, as in this world, to any circumstances. Even in this world, trouble, or
the infliction of pain and sorrow, is necessary to rouse the conscience. To some
extent God punishes men in this world, for this purpose. “Because they 'have no
changes, therefore they fear not God.” “ Moab hath been at ease from his youth,
and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to
vessel.” The seventy-third Psalm describes the wicked who “ are not in trouble
as other men; neither are they plagued like other men.” Hence “ their strength
is firm.” But even tribulation is powerless in many cases, and the sinner is
either emboldened by temporary respite, or provoked by the rod to further
opposition. Pharaoh is an eminent example of this.

It is said of another, “ And in the time of his distress did he trespass yet
more against the Lord; this is that king Ahaz.” Other passages in accordance
with these, to prove the positions just laid down, might easily be cited. So
that, however terrible and bitter the condition of the sinner might be at first,
it is not inconceivable that he should at last say, with Satan in Paradise Lost,
“Hail! horrors, hail! and thou, profoundest hell!” if God would but depart from
him! Sinking into a torpid, brutish state, or rousing themselves into defiant
forms of hatred and blasphemy, occupying themselves with plots and counterplots
in their strife with each other, the wicked in hell, like bad or abandoned
people here, might make their condition tolerable. They would, for example, feel
the need of subordination among themselves for their own protection; selfishness
would suggest many alleviations of misery by mutual forbearance; and as the
worst of men -- pirates, gamblers, debauchees -- have codes of honor, and
ambition its fawning flatteries, and pride smothers its resentment, and
selfishness in all its forms is compelled to put on the mask of submission and
obeisance, so the wicked, if left to themselves, even with their wickedness
festering and their crimes becoming gigantic, might manage, by self-control, to
reduce things into a system which to their wretched natures might, in very many
cases, be even tolerable. Sin itself is no misery to a sinner; it must meet with
ill success, it must be compelled to feel a superior power acting contrary to
itself; then, indeed, it is the occasion of misery. It is no sorrow to wicked
men here, for God to depart from them; it is rather their desire; “ therefore
they say unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.”
Saul never would have uttered that bitter cry, “ God is departed from me, and is
become my enemy,” if the Philistines had not pursued hard after him. God and he
had been for a long time far apart; but very little did Saul care for this,
until the day of his calamity made haste.

If, therefore, there is to be, in the strict sense of the term, punishment after
death, it would seem that there must, in the nature of things, be visitations
upon the wicked of that which the Bible calls “ indignation and wrath,
tribulation and anguish.” While there must be in the sinner himself a state of
things which will make these inflictions punishment, there must also be a mighty
hand stretched out forever to make the future condition of the wicked, one of
retribution. There is both error and truth in the common saying with many that
future misery will proceed from conscience; -- error, if it be supposed that
conscience left to itself will occasion torment; for, if in this world, with so
much to stimulate conscience, it so easily falls asleep, the provocations, and
the necessity of self-defence, and redress, and all the bad influences of hell,
must have the power totally to sear it; -- but there is truth in the saying, if
it be allowed that God is to visit the wicked in ways that will excite
conscience against them; this would be “ infliction,” compared with which fire
and brimstone, though the most appalling images of torture we can easily
conceive, do not convey more terrible ideas of retribution.

Now, the Bible is continually representing the wicked as receiving from God
positive inflictions, and not merely as being abandoned to themselves. Even when
it speaks of many sources of misery which might seem to be the natural
consequences of their sin, it often represents these consequences as being
administered by the direct agency of the Almighty. So that the two things seem
to be combined. '' Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and
a horrible tempest; this shall be the portion of their cup.” '' Now consider
this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to
deliver.” “ God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will whet
his sword; he hath bent his bow and made it ready.” These passages teach that
sinners will not merely be left to the natural consequences of sin. The ideas of
arrest, and of execution, are here presented; the transgressor is not left to
himself, with merely his sin for his punishment. Then, again, we read: '' Woe
unto the wicked; it shall be ill with him; for the reward of his hands shall be
given him,” “ Yea, woe unto them also when I depart from them.”

Even though the wicked should not suffer otherwise, nor to a greater degree,
than they are capable of suffering in their minds here, yet, if they are to be
punished, these sufferings must be kept active by an outward power; for their
natural tendency is to harden and stupefy, or to excite passions whose
gratification affords a certain redress.

All this we may believe without venturing one step into the dominion of fancy to
depict the kind and manner of those inflictions which are necessary to
constitute punishment. Nor is it necessary; for knowing as we do by experience
and observation what the passions of the human heart are when restraint is
weakened or removed, we need no external images of woe to represent what it must
be for God to minister excitement to them by his presence and his intercourse
with them. In a sense he departs from them, as he did from Saul. By this is
signified the withdrawal of everything merciful, alleviating, hopeful, and of a
restraining reformatory nature. Yet he will always make his presence to be felt;
for “ if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there.” While, therefore,
material images of woe, if too specific, seem to degrade, the subject, and are
apt to pass over, in their effect on some, from the extreme of horror to the
grotesque, they are not objectionable on the score of over-statement; nothing
which fancy ever depicted being capable of expressing the misery which must be
felt by a depraved soul opposed to God and with God for its punisher.

We have only to think of what is sometimes felt at funerals and closing graves,
to see what future misery must be in one of its merely incidental forms -- the
loss of all good forever.

If God shall but keep perpetually fresh such sorrows as men feel here, he will
fulfil a large part of that which the Saviour and the apostles have declared to
be the future portion of the wicked. So that when good men like Leighton,
Baxter, Andrew Fuller, the Wesleys, Watts, and Edwards, portray, according to
their several conceptions, the pains of the wicked, they fall far below the
truth; and their representations, if at all objectionable, are not so for the
reason that they surpass the dread reality; for that is impossible. Let us now
consider the following passages: --

“ As therefore the tares are gathered and are burned in the fire, so shall it be
in the end of the world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they
shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them which do
iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and
gnashing of teeth.”

These same closing words are used a few verses afterwards, in explaining the
parable of the net. Not to burden the attention of the reader, there is one
passage more which I will quote in connection with the preceding, for the sake
of briefly remarking upon them, before passing to the next topic. The passage to
which I refer is: ''And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice,
If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead
or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is
poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be”
tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the
presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and
ever: and they have no rest, day nor night, who worship the beast and his image,
and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.” *

If the Bible says that angels, at the last day, inflict on the wicked that which
can best be compared only to casting them into a furnace of fire, I will
implicitly believe it. My reason ascertains whether this is said, beyond
reasonable doubt; then reason bows to revelation. I will not object that such
employment does not consist with my conceptions of angelic natures. If I did,
the question would be appropriate. Do you consent that a holy angel should have
cut off the hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians of * Revelation 14:9-11.

Sennacherib's army in one night, and that another should have directed the
pestilence of three days in Israel? What will you do about these things? You are
disposed, perhaps, to associate angels with “birds and flowers,” with elves and
fairies, and not with garments rolled in blood, or hands reeking with slaughter.
My reply is, I will correct my natural or acquired feelings by the word of God.
But the word of God says that angels will cast “ all things that offend, and
them which do iniquity, into a furnace of fire.”

Inanimate things are not meant; for it is added, “ there shall be wailing and
gnashing of teeth.”

Moreover, the word of God says that the idolatrous worshippers of the beast
shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels
and of the Lamb. My only question will be again, Does the Bible mean by this
that men will be made to suffer in a way which is most appropriately expressed
by fire and brimstone; that even if it be not literally so, there would really
be nothing to choose between the two things, the figure and the literal meaning?
And does it say that holy angels, and the Lamb of God himself, will look on,
approve, and confirm the infliction? If so, I fully and firmly believe it; be it
figurative or literal, I believe it, and I will take it to be the same as
literal. And I will postpone the explanation to my natural feelings, till I know
more. I find that when men fully understand the enormities of some outrage upon
a fellow-creature, and the soul is filled with them, the punishment, swift or
slow, meets with no repugnance in their nature.

Perhaps when I know more about sin and unbelief, it will be so with regard to
future punishment. Only let me be persuaded that the language of the Bible,
properly interpreted, declares anything; then there is no appeal. But I now
respectfully ask the attention of the reader, when I say, that if I did not
believe in there being a state of future punishment which justifies such
language, I fear that I could not stop short of the boldest infidelity. I might
even assail the Bible as unfit to be read. It is no relief to tell me that the
language does not mean all which it would seem to convey. I should reply, This
is bad language, unless there be something which language of this sort only can
express. But if it be an exaggemtion of a truth, or if, for the sake of
impression, an idea is conveyed which is false, a man may as well apologize to
me for a profane blasphemer, saying that his oaths do not really mean all which
they express, as try to reconcile me to the belief that such words as these are
inspired. It is not the truth which offends me, but the untruthfulness of the
language. The words are not decorous; my moral sense is abused, when I read such
expressions, unless substantial truth requires them. The sin is not against my
faith, but against my understanding. If there be nothing in holy angels, and in
the Saviour, which corresponds to these representations, I should be tempted to
go at once from the Bible to the teaching and preaching of some man who rejects
the Bible, and rejects it partly because it uses such language. But where should
I find such a preacher, who would not trouble me with the inconsistency of
taking his text every Sabbath from the very book from which I seek to flee? So
true is it that the stoutest unbeliever cannot shake off the hold which the
Bible has upon his moral nature. Absolute scepticism seems to be as impossible
as universal knowledge. “ Cast them into a furnace of fire,” “ in the presence
of the holy angels,” “ and of the Lamb.”

Some tell me that this is “ Oriental; “ some, that it is merely “
flame-picture;'“ some, that it is “mere hyperbole.” Now, if a mere show of
displeasure is signified by this language, the objection is, not to the
punishment, but, that such inappropriate, such defamatory representations should
be used in connection with the holy angels and the Lamb of God. If you will
insist that the words are true, I have no objection to make. But the Bible does
not observe the ordinary laws of decorum in language, unless truth would be
violated by the use of other and milder terms than these, in describing the
future infliction of punishment upon the wicked. The following scriptures,
teaching that the wicked are in misery after death, confirm the foregoing
statements: “The wicked is driven away in his wickedness.” “The ungodly are like
the chaff which the wind driveth away.”

“ The men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before God exceedingly.” “ And the
Lord rained fire and brimstone out of heaven, and destroyed them all.” “ The
rich man died, and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in
torment.” “- Judas by transgression fell, and went to his own place.” “ If ye
believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” '' And where I am, thither
ye cannot come.”

He who will say that such men as are here described meet in death with a change
of character which prepares them at once for happiness, may as well assert, once
for all, that delusion is practised upon us by the representations of the Bible;
that the object is merely to frighten the living; that apparent judgments upon
the wicked, death and its terrors, are merely a dumb show, a tragic
demonstration, a dissolving view turning, within the veil, into manifestations
of compassion and love. There have not been wanting men, who, in their concern
for the character of God, have interpreted his words of vengeance, and his
terrible acts towards the wicked, in this manner -- as though such deception
were any relief from imputations of undue severity. Archbishop Tillotson
ventured such an explanation, and President Edwards's ironical reproof of him
and others, for betraying their Maker's secret, is well known. There are some
even now who, like the sect of Manichees, seem to hold that all evil resides in
matter, and therefore that in the separation of the soul from the body the soul
becomes pure. But the question before us is, What do the Scriptures teach? If
there be anything conclusive in positive statements, this is placed beyond all
reasonable dispute -- that some men die in their sins, and that after death they
have in themselves the elements of misery The rich man surely is an instance of
this. Judas's '' own place “ was not heaven.

We have seen thus far that, while the Scriptures represent the wicked themselves
to be an essential source of their own misery, future punishment necessarily
implies infliction, or excitation, from a source beyond the sinner himself. Some
opprobriously call this “the doctrine of endless torture.” But there is
something more terrible here than ''torture.” If the sinner were made to feel
constantly that he is in the hands of a torturer, many a passion of his nature
might minister strength to his resistance, and impart fortitude. But to have
his, own self excited against him forever, so as to seem the proximate cause of
his misery, is the more helpless woe. But however the sources of it may be
combined, we have seen that the wicked are in misery after death. The question
now is. Will their misery remain forever? Do the Scriptures teach that the
punishment of the wicked, made up as it necessarily is from the natural
consequences of evil-doing and positive inflictions from the hand of God, will
be without end? The affirmative of this question I have undertaken to prove. But
it may be said. You undertake an impossible task, because you know nothing of
futurity.

Principles may yet be evolved which now are slumbering in the bosom of God. You
must journey farther than man has gone before you can decide this subject. “-
Have the gates of death been opened to thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the
shadow of death? “

The*only question to be considered is. What do the Scriptures now teach as to
the future condition of the wicked? Do they, or do they not, represent it as
unalterable? If we can ascertain this we need not perplex ourselves as to
ulterior revelations; nor should we refuse to receive the present testimony of
God, with the objection that something more may possibly be said hereafter.
What, then, does the Bible teach us as to the state and prospects of the
impenitent after death?

Let the reader now endeavor to lay out of the question all considerations
relating to the reasonableness or justice of future, endless punishment. Let him
not foreclose the discussion in his own mind by saying that it is unreasonable
and unjust, and therefore that it cannot be in the Bible. Rather let him first
ascertain whether it be taught there, and then, if he will, let him debate with
himself whether finding it there, he will, or will not, receive the Bible
itself. In considering whether the Scriptures teach that the punishment of the
wicked will be without end, we will see if the following proposition can be
maintained.


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  CHAPTER 22: A 02     REDEMPTION CHRIST REPRESENTED HAVING
========================================================================

II. Redemption by Christ is represented as having for its object salvation from
final perdition.

IF upon the failure of all which is done in redemption to save men, they are to
be subjected to another probation after death, there are powerful reasons to
think that the surest way to effect their recovery is, to let them know
beforehand that God will give them a second trial. For this is manifestly the
way in which God proceeded with the Hebrew people, whose reformation in this
*world, and whose allegiance, he was seeking to secure. In foresight of their
apostasy and punishment, they were told beforehand that they should have a
second probation. The following words are an explicit declaration to this
effect, and are an instance of divine wisdom which man would never have devised,
from fear of consequences. After telling Israel of the happy fruit which would
attend their obedience, and the direful effects of their apostasy, instead of
leaving them in doubt whether the will have a second probation, God expressly
tells them that they shall be again restored. “ When thou art in tribulation and
all these things are come upon, thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to
the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice, (for the Lord thy God is
a merciful God,) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the
covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto thee.”

It might have been argued with much plausibleness that such an announcement
would be inexpedient; that it would have a direct effect to make men careless
and presumptuous. But infinite wisdom judged otherwise, and proceeded at
different times to say: '' If his children forsake my law, then will I visit
their transgressions with the rod; -- nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not
utterly take from him.” And again: ''If my covenant be not with day and night,
then will I cast off the seed of Jacob; -- for I will cause their captivity to
return, and have mercy upon them.” Again: “ I will for this afflict the seed of
David, but not forever.”

* Deuteronomy 4:30.

What principle in moral natures is there which makes this announcement, to
sinners, of future clemency and restoration, wise and expedient? The obvious
answer is, Hope. Whether or not there can ever be repentance without hope, it is
certain that hope is a powerful means of repentance. “ How many hired servants
of my father have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger. I will
arise and go to my father, and say unto him. Father, I have sinned.” -- The
promise of a future trial, the explicit avowal of relenting in his displeasure,
with a view to the final recovery of the transgressors, was deemed by the Most
High to be essential in the exercise of his administration in ancient times. The
admixture of hope in his threatenings, the line of light in the horizon below
the coming tempest, was regarded by Jehovah as a necessary means of effecting
the ultimate restoration of the Jews, so that, to this day, provision is made
for hope to fasten its hand upon exceeding great and precious promises, the
moment that the thought arises of turning to God. He would have the sinners
think, in their deep distress under the chastising rod, that he would be found
of them, if they returned and sought him, and that he made provision for hope
even while the terrible blow was about to descend. In offering pardon and
salvation to men through the sufferings and death of Christ, and in setting
forth the consequences of neglecting so great salvation, if God does not
intimate that, nevertheless, the wicked shall not be utterly cast off, surely it
is not because it would be inconsistent with the principles of moral government
thus to mingle hope with chastisement. We have seen that intimations of future
mercy were made to men who were abusing the most signal acts of divine favor;
and that to secure their future repentance, God judged it wise and prudent to
prevent the ill effect which wrath and punishment might have upon them, by so
ordering it that they should recollect amidst their punishment that even long
before the moment of descending wrath, he remembered mercy, and that,
accordingly, when about to cast them off, he said, “ How shall I give thee up?
-- my heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.” And the
anointed prophet said in his name, “ He will return, he will have mercy upon US;
and thou wilt cast their iniquities into the depths of the sea.” All this, it
will be remembered, was not a sudden relenting; it was part of a plan announced
so long beforehand as to give evidence of special design.

We, therefore, say, that if no such foretokens of far distant mercy and
forgiveness are now made to those who reject Christ, it cannot properly be
argued that it would be unsuitable, and that wisdom and prudence forbid. On the
contrary, such promises would be in accordance with those former dealings of God
with men in which he has manifested the most peculiar love for transgressors. It
would be analogous to his former conduct should he intimate, in immediate
connection with his threatenings, that if we neglect our present opportunity and
means of salvation, and subject ourselves necessarily to a long and fearful
discipline of sorrow, nevertheless the time will come when he will return and be
pacified towards us for all which we have done. If no such intimations are
given, we have strong presumptive evidence that it is because the condition of
the wicked at death is final.

For, as we read the threatenings against Edom, and Babylon, and Egypt, and Tyre,
we find no words of promise mingled with the predictions of their doom.
Probation for them is past; hence, when God is declaring his vengeance against
them, not one word is uttered which, in the hour of their downfall, would come
to their memories as a ray of hope. The utter ruin and desolation of those
kingdoms show the reason for withholding every promise of future mercy; it was
intended that their destruction should be final. But it may be said, Ts God
under any obligation to disclose all his future purposes with regard to the
wicked? Surely not; but certainly he will not deceive us; he is not obliged to
tell us anything; but if he tells us a part, he will not make false impressions.
But some will say, It may now be wise in God to vary his plan, and suffer the
wicked to “ depart “ with the full expectation that their doom is forever; and
then he may interpose and save them. Who will deny that this is possible?

It is evidently the object of the gospel to save men here from their sins, and
to rescue them from future misery, limited or endless. Is it honest, or would it
not be like '' false pretences,” to make the impression that there is to be no
further probation after deatli, if the idea is utterly inconsistent with the
character of God?

We know what is thought of one who offers his wares as positively the last, and
then produces more. The question is simply this: Would God seek to save men by
making them think that this is their only chance of pardon, when he knows that
it is not to be the last? But if God intended that we should believe this to be
the last, who among the sons of the mighty is entitled to the merit of having
undeceived us? It is impiety to assert that there is a future probation, against
the plain declarations of the Bible, if such declarations are made.

Now let us examine the inspired record. At the very close of the Bible we read:
“He that is unjust let him be unjust still, and he that is filthy let him be
filthy still, and he that is righteous let him be righteous still, and he that
is holy let him be holy still.” As the “unjust” and “filthy” never could be
directed to refrain, in this world, from efforts to become good, (unless their
day of grace were past,) these words are obviously a declaration that character
is unchangeable after death. In faithful consistency even to the last with the
great distinguishing feature of the Christian religion, viz, regard for the
individual, the closing words of the Bible have reference to each accountable
member of the human family, “And behold I come quickly, and my reward is with
me, to give to every man according as his work shall be.” Here is the place
where we should look for intimations, if any could be made, of future probation.
Here is the promontory which runs down to the unfathomable main, looks forth on
“ that ocean we must sail so soon; “and as it terminates all earthly efforts
after salvation, does it give us one hint about some future method of recovery?
Are there signals prepared on this cape and headland, indicating to the eye of
despair, afar off, that the cross of Christ holds out proposals of
reconciliation still, to those who trampled it under foot, on their way to
eternity? On the contrary, everything makes the impression on the vast majority
of readers ever since these words were written, that the results of life are to
be final. No hopeful class of probationers are represented as without,” when the
righteous have entered through the gates into the city. All the sublime images
in the last chapters of this book come thronging down to that shore where
inspiration lays aside its pen and looks towards the shoreless waste beyond
time. It has been said that the Old Testament ends with a curse. This is a
mistake. It ends with a promise of turning the hearts of fathers and children,
to avert a curse. But no prediction of any turning of hearts in eternity occurs
at the close of that book which gives us the last information respecting the
future. Its silence is as impressive as its few decisive words.

We can imagine how Christ would have drawn the picture of retribution had he
followed the Old Testament, in doing so, in its hopeful and prophetic
intermingling of light with the darkness. Making the prospect terrific, at
first, beyond all human power of description, to enforce the duty of immediate
repentance, and to deter from sin, then appealing to our sense of propriety, our
magnanimity, our shame, he would have told us how in the future, more or less
remote, God would visit his erring and perverse children with his remonstrances;
how he himself would weep over them and repeat the offers of pardon; and in view
of all this we can imagine how he would expostulate. Such a procedure would
accord with the principles of human nature and of the divine government, as
illustrated in the history of Israel. Is the Saviour less compassionate and
ready to forgive than the God of the Old Testament? -- for we see God listening
to catch the first sigh of repentance; and when he hears it, he proclaims: “I
have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus: Thou hast chastised me, and I
was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke; turn thou me and I shall
be turned; for thou art the Lord my God.” Not one word like this do we hear from
the lips of him who was the brightness of the Father's glory and the express
image of his person. Where is prophecy, with her glowing tongue, foretelling, at
the hour of captivity, the sinner's final return? The opening of hell, and the
final release of Satan and his angels, and of wicked men, would have been an
anticipation sublime beyond most other visions; and, if allowable, it could not
have failed to excite the imagination of seers and prophets. But where are the
Isaiahs, stretching their vision beyond time and the captivity of hell, saying.
Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to the
cursed, and say unto them that their warfare is accomplished, that their
iniquity is pardoned; for they have received of the Lord's hand double for all
their sins. Can it be that not even from you, beloved John, is there a vision or
a word of hope for sinners after death?

You saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, the books opened, and
another book, which is the book of life. You saw the judgment, and the doom; the
lake of fire was first prepared by casting death and hell into it, and when all
was ready, whosoever was not found written in the book of life, you saw him cast
into the lake of fire. No syllable of mercy? No visit from the angel that talked
with thee, saying. Come up hither, to see, from a higher point, beyond that
lake? Have you no yearning look? -- not even one slightly musical dark saying
upon the harp, to keep us from suspecting that God can ever be implacable? In
the Old Testament he relents and repents. '' His soul was grieved for the misery
of Israel.” “ How shall I make thee as Admah! How shall I set thee as Zeboim! My
heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.” Is that Old
Testament, which is represented by scoffers as ''cruel,” “sanguinary,”
''vindictive,” actually more merciful in its expressions towards rebellious
Israel than the New Testament is towards men who died in their sins?

How strange that He, who wept over Jerusalem, could say, “ Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,” and let
fall no expressions of commiseration or word of hope, nor leave some elliptical
“notwithstanding,” -- an unfinished sentence, a place with asterisks, a chance
even for a guess that all would not be forever determined for the wicked, at the
last day!

Mark the altered language, the different tone and manner of the Saviour towards
the wicked in the other world, compared with his words and behavior towards our
sinful race when he was on earth. “ The master of the house has risen up, and
shut to the door.” They knock; he says, “ I tell you I know you not, whence ye
are. Depart from me.” The direction is, “Bind him, hand and foot.” They “ cut
him asunder, and appoint him his portion,” not with candidates for heaven, under
discipline, but “with the hypocrites.” He is '' thrust out.” Christ uses the
expressions, “ lose his soul; “ “be cast away; ““salted with fire;” “grind him
to powder;” “son of perdition”; “ “slay them before me; ““ seek me and not find
me; “ “ gather the good, and cast the bad away;” “great gulf fixed;” “die in
your sins;” “where I am ye cannot come.” In various parts of the Bible we meet
with phrases of the like tenor, -- such as “ wrath to come; “ “ shame and
everlasting contempt; ““ torment us before the time; “ “ reap corruption; “ “
wages of sin is death; “ “ more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment; “
“mist of darkness forever and ever.” Indeed, these incidental expressions,
interwoven everywhere throughout the Bible, assume that the doctrine of future,
endless punishment for sin is a matter of course. The common mode of referring
to the future implies it. “ Because there is wrath, beware lest he take thee
away with his stroke; ““then a great ransom will not deliver thee.” “I will
laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh.” The numerous
passages of this tenor do not suggest any idea of future clemency.

Paul thus declares the end of the wicked, “ The Lord Jesus shall be revealed
from heaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them
that knew not God, and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall
be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from
the glory of his power, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and
admired in all them that believe, for our testimony among you was believed in
that day.” That this does not apply to the destruction of Jerusalem, as the
Papists and some Protestants would have us think, appears from the next chapter,
in which the Thessalonians are told that “ that day “ is not “ at hand,” because
the “man of sin” was first to be revealed.

Then Peter follows him, and says, “ But the heavens and the earth which are now,
by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of
judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”

Thus, while the Bible satisfies us that the redemption made by Christ is a final
effort to save men, we do not wonder that those who reject the Godhead of Christ
and his sacrifice for sin, reject also the idea of endless punishment. There is
no adequate necessity for a divine Saviour with his vicarious sacrifice, if
there be no such penalty annexed to the law of God. Every man is then his own
redeemer, either by obedience or by suffering. But the evangelical believer
looks into the. manger and upon the cross, and sees there his God incarnate. He
sees, in that Christ, a sacrifice for his sins. The world laugh him to scorn.

They demand whether he believes that his God is dying; and every form of
intellectual ridicule is poured upon him. He steadfastly maintains that “ the
Word was God,” that “ the Word was made flesh,” that this incarnate Word was on
the cross, “ a ransom for many,” “ a propitiation through faith in his blood,”
his sufferings a substitute for the sinner's punishment. The believer looks to
find some necessity for such an incarnation, and for the sacrificial death of
such a being. He cannot find it in the need of example, moral suasion, or
representation of the divine interest in him; but, in the declaration that
Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, he sees the appropriateness of
the incarnation to give a divine worth and efficacy to sufferings which are to
atone for sin. There is no revelation to be compared with this: “ God was
manifest in the flesh,” and, he “was manifested to take away our sins.” By all
the methods of imagery, symbolism, predictions, and most minute, pathetic
delineations of his coming, his life, death, and resurrection; by appeals from
his own lips, and those of men “ in Christ's stead; “by that perpetual memorial
of him, and of his sacrifice, the Lord's supper, men are admonished, and, “ as
though God did beseech them,'* urged to accept pardon through this infinite
provision made for the forgiveness of sin. This produces the effect, generally,
upon the mind, of a last effort.

It might have been supposed that the work of Christ would suffice for the
present dispensation, and that men rejecting or neglecting it would, in a future
state, be approached by those influences which belong peculiarly to the work of
the third person in the Godhead. But Christ said, ''It is expedient for you that
I go away; for, if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I
depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world
of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.” Something more than ordinary divine
influence is meant here by the Comforter; for the Saviour's being in the world
would not of course keep divine influence out of it, or prevent the disciples
from receiving comfort in God. A special, divine agency is here recognized, and,
by all the laws of language, a special, divine, personal agent. His object is to
reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. All which is
implied in the idea of moral omnipotence is thus made to bear upon the hearts
and minds of men, to effect their reconciliation to God, through Christ.

Resistance to these efforts in a certain way, it is declared, shall have the
effect, however long a time before death it may be made, to consign the sinner
to hopeless condemnation; for '^ whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it
shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”

It does not seem easy to explain how any one who ''hath never forgiveness,” “
neither in this world, neither in the world to come,” is to be saved; nor by
what moral distinctions it can be made to appear that some who commit one
particular sin are justly condemned to a hopeless, unforgiven state, and that
all the rest of mankind are to be restored. The work of the Holy Spirit, and the
unpardonable sin against him, convince us that the effort of mercy to save men
ends with life. Such words as these from Christ, “hath never forgiveness, but is
in danger of eternal damnation,” admit of no appeal. In this connection let it
be observed that evangelical Christians regard the work of the Holy Spirit as of
equal importance with the death of Christ, and as essential a part of the work
of redemption. It is from sin that we are to be redeemed; it is to holiness that
we are to be restored; hell and heaven are a consummation, respectively, of sin
and holiness. But we notice that those who reject 'the idea of future punishment
dwell much on sin and holiness as being the sole objects of redemption,
irrespective of the future state to which they lead. Olshaiisen says: '' The
Scriptures know no such pretended divestment of all egoism, that man needs as
motives neither fear nor hope, whether of damnation or eternal happiness; -- and
rightly; for it (z. e, this notion) exhibits itself either as fanatical error,
as in Madame Guyon, or, which is doubtless most common, as indifference and
torpidity.”^ However some may regard it as a narrow and selfish thing to make so
much, as evangelical Christians do, of “ salvation “ and “ safety,” we find that
the New Testament sets us the example. Its chief burden is holiness, likeness to
God; but it appeals to our love of happiness and dread of pain; sentimental
philosophy would substitute for these instincts a perception of the “ good, the
beautiful, and the true;” the gospel insists on these, but the way to reach them
is through the natural constitution which God has given us.

Inspiration does not disdain to say, “ God so loved the world that he gave his
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have
everlasting life.” “He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not
shall be damned.” '' We shall be saved from wrath through him.” '^ Who have fled
for refuge to lay hold on the hope se-t before us.”

“ What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? “The attempt to show
that all this is unworthy of our “noble aspirations,” is only professing to be
wise; but “ the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” The work of the Holy
Spirit in applying the redemption by Christ to the souls of men has for its
object not only to save them from sin, but from its “ wages,” which is “death.”

All having failed, and men going from under the concentrated influences of
redeeming mercy into a future state, if then the God who has provided such a
plan of redemption, is to meet them, and, rather than have them perish^ abandon
all his terms, and admit them to heaven upon their own conditions, rather than
see them suffer; if he who became flesh and died for them, will then consent
that punishment shall try to effect that which love and earthly discipline,
together, failed to accomplish, and punishment proves to be the power of God and
the wisdom of God unto salvation, and sinners will therefore have more powerful
means of grace in hell than under the gospel, we, for our part, need another
revelation to inform us of it, and then to explain its consistency with our
present Bible.


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  CHAPTER 23: A 03     THE FALL ANGELS, MAN CONFIRMATORY PROOF
========================================================================

III. The fall of angels, and of man, is a confirmatory proof of future, endless
retribution. THIS will of course have weight only with those who believe in the
existence and fall of angels, and in the fall of man. To prove either of these
here, would be out of place; and, indeed, the necessity of proving them would
show that everything which has thus far been said in this article is
superfluous, because it takes for granted many things generally believed, which
rest, however, on the same kind of evidence with the existence of angels and
their fall. The apostles, the scribes and Pharisees, I have not thought it
necessary to prove had a real existence, and that they were not merely
personified principles of good and evil.

If the reader be one who rejects the doctrine of fallen angels, and of the fall
of man, he will read what is here said merely as showing the way in which those
who believe these things are confirmed, by them, in their belief of endless
retribution. Peter says, “ God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them
down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto
judgment.”* Jude says, ''And the angels which kept not their first estate, but
left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness
unto the judgment of the great day.” If God did not keep angels from falling, we
are not constrained to think that he will restore them, If he will hereafter
reinstate them by a direct act of power, the same power could have kept them
from falling, with no greater interference with their free agency. If he allowed
them to fall with a view to some great good in, their natures, suffering them,
in the progress of their experience, to ruin this world, and bring in such a
fearful plague as sin has been to our race, all to be compensated for in the
great sweep of ages by this beneficial knowledge of evil, we are * 2 Peter 2:4.
Jude 1:6. led to the conclusion that sin and “Buffering are the necessary means
of the greatest good. But what manner of Supreme Being have we here for a
Universalist to love and worship? His government, it would seem, cannot proceed
without suffering a host of angels, falling from their thrones in heaven, to
pass through centuries of sin and mischief. This seems neither benevolent nor
wise. In the exercise of their liberty we are told that angels kept not their
first estate, but left their own habitation, and that God hath reserved them in
everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. If they
are finally to be restored, God will restore them, or they will come back of
themselves. If God foresaw that he must finally restore them, he would have kept
them from falling, unless sin and misery are, under his government, the means of
the greatest good. If so, this may be one of the cases in which if a little is
good, more is better; and perhaps the best interests of the universe will be
promoted by protracting this sin and suffering indefinitely.

It is a wholly gratuitous assumption that fallen angels and men will at last, of
their own accord, repent. Who has travelled so far as to know this? What reason
have we to think that hell will finally convince and persuade men? All our
present knowledge respecting it contradicts this expectation. Satan and his
angels have tried its redeeming power, if it has any, for at least six thousand
3^ears. We see no premises, therefore, on which to base the assertion that men
will at last universally repent. It does not appear that being in torment, even,
will have any better effect, forever, on men, than it seems to have had on “ the
rich man,” whose only prayer to Abraham was for mitigation of pain, and for a
warning to be sent to his brethren. He seems to think that if one went to them
from the dead, they would repent.

Why had he not repented himself, among the dead? Surely the very experience of
hell itself must be a more powerful means of good than a mere apparition. But as
suffering had not made him penitent, must be that it has no such effect after
death. Hell seems a very cruel means of effecting the reformation of sinners,
when we think that, if employed for this purpose through such great periods of
punishment, it will be employed by Him who so easily converted Saul of Tarsus,
and the woman that was a sinner, and Zaccheus, and the thief on the cross. This
is, to my own mind, one of the insuperable objections to the theory of future
disciplinary punishment. I can readily yield my assent to the declaration that “
he that belie veth not the Son shall not see life;” it does no violence to my
understanding that those who refuse salvation by Christ, when notified that
their refusal will be fatal, should reap forever that which they sowed, and
continue hereafter to sow that which they reap, and thus without end.

I read this in the Bible. I have no controversy with it. But that a human soul
should need ages in hell, with Satan and his angels, to be made contrite, is as
contrary to all analogy as it is destitute of scriptural proof. Besides, if God
does all in this world which he can do without destroying free agency, to
convert certain men, it is difficult to see how the use of superior power in
hell can fail to destroy it utterly. If God does not use all proper means here
to save men, how is he infinitely merciful? But if here he goes to the very
boundaries of their free agency, which, it is said, he never passes over, and
yet fails to subdue them, it is gratuitous to say that he will certainly succeed
any better hereafter.

How much longer than these six thousand years past, angels are to suffer, we
cannot tell; but the consignment of wicked men at the last day to such company
as that of “ the devil and his angels,” looks fearfully unlike a remedial
measure for angel or man. The last sentence is utterly inconsistent with any
expectation, or intention, on the part of Christ, that those on whom it is
pronounced will return. Otherwise, he would not have pronounced them cursed.
Probationers are not accursed. They are prisoners of hope. Everything in the
last words of Christ to the wicked is as final as language can make it. But if
the wicked are to be punished until they repent, we said, punishment thus far
has not reformed the original inhabitants of hell. It is incumbent on those who
advocate final restoration on this ground, to prove that punishment will at last
have a restorative power, or they must show how long the wicked must sin and
suffer to make it wrong to punish them any more, even if they continue to sin.


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  CHAPTER 24: A 04     TERMS USED REGARD RESURRECTION DEAD
========================================================================

IV. The terms used with regard to the resurrection of the dead, are proofs of
endless retribution. IN the '' Child's Catechism,” by Rev. O. A.

Skinner, I find the following:* “ Q. Will sin exist in the resurrection?

'' A. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom
of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.f “Q. What does the Saviour
say respecting our condition when raised?

“ A. Neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels; and are
the children of God, being children of the resurrection.”:}, Here, it will be
seen, it is assumed that Christ refers to all the dead, and that all, when they
are raised, will be the children of God. This, it is understood, is the
prevailing belief of Universalists.

* Page 24. f 1 Corinthians 15:50. t Mark 12:25.

We read that “ no Scripture is of any private interpretation;” in other words,
that the meaning must be ascertained by comparing the Scriptures one with
another. The parallel passage in Luke reads: “ But they that shall be accounted
worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry
nor are given in marriage; neither, can they die any more, for they are equal
unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the
resurrection.” * Our esteemed friend, Mr. Skinner, it seems to me, is led into a
mistake by regarding the expression, “ children of the resurrection,” as meaning
all who have part in the resurrection; and since Jesus declares '' the children
of the resurrection” to be synonymous with ''children of God,” Mr. S. naturally
concludes that all who rise from the dead will be the children of God.

Now, allowing, for the sake of the argument, that the wicked are raised from the
dead in their sins, they are not, in the scriptural sense, '' children of the
resurrection.” Rising from the dead does not make us “ children of the * Luke
20:35-36. resurrection.” Being the offspring of God does not make us the
“children of God; “the wicked would not “come forth to everlasting life,” though
coming forth to live forever. The term ''children of the resurrection” connects
with itself the further idea of being qualified for heaven, -- “counted worthy
to obtain that world.” This is confirmed, it seems to me, beyond all question,
by one word of the apostle Paul, “ I count all things but loss, &c, if by any
means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”* If, on being raised
from the dead, all men are to be fit for heaven, Paul need not have used such
“means” to “attain” to it, nor, indeed, any “means” whatever; for he was sure to
be raised, like the rest of mankind. Adopt the interpretation just given, viz,
that to be accounted worthy to obtain the resurrection from the dead includes
the idea of a distinguishing fitness for heaven, body and soul reunited, and we
can see why Paul should say he was willing to count all things but loss to
attain unto it, -- rising from the dead with his perfected nature, body and soul
being, in his view,

*Php_3:8-11. the consummation of preparedness, in every respect, for heaven. If
such be Paul's meaning of '' attaining unto the resurrection of the dead,” the
wicked, in their sins, though raised from the dead, do not attain unto the
resurrection, and they are not, therefore, in the Saviour's sense, “children of
the resurrection.” The Sadducees had said, '' Whose wife shall she be in the
resurrection?” I will paraphrase the reply of Christ according to my
interpretation of his words: “It is, of course, no use for me to answer your
question on the supposition that the woman and her seven husbands are not among
the saved. They that have done evil ' shall come forth,' as I once said, ' to
the resurrection of damnation.' Conjugal relationships among them, or anything
relating to happiness, are not supposable. Your inquiry, therefore, relates, of
course, to those who are supposed to be in a condition to admit of friendly and
loving relationships. As to them, I say, that being accounted worthy to obtain
that world, and afterwards such a resurrection as is worthy of the name, they
stand in no need of earthly joys, and as they die no more, the necessity for
reproduction ceases; they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of
God, being, in distinction from the rest of the risen dead, ' children of the
resurrection.' “ The meaning of the phrase is also illustrated by the
expression, “ children of this world.”

Good people are, in one sense, “ children of this world,” equally with the bad;
that is, they are natives of this world; and yet we read, “ the children of this
world are wiser in their generation than the children of lights Thus, the good
only are “ children of the resurrection,” though all are raised; as the wicked
only are “ children of this world,” though bad and good live here together.

Paul said before Felix, and declared that the Jews “ themselves also allow “ it
(for the Sadducees were small in number, though high in rank and power), ''That
there shall he a resurrection of the dead both of the just and unjust * The idea
advanced by Mr. Skinner and others, that all who are raised from the dead are
children of God, grows, therefore, out of his mistake, as I view it, in
interpreting the expression,

* Acts 24:15. children of the resurrection” to mean all the risen dead. Enough
has been said in explanation of the opposite, and, as we believe, the more
scriptural sense of the phrase. It seems to us unaccountable that any should
adopt the idea that all who are raised from the dead will be the children of
God, if they have ever read the parables of Christ in Matt. xiii. How does he
there say it shall be in the end of the world?

'' So shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of man shall send forth his
angels, and they shall gather aut of his kingdom all things that offend, and
them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire, there shall
be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” The same words are repeated at the close of
the parable of the net.

Surely there will be some of the risen dead who will not be '' children of the
resurrection,” because they will not be the “ children of God.”

I proceed now to the argument to be derived from the declarations of Christ in
connection with the resurrection. Christ said, “ The hour is coming, and now is,
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall
live.” This he said to illustrate his commission to bestow spiritual life on
those who are dead in sin. Then he proceeds at once to assert a power in
confirmation of this, in the way of miracle. “ Marvel not at this,” -- (at my
power to regenerate the soul,) “for the hour is coming” (notice that he does not
here add -- “and now is”) “when all that are in their graves shall hear his
voice and shall come forth, they that have done good to the resurrection of
life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation.”

“ All that are in their graves “ includes all who die, from Abel to the last
victim of death and the grave. “ They that have done evil,” of course, then, are
there. Now, it appears that they who have done evil will not have atoned, in the
intermediate state, for the deeds done in the body, because the Saviour says
they will come forth “ to the resurrection of damnation.” But some of them will
have been for a very long time in the separate state. Wherever the rich man went
at death, he was “ in torment; “ there were men before his day, and there have
been men since his time, who were as wicked as he. But can sin be punished “in
torment” so long?

Peter tells us that there were “spirits” in his day ''in prison,” to whom Christ
preached by the Spirit in the days of Noah, -- that is at least three thousand
years before. That is a long time for sin to be punished, or even for a sinner
to be detained, under the government of a good God. Now, these are yet to “ come
forth unto the resurrection of damnation.” If sin can be so punished by the
Infinite Father, and if bodies are to be added to these souls, notwithstanding
this already protracted experience of misery, and if they, body and soul, are at
the last day to be doomed to “ fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,” on
what principles can all this be explained? Does sin merit such punishment, as
the Bible declares has already been inflicted?

“Would an earthly parent punish 'thus? “ Is there not enough, in this
ascertained infliction of punishment for sin, to destroy all confidence in the
government of God, unless sin deserves it all? And if it deserves all this, we
know not how much more it may deserve.

It will be observed, in addition, that Christ does not tell us, they that have
done evil but by the power of discipline shall have repented shall come forth to
the resurrection of life, and the incorrigible to the resurrection of a further
discipline. How is this? Has not the long interval between death and the
resurrection resulted in the salvation of any? Strange that some of the more
hopeful of the wicked should not have availed themselves of the opportunity
between death and the judgment, to confess and repent.

It is contrary to all analogy that it should be necessary to punish men so long
before they repent. On the deck, or in the rigging, of a burning vessel at sea,
when death is absolutely certain, it is to be presumed that it does not take a
wicked man very long to decide with what feelings he will meet his God. When the
soul, after death, finds itself on the way to hell, can we suppose that an
opportunity to escape, by repentance, if it were offered, would be rejected? If
the only object of God is to reclaim the sinner, he will release him the first
moment that he repents. It is so in this world. “And when he was yet a great way
off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and
kissed him.” If the soul, at the sight of its punishment, relents and agrees to
the terms of pardon, does a Universalist believe that God will say, “ No; you
must suffer in hell for your sins, even though you have now repented”? Would an
earthly father inflict punishment in such a case? But the Bible represents the
wicked to have been in hell from the time of their death till the resurrection,
and at the resurrection they must yet come forth “to the resurrection of
damnation.” It is incredible that so much time and so much suffering should be
necessary to make sinners repent. Either they repent, and God still continues to
punish them “ ages on ages; '' or they do not repent between death and the
resurrection, nor at the judgment-seat of Christ, nor in the immediate prospect
of going away to the society and the punishment of the devil and his angels. If
a soul which is finally to be reclaimed, can pass through such experience and
not repent, it requires larger hope and faith than is common to men to expect
that future punishment can be a means of salvation. That the guilt of a finite
creature, man or angel, should merit thousands of years in hell, or that
thousands of years should be requisite to bring him to his right mind, no more
accords with our natural feelings, nor with what we call “reason,” than does the
idea of endless punishment. But if the Bible conveys anything intelligibly to
our understanding, it teaches that angels and men have been subjected to
punishment for a longer period than is “reasonable “for mere discipline.

Surely, the end of future punishment cannot be merely the recovery of the
sinner. Were it so, moreover, it would follow that sin injures no one but the
sinner himself. It violates no duties towards God, no interests of
fellow-creatures. But the law of God refutes this; the threatenings against
those who cause others to fall, and the frequent punishment of men who made
others to sin, prove that the punishment of the sinner will have some other end
than his reformation.

It being frequently argued that the sins of a finite creature cannot be punished
forever, because a finite creature cannot merit infinite punishment, it will be
enough to meet this, in passing, with a single remark, viz.: That, if this be
so, then, even if the whole universe should sin forever, the whole universe
cannot be punished forever, because the whole universe, after all, is but
finite.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 25: A 05     THE SCRIPTURES TEACH LAW  GOD
========================================================================

V. The Scriptures teach that the law of God has a curse: -- which it has not, if
future punishment be disciplinary. THE punishment, however long and severe,
which shall result in restoring a soul to holiness and an endless heaven, under
the kind and faithful administration of its heavenly Father, it would be
unsuitable to call “a curse.” The theory of Restorationists is, that mercy,
having failed to recover sinners in this world, will go on hereafter, in the
same direction, with more vigorous methods, till it succeeds, -- the same
undying, unfaltering love pursuing the wanderer, which here never ceased to
plead.

Hereafter it will mingle stronger ingredients, and cure the disease of sin. What
“ curse “ there is in such loving-kindness, it is hard to see. In this world we
experience just this treatment, “ Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes; Fine
nets and stratagems to catch us in; and sometimes all the waves and billows go
over us. Men are stripped of property, family, health, reputation, and finally
they turn to the hand that smites them, grateful that God did not spare the rod
for their crying; and they testify that through the loss of all things they have
gained eternal bliss. Do they call their afflictions their “ curse “? Have they
suffered “the curse of the law “? All the ordinary medicines having failed, the
physician brings some extreme remedy and saves the patient. Was that a '' curse
“? He amputates the limb, and thus prolongs a precious life. Did he '' curse “
the man in doing so? We must, therefore, expunge large parts of the Bible if
future punishment be only a wholesome discipline. “ Christ has redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” No; he has only redeemed us
from a further dispensation of infinite mercy, if punishment be only for
discipline; indeed, he prevents the bestowment of a greater proof of love than
he himself gave us in dying on the cross; for if, after all his love for us, he
will persist in disciplining us in hell, willing to see us suffer that he may
finally save us, '' herein is love.” The cross is not the climax of his love,
but the lake of fire. How it is in any sense a curse, we fail to see. Christians
here never look upon the means of sanctification as “the curse of the law.” The
sinner who by the severest discipline is brought to Christ, feels that he
thereby escapes '' the curse of the law.” But we cannot find that curse, neither
here nor hereafter, unless there be punishment which is not intended for the
recovery of the sinner.


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  CHAPTER 26: A 06     THE SENTENCE PASSED UPON THE WICKED
========================================================================

VI. The Sentence passed upon the wicked indiscriminately, forbids the idea of
discipline in future punishment.

AMONG the impenitent at death and in eternity there is, of course, great variety
of character. If the object of future punishment be to reclaim them, the wise
and considerate methods of earthly discipline seem to be utterly discarded after
death. We hardly need to be reminded how indiscriminate are the threatenings
which are said to be inflicted on the wicked. The last sentence evidently
regards none of them as probationers; there is no forbearance in it towards the
more hopeful; they are all addressed as “ye cursed.” We are considering the
testimony of the Scriptures.

What evidence do they afford of any discrimination in the treatment of the
finally impenitent, notwithstanding the vast variety which must exist among
them? I answer, Not any. But the following passages, among others, teach plainly
that the doom of the wicked will be, indiscriminate, without regard to hopeful
diversities of character.

“ And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were
opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead
were judged out of the things which were written in the book, according to their
works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell
delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man
according to their works.” Then follows this declaration: 'And death and hell
were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” Some say, death and
hell are annihilated. But this is not the idea intended, unless the wicked also
are then to be annihilated; for the next verse, concluding the subject, says,
“And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake
of fire.” The obvious meaning is. Death and hell, whatever they represent, will
then be added to the lake of fire, whatever that is, as new ingredients, and to
constitute “ the second death,” and as a final gathering together of all the
elements of sorrow and pain, with all the wicked, into one place. With this
passage agree the words of Daniel: “ And many of them that sleep in the dust of
the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and
everlasting contempt.” The parables of Christ relating to the end of the world
recognize only two great divisions of men at the last day.

Wheat and tares only are to be in the ''field;” good and bad only, in the “net.”
The wheat is saved, the tares are burned; ''the good” in the net are gathered
into vessels; “the bad” are none of them dismissed for amendment, or growth, but
are “cast away.” And Christ tells us that every human being will stand at his
right hand, or left hand, “blessed,” or “cursed.”

Now, when we call to mind the justice of God, and reflect that undue severity,
or the laying on man more than is meet, would alienate the confidence of the
good from the Most High, and when we consider the declaration of Christ, that
sins of ignorance shall receive but “ few stripes,” and we still perceive that
the human race are evidently to fall at last into two divisions, which will
include the whole, with their countless diversities and degrees as to character
in each division, we infer that no provision is made for a more hopeful class to
enjoy a further trial. All upon the left hand are doomed alike.

If there is to be a new probation after death, the Bible surely does not teach
it.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 27: A 07     DURATION FUTURE PUNISHMENT EXPRESSED
========================================================================

VII. The duration of future punishment is expressed in the New Testament by the
terms employed to denote absolute eternity.

THERE is, we all admit, such a thing as forever. If the Bible speaks of the
natural attributes of God, his eternity is of course brought to view, and there
must be a term, or terms, to convey the idea.

Now it is apparent to all, that the words eternal^ everlasting, forever^ never
of themselves signify a limited duration. No one ever learns from these words
that the duration to which they refer is less than infinite. The idea of
limitation, if it be obtained, always is derived from the context.

It is moreover true, beyond the possibility of dispute, that the words eternal^
everlasting^ and forever^ always mean the whole of something.

There is no instance in which they are used to denote a part of a thing's
duration. It is always the entire period for which that thing is to last. This
no one will call in question.

It is well understood that the words “ forever,” and “ everlasting,” are used to
express a duration commensurate with the nature of the thing spoken of. “
Everlasting mountains “ are coeval with creation, and are to endure as long as
the earth. “A servant forever” is a servant for life. We cannot take the sense
which the word has in connection with a certain thing, and by it prove or
disprove anything relating to a totally different thing. We cannot prove, for
example, that mountains will not last to the end of time, because forever
applied to a servant, means only for life. We must consider the nature of the
object to which the word is applied. When it is applied to the Most High, of
course it means unlimited duration. Now the words which convey the idea of
absolute eternity are applied, for example, to mountains, and to future
punishment, and to the being and government of God. This, then, is certain:
Because forever when applied to some things, does not mean absolute eternity, it
does not follow that it does not mean eternity when applied to future
retribution. If it were so, we could not convey the idea of the eternity of God;
for it could be said that forever is sometimes applied to a limited duration.
That is true; now if this proves that future punishment is not forever, it must
also prove that the being of God is not forever.

Two things are beyond dispute: 1. Forever and everlasting are applied to future
retributions. 2. These terms always mean the whole as to duration, of that with
which they stand connected. If applied to life, it is the whole of life; if to
the existence of the world, it is the entire period of its existence; if to a
covenant, the covenant is either without limit as to time, or it is the whole of
the duration which the subject permits; and when applied to Jehovah, it refers
to his whole eternity.

What, then, does it mean, when applied to future retribution? It always means
the whole of something. Is it the whole of future existence? No one can base a
denial of it on the ground that the word, when applied to human life, means only
a few years, or a limited duration when applied to the earth. For, how is it
when applied to God and the happiness of heaven?

It is certainly the place of any who deny endless retributions, to show that the
words cannot mean the whole of future existence when applied to punishment. The
words mean the whole of future existence when applied, by the, use of the same
Greek words in the same passages, to the happiness of the righteous. The
objector must show that when applied to the future life, they mean only a part
of it, notwithstanding they always mean the whole of everything else with which
they stand connected.

Such are some of the considerations, drawn from the word of God, which satisfy
my own mind that retributions after death are without end. Mr. Foster speaks of
it as '' the general, not very far short of universal, judgment of divines.”
Such multitudes of the best of men and women are still firmly persuaded of its
truth, that we are led to say, there must be a foundation for it in the word of
God, -- and for this reason: If mankind could have divested themselves of the
conviction that it is not found in the word of God, it is reasonable to think
that it would long since have been discarded.

Nay, rather, who would have invented such a doctrine? Good men would not have
palmed it upon the world, for more reasons than one. Besides, many an error has
been exploded; it is unaccountable, if this be error, that it should have kept
its hold upon the human mind. No Protestant, it would seem, would quote a belief
in purgatory as a parallel case. We have no coercion, nor any kind of motive to
bias our minds towards this article of faith. We use no terms on this subject,
-- certainly we approve of none, which are not derived from the Bible.

We are not superstitious, nor fanatical, nor priest-ridden, nor cruel; and we
think we have far more exalted reasons for believing in the infinite love of God
than any have who do not see it, as we do, in the atoning cross. However good
and amiable the opposers of this doctrine may be, they will not assume that they
are more humane, more pitiful, more gentle, more the friends of God and man,
than those who believe it. In view of the hold which it has on the minds of men,
it would be so great a marvel that the doctrine should not be found in the
Scriptures, that nothing could be more astounding, not even the fearful truth
itself. And that it may be seen, further, how we are confirmed in our persuasion
that we read the Bible aright, I refer not only, as above, to the convictions of
believers that the doctrine is scriptural, but to the positive statements of
some who have rejected it.

Mr. Foster tells us: “And the language of Scripture is formidably strong, -- so
strong that it must be an argument of extreme cogency that would authorize a
limited interpretation.”

Dr. Thomas Burnett, an English divine, writing in favor of final restoration,
says: ''Human nature revolts from the very name of future punishment. But the
sacred Scriptures seem to be on the other side.”*

One effect of the recent discussion of this subject in this city has been to
elicit from a distinguished advocate of final restoration, the following
statement, “ And yet I freely say that I do not find the doctrine of the
ultimate salvation of all souls * “ Natura humana abhorret ab ipso nomine
poenarura seternarum. At Scriptura sacra a partibus contrariis stare videtur.”
-- De Statu Mort. et Resurg.^ p. 228, 2d ed. clearly stated in any text or in
any discourse that has ever been reported from the lips of Christ. I do not
think that we can fairly maintain that the final restoration of all men is a
prominent and explicit doctrine of the four gospels.” * To this, I am able to
add the explicit testimony of Rev. Theodore Parker. Wishing to verify a
quotation which a friend had tried in vain to find for me in one of Mr. Parker's
volumes, I addressed a note to Mr. Parker, asking him to give me the reference.
The following polite and obliging answer will speak for itself.

All the italics are Mr. Parker's.

'Boston, Dec. 1, 1858.

“ Rev. De. Adams.

“ Dear Sir: I am ill now, and cannot recollect that the passage you refer to
occurs in any of my volumes; yet it might, in several. I am sure it does in some
printed sermons -- pamphlets, but cannot now say which. I will try to find the
passage.

“ To me it is quite clear that Jesus taught the doctrine of eternal damnation^
if the Evangelists -- the first three, I mean -- are to be treated as * Rev. T.
S. King's Two Discourses, p. 5. inspired. I can understand his language in no
other way. But as the Protestant sects start with the notion -- which to me is a
monstrous one -- that the words of the New Testament are all miraculously
inspired by God, and so infallibly true; and as- this doctrine of eternal
damnation is so revolting to all the humane and moral feelings of our nature,
men said ' the words must be interpreted in another way.' So as the Unitarians
have misinterpreted the New Testament to prove that the Christos of the fourth
gospel had no preexistence, the Universalists misinterpreted other passages of
the gospels to show that Jesus of Nazareth never taught eternal damnation. So
the geologists misinterpret Genesis to-day -- to save the divine infallible
character of the text.

Yours truly, “ Theodore Parker.”

It was but fair to let Mr. Parker state his whole belief on this subject. Thus,
in his view, if the Evangelists are to be believed, Christ taught that future
retributions are to be endless.

There is nothing to be surprised at in this; but it will be seen that it is not
without good reason that those who receive the Bible implicitly as the word of
God, have so generally believed in endless retribution as a doctrine of
Scripture. The question then arises, whether our human instincts, or divine
revelations, whether man the sinner, or God the sovereign, shall dictate the
penalty of sin? Mr. Foster, seeking relief to his mind from the terrible idea of
endless sin and misery, says of the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked,
“ It would be a prodigious relief.” Some one respectfully replies to him that “
the divine government is not for the relief of the imagination, but for the
relief of the universe.” The question is often asked, How, allowing endless
retribution to be a scriptural doctrine, can you have peace of mind in your
belief?

I answer. We believe that no one will perish who does not reject the Saviour of
the world; or, if he be a heathen, does not sin against light and conviction
sufficient to save him.

It has an effect to quiet our minds when we reflect that our thoughts and
feelings at the loss of the soul were surpassed in Him whose soul for us was
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.

Tears were shed by him over sinners -- “God hath laid on him the iniquity of us
all.” If the thought of endless retribution is so terrible to us. who know so
little about it, we are constrained to think that there was never any sorrow
like unto the sorrow of him, who loved us and gave himself for us, when he sees
that he must, nevertheless, pronounce upon any for whom he died, the sentence of
that everlasting punishment from which he became incarnate, and died to save us.
Great as our astonishment and sorrow are, we cannot forget that they are
infinitely less than his. If, through grace, we are saved, we look to him, who
knows what his own tears have been, to wipe away all tears from our eyes.

We also consider that the basis of future punishment is a chosen and cherished
state of mind, which leads men here to reject Christ, notwithstanding his known
character and his efforts for them. This may lead them still to reject him; for,
as already stated, we do not find that even the loss of heaven and the
experience of chains under darkness, have reconciled lost angels to God. While
they choose to sin, therefore, we see no injustice in their being punished, even
if they sin forever. That the Bible contains forewarnings and instructions which
ought to be sufficient to deter men from future misery, we learn even from the
reply of Abraham to the rich man in hell. The rich man desired that Lazarus
might be sent to his father's house with testimony concerning that “ place of
torment.” Abraham replied that “ they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear
them.”' The rich man could have easily reminded Abraham, if truth permitted,
that there is nothing about that place in the Old Testament. He makes no such
answer, but pleads the supposed efficacy of a visitor from the unseen world.
Abraham replied, that such a visitor could have no effect on those who do not
believe the testimony of the Old Testament on that subject. All this is from the
lips of Jesus Christ.

Inasmuch as we cast no blame on God for the present condition and conduct of
cannibals, and pagans, and atheists, and blasphemers, and slavetraders, and
every other description of wicked men, (neither do they themselves impute blame
to him,) we do not feel that God will be responsible for the endless wickedness
and misery of sinners; nor will they charge him with injustice more than they
now do.

We believe that the God of the New Testament is the same unchangeable God of the
Old Testament; that Christ has not modified the divine character, nor altered
one principle of the divine administration; but that the New Testament reveals
the mercy of God in fullorbed beauty, though its outlines were always visible
from the beginning; that all which was terrible in the God who destroyed the old
world, and Sodom and Gomorrha, and cast down rebel angels from heaven to hell,
is still the same, and that when mercy has failed under the New Testament to
recover sinners, the God of the Old Testament and of the New will be their Judge
and King. We read that “ it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the
living God.”

'' For our God is a consuming fire.” And we have our choice, to love and serve
such a God as this, or to reject him and take the consequences. Our private
experience persuades us that He is good. He has always been just and kind,
gentle, easy to be entreated. In all our afflictions he was afflicted, and the
angel of his presence saved us.

Knowing this, his stern, uncompromising hatred of sin, his power to inflict
suffering and to look upon it forever, if necessary, give us confidence in Him.
We may need such attributes for the foundation of our safety and of our
confidence in God, as much as that attribute which we now separate from the rest
of his character and call his love.

We believe that the Bible teaches -- for surely it follows of course from all
which has now been adduced -- that some proportion of pain and misery will
forever exist under the government of God. The idea that they are to be wholly
expurgated is contradicted by the Scriptures, and is mere fancy. But the scale
of things being hereafter enlarged to our apprehension, and the reasons for one
thing and another which are now but partially explained, being more fully
apparent, we think we see in the present feelings of good citizens with regard
to law, and punishments, and the officers of justice, how future pain and
misery, in their relation to the infinitely blessed system of government over a
universe of free agents, will by no means diminish the happiness of that
multitude of obedient souls which no man can number.

I have always been struck by the consideration, that the passages from which
Universalists infer the final happiness of all men, do not occur in the Bible in
connection with the punishment of the wicked. This is of the utmost importance.
It is one presumptive proof that, occurring as they do apart from any mention of
the punishment of the wicked, they belong to other subjects. And so we find
them, in connection with the blessedness of the righteous, the ultimate
victories of Christ over his enemies, his final reign, and the happiness of
heaven. But we look in vain for passages where promises, prophecies, hints of
ultimate restoration, occur in connection with the subject of future punishment.
It will not be disputed that there are passages which seem to teach future
endless punishment and the attempt is to show that they are “ metaphorical.” But
some appear to think that metaphorical means fictitious unreal on the contrary
“metaphorical” language is generally the stronger way of asserting anything,
being resorted to for the purpose of intensifying the expression. But how
remarkable it is that we find no clause nor phrase, neither literal, nor
“metaphorical,” limiting the main drift of a passage which speaks of future
endless punishment, or suggesting the idea of restoration. The bold, terrific
language of Scripture, asserting the future punishment of the wicked, has not
one word of qualification.

We frequently meet with such representations and illustrations as the following,
in modern writers, -- from whom I had intended to quote several passages; but
the following statement of their views will suffice: -- The soul is God's child.
Will a good mother ever cast away her offspring? No; neither will the great
''Mother of us all,” -- the love of God. The worst of men -- the Judases, the
Neros, and Caligulas -- will at last fulfil their career of sin and sorrow, and
return to the bosom of God. As the earth in some parts of its orbit drives av/ay
from the sun, but soon comes “rounding back again,” so every creature that God
ever made, Satan and all (if there be any Satan), will at last accomplish its
terrible career, and, passing its solstice, rejoice in a new moral existence.
The brief reply to all such fancies is this, Have we a Bible? Does it give ns
any intimation of such a revolution, such an orbit, for the lost soul? We read
of “wandering stars, to whom is reserved the mist of darkness forever and ever;
“ but where does the Bible, in speaking of the spirit launching forth on its
aphelion, intimate that its path is a cycle, and not a straight line?

We see one part of the race “ go away into everlasting punishment.” But this is
said to be merely “a metaphor.” We will be grateful even for “ a metaphor,” if
there be any, representing their return.

We have lately been furnished, from high authority in the Universalist
denomination, with some of the principal proof texts in the discourses of Christ
in favor of the salvation of all men. They occur in the review already spoken
of, (in the preface to this article,) written by Rev. Dr. Thomas Whittemore, in
which he endeavors to answer Rev. T. S. King's assertion, that he could not find
any text or discourse of Christ which contains the doctrine of the final
happiness of all men. Dr. Whittemore, of course, would here bring forth some of
his strong proofs, for he says of Mr. King's discourse: “We think they will do
as much to break down Universalism as to break down the doctrine of endless
misery.” The following are Dr. Whittemore's quotations from the words of Christ,
to prove that he taught the final salvation of all men.

1. '' This is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.”* Dr. Whittemore
gives an extended exposition of the discourse of Christ at the well of Samaria,
which gave occasion to these words of the Samaritans; and he says, “ Jesus
Christ, let it be remembered, is declared to be the Saviour of the world; and
how could he be justly called the Saviour of the world if the world shall never
be saved? “

2. “All things are delivered unto me of my Father.” This is a major premise.
“All that the Father, hath given me shall come to me,” is * John 4:42. t P- 390.
the minor premise. '' To come to Christ is to become a Christian.”* This
involves the ergo of the proposition. He adds, '' We have by no means exhausted
our proof; “f and he gives us,

3. “ And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” We
have the word of Christ for it, -- “ will draw all men unto me.”

4. “ Jesus answered. Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of
God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but
are as the angels of God in heaven.” “ If angels are holy, mankind are to be
holy; if angels are to be happy, mankind are to be happy.” “ This is a distinct
and positive declaration of the purity and happiness of all men.” “ How, then,”
Dr. W. says, '' can we adopt the language of Mr. King, and say, * I do not find
the doctrine,' &c. Strange declaration! Jesus joined two great facts together,
the resurrection of all men, and their exaltation to the condition of angels.”
§

Such passages are, in the opinion of Dr. Whittemore, a plain, obvious
refutation, from Christ himself, of that, in Dr. Whittemore's view, dan * p.
391. t p. 392. + p. 395. § p. 395. gerous assertion by Mr. King, viz, “ the
ultimate salvation of all souls is not clearly taught in any text or discourse
in the gospels.” The principal topics which have now been considered are these,
The Scriptures reveal a future state of reward and punishment.

They teach that the body and soul will be joined in future happiness and misery.

Christ teaches that God can destroy both body and soul in hell. If God cannot
morally do this, the declaration is unintelligible; it answers no purpose of
instruction.

Future punishment will therefore be a natural operation of moral laws, sustained
and made effectual by the hand of God upon the sinner, who, by his state of
depravity, will be made susceptible to misery forever. The essential elements of
misery remain in the wicked after death.

Redemption by Christ is represented as having for its object salvation from
final perdition. The work of the Holy Spirit as a part of redemption, and the
unpardonable sin against Him, prove that the present is the final effort to save
men.

None of the passages relied on to prove final restoration occur in connection
with the subject of future punishment, but with the reign of Christ, and the
happiness of the righteous. No passage in the Bible discloses the future
repentance of the wicked.

Promises of restoration, made to sinners who in this world were to become
penitent, always occur in connection with threatenings and doom. No such
promises are made in connection with the threatenings of future punishment, or
with the final doom of the wicked. The Bible closes with an express declaration
of the future unchangeableness of character.

There are no prophetic visions in the New Testament which contemplate
deliverance from hell, and corresponding to visions of God's ancient people in
captivity, and of their release and restoration. The fall of angels, and of men,
is a confirmatory argument in favor of future punishment, seeing that if God did
not keep them from falling, he can consistently refuse to restore them. The
terms used with regard to the resurrection of the dead, show that the wicked
will have experienced no change since death, but will come forth from their
graves to the resurrection of damnation.

If the wicked are punished hereafter merely for their own good, there is no such
thing as sin against God or our neighbor; -- which is contrary to Scripture.

- The law of God has no curse if future punishment be in all cases disciplinary.
The sentence passed upon the impenitent indiscriminately, forbids the idea of
discipline in future punishment.

It is inconceivable that fallen angels and “ the spirits in prison,” who were on
earth “in the days of Noah,” should not long ago have repented of their sins, if
repentance were the object sought by their punishment.

If death, and the scenes within the veil previous to the judgment-day, do not
effect the repentance in the wicked, there is no ground to think that their
banishment from Christ with the fallen angels, at the last day, is intended for
their reformation, or would effect it.

“ Forever “ and “ everlasting “ always denote the whole as to duration, of that
with which they stand connected.

If a finite being cannot justly be punished forever, then, if the whole universe
should sin forever, it could not be punished forever, because the whole
intelligent universe also is finite. The duration of future punishment is
expressed in the New Testament by the terms employed to denote absolute eternity
in cases which are never questioned. The provision made in the incarnation,
sufferings, and death of the Son of God for pardon and salvation, and the
abundant calls to repentance, and offers of eternal life, through Christ, to
all, will make the final impenitence of sinners inexcusable, and their misery
will be of their own procuring.

I may be allowed, in closing, to quote the words of the apostle Paul, which
those who preach and are set for the defence of the gospel, must not hesitate to
adopt: “ For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved and
in them that perish: To the one we are the savor of death unto death, and to the
other, the savor of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?”*

Pursuing my ordinary labors, a Universalist and Unitarian clergyman of this city
invited me to repeat, in his pulpit, a sermon on this subject, to which he had
listened in my church. As I profess not to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ,
which, in my view, involves the doctrine of endless punishment, I complied with
his request. This has led to the present communication. Had mere controversy
been my object, I would hot have sought to discuss the scriptural view of this
subject, with such admissions before me as those of Rev. T. S. King and Rev.
Theodore Parker. When I read them, I thought that one whose only object was to
get the advantage of an opponent, might he justified in feeling with regard to
the doctrine of Restoration, as Joab did when he found Absalom in the tree, and
he blew a trumpet, and all the people returned from the battle. Such men as Mr.
King and Mr. Parker, seeing the doctrine of endless punishment in the literal
speech of the Bible, as* * 2 Corinthians 2:15-16. interpreted by us, and
rejecting its inspiration, partly because they find it there, relieves us
greatly from the need of holding controversies on this subject. Controversy has
not been my motive. I have sought to persuade my reader to flee with me for
refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. In the foregoing discussion, I
am not aware that there is anything which intentionally reflects upon the
understanding or motives of others. It has cost no effort to abstain from being,
in any way, derisory, or satirical, or contemptuous. Conscious only of kindness
and good- will to all, and grateful for this opportunity to state and defend
important principles,-! am. The reader's friend and servant, N. Adams.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 28: A 08     CORRESPONDANCE
========================================================================

CORRESPONDENCE. 12 Burroughs Place. Rev. Dr. Adams.

Dear Sir: It was my privilege to be one of your auditors last Sunday evening,
when you delivered the discourse, listened to with great interest by a large
assembly, on the *'Reasonableness of Eternal Punishment.''

I take the liberty to address you, with the request that you will repeat the
discourse in the Hollis Street Church next Sunday evening. Members of the
committee of my society, and many others of the parishioners^ express to me the
hope that you may find it consistent with your engagements and in accordance
with your sense of duty to accept this invitation. Our church is very spacious;
on such an occasion I doubt not that it would be crowded with an audience of “
Liberal Christians.” I am sure that they would eagerly embrace an opportunity to
hear so able an advocate of ^* Orthodoxy” upon a theme so important as the
eternal punishment, by the Infinite Father, of all who fail to comply with the
terms of grace which He has established for His children during this brief life.

Let me assure you that, if you accept this offer, the pulpit shall be entirely
at your disposal, precisely as if it were your own. And let me say that I expect
no such offer in return.

If you consent, I shall simply urge my people to attend your service, and
listen, as I shall listen a second time, with the respect your abilities
deserve, and with the earnestness which the momentous question, you discuss --
about which vre differ so widely -- should inspire in us all. In the hope of an
early reply, I am respectfully yours, T. S. KING.

Rev. T. S. King. 4 Boylston Place. My Dear Sir: Your note of the 21st inst.
reached me this morning, and I need not say that it has greatly surprised and
deeply interested me. The sermon was written in 1852, and was then preached to
my own people on a Sabbath morning, in the ordinary course of ministerial labor.
The subject has weighed much on my own mind during the present religious
interest, and this alone induced me to present it at my lecture last Sabbath
evening. That it did not strike you and others as an unfeeling exhibition of
mere theological opinion upon an infinitely important and very trying subject,
is truly gratifying to me. Your invitation to repeat the sermon in your church,
next Sabbath evening, is conveyed in such terms that I feel impelled to accept
it, and I will therefore comply with your request. It is due to you as well as
to myself to say, that parts of the discourse, as originally written, were
omitted last Sabbath evening, and their place was supplied from brief notes, and
by a few extemporaneous remarks. All this I will endeavor to repeat; and I infer
from the tenor of your note that should I further explain and re-cnforce some of
my statements, it will but accord with your wishes. I ought, moreover, to add
that none but myself can properly be held responsible for my sentiments and
expressions on this subject, however much I may suppose my views to agree with
theirs. With sincere regard, I am, dear sir, very truly yours, N. ADAMS.

REASONABLENESS OF FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. For the wages of sin is death. --
Romans 6:23.

LET US endeavor to think how- it would be with us, should it come to pass, as
the fool in his heart wishes it to be, that there is no God; that God is
dethroned. Some disaster has happened in the universe, and rival spirits, we
will suppose, have triumphed. Malignity has supplanted benevolence; wickedness
is enthroned over virtue; chance does not rule, but the government of all worlds
is in the hands of the enemies of God. Prayer now is useless; public worship may
as well cease. Bibles are like old books of history, and nothing more, for the
promises of the Bible are now like irredeemable bills. Repentance and faith are
useless. The deity to whom this world has fallen by lot is Mammon, or Moloch; or
it may be that Satan himself, out of spite for all which he has suffered here,
takes it under his charge. Everything now is perverted; darkness is put for
light, evil for good, bitter for sweet. The strongest must rule; to get all he
can, by all means, is the governing principle of every man; no rights are
respected; Virtue is driven out of the world; her defences and her great reward
have perished. Everywhere we are assailed with the sight of these words, and
with this cry, No God! No God! Whether the devils have power to control the
elements and rule the heavenly bodies, or whether all things will rush to ruin,
is a fearful question, which every day and hour appalls the stoutest heart. For,
instead of One, Almighty, Supreme Being, who can say, as formerly, ''I am God,
and there is none else,” and instead of that unity of purpose, and independent
will, and unrivalled might, which governed the universe safely and happily, a
band of devils, we suppose, is at the head of affairs, the superior demon
holding his sway by force over the rest, or by their assent; but no unity of
purpose, or permanence, can be expected in things controlled by hateful and
hating creatures. We look up to the heavens; they no longer “ declare the glory
of God,” but telegraph his discomfiture. As one says, *'What were the universe
without a God? A mob of worlds, careering round the sky.”

Law everywhere would be likely to be mob law.

If we could, by armies and any sacrifice of treasure and blood, reinstate
Jehovah in his throne, our own self-interest, and sense of justice, and
oiitraged feelings, would impel us to any and every effort to drive Satan and
his hosts from heaven, and shut them up in hell as long as they should continue
rebellious; and the return of the day when God Almighty should resume his
peaceful reign in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth,
would be a jubilee. But, alas! if the almighty arm, so called, could not prevail
against his enemies, how could mortals help him? Let it once be that usurpers
have the throne of God, and annihilation would be coveted by every one of us 116
KEASOKABLENESS OF more eagerly than any despairing suicide ever yet longed to
prove or to find it true.

Every one of us has done his part to bring about this state of things. Should
the natural feelings and conduct of each of us be extended indefinitely, all
this would virtually happen.

There might be more refinement in wickedness in some places than in others, to
suit the tastes and habits of different people; but Greece and Rome, the models
of ancient cultivation and refinement, are, with “the whole world lying in
wickedness,” described by an unerring pen in the first chapter of Paul's Epistle
to the Romans, and in terms which make every reader blush with shame at human
nature. Its degeneracy and corruption, from Cain to the days of the Canaanites,
and ever since, when unrestrained by the grace of God, have been such that
nation after nation made it necessary for God to wipe them out of existence, “
as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.”* Volney surveys
the “ ruins of empires,” and mourns, saying, '' To what purpose is this waste? “
and he impeaches the wisdom of his God. He will * 2 Kings 21:13. not consider
that sin is the procuring cause of national, as it is of individual ruin, and
that God has but fulfilled the threatening, “ The nation and kingdom that will
not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.”* “Thou
shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.'“ Sin is the antagonist of
God. If sin prevails, there is “ no God.” For wherever, even upon a small scale,
sin prevails, God is banished. Let its power be supreme, and practically there
is no God. Where is sin? Who ever saw it? Where is its habitation? Sin exists
nowhere but in free, intelligent creatures. There i^ no sin separate from a
sinner. Whoever, therefore, is a sinner, is sin impersonated. In the greatest
measure, we suppose, sin exists in Satan; then in his companions; then in lost
men; then in living men.

“The carnal mind is enmity against God.” If we say. The Asiatic cholera is in
Boston, we mean that there are those here who have the cholera. There is no sin
but in the hearts of fallen spirits and men.

* Is. 9:12. t Psalms 2:9.

There is not one of us who, when placed in circumstances where God and his
requirements or prohibitions came in conflict with our wishes, has not fought
against God. This is no more than the powers of hell would do on a larger scale,
if they had the opportunity. The difference is this: There is a plague, we will
say, in London, -which is cutting down a thousand in a day. Men think and speak
of it as an awful scourge. But you are at Bath, or Carlisle, sick with the
plague, alone, and you are ready to die. There is no difference between j^our
plague and the plague in London. All the symptoms which the thousand victims in
London have, you exhibit; but you are not in a community where the disease is
triumphant. But it is killing you; it does no more in London, only that it has
gained the upper hand, and puts the inhabitants, to flight. In like manner, sin,
disobedience to God, and the dislike of him from which it springs, is the same
in substance everywhere. If we dislike God, his attributes, his requirements,
his prohibitions, and if infinite mischief is not the consequence, it is because
our influence is hemmed in and overruled; just as we might have a contagious
disorder, and yet such preventives be employed as would keep it from doing much
harm.

Though sin has not extended in the universe so far as to dethrone God, we have
most perfect illustrations of its awful power.

There was a time when all the sin which was in the world was enclosed in one
sinful wish in the breast of one woman. She had permission to eat of every tree
but one, and that one God prohibited, saying, “' In the day that thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt surely die.” A transient thought, immediately repressed or
disapproved, would not have been sin; for, as Milton says, *' Evil into the mind
of God or man May come and go, so unapproved, and leave No spot or blame behind;
“ * but she indulged that wish, and hankered after that fruit; and in that
sinful wish all the sin of earth once lay. That wish became an act; and now let
him who would write the sins and woes of earth first count for us the
snow-flakes of five * Paradise Lost, B. 5:1:117. thousand winters, and tell us
the number of drops in all the rivers and oceans. “ By one man's disobedience
many were made sinners; “and their history is the history of wars, lust,
intemperance, violence. O sin! what hast thou done? What canst thou not do?

There is-another illustration still more affecting. We see a company of evil
spirits whom Christ is casting out of two men. They hold a conversation with the
Saviour. If they are mere diseases, and not intelligent creatures capable of
reasoning, but are only personified maladies, who are making a truce with
Christ, and if he countenances the delusion that this scene is not even so real
a thing as a masquerade, but a fiction throughout, while questions are put and
answers given, requests made and permission granted, there is an end to all
confidence in language, and indeed the reality of everything may be questioned.
'' And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the
deep.”* They did not mean the sea, for thither they soon went of their own
choice. The same word, in Revelation 20:8, is translated '^bottomless

Luke 8:31. pit.” They are called '' evil spirits.” But if they were intelligent
creatures, they were fallen creatures; for we suppose that God would not create
a demon; and allowing even that they were the souls of lost men, or an order of
beings who came into existence, as we did, with a fallen nature, probation must
have been allotted to them -- a chance to be saved; for we shall agree that no
infant, nor any other being, can be lost merely for having a fallen nature.
These fallen spirits, then, were once su];:rounded by virtuous influences; they
may have been angels; and if they were, nay, even if they sang together with
other morning stars, and shouted for joy with all the sons of God, at the birth
of the world, they fell no further, comparatively, than the sons or daughters of
men have fallen here, from homes of purity and circles of refinement, from
pulpits and the table of Christ. “So the devils besought him, saying, If thou
cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.” * O sin, what hast
thou done? This whole legion of devils, moreover, had taken possession of two
poor creatures, and made them maniacs “ exceed

* Matthew 8:31. ing fierce.” Why should more than one malignant spirit wish to
possess one human body?

What mysteries there are in sin, and “ depths of Satan”! The difference between
sin as it existed in these demons and as it exists in our breasts, is the same
as between the loathsome victim of the plague, and the man who is just taken
sick with it. There was a time when angels in heaven, who, the Bible tells us,
were '' cast down to hell, and delivered into chains of darkness, to be reserved
unto judgment,” * were but just infected with this malady of sin. There was a
time when Eve was but just attacked with it.

We are in the early stage of the disorder; but we have it, and if no remedy be
applied, time only is wanted to make us desperate. If placed in circumstances
where we could communicate the infection to unfallen creatures, like Eve to
Adam, and thus to a race, God only can measure the consequences. Many a human
spirit, if not redeemed from its sins, the child now sleeping in its cradle, is
capable, in the progress of its being, of going forth to tempt and ruin some

* 2 Peter 2:4. fair world, and to become the “ prince of the power of the air “
to that fallen province of God's empire, and to rival the arch apostate angel in
his direful history. Is this tremendous thing in us -- this antagonism to God?
this enemy to the universe? If so, what is it?

“ Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” *
The sum of all which God requires of man, and prohibits, is comprehended in the
ten commandments, every one of which, in thought, word, or deed, we have broken.
The Saviour gives us a still more simple summary of our duty: '' Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind, and with all thy strength; “ and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself.” We have failed to do this; we love and serve the creature more than
the Creator. Do we avoid that which God disapproves? Do we study to do that
which he loves? If we have a family, do we call them together morning and night,
and read to them out of God's word, * Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism,
14.

Mark 12:30-31. and before them bow the knee to God? Is it natural to do this? If
not, do we give evidence that we love God? His blessings we highlyprize; his
natural attributes we are ready to adore; but God, with the moral attributes
which the Bible ascribes to him, we do not I8ve. On the contrary, we have
feelings and thoughts, and we do things, which are “ enmity against God,” and,
carried out into other situations, and exasperated by opposition to our wills,
and their influence being sufficiently extended, they would supplant his throne.

If we were in the place of. God, we may imagine how we would regard sin. He
comprehends the interests of all intelligent beings, and sees that sin is fatal
to his government over them, so that, wherever sin reigns, there, and in that
proportion, there is no God. It would be better that the universe should perish
than that harm should come to the infinite God; but sin would not only destroy
the universe; for, if it could prevail, it would dethrone God. Let us place
ourselves where we could see and feel what sin would do if it were aimed against
us,

Romans 8:7. and our authority, and the happiness of a universe for whose welfare
we were responsible.

How would we legislate about that which would inevitably ruin other worlds and
races, as it has ours? What would we do to prevent it, and to reform and save
the rebellious? Should we do anything? We will take it for granted that we
would. But human wisdom and earthly love could not do more than God has done to
save sinners. In the threefold distinction of the divine nature, we hold there
is that which is called “ the Word,” which - “was in the beginning with God,”
and which “ was God.” * Then, seemingly guarding against the Sabellian theory of
“ manifestation,” it is said again, “ The same was in the beginning with God;”
not therefore God filling a human body and soul with influence, and so making a
mere demonstration of divinity, but it was the Word, who was not only God, but
(“great is the mystery”) ''with God,” indicating both union and distinctness. He
became flesh, and dwelt among us. His great object was to take the sinner's
place

* John 1:1. as a sacrifice for sins. He did not interpose between a wrathful
being and his victims. For the sake, perhaps, of keeping up in the human mind
the idea of Deity unmixed with our nature, the Father is familiarly called “
God,” and yet as often “ God the Father,” which word ''Father” would be, in
numerous instances, an unwarrantable pleonasm, if “ our heavenly Father,” and
not a person in the Trinity, were intended.

“ The Word,” by union with human nature, it is supposed, was constituted “ Son,”
and so acted in a subordinate capacity; and so we are told, without farther
explanation of the mystery in the^ Godhead, that “ God so loved the world that
he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.” That he died, we know; that he did not die
for his own sins, we know; * that “in due time Christ died for the ungodly,” we
know. “ He was wounded for our transgressions, he w^as bruised for our
iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we
are healed.” J It is said of him, “ Whom God hath set forth to be a * Daniel
9:26. f 'Romans 5:6. J Isaiah 53:5. propitiation through faith in his blood, to
declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the
forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time, his righteousness, that he
might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.' ' * The terms
of salvation for every penitent sinner are, “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved.” f “ He that believeth on him is not condemned.”

''Being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.”
“If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours- only, but
also for the sins of the whole world.” § All are invited to accept pardon and
salvation by pleading the sufferings and death of this Redeemer; and it is then
said, '' There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” || To enforce these
offers of mercy, and to supply all needful help in being saved, there is One,
equal in his nature with the Father and the * Romans 3:25. f Acts 16:31.:j:
Romans 5:9.

1 John 2:1-2. || Romans 8:1.

Son, to whom is committed the work of carrying redemption into effect in the
hearts of men. The Holy Ghost, by the plan of salvation, succeeds Christ, and
strives with men.* The Bible is put into their hands; an order of men is
appointed for the special purpose of being *' ambassadors for Christ,” “ as
though God did beseech them,'^ and they pray them “in Christ's stead, be ye
reconciled to God.” * One day in seven is set apart by divine authority for
special attention to this subject. A most touching ordinance is divinely
appointed, which every month or two appeals to their senses, and most powerfully
to their hearts. It is no less than a simple representation, by two appropriate
symbols, of the body and blood of the Redeemer pleading with man, “ This do in
remembrance of me.” f Frequently one and another is converted from his sins, and
accepts this offered mercy; others confess the reality and beauty of the change,
but they continue in their own chosen ways. Members of their families experience
this change, and God thus draws them “ by the cords of a man, with bands of
love;” '' but,”

¦ 2 Corinthians 5:20. t Luke 22:19. he is compelled to add, “ they knew not that
I healed them.” * And now the angel of death comes into their dwellings: all the
softening influences of sickness, and the benign influences of sorrow, persuade
them to.be reconciled to God, and all in vain. From lips soon to close in death,
appeals are made to them with all the love of a wife, or child, or pastor; or,
it may be, a partner in business sends word from his dying pillow, and asks
them, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? “ f God in his word has
told them that he will confine his efforts for their salvation within the limits
of their natural life, and with urgent love he says, “ Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor
knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest.” J

Among the closing words of the Bible these accents fall on their ears like the
last notes of a bell that calls to the house of prayer: “ He that is unjust let
him be unjust still, and he that is * Hosea 11:4; Hosea 11:3. f Matthew 16:26, J
Ecclesiastes 9:10. filthy let him be filthy still, and he that is righteous let
him be righteous still, and he that is holy let him be holy still.” * The vast
majority of all who receive the Bible as the word of God unite and testify “ how
that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; “ f that there is
pardon through his blood; that he “ delivered us from the wrath to come; “ J and
that no probation after death is intimated in the Bible. But notwithstanding all
this, men refuse to repent of their sins, and they persist in their repugnance
to God. They go into the next world from amidst these influences of mercy, in
total disregard of all which has been done to save them. The question is, What
is it reasonable for them to expect? Only two things can take place: Further
measures will be used to reclaim them, or. They must be forever given up to sin
and its consequences.

It is not for man to say what shall now take place. Will he insist that the
sinner shall have no further trial? He must not prescribe limits to the mercy of
God. “ For my thoughts are Revelation 22:11. f 1 Corinthians 15:3. | 1
Thessalonians 1:10. not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the
Lord.” * Will man insist that the sinner ought to have another period of
probation? He is equally at fault if he dictates to the justice of God.
Revelation is the only source of knowledge upon this subject. Those of our race
who have received the word of God implicit and have interpreted that book, as
they do all writings, according to its most obvious import, have, with
inconsiderable exceptions, believed that eternal punishment is revealed. But it
is with the reasonableness of the doctrine that we are now concerned. There is
not a doctrine of revelation -- God forbid! -- which is against reason. It may
be above reason in many things, but it never contradicts either the known and
established principles of the human conscience and understanding, nor the
palpable truths of human experience and observation.

Now, upon this ground we plant ourselves, and say, that, so far as we can judge,
endless future punishment is reasonable. He who disbelieves the evangelical
system cannot prove the doctrine to be reasonable. Finding future eternal pun

* Is. 4:8. ishment disclosed in the Bible, it commends itself to our
understanding and conscience as a reasonable truth.

One objection to it is this. It is said, -- ^''Eternal punishment is too long as
a penalty/ for the sins of a short life.'“ None but God can judge here. The
important question is, Was the transgressor duly notified?

He is in a foreign land, and is made fully acquainted with a law and its
penalty, which he thinks is exceedingly severe. The government, however, have
special reasons for the enactment; but he prefers the risk of the penalty to the
loss of a certain benefit, and is without excuse, for he transgressed with his
eyes open. Is it just for one to lose so much in consequence of so brief a
period of transgression? This depends on the information possessed beforehand. A
passenger by the steamer does not expect that, if notice of the hour of
departure is communicated to him, the bell will toll a whole day, or even an
hour for his dilatoriness. He may by losing the voyage, change the prospect of
life, and one half minute can decide whether it shall be so.

Forgery, arson, manslaughter, conceived and executed in the briefest space of
time, have no valid defence in the shortness of the time occupied by the deed. A
day is not too short in which to commit a crime which will be punished by
imprisonment for life. We take away a man's whole life, and he a young man, for
an act committed within one hour.

If a note has matured, bankruptcy is not arrested because the promisor received
only one notice.

We probably never heard it objected to eternal salvation^ that it is too long to
be the consequence and reward of this brief life. That heaven is promised to the
righteous, and that it will be without end, no one doubts. But what if we should
say, as we might with as good reason as in objecting to endless punishment,
''Life is too short in which to merit heaven; we ought to be subjected after
death to a longer probation, be placed in new circumstances of trial for a
period that should bear some proportion to the greatness of the reward “? What
period of trial would be thought an equivalent for measureless felicity, it
would be hard indeed to say; and we are therefore led to the principle that the
length of time in which good or evil actions take place is no proper measure of
their desert. We act upon this principle in everything.

Much use is made of this objection to endless punishment as urged by the late
Rev. John Foster, an evangelical Baptist, of England. He writes a letter to a
young ministerial friend who had asked his views on the subject of endless
punishment. Mr. Foster saj's that he has made much less research into this
subject than his young friend had probably done, and that he had been “ too
content, perhaps, to let an opinion or impression admitted in early life
dispense with protracted inquiry and various reading.” lie then says: ''The
general, not very far short of universal, judgment of divines in affirmation of
the doctrine of eternal punishment, must be acknowledged a weighty
consideration. It is a fair question, Is it likely that so many thousands of
able, learned, benevolent, and pious men should all have been in error? And the
language of Scripture is formidably strong; so strong that it must be an
argument of extreme cogency that would authorize a limited interpretation.” But
his answer to all this is, in his own words, -- “the stupendous idea of
eternity,'' -- upon which he proceeds to dwell with great power. To this, one
reply may be, that the great and good men of all evangelical denominations, as
capable as Mr. Foster of appreciating the awful idea of eternity, “have
generally,” and, as he himself says, “ not very far short of universally,”
received this doctrine. Almost every believer in it has, at some time, had some
relation or friend whose condition at death excited fearful thoughts, and
clothed the grave with more than midnight darkness. The very strongest
temptations have thus been presented to believers in the doctrine to find or
create insuperable objections to it; yet the vast majority of Christian
believers who have lost friends concerning whose condition they entertain but
little hope, remain persuaded that the doctrine is revealed. Mr. Foster had no
knowledge or penetration which they did not possess; he also “was formed out of
the clay; “he could substantiate no claim to have his feelings of repugnance
regarded as paramount to the feelings of submission and faith with which his
Christian brethren, in the hour of their sorrow, have deliberately declared
their belief in this doctrine. But we are furnished with another reply, in a
letter of Mr. Foster himself to Rev. Dr. Harris, oo another subject and at a
different time, in which he describes this world as he thinks it would strike
the inhabitants of another planet. These few words will show the tenor of his
remarks: “ To me it appears a most mysteriously awful economy, overspread by a
lurid shade. I pray for the piety to maintain a humble submission to the wise
and righteous Disposer of all existence. But to see a nature, created in purity,
ruined at the very origin, &c, the grand remedial visitation^ Christianity,
laboring in a difficult progress -- soon perverted -- at the present hour known
and even nominally acknowledged by very greatly the. minority of the race -- its
progress distanced by the increase of the population -- thousands every day
passing out of the world in no state of fitness for a pure and happy state
elsewhere, -- O, it is a most confounding and appalling contemplation.” So he
describes this world in very much the same way in which he has depicted future
endless retributions; and we may say that had he been told of such a world as
ours, under the government of a good God, he would have had misgivings and
objections not unlike those which he has expressed on the subject of future
punishment. He excites distrust and fear in our minds with regard to the
government of the world. We should not feel happy in the thought that God
reigns, nor could we see how the multitude of the isles should be glad thereof,
should we live under the influence of such views as those of this truly able and
excellent man.

It is objected again that “ a mere mortal cannot by any sins which he can
commit^ merit endless punishment

Whether he actually does incur it, we say again, must be ascertained from
revelation. In reply to this objection, we are to remember that it is not one
single transgression which God is called upon to punish -- a sudden,
unpremeditated, or even one deliberate act, for which act the sinner is sorry;
but it is continued disobedience, in opposition to all the methods of divine
love and wisdom employed to turn us from our sins. Conscience has faithfully
done her work until she was seared; warnings and threatenings have exhausted
their strength; the cross of Christ and the influences of the Holy Spirit have
proved of no avail.

There may be little sins against some of the gods of heathenism, but there can
be no little sin against Jehovah. But how is man '' little “?

He has competent knowledge of the character of God; he is only ''a little lower
than the angels,”* and has dominion over all the works of God. He can comprehend
the starry heavens; he is godlike in liis original nature, for ''in the imao^e
of God made he him.” The sublime truths which God has revealed to man show what
estimate God has of man's capacity and responsibility. A finite creature can
insult the majesty of heaven as deliberately and intelligently as the archangel;
he can annihilate the authority of God in his own soul, and wherever he has
influence; if all finite creatures should do this, -- and there are no creatures
who are not finite, -- there would be no moral universe, no divine government.

It is said, “this a libel on the character of God to believe that he can bear to
punish his children forever.'' Had Ave known beforehand that God was to create
offspring whom he would teach to call him by the endearing name of Father, and
then should see four hundred of these his children in such a scene of
indescribable agony and destruction as was recently witnessed on board the, we
should say the analogy between divine and human parentage surely is imperfect.
God is something besides a “Father; “he is King and Judge. Men never discipline
their children by drowning them, and burning them, and tearing them in pieces.
The destruction of the Canaanites for their iniquity is so terrible, that, some,
for that reason, reject the Old Testament, which approves it. God's judgments
are a great deep. True, '' he made birds and flowers; “ all the exquisite
sensibilities of the human system are his gift; the natural and moral world are,
by his love and skill, most beautifully adapted to each other; and will he hide
his face forever from a single child? No, not unless that child persists to hide
his face and withhold his heart from God. 'For he will not lay on man more than
is right, that he should enter into judgment with God.” * He is seeking
continually to make his children love him. The Sabbath day perpetually reminds
every one of them of God. Church spires everywhere point to heaven. Church-going
bells call men to prayer, and to hear the gospel. Friends, by their words and
example, persuade men to love and serve God. How many people are there,
probably, in this city, for example, who have not had, and do not have, not only
opportunity, but persuasion of some kind, within and without, to fear God? There
are few, if any, who see the lightning or hear the thunder, without having the
thought of their accountableness flash through their minds. If but a hearse
appears in the streets, all who see it are left without excuse should they die
in their sins. '' By the things which are made” God is so ''clearly seen,” that
even idolaters are “ without excuse; “ much

* Job 34:23. more they who, to say no more, live where the Christian Sabbath,
like the quiet moon, at short and regular intervals, arrests and turns the
mighty tide of human affairs, so that even the prisoner in his cell feels it
lifting and bearing him heavenward, and the Sabbath-breaker himself, by the very
increase of his gains on that day, or by the opportunity for sloth, or by the
feeling which leads him to hasten or delay his drive, to avoid the church-going
people, has conviction of sin and admonition of duty sufficient to bar excuses
and to make him speechless in the day when God rises up to judgment. But at last
the day of life is over -- the period within which God told us that his efforts
for our conversion would be limited, and after which, he warned us, would be the
judgment, and endless retribution. Some said that this was impossible in the
nature of things. They were told that the Bible literally declared it. They said
that it was figurative, or a parable. They were reminded of the words of Jesus,
the final Judge, relating the very words of the last sentence upon the wicked.
They said that the God who made spring, and birds, and flowers, and human
affections, and who is himself a Father, could not see men suffer without end.
But the love of God, they are told, is not seen in spring, and birds, and
flowers, and human happiness, so much as in this, that “ God so loved the world
that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.” “ Herein is love; not that we loved God, but
that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” * But
all this proves of no avail; they go to “ the judgment-seat of Christ,” “ every
one,” to “ receive the things done in the body, whether it be good or bad.”
Shall God now violate the fundamental characteristic of their constitution, that
is, free agency, and instead of governing them by motives, treat them like
moulded clay, which, when it does not suit him, the potter presses together
again on the wheel, and makes of it another vessel? That is not such a
government as God chooses to administer, but a government of motives, addressed
to free and accountable creatures.

* John 4:10. t 2 Corinthians 5:10.

What shall now be done with those whom God has faileth in his efforts to turn
and save? Some reply, “ He ought to punish them till they do repent.” And yet
they who say this, many of them, tell us, as one great argument against future
endless punishment, that “ we have misery enough in this world, without being
punished in the next.”

Therefore, by their own acknowledgment, God has already used dreadful methods of
chastisement with them; so great that they say there cannot be any future
punishment of sin. Yet these mortal agonies of body and mind, these life-long
trials and sorrows, have failed to make them love and serve God. Will it be
useful that he should proceed and punish them further? Can God heap upon them
sorrows more bitter than they have felt at the graves of their loved ones, and
at their return from those graves to their desolated dwellings? Are there other
strokes of his lightnings better fitted to rive and consume their spirits than
those with which they have already been struck? It is not reasonable. The wrath
of God is not “ the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation.''* We
have a different opinion respecting our Maker from that which leads one to
believe that anger, fury, vengeance are the perfection of his governmental
influences; as they surely are, if they are more eflicacious than the love which
he has manifested in the Son of his love.

God himself says, “ What more could be done to my vineyard that I have not done
in it? “ We suppose, therefore, -- and we think it is reasonable, -- that if we
do not repent of our sins, and are not willing to accept Christ, and all the
efforts of mercy to save us, God will suffer us to sin against him forever. He
will not hinder us from having our own chosen way. Shall we rebel against this?
Will we say, “ This is cruel; it is tyrannical, unworthy of God, our heavenly
Father, to let us have our own choice? That choice, we know, is not good; but he
ought to make us good. What! suffer us to sin against him forever! “ We chose to
sin against him as long as we could; and now it is not unreasonable to give us
the desire of our hearts. But God may say. This I will do. I will * Romans
1:16:1 Corinthians 1:18; 1 Corinthians 1:24. place all of you who sin, in a
world by yourselves, from which I and my friends will forever withdraw. Perhaps
we secretly say, “If this be all, we do not so much object. This is not hell.”
But suppose that when God withdraws from us, he takes everything away with him.
This present world cannot be a pattern of a world where all is sin. For this
world was made for an upright race, and when they fell, nature itself, in most
things, survived the fall. We are not to suppose that the wicked will find
themselves in a world of beauty, where they may reconstruct society after the
model of the present life, and where they shall enjoy liberty and all the
blessings of God's providence. But if God departs from them, it is reasonable to
suppose that he will leave no proofs of his love to them whatever; for he says,
“ Woe also unto them when I depart from them.” * He would take away, we must
suppose, all their domestic relations, friendships, social pleasures, books,
every pursuit of knowledge, music, travels, quiet sleep, morning and evening
salutations of loved ones^ and change the whole face of nature; for God

* Hosea 9:12. would not have made so many things just to give pleasure, had he
made this world for the permanent abode of rebels; and when we leave this world,
if we have shut God out of it be our sins, we cannot expect to find a beautiful
world like this prepared for our abode. It is of great use to us to see good
people here; we feel safer to think that there are churches and meetings for
prayer, and the Lord's supper, though we decline any part in them. These things
are for our profit; and the good and the bad share alike, because this is a
state of probation, not of reward. But if we refuse to be won by these things,
then it may be as though a certain vision of Jeremiah were, in some sense,
fulfilled in our future abode. He describes Jerusalem wasted, and all her people
gone into captivity. “ I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void;
and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they
trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and lo, there was no man,
and all the birds of heaven were fled.” * When God tells us what heaven is, f he
describes the population * Jeremiah 4:23-25. f Revelation 22:14. of them that
arc ''without -- dogs, sorcerers,” and others; as though he said, “ I will
gather sinners together in one place, bring together all the obscene, liars,
murderers, pirates, idolaters, into one community with you whose tastes have
been cultivated; for why should I discriminate between those who have together
rebelled against me, and rejected my Son? '^ If to any, by reason of 'their
great accomplishments of mind and manners, this will be specially intolerable,
they must remember that in those endowments they have special motives and helps
towards being saved, and to save others. “ Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy
good things; “ but '' thou mayest be no longer steward.” Would there be anything
unreasonable in this? In view of all which God has done to save the soul, in
view of the full notice which we have received that this life is our only period
of probation, and the opportunities which we have had to secure eternal life, we
cannot accuse the Almighty of injustice if we find that there is no opportunity
after death to repent and believe the gospel. Above all, we cannot reasonably
expect; from what we already know of God, that having expended upon us all which
the gospel of his grace includes, he will, upon the failure of that which is “
the brightness of his glory,” put us into a prison, and wear out our spirits
with suffering, and thus reduce us, like refractory culprits, to a state of mind
in which we cannot refuse to love him. Such is not the Being whom many of us
delight to call our heavenly Father. If any worship such a God as this, they
have their liberty to do so; but let them not complain to us of unreasonableness
in our views of God.

It seems reasonable, therefore, to believe, in common with the vast majority in
all ages of those who receive the Bible as the word of God, that all who fail to
repent and accept the pardon of their sins through Jesus Christ in this life,
will at death find those words to be literally true, which seem to be placed
among the last words of the Bible by divine arrangement, for the solemn effect
which they always have upon the human heart: '' He that is unjust let him be
unjust still, and he that is filthy let him be filthy still, and he that is
righteous let him be righteous still, and he that is holy let him be holy still.
And behold I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according
as his work shall be.” As to the heathen, we are not their judge. The first and
second chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, however, are very explicit with
regard to them. ^'The invisible things of God,” that is, '' his eternal power
and Godhead,” '' are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made;
so that they are without excuse.” We are told that “ they hold the truth,” but '
in unrighteousness;” therefore it is said, “the wrath of God is revealed from
heaven against “them.$ We sometimes hear a passage, in this connection, quoted
thus: “For as many as have sinned without law shall also be judged without law.”
Not so. It reads, “ For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish
without law.” § It is a common remark, but it will bear repetition, “ We shall
either find the heathen in heaven, if we ourselves are there, or see good and
satisfactory reasons for their not being there.”

*Revelation 22:11-12. Romans 1:20. Romans 1:18. Romans 2:12.

Far too much is made of the question, and great injury has been done bj it,
whether or not there will be literal fire in the future punishment of the
wicked. It is well to discourage such a discussion. We shall have bodies after
the resurrection, for “ all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the
Son of man, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection
of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” Our
bodies will, of course, be of a less spiritual nature than the soul, otherwise
two souls will be conjoined in one person. We naturally suppose that the object
of the body will be to relate the soul to an external world; as glass, in the
telescope, though a grosser object than the eye, helps vision, so the body will
aid the soul hereafter, as here. This we all admit. Now, in what element, if
any, the righteous or the wicked will live hereafter, is of no possible
importance to us, seeing that the primary source of happiness or misery with
intelligent creatures must be mental, and if there be external sources of
pleasure or suffering, they are mere circumstances in their condition; they ire
not the substantive occasion of their joy or sorrow. To represent the Most High
as inflicting tortures on the bodies of the wicked strikes us as unworthy of the
conceptions concerning God with which the Bible inspires us. A world of sinners,
unmitigated by the presence of a single good being, God himself and all his
restraining influences forever withdrawn, needs no penal fires to increase our
sense of its horror; indeed, they rather detract from our ideas of the most
intense misery. If all that is personified by “death,” and all the mental,
moral, and social elements of what is called “ hell,” are to be “ cast into a
lake of fire,” every intelligent person would suppose that the element
containing them would be of little importance. They would be no more to the
inhabitants than the element of water could be to Pontius Pilate, whom a great
poet represents as in a flood, his hands above it, and he washing them, *' Which
still unwashen strove,” in memory of his taking water to wash those hands of a
certain prisoner's blood. No one would suppose that living in the element of
water could be a principal source of misery in such a punishment. But we read, “
Then shall the King say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Figurative language, it may justly be said, is out of place in a judicial
sentence, for, of all utterances, this should be as strictly literal as justice
itself.

If, now, Ave should believe, on this single passage, or for any other reason,
that the element in which future retribution will be administered is declared to
be fire, instead of air, or water, or earth, we should do vast injustice to the
subject of divine retributions to intrude the idea. I refer to it, therefore,
for a purpose, which seems to me important, of vindicating our belief in future
endless retributions from imputations of grossness and physical barbarity. We
use the language of the Saviour and of his apostles without hesitation, and
there we stop. Any details of the curse, and of the punishment, and of what is
''prepared,” would add nothing to our conceptions of the dread sentence from the
lips of Him whose “left hand” was once nailed to the atoning cross, for those
whom he bids, “Depart.”

If the language of Christ in that last sentence, and in other places, relating
to future punishment, be figurative, we remember that, by the laws of the human
mind, figurative language is generally resorted to in consequence of
insufficiency in literal terms. We do not cavil at the use of figurative speech,
nor subtract from its intention, when we know that the speaker is serious and
earnest. If a master-in-chancery informs a man that his property has proved “ to
be zero,” the man will not remind his friends, nor insist with his creditors,
that the expression is only metaphorical.

We believe that the threatening of future endless punishment has been one great
means of what little fear of God there has hitherto been in this world; and that
it has been a powerful element in the causes which have led to the salvation of
the ''multitude which no man can number,” who “fled for refuge to lay hold upon
the Hope set before them.” We are not ashamed to say that we believe in, and we
fear, the everlasting wrath of God, and that this has been a means of leading us
to believe in “his Son from heaven, even Jesus, which delivered us from the
wrath to come.” * Nor is our doctrine one that narrows and enfeebles the mind.
It is connected with a stupendous system of truths. It leads us to believe that
this world, small as it is, is made use of by the Creator to illustrate
principles in his government, “ to the intent that now unto principalities and
powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of
God.” That this world is the smallest but two in the planetary system, is no
more a valid objection to its being used for infinite purposes of wisdom, than
it would be to object to the size of the slate on which La Place wrought out his
logarithms for his 3Iecanique Celeste. God is solving problems in this world
with sin; the results may enter into the practical knowledge of unnumbered
worlds, as the answers to problems are transferred to books of navigation, and
are the confidence of them that are afar off upon the sea. Our own Lexington and
Bunker Hill were not too small for transactions which brought this * 1
Thessalonians 1:10. f Ephesians 3:10. nation into being; nor did one field in
Waterloo prove too small to have the destiny of half of Europe decided there.
The cross of a Redeemer has stood here; things are associated with it which we
are told “ angels desire to look into.”* “All things were created by him and for
him, and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”! “We see
Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death,
crowned with glory and honor; that he, by the grace of God, should taste death
for every man.” So we believe in a sacrifice for sin, which is made infinitely
efficacious by the presence in the person of Jesus of the Word, who was “ with
God,” and “ was God.” In such a Redeemer and in such a redemption we see our
infinite ruin. We believe that God will show, by means of those who reject this
redemption, what sin is capable of doing, and then, by letting sinners eat of
the fruit of their own ways, and filling them with their own devices, perhaps he
will, by the help of it, so instruct and govern the universe of free,
accountable beings, that it shall forever be said, “ Dominion and fear are with
him; he * 1 Peter 1:12. f Colossians 1:16-17. maketh peace in his high places.”*
An endless heaven is prepared, in which the righteous will have bodies “
fashioned like unto Christ's glorious body, according to the working whereby he
is able even to subdue all things unto himself.” Thus being associated most
wonderfully with the incarnate Word, they will be the objects of love with all
who worship at the throne of God and of the Lamb, and not only so, but with Him
who will say of us, with more joy than that with which he regards the ninety and
nine just persons who need no repentance, “I have found the sheep that was
lost.”

But, in the meantime, we read that “ the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from
heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that
know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; “ -- such
is the crime and the accusation; -- “ who shall be punished with everlasting
destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, when
he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all

* Job 25:2. them that believe (for our testimony among you was believed) in that
day.”* The penalty annexed to, a law is all that makes it a law; without a
penalty, it is no more a law. than an extract from a sermon. The penalty is the
expression of the lawgiver's opinion of the crime. There is something in weak
and insufficient penalties, and in bail far below the offence, which makes the
heart faint and sick. It must inspirer holy beings with confidence, who know
what sin is, and what it deserves, and what it would do to them if it could
triumph, to see and feel that there is a Supreme Being, who, with all his love,
has no doting fondness, nor any weakness, but can bear to see the wicked suffer,
if necessary and right.

They consider his word, “ The soul that sinneth, it shall die/' and they see in
it the foundation of their confidence in God. How much evil is there in sin? It
is itself evil; anti-governmental, subverting every form of happiness; its
tendency, as we have seen, is to dethrone God.

If God affixes less than an infinite punishment to sin, it shows that he
considers it less than an * 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10. infinite evil. If the
penalty threatened against such a sin be- less than infinite, the natural
inference would be, To sin against God is not an infinite evil, for it has no
infinite punishment.

Men could say, and all races on probation could say. If we sin against God, our
punishment will come to an end; and after that, there will be an eternity in
heaven, in comparison with which our immense duration of punishment will become
as a drop to the sea.* Men, they would say, escaped at last, and are now
universally and forever happy in heaven; and so world after world might become
rebellious, and their histories be like those of earth. We think it reasonable
to say. Far better that the comparatively few from earth should bear the
consequences of their sin forever, than that, by ah insufficient punishment of
sin, disaster should come upon realms we know not how many and great. I say this
to meet the objection that the everlasting punishment of any, whether
comparatively a few, or even of many, is to be a blot on the government of God.
For the whole question may resolve itself into this: Is it best that God should
have a moral government? If that involves the possibility of sin, some would
say, No; others would say, Yes, provided the sinners might be as free in their
sin as the righteous are in their righteousness; then, for the sake of the
inconceivable bliss in a universe of intelligent creatures, let there be this
government, by motives, and let “ the righteousness of the righteous be upon
him, and the wickedness of the wicked be upon him.” Angels, it appears, were
placed on probation in heaven, and under the most favorable circumstances; man
was placed in probation in paradise, with slight inducement to sin; man had a
Redeemer in the person of his Creator; angels may have had an equivalent motive
to obedience in the immediate presence of their Creator, and in full knowledge
of what a forfeiture they would incur by sin. Angels sinned, notwithstanding all
that Heaven had done to keep them upright; men perish, notwithstanding the
redemption made by their God and Saviour. The illustrations which their eternal
punishment will afford of the nature of sin, of the love of God, of divine
justice, of free agency, of holiness and its infinite rewards, we say it is not
unreasonable to believe, will out weigh the personal sufferings of those who
voluntarily sin and perish. We say, voluntarily perish; for. God will give to
each one according to his deeds. Though there were an inconceivable multitude
who should perish, yet in the immense variety of their individual cases,
discriminating justice will be weighed out to them with a care and exactness
unapproached by the exquisite balances in the mint, or with the apothecary.
Could holy beings get the impression that there is one soul from Christian,
pagan, or heathen lands, with whom its Maker had dealt harshly, or laid upon him
one stripe more than was his due, there would be sudden silence among them; they
would look one upon another; and the seraphim who, in their worship, spread more
of their six wings to cover themselves with than to fly, would spread them all
to fly, -- whither they might not say, but only where they might no longer be
constrained to cry. Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of hosts! No such occasion
ever will be given for such loss of confidence; but they will say, “Alleluia!
salvation, and glory, and honor, and power unto the Lord our God; for true and
righteous are his judgments.” * As those who desire to be of good repute with
you as men of understanding, and of humane, generous sentiments and feelings, we
do not hesitate to say, that the “reasonableness of future endless punishment “
is as plain to us as its scriptural proofs.

If, when we read that it would have been good for Judas Iscariot that he had
never been born, and therefore that there is no eternity of happiness for him,
to follow any vast period of expiatory suffering, -- if we are expressly told
that blasphemy against the Holy' Ghost hath never forgiveness, neither in this
world nor in that which is to come, -- if it be true that Satan and his angels
are reserved in chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day, and if
then a part of our race are to be consigned to the same abode with them for
retribution, -- whose eternity is expressed by the selfsame, word which is
employed to designate the duration of happiness for the righteous; and *
Revelation 19:1. for these and other equally powerful representations of the
Bible, we have unwavering faith in the doctrine, as a revealed truth; the
confidence with which we believe it may be judged of when we say, that it
commends itself to our reason as truly as it does to our faith. How it commends
itself to our faith, may be learned by knowing that the doctrine does not stand
as an isolated thing in our belief. The laws of comparative anatomy, so to
speak, may be applied to it, and we say. If certain things are true, which in
our earliest discoveries of practical truth we are confident are essential to
salvation, then this doctrine is as really required, as immense vertebrae of an
unknown animal require that the undiscovered ribs should also be immense. An
astronomer notices the slower or quicker rate of motion in a planet at one part
of its orbit, and he tells you that there must be a world beyond it, not yet
seen; he tells you its size, its gravity, its orbit, its rate of motion; and
when at last Neptune is discovered, it proves to be precisely that which Uranus
dictated by his perturbations. So that the doctrine of endless retribution is
not, with us, a mere dogma; it belongs to a great scheme of revealed truth which
we call the “plan of redemption,” all of which stands or falls together. The key
to this great scheme -- “ which,” we are warranted to say, ''in other ages was
not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed unto the holy apostles
and prophets” -- is the Supreme Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Believe that,
and logically you are led to receive the whole. Reject that, and you cannot
consistently believe the doctrine now under discussion.

“*What think ye of Christ?' is the test To try both your state and your scheme.”
The Creator, the Second Person in the Godhead, takes our nature; that
mysterious, complex Being goes to the cross, and dies. Then the atonement
follows, as a matter of course; and if an atonement is made for sin, then the
wages of sin is death. If man can atone for sin by ages of suffering, and then
reach heaven, it is unreasonable, we say, to believe that this stupendous
sacrifice would have been made. So that Christ is “the power of God and the
wisdom of God unto salvation.” There are words of mighty import in that passage:
“Who hath made him to he sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in -him.”*

“ The wages of sin is death.” Some say, The wages of sin is conscience; some.
The wages of sin is discipline; some. The wages of sin is imprisonment for a
great indefinite period, for the purpose of punishment and restoration.

Let us adhere to the Bible: “ The wages of sin is death.” If you call it
figurative, the laws of rhetoric teach us that a meaning totally opposite to the
nature of a figure cannot be true. The ruling idea conveyed by the word death is
termination. If you search the Bible for instances in which death means a
limited infliction, and so reduce one side of the equation in the passage from
which the text is taken, you must by necessity reduce the other side; and thus,
so much as you diminish deaths you must diminish life; for if death be not
death, neither is life eternal life.' * 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Notice also the two contrasted words in the verse from which the text is taken:
“ The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus
Christ our Lord.” Death for sin is “ wages “ -- something earned or merited.

Eternal life is not ''wages” to us; it is to angels. The law is the angels'
gospel. They stand by obedience. But to us eternal life, if we have it, is
without works -- a gift, unmerited, free. Having forfeited heaven by sin, God
stands ready to give it to us on certain terms, the terms and method themselves
being no less wonderful than the gift.

Need I remind you that this is a subject which, for each of us, is of
unparalleled interest? Each of us may. without presumption, say with his Maker,
“ I live forever.” If God says, '' Of my years there is no end,” the words may
be responded to by us: Of my years there is no end. But each of us is also a
sinner, ruined and lost. We believe that sin can be forgiven only by faith in
Jesus Christ, who, by his sufferings and death, is a substitute for the sinner,
and constitutes for him a righteousness which takes away his condemnation, and
prepares for his sanctification and salvation. We are told that there is
salvation in no other way, and, moreover, that unbelief of it, where there has
been sufficient opportunity to understand it, proceeds from a wrong state of
feeling, and is therefore morally wrong, and that such unbelief is declared by
Christ a-nd his apostles to be the greatest of all pardonable sins. Christ says,
“ He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth
on him.” Do we who preach tell the people this? Surely it is not possible for
the Son of God to suffer and die in our stead, and we be innocent if we do not
believe in him; but we shall add to the guilt of sin the heavier guilt of
rejecting the offered remedy, procured at such infinite expense. The sight of
Christ will close our lips if we are not saved. He portrayed the scenes of the
last judgment; the separation, the welcome of the righteous, and the sinner's
doom. And having done this, he went to “ a place which is called Calvary,” and
died to save us from the condemnation which he had so faithfully and affectingly
portrayed. If we fail to believe in him, and he therefore fails to redeem us
from our sin, we must experience the truth of our text. And when the judgment is
passed by, and the wicked have gone to their own place, and angels stand in
silence, weeping, and thinking of their end, methinks I hear one of them break
the silence and say. After the Saviour had suffered for them, it is an infinite
pity that they should perish. And may many (may it be all!) of you, who now are
unbelievers, but then redeemed sinners, continue the strain and say, “ For God
so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Salvation! Salvation!
Every one of us can be saved. “ For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to
obtain salvation."


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  CHAPTER 29: THE SABLE CLOUD
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The Sable Cloud, by Nehemiah Adams The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sable
Cloud, by Nehemiah Adams This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost
and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Sable Cloud A Southern Tale With
Northern Comments (1861) Author: Nehemiah Adams Release Date: January 6, 2005
[EBook #14615] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF
THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SABLE CLOUD *** Produced by Robert Shimmin, Amy
Cunningham and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE SABLE CLOUD: A
SOUTHERN TALE, WITH NORTHERN COMMENTS. BY THE AUTHOR OF "A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF
SLAVERY." "I did not err, there does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining
on the night" -- MILTON'S COMUS BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. MDCCCLXI (1861)
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H O HOUGHTON CONTENTS. Chapter
1. Death and Burial of a Slave's Infant 1 Chapter 2. Northern Comments On
Southern Life 5 Chapter 3. Morbid Northern Conscience 32 Chapter 4. Resolutions
For a Convention 53 Chapter 5. The Good Northern Lady's Letter from the South 59
Chapter 6. Questions and Answers 118 Chapter 7. Ownership in Man.--the Old
Testament Slavery 150 Chapter 8. The Tenure 177 Chapter 9. Discussion in
Philemon's Church at the Return of Onesimus 205 Chapter 10. The Future 239


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  CHAPTER 30: DEATH AND BURIAL OF A SLAVE'S INFANT
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CHAPTER I. DEATH AND BURIAL OF A SLAVE'S INFANT. "The small and great are there,
and the servant is free from his master." A Southern gentleman, who was visiting
in New York, sent me, with his reply to my inquiries for the welfare of his
family at home, the following letter which he had just received from one of his
married daughters in the South. The reader will be so kind as to take the
assurance which the writer hereby gives him, that the letter was received under
the circumstances now stated, and that it is not a fiction. Certain names and
the date only are, for obvious reasons, omitted. THE LETTER. MY DEAR FATHER,--
You have so recently heard from and about those of us left here, and that in a
so much more satisfactory way than through letters, that it scarcely seems worth
while to write just yet. But Mary left Kate's poor little baby in such a
pitiable state, that I think it will be a relief to all to hear that its
sufferings are ended. It died about ten o'clock the night that she left us, very
quietly and without a struggle, and at sunset on Friday we laid it in its last
resting-place. My husband and I went out in the morning to select the spot for
its burial, and finding the state of affairs in the cemetery, we chose a portion
of ground and will have it inclosed with a railing. They have been very careless
in the management of the ground, and have allowed persons to inclose and bury in
any shape or way they chose, so that the whole is cut up in a way that makes it
difficult to find a place where two or three graves could be put near each
other. We did find one at last, however, about the size of the Hazel Wood lots;
and we will inclose it at once, so that when another, either from our own family
or those of the other branches, wants a resting-place, there shall not be the
same trouble. Poor old Timmy lies there; but it is in a part of the grounds
where, the sexton tells us, the water rises within three feet of the surface;
so, of course, we did not go there for this little grave. His own family
selected his burial-place, and probably did not think of this. Kate takes her
loss very patiently, though she says that she had no idea how much she would
grieve after the child. It had been sick so long that she said she wanted to
have it go; but I knew when she said it that she did not know what the parting
would be. It is not the parting alone, but it is the horror of the grave,--the
tender child alone in the far off gloomy burial-ground, the heavy earth piled on
the tender little breast, the helplessness that looked to you for protection
which you could not give, and the emptiness of the home to which you return when
the child is gone. He who made a mother's heart and they who have borne it,
alone can tell the unutterable pain of all this. The little child is so
carefully and tenderly watched over and cherished while it is with you,--and
then to leave it alone in the dread grave where the winds and the rain beat upon
it! I know they do not feel it, but since mine has been there, I have never felt
sheltered from the storms when they come. The rain seems to fall on my bare
heart. I have said more than I meant to have said on this subject, and have left
myself little heart to write of anything else. Tell Mammy that it is a great
disappointment to me that her name is not to have a place in my household. I was
always so pleased with the idea that my Susan and little Cygnet should grow up
together as the others had done; but it seems best that it should not be so, or
it would not have been denied. Tell Mary that Chloe staid that night with Kate,
and has been kind to her. All are well at her house. * * * * * Of the persons
named in this letter, KATE is a slave-mother, belonging to the lady who writes
the letter. CYGNET was Kate's babe. MAMMY is a common appellation for a
slave-nurse. The Mammy to whom the message in the letter is sent was
nursery-maid when the writer of the letter and several brothers and sisters were
young; and, more than this, she was maid to their mother in early years. She is
still in this gentleman's family. Her name is Cygnet; Kate's babe was named for
her. MARY is the lady's married sister. CHLOE is Mary's servant. The incidental
character of this letter and the way in which it came to me, gave it a special
charm. Some recent traveller, describing his sensations at Heidelberg Castle,
speaks of a German song which he heard, at the moment, from a female at some
distance and out of sight. This letter, like that song, derives much of its
effect from the unconsciousness of the author that it would reach a stranger.
Having read this letter many times, always with the same emotions as at first, I
resolved to try the effect of it upon my friend, A. Freeman North. He is an
upright man, much sought after in the settlement of estates, especially where
there are fiduciary trusts. Placing the letter in his hands, I asked him, when
he should have read it, to put in writing his impressions and reflections. The
result will be found in the next chapter. Mrs. North, also, will engage the
reader's kind attention.


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  CHAPTER 31: NORTHERN COMMENTS ON SOUTHERN LIFE
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CHAPTER II.
NORTHERN COMMENTS ON SOUTHERN LIFE.
"As blind men use to bear their noses higher Than those that have their eyes and sight entire."
HUDIBRAS.
"One woman reads another's character Without the tedious trouble of decyphering."
BEN JONSON. New Inn.
So then, this is a Southern heart which prompts these loving, tender strains. This lady is a slave-holder. It is a slave toward whom this fellow-feeling, this gentleness of pity, these acts of loving-kindness, these yearnings of compassion, these respectful words, and all this care and assiduity, flow forth.
Is she not some singular exception among the people of her country; some abnormal product, an accidental grace, a growth of luxuriant richness in a deadly soil, or, at least, is she not like Jenny Lind among singers? Surely we shall not look upon her like again. It would be difficult to find even here at the North,--the humane North, nay, even among those who have solemnly consecrated themselves as "the friends of the slave," and who "remember them that are in bonds as bound with them,"--a heart more loving and good, affections more natural and pure. I am surprised. This was a slave-babe. Its mother was this lady's slave. I am confused. This contradicts my previous information; it sets at nought my ideas upon a subject which I believed I thoroughly understood.
A little negro slave-babe, it seems, is dead, and its owner and mistress is acting and speaking as Northerners do! Yes, as Northerners do even when their own daughters' babes lie dead!
The letter must be a forgery. No; here it is before me, in the handwriting of the lady, post-marked at the place of her residence. But is it not, after all, a fiction? I can believe almost anything sooner than that I am mistaken in the opinions and feelings which are contradicted by this letter. In the spirit of Hume's argument against the miracles of the Bible, I feel disposed, almost, to urge that it would be a greater miracle that the course of nature at the South in a slave-holder's heart should thus be set aside than that there should not be, in some way, deception about this letter. But still, here is the letter; and it is written to her father, whom she could not deceive, whom she had no motive, no wish, to delude. Had it been written to a Northerner, I could have surmised that she was attempting to make false impressions about slavery, and its influence on the slave-holder. Why should she tell her father this simple tale, unless real affection for the babe and its mother were impelling her? This tries my faith. It is like an undesigned coincidence in holy writ, which used so to stagger my unbelief. Possibly, however,--for I must maintain my previous convictions if I can,--possibly her father is such as our anti-slavery lecturers and writers declare a slave-holder naturally to be, and his daughter, herself a mother, is seeking to touch his heart and turn him from his cruelties as a slave-holder by showing him, in this indirect, beautiful manner, that slave-mothers have the feelings of human beings. Perhaps I may therefore compromise this matter by allowing, on one hand, that the daughter is all that she appears to be, and claiming, on the other, that the father is all that a slave-holder ought to be to verify our Northern theories. But she herself is a slave-holder, and therefore by our theory she ought to be imbruted. I beg her pardon, and that of her father; but they must consider how hard it is for us at the North to conquer all our prejudices even under the influence of such a demonstration as her letter. I ask one simple question: Is not this slave-babe, (and her mother,) of "the down-trodden," and is not this lady one of the down-treading? And yet she weeps,--not because, as I would have supposed, she had lost one hundred and fifty dollars in the child, but as though she loved it like the sick and dying child of a fellow-creature, of a mother like herself. Now, who at the North ever hears of such a thing in slavery? The old New York Tabernacle could have said, It is not in me;--the modern Boston Music Hall says, It is not in me. None of the antislavery papers, political or religious, say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears. Our Northern instructors on the subject of slavery, the orators, the Uncle Tom's Cabins, "The Scholar an Agitator," have never taught us to believe this. The South, we are instructed to think, is a Golgotha, a valley of Hinnom; compacts with it are covenants with hell. But here is one holy angel with its music; a ministering spirit; but is she a Lot in Sodom? Abdiel in the revolted principality? a desolate, mourning Rizpah on that rock which overlooks four millions of slaves and their tortures?
In a less instructed state of mind on this subject, I should once have said, on reading this letter,--This is slavery. Here is a view of life at the South. As a traveller accidentally catches a sight of a family around their table, and domestic life gleams upon him for a moment; as the opening door of a church suffers a few notes of the psalm to reach the ear of one at a distance, this letter, written evidently amidst household duties and cares, discloses, in a touching manner, the domestic relations of Southern families and their servants wherever Christianity prevails. It is one strain of the ordinary music of life in ten thousands of those households, falling accidentally upon our ears, and giving us truthful, artless impressions, such as labored statements and solemn depositions would not so well convey, and which theories, counter-statements, arguments, and invectives never can refute. Our senior pastor would say that the letter is like the Epistles of John,--not a doctrinal exposition, but a breathing forth of the spirit which the evangelical history had inspired. I have come to know more, however, than I did when I could have had such amiable but unenlightened feelings. I have read the "Key to Uncle Tom" and the "Barbarism of Slavery."
Still, I am sorely puzzled. "Kate," she says, "wanted to have it go, it had been sick so long; but I knew, when she said it, she did not know what the parting would be."
"The parting!" Has she read our Northern abstracts and versions of the Dred Scott Decision, and are there, in her view, any rights in a negro which she is bound to respect? Has she not heard that the Supreme Court of the United States has absolved her from all her feelings of humanity? "The parting!" Where has she lived not to know how, according to our lecturers, families are parted at the auction-block in the Southern States without the least compunction? We are constantly told,--has she not heard it?--that the slave at the South is a mere "chattel," and that a slave-child is bought and sold as recklessly as a calf, and that a parting between a slave-mother and her children, sold and separated for life, is an occurrence as familiar as the separation of animals and their young, and no more regarded by slave-holders than divorcements in the barn-yard. This being so, it must follow that when a slave-babe dies, the only sorrow in the hearts of the white owners is such as they feel when a colt is kicked to death or a heifer is choked. This must be so, if all is true which is meant to be conveyed when we are told so often at the North that the slave is a mere "chattel." Therefore I am puzzled by this lady's tears for the mother of this little black babe. She says of the mother of that poor little negro infant slave, "I knew she did not dream what the parting would be." I repeat it, my theory of slavery, that which I hold in common with all enlightened friends of freedom, requires that this lady should have a debased, imbruted nature, for she owns human beings, has made property of God's image in man. And now I feel creeping over me a dreadful temptation to think that one may hold fellow-creatures in bondage and yet be really humane, gentle, and as good as a Northerner! What fearful changes in politics would come about should our people believe this! It cannot be that our great party of Freedom can ever go to pieces and disappoint the hopes of the world; yet this would be the case, if the feelings stirred by this letter should gain a general acceptance. I cannot gainsay the facts. Here is the letter. May it never see the light; people are much more influenced by such things than by mere logic, and oh, what would befall the nation should our Northern excitement against slavery cease, and should we leave the whole subject to the South and to God! "What if people should come to believe that the Southerners--fifteen or sixteen States of this Union--are as humane, Christian, and conscientious as the North!
Who will resolve my painful doubts? I do crave to know what possible motive this lady could have had in taking so much thought and care about the last resting-place of this poor little black "chattel." You and your husband, dear lady, seem to be as kind and painstaking as though you knew that a fellow-creature of yours was returning, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
One great Northern "friend of the slave" tells us that the slaves at the South are degraded so to the level of brutes, that baptizing them and admitting them to Christian ordinances is about the same as though he should say to his dogs, "I baptize thee, Bose, in," etc. This, he tells us, he repeated many times here, and in England.[1] Nothing but love of truth and just hatred of "the sum of all villanies" could, of course, have made him venture so near the verge of unpardonable blasphemy as to speak thus. Yet your feelings and behavior toward this babe are in direct conflict with his theory. Pray whom am I to believe?
[Footnote 1: See "Sigma's" communications to the Boston Transcript, August, 1857.]
Perhaps now I have hit upon a solution. Some people, Walter Scott is an instance, bury their favorite dogs with all the honors of a decorated sepulture. Rather than believe that your slaves are commonly regarded by you as your fellow-creatures, having rights which you love to consider, or, that you do not mercilessly dispose of them to promote your selfish interests, we, the Northern people, who have had the very best of teachers on the subject of slavery, learnedly theoretical, reasoning from the eternal principles of right, would incline to believe that your interest in the burial of this little slave-babe was merely that which your own child would feel on seeing her kitten carefully buried at the foot of the apple-tree.
One thing, however, suggests a difficulty in feeling our way to this conclusion. I mention it because of the perfect candor which guides the sentiments and feelings of all Northern people in speaking of slavery and slave-holders.
The difficulty is this: Who was "poor old Timmy"? Some old slave in your father's family, I apprehend. You seem sad at finding that his grave is not in the best place. "The water rises within three feet of the surface;"--we infer, from the regret which you seem to feel at this, that you have some care and pity for your old slaves, which extends even to their graves. But we had well nigh borrowed strength to our prejudices from this place of old Timmy's grave, and were saying with ourselves, Thus the slave-holders bury their slaves where the water may overflow them; but you seem to apologize to your father for Timmy's having such a poor place for his remains by saying, "His own" (Timmy's) "family selected his burying-place, and probably did not think of this." Very kind in you, dear madam, to speak so. "The friends of the slave" are greatly obliged to you for such consideration. You say, "His own family selected his burying-place." Do slaves have such a liberty? Can they go and come in their burying-grounds and choose places for the graves of their kindred? This is being full as good to your servants, in this particular, as we are at the North to our domestics. You thought poor old Timmy's grave was not in a spot sufficiently choice for this little babe's grave, and, it seems, you inclosed a spot, and inaugurated it by the burial of this child, for the last resting-place of other babes, the kindred of this child and of your other servants. This looks as though there were some domestic permanence in some parts of the South among the servants of a household; and as though the birth and death of a child have some other associations with you than those which belong to the breeding and sale of poultry. We are truly glad to think of all this. It is exceedingly pleasant to have a good opinion of people, much more so than to believe evil of them, and to accuse them wrongfully.
In speaking thus to you, I make myself think--and I hope I do not seem self-complacent in saying it, for you must have learned from the tone of my remarks, if from no other source, that self-complacency is not a Northern characteristic, especially in our feelings toward the South--but I make myself think, by this candid admission of what seems good in you, of a venturesome remark by Paul the Apostle to your brother slave-holder Philemon, in that epistle in which he sends back the slave Onesimus,--a very trying epistle to us at the North, though on the whole, many of us keep up our confidence in inspiration notwithstanding this epistle, especially as it is explained to us by some at the North who know most of Southern slavery, our inbred hatred of which, it is insisted by some of our best scholars, should control even our interpretation of the word of God. Paul speaks to this slave-holder, Philemon, of "the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you,"--which we think was exceedingly charitable, considering that it was said to a holder of slaves; and perhaps quite too much so; for the truth is not to be spoken at all times, and especially not of those who hold their fellow-men in bondage. I am often constrained to think that it was an inconsiderate, unwise thing in the Apostle to take this favorable view of that slave-holder; he may, however, have written by permission, not by commandment; that would save his inspiration from reproach; for had he been inspired in writing this epistle, I ask myself, Would he not have foreseen our great Northern conflict with the mightiest injustice upon which the sun ever shone? and would he not have foreseen how much aid and comfort that epistle would give the friends of oppression on this continent? One first truth in the minds of the most eminent "friends of freedom" is this: "Slavery is the sum of all villanies." Other truths follow in their natural order; among them the question of the inspiration of the Bible has a place; but slavery leads some of them to think lightly, and to speak disparagingly, of the Bible, because it comes in conflict with their theories regarding slave-holding, which is certainly not always referred to in Scripture in the tone which we prefer. There was the Apostle James, too, writing about "works" in the same unguarded manner as Paul when speaking of slaves and slave-holders. Pity that he could not have let "works" alone, seeing it was so important for the other Apostles to establish the one idea of justification by faith. He made great trouble for Luther and his companions in their contest with Popery. Luther had to reject his epistle; "straminea epistola" he called it,--an epistle of straw,--weak, worthless; and he denied its inspiration, because it conflicted with his doctrine of "faith alone." So much for trying to be candid and just, and for presenting the other side of a subject, or of a man, when the spirit of the age is averse to it, and candor is in danger of being looked upon as a time-serving thing. Neither Paul nor James, however, had felt the tonic, bracing effect of good anti-slavery principles, or they would not have written, the one such a letter to a slave-holder, and the other such a back-oar argument against "faith alone." However, I am disposed to think well of Paul and James, notwithstanding these the great errors of their lives. Indeed I can almost forgive them, when I am reading other things which they said and did. You will please acknowledge, therefore, my dear madam, that in giving you credit for kind feelings toward a poor slave and its mother, we are disposed to be just; yet I beg of you not to think that I abate one jot or tittle of my belief that, in theory, slavery is "the sum of all villanies," "an enormous wrong," "a stupendous injustice."
I have just been reading your letter once more, and the foolish tears pester me so that I can scarce see out of my eyes. I find, dear madam, that you have known a bitter sorrow which so many parents are carrying with them to the grave. Your words make me think so of little graves elsewhere, that I forget for the time that you are a slave-holder. Nor can I hardly believe that your touching words are suggested by the death of a slave's babe, when you speak of "the heavy earth piled on the tender little breast." O my dear lady! has a slave's babe "a tender little breast"? Then you really think so! And you a slave-holder! "Border Ruffianism," perhaps, has not yet reached your heart; and yet I suppose--forgive me if I do you wrong--that slave-holders' hearts generally need only to be removed to the "borders," to manifest all their native "ruffianism." Can you tell me whether there are any mothers in Missouri (near Kansas) who feel toward their slaves who are mothers, as you do? There are so many people from the North in Kansas (near Missouri) who have gone thither to prevent you and your brethren and sisters from owning a fellow-creature there, that I trust their influence will in time extend through all Missouri, and that white mothers in that State will everywhere have such humane feelings toward the blacks as we and you possess.
All that I ask of you now, is, that you give Kate her liberty at once. Oh, do not say, as I fancy you will, There is not a happier being than Kate in all the land of freedom. "Fiat justitia," dear madam, "ruat coelum." I cannot conceive how being "owned" is anything but a curse. Really, we forget the miseries of the Five Points, and of the dens in New York, Boston, Buffalo, and other places at the North, the hordes in the city and State institutions in New York Harbor, Deer Island, Boston, and all such things, in our extreme pity for poor slave-mothers, like Kate, whose children, when they get to be about nine or ten years old, are liable to be sold. Honest Mrs. Striker came to work in our family, not long since, leaving her young child at home in the care of a young woman who watched it for ten cents a day. I said to her, Dear Mrs. Striker, are you not glad that you live in a free state, and not where, when you return like a bird to its nest at night, you may find your little one carried off, you know not where, by some man-stealer, you know not whom?--We honor your kind feelings, madam, but you are not aware, probably, what overflowing love and tender pity there is among us Northerners, toward your slaves and their children. We are disinterested, too; for we nearly forget our own black people here at the North, and more especially in Canada, to care for you and your people. And though hundreds of innocent young people are decoyed into our Northern cities yearly from the country and are made the victims of unhallowed passions, yet the thought that some of your young people on those remote, solitary plantations, can be compelled by their masters to do wrong on pain of being sold, fills us with such unaffected distress that we think but little of voluntary or compulsory debauchery in our own cities; but we think of dissolving the Union to rid ourselves of seeming complicity with such wickedness as we see to be inherent in the relation of master and slave. We at the North should all be wicked if we had such opportunities; we know, therefore, that you must be. Because you will not let us reprove you for it, we cut off our correspondence with your Southern ecclesiastical bodies. But I began to speak of little graves. You will see by my involuntary wandering from them how full our hearts are of your colored people, and how self-forgetful we are in our desires and efforts to do them good. And yet some of your Southern people can find it in their hearts to set at nought these our most sacred Northern antipathies and commiserations!
But I constantly hear some of your words in your letter striking their gentle, sad chimes in my ears. "It is not the parting alone, but the helplessness that looked to you for protection which you could not give;" "the emptiness of the home to which you return when the child is gone."
Now, for such words, I solemnly declare that, in my opinion, you, dear madam, never had a helpless slave look to you for protection which you could give and which you refused; you, surely, never made a slave's home desolate by taking her child from her. No, such words as those which I have just quoted from your letter, are a perfect assurance that neither you nor your kindred, within your knowledge, are guilty of ruthless violations of domestic ties among your colored people. Otherwise, you could not write as you do about "desolate homes" and "the child gone." While I read your letter and think of you, I am reminded of those words: "Is not this he whom they seek to kill?" Why, if the insurgents' pikes were aimed at you and your child, I would almost be willing to rush in and receive them in my own body. Yet I would not be known at the North to have spoken so strongly as this. O my dear madam, if there were only fifty righteous people (counting you) in the South, people who knew what "desolate homes" and "the child gone" mean, I should almost begin to hope that our Southern Gomorrah might be spared.
But I fear that I am trespassing too far away from my sworn fealty to Northern opinions and feelings. I begin to fear that I may be tempted to be recreant to my inborn, inbred notions of liberty, while holding converse with you, for there is something extremely seductive to a Northerner in slavery; it is like the apple and the serpent to the woman; so that whoever goes to the South, or has anything to do with slave-holders, is apt to lose his integrity; there is a Circean influence there for Northern people; thousands of once good, anti-slavery men now lie dead and buried as to their reputations here at the North, in consequence of having to do with the seductive slave-power; they would fill Bonaventura Cemetery, in Savannah; the Spanish moss, swaying on the limbs of its trees, would be, in number, fit signals of their subjection to what you call right views on the subject of slavery.
Though I fear almost to hold converse with you, yet, conscious of my innate love of liberty, I venture to do so. Bunker Hill is within twenty miles of my home. When I go to that sacred memorial of liberty, I strive to fortify my soul afresh against the slave-power. After hearing favorable things said, in Boston, about the South, I can go to Faneuil Hall, and there, the doors being carefully shut, walk enthusiastically about the room, almost shouting, "Sam. Adams!" "James Otis!" "Seventy-Six!" "Shade of Warren!" "No chains on the Bay State!" "Massachusetts in the van!" "Give me liberty or give me death!" I can enjoy the privilege of looking frequently on certain majestic figures in our American Apocalypse, under the present vial,--but I need not name them. I meet in our book-stores with "Lays of Freedom," never sung by such as you. I see in the shop-windows the inspiring faces, in medallion, of those masterpieces of human nature, "the champions of freedom," our chief abolitionists;--and shall I, can I, ever succumb to the slave-power, even though it approach me through the holy, all-subduing charms of woman's influence? No! dear madam, ten thousand times, No! "Slave-power!" to borrow Milton's figure when speaking of Ithuriel and Satan, the word is as the touch of fire to powder, to our brave anti-slavery souls. You have, perhaps, seen a bull stopping in the street, pawing the ground, throwing the dust over him and covering himself with a cloud of it, his nose close to the earth, and a low, bellowing sound issuing from his nostrils. Your heart has died within you at the sight. You have been made to feel how slight a defence is fan, or sunshade, against such an antagonist, though you should make them to fly suddenly open in his face. No enemy of his was in sight, so far as you could perceive; you wondered what had excited his belligerent spirit; but he saw at a very great distance that which you could not see; he heard a voice you could not hear, giving occasion to this show of prowess. That fearful combatant on the highway, dear madam, is the North, and you are the distant foe. You may affect to smile, perhaps, at the valorous attitudes, the show of mettle in the bull, but you have no idea, as I had the honor to say before, how sturdy is our hatred of the slave-power and how ready we are to do battle with it. We paw in the valley, and are not afraid.
Never think to delude us, my dear lady, with the thought that slavery in our Territories means such ladies as you owning Kates and their little babes, and having such hearts toward them as you seem to have; for that would take away a large part of the evil in slavery. Nor must you expect us, in thinking of slavery as extending into our Territories, to picture to ourselves an accomplished gentleman and lady searching a cemetery for a spot to be the grave of a little slave-babe, and behaving themselves as though they had feelings toward it and its mother irrespective of the market-price of slaves. "Border Ruffians" are the archetypes of our ideas respecting all who wish to extend slavery into our Territories. On the score of humanity, madam, we have no objection to you and your husband taking Kate and living in Kansas; how perfectly harmless that might seem to many! for, no doubt, you and Kate are perfectly happy as mistress and servant; you would need domestics there, and how could they and you be better pleased than if they and you were just as Kate and you now are to each other? but, O dear madam, that would be slavery, and we are under sworn obligations here at the North to oppose the owning of a human being with indiscriminate hatred. Say not it seems hard that if you wish to live in Kansas, for example, you cannot have liberty to go there with Kate, who is as much attached to you, I make no doubt, as any Northern or English servant is to a household. Perhaps it does seem perfectly natural and harmless, and no doubt Kate's relation to you is as gentle and pleasant, almost, as that of an adopted member of a family, who is half attendant, and half companion; this we understand. You see nothing terrible in such a relation. O dear madam, you have the misfortune to have been born under the blinding, blighting influence of slavery, and cannot see things in the true, just light in which they appear to us, whose minds are unprejudiced and clear, and whose moral sentiments on this great subject are more correct and elevated. What is making all this trouble in our nation? I will answer you in the burning words of a Northern clergyman in his speech at a meeting called to sympathize with the family of John Brown, after his death by martyrdom: "The Slave-Power itself, standing up there in all its deformity in the sight of Northern consciences,--that is the cause, [applause] and there the responsibility belongs."[2] Yes, you are sinning against the Northern conscience! It is settled forever that you are evil-doers in holding your present relation to the slave. We are bound to hem you in as by fire, till, like a scorpion so fenced about, you die by your own sting. We must proclaim liberty to your captives. Step but one foot with Kate on free soil, and our watchmen of liberty, set to break every yoke and help fugitives on their way from the house of bondage, will be around you in troops, and shout in her ear those electrifying and beatifying words, "You are a free woman!" There her chains will drop; she will cease to be a slave, and become a human being.
[Footnote 2: Boston Courier, Nov. 26, 1859.]
Must I refer to your letter once more? I hope to destroy its spell over me. But I wish at times that I had never seen that letter. "Tell Mammy that it is a great disappointment to me that her name is not to have a place in my household." Your little slave-babe, Kate's child, you named Cygnet, because Mammy's name is Cygnet, and she and your mother grew up together, and she has been your kind, faithful servant and friend, as much friend as servant, during all your youth till you were married. And you seek to perpetuate her name in your own household, and to have a little Cygnet grow up with your own little Susan. "I was always pleased with the idea that my Susan and little Cygnet should grow up together; but it seems best that it should not be so, or it would not be denied." All this is very sweet and beautiful; but now let me tell you, honestly, what the spontaneous thought of a Northerner is while meditating on such an apparently lovely picture. Here it is: Suppose that Susan and little Cygnet, when both are three years old, are playing in your front-yard some morning, and a cruel slave-trader should look over the fence, and say to your husband, "Fine little thing there, sir; take a hunderd and a ha'f for her?" I ask, Would not your husband (perhaps in need, just then, of money to pay a note) lay down his newspaper, invite the fellow in to drink, and go through the opening scene of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," coaxing up the fellow's price; and finally, would he not sell little Cygnet while her mother was out of sight, push poor little Susan into a room alone to cry her eyes out, and you and your husband pocket the money? Many of us at the North, dear madam, if you will take my unworthy self as a specimen, and I am a very moderate anti-slavery man and no fanatic, are quite as ready to believe such things of you as the contrary. We have read "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Nothing could exceed the disgust and ridicule which your letter would meet with at the hands of some of our best anti-slavery men. I am thinking of it, just now, as in the hands of Rev. Mr. Blank. The other day I saw a cambric muslin handkerchief, richly embroidered, blow past me out of a child's carriage. As I turned to get it, a dog seized it, shook it, put both his paws on it, rent it, made rags of it, threw it down, snatched it up, and seemed vexed that there was no more of it to tear. So will our abolitionists serve your letter, should they ever see it. And, my dear madam, though I disapprove their temper and language, yet I must confess that I sympathize with them in their principles, the only difference between them and me being that of social position and manners. I must tell you that, after all, you are probably unaware of the deception which you are practising on yourself, in supposing that you are really as loving and gentle toward a slave-mother and her child as some might infer. Let but a good sale tempt you! I wait to know whether you would then write such a letter. We have a ready answer to all the kind and good things which are said about you, in this, which you will see and hear in all our speeches and essays, namely, "Slavery is the sum of all villanies." That is to all our thoughts and reasonings about slavery what the longitude of Greenwich is to navigation. All your clergy, all your physicians, all your judges and lawyers, all your fathers and mothers, your gentlemen and ladies, all your children, are heaped together by us in one name, to us an awful name,--"Slave-power." We think about you as we do of Egypt, with Israel in bondage.
And now that allusion furnishes me with an argument against your letter, which I must, in conclusion, and sorely against many of my feelings, let fall, like a stone, upon it, and crush it forever. Pharaoh's daughter was touched with the cry of the little slave-babe, Moses; but what does that prove? that Egyptian bondage was not "an enormous wrong," a "stupendous injustice," "the sum of all villanies"? or that a Red Sea was not already waiting to swallow up the slave-holders, horse and foot?
You may write a thousand such letters, all over the South; but though they delude me for a while, it is only until the moisture which they raise to my eyes from my heart, by the pathos in them, dries up, and leaves my vision clear of all the blinding though beautiful mists of that error which has diffused itself over one half of this goodly land, and, I grieve to add, which has fallen upon many even here in New England, recreant sons of liberty, traitors to the memories of Faneuil Hall and Bunker Hill.
LETTER FROM MR. NORTH, INCLOSING THE FOREGOING. INFLUENCE OF THE LETTER UPON HIS WIFE.
MY DEAR MR. A. BETTERDAY CUMMING:--
I have, as you see, complied with your request, and herewith I send you my thoughts and feelings in view of the good Southern lady's letter. I came near, once or twice, abandoning some of my long-cherished principles, under the influence of the letter and of the reflections to which it gave rise. But I have been enabled to retain my integrity. I am sorry to say that the letter has made me some trouble through its effect on my wife, to whom, incautiously, I read it. Very soon after I began to read, I perceived that some natural drops were finding their way down her tear-passage, leading her to a frequent use of the handkerchief. By this means she interrupted me, I should say, six or eight times, during the reading, and as soon as I had finished she rose and left the room.
I remained, and wrote a large part of the accompanying reflections, and, near midnight, on repairing to my room, I found that Mrs. North was asleep. She waked me in the morning by asking me if I was asleep. I told her that I would gladly listen to what she had to say. She said, "Will you not please, my dear, stop the ----, and the ----," (naming two newspapers,) "and take others?"
"Why," said I, "what is the matter with them?"
She began to weep again. In a few moments she said, "I would give the world if I could have a conversation with that Southern lady."
"I fear," said I, "that it would have a deleterious effect on your attachment to the principles of liberty."
"Liberty!" said she. "Oh, how foolish I have been! I see now that there is another side to that question."
"I hope, my dear," said I, "that you will say and do nothing to occasion any reproach. Certainly, there are two sides to every question. If you manifest any surprise at finding that there is another side to the Liberty question, I fear that some will quote to you the fable of the mouse who was born in a meal-chest."
"I never heard of it," said she.
"Why," said I, "the mouse one day stole up to the edge of the chest, when the cover had been left open, and, looking round on the barn-chamber, she said, 'Dear me, I had no idea that the world was half so large.'"
"The cover has been down and the meal has been in my eyes long enough," said she. "I have been so much accustomed for a long time to read in our papers about 'enormous wrong,' 'stupendous injustice,' 'the slave-breeders,' 'sum of all villanies,' that, unconsciously, I have come to think of the South, indiscriminately, as though they were Robin Hood's men, or"--
"O my dear," said I, "you must have known that there are many good people at the South, notwithstanding slavery."
"How can there be one good man or woman there," said she, "if all that those newspapers say of slave-holding be true? Husband, depend upon it we have been believing a great lie. Just think of that letter. What a tale many of those words reveal. When the infants of our former servants die, do our ladies write such letters about them? I should judge that owning a fellow-creature softens and refines the heart, if this letter is any sign, instead of making them all barbarians. All the newspapers and novels in the world cannot do away the impressions which that letter has made on my mind. I tell you, husband, having slaves is not the unmitigated curse to owners nor to slaves that we have been taught to believe."
"Perhaps," said I, interrupting her, "you would like to live at the South, and own a few."
"I could not be hired by wealth," said she, "to have them for help, even here. I never did like them; and when I think that there are good men and women who do, and who are as kind to the poor creatures as this dear lady, I think that we should give thanks to God."
"Oh, the Southern people are not all like this good lady, by any means," said I.
"'Peradventure,'" said she, "'there be fifty righteous.' There must be tens of thousands. People like this lady are very apt to make good the saying of the blackberry pickers when they see a blackberry, 'Where there's one there's more.' The letter reads as though it were an every-day thing, a matter of course, for this lady to be kind and loving to the blacks; and for my part I bless any one who has anything to do for her or for those like her. Our papers never tell us such stories as this letter contains. No, they, do not love to hear them, I fear; but if a slave is beaten or ill-treated, then the chimes begin, 'enormous wrong,' 'stupendous injustice,' 'sum of all villanies.'"
"Why, my dear," said I, "you are getting to be pro-slavery very fast."
"Never," said she, "if you mean by that, as I suppose you do, approving all that is involved in slavery and all that is committed under the system."
"But," said I, "your present feeling toward this Southern lady may insensibly lead you to believe that it is right to own a fellow-creature. Does not Cowper say,--
"'I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep And startle when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earned?'"
"How Kate must 'startle' and go into convulsions with terror every time this mistress wakes!" she replied. "If Cowper had written in Alabama, instead of describing a state of slavery such as existed in the British possessions, and not, as in the South, mixed up with his every-day life; if the first face with which he had become familiar as a babe had been a black face, the face of his mother's 'slave' loving him, and nursing him, and he, in turn, had tended his old 'Mammy' in her decrepitude, his imagination would have contained some other pictures than those in the lines which you quote. Had there been a Mrs. Cowper, I fancy she would have been like this lady; and perhaps we should have seen Mr. Cowper acting the kind part of this lady's husband toward a slave-mother and her babe, his 'property,' so called. I lay awake here, last night, while you were writing, and thought it all over. What were you writing about so long? I wished that I had a pencil and paper near me. Those English and French people who got rid of slavery as one gets rid of a bunion, know nothing about slavery mingled with our very life-blood. How self-righteous they are! Our people, too, are perpetually quoting what Thomas Jefferson said about slavery in his day. Pray, has there been no progress? Why are we not permitted to hear what Southern men, as good as Jefferson, now say about modern slavery?"
"My dear," said I, "perhaps you are not fully qualified as yet to judge of this great subject in all its relations. The greatest and wisest men are divided in opinion about it."
"Great subject!" said she, "please let me interrupt you; there is but one side to it, I should judge, from reading our papers. What do some of the 'greatest and wisest men,' on the other side, have to say for themselves? Are they all 'friends of oppression,' 'enemies of freedom,' 'minions of the slave-power,' 'dough-faces'? Husband, I am thoroughly disgusted. I have been compelled to have uncharitable feelings toward thousands of people like this Southern lady; I confess I have really hated them, as I hate men-stealers and pirates. This letter has convinced me of my sin. It is like the Gospel in its effect upon me."
"But, my dear," said I, "recollect that good people may be in great error, and we read, 'Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him.' Now, to hold a fellow-being in bondage,--how can it be otherwise than 'stupendous injustice'?"
"I wonder," said she, "if Kate feels that she is in 'bondage' to this lady. I wonder if she would not think it cruel, if her mistress should set her free."
"But it is wrong," said I, "to hold property in a human being, whether the bondman be in favor of it or not."
"'Property!'" said she. "I should like to be such 'property,' if I were a black woman. If it were wrong in the abstract," said she, "it might not be in practice."
"Oh," said I, "what a pro-slavery idea that is! where did you learn it?"
"I learned it," said she, "at our corn-husking, when the Squire read extracts from John Quincy Adams's speech about China, in which he said that if China would not open her trade to the world, it would be right to make war upon her. Now war is wrong, but circumstances sometimes make it right. So with holding certain men in slavery, under certain circumstances. I cannot believe that it is right to go and enslave whom we will; but the blacks being here, I can see that it may be the very best thing for all concerned that they should be owned. This may be God's way of having them governed and educated."
I found that I was getting deeper into the subject than I intended, and, besides, it was time to rise. As I left the room, she said, "You will change those papers, won't you? then we will have some more pleasant talks about this subject." She called to me from the door, "Please don't send back the lady's letter; I wish to copy it." This is my reason for not sending the letter with my reply to it. You will certainly give me credit for candor in telling you all that my wife said. However, it is so easily answered that I need not fear to intrust you with it.
Yours, for the slave, A. FREEMAN NORTH.
P.S. After all, I concluded to retain this, and wait till my wife had made what use she desired of the letter, that I might be sure and return it to you safely. In the mean time, I have changed the papers. How irresistible a pleading woman is, especially a wife. Her very want of logic makes her more so, when we are good-natured. She came upon me with just such another supplication a few mornings since. As soon as she awoke, she said, "Husband, do please have our parlor window-sashes let down from the top." "For ventilation?" said I. "Yes," said she, "partly;" but I saw that she smiled. "What has made you think of it so suddenly?" said I. "Do you not want to catch some more canaries?" said she. "I suspect," said I, "that you would like to have ours escape." "Perhaps," said she, "that would be a relief to you from your present embarrassment." Then I saw that all this was banter. She wished to teaze me a little. The truth is, I have two fine singing canaries and a mocking-bird. Some of my pro-slavery friends delight to pester me about them. They say that they mean to issue a habeas corpus, and take them before Justice Bird, (who, you know, queerly enough, happens to be United States Commissioner,) and inquire if they be not restrained of their freedom. I tell them that man has dominion over all the fowls of the air. But they say, "Then might makes right! Is it not a fine thing that such a lover of liberty and friend of freedom and enemy of oppression should keep those little prisoners for his selfish gratification. Come, be a practical emancipationist to the extent of your ability; set the South an example; break every yoke." "They are better off with me," said I; "the hawks or cats would catch them, or they would die from exposure." "Expediency!" said one of them; "do justice, if the heavens fall." "Fye at justitia!" said one, who pretended to take my part. "Ruat coelum, Let them rush to heaven," replied the other. "Parse coelum, please, sir," said my boy in the Academy. "Yes, past the ceiling," said the lawyer, pretending to misunderstand him; "that's right, my son;"--and more wretched punning of the same sort. Hence Mrs. North's pretended supplication about the window-sashes. She has been in excellent spirits ever since I stopped the papers. She says that she wonders at herself so calm and happy. I heard her yesterday calling at the stairs to a little lisping English waiting-maid, who cannot pronounce s: "Judith," said she, "did you not hear the parlor-bell?" Judith walked up, and said, "Mitthith North, lately you've rung tho eathy, that motht of the time I thought it mutht be a acthident, and didn't come up at futht. I thpect the wireth ith got ruthty." Mrs. North said nothing, but afterward, in relating the affair to me, she said she truly believed that it was owing to my stopping the papers. For she could remember how often she went to the bell-rope saying to herself as she pulled it, "sum of all villanies!" then "enormous wrong," with another pull, and then "stupendous injustice," with another. Several times she says Judith has rushed up to the parlor with "Ma'am, whath the matter! the bell rung three timth right off." She thinks that her nervous system will last longer without the papers than with them. As she told me this, she was shutting down the lid of the piano for the night. As it fell into its place, the strings set up a beautiful murmur. "Oh, hear that!" said she; "how solemn it is!" "I suppose," said I, "you would not have heard it, if those papers had been in the house." I shall not tell you, a bachelor, what she said and did. I trust that her views on the great subject of freedom will get adjusted by and by; and I am debating with myself what papers to take, having been obliged, for my own edification, to become a subscriber to the reading-room. There, however, I meet with a good many pro-slavery prints, and I am tempted to look into them; after which I frequently feel as though I should pull a bell-rope three times. A.F.N.


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  CHAPTER 32: MORBID NORTHERN CONSCIENCE
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CHAPTER III.
MORBID NORTHERN CONSCIENCE.
"Heaven pities ignorance: She's still the first that has her pardon sign'd; All sins else see their faults; she's, only, blind."
MIDDLETON: No Help like a Woman's.
[Accompanying note, from A. BETTERDAY CUMMING to A. FREEMAN NORTH.
MY DEAR MR. NORTH,--
With many thanks for your kindness and frankness, and with my warmest congratulations to Mrs. North for the pleasant effect which the Southern lady's letter has had upon her, I send you another document, hoping that she will read it to you. It will not be worth while for me to say anything about this production. It purports to be from a young man in one of our New England literary institutions, whose aunt, with her husband, was residing at the South for the health of a niece, a sister to this young man;--they being orphans. The letter is so entirely in the same key with your feelings that you cannot fail to be interested. Knowing that you love rare specimens in everything, I send you this as "the only one of its kind," or as we say, "sui generis."--A.B.C.]
---- College, ---- -- ----.
MY DEAR AUNT,--
I have not heard from you but once since your arrival at the South. It is because sister is more unwell? or because you are very busy with your arrangements for the winter? or is it because, as I more than half suspect, you are so much overcome by your first observation and experience of slavery, that you have but little strength left to write to me from that "---- post of observation, darker every hour"? Perhaps you are mustering courage to tell me of the sights which you have seen, the little while that you have been among the poor, enslaved children of the sun in our Southern house of bondage. "Afraid to ask, yet much concerned to know," I wait impatiently for a letter from you. I expect to make great use of its details among my fellow-students, many of whom, I mourn to say, have their hearts case-hardened against the story of oppression. They will show an interest in everybody and everything sooner than in the slave and his wrongs. They are not only callous on that subject, but they laugh at your zeal and call it hard names.
No one can tell what I suffer in the cause of freedom, through my well-meant endeavors to interest and instruct others on the subject which absorbs my thoughts. I know that I shall have your sympathy; and when I come to hear from you what your own eyes have seen, ere this, in slavery, I shall esteem all my sufferings in the cause of the slave as light as air.
I employ the intervals of study in walking among the beautiful scenery of the village and its environs, if haply I may meet with some to whom I may open my mind on this great theme. The last time that I went out for this purpose, I met with a sad sight. A horse was running away with a buggy, while between the body of the carriage and the wheel I saw depending a foot, which I at once inferred was that of a lady. The horse rushed by, and sure enough, a young lady had fallen on the floor of the buggy, holding the reins, evidently entangled and embarrassed in her posture, uttering the most heart-rending cries and shrieks, with intermingled calls to the horse to stop.
I could not help looking at the horse, as he passed, with feelings of strong displeasure. To think that anything having an ear to hear and a sensibility to feel should be so heedless of the cries of distress, roused up my soul to indignation. As I reflected, however, it occurred to me that no doubt this horse had been subjected to unkind treatment from his youth up. I began to blame his owners. Had the law of kindness been observed in the early management of this horse, doubtless he would have regarded the first appeal of this young lady to him. May we not hope, dear Aunt, that a new era is dawning upon us with regard to the universal triumph of love and kindness over oppression of every kind, and that the brute creation will partake of its benign influences? The tone and manner in which horses are spoken to often sends a chill to my heart.
This reminds me, if you will excuse longer delay in my narrative, of some unfavorable impressions which I received lately on my way to Boston, with regard to the imperious manner in which a traveller is assailed by advertisements on the fences, as you pass through the environs of the city. Every few miles, as the cars passed along, I saw, printed on the rough boards of a fence: "Visit" so and so; "Use" so and so; "Try" so and so. I would not be willing to say how often my attention was caught by those mandatory advertisements. At last I became conscious of some feeling of resistance. Whether it was that I began to breathe the air of Bunker Hill, and the atmosphere which nourishes our most eminent friends of freedom, so many of whom, you know, live in Boston and vicinity, I cannot tell; but I found myself saying, with quite enough resentment and emphasis, "I will not 'use' so and so; I will not 'try' so and so; especially, I will not 'visit' so and so,--First, It will not be convenient. Secondly, I have no occasion to do so. Thirdly, I do not know the way; but, Finally, I do not like to be addressed in this manner, as an overseer of a Southern plantation addresses a slave. I am not a slave. I am a Massachusetts freeman." This way of speaking to people, dear Aunty, must be discountenanced. It will, by and by, beget an aptitude for servile obedience; the eye and ear becoming accustomed to the forms of domination, we shall have yokes and chains upon us before we are aware. Some one says, "Let me write the songs for a nation, and I care not who makes her laws." So say I, Let me write imperative advertisements on fences and buildings, and all resistance to Southern encroachments and usurpation will soon be in vain.
But to resume my narrative. I began to look round, as soon as my excitement about the runaway horse would allow, for some one to whom I could open my overburdened mind on the subject of freedom. I espied a man with an immense load of chairs, from a factory in our neighborhood, as I supposed, on his way to Boston. Four horses drew the load, which I saw was very heavy; not so heavy, I thought with myself, as that which four millions of my fellow-men are this moment laboring with, over the gloomy hills of darkness in our Southern States. I felt impelled to address the driver on this great theme. So, before he had reached the top of the hill, I called out,--
"Driver!"
Perhaps there was more suddenness and zeal in my call than was judicious, but the driver immediately said "Whoa!" to his horses, and he ran hither and thither for stones to block the wheels to keep his load from running back, down hill.
I felt encouraged, by this, to think that he was of a kind and pliable disposition; and seeing the wheels fortified, and the horses at rest, I felt more disposed to hold conversation with the man. "Who knows," I said to myself, "but that I may now make one new friend for the slave?"
"A warm day," said I.
"Yes, sir," said he, a little impatiently, I thought, The sun was very hot, an August morning, no air stirring, well suited to make one think of toil and woe under our Southern skies.
"Have you ever been at the South?" said I, wiping my forehead.
"No, sir," said he, picking out a knot in the snapper of his whip, evidently to hide his embarrassment while waiting to know the drift of my question. The sight of his whip kindled in my soul new zeal for the poor slaves, knowing as I did how many of them were at that moment skipping in their tortures and striving to flee from the piercing lash.
"Your toil in the hot sun with your load, my dear sir," said I, "is well fitted to impress you with the thought of the miseries under which four millions of your fellow-men are every day groaning in our Southern country. I make no doubt that you are grateful for the blessings of freedom which we enjoy here at the North. I wish to ask whether you are doing anything against oppression; whether you belong to any Association whose object is"--
"What on airth did you stop me for," said he, quite impatiently, and yet with a lingering gleam of respect, and with some hesitancy at any further rudeness of speech.
"My dear sir," said I, "four millions of Southern slaves are this very hour groaning under sorrows which no tongue"--
"You"--(he hesitated a moment, and surveyed me from head to foot, and then broke out,)--"putty-headed, white-birch-looking, nateral--stoppin' a load right near the crown of a hill, no gully in the road, such a day as this, and--'Ged ehp,'"--said he to his horses, as the stones under the wheels that moment began to give way; and then he drew his lash through one hand, with a most angry look. I really thought that I should have to feel that lash. The thought instantly nerved me:--I'll bear it! it's for the slave; let me remember them, I might have added, that are whipped as whipped with them; but at that moment the horses had reached the hill-top, and the driver was by their side.
He called back, as he passed round the rear of his load to the nigh side of his team. I caught only a few of his last words;--"take your backbone for a for'ard X." I snapped my thumb and finger at him, though not lifting my arm from my side. The human spinal column, with its vertebræ, for an axle-tree of a wagon! And yet, I immediately thought, the poor negro's back is truly "the for'ard X" of the great wagon of our American commerce. But I let him depart.
Salutary impressions, I cannot question, dear Aunty, were made upon his mind. He had heard some things which would occupy his thoughts in his solitary trudge on his way to Boston. That thought comforted me as I was writhing a little on my way home, under his opprobrious epithets; for you know that I was always sensitive when addressed with reproachful words.
I could not help recalling and analyzing his scalding words of contempt. I took a certain pleasure in doing so, because, as I saw and felt the power of each in succession, I remembered what awful abuses flow from the tongues of Southern masters and mistresses continually, as they goad on their slaves to their work, or reproach them for not bringing in the brick for which they had given them no straw. So it was comparatively a light affliction for me to remember that I had been called by such hard names. "Putty-headed!" said he. I infer, dear Aunty, that he must have worked in the painter's department, and had been familiar with putty; hence he drew the epithet, into whose signification I did not care to inquire. "White-birch-looking!" I suppose he referred to the impression of imbecility which we have in seeing a perfectly white tree in the woods among the deep green of the sturdier trees. He may have referred to the effect of sedentary habits on my complexion. However, I soon forgot the particulars of his insulting address, retaining only the impression that I had suffered, and that willingly, in the bleeding cause of freedom.
It was a great relief to me that, just at that moment, a very fine dog approached me and fawned upon me, then ran ahead, and seemed afraid that I should send him back. After a while I tried to drive him away, but he insisted on following me, and I have no doubt that I might have secured him, had I wished to do so. I was not a little inclined, at one time, to take him home with me, and to keep him as a companion in my walks. But he had a collar with his own name, Bruno, upon it, and the name of his owner. The question of right occurred to me. I debated it. Applying some of the self-evident truths established by our own Independence, I almost persuaded myself that I might rightfully take the dog. I reasoned thus:1. All dogs are born free and equal. 2. They have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 3. All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. These principles, breathed in, from childhood, with the atmosphere of our glorious "Fourth," I did not hesitate to apply in the case of the dog. I do not know what practical conclusion I might have arrived at, but suddenly I lost sight of Bruno in consequence of a new adventure, in the process of which he disappeared.
A matronly looking lady came suddenly out of a gate, with a cup in one hand containing a teaspoon, and a brown earthen mug in the other hand. She pushed the gate open before her, easily; but I saw that she was embarrassed about shutting it. I stepped forward and assisted her.
"Some kind office for the sick, I dare say," said I.
"A woman in that plastered house is very sick," said she; "I have just fixed some marsh-mallow for her, to see if it will ease her cough. Sorry to trouble you, sir, but my cup was so full that I could not use my hands."
"I suppose," said I, "madam, if you will allow me to detain you a moment,"--
"I am afraid my drink in the cup will get cold, sir, but"--
"Only a moment, madam," said I; (for I did not feel at liberty to walk with her;) "only a moment; I am led to think, by your kindness to this poor woman, of the millions of bond-people in our Southern country who never feel the hand of love ministering to their sick and dying"--
"O you ignorant thing!" said she, pouring the contents of the cup into the mug, and then setting the cup on the mug, all without looking at me; "where were you born and bred? You must be an abolitionist. Southern ladies are the very best of nurses; and as to their slaves when they are sick,--why their hearts are overflowing--why!" said she, "I could tell you tales that would make you cry like a baby--the idea! millions of slaves sick and neglected! Do you belong to ---- College?"
"Yes, madam," said I.
"Sophomore?" said she.
"Yes, madam." But it was a cutting question. She had an arch look as she asked it.
"Well sir," said she, with a graceful air, in a half averted direction, "you have some things to learn about your fellow-countrymen which are not put down in your Moral Philosophies. Please do not betray your ignorance on subjects about which you are evidently in midnight darkness." She was some ways from me, but I heard her continue: "Was there ever anything like this Northern ignorance and prejudice about the Southern people!"
I had nothing to do but resume my lonely walk. My sense of desolateness no tongue can tell. I whistled for Bruno, but in vain. She called me "an ignorant thing," said I. Ignorant on the subject of slavery! How easy it is to misjudge! Have I steadied free-soil papers all these years only to be called "an ignorant thing!" I could graduate to-day from this institution, though only in my second year, if the examination were confined to the subject of slavery. I have thoroughly understood the theory; I have learned by heart the codes of the iniquitous system. I know it root and branch, from pith to bark. All the lecturers on the subject have not labored in vain, nor spent their strength for nought, with me. And now to be called "ignorant!" Just as though I could not reason, that is, draw inferences from premises, make deductions from facts. There is the great fact of slavery; it is "the sum of all villanies;" men holding their fellow-men in bondage for the sake of gain; the heart naturally covetous, oppressive, and cruel, where power is unlimited. As though the law of kindness could, in such circumstances, possibly prevail and mitigate the sorrows of the bondman! The direct influence of slavery is to debase, to make barbarous, to petrify; I know as well as though I saw it that the South must be full of neglected, perishing objects, cast out to perish in their sicknesses. You doubtless are acquainted, dear Aunty, with the great change in the mode of reasoning introduced by Lord Bacon. We reason now from facts to conclusion; this is called the inductive method, to collect facts, then draw inferences. The facts which I have collected on the subject of slavery, in my reading and hearing, lead me to a perfect theory on the subject, and my confidence in that theory is all which it could be if, like you, I were now seeing it verified with my own eyes.
I reason on this subject of slavery, just as our philosophers reason about the moon. You have learned, dear Aunt, ere this, that there is no water in the moon. Certain things are observed by our telescopes, in the moon, from which we are sure that there is no water there. Now there are certain given facts in slavery. Slavery is Barbarism. It consists in holding men to compulsory servitude. The human heart is avaricious; it gets all it can, and keeps all it gets. Give it complete power over a human being, and there are no limits to its cupidity and wrong-doing, but the finite nature of the thing itself. Hence, does it not follow that there can be no disinterestedness, no tender mercies in slavery? Yes, dear Aunt, as we are perfectly sure that there can be no water in the moon, so are we sure, by the same unerring rule of reasoning according to the inductive philosophy, that there is not one drop of water in slavery for the parched lips of a dying slave. I stated this to a member of our Junior Class who is a wonderful metaphysician. He was kind enough to say that he could discover no flaw in the logic. Your letter, which, I trust, is now on its way to me, I know will fully confirm my theory and conclusion.
This lady had probably been reading some miserable cant about Southern humanity, for there are people everywhere who take the wrong side of every subject, from sheer obstinacy. What can disprove the laws of human nature? They require that things should be at the South as our theories lay them down.
In our Institution I mourn to say there is much opposition to the principles of freedom. Not only so, but the students, many of them, mock at us who stand up against oppression.
You may not be aware, dear Aunty, that I have a habit, in walking, of keeping my hands firmly clenched, and my thumbs laid flat and pressed down over the knuckles of my forefingers. This, I am aware, gives the thumbs a flattened look. One of our principal pro-slavery students delights to laugh at me to my face. Perhaps I am wrong in connecting everything with this all-absorbing theme, but, truly, my thoughts all run in that direction. Mother and you were accustomed to send me on errands when I was little, and you placed your money in my right hand and mother hers in my left, because, on my return to our house, your room was on the right hand of the entry. So I used to go along, holding your respective moneys in my palms, with my thumbs stopping the apertures. And now I am persecuted for the fidelity which led me to acquire a habit that cleaves to me to this day. But little did I dream, dear Aunty, when I padded along like a straight footed animal in the water, instead of having the free use of my open palms to aid me in walking, that I was acquiring a habit to be to me an inlet of torture in behalf of our manacled four millions, whose hands feel the galling bonds of slavery. I take it joyfully, because it is all for the slave.
The day that I came home from my two interviews and efforts just related, a pro-slavery student, a Senior, invited me into his room. He is exceedingly kind and generous, though, I am sorry to say it, a friend of oppression. He gave me a splendid apple, the first which I had seen for the season. He dusted my coat with his feather-duster, and he even dusted my boots. He asked me how far I had been walking. I told him all which I had said and done, thinking that it would profitably remind him of the great subject. He roared with laughter. "Three cheers for Gustavus;" "isn't that rich;"--waving, all the while, the feather-duster, and breaking out with fresh peals, as I related one thing after another. The noise which he made brought in several of the students from neighboring rooms, and he related my stories to them as they stood with their thumbs and fingers holding open their text-books at the places where they were studying. They were a curious looking set, in their dressing-gowns, slippers, and smoking-caps; and the most of them, unfortunately, happened to be pro-slavery, and advocates of oppression; by which I mean, not in favor of my mode of viewing and treating the subject of slavery. One of them was so amused and excited that he lost all self-control. He threw down his book, caught me with his two hands about the waist, and tickled me so that I fell upon the floor. Then they raised a shout. We have cool nights here, sometimes, in the warmest weather, and we keep, on the foot-boards of our beds, cotton comforters, called delusions, because they are so downy and light. Two of the students took the Senior's comforter and laid it on me; then four of them sat down, one on each corner, to keep me underneath. I have told you that it was a sultry August day. I thought that I should smother. I told them so, as well as my choked voice would allow; but one of them said, in a soft, meek tone, as I writhed in distress, "Hush, Gustavus, lie still; you are certainly laboring under a delusion." This was all the more painful from its being so cruelly true, in a literal sense, while I knew that they had reference to my views with regard to freedom, in the word "delusion." What sustained me in those moments, dear Aunty? It was not that I had myself stood by when this trick was played on Freshmen, and encouraged it by my actions; no, a higher and holier power than conscience of wrong-doing wrought upon me in those moments. Oh, I thought, the very cotton which fills this comforter, was cultivated by the hand of a slave. And shall I complain at being nearly smothered by it, when I remember what an incubus slavery is to the poor creature who gathered this cotton, and what an incubus it is to our unhappy land? I was delivered at last from my load, because my tormentors were tired of their sport. Would that there were some prospect that they who load cruel burdens on the slave were increasingly tired of their work!
They would not, however, let me rise. So, thought I, when we have taken the burden of slavery off from the poor negro, unholy prejudice against color keeps him from rising to a level with the rest of the community. I begged that I might get up. They told me that my morning exertions required longer rest. I told them that I must get my Greek. Whereupon one of them stood over me, with his arms raised in a deploring attitude, and said,--
"Sternitur infelix!-- --Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos."
This, dear Aunty, is the lamentation of a Latin poet over a Greek soldier lying prostrate on the battle-field, far from home;--"and dying he remembers his sweet Greece." So they made game of me with the help of the Classics, giving poignancy to their jokes by polishing the tips with classical allusions. While I was under the "delusion," they sung snatches of Bruce's Address to his army; and when they came to the words
"Who so base as be a slave?-- Let him turn and flee,"
one of them ran a cane under the delusion and punched me with it, keeping stroke to the music. This was little short of profaneness. They asked me if the chair-maker's harnesses were probably made by free or slave labor, alluding, unfeelingly, to a mistake which I made in a recitation one day, when two of those very students had kept me talking about slavery up to the very moment when the recitation-bell rang, so that I had not looked at my lesson. There are men in my class, and these were some of them, who, I am told, are plotting to prevent my having the first appointment, to which they know that my marks at recitation entitle me. But may I never be so prejudiced against those who differ from me on the subject of slavery as to deny them credit for things which they have fairly earned. I leave this to the avowed enemies of human rights. For the cause of the slave, I must gain the first appointment.
I alluded, just now, to my feelings at witnessing tricks played on the Freshmen. Had the Sophomores asked my advice before they played those tricks, I should have dissuaded them; but when they played them, with such courage and enterprise, I stood before them with admiration. But while I was under that quilt, I found that I did not admire the Sophomores at all, any more than I did the Seniors who then had me in their power.
The enemies of freedom, in College, had a great triumph the other evening. One of them, in one of the Literary Societies, read an Original Poem, the title of which was, "The Fly-time of Freedom." He spoke of "our glorious summer of Liberty" being infested and pestered with noisy, provoking things, which he characterized under the names of dor-bugs, millers, and all those creatures which fly into the room when the lamp is lighted; the swarms of black gnats which are about your head in the woods; horse-flies which stick, and leave blood running; and devil's-darning-needles. One brave man here, a great "friend of freedom," who, they falsely say, loves to be persecuted, and longs for martyrdom, and interprets everything that way, he described as a miller, who seems to court death in the flame. I think he aimed at me in speaking of soft, harmless bugs which creep over your newspaper or book. Many faces were turned to me as he repeated these lines. I am sorry to say the piece was much applauded. It has put back the cause of emancipation in College, I fear, a term.
The following introduction to another piece was written, and was read, at the same meeting, by a member of my own class. I fear that there is a sly hit intended by the writer, which I do not discern, at somebody, or something, related to freedom. This I suspected from the applause it excited on the part of those who I know are the most deadly foes we have to free institutions. I obtained a copy of this introduction. It will serve, at least, to show you, dear Aunty, what a variety of topics we have to excite our minds here in College. You can exercise your discretion about letting uncle read it, as it is on a subject of some delicacy. The writer says,--
"I am collecting facts from our daily papers illustrating the Barbarism of Matrimony. My list of wives poisoned, beaten, maimed for life by their husbands, and of divorces, cruel desertions, the effects on wives of intemperance in husbands, is truly fearful. I make no question that there are some happy marriages. But a relation which affords such peculiar opportunities for cruelty to women, must sooner or later disappear. No doubt the time will come when marriage will be deemed a relic of barbarism, and a bridal veil be exhibited as one of the mock decorations of the unhappy victims. Human nature in man is not good enough to be trusted with such a responsibility as the happiness of woman. Let Bachelors of Arts, on our parchments, suggest to us our duty to aid, through our example, as well as by words, in breaking this dreadful yoke, bidding those innocent young women who are now, perhaps, fearfully looking at us as their future oppressors, to be forever free. In the language of young Hamlet: 'I say, we will have no more marriages.'"
* * * * *
Just before dark one evening, I was sitting in my room, meditating on the great theme which absorbs my thoughts. My eye was caught by the bright bolt of my door-lock, the part of the bolt between the lock and the catch showing, beyond question, that the door was fastened. Some one on the outside had turned a key upon me.
I had the self-possession to be quiet, for my mind had been calmed by reflecting, in that twilight hour, that now one more day of toil for the poor slaves was over.
But as I looked at the bolt, my attention was diverted by something near the top of the door, moving with a strange motion. It was black; it opened and shut. I drew toward it. I found that it was the leg of a turkey, the largest that I ever saw. It was held or fastened in the ventilator over the door, while some one on the outside was evidently pulling the tendons of the claw, making it open and shut.
There it performed its tragi-comic gibes for several minutes.
I resumed my seat, unterrified, of course, and proceeded to turn the spectre to good account. I addressed it, in a moderate tone; though I think that I used some gesticulation. Said I: Personation of the Slave-power! predatory, grasping, black! thinkest thou a panting fugitive lies hid under my "delusion?" or wouldst thou seize a freeman? The Ægis of Massachusetts is over me. Gape! Yawn! Thou art powerless; but thy impudence is sublime.--Ten or fifteen voices then solemnly chanted these words:--
"Emblem of Slavery Clutching the Free! We've digested the turkey That gobbled oil thee. Sure as THANKSGIVING hastened, Cock-turkey! thy hour, Thanksgivings shall blazon Thy downfall, Slave-power!
"The Slave-power has talons, Like Nebuchadnezzar; Slaves are the Lord's flagons Our modern Belshazzar From the Temple of Nature Has stolen away. 'Mean!' 'Mean!' be writ o'er him! Wrath! canst thou de"--
Here screams of laughter, and a scampering in the entry, and the turkey's leg tumbling into my room, ended the trick and their cantillation. I was wishing to hear, in the next stanza, the idea that as the tendons of the claw were worked by a foreign power, so slavery at the South owes its activity to Northern influence. Perhaps it is due to myself to say that the word scampering, a few lines above, has no revengeful reference, in its first syllable, to the author of the trick. The cause of humanity, I find, has a tendency to make one cautious and charitable in his use of words.
They have anti-slavery meetings in the village, now and then, which I attend. All the talent of the place, and the truly good, are there. One evening, when the excitement rose high, a tall, awkward young man mounted the stage, and said that he wanted to offer one resolution as a cap-sheaf. You will infer, dear Aunty, that he was an agriculturist. He lifted his paper high up in one hand, while his other hand was extended in the other direction, and so was his foot under that hand. He looked like Boötes, on the map of the heavens, which we used to take with us, you know, in studying the comet. "Read it!" "Read it!" said the meeting. "I will," said he, flinging himself almost round once, in his excitement, reminding me of a war-dance, and then taking his sublime attitude again; when he read,--
"Resolved, Mr. Cheerman, fact is, that Abolition is everything, and nuthin' else is nuthin'."
Some of the younger portion of the audience wished to raise a laugh, but the reddening, angry faces of the prominent friends of the slave were turned upon them instantly, and overawed them.
All were silent for a moment, when the Chairman rose to speak. He was a short man, with reddish hair, and his teeth were almost constantly visible, his lips not seeming to be an adequate covering for them. He had, moreover, a habit of snuffing up with his nose,--in doing which his upper lip, what there was of it, played its part, and made him show his teeth by frequent spasms. Being a little bow-legged, he made an awkward effort in coming to the front of the stage; but we all love him, because he is such a vigorous friend of freedom, looking as though he would willingly be executioner of all the oppressors in the land. He said that he "utterly concurred" with the mover in the spirit of his resolution; it was not, to be sure, in the usual form of resolutions, but that could easily be fixed; and he would suggest that it be referred to the Standing Committee of the Freedom League. "I agree to that," said the pro-slavery Senior who gave me that entertainment in his room, (but who, by the way, being a friend of oppression, had no right to speak in a meeting in behalf of freedom;) "I agree to that," said he, "Mr. Chairman, and I move that the School-master be added to the Committee." What a cruel laugh went through the meeting! while the most distinguished friends of the slave had hard work to control their faces.
I could not help going to the mover of the resolution after the meeting; and, laying two fingers of my right hand on his arm, I said, "Don't be put down; he tried to reproach you for not being college-bred; he had better get the slaves well educated before he laughs at a Massachusetts freeman for not being a scholar."--He tossed his black fur-skin cap half-way to his head, and he wheeled round as he caught it, saying, "Don't care, liberty's better'n larnin', 'nuff sight."--"Both are good," said I, "my friend, and we must give them both to the slave."--"Give 'em the larnin' after y'u've sot 'em free!" said he; "I'll fight for 'em; don't want to hear nuthin' 'bout nuthin' else but liberty to them that's bound." He stooped and pulled a long whip and a tin pail from under the seat of the pew where he had been sitting, making considerable noise, so that the people, as they passed out, turned, and the sight of him and his accoutrements made great sport for some whose opinions and feelings were the least to be regarded. I saw in him, dear Aunty, a fair specimen of native, inbred love of liberty and hatred of oppression, unsophisticated, to be relied on in our great contest with the slave-power. I have been told, since the meeting, that his Christian name is Isaiah.
The meeting that evening appointed me a delegate to an Anti-slavery Convention which is to be held before long. I am expected to represent the College on the great arena of freedom. They have done me too much honor. Since my appointment, the students have sent me, anonymously, through the post-office, resolutions to be presented by me at the Convention. I have copied them into a book as they came in, and I will transcribe them for you and send them herewith. The spirit of liberty is, on the whole, certainly rising among the students. As the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, I cannot but hope that my trials in the cause of freedom have wrought good in the Institution. Some who send in these resolutions privately, are, no doubt, secret friends, needing a little more courage to face the pro-slavery feeling and sentiment which are all about them. Some one who read these resolutions suggested the idea of their being a burlesque. I repudiated the idea at once. They will commend themselves to you, dear Aunty, I am sure, as honest and truthful.
The President called me to his room yesterday, and asked me about the treatment which I received from those Seniors. While I was telling him of it, I noticed that he kept his handkerchief close to his face almost all the time. I thought at first that his nose bled, or that he had a toothache; but I afterward believed that he was weeping at the story of my wrongs. A Southerner, in the Junior Class, said he had no doubt that the President was laughing heartily all the time. None but a minion of the slave-power could have suggested this idea. The President felt so much that he merely told me to return to my room.
But I perceive, by the students with letters and papers in their hands, that the mail is in. I will add a postscript, if I find a letter from you; and I will send on the resolutions at once. Write soon, dear Aunty, to your loving nephew, and to
Yours for the slave, Gustavus.


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  CHAPTER 33: RESOLUTIONS FOR A CONVENTION
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CHAPTER IV. RESOLUTIONS FOR A CONVENTION. "Nay, and thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as
well as thou."--HAMLET. I. Resolved, That the continued practice of wild geese
to visit the South for the winter, flying over free soil--Concord, Lexington,
Bunker Hill, Faneuil Hall,--on their way to the land of despotism, cannot be too
loudly deplored by all the friends of freedom in the North; and that the laws of
nature are evidently imperfect in not yielding to the known anti-slavery
sentiments of this great Northern people so far as to make the instincts of said
geese conform to our most sacred antipathies and detestations. II. Resolved,
That the abolitionists of Maine, and of the British Provinces, resident near the
summer haunts of said geese, be requested to consider whether measures may not
be adopted whereby anti-slavery tracts, and card-pictures illustrating the
atrocious cruelties of slavery, and appeals to the consciences of the South, or
at least instructions to the colored people as to their right and duty to assert
their liberty, may not be fastened to these birds of passage, to make them
apostles of liberty; so that while they continue to disregard the bleeding cause
of humanity, their very cackle may be converted into lays of freedom. III.
Whereas we read in the Revelation a description of the wall of heaven as having
"on the South three gates," a number equal to that assigned to the North,
Resolved, That this description being in total disregard of the great modern
anti-slavery movement, the book which contains it cannot have been divinely
inspired; and that a true anti-slavery Bible would have represented those
pro-slavery gates as shut, with the inscription over them: Enter from the North.
IV. Resolved, That the great abolitionist who represents himself in his speeches
as baptizing his dogs, in just ridicule of the baptism of chattel slaves, is
worthy, with his dogs, of a place in the heavens among the constellations; and
that anti-slavery astronomers be requested to make a Southern constellation for
them somewhere near the head of The Serpent, as rivals to "Canes Venatici,"
which pro-slavery astronomers no doubt designed, in blasphemous profanation of
the heavens, to represent their bloodhounds hunting fugitive slaves, placing it
in disgusting proximity to our own Northern Ursa Major. And the friends of the
slave are hereby invited to make that new constellation their cynosure, vowing
by it, and anti-slavery lovers arranging their matrimonial engagements, if
possible, so as to plight their troth only when it is in the ascendant. V.
Resolved, That we shall hail it as a sign of progress and an omen for good, when
anti-slavery women, with the sensibility which belongs to their sex, shall
become so interpenetrated with the sentiments of freedom, that they can
distinguish by the sense of taste the oyster grown in James River, Richmond,
Virginia, and handled by the toil-worn slave, from that which grew on free soil.
VI. Resolved, That our noble anti-slavery poets be requested to compose sonnets
addressed to the whippoorwill, appealing to that sorrowful-tuned bird by our
associations with his name, and by his own historic relationship to the victims
of oppression, to desert the South and to frequent our woods and pastures in
greater numbers, that the sensibilities of our people may be continually touched
by his notes and his name, so suggestive of the monstrous lash which rules over
one half of this great nation. And the anti-slavery members of the Legislature
are hereby requested to seek legislative enactments whereby the whippoorwill may
be further domiciliated at the North, and be provided with protection during the
winter season. VII. Resolved, That bobolinks, blue jays, orioles, martins, and
swallows, who visit the rice-fields of the South, and live upon the unrequited
toil of four millions of our fellow-men, should not, upon their return, be
viewed with favor by the friends of equal rights at the North, but should be
destroyed by sportsmen as a sacrifice to outraged humanity. And no true
anti-slavery taxidermist will, in our judgment, be found willing to stuff the
skin of one of those mean and traitorous birds for any public or private
ornithological show-case. VIII. Resolved, That one subject of great interest,
well suited to occupy the attention of Massachusetts freemen and friends of
liberty the current year, is this: Whether the great whips in Dock Square,
Boston, which stand professedly as signs before the doors of whip-makers' shops,
but are in the very sight of Faneuil Hall, shall be allowed to remain within
that sacred precinct of liberty; and that we tender our thanks to those who are
investigating the question whether the whips were not originally placed, and are
not now maintained, there by the slave-power, in mockery of our Northern hatred
of oppression. IX. Resolved, That, if it be true that the steel pen which signed
the bill for the removal of a Judge of Probate for doing an accursed duty as
U.S. Commissioner, was taken from the Council Chamber and is now in the
possession of one who has driven it into the edge of his chamber-door casement,
and every night hangs his watch upon it, at the head of his bed, with the
infatuated notion that thereby, through some "most fine spirit of sense," the
tick of a death-watch will disturb the political dreams of our Massachusetts
rulers, we hereby declare that this is most chimerical and visionary, and that
the great party of freedom in Massachusetts need not feel the slightest
apprehension that our rulers have the least misgivings as to the morality of
their conduct in the removal of said officer, nor that they fear political
retribution for that deed; nor do we believe that the death-watch will ever tick
in the ear of freedom in Massachusetts. X. Resolved, That in the acquiescence of
many at the North in the entire justice of a universal massacre, by the slaves,
of their masters, including women and children, we recognize a state of
preparedness for the proscription and banishment of all who do not come up to
the high abolition standard; but that in carrying out that project, we ought
first to seek the reclamation of the victims, and therefore that due inquiry
ought to be made concerning the most effective modes of persuasion, as, for
example, thumb-screws, racks, wheels, scorpions, water-dropping for the head,
bags of snakes, tweezers, and steel-pointed beds, it being apparent that our
agony for the slave cannot be satisfied except by his liberation, or by the
forcible subjection to us of all who oppose it. And we do hereby request all the
friends of freedom now travelling in despotic countries to make inquiry as to
the most approved methods of persuading the mind by appeals to it through the
sensibilities of the flesh, and to be prepared with this information against the
time when the sublime march of abolition philanthropy shall arrive at the limits
of forbearance with all the Northern advocates of oppression. XI. Whereas no one
who holds slaves can be a Christian; and whereas Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were
slave-holders, Abraham himself having owned more slaves than any Southerner; and
whereas a synonyme of heaven, in the New Testament, is "Abraham's bosom;" and
whereas no true friend of freedom can consistently have Christian communion with
slave-holders, Resolved, That we look with deep interest to the introduction
among us of the principles of the Hindoo philosophy and religion (including the
transmigration of souls), through tentative articles in our magazines; by which
there is opening to us a way of escape from that heaven one exponent of which
is, to lie in the bosom of a slave-holder. XII. And in conclusion, Be it
Resolved, That Bunker Hill was since Mount Sinai, that Faneuil Hall is far in
advance of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness; and that our anti-slavery
literature is immeasurably beyond epistles to Philemon and other inspired
pro-slavery tracts.


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  CHAPTER 34: THE GOOD NORTHERN LADY'S LETTER FROM THE SOUTH
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CHAPTER V.
THE GOOD NORTHERN LADY'S LETTER FROM THE SOUTH.
"No haughty gesture marks his gait, No pompous tone his word; No studied attitude is seen, No palling nonsense heard; He'll suit his bearing to the hour, Laugh, listen, learn, or teach. With joyous freedom in his mirth, And candor in his speech."--ELIZA COOK.
[My friend, A. Freeman North, having read the foregoing, returned it with a hasty note, in pencil, saying, "Please send me the Aunt's reply, if you have it, or can procure it." I accordingly sent it, and we have it here.]
MY DEAR NEPHEW,--
Your letter came while we had gone into the country for a fortnight. Hattie is much improved, and I trust will soon be well. I gave her your letter to read. She told me that she could not find it in her heart to wonder at you for it; for once she should probably have written very much in the same strain.
It was Easter Monday afternoon when our steamboat reached the wharf. We took an open carriage and drove toward the hotel. As we reached the centre of the city, the place seemed to be full of colored people, who evidently had just come out of their meeting-houses. This was our first view of the blacks. Our driver had to stop frequently while they were crossing the streets, and we had full opportunity to enjoy the sight. Hattie exclaimed, after looking at them a few moments,--
"Why, Uncle, they are human beings!"
"What did you suppose they were?" said he.
"Uncle," said she, "these cannot be slaves. Where do you suppose the yokes are?"
"Now, Hattie," said he, "you were not so simple as to suppose that they wore yokes, like wild cows and swine."
"Why," said she, "our papers are always telling about their being 'reduced to a level with brutes,' and every Sabbath since I was a child, it seems to me, I have heard the prayer, 'Break every yoke!' Last Sabbath our minister, you remember, said, 'Abraham was a slave-holder, David a murderer, and Peter lied and swore.' Why, Uncle, these black people look like gentlemen and ladies! If slave-holders are like murderers and thieves, these cannot be their slaves!"
"Ask that elderly gentleman," said your Uncle. He was stopping for our carriage to pass,--a portly man, with a ruffled shirt, and a rich-looking cane, the end of which he kept on the ground, holding the top of it at some distance from him.
"Please, sir, will you tell me if these are the slaves?" said Hattie.
He looked round, while he kept his arm and the top of his cane describing large arcs of a circle.
"They are our colored people, Miss," said he, exchanging a smile with your Uncle and me.
"Well, sir," said Hattie, more earnestly than before, "are they slaves?"
He politely nodded assent, but was apparently interested by something which caught his eye. He then took out a snuff-box, and, looking round about him while opening it, said,--
"Some of them dress too much, Miss,--too much, altogether."
"Kid gloves of all colors," said Hattie, soliloquizing. "Red morocco Bibles and hymn-books. What a white cloud of a turban! Part of the choir, I take it,--those, with their singing-books. Elegant spruce young fellow, isn't he, Aunt? with the violoncello. Venerable old couple, there! over eighty, both of them. Well," continued Hattie, "I will give up, if these are the slaves."
"Don't make up your mind too suddenly," said your Uncle; "you will see other things."
"Uncle," said she, "what I have seen here in fifteen minutes shows me that at least one half of that which I have learned at the North about the slaves is false. Our novels and newspapers are all the time misleading us."
"And yet," said your Uncle, "perhaps everything they say may be true by itself; it may have happened."
"Why, Aunt," said she, "such a load is gone from my mind since looking upon these colored people that I feel almost well. Why, there's a wedding!" said she. "Driver, do stop! Uncle, please let us go in."
They left me, and went into a meeting-house, where a black bridegroom, in a blue broadcloth suit, white waistcoat, kid gloves, patent-leather shoes, and white hose, and an ebony bride, in white muslin caught up with jessamines, and a myrtle wreath on her head, had gone in, followed by a train of colored people. The white people, invited guests, it seems, were already assembled. The sexton told your Uncle that the parties were servants, each to a respectable family. This was a new picture to Hattie. She said that in looking back to the steamboat, an hour ago, the revelations made to her by what she had seen and heard, in that short time, all new, all surprising and delightful, afforded her some idea of the sensations of a soul after it has been one hour within the veil. We sat in the carriage, and saw the procession pass out, when the choir, who had been in the church before the wedding, practising tunes, resumed their singing.
"Now the idea," said Hattie, after we had listened awhile, "that they can forget that they are slaves long enough to meet and practise psalm-tunes!"
"You evidently think," said your Uncle, "that they would not sing the Lord's songs, if this were to them a strange land."
"They certainly have not hung their harps upon the willows by these rivers of Babylon," said Hattie.
"Why, some of our people at the North are to-day writhing in anguish, because of these slaves, and are imprecating God's vengeance, and praying that the slaves may get their liberty, even by violence, while the slaves themselves are practising psalm-tunes!"--
"And getting married," said your Uncle.
"Yes, Sir," said Hattie, "and this week our ---- paper will come to us from New York loaded with articles about 'bondage' and 'sum of all villanies,' and 'poor, toil-worn slaves.' Toil-worn! I never saw such a lively set of people. Do see that little mite of a round black child, in black jacket and pants; he looks like a drop of ink; Oh, isn't he cunning! Little boy! what is your"--
"Come, come!" said your Uncle, "you are getting too much excited; you will pay for all this to-morrow with one of your headaches."
But a new surprise awaited us. The driver stopped opposite a large, plain-looking building, and told us that we had better step in. On entering, we involuntarily started back, for I never saw a house more densely filled; and all were blacks. It was a sable cloud; but the sun was in it. The choir were singing a select piece. The principal soprano, an elegant-looking black girl, dressed in perfect taste, held her book from her in her very small hand covered with a straw-colored glove. The singing was charming. We asked a white-headed negro in the vestibule what was going on.
"Why, it is Easter Monday, Missis."
"Is this an Episcopal church?"
"No; Baptist."
"What are all these people here for?" said your Uncle.
"Why, to worship, Sir, I hope. It's holiday."
"Do they go to church, holidays?"
"Why," said he, with a smile and bow, "some of the best of 'em, p'raps."
We returned to the carriage.
"Think," said your uncle, "of two thousand people at the North spending a part of 'Artillery Election Day' in Boston, for example, in going to church!"
"Well," said Hattie, "if I were not to live another day, I would bless God for having let me live to see these things. I am so glad to find people happy who I had supposed were weeping and wailing."
We admonished her that she had not seen the whole of slavery.
A very interesting coincidence happened to us the next day. We took tea at Rev. Mr. ----'s. A splendid bride-cake adorned the table. As Hattie was admiring the ornaments on the cake, the lady of the clergyman smiled and said,--
"This is from a colored wedding."
Sure enough, that black bride whom we saw the day before had sent her minister's wife this loaf. Said Miss ----, "I was hurrying to get a silk dress made last week, but my dressmaker put me off, because she was working for Phillis B.'s wedding."
We both gave a glance at Hattie. She sat gazing at Miss ----, her lips partly open, her eyes moistened,--a picture in which delight and incredulity were in pleasant strife.
* * * * *
We have been in the interior a fortnight. One thing filled me with astonishment, soon after I came here, namely, to find widow ladies and their daughters, all through the interior of Southern States, living remote from other habitations, surrounded by twenty, fifty, or a hundred slaves. Hattie and I spent a week with a widow lady, whose head slave was her overseer. There was not a white man within a mile of the house. More than twenty black men, slaves, were in the negro quarter. I awoke the first night, and said to Hattie,--
"Do you know that you are 'sleeping on a volcano'?"
"What do you mean, Aunt? You frighten me."
"Well, it will not make an eruption to-night," said I. "We will examine into it to-morrow."
At breakfast I asked the lady how she dared to live so. I told her that we at the North generally fancied Southern people sleeping on their arms, expecting any night to be murdered by their slaves.
"It ought to be so, ought it not?" said she, "according to your Northern theory of slavery; and it may get to be so, if your people persist in some of their ways. My only fear is of some white men who live about two miles off. I keep two of my men-servants in the house at night as a protection against white depredators."
"But," said Hattie, "there have been insurrections. Are you not afraid that your slaves will rise and assert their liberty?"
The lady smiled and was evidently hesitating whether to answer seriously or not, when Hattie continued,--
"Aunt! now I see what you meant by our sleeping on a volcano."
"Yes," said I, "we at the North often speak of you Southerners as sleeping on a volcano. Our idea is that the blacks here are prisoners, stealing about in a sulky mood, vengeance brooding in their hearts, and that they wait for their time of deliverance, as prisoners in our state-prison watch their chance to escape."
"Well," said she, "believe I am the only slave on the premises. I am sure that no one but myself is watching for a chance to escape. I would run away from these people if I could. But what shall I do with them? I am not willing to sell them, for when I have hinted at leaving, there is such entreaty for me to remain, and such demonstrations of affection and attachment, that I give it up.
"Here," said she, "are seven house-servants, large and small, to do work which at the North a man and two capable girls would easily do. I have to devise ways to subdivide work and give each a share. My husband carried it so far that he had one boy to black boots and another shoes, and these two 'bureaus' were kept separate."
"Oh," said I, "what a curse slavery is to you!"
"As to that," said she, "it is the negroes who are a curse, not their slavery. So long as they are on the same soil with us, the subordination which slavery establishes makes it the least of two evils. If there is any curse in the case, it is the blacks themselves, not their slavery. Were it not for their enslavement to us, we should hate them and drive them away, like Indiana and Illinois and Oregon and Kansas. Now we cherish them, and their interests are ours.
"Two distinct races," said she, "never have been able to live together unless one was subordinate and dependent. This, you know, all history teaches. Your fanatics say it should not be so; they talk about liberty, equality, and fraternity, and put guns and pikes into the hands of the inferior race, here, to help them 'rise in the scale of being,' as they term it. What God means to accomplish in this matter of slavery I do not see.
"Suppose, merely for illustration," said she, "that cotton should be superseded. Vast numbers of our slaves might then be useless here. What would become of them? We should implore the North to relieve us of them, in part. Then would rise up the Northern antipathy to the negro, stronger, probably, in the abolitionist than in the pro-slavery man; and as we sought to remove the negroes northward and westward, the Free States would invoke the Supreme Court, and the Dred Scott decision, and then we should see, with a witness, whether the black man has 'any rights' on free soil 'which the' original settlers 'are bound to respect.' Think of bleeding Kansas, even, refusing to incorporate negro-suffrage in her constitution, when left free to follow the dictates of common sense, and a wise self-interest. I sometimes think that that one thing, as a philosophical fact, is worth all the trouble which Kansas has cost. It cannot be 'unholy prejudice against color.' It is human nature asserting the laws which God has established in it.
"I never," said she, "find abolitionists quoting the whole of the verse which says: 'and hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth.'"
"What," said I, "do they leave out?"
"'And hath fixed the bounds of their habitations,' are some of the next words," said she.
But you will tire of this. I will resume my story. I will only say that I told the lady that some of my gentleman friends would call her a strong-minded woman.
* * * * *
Your letter made me think of something which happened to a lady, a fellow-traveller of ours, a few weeks, ago. She came here to visit a lady whose husband owns one hundred and fifty slaves. The morning after she reached the plantation, as she told me, she was awaked by the cracking of whips. She listened; human voices, raised above the ordinary pitch, were mingling with the sounds. She lay till she could endure it no longer. Coming down to the piazza, she saw a white man mending a harness on a horse. "Those whips," said she, inquiringly,--"they have rather interfered with my peace. Any of the colored people been doing wrong?" He hesitated, and kept on fixing his harness, till, finally, he turned round,--for he had been standing with his back to her and, as she supposed, to hide his chagrin at being questioned on so trying a subject. "Truth is, Madam," said he, taking a large piece of tobacco and a knife from his pocket, and helping himself slowly,--"truth is, we have so much of this work to do, we have to begin early. Sorry it disturbed you;" and he gathered up the reins and drove off.
The whips kept up their racket. "Here," said she to herself, "is the house of Bondage. How can I spend a month here?" She thought that she would peep round the house. Yet she feared that she should be considered as intruding into things which she had better not meddle with. But the screams became so fearful that she could no longer restrain herself. She rushed round the corner of the house, and came full against a black woman rinsing some fustian clothes in a tub near the rain-spout. "Do dear tell me," said she, "what they are doing to those people. Who is whipping them? What have they done?" The black woman stopped, and looked round without taking her hands from her tub, and then said, as she went on rinsing, "Lorfull help you, Missis, dem's de young uns scaring de birds out of de grain."
What bliss there was to her in that moment of relief! Six or eight little negroes were sauntering about at their morning work, each having a rude whip, with tape for a snapper, interrupting the hungry birds at their breakfast.
I expected to see a wretched, down-trodden, alms-house looking set of creatures; for the word slave, and all the changes which are rung on that word, made me think only of people who are convicts, such as you see in the state-prison yard at Charlestown, Mass. I never expected that they would look me in the face, but would skulk by me as a spy or enemy. A Christian heart is overjoyed to find what religion and society have done for these colored people. If one who had never heard of "slavery" should be set down here, the Northern idea of "bondage" would not soon occur to him.
In the Presbytery which includes Charleston, S.C., there are two thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine church-members, and of these one thousand six hundred-and thirty-seven, more than one half, are colored. In State Street, Mobile, there is a colored Methodist Church who pay their minister, from their own money, twelve hundred dollars a year. Not long since they took up a voluntary contribution for Home Missions, amounting to one hundred and twenty dollars. Their preacher was sent by the Conference, according to rotation, into another field, and the blacks presented him with a valuable suit of clothes.
You see things here, good and evil, side by side, and mixed up together, one thing counterbalancing another. If you reason theoretically upon this subject, as you do "about the moon," to quote from your letter, it is enough to make one almost a lunatic, and I do not wonder that some of our good people at the North, who pore over this subject in this way, are on the borders of insanity.
My great mistake at the North with regard to this subject of slavery was, I reasoned about it in the abstract, instead of considering it in connection with those who are slaves under our laws, bound up with us in our civil constitution. Things might be true or false, right or wrong, in connection with the enslavement of a race who had never been slaves, which cannot be applied to the colored people of the South. Hence, the arguments and the appeals founded on the wrongfulness of reducing you or me to slavery are obviously misapplied when used to urge the emancipation of these slaves. Moreover, my thoughts about slavery were governed by my associations with the word slave, in its worst sense. This is wholly wrong, and it is the source of most of our mistakes on this subject.
Dreadful things happen here to some of the slaves in the hands of passionate men. One slave who had run away was caught, and was beaten for a long time, and melted turpentine was then poured upon his wounds. He lingered for several hours. But the horror and execration which this deed met with were no greater at the North than at the South. It cannot be denied that slavery, as well as marriage, affords peculiar provocations and facilities for cruel deeds,--according to the doctrine of your friend and fellow-Sophomore. But in which section there is the more of unpunished wickedness, I am slow to pronounce, for I do not wish to condemn my own people, nor to justify others in their sins. An excellent minister in Cincinnati not long since preached a sermon on murder, in which he stated that "during his residence in that city, there had been more than one hundred murders, or an average of two a month, while in no instance had the perpetrator been executed." Reading lately of a husband at the North throwing oil of vitriol from a bottle, filled for the purpose, over his wife's face and neck, and of a Northern clergyman feeding his young wife, as she sat on his knee, with apple on which he had sprinkled arsenic, I questioned whether human nature were not about the same everywhere. The theoretical right of a master, in certain cases, to put his slave to death, without judge or jury, is controlled by the self-interest of the owner who, of course, does not recklessly destroy his own property. The slave-codes are no just exponent of the actual state of things in slavery. For example,--by law a master may not furnish his slave with less than a peck of corn a week. This has a barbarous look. But to see the slaves feasting on the fat of the land you certainly would not be reminded of the "peck of corn," except by contrast. There must be some legal standard, below which if an inhuman master falls in providing for his servant, he can be prosecuted. Hence the "peck of corn." By the will of an eminent citizen at the North, establishing courses of lectures for all coming time, the pay of each lecturer is to be determined by the market value, at the time, of a bushel of wheat. This is a fair standard for the unit of measure.
In arguing with one who should insist that the abuses in slavery are a reason for breaking up the institution in this country, I should feel justified in maintaining that there are as many instances of a happy relation between, master and servant in the Southern country as there are happy marriages in the same number of households anywhere. Let there be four millions of an inferior, dependent race mixed up with a superior race, anywhere on earth, and of course, while human nature is what it is, there will be hardships, wrong-doings, oppressions, and barbarisms. At the North, we get scraps of anguish in the newspapers relating to hardships at the South; and many pore upon them till they make themselves half-crazed. All the circumstances serving to qualify the narrative are sometimes withheld, and the stories are told with dramatic art. There is sorrow enough everywhere to furnish material for such kind of writing, especially to those who make it their calling, or find it for their interest, to publish it. But the goings-on of life, at the South, with its alleviations and comforts, the practical mitigations of an oppressive system, theoretical evils qualified by difference of color, constitution, and history, and all the goodness and mercy which Christianity and a well-ordered state of society provide, we at the North do not see. Nor do our people consider that running away, and the complaints of the slaves, are partly chargeable to the discontent and restlessness of human nature; but we seem to take it for granted that every one who flees from the South is as though he had escaped from a prison-ship.
While at the North, I remember reading an article, signed with initials, in a prominent Massachusetts magazine, which contained this sentence: "Arsenic is universally in possession of the negroes; but it is considered the part of wisdom, where families are poisoned, that the fact should be kept as secret as possible." This was brought very powerfully to my mind one day on passing through King Street, in Charleston, and seeing for a painted sign over an apothecary's shop, a tall, benevolent-looking negro, in his shirt sleeves, behind a golden mortar, with the pestle in his hands, as though at work.
Now, I thought with myself, as I stood and enjoyed the sight, what a palpable and eloquent, though undesigned and silent, refutation that is, of all such Northern chimeras. If poisons are mixed with articles of food or medicine by the negroes with any noticeable frequency, the sign of a negro compounding medicines for public sale would surely be, to customers, the most detersive sign which an apothecary could erect over his premises. That little incident, and things like it, which are meeting you at every turn, show the state of things here to be in pleasing contrast to the horrors with which the imaginations of many of us Northerners are peopled. I find, in the "Charleston Mercury," a good cut of this "negro and golden mortar," and I send it to you as an appropriate answer to much of your letter.
Our landlord, driving us about the country the other day, and needing silver change, came to a gang of slaves in a field, and cried out, "Boys, got any silver for a five dollar gold piece?" Several hands went into as many pockets, at once, and a lively fellow among them getting the start, jumped over the fence, and changed the money. I had been here a month when I received your letter, and when I read it I at first laughed as heartily, I suspect, as "the pro-slavery Senior" did. Then I pitied you, and I pitied myself for my own former ignorance, and I pitied very many of our Northern people, and, not the least, such persons as poor "Isaiah," who I know are honest, but are grievously misled. The word slavery is, to us, an awful word. Very much of our anti-slavery feeling is a perfectly natural instinct. You cannot see Java sparrows in a cage, nor even a mother-hen tied to her coop, without a lurking wish to give them liberty. On thinking of being "a slave," we immediately make the case our own, and imagine what it would be for us to be in bondage to the will of another. We cannot easily be convinced that this is not exactly parallel with being one of the slaves at the South, nor that to be a slave does not have these things for its inseparable conditions, which, we imagine, are always obtruding their direful visages; namely, "auction-block," "overseer," "whip," "chattelism," "separations," "down-trodden," "cattle." Hence it is easy for orators and preachers to work on our sympathies. There are scattered facts enough to justify any tale which any public speaker chooses to relate. I confess that my respect for many of our Northern people has not risen, as I see them from this point of view. They ought not to be so easily duped, so ready to believe evil, so quickly carried away by partial representations, and so unwilling to take comprehensive views of such a subject as this. I condemn myself in speaking thus; I partly blame the novel-writers, and the editors of party papers, and political leaders. But we ought at the North to understand this subject better, to listen willingly to information from great and good men who have spent their lives among the slaves, and to discriminate between the evil and the good. The result may be that we shall not change our inbred views, nor cease to dissent from those who advocate slavery as a necessary means of civilization in its highest forms; but we shall certainly differ from those who declare it to be, practically, an unmitigated curse to all concerned. I am often made to wish that the Southerners could be relieved of our Northern hostility and its effects upon them, just to see them laboring, as they then would, to correct certain evils which ought to be redressed. We are all apt to neglect our duty, more or less, when we are suffering abuse.
Educate this people, some years longer, in the way in which they are going on, and they cannot be slaves in any objectionable sense. Tens of thousands of them, now, are not slaves in any such sense, and they never can be; they could not be recklessly sold at auction; the owners would revolt at it, and those in want of servants would meet with great competition in obtaining such as these. A church-member who should separate husband and wife for no fault, would be disciplined at the South as surely as for inhumanity at the North. But oh, we say at the North, only to think, that all those fine-looking people whom Hattie saw from the barouche, that Monday afternoon, were liable on Tuesday morning to have their kid gloves and finery taken from them, and to be marched off to the auction-block! Hence our commiseration. And it is a most groundless commiseration.
One thing is especially impressed on my mind. There being sins and evils in slavery, as all confess, there are men and women here who are perfectly competent to manage them without our help. There is nothing that seems to me more offensive than our self-righteousness, as I must call it, at the North, in exalting ourselves above our fathers and brethren of all Christian denominations at the South; as though there were no conscience, no Christian sensibility, no piety here, but it must all be supplied from the North. When I hear these Southern ministers preach and pray, and see them laboring for the colored people, and then think of our designation of ourselves at the North, "friends of the slave," and remember that all our anti-slavery influence has been positively injurious to the best interests of the slave at the South, I have frequently been led to exclaim, What an inestimable blessing it would be to this colored race, and to our whole land, if anti-slavery, in the offensive sense of that word, could at once and forever cease! and I have as often questioned in my own mind whether slavery has not been, and is not now, the occasion of more sin at the North than at the South, and whether we at the North are not more displeasing in the sight of God for the things which are said and done there, in connection with anti-slavery, than the South with all the sins and evils incident to slave-holding. I am coming to this belief.
The people who most frequently excite my commiseration are the free blacks. They are "scattered and peeled." The Free States dread their coming; they cannot rise in the Slave States. Even the slaves look down upon them, sometimes. "Who are you?" said a slave to a free black, in my hearing; "you don't belong to anybody!" Some States have given them notice to quit, within a specified time, or they must be sold. Some here insist that slavery is the only proper condition for the blacks, and they would reduce them back to bondage. Others remonstrate at this as cruel. Surely it is a choice of evils for them, to be free, or to be slaves, if they remain here. There is one thought that affords a ray of consolation,--they are better off, in either condition, than they once were in Africa. It is unquestionable to my mind that their relation to the whites, even in bondage, is, as the general rule, mercy to them, while they are on the same soil with the whites. Allow it to be theoretically wrong to be a slave,--it is, under existing circumstances, protection and a blessing, compared with any arrangement which has yet been proposed. I have not sufficient patience to argue with those, North or South, who contend for slavery as a normal condition. I should be called at the North "pro-slavery;" but the North is in a passion on this subject. I am not, and I never can be, an advocate for this relation, in itself, but as a present necessity.
I once heard a speaker at an anti-slavery meeting at home say, "They tell us how elevated the blacks are, how intelligent, how pious; that shows how fit they are for freedom, how wrong it is to hold such people in bondage. As much as you raise the slaves in our opinion, you deepen the guilt of the slave-holder."
This used to dwell much on my mind. I see the thing differently now. You remember your Uncle Enoch, from Madras, who made your first Malay kite. I remember a fable which he told you when he was flying the kite for the first time. "A kite," he said, "high in the air, reasoned thus: If, notwithstanding this string, I fly so high, what would I not do, if I could break away! It gave a dash and became free, and was soon in the woods." I do not mean to strain the comparison; but, certainly, a string has raised, and now keeps up, the colored race, here. How they would do, if the string were cut, let wiser heads than mine decide. They cannot have my scissors, at present.
The way to be friends of the slave, I now see, is to be the real friends of their masters, and to pray that the influences of truth and love may fill their hearts. Where this is the case, the slaves, as a laboring class, are better off than any separate class of laboring people on earth, both for this world and the next.
As to setting them free at once and indiscriminately, it would be as unjust to them as it originally was to steal them from Africa. So it appears to me. What God means to do with them, no one can tell. That He has been doing a marvellous work of mercy for the poor creatures is manifest. They were slaves at home; they have changed their situation to their benefit. I have made up my mind to leave this great problem--the destiny of the blacks--to my Maker, and, in the mean time, pray in behalf of the owners, that they may have a heart to act toward them according to the golden rule. I am glad that I am not oppressed with the responsibility of ownership. Those who assume it should be encouraged by us to treat their charge as a trust committed to them for a season. I do not argue, much less plead, for the continuance of this system; it may be abolished very soon, but that is with Providence. I have acquired no feelings toward the institution which would not lead me to rejoice in emancipation the moment that it would be for the good of the colored people.
You are looking for my letter to furnish you with details of horrors in slavery. Wherever poor human nature is, there you will find imperfection and sin; and of course power over others is always liable to great abuses. If I were to follow the plan of those who collect the horrors of slavery and spread them out before our Northern friends, but should gather merely the beautiful and touching incidents which I meet with, and which are related to me, I could make people think that slavery is not an evil. But I have not seen an intelligent Southerner who, admitting all that we had said about the happiness of the slaves as a class, did not go far beyond me in declaring that the presence of a subject, abject race, cannot fail to be an evil. There is not an ultraist at the North, whom, if he had their confidence, and were not put in antagonism to him, the Southerners could not make ashamed, and put to silence, by telling him evil things about slavery, which he had never contemplated, and by admitting most fully things which he would expect them to deny. But they are placed in a false position by his clamor and anger, which set them against him and his doctrines. They say, "Allowing all that the North asserts, here are the colored people on our hands; what are we to do with them?" Not one of the Northern "friends of the slave," nor all of them together, have ever proposed a feasible plan with regard to the disposal of the slaves, which would be kind or even humane to the blacks. Moreover, theoretical arguments against slavery, and representations of it, from many quarters, are so palpably wrong, that replies to them and refutations are counted by us at the North as defences of "oppression;" which they were never designed to be. I am surprised at the extent and depth of real anti-slavery feeling at the South. Sometimes I question whether Providence is not permitting the antagonism of the North and South to continue just to compel the South to hold these colored people in connection with themselves for their good, until God's purposes of mercy for them are accomplished, and "the time, times and half a time" of their captivity is fulfilled. If Northern resistance to slavery had ceased, perhaps the South would have rid herself of the blacks sooner than would have been for their good.
I hope that you will not think me "a strong-minded woman" in what I here repeat to you of the opinions and expressions which I have gathered in listening to the conversation of intelligent people on this subject. I write these things for your instruction, and also as memoranda for my own future use.
It is a cherished idea with many excellent people that the time will come when there will not be a slave in this land, nor on the earth. If they mean by this that the time will come when every man in every face will see a brother and a friend, it is certainly true. But if they mean by it that ownership in man will come to an end, their opinion and prophecy are as good as those of men who should undertake to differ from them, and no better; while both would be entirely presumptuous in being positive on such a subject. Some people seem to think that, in the good time coming, it is as though we should dwell out-of-doors, among flowers and fruits, with few wants, these being supplied by the spontaneous offerings of nature.
Others, however, suppose that we shall still need some to shovel, take care of horses, work over the fire the greater part of the day in preparing food, go of errands, and, in short, be a serving class. They suppose that the same sovereign God which distributes instincts, and wisdom, variously, to animals, and gifts of understanding to men, will, in the same sovereign way, create men and women with such degrees of capacity and susceptibility as will lead inevitably to their being superiors and inferiors, and that this will be, as it is now where love and kindness reign, the source of the greatest happiness to all concerned.
This being so, none of us will venture to say that no one of the existing races of men will, to the end of time, be of such gentle, dependent natures as to find their highest happiness and welfare in being, generally, in the capacity of servants. Some of all races, we do not object, may be servants to the end of time. No one will say to his Maker that it will be unjust for Him to put a whole race of men forever in that serving condition, making them, according to their capacity, most happy in being so. For "Who hath been His counsellor?" That the Africans are under a cloud of God's mysterious providence, no one denies. I will not dictate to my Maker when He shall remove that cloud, while I still endeavor to mitigate the effects of it upon my fellow-creatures, the blacks. I do not know that he may not perpetuate, to the end of time, a relationship of dependency to other races in this African race. I know nothing about it. But I always feel impelled to say these things, when I hear good men confidently predicting that ownership in man will soon and forever come to an end. I reply, It may be in the highest measure necessary to the happiness of the human family, at its best estate, that one race, or that races, should be in the relation of inferiors, finding their very best advantage in the relative place which a sovereign God has assigned them in the scale of intelligence, by holding that relation to the end of time. Of course it would cease to be a curse; it would become one of those subordinate parts in the great orchestral music of life which subdue and soften it for the highest effect. If any one gets angry at such an idea, I leave him to his folly; for he is angry without a cause at me, who have, in this idea, expressed no wish that it may be true; and he is angry that his Maker should do a thing which contradicts his pet notions about "freedom." But the singular fact of slavery in this land, continued and defended under all political changes, and now having the prospect of being more firmly established than ever by means of our great national commotion on this subject, is enough to make a serious mind reflect whether it be wholly the work of Satan, or whether the providence of God be not concerned in this great and difficult problem.
It is certainly remarkable that religion, which once gained such a footing in Africa, so soon and entirely died out there, but that the Africans, transported to our land, are of all races the most susceptible to religious influences. If we should visit a foreign missionary field, and learn that the mission had been blessed to the extent which has characterized the labors of Christians at the South for their slaves, of whom, according to the "Educational Journal," Forsyth, Ga., there are now four hundred and sixty-five thousand connected with the churches of all denominations, we should regard it as the chief of all the works of God in connection with modern missions. It is this providential and Christian view of slavery which quiets my mind. Now, suppose that, contemplating a foreign missionary field where such results should be found, one should object: "But there are evils there; people do not all treat their dependants as they ought; hardships, cruelties, and some barbarisms remain;"--we should not, I apprehend, proceed to scuttle such a ship to drown the vermin. But I can see that Satan must be in great wrath to find himself spoiled of so many subjects. One stronger than he has brought here hundreds of thousands, who, in Africa, would have perished forever, but who are now civilized and Christianized. Satan would be glad, I think, to see American slavery come to an end. We have no right to go and steal people in order to convert them; the salvation of these slaves will not, in one iota, extenuate the guilt and punishment of those who were engaged in the slave-trade. But "the wrath of men shall praise Thee." In the writings of anti-slavery men I do not remember to have met with cordial acknowledgments of what religion has done for the slaves at the South. They coldly admit the fact, but often they speak disparagingly of the negro's religion, which is full as good as that of converts in our foreign missionary fields, as good, judging from some things in Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, as that of some converts to whom he wrote. Our Northern anti-slavery people cannot bear to have anything good discovered or praised in connection with slavery.
My own hopeful persuasion is, that great and marvellous works of Divine Providence and grace are in reserve for the African people in their own land, and that we are to prove to have been their educators. Most sincerely do I hope, however, that the number of scholars and future propagators of religion and civilization, imported here from Africa, will not need to be increased, considering that one hundred and fifty per cent. of deaths by violence take place in procuring a given number of slaves. This is but one objection; others are sufficiently obvious. Both parts of that passage of Scripture are exceedingly interesting: "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God." Egypt, the basest of kingdoms, shall yet send forth first-rate men; and Ethiopia, even, shall be the worshipper of God. I hope that these prophecies, though fulfilled once, are yet to have their great accomplishment. This is my persuasion, and I trust that every nation will be independent; but I shall not discard the Bible, if my interpretation and hope should fail. Ethiopia is certainly stretching out her hands unto God in our Southern country.
Hattie received some papers for children from a young friend at the North, last week. After attending the colored Sabbath-school in ----, and teaching a class of nicely-dressed, bright little "slave" girls, and hearing the school sing their beautiful songs, with melodious voices, such as, I can truly say, I never heard surpassed at the North, and after looking upon the teachers, who represented the very flower of Southern society, the superintendent being a man who would adorn any station, you cannot fully conceive with what feelings I read, in one of Hattie's little papers from the North, these lines, set to music for the use of Northern children:
"I dwell where the sun shines gayly and bright, Where flowers of rich beauty are ever in sight; Here blooms the magnolia, here orange-trees wave; But oh, not for me,--I'm a poor little slave.
"They say 'Sunny South' is the name of my home; 'Tis here that your robins and blue-birds are come, While snows cover nests up, and angry winds rave; They may rest here,--not I; I'm a poor little slave.
"Here beautiful mothers, 'mid splendors untold. Their fairy-like babes to their fond bosoms fold; My mammy's worked out, and lies here in the grave; There's none to kiss me,--I'm a poor little slave.
"I've heard mistress telling her sweet little son, What Jesus, the loving, for children has done; Perhaps little black ones he also will save; I ask him to take me, a poor little slave!"
No wonder, Gustavus, that you write such letters as your last, fed and nourished as you are on such things as this. I took it with me that evening to a missionary party at the house of Judge ----. I read the lines. The ladies said nothing for a time, till at last one said to me, "Such things have helped us in seceding." The Judge took the lines, looked them over, and, smiling, handed them back to me, saying, "Madam, is Massachusetts a dark place?" "Yes," said a young gentleman, "and the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." "Oh," said I, "how prejudiced you all are!" Whereupon they all laughed. "Now," said I, "you think, no doubt, that the author of such a piece is malign. I know nothing of its origin, but I venture to say it was written by one whose heart overflows with love to everybody, but who is 'laboring under a delusion.'" I did not tell them of the "delusion" which you were "under," in the Senior's room, but I said, "I have a nephew in a New England college who has the Northern evil very badly. But he is so very kind. Set him to write poetry about the South and he would produce just such lamentable stanzas." Nothing will cure these fancies, about oranges and magnolias not blooming for the little negroes, so well as to bring these good people where they can see them pelting one another with oranges, such as these poets never dreamed of, and making money by selling magnolias to passengers at the railway stations.
"Here beautiful mothers, 'mid splendors untold," etc. I went with the wife of a planter to her "Maternal Association" of slave-mothers. She gathers the fifteen mothers among her servants once a fortnight, and spends an afternoon talking to them about the education of their children, and reading to them; and when she knelt with them and prayed, I cried so all the time that I hardly heard anything. Oh what a tale of love was that Maternal Association! "Here beautiful mothers 'mid splendors untold," etc.;--those words kept themselves in my thoughts. Now tell this to some great "friend of the slave," in Massachusetts, and what will he say?--"All very good, I dare say; hope she will go a little further, and give those fifteen their liberty." I sometimes say, "Must I go back to the North, and hear and read such things?"
Yes, it is such things as these, simple and inconsiderable as you may deem them, which are dividing us irreconcilably, and breaking up the Union. It is not Messrs. ----, nor their frenzy, but it is Christian brethren who allow their Sabbath-school children, for example, to say and sing, "I've heard mistress telling her sweet little son, what Jesus, the loving, for children has done," making the impression that such a Christian mother leaves a colored child in her house, without instruction, to draw the inference, if it will, that Jesus, perhaps, will love a "poor little slave!" There are no words to depict the feeling of injustice and cruelty which this conveys to the hearts of our Christian friends at the South. "Let us go out of the Union!" they cry, in their blind grief; but where will they go? for while our Northern people write and publish and sing and teach their children to sing such things, we can have nothing but mutual hatred, and perhaps exterminating wars. We must change. If our Northern people would discriminate, and, while retaining all their natural feelings against oppression and man-stealing, would admit that "ownership in man" is not necessarily oppression nor man-stealing, they would do themselves justice and contribute to the peace of the country. "But O!" they say, "look at the iniquitous system. If separating families, and destroying marriage, and liberty to chastise at pleasure, and to kill, are not sin, what is sin?" So they impute the system, and everything in it, to the people who live under it. How a system can be a sin, it would puzzle some of them, who say that all sin consists in action, to explain. And when they came to look into the system itself, they would find, that if slavery is to exist, some laws regulating it are, of necessity, self-protective, and must be coercive. Even in Illinois, it is enacted that a black man shall not be a witness against a white man. But if the slaves could swear in court, every one sees that the whites must be at the mercy of their servants. The testimony of the honest among them is procured, though indirectly, and it has weight with juries; but it is a wise provision to exclude them as sworn witnesses. So of other things, which theoretically are oppressive, but practically right; while many things in the system which are rigorous are as little used as the equipments in an arsenal in times of peace.
When you quote John Wesley's words and apply them to the South: "Slavery is the sum of all villanies," you unconsciously utter a fearful slander. Whatever may have been true of British slavery, in foreign plantations, in Wesley's day, the good man never would utter such words about our Southern people could he see and enjoy that which gladdens every Christian heart. If slavery be, necessarily, "the sum of all villanies," as you and many use the expression, the relation cannot exist without making each slave-holder a villain, in all the degrees of villany. You will do well to look into the cant phrases of "freedom," before you indulge in the use of them. The bishops and clergy of the noble army of Methodists in the South would not sustain their great chief in applying the phrase in question to the actual state of things in the Southern country. Wesley used those words concerning slavery in foreign colonies; he had not seen it mixed up with society in England, as it is in the South.
Taking the blacks as they are, and comparing them also with what they would be in Africa, or if set free, to remain in connection with the whites, slavery is not a curse. To be free is, of course, in itself a blessing. But it depends on many things whether, under existing circumstances, being a slave here is practically a curse. Our people generally insist that it must be, and therefore that it is. Here they are mistaken, as I now view the subject. The British people and the French, looking at the blacks in a colony, settle the question of emancipation in their own minds without much difficulty. But it would be found to be a different thing to emancipate the colored race, to live side by side with the English people in the mother-country. In that case, a contest between the two races for the possession of power, and innumerable offences and practical difficulties, would, in time, lead to the extermination, or expatriation, of one of the two races, or to their intermarriage, if the universal history of such conjunction of races is any guide.
I do not wonder that the good lady with the "marsh-mallow" exclaimed so at your groundless commiseration of the sick among the slaves. You have no more idea of the practical relation between the whites and the blacks, the owners and the slaves, than most of the English people, who have never been here, have of our Federal and State relations.
I will tell you an incident which I know to be literally true.
A lady from a free state was visiting at the South. Calling upon a married lady, a near relative of one who has been Vice-President of the United States, she found her with a little sick black babe at her breast.
The Northern lady started with astonishment. I am not informed whether she was what is called among us a "friend of the slave;" the eminent lady friend whom she visited certainly was such, in the best sense. The Northern lady's feelings of repugnance would not be found to be peculiar to her among our Northern people. The little babe died on the lap of the Southern lady.
So you see that there are more things here than are dreamed of in your philosophy. When you stigmatize the Southerners as oppressors, my only consolation for you is that you know not what you do. Imagine, now, the Rev. Mr. Blank, at the North, relating that little incident: "Behold and see this monstrous picture of infinite hypocrisy: The Slave-power with a slave at its breast! Yes, rather than lose one or two hundred dollars' worth of human "property," a distinguished lady slave-holder will give her nourishment to a slave-infant. So they fatten the accursed system out of their own bodies and souls." Such is a fair specimen of this man's frenzy; and there are multitudes all over the Free States who will listen to such language and applaud it. But how cruel it is, how low and wicked! I pray Heaven to deliver you from being an abolitionist in the cast of your mind, your temper, and spirit. Nothing gives me such an idea of the world of despair as when I read ultra anti-slavery speeches. I see how the lost will hate God's mysterious providence, and revile it; and how they will fight with each other, and pour out their furious invective and sarcasm and vituperation, and scourge one another with their fiery tongues, as they now do, when some one of the party appears to falter. If there were not something truly good in connection with slavery amid all its evils, I think such men would not oppose it.
Pray, who are these gentlemen, and who are their extremely zealous anti-slavery friends of more respectable standing, that they should have such immense instalments of sympathy and pity for the "poor slave"? Their neighbors are as susceptible as they to every form of human sorrow; they know as much, their judgments are as sound, their motives are as good as theirs. Had these zealous people made new discoveries, or, were the subject of slavery new, we might give them credit for being on the hill-tops, while we were in the vales. This passionate sympathy, on the part of some, for "the down-trodden," as they call the negroes, is not like zeal for a theological, or a political, or a scientific, doctrine, which would justify its adherents in rebuking the error and indifference of others; for if slavery be as they represent it, the proofs of it must be as self-evident as starvation. What if a class of men among us should rage against those who do not contribute largely to the Syrian sufferers, as the zealous anti-slavery people reproach and even revile those who do not see slavery with their eyes? We should then say, "Friends, who are you, that you should claim to have all the virtuous sensibility?"
But more than this,--I doubt, I venture to deny, and that on philosophical grounds, the true philanthropy of these people. For true love and kindness always create something of their own kind where they have full power. Are there any words or acts of love, kindness, gentleness, mercy, toward others, in the speeches and doings of the zealous anti-slavery people?
I wish that you had been with me, one evening, in a corner of the Methodist meeting-house, where I sat and enjoyed the slaves' prayer-meeting. I had been filled with distress that day by reading, in Northern papers, the doings and speeches at excited meetings called to sympathize with servile insurrection. In this prayer-meeting the slaves rose one after another, went in front, and repeated each a hymn, then resumed their seats, while some one, moved by the sentiments of the hymn, would lead in prayer. A white gentleman presided, according to custom, and I was the only other white person present. Going to that meeting with the impressions upon my heart of the terrible excitements which you were witnessing at home, and saying to myself, "O my soul, thou hast heard the sound of the trumpet and the alarm of war!" you cannot imagine what my feelings were when the largest negro that I ever saw rose and stood before the desk, and repeated the following hymn by Rev. Charles Wesley. The first lines, you may well suppose, startled me, and made me think that the insurrection had reached even here.
"Equip me for the war, And teach my hands to fight; My simple, upright heart prepare, And guide my words aright.
"Control my every thought, My whole of sin remove; Let all my works in thee be wrought, Let all be wrought in love.
"Oh, arm me with the mind, Meek Lamb! that was in thee; And let my knowing zeal be join'd With perfect charity.
"With calm and temper'd mind Let me enforce thy call; And vindicate thy gracious will, Which offers life to all.
"Oh, may I love like thee, In all thy footsteps tread; Thou hatest all iniquity, But nothing thou hast made.
"Oh, may I learn the art, With meekness to reprove; To hate the sin with all my heart, But still the sinner love."
You must read this hymn to "Isaiah," and tell him about the prayer-meeting. While the "friends of the slave," as you call them, are holding such humiliating meetings as you describe, in behalf of the slaves, and are vexing themselves and chafing under the imagination of their unmitigated sorrows and "oppression," the slaves themselves, all over the South, are holding prayer-meetings, and are blessing God that they are "raised 'way up to heaven's gate in privilege." As I sat in that prayer-meeting I could almost have risen and asked the prayers of the slaves in behalf of many at the North who are making themselves and others nearly insane on their behalf. But I thought of my former ignorance and prejudice, and said, "And such were some of you."
I will tell you some of the little incidents which meet one every day, and which give you impressions respecting the relations between the whites and blacks, full as instructive as those received in any other way.
Crossing a public street, which is steep, in the city of ----, a truckle-cart came by me at great speed, drawn by a white boy, with another white boy pushing, and seated in it, erect and laughing, was a fine-looking black boy of about the same age as his white playmates. Around the corner of another street there came by me, with a skip-and-jump step, two white girls, about thirteen years old, and between them--the arms of the three all intertwined--was another girl of the same age, as black as ebony. On they went jumping, and keeping step, and singing.
I had not been accustomed to such sights in Beacon Street, on my visits to Boston. "Friends of the slave," as we most surely are, and some of us being decorated with that name by way of distinction, significant of our all-absorbing business "to raise the black man at the South to the condition of a human being," when we get them there we are not greeted in the streets with pictures of white and black children on such terms as appeared in these two casual incidents. Nothing at first struck me with greater wonder at the South than to see the most fashionably dressed ladies in the most public streets stop to help a black woman with a burden on her head, if she needed assistance, or to hold a gate open for a man with a wheelbarrow.
One white boy cried to another across a street, "Come along, it's most time to be in school." The other answered, in a petulant tone, "I a'n't going to school." A tall, white-headed negro was passing; his black surtout nearly touched the ground; he had on his arm a very nice market-basket, covered with a snow-white napkin, and in his right hand a long cane. Hearing what the last boy said, he came to a full stand, put down his basket, clasped his long cane with both hands, and brought it down on the brick sidewalk with three quick raps, and then a rap at each of these points of admiration: "What! what! what!" said he, drawing himself up to express surprise, and calling out with magisterial voice; "Go to school! my son! go to school! and larn! a heap!" the cane making emphasis at every expression. The white boy retreated under the impression of a well-deserved, though kind, rebuke. He did not call the old man "nigger," nor in any way insult him.
But here is an incident of a different kind.
Standing to talk with a man who had charge of my baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers' apartment. I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity in his appearance. As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would have commanded attention anywhere. The white man, seeing him enter the wrong door, cried out to him with an impudent voice, ordered him back, pointed him to the proper room, and told him to go in there and make himself "oneasy," with a laugh at his own attempt at inaccurate talk as he cast a glance at some white men standing by. The black man was his slave. The natural and proper order of things was reversed in their relation to each other.
I looked at the black man as he took his seat, and, without being observed, I kept my eye on his face. He cast his eye out of the window, as though to relieve a struggle of emotions, but a calm expression settled down upon his features.
A Southern gentleman, a slave-holder, witnessing the scene with me, said,--
"Disgusting! There, madam, you have one of the great evils of slavery,--irresponsible power in the hands of men who are not fit to be intrusted with authority over others. No man, I sometimes think, ought to be allowed to hold slaves till he has submitted to examination as to character, or brings certificates of a good disposition. I know that man. His father was from ---- [a New England State.] He is what we call a torn-down character. His neighbors all"--but the signal was given for starting, and the conversation was broken off.
My first thought was, How glad I would be to set that man free from such bondage! The next thought was, Where would I send him to be free from "the power of the dog?" I had been reading, in a Boston paper, a lecture delivered in Boston, by a distinguished "friend of the slave," against Mr. Webster and Mr. Choate, before an "immense audience." I thought, How much better it is to be a Christian slave, even to this master, than to sit in the seat of the scornful, applauding such a lecture!
The poor slave was having his probation and discipline, as we all have ours, and he was suffering, as we all do in our turns, from an impudent tongue. Little did he think that a fellow-creature, looking at him at that moment, was reminded, by his meekness under insult, of Him, our example, who, under such provocation, opened not his mouth, and that I was made to remember, as I stood there and received instruction from him, that the best alleviation and cure of anguished sensibility under ill-treatment is in this same silence, and in thoughts of Jesus.
After the cars had started, I took my Bible from my carpet-bag, and read these passages: "Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully." Then this is enforced by the example of our incarnate God and Saviour, who is held up to Christian slaves as their example; and in this connection, not only in this passage, but elsewhere in speaking to slaves, the Apostle brings in the most sublime truths relating to redemption. You will be struck with this in reading what is said to slaves, that in several cases, the train of thought proceeds directly from their condition and its duties, to the most sublime and beautiful truths of salvation. How divinely wise did these exhortations to slaves appear to me, that morning, in contrast with the spirit of the Northern abolitionist, and his talk about "Bunker Hill," "'76," and his "grandfather's old gun over the mantel-piece," and his injunctions to slaves as to the duty of stealing, and even murdering, if necessary, to effect their liberty. This is not the spirit of the New Testament. The idea of submission on the part of "servants" to "masters," of "pleasing them well in all things," of "fear and trembling," "not purloining but showing good fidelity in all things," is not found in the Gospel of the abolitionist. He complains that we do not send the true Gospel to the South. There are passages in the Epistles addressed to slaves, which, if faithfully regarded, would make fugitive slave laws for the most part needless. No wonder that the New Testament, with its exhortations to meekness and patience under suffering, and the duty of those who are "under the yoke," and of masters as being "worthy of honor," and the caution that the slave do not take undue liberty where his master is a believer, nor assert the doctrine of equality in Christ as a ground for undue familiarity, or disobedience, is repudiated by the vengeful spirit of the abolitionist. How well the Apostle understood him! "If any man teach otherwise," that is, contrary to these injunctions as to the duty of slaves who have believing masters, "he is proud, (that is the leading feature of his error) he is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings." What an anomaly it would be to have an abolition convention opened with reading a collect of Paul's inspired directions to masters and slaves.
But we never hear anything quoted from the Bible on the subject but "break every yoke!" "let the oppressed go free!" "undo the heavy burdens!" I was telling a slave-holder of the frequency with which we hear these expressions in public prayer. "I could join in every one of them," said he; "I am for breaking every yoke, South and North, unbinding every heavy burden, and destroying every form of oppression. But they must be actual, not theoretical, nor imaginary."
This gentle slave in the cars, we will suppose, refuses opportunities to escape, but complies with the exhortations of the New Testament, "enduring grief, suffering wrongfully." His master is at last touched by his meekness, his "not answering again." I should relate only that which I know to have happened, should I say, that one day this master is filled with distress on account of sin. He goes out into the cotton-field and finds Jacob.
"Jacob," he says, "I am a great sinner. Jacob, I feel that I am sinking into hell. Jacob, pray for me. I mean to turn about, if I live."
"Dats jest what I've sought de Lord for, massa, dis six months coming New Year. Let's go up into de loft; it's whar I've wrastled for you in prayer."
He leads the way. The floor of the loft is covered with cotton-seed. A wheelbarrow is in the middle of the floor. Jacob takes off his jacket, and with it brushes the cotton-seed away from one side of the wheelbarrow, lays the jacket down for his master to kneel upon, and goes to the other side. Like Jacob at Peniel, he has power over the angel, and prevails; he weeps and makes supplication unto him. The master breaks out in prayer. He rises and says,--
"Jacob, forgive me if I've been unkind to you; I've seen that you are a Christian; now if you want to leave me for anybody else, say so."
"Thank you, massa; only sarve de Lord with gladness for all de good things he has done for you, and I'll sarve you de same. Please go home and tell missis; she told me to pray for you; 'twill finish up her joy."
This is better than running away and going to Canada. Those Christians who send the Gospel to the South by missionaries and religious tracts, to promote such scenes as this, do a better work than though they withheld missionaries and tracts from one half of the nation, and called it "Standing up for Jesus."
I am sometimes inclined to put down all that I see and hear, good and bad, and publish a book to satisfy my truly candid but mistaken friends at the North as to the real truth on this subject. But I have in mind the way in which similar works have already been received and treated by an unreasoning, passionate North. I have amused myself sometimes in imagining what certain writers would say to some of the incidents which I have related in this letter. Let me attempt to show you the spirit and manner of our Northern reviewers when one ventures to state favorable things relating to slavery. I will take some of the incidents already related in this letter and let these men review them. I am perfectly familiar with their style, from having been employed in helping your uncle prepare the notices of new publications for the "---- Review." Here, then, I will give you first a supposed notice of my little book, should I make one, from a Northern religious newspaper, quoting, in all cases, the identical expressions from articles which I have read:--
"'The authoress, it seems, is yet in her Paradise of slavery.' Her 'opulent friends' and the slave-holders generally, it would appear, got up little tableaux for her, to impose on her good-nature. Knowing the times when she took her daily walks, they put the fattest and sleekest black boy whom they could find, into a truckle-cart, and made two of the sons of the 'most opulent' citizens race down hill with him. Slavery, therefore, is not the bad thing she and we had supposed. The female teacher of a school in the neighborhood of her daily walk was suborned, most probably, by the 'opulent' ladies of the place, to practise another pleasing trick. Two white girls and a black girl were made to practise running with their arms interlocked, and one day, as our friend came in sight, they were pushed out to astonish her with one instance of white girls hugging a negro slave-child. No doubt our friend, on seeing these three together, soliloquized as follows:--
"See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending, All nature now glowing in Eden's first bloom."
The old negro, respectable and well off, was one of those rare exceptions to surrounding degradation which you now and then see in Southern cities. The poor slave in the cars, gentle, timid, quivering, was the true exponent of slavery. Had our authoress filled her book with such illustrations exclusively, she would have written more truthfully, more for her reputation with the real 'friends of the slave,' and, we confess, more in accordance with our taste."
A writer in a very respectable publication at the North, already referred to, gave us several years ago a curious piece of criticism on some publication which he regarded as too favorable to slavery. His pages, some of them, were crowded with daggers, in the shape of exclamation marks,--two, three, four, and, in one instance, five, at the end of quotations from the book under review. It was he that made the assertion about the "arsenic," as being "universally in the hands of the slaves."
I shall now let him review my little stories. I quote many of his words:--
"'To show the ignorance and simplicity of our travelling' lady, we give the following,--and what will the North say to this new argument in favor of slavery? namely, a truckle-cart! a black boy riding!! two white boys giving him a ride!!! and three girls, one of them black! arm in arm!! romping. 'It is not the fault of this writer, that she cannot understand a principle;' 'she is a New England Orthodox,'--'and a fair specimen of the limitations of that type of mankind.' 'But does not the lady know,' why negro boys are put in truckle-carts? 'If not, any of her Southern friends could have told her.' We can tell her; 'we have lived at the South.' These white boys were sent on an errand with their cart, and to increase its momentum down hill, and, withal, to tease and worry a fellow-creature, with a skin not colored like their own, they made this poor slave-boy get in. She should have seen the poor creature trudging home, up hill, under a Southern sun, after the little white tyrants had done with him, unless it was the case, which we more than half suspect, that the ride was a stratagem to convey the poor child to the auction-block. 'How the merry dogs,' the white boys, must have laughed at this Northern lady's complacent looks at them. She had no tears for the poor old white-headed negro, who, hearing the word 'school' from the lips of his white young masters, had such a rush of sorrow come over his soul at the thought of the midnight ignorance in which the slave-driver's whip had kept him, that he actually dropped his burden in the public street, and uttered incautious words, for which, no doubt, old as he was, he caught a terrible flogging. "Why, in the name of humanity, did not the authoress load her pages, as she might so easily have done, with scenes like that in the cars? There is slavery! patent! undisguised! In the other cases it is slavery, indeed, but covered with the pro-slavery lady's snow-white napkin."
Here is a review of me and of my little stories, by a distinguished New England divine, and author. He has written much on slavery. Having prepared notices of some of his writings on this subject, I am familiar with his turns of thought and modes of expression. I have great regard for him, and always read him with pleasure and profit, not excepting when he writes as follows, in doing which he has the approbation of large numbers among the Northern clergy of all denominations, except the Episcopalians,--who, more than other Northern ministers, are remarkably free from ultraisms.
"Concerning the truckle-cart, 'we would say this,' that unquestionably 'the moral power' of the incident was all which the writer assumes, but its 'logical sequences' 'we utterly deny.' Slavery is evil, and only evil, and that continually; now, to infer that agreeable relations can subsist between the children of masters and the children of slaves under the 'immense, malignant, and all-pervading influence of slavery,' abhorred of Heaven and all good men, does violence to all sound principles of reasoning, and is at war with 'the manifest rules of Providence.'
"And as to the three girls 'we are prepared to say' that the author 'did not look deep enough' into the philosophy of human motives under the controlling power of slavery. For slavery makes men improvident, and their children also; (see 'Judge Jay,' 'Weld on Slavery,' etc.) These white girls, therefore, probably had no money in their pockets; it was the time of recess; they were hungry; the black child we presume had money in her pocket, for by the authoress's own showing (in the story of a slave changing a gold piece for the landlord), slaves may have money of their own. Had our authoress followed her trio down to the confectioner's, there she might have seen these white children cajoling the poor black, and making her treat them; in preparation for which they affected to put their arms around her; but, in the true diabolical spirit of slavery, it was only to devour.
"We have no space to enter philosophically into the instruction afforded us by the old negro and the schoolboys; but there is deep meaning in it, which the true friends of the slave, who may read it, will do well to ponder. The old negro is the prophetic representation of his down-trodden race, crying with bewildered accents, he heeds not where, 'Go to school! boys; go to school!' Let a united North echo back his words, suiting their political action to them, and saying to the colored children, with an authority which shall shake the very pillars of the Union, 'Go to school, boys! go to school!'
"Nor can we, for the tears which dim our sight, speak as we would of the wretched master and his amiable slave in the cars. The sketch reminded us of the best in 'Uncle Tom.' We need books filled with such pictures, to electrify the slumbering sensibilities of the North. Wanton candor in speaking of slavery, is the most unpardonable of sins. There is a time to tell the whole truth; but the wise man says. There is 'a time to keep silence.'"
I did not pretend, Gentlemen Reviewers, that my little, pleasing incidents were arguments in favor of slavery; you should not have been so alarmed; you are really rude; I almost feel disposed to say to you, for each of my tales, as the Rosemary said to the Wild Boar,--
"Sus, apage! haud tibi spiro;"
which, not having a poetical friend near to translate for me, I venture to render as follows:--
"Thus to the Boar replied the Rosemary: O swine, depart! I do not breathe for thee."
In noticing the manner in which many Northern writers, some of them amiable men, receive the candid views and statements of travellers and visitors at the South, I have been made to think of a company of the owls, such as you see in Audubon, listening to the reading of David's one hundred and fourth Psalm, in which he describes nature. Not a smile of satisfaction; on the contrary, if you
"Molest the ancient, solitary reign"
of prejudice in their minds against the South, they either mope, or make a sad noise. With regard to others, are there any limits to their anger and denunciations? You may, without difficulty, imagine how this appears to the Southerner, who knows the truthfulness of the representations which excite this passionate resentment, and how much the character of the North for ordinary candor falls in his esteem, and how little disposed he is to heed their admonitions, and how absurd their demands upon his ecclesiastical bodies to suffer their remonstrances, appear, together with their subsequent withdrawal of fellowship for the reason publicly assigned; namely, that the South will not let them admonish her "in the Lord." Indeed, whatever may be true of slavery, the South looks on the great body of zealous anti-slavery people as being in as false and unnatural a state of excitement as the Massachusetts people were in the times of witchcraft. A great delusion is over the minds of many at the North, like one of our eastern sea-fogs. It always makes a Southerner merry, when listening, in New York or Boston, for example, to a lecture, if the speaker concludes a sentence with some allusion to "freedom," and the people clap and stamp. That the blood should tingle in our veins at so slight a cause, makes him think that we are certainly in need of something worthy of our great excitability, and that we are thankful for small favors in that way. He does not think less than we of liberty where an occasion makes that name and idea appropriate; but that the condition of his slaves should reconsecrate for us all the old battle-cries of freedom, seems to him pitiably weak. It shows him how incompetent we are to deal with the acknowledged evils of slavery; and there are those at the South who are stirred up by us to take extreme views of an opposite kind, which good people there very generally deplore.
A Southern lady here tells me that some time since, being on a visit at the North, she received through the post-office anonymous letters with extracts from newspapers containing little items of woe, declared to have been experienced at the South, with here and there delirious abuse of slave-holders and frenzied words about freedom. She could have matched every one of them, she said, with wife-murders at the North, during her visit. In dealing with people like the slaves, of course men of brutal passions, provoked by their stupidity and negligence, or exasperated by their crimes, and, in cases of ungovernable anger, venting their displeasure upon their negroes under slight or merely imaginary affronts, give occasion to tales of distress which are nowhere mourned over more deeply than at the South. These cases are the natural results of a superior and inferior class of society, standing in the relation, the one to the other, of proprietor and dependant, and such evils are not peculiar to this institution. Human nature is the same everywhere. The South is willing to have the abuses of irresponsible power among them compared with abuses, discomforts, disadvantages elsewhere. Grant that an owner may abuse his liberty; ownership leads to more of care and protection than of abuse and cruelty. The slaves are here; the question is not, What would be the best possible condition for these people under the sun, but, What is best for them, being on this soil. "Set them all free," is the answer of some. Half the ministers at the North every Sabbath pray for the slaves thus: "Break every yoke; let the oppressed go free." If this means, Give the slaves their liberty, this would be their most direful calamity; they would be chased away from every free state, in process of time, and the Dred Scott decision would be invoked, even in Massachusetts, by its present most bitter opposers, and in its most misrepresented forms, as a defence of the American white race against the blacks. "Set them free and hire them!" is the reply of others. This, among other effects, would make them a far more degraded people than they now are. Slavery keeps them identified with the whites; they are more respectable and respected by far, in this relation, than they can be, in the circumstances of the case, if they are detached from the whites. There is no expression which conveys a more absolute error than this, and we often meet with it: "He ceased to be a slave, and became a man." I read lately the report of a lecture at the North, by an eminent gentleman, of great moral worth, and highly respected. He said, "A man cannot be, voluntarily, a slave, without having his manhood crushed out of him." That might be true in our case; but having seen manhood forced into benighted natures here, and splendid specimens of man as the result, I was, by this remark, reminded again of the delusiveness which there is sometimes in the best of logic. You gave us a good specimen in your admirable illustration of no water in the moon. A comparison of the slaves with the free negroes of the North, and in Canada, and with the free colored population in some of the Slave States, will satisfy any impartial spectator that manhood is full as conspicuous in the slaves, as a body, as in the free negroes.
Here are two extracts from Northern papers, which, true or false, awaken compassion in every human bosom toward the free colored people. Indeed, allowing these statements, so unfavorable to them, to be mostly false, it reveals the antipathy of the white to the colored race when the blacks come to seek equality with the whites. Let these free blacks be mixed up in large proportions with society in England and Scotland, and if Canadians feel as they are here represented, we may be sure that the present tone of the British people with regard to American slavery and the blacks, would also be modified. But here are the extracts:--
"Getting Sick of Them.--The colored persons of Toronto, having had a meeting to denounce Colonel John Prince, a member of the Canadian Parliament, for speaking against them, he publishes a reply, in which he says,--
"'It has been my misfortune, and the misfortune of my family, to live among those blacks (and they have lived upon us) for twenty-four years. I have employed hundreds of them, and with the exception of one, named Richard Hunter, not one of them has done for us a week's honest labor. I have taken them into my service, fed and clothed them, year after year, on their arrival from the States, and in return have generally found them rogues and thieves, and a graceless, worthless, thriftless set of vagabonds. This is my very plain and simple description of the darkies as a body, and it would be indorsed by all the Western white men, with very few exceptions.'"
"Underground R.R. Return Trains.--The 'Cleveland Plaindealer' states that every steamboat arriving at that place brings back from Canada families of negroes, who have formerly fled to the Provinces from the States. They are principally from Canada West. They describe the life and condition of the blacks in Canada as miserable in the extreme. The West is, therefore, likely to have large accessions to its colored population. The Canada folks do not want them, and have shown a disposition in their Parliament, and otherwise, to discourage their coming to, or remaining in the Provinces. In some instances, the question of ejecting those now resident there, has been discussed. Our Western States will be likely to experience a similar attack of the black vomito, when they shall have become satisfied with this peculiar Southern luxury. In some localities the superabundant free negro population has already become a burden, while in others they are under severe restrictions, which amount almost to an exclusion from the limits of the state.
"Should this exodus from Canada continue to any great extent, it would throw such a burden upon those states which have adopted the most liberal policy towards the negro, that it would occasion a reaction in the public sentiment which would compel them to abandon their abolition doctrine and practice, for their own self-protection. We should then hear of fewer attempts to abduct slaves from the slave-holding states; and abolitionists would be content to allow slaves to remain under the care and protection of their masters. Even though at heart sympathizing with the oppressed and task-worn negro, and yearning towards him with all the love of the professed philanthropist, he would still be permitted to toil and bleed; for now that the route to Canada has been closed, there is no alternative but to take them to their own bosoms."
Compare with this the condition of the free blacks in South Carolina. The amount of property held by them is $1,600,000; their annual taxes, $27,000; and the free blacks own slaves to the amount of $300,000 in value.
The above statements teach us that any attempts to force the Southern slaves away from their present relation, are in violation of the laws of Providence concerning them. If they become free in a natural way, and can provide for themselves, or be provided for, it is well; otherwise, the South, and their present relation to the white race, are the bounds of their habitation fixed for them by an all-wise God, till his purpose concerning them as a race shall be made manifest. The people of the Free States ought to thank God that the South is willing to keep the colored people. Instead of inflaming our passions against the abstract wrongfulness of holding fellow-men in bondage, we should consider that theoretical justice to the slaves as a whole would be practical inhumanity. The destiny of the colored race here is a dark problem. But it is not for us to penetrate the future. When God is ready to finish his purposes with regard to their continuance with us, He will open a way for their liberation; in the mean time it is our duty to protect them from their own improvidence and from the neglect and degradation which they would suffer at the hands of the Free States. Instead of aiding slaves to escape, or rejoicing when we hear of runaways, I say we should feel grateful, on our own account, and for the slaves, that the South is willing to harbor them, and we ought to consider that the very best thing to be done for them is to encourage the South in treating them well, mitigating their trials and sorrows, and, in short, complying with the Apostle's doctrine and exhortations as to the duty of masters.
But we have a way, at the North, of delivering over our Southern brethren to supposed terrible liabilities in their relation to the slaves. "They are sleeping on a volcano;" "they keep weapons under their pillows;" "they are always in fear." And when a servile insurrection takes place, many close their eyes and lift their hands, and say, "Perhaps the day of retribution is come! They have been 'sinning against the Northern conscience;' they have been resisting our well-meant efforts for their good; we would not stir up the slaves against them," (some kindly say,) "but if they rise, did not Jefferson say, 'There is not an attribute of the Almighty that would take part with the whites?'" Thus we prefer to take Jefferson's opinion on this subject, though hundreds as good and wise as he, and quite as decided in their acceptance of the Christian religion, differ totally from him. In strictly political matters, many of the same people who love to quote Jefferson against modern slave-holders, are of opinion that time and experience give modern statesmen some advantages in their judgments. As to Jefferson's oft-quoted remark, above cited, it appears to me that if the Almighty has anywhere set the seal of his divine blessing, clear and broad, it is on the Christian influence of our Southern friends upon this colored race.
It is humiliating to me, in looking back to the North, to see how injudicious and weak we are in pouring out our sympathy upon a fugitive slave, without discrimination. The lecture before the Boston audience, already mentioned, contains a perfect illustration of Northern credulity in the case of fugitive slaves. The lecturer tells us that while reading the printed report of Mr. Everett's Oration at the inauguration of the Webster statue, a fugitive slave appeared at his door, and, baring his breast and back, showed him the marks of the branding-iron, and the scars from the lash. At the sight, he says, the paper dropped from his hand. He "thought of Webster and the Fugitive Slave Law."
Now this negro was, just as likely as not, one of those characters whom we call jail-birds. If so, and he had lived at the North, instead of branding-iron and stripes, he might have had parti-colored pants, and manacles, and a record of ten or twenty years in the state's prison. But because he ran away from the South, he straightway became, as a matter of course, a martyr and a saint. Perhaps he was, truly, a saint; and perhaps he was not.
Looking out of the window in a hotel the other day, we saw two white men leading up a black man with a leather bridle around his neck.
"Here, Hattie," said your Uncle, "here is slavery; now you have it in full bloom."
The poor fellow was crying and protesting and begging to be released. Your Uncle stepped out and spoke to a very respectable gentleman whom he met on the piazza. He could not refrain from expressing some feeling at the sight of a fellow-creature so literally "reduced to the level of the brutes." I did not hear the whole of the conversation, for my attention was diverted by two roosters who just then flew at each other and were assailed by a troop of black urchins who tried to scare them apart, pulling their tail-feathers and uttering ludicrous cries.
"You are from the North, sir, I take it," said the gentleman, in reply to your Uncle.
"I am, sir," said your Uncle. "Do you often bridle your slaves in this way, in these parts? I am seeking for information on the subject of slavery."
"I shall be happy to give you any," said the gentleman. "I am here as a magistrate."
"I am one at home," said my husband.
"One of these white men who led the negro," said the gentleman, "was riding on horseback, and was attracted to a by-place by the screams of a child, and found this black man attempting violence upon a black girl ten years old. He knocked the fellow down and held him, and called for help. A white man who came up took the bridle from the horse, to secure the villain with it. They have with difficulty kept the negroes from putting him to death."
"We are all ready, sir," said a sheriff to the gentleman.
"Will you walk into the hall?" said the magistrate to your Uncle.
But the stage-coach was waiting for him, and we were soon on our way. Your Uncle was silent for nearly fifteen minutes, when he said,--
"What is that passage, Hattie, about answering a matter before you understand it?"
I gave Hattie my Bible, and, after a while, she read:
"He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. The spirit of a man"--
"That will do, child," said your Uncle, "I wanted only that one verse."
* * * * *
I should be glad to transfer some of this Southern ease and beauty of manners to the North. I wish that we could see more of these Southern ladies and gentlemen there. They stay away very much, because they cannot bring servants with them. Whole families would rejoice to visit our Northern shores and mountains for summer residences, were it not for this. When our passions subside, and we can look at this subject fairly, we shall repeal the statutes which prevent a Southerner from residing in a free state for a season, with his or her servant. The people of Massachusetts, for example, can easily appreciate the hardship of being kept away from a clime which they would visit for health or recreation, by the fear of being set upon by a mob of whites and blacks seeking to drag a wet-nurse, for example, before a court to be interrogated whether she does not wish to leave us. How long will our warm-hearted, hospitable people allow such things? The answer, from ten thousand tongues, will be, So long as Southern people imprison colored seamen from the North!--If Southern slaves should come here and make trouble between our domestics and us, and we should forbid their coming, the cases would be more nearly parallel.--Moreover, it will be said that the manner in which people from the North have in many instances of late been treated at the South, does not encourage the hope and prospect of amicable intercourse. This is certainly so; and therefore what have we to look for but everlasting hatred and strife? and that whether we be one nation or two confederacies.
A distinguished Southern gentleman came home from his visit to the North, where he had received great attentions, and he filled his hearers with his enthusiastic admiration of us for our wonderful ingenuity in all the arts of life.
"It is astonishing," said he, "how they work everything into shape, and create instruments for their purposes. But," said he, "there is one thing in which they are deficient. They are omnipotent with matter, but they do not know how to govern men. If they did," said he, "there would be no chance for us in any form of contest with them."
I was much entertained, and I said to him that I supposed his remarks would need qualification on both sides; but I was greatly impressed, as I often am here, with the secret, strong attachment which there is in Southern hearts to the North as a part of the country, irrespective of its anti-slavery views and feelings. Its climate and institutions and arts and scenery are adapted to their diversified wants. "The North and the South, Thou hast created them." God made the North for the South, and the South for the North, and our acts of non-intercourse are in violation of his will. We are in a war of "conscience," inflamed by doctrinal error on our part. It allows no "conscience" to the other side. The state of our "consciences" at the North is jury, judge, and executioner. There is no "conscience," we think, in Southern churches, ministers, judges, citizens, except that which is defiled. Probably there is not on earth this day a greater despot, or one more prepared for inquisitorial proceedings, than "Northern Conscience."
No doubt I should be contented and happy to be a slave-holder, had I been born and bred here, but I rejoice that I belong to a free state. I love to think of my capable girls, my "help." at home, who make the household go like clock-work, instead of having a swarm of servants who do only half as much, and only half as well. I am glad, too, that my children live in a climate favorable to labor, and are not born to be waited upon. But I am ashamed of those who erect these things into an invidious comparison, and with a supercilious, reproachful spirit. God, who made us of one blood, has fixed the bounds of our habitations. I love these Southerners as I never loved new acquaintances before. But I prefer a state of society free from slavery: yet this makes me love those to whom God has given a South country, and imposed upon it a necessity, at present at least, to employ the African race as cultivators of the soil. It has often disturbed my feelings to hear some people inveigh reproachfully against the Southern country, as comparing unfavorably with neighboring free states. Going up the Ohio River one day, a Northern gentleman pointed to some poor-looking lands in Kentucky on the one hand, and some flourishing fields of Ohio on the other. "There, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "is slavery," pointing to Kentucky, "and there," turning to the other side, "is freedom."
"Now," said an intelligent Ohioan, "if you will excuse me for saying it, I regard that as clear humbug. What is cultivated on either side? The products of Kentucky, if raised in Ohio, would give the same look to her lands. It is not slavery and freedom that make the difference; it is the difference between large staples sown over large territories, and smaller staples raised on smaller fields. Kentucky's soil would be exhausted just as fast under free labor, so long as she cultivated her present crops."
I long to see some clear running water. Our streams and brooks in New England are not appreciated till one comes to this part of the land. I long to see some good grass. I yearn for some hills. I would sail again along our rock-bound coast; Oh for a walk on its beaches, to see the tunnellings of the sea in the rocks, and the spouting-horns. But what a relief it is to be in a section where the Christian religion is so generally accepted, and the swarms of errorists and sectarians which abound elsewhere are comparatively unknown. Here, the lowest class, in which error would be prolific, is under instruction, to a great degree. I see now why it is that false views about slavery are a great stimulant to heretical views and feelings;--they are a convenient substitute for the love and zeal which true Christianity supplies. The human mind, where it is accustomed to act freely, must be impelled by some master-passion; and when true religion does not supply it, error stands ready to satisfy the demand.
On the whole, I am persuaded that our Northern people behave full as well under the anti-slavery excitement as Southerners would if their consciences were perverted like ours, and we were the objects of their opposition. I think that a change will come over us. At the North, you have heard the wind, at midnight, after a warm rain, in winter, haul out to the north-west, and you know what a piping time we then have of it, and how the clear cold air, the next morning, and the bright sun, excite and cheer us. There has been with us for a long time at the North, in our political and religious atmosphere, a warm, foggy, unwholesome drizzle of weak, fanatical feeling, with now and then gusts of wind and scud,--a kind of weather most abhorred by mariners. But we hope that the wind is changing, and that "fair weather cometh out of the North." God will not suffer us to live long, we earnestly hope, in this condition of misunderstanding and hatred, for it would be contrary to his established laws that we should long continue to be one nation with such feelings toward each other. The change will be in the North. Slavery will come to be regarded as not in itself a sin, and the evils incident to it will be left for those immediately concerned to bear them or seek their removal. Or, if we become divided, the Southern section may extend its conquests into the whole southern part of the American continent, and spread the institution of slavery over that vast domain. God may have purposed that the good which has flowed to the African race in this land by its connection with us, shall be extended to millions more, not by importation, we may suppose, but by propagation here. I say this to show that fanatical opposers of slavery may be employed under God as the instruments of extending slavery to the very limits of habitable land in the southern parts of our continent. We have tried in vain at the North, for thirty years, to abolish slavery. It is time either to cease, or to try some entirely different influences.
But I must close my long letter. When you write again, I have no doubt that you will have seen some things in a new light. Tell me more about your studies. I was interested in your way of describing things. I only wondered that, with your occasional sense of the ludicrous, you should not have been aware of the impression which you yourself must have made on others. Burns's "giftie," "to see oursel's," etc., we all, more or less, need. I told Hattie the other day that I thought some parts of your letter did you very great credit, but that the monomania of the North has fallen upon you, and that you have it, as it seemed to me, in one of its worst forms. Some it makes fierce, others, flat, according as the victim is, naturally, more or less amiable.
Your mother gave you in charge to me in her last sickness, and I must do all in my power for your best good. I have, therefore, told you some things which I have seen and considered. These you must now add to the facts of your "inductive philosophy." Your definition of "pro-slavery," and "friends of oppression," is a fair illustration of a prevailing state of mind at the North:--"Pro-slavery--i.e., do not agree with me in my manner of viewing and treating the subject." This you will correct. Excuse my freedom, but you have no father nor mother now, to advise and guide you, and you must let me be your Mentor in some things. I shall keep your letter and let you see it perhaps ten years hence. Be careful what newspapers you read. Those which abound with low, opprobrious language about the South and Southerners, avoid. There are some low Southerners about here who go around buying up refractory and vicious negroes; they are the dregs of society; but I have listened, with others, at the North, to men, on the subject of "freedom," who, I think, would take kindly to this business, and they would be as hearty in it as they are now in vilifying it. The "Legrees" are not confined to the South. Do not incline your ear to those who systematically inveigh against slavery, making it their principal business. You will invariably find that there is something false and wrong in their principles as well as spirit. Be careful to what influences you commit your thoughts and your taste.
You need not become a friend of oppression; you need not approve of "auction-blocks," and "separation of families;" slavery can exist when these are done away. Until you are appointed and commissioned as a minister of righteousness to Southern Christians and ministers, I advise you to blot slavery out of the list of topics about which you are called to express the least concern. The South will work out the problem for herself, with the help of that God who has evidently appointed her to do a great work for the African race, and all the more perfectly and speedily as our Northern people let her entirely alone as to the moral relations of the subject.
You subscribe yourself, "Yours for the slave;" I shall subscribe myself, "Yours for preaching the Gospel to every creature."
With the strongest love, Your affectionate Aunt.


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  CHAPTER 35: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
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CHAPTER VI. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. "The sages say dame Truth delights to dwell,
Strange mansion! in the bottom of a well. Questions are, then, the windlass and
the rope That pull the grave old gentlewoman up." PETER PINDAR. My friend, Mr.
North, having read the foregoing letters, wrote me a note requesting me to come
and spend an evening with him and his wife, and answer some questions occasioned
by these letters. The lady was earnest that I should do so. After being seated
before a cheerful fire in my friend's house, while it was raining violently, so
that we felt defended from all interruption, my friend said,-- "Here, first of
all, is the Southern lady's letter to her father, which, I suppose, belongs to
him, and which you may wish to send back." "I do," said I. "But, please," said
Mrs. North, "let it be published. Add to it the incident of the Southern lady
nursing the sick babe of a slave." "O my dear," said her husband, "that would
create a false impression. It would be a pro-slavery tract. It would abate
Northern zeal against the 'sum of all villanies.' Something should go forth with
such representations to correct their influence in the Free States. What would
become of the cause of freedom should such stories make their impression upon
the minds of our people?" "You might," said I, "make a heading of an
auction-block, or slave-coffle; add the last pattern of a slave-driver's whip;
picture a panting fugitive on his way to the North; give us a ship's hold, with
a black boy just detected among the stowage. You would thus, perhaps, keep these
beautiful, touching illustrations of loving-kindness in slave-holders from
having the least effect." "It is very important," said he, seriously, "to keep
up a just abhorrence of slavery here at the North, because"-- "Excuse me," said
I, "but what do you mean by an abhorrence of slavery?" "Why," said he, "is not
the Christian world agreed that 'slavery is the sum of all villanies'?" "By no
means, in the United States," said I; "you might with as real truth say that
here slavery is the sum of all the loving-kindnesses." "Is not that letter of
the Southern lady to her father," said he, "as rare a thing almost as a white
crow?" "O husband," said Mrs. North, "what an opinion you must have of Southern
society!" "Is not Gustavus," said I, "a perfect representative of the North, on
the subject of slavery? Does not ultra anti-slavery find or make everybody, as
the Aunt says, either fierce or flat?" "You do not believe so," said he.
"Neither do you believe," said I, "that where Christianity has exerted the same
influence on the hearts of men and women as on yours, and all the humanizing and
elevating influences of society prevail, that letter is a rare product." "I
cannot believe," said he, "that one can own a fellow-creature, hold God's image
as property, and be a true Christian. This lady is an exception which does not
destroy the general rule." "My dear sir," said I, "you are an abstractionist.
You make the best possible condition under the sun your standard, to which you
would make all men and things conform, instead of allowing for the vast
inequalities, the necessities, the mutual dependence, the long historical
conditions of men, as individuals and races. A race or class of human beings may
be in such a condition, that being 'owned' by a superior race will be, in their
circumstances, a real mercy and a great blessing." "O my dear sir," said he, "I
weep over the degradation of your moral sense. 'Owning a fellow-creature!' I
would not hold property in a human being 'for all the wealth that sinews bought
and sold have ever earned.'" "Thousands of men and women," I replied, "as good
in the sight of God as you or I, think otherwise. There is nothing in the
relation of ownership to a human being which in itself is sinful, or wrong." "If
it is your purpose," said he, "to argue in favor of oppression, perhaps we had
better not pursue the conversation." "Uncharitableness, false judgments,
self-righteousness," said I, "condemning a whole people for the sins of a few,
are as truly 'oppression' as anything can be. I plead for no wrongs; I justify
no selfishness in the relation of master and servant; I regard the golden rule
of Christ as the law by which slave-holding should be regulated in every
instance." "I never expected," said he, "to live long enough to hear of the
golden rule being applied to slavery! It would be like applying light to
darkness, truth to falsehood, holiness to sin." "By what rule," I inquired, "do
you think the lady is habitually governed who wrote the letter which has
interested you so much?" "Why," said he, "there are good people under every
iniquitous system. These exceptional cases are not the rule of judgment with
regard to the nature and effect of a system." "Can you not imagine one man
owning another," said I, "under circumstances, and with motives, and in a temper
and spirit which will make the relation most desirable?" "I go further back,"
said he, "and I deny that it is right for one human being to own another." "Has
not God a right," said I, "to place one human being over another as his owner?"
"Has God a right," said he, "to countenance theft and oppression?" I said to
him: "I might follow your example, and answer you by asking, Has God a right to
countenance war? But I will relieve all your disagreeable apprehensions as to
our conversation at once, by saying that I am not to argue in favor of
oppression. If holding a slave is oppression, it is a sin. And if it be
inconsistent with the golden rule, it is a sin." "If that be your doctrine,"
said he, "we shall soon agree. Now apply the golden rule to slavery. Are there
any circumstances in which you would yourself be willing to be 'owned'?"
"Certainly," I replied. He rose, and put some lumps of coal upon the fire with
the tongs, and said, "I presume you mean what you say, and that you do not wish
to trifle with the subject." "Mr. North," said I, "would you be willing that any
one should make you head-cook in a hotel, engineer in a steamboat, or keeper of
a floating light?" "No, Sir," said he. "You would, Mr. North," said I, "under
given circumstances. You would petition for such places, get recommendations for
them, and count yourself perfectly happy, if you succeeded in obtaining them.
"Now look at the slaves. They are a foreign race, we are their civil superiors,
and unless we amalgamate, we intend to remain so. While we are in this relation,
it is a privilege to the blacks to have owners, but they must use their
ownership according to the golden rule. When this is done, the condition of the
blacks, in their present relation to us, is happy." "How often," said he, "do
you suppose that it is done?" "That," said I, "is another and a very interesting
question, which we will consider soon. You took the ground, as I understood you,
that the law of love would prevent any one from holding a fellow-creature as a
slave. I reply that it would be in perfect accordance with it, as the blacks at
the South are now situated, for the whites to be their humane owners. But pray
what do you mean by 'owning' a human being?" "I mean," said he, "having the
right to abuse them, domineer over them, work them as cattle, sell them, and--"
"Did this Southern lady," said I, while he paused for more words, "ever acquire
a right with her ownership to treat Kate so?" "Her laws," said he, "give her a
right to punish her; and such irresponsible power is fearful. She could whip her
to death and"-- "And be punished for it," said I, "as surely as you would be for
whipping a servant to death." "She is at liberty to punish more severely than
the case warrants," said he, "and then she can shield herself under the laws."
"I presume," said I, "a Northern parent never gives a hasty box on the ear,
never strikes one passionate blow in the chastisement, never shakes a child a
single trill beyond the due harmony of parental affection, never scourges it
with the tongue to momentary madness! What a dreadful thing parental authority
is! Would it not be well to abolish the authority of parents over children!
Indeed, would it not be well to go further, and interdict the public lands of
the United States from being settled; for as surely as men live there, every
form of wickedness will, in its turn, be perpetrated. How much better the calm
and holy silence of the woods and fields, than if the tumultuous passions of men
should roll over them!" "But, my dear sir," said he, "I maintain that oppression
is inseparable from the holding of a slave. I insist that this Southern lady, if
all her feelings and conduct toward her servants are like her letter, is an
exception among her people." "No, Sir," said I, "she is the general rule among
all decent people, and there is as much sense of decency and propriety there as
with us, as many good people, kind, humane, generous, and it is as rare a thing
for a servant to be ill-used there, as for our apprentices, and servants, and
even our children. How kind and good you would be, Sir, if Providence should
place a human being under you as his owner, for the mutual good of both of you."
"Dear me," said he, "I should try to feel and act just as I suppose those
Southerners do who, you say, are fairly represented by this lady's letter about
the slave-babe." "Mr. North," said I, "suppose that the State should make you
the absolute owner of some of those boys who set fire to the Westboro' and Deer
Island institutions. In consideration of your personal responsibility for them,
there is ceded to you all right and title to their services, and absolute
control over them, subject, of course, to the laws against misdemeanors and
crimes against the person. My only point is this: Where would be the sinfulness
of that relation? All that would be sinful about it would be in your neglect or
violation of your duty as a master." "How glad all this makes me feel," said he,
"that I am not troubled with slaves. If we do not like our servants or
apprentices, we can get rid of them." "Then," said I, "you surely ought to pity
those who are bound to their slaves and have to put up with a thousand things
which you say we can escape by changing our help." "But," said he, "can they not
sell off their slaves when they please?" "Suppose, however," said I, "that they
happen to be humane, as Mr. North is, and as we all are in the Free States! and
that they are unwilling to turn off a poor helpless creature for her faults, to
be sold, and to go they know not where!" "Slavery," said Mr. North, "is surely a
great curse. I am so glad that I live under free institutions." "Who made us to
differ from the South in this respect? How came those blacks there? Whose ships,
whose money, imported them? You remember that it was by the votes of Free
States, that the importation of slaves was continued for eight years beyond the
time when the Southern States had voted in the Convention that it should cease.
And now what would you have the South do with the slaves, to-day?" "Set them all
free," said he, "'break every yoke; proclaim liberty to the captives, the
opening of the prison-doors to them that are bound.'" "Allow me," said I, "to
smile at your simplicity, for you are very child-like, not to say childish, in
your feelings. You would have the colored people universally go free. Do you
really think that Kate is worse off in being what you call a slave, than that
young, free black woman who keeps a stall and sells verses and knives near our
Park?" "O dear sir," said he, "liberty is a priceless boon; liberty"-- "Liberty
to what?" said I. "Why," said he, "liberty not to be sold, nor to be beaten, nor
to be subject to the wicked passions of a master." "Would you rather," said I,
"have your daughter a servant in a Southern family, brought up as a playmate
with the children, a sharer in many of their gifts, a partner with their
parents, as the children grew up, in the pride and joy of the parents, an
honored member of the wedding party when a daughter is married, one of the
principal mourners when the bride departs, identified with the history of the
family, provided for in the will, a support guaranteed to her by law in sickness
and old age, and that, too, not in a pauper establishment, but in her owner's
home, and when the parents die, if she survives, taken by some branch of the
family or neighbor from regard to her and to them; her moral and religious
character improved under their training, a respectable standing in society
conferred upon her by her connection with them, her religious privileges
sacredly secured to her, any insult redressed as though it were the family's
personal affair; she a partaker of their food and of all their comforts, and
followed to her grave with respect and love; or, for the sake of 'priceless
liberty,' 'heaven's best gift to man,' would you prefer to see her seated under
the iron fence of a park, an old umbrella tied to the pickets for her shelter,
and she, in rain and sunshine, selling 'Old Dan Tucker,' 'Jim Crow,
Illustrated,' and pea-nuts, and sleeping you know not where? Which lot would you
choose for a child? Which is best for this world and the next? In one case, she
is 'owned,' she is 'a slave;' and in the other, she is a free woman." "You have
no right," said he, with some warmth, "to take the best condition in slavery,
and the very worst in freedom, and compel me to choose." "'Best condition in
slavery!'" said I; "is there any 'best' in being a slave, in not being free?
Does it admit of degrees? Is not being 'owned' such a curse, such an unmixed
iniquity in its essence, that to compare its best estate with the worst in
freedom, is like comparing the best devil with the most inferior saint? Is not a
devil's nature incapable of comparison as good, better, best, with anything
which is not, in its nature, devilish? According to your conversation just now,
it seemed as though being 'owned' always implied an unmitigated transgression;
and now when I inquire whether you would prefer degradation to the iniquity of
being 'owned' in comfort and usefulness, respectability and happiness, you
shrink from the question. If freedom in the abstract is the best thing under the
sun, of course you will prefer it to everything else. No happy condition, no
happy prospect for this life, and the life to come can, in your view, make being
'a slave,' as you call it, capable of being compared with this abstract
privilege of being free. In this you and your friends labor under a huge
mistake, and it poisons all your views and feelings about slavery. When you
denounce slave-holders and slavery, and depict the condition of the slave in
your awful colors, they at the South know that in hundreds of thousands of
instances, as it regards masters and slaves, all that you say is practically
false; you are carried away by your zeal against a theoretical wrong. "Now
suppose that instead of starting with the theoretical wrong and getting only
such facts as illustrate it, you should travel through the South to pick up such
letters as you consider this, respecting Kate, to be;--what a pleasing view
might be presented of the slaves' condition in cases without number!" "But,"
said he, "there are terrible evils underlying these fair features of slavery."
"True," said I, "but why, in the name of truth and love do you never hear such a
letter as this read on the platforms of Northern abolition societies? What
mingled groans and hisses and shrieks for freedom, and then what an emptying of
the demoniacal epithets there would be, if such a letter should be offered. One
case of whipping would have more effect than a thousand such letters, in your
assemblies and newspapers. No one from the continent of Europe would infer from
those meetings that such beings as Kate and her little babe, and this lady and
her husband and father, existed even in fiction, but that slave-holders are
Legrees, and the slaves their victims. What a beautiful effect it would have on
us and on the South, if touching tales of loving-kindness between masters and
slaves, instances of perfect happiness in that relation, should be cited, and
then you should enter your candid, but decided opposition to the system, to its
extension, to its evils where it exists. How soon we should all be found working
together, so far as we might, for the amelioration of the colored race here,
with a view to the extinction of slavery in every form of it in which it is an
evil, or a greater evil than anything which might properly be substituted."
"Well," said Mrs. North, "husband, what do you say to that?" "I like it," said
he. "But now," said I, "the language of the place of despair is exhausted in
describing and denouncing the South. If a man among us lifts up his voice to say
good things about Southerners, one universal hiss goes up from all your
conventions and anti-slavery prints. He may be seeking the same end with you,
namely, the peaceful removal of slavery, with due regard to the highest good of
all concerned; but let him utter a word in arrest of your unqualified
condemnation of slavery as it actually is, and there are no persecutors, nor
scourges, nor intolerance on the earth, more fierce and cruel than you and your
denunciations." "Take it patiently, husband," said Mrs. North, "you know that
you deserve it." "I know from this," said I, "if from nothing else, that your
theory is wrong. The truth does not excite such passions in those who love and
seek to promote it. We see that, in cases without number, the present condition
of the slaves is a blessing for both worlds, and that if all who possess slaves
were, as many are, slavery would cease to be any more of a curse than any
dependent condition in this world. There must always be those who will do every
sort of menial work. The great Father of all, who himself says that he has
'deprived' the ostrich 'of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her
understanding,' so arranges the capacities of some that their happiness consists
in leaning upon superior intelligence and capability. "The serving people, in
some districts of country, are volunteers from all races; at the South, they
consist of one inferior, dependent race, who for ages have been slaves in their
own country, and would be such even now, if they were there. We will not shut
the door of hope forever upon any part of the human family, as to their
elevation among the tribes of men, but this race has, for a long period of its
history, evidently been undergoing a tutelage and discipline at the hand of
Providence. There is some marvellous arrangement of Providence, it seems to me,
designing that this black race shall lean upon us. Let the same number of any
other immigrant race have gone from us to Canada as of this colored race, and
the world would have heard a better report from them ere this. They thrive best
in connection with us as their masters, whether it be right or wrong for us to
be in such relation to them." "But now," said he,--in a persuasive tone, and
evidently wishing to turn the drift of the remarks,--"just set them free, and
hire them; we shall agree then. The slaves will be as well off, and so will
their masters." "Mr. North," said I, "being owned is, in itself, irrespective of
the character of the master, a means of protection to the negro. Somebody then
is responsible for him as his guardian and provider, and is amenable to the
State for his sustenance. You can easily see that, let the colored people come
to be a hireling class, and their interests and those of their masters are
disjoined. There would be conflicts and oppressions among themselves; they would
fall into a degraded, serf-like condition; but now each of them partakes of his
master's interests, and rises with him. I am not here pleading for slavery in
the abstract, but, the blacks being on the soil, it is far better for them to be
owned than to be free. Why are the Southwestern States, one after another,
passing laws, or framing their constitutions, to shut out from their borders
free negroes,--people in the very condition into which you would reduce by
wholesale all the blacks in the South? I pray you look and see that you are an
abstractionist, setting what you deem a theoretical wrong against a practical
good, and under the circumstances, a real mercy." "But," said Mr. North,
"slavery impoverishes the soil, makes the whites shun labor, feeling it to be
degrading, and it keeps the white children from industrial pursuits, and"--
"Please stop," said I, "my dear Sir, and think of what you are saying, and be
not carried away by that popular flood of cant phrases. Now you know that God
has given our Southern friends a south country, nearer than ours to the tropics.
Out-of-door labor there is injurious to the white people, as you know. They are
not to be blamed for this. God has not given them strength to endure exposure to
the sun. Had they a northern climate, in which the labor required by the
mechanic arts could be performed with safety and comfort, do you not suppose
that they would have the same aptitude and relish as we for handicraft? Their
children cannot be brought up to manual labor to the extent that ours are,
because the God of heaven has ordained their lot in a land less favorable than
ours to toil. His providence, making use of the sins of men, has placed the
blacks here; you and the rest of the world, who depend upon their cotton, are
willing enough to use it in its countless forms, while you reproach your Maker,
as I think, for having caused it to be raised as he has seen fit to do." "But
Oh," said Mr. North, "free labor is more profitable than slave labor. You well
know how it affects the soil, and that the great price of slaves will in time
make the system oppressive to the masters, especially if they are all as
considerate as you say they are about selling." "The good Aunt has replied to
you as to the soil, and we need not distress ourselves about the price of
slaves; that will regulate itself. You well understand," said I, "that I am not
arguing in favor of slavery per se, nor for the slave-trade, nor for the
extension of slavery; but I contend that where slavery now exists, no one has
yet proposed a scheme which is better than the continuance of ownership, the
blacks remaining on the same soil with their present masters. Nor do I mean to
say that the present system must inevitably continue forever. We must leave
future developments in other hands. Of course there are difficult problems on
such a subject as this. Intelligent Christian gentlemen at the South say that
the best schemes which have been proposed by Europeans for the substitution of
apprenticed negroes for slaves would make the condition of the negro as far
worse than our slavery as the condition of a degraded negro here is below that
of his master. Who will care for him when he is old, or sick? Granting this
apprentice scheme to be arranged without oppression or sin of any kind, I hold
that the condition of our slaves owned by masters and mistresses, is better than
such a hireling condition, though it have the appearance of liberty." "Why so?"
inquired Mr. North. "The slaves are not treated as hired horses are liable to be
treated," I replied. "We know how a man is likely to treat his own horse,
compared with the horse which he hires. Men nurse their slaves when they are
sick; they provide for them when they are old. By their care and responsibility
for them, and in relieving them from responsibility, they pay them wages whose
market-value, if it could be reckoned in dollars, would be higher wages than are
paid to the same class of laborers in the land. There are not four millions of
the lower class of the laboring people in any one district of the earth whose
condition is to be compared with that of the Southern slaves for comfort and
happiness." "I presume," said Mrs. North, "that you would not regard exemption
from responsibility as in itself a blessing. You know how it educates us, how it
sharpens the faculties, how it makes a man more of a man; therefore is it, after
all, any kindness to the slaves, that they are relieved from responsibility?" "I
thank you," said I, "for that question. Does it concern us that our domestic
servants are relieved, for the time, of all responsibility for house-rent,
taxes, political duties? "Every condition of poverty and toil has its peculiar
hardships and sorrows. But putting together, respectively, all the advantages
and the disadvantages of our slaves, he who looks upon a population with
enlarged views of liabilities and of the inevitable results in the working of
different schemes of labor, and is not so weak or morbid as to dwell
inordinately on real and imaginary wrongs and miseries, which, after all, if
real, are compensated for by advantages or surpassed by aggregated smaller evils
in other conditions, must admit that, the colored people being here, their being
owned is the very best possible thing for their protection, and the surest
guarantee against all their liabilities to want in hard times, sickness, and old
age. "Speaking of hard times leads me to say, that if you could put four
millions of laboring people in the Free States, for a winter or during
commercial distresses and the stagnation of every kind of business, in a
position where, while they were still active and useful, a single thought or
care about their sustenance would not visit them, you would be deemed a
philanthropist and public benefactor. There will not be the same number of
people in the laboring class throughout our land next winter, in any one
section, whose comfort and happiness will exceed that of our slaves." "Oh,
well," said Mr. North, "all this may be true, but this does not reconcile me to
slavery. Our horses here at the North will all be comfortably provided for,
notwithstanding any money pressure. But I would rather be a human being and
fail, every winter, than be a horse." "Husband," said Mrs. North, "do you
consider that a parallel case? Mr. C. is not arguing, as I understand him, that
slavery is better than freedom. He is not persuading us to be slaves rather than
free. He takes these four millions of blacks as he finds them, in bondage, and
he asks, What shall we do with them? You say, Set them free. He says, They are
better off, as a race, in their present bondage, than they would be if made
free, to remain here. Not that they are better off than four millions of colored
people, who had never been slaves, would be in a commonwealth by themselves." "I
thank you, Mrs. North," said I, "for your clear and correct statement of my
position. And now I will take up Mr. North's parable about the horses, and apply
it justly. Let hay and grass be exceedingly scarce, and I had rather take my
chance with an owner and be a horse, in a stable, and at work, than a horse
roaming in search of food, chased away everywhere. The comparison is between
horse and horse, and man and man." "You make me think," said Mrs. North, "of an
interesting passage in a late magazine, written by a lady. She was on a voyage
to Cuba. She arrived at Nassau. She says, 'There were many negroes, together
with whites of every grade; and some of our number, leaning over the side, saw
for the first time the raw material out of which Northern Humanitarians have
spun so fine a skein of compassion and sympathy. You must allow me one heretical
whisper,--very small and low. Nassau, and all we saw of it, suggested to us the
unwelcome question whether compulsory labor be not better than none.'"[3]
[Footnote 3: Atlantic Monthly, May, 1859, p. 604.] "There is," said I, "this
great question of right, with some, as to slavery: As the State has a right to
interpose and send vagrant children to school, has the world a right to
interpose, in certain cases, and send certain races to labor for the good of
mankind? This was the question which broke upon the lady's mind. It is very
interesting to see the question thus stated, and to notice the graceful touch of
apology, and of playfulness, in the manner of stating it. There was risk, and
even peril, in making the suggestion, but, withal, some moral courage. Still a
lady may sometimes venture where it might not be safe for a gentleman to go.
"But the question between us is not, 'Freedom or slavery,' in the abstract, nor,
Whether it is right, in any case, to reduce a people to slavery; but, What is
best for our slaves? All your proofs that freedom is better than slavery in the
abstract, are nothing to the point." "It is the foulest blot on our nation in
the eyes of the world," said Mr. North, "that we have four millions of human
beings in bondage." "Have you read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin?'" I inquired. "Ask me,"
said he, pleasantly, "if I know how to read. Every lover of liberty and hater of
oppression has read 'Uncle Tom.'" "That is very far from being true," said I;
"but still, you like Uncle Tom as a character, do you?" "You astonish me," said
he, "by making a question about it. He is the most perfect specimen of
Christianity that I ever heard of." "Among the martyrs," said I, "have you ever
found his superior?" "No, Sir!" was his energetic answer. "Now," said I, "what
made Uncle Tom the paragon of perfection?" "What made him?" said he. "Yes," said
I, "what made him the model Christian? You do not reply, and I will tell you.
SLAVERY MADE UNCLE TOM. Had it not been for slavery, he would have been a savage
in Africa, a brutish slave to his fetishes, living in a jungle, perhaps; and had
you stumbled upon him he would very likely have roasted you and picked your
bones. A system which makes Uncle Toms out of African savages is not an unmixed
evil." "But," said he, "it makes Legrees also." "I beg your pardon, Sir," said
I, "it does not make Legrees. There are as many Legrees at the North as at the
South, especially if we include all the very particular 'friends of the slave.'
Legree would be Legree in Wall Street, or Fifth Avenue; Uncle Tom would not be
Uncle Tom in the wilds of Africa." "And so," said he, "it is right to fit out
ships, burn villages in Africa, steal the flying people, bestow them in
slave-ships, and sell them into hopeless bondage!" "So you all love to reason,"
said I, "or seek to force that conclusion upon us. No such thing. If God
overrules the evil doings of men, this is no reason for repeating the wrong. I
am insisting that slavery as it exists in the South has been a blessing to the
African. This does not warrant you in perpetrating outrages on those who are
still in Africa. "But the result has been, through the mercy of God as though we
had taken millions of degraded savages out of Africa, and had made them
contribute greatly to the industrial interests of mankind. "We have raised them
from heathenish ignorance and barbarism to the condition of intelligent beings.
Look at them in their churches and Sabbath-schools. Slavery has done this. See
the colored population of Charleston, S.C., voluntarily contributing, as they
do, on an average, three dollars apiece, annually, for the propagation of the
Gospel at home and abroad. See the meeting-house of the African Church at
Richmond, Va., a place selected for public speakers from the North to deliver
their addresses in it to the citizens of Richmond, because it is more commodious
than any other public building in the city. Think of the membership of slaves in
Christian Churches; of the multitudes of them who have died in the faith and
hope of the Gospel. Slavery has done this. The question is whether slavery has
been, or is, such a curse, on the whole, to the African race, that we must now
set free the whole colored population? Please let us keep to the point. The
reopening of the slave-trade is a question by itself. "It seems that God had
chosen to redeem and save large numbers of the African race by having them
transported to this Christian land. Philanthropists would not be at the cost and
trouble of all this. God has, therefore, used the cupidity of men to accomplish
his purposes, and he punishes the wicked agents of his own benevolent schemes.
His curse has for ages rested on the African race, and the laws of nature have,
to a great degree, interposed to prevent Christian efforts in their behalf. God
saw fit to change the prison-house, and prison yards and shops of this race from
one continent to another, and New England merchantmen, in part, have been
allowed to be the conveyers. In the process of transferring these future
subjects of civilization and Christianity, vast misery is endured, as in opening
a way by the sword for the execution of his decrees, great slaughter is the
inevitable attendant. I look at the whole subject of slavery in the light of
God's providence. And I do not see that his providence yet indicates any way for
its termination consistent with the interests of the colored people. "As to the
extension of slavery, in this land, if the Most High has any further purposes of
mercy for the African race in connection with us, he will not consult you nor
me. He will open districts of our country for them; if my political party
refuses to be the instrument in doing this, from benevolent motives, or from any
other cause, He will make that party to be defeated, it may be by a party below
us in moral principle, as we view it. This question of slavery, its extension
and continuance, is therefore among the great problems of God's providence. I
shall do all that I properly can to prevent it, and to encourage, and, if called
upon, to aid my brethren now in immediate charge of the slaves, to fulfil their
solemn trust; but anything like impatience and passion at the existence of
slavery, I hold to be a sin against God. I pity those good men whose minds are
so inflamed by the consideration of individual cases of suffering as not to
perceive the great and steadfast march of the divine administration. Politicians
and others who get their places, or their bread, by easy appeals to sympathy for
individual cases of suffering, are the causes of much misplaced commiseration
and of a low, uninstructed view of the great interests involved in slavery. Yet
these very men who, for selfish purposes, stir up the passions of our people, by
dwelling on cases of hardship in slavery, are greatly disappointed when Napoleon
III., at Villafranca, prematurely terminates a war of unparalleled slaughter.
They would have preferred, for the cause of constitutional liberty and for its
possible influence against the Pope, that the fighting had continued a month
longer; we hear no pathetic remonstrances from them on the score of the killed
and maimed, the widows and orphans and the childless, of homes made desolate, by
this additional month of battle. Such is man, so inconsistent, so blinded by
party prejudice, so ready to maintain that which, in a change of persons and
places, he will denounce. He will be wholly blinded by individual acts of
suffering to all that is good in a system; and again, the good to be effected by
a war will blind him to the hundreds of thousands of dead or mutilated soldiers,
with five times that number of bleeding hearts, rifled by the sword of their
precious treasures." I saw that I had prolonged my remarks to an undue length.
We sat in silence for a little while, looking into the fire, and listening to
the rain against the windows, when Judith called Mrs. North to the door; and,
after some whispering between them, Mrs. North said to her, "Oh, bring them in;
our company will excuse it." The cranberries, it seems, were not doing well over
the fire in Judith's department, and she had hesitatingly proposed that they
should be promoted to the parlor grate, where, after due apologies, they were
placed. They soon began to simmer; then one would burst, and then another, we
pausing unconsciously to hear them surrendering themselves to their fate, while
one mouth, at least, watered at the thought of the delicious dish which they
were to furnish; the rich, ruby color of their juice in the best cut-glass
tureen, and the added spoonful, as a reward for not spilling a drop on the
table-cloth the last time they were served, coming to mind, with thoughts of
early days. And here I was discussing slavery. Now, while the cranberries were
over the fire, making one feel domestic and also bringing back young days, it
was impossible to be disputatious, had we been so inclined. The Northern
cranberry-meadow and the Southern sugar-plantation seemed mixed up in my
feelings on this subject, qualifying and rectifying each other. Perhaps the
soothing presence of the cranberry saucepan was timely; for, without any design,
a phase of our subject next presented itself which was not the most agreeable. I
broke the silence, and said,-- "Mr. North, what do you think is the mission of
the abolitionists as a party, and of all who sympathize with them?" "Why," said
he, "to abolish slavery, to be sure. What else can it be?" "You are mistaken,"
said I. "The real mission of the abolitionists, thus far, is, To perpetuate
slavery till Providence has accomplished its plan. You know what Southern
synods, and general assemblies, and many of the ablest men at the South have
said about slavery; how they deplored it, and called upon Christians to seek its
extinction. The South would probably have tried to abolish slavery ere this, if
left to themselves. But they would have failed; and Providence prevented the
useless effort. The influence of those sentiments which prevailed in the General
Assembly of 1818 would have been to remove all the objectionable features of
slavery, at least, preparatory to its final extinction, if that could be
reached. It looked as though Churches generally would, in obedience to the
General Assembly, have made it, in certain cases, the subject of discipline.
Abolitionism, however, began about that time. It had the effect to make the
South defend themselves and slavery too. Providence saw that the South was weary
of the system, and wished to throw it off. But the years of the captivity
appointed of God had not come to an end. Purposes of mercy for the African race
had not been accomplished; the South must be made willing to hold these poor
people for the 'time, times, and half a time,' ordained of God. To encourage
them, the God of Nature makes the great Southern staple, cotton, to be in
greater demand for the supply of the world; the cotton-gin is invented, and
immediately the slaves are thereby assisted to retain that hold upon the South
which was about to be broken off. All this seems to me designed, as it certainly
has the effect, to perpetuate slavery until Providence shall indicate measures
for the removal of the colored people among us. This may be delayed for
centuries to come. In the mean time, we at the North, by keeping up our
agitation of the subject, have impressed the South with the importance of being
united against us; but if any of our schemes of emancipation had divided them,
it would not have been for the good of the slaves. So the abolitionists have
been fulfilling their destiny by fighting against Providence to help perpetuate
slavery till the Most High shall disclose his will concerning it." "And helped
the South," said Mr. North, "perpetuate violations of the marriage relation, and
to separate families, and to countenance all the sins in slavery!" "Yes, to some
degree," said I; "for should we treat them with common candor and truthfulness,
make them feel that we appreciate the perplexities of the subject, admit for
once, and act upon it, that they are better and more competent 'friends of the
slave' than we, it would be the surest way to put a stop to every evil in
slavery. Now they have little power over a certain class of men among them, who,
when measures are proposed for the relief of the slaves, raise the cry that they
are abolitionists, and excite an odium which deters them from doing many things
which would otherwise be attempted." "They might all certainly join," said Mr.
North, "one would think, to prevent the violation of the marriage contract by
the slaves, and the sundering of the marriage tie by the auctioneer." "Now,"
said I, "there are two allegations, and I will answer them. As to the violation
of the marriage covenant by the slaves, are you aware how many divorces for the
same cause are granted in your own state yearly? You will find, on inquiry, that
'freedom' has nothing to boast of in this respect. As to the auctioneer, and the
separation of the marriage tie by him, how often do you think that an honest
black man, for no crime, is taken from his wife and sold, or she from him? How
often, do you suppose, are families divided and scattered at the auction-block?
If you will inquire, you will find that the cases are extremely rare; that in
some large districts it has not occurred for several years; and that in other
cases, where it has occurred, regard has been had to the neighborhood of the
purchasers, so that members of the same families have been within reach of one
another. You seem to think that a great feature, and the most common effect, of
slavery is to separate families. Such is the general belief at the North. Let me
remind you that there is no form or condition of service in the world which has
more effect than slavery to keep families together." "Well," said Mrs. North,
dropping her work in her lap, "I never thought of that before." "Why," said I,
"where will you find in the Free States husband and wife and children living
together as servants in the same family?" Said Mrs. North, "It is rather
uncommon with us to find two sisters living together as help in a family. At
least, it is always spoken of and noted as pleasant and desirable." "What would
Northerners think," said I, "of gathering the old parents and all the brothers
and sisters of their domestics together, in small tenements near their own
dwellings? He who should do this would be regarded as a very great saint. So
that you may as well say that slavery is a system by which a serving class is
kept together in families, as to say that its purpose and effect is to break up
families." "Just think," said Mrs. North, "of the serving class in our families
here at the North,--how they are separated by states, by oceans, from one
another!" "Be careful, Mrs. North," said I, "how you even hint at such
mitigations in slavery, for you will be denounced as a 'friend of oppression' if
you discern anything in the system but 'villanies.' You never hear such a
feature of slavery, as that of which we have just spoken, recognized here at the
North by our zealous anti-slavery people." "Do you not think," said she, "that
if we were candid and less passionate, and viewed the subject as anti-slavery
men at the South do, we should exert far more influence against slavery?" "If we
exerted any," I replied, "it would be 'far more' than we do now. If we would
only cease to 'exert influence' in that direction, and begin to learn that the
people of the South are as Christian, benevolent, and good in every respect as
we, this first, great lesson, which we all need to learn, would do us all great
good. Self-righteousness is the great characteristic of the Northern people with
regard to the South. Fifteen States declare that they are justified before God
in continuing the system of slavery. The other States would be ashamed to
condemn those fifteen States for immorality in the discussion of any other
subject; but here they assume that one half of the American nation is convicted
of crime. I take the ground that, if the Churches and the ministry of those
fifteen States say, With all the evils of slavery, it is right and best that we
should maintain it, I will so far yield my convictions as not to feel that they
are less righteous than I." "Oh," said Mr. North, "but they have been born and
educated under the system. Of course they must be blinded by it, and their moral
sense perverted." "There," said I, "Mr. North, is the 'Northern Evil' again. Oh,
what a shame it is for intelligent people to decry Southern Christians in this
way, and to erect their own moral sense into such self-complacent superiority!
"You will see in your church one excellent brother, whose heart is filled with
anguish at the thought of the 'poor slave.' One sits by him who knows full as
much on this and on all subjects as he, who feels that the people at the South
are perfectly qualified to manage this subject, and that we have no need to
interpose. He thinks that if one wishes to be excited with compassion at the
sorrows and woes of men, a short walk will bring him to certain abodes such as
no Southern slave would be allowed by any human master to inhabit. If he would
benefit men as a class, our own sailors need all his philanthropy. But the good
anti-slavery brother is possessed with the idea that the Southern slave is the
impersonation of injustice and misery, and that those who stand in the relation
of masters are guilty of crimes, daily, which ought to shut them out of the
Church. "I have often thought that the most appropriate prayers in our public
assemblies, with regard to slavery, would be petitions against Northern
ignorance and passion with respect to Southern Christians. It is we who most
need to be prayed for. When I think of those assemblies of Christians of all
denominations in the South, with a clergy at their head who have no superiors in
the world, and then hear a Northern preacher indicting them before God in his
prayers, what shall I say? The verdict of a coroner's inquest, if it were held
over some of his hearers at such a time, might almost be, Died of disgust." "Now
I desire to know," said Mr. North, "if we are never to pray in public about
slavery? Is it not the great subject before the country, and are not all our
interests in Church and State deeply involved in it?" "While we believe," said
I, "that holding slaves is a sin, I take the ground that praying for the
Southerners is a false impeachment. When we are rid of this error, we do not
feel their need of being prayed for any more than 'all men,' for whom Paul says,
'I will that men pray everywhere,'--'lifting up holy hands without wrath or
doubting.' Our 'hands' must be 'holy' when we lift them up for 'all men,'
including Southerners; there must be no 'wrath' in our prayers,--which I am
sorry to say is too easily discerned in prayers against the South; and there
must be no 'doubting' in the petitioners whether their feelings and motives are
right before God. There is as much in the relation of officers and crews in our
merchant vessels, to say the least, to enlist the prayers of ministers, as in
slavery. But this relates to ourselves, and has not the enchantment of a distant
sin. "You must bring yourself to believe, Mr. North, that Southern hearts are in
general as humane and cultivated as ours. This, it is true, is a great demand
upon a Northerner." "But oh," said he, (we happening to be alone just then,)
"the cruelty of compelling virtuous people, members of Churches, to commit sin,
under pain of being sold." "Mr. North," said I, "how do you dare to open your
lips on that subject,--you, with myself, a member of a denomination in which
men, eminent in our pulpits, have--so many of them of late years--fallen. One
would think that we would never cast a stone at the South on that subject. "Some
among us seem to think that the power and the opportunity to commit sin must
necessarily be followed by criminal indulgence. They do themselves no credit in
this supposition. They also leave out of view a natural antipathy which must be
overcome, sense of degradation, probability of detection, loss of character,
conscience, and all the moral restraints which are common to men everywhere; and
they only judge that all who exercise authority over an abject race must, as a
general thing, be polluted. "As to opportunities for evil-doing at the South
compared with the North, no one who walks the streets of a Northern city, by day
or night, with the ordinary discernment of one who sets himself to examine the
moral condition of a place, will fail to see that we need not go to the South to
find humiliating proofs of baseness and shame. There is less solicitation at the
South; here it is a nightly trade, without disguise. At the South the young must
go in search of opportunity; here it confronts them. The small number of yellow
children in the interior of the Cotton States, on 'lone plantations,' is
positive proof against the ready suspicions and accusations of Northern people.
Let all be true which is said of 'yellow women,' 'slave-breeders,' and every
form of lechery, he is simple who does not believe that the statistics of a
certain wickedness at the North would, if made as public as difference of color
makes the same statistics at the South, leave no room for us to arraign and
condemn the South in this particular. Their clergy, their husbands, their young
men, if they are no better, are no worse than we. But there is nothing in which
the self-righteousness created by anti-slavery views and feelings is more
conspicuous than in the way in which the South is judged and condemned by us
with regard to this one sin. Had the pulpits of the South afforded such dreadful
instances of frailty, for the last ten or fifteen years, as we have had at the
North, what confirmation would we have found for our invectives against the
corrupting and 'barbarous' influence of slavery! "How the morbid fancy of a
Northerner loves to gloat over occasional instances of violence at the South,
and is never employed in depicting scenes of betrayal and cruelty which our
policemen in large cities could recount by scores." "I saw," said Mr. North, "in
a recent paper, that a slave in Washington County, N.C., was hanged by the
sheriff in the presence of three thousand spectators, for the murder of a white
man, whom he shot with a pistol because he suspected him of undue familiarity
with the wife of the black man. Poor fellow! no doubt he swung for it because he
was a slave. He must let his marriage rights be invaded by the whites, and bear
it in silence, or die." Said I, "What a perfect specimen of Northern
anti-slavery feeling and logic have we in what you now say. If a man, on
suspicion of you, takes the law into his hands and shoots you with a pistol,
does he not deserve to die? He does, if he is a white man; perhaps, if he be a
slave, that excuses him! Even where a man is known to be guilty of the crime
referred to, and the husband shoots him, he is apt to have a narrow escape from
being punished. As to bearing such violations of one's rights in silence under
intimidation, there is no more power in intimidation to save a villain at the
South from disgrace and abhorrence in his community, than at the North." "But he
can evade prosecution under the statute," said Mr. North, "more easily at the
South than here." "When you have served on the grand jury a few terms," said I,
"you will be more charitable toward Southerners. Human nature is the same
everywhere. It makes, where it does not find, occasion for sin. "Now you will
not understand, in all that I have said, that I am pleading for slavery, that I
desire to have this abject race among us, that Southerners are purer and better
than we. We are both under sin. We all have our temptations and trials; each
form of society has its own kind of facilities for evil; but the grace of God
and all the influences which bear on the formation and the preservation of
character, are the same wherever Christianity prevails." "Well, after all," said
he, "it must be a semi-barbarous state of society, where such a system is
maintained." "I shall have to send you," said I, "to the 'Hotel des Incurables.'
I think that your judgments are more than semi-barbarous. If you please to term
even the Southern negroes 'semi-barbarous,' you may do so; but you are bearing
false witness against your neighbor. "My dear friend," said I, "sum up all the
evils of the laboring classes, of foreigners and the lower orders of society.
Take their miseries, vices, crimes, with all the blessings of freedom and
everything else. Get the proportion of evil to the good. Remember that these
classes will continue to exist among us. Then take the slaves, the lower order
at the South, as foreigners are with us, and say if, on the whole, the
proportion of evil among the slaves is any greater than among the corresponding
classes elsewhere. Do not be an optimist. Acknowledge that society, in this
fallen world, must have elements of evil, by reason at least of imbecility, want
of thrift, misfortune, and other things. You will not fail to see that slavery
with all its evils is, under the circumstances, by no means, the worst possible
condition for the colored people." "Well," said he, "I will think of all you
have said. I do not wish to be an ultraist, nor to shut my eyes against truth.
You will wish to go to bed; there are some further points on which I would know
your views, and we will, if you please, resume the subject to-morrow."


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  CHAPTER 36: OWNERSHIP IN MAN - THE OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY
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CHAPTER VII. OWNERSHIP IN MAN.--THE OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY. "Therefore all things
whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; FOR THIS
IS THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS." HOLY WRIT. The rain still poured down in the
morning, making it agreeable to us that we had the prospect of an uninterrupted
forenoon for our conversation. So when we found ourselves together again in the
course of the forenoon, by the fire, we opened the discussion. Mr. North
inquired what I understood by the term "owning a fellow-creature." "I understand
by it," I replied, "a right to use, and to dispose of, the services of another,
wholly at my will. That will must be subject to the whole law of God, which
includes the golden rule. I do not mean by it that a man owns the body of a man
in such a sense that he can maim it at will, or in any way abuse it. Ownership
in men is power to use their services and to dispose of them, at will." "Now,"
said he, "who gives you a right to go to Africa or to a slave auction and to say
to a human being, 'I propose to own you.' How would you like to have a black man
come to you in a solitary place and say, 'My dear Sir, I propose to own you.
Henceforth your services are subject to my will.'?" "As to Africa," said I, "and
making slaves of those who are now free, we cannot differ. As to the other part
of your question, I will carry the illustration a little further, and in doing
so, will answer you in part. How would you like to have some Michael O'Connor
come to you and say, 'Mr. North, I propose to hire you and pay you wages as my
body-servant, or my ostler.' Why should you not consent? If you do not, why
should you hire Mike himself to serve you in either of those capacities? What
has become of the golden rule, if you hire a man to do work for you which you
would not be hired to do? "You are feasting with a company of friends; and your
domestics, below, hear your cheerful talk, and feel the wide difference between
your state and theirs. Why do you not go down and say, 'Dear fellow-creatures,
go up and take our places at table, and let us be servants'? Does the golden
rule require that? Inequalities in human conditions are a wise and benevolent
provision for human happiness, so long as men are dependent on one another, as
they are and ever must be. Some are so constituted by an all-wise God that they
are happier to be in subordinate situations. Mind is lord; and they, seeing and
feeling the superiority of others, gladly attach themselves to them as helpers,
to be thought for and protected, and to enjoy their approbation. There is
nothing cruel in this, unless it be cruel not to have made all men equal. There
are important influences growing out of these relationships of superiors and
inferiors,--gentleness, kindness, benevolence, in all its forms, on the one
hand, and on the other, respect, deference, love, strong attachments and
identification of interests. "As to the remaining part of your question, let me
ask, What nation or tribes are capable of such bondage as the Africans at home
inflict and bear? We never had a right to go and steal them, nor to encourage
their captors in their pillage and violent seizure of the defenceless creatures;
nor do I think that all the blessings which multitudes of them have received,
for both worlds, in consequence of their transportation from Africa, lessens the
guilt of slave-traders; nor are these benefits any justification of the trade,
nor do they afford ground for its continuance. Nothing can justify it. Such is
the voice of the human conscience everywhere except where covetousness or
controversy prevail. "But finding these colored people here, the question upon
which you and I differ, is, What is our duty with regard to them? "You say, Set
them all free. I reply, The relation of ownership on our part toward them is
best for all concerned. You say, It is wrong in itself. To say this, I think, is
to be more righteous than God." "Then you maintain," said he, "that the Most
High, in the Bible, countenances all the atrocities of American slavery." "What
a strange way," said I, "of arguing, do we very generally find among
anti-slavery men, when their feelings are enlisted, as they are so apt to be.
They take unwarrantable, extreme inferences from what we say, and oppose these
as logical answers to a statement or argument. 'Auction block' and 'Bunker
Hill,' are sufficient answers with them to most of our reasoning on this
subject. But let us look at this point in a dispassionate manner. "But," said I,
"before I begin I wish to be distinctly understood as holding this doctrine;
namely, The Bible does not justify us in reducing men to bondage at our will.
God might appoint that certain tribes should be slaves to others; but before we
proceed to reduce men to slavery, our warrant for it must be clear. "If,
however, slavery is found by a certain generation among them, and it is not
right and just nor expedient to abolish it, may we not safely ask, How did the
Most High legislate concerning slavery among the people to whom he gave a code
of laws from his own lips? "Learning this, we must then consider whether
circumstances in our day warrant, or require, different rules and regulations.
"But our inquiry into the divine legislation respecting slavery, will disclose
some things which draw largely upon one's implicit faith in the divine goodness;
and if a man is disposed to be a sceptic and his anti-slavery feelings are
strong, here is a stone on which, if that anti-slavery man falls, he shall be
broken, but if it falls on him, it shall grind him to powder. "You will
acknowledge this, if you will allow me to speak further on this subject. "Did
you ever notice," said I, "with what words Christ concludes his enunciation of
the golden rule? They are a remarkable answer to our modern infidels, who impugn
the Old Testament as far behind the New in its moral standard. After declaring
that the rule by which we should treat others is self-love, the Saviour
says,--'for this is the Law and the Prophets.' So there was nothing in the Law
and Prophets inconsistent with the golden rule. The golden rule therefore marks
the history of divine legislation from the beginning; and if God appointed
slavery, he ordained nothing in connection with it which was inconsistent with
equal love to one's self and to a neighbor. "This deserves to be considered by
those who, finding slavery in the Old Testament appointed by God, begin, as it
were, to exculpate their Maker by saying that the Hebrews were a rude,
semi-barbarous people, and that divine legislation was wisely accommodated to
their moral capacity. Now it is singular, if this be so, that the Mosaic code
should be the basis, as it is, of all good legislation everywhere. The effort to
make the Hebrew people and their code appear inferior, in order to excuse
slavery, is one illustration of the direful effect which anti-slavery principles
have had in lowering the respect of many for the Bible, and loosening its hold
upon their consciences. Now it is to me a perfect relief on this subject of
slavery in the Old Testament, to know that God appointed nothing in the relation
of his people to men of any class or condition which his people in a change of
circumstances, might not be willing should be administered to them. If slavery
was ordained of God to the Hebrews, it must, therefore, have been benevolent. If
we start with the doctrine that 'Slavery is the sum of all villanies,' no wonder
that we find it necessary to use extenuating words and a sort of apologetic,
protecting manner of treating the divine oracles. After all it is evidently hard
work, with many anti-slavery men to maintain that reverence for the Old
Testament and that confidence in God which they feel are required of them. So
they lay all the responsibility of imperfection in the divine conduct, to the
'semi-barbarous Hebrews!'--a people by the way, whose first leader combined in
himself a greater variety, and a higher order, of talent, than any other man in
history. As military commander, poet, historian, judge, legislator, who is to be
named in comparison with the man Moses? "We must come to the conclusion," said
I, "that the relation of ownership is not only not sinful, but that it is in
itself benevolent, that it had a benevolent object; for its origin was certainly
benevolent." "What was its origin?" said Mrs. North; "I always had a desire to
know how slavery first came into existence." "Blackstone tells us," I replied,
"that its origin was in the right of a captor to commute the death of his
captives with bondage. The laws of war give the conqueror a right to destroy his
enemies; if he sees fit to spare their lives in consideration of their serving
him, this is also his right. Thus, we suppose, slavery gained its existence.
"True, its very nature partakes of our fallen condition; it is not a
paradisiacal institution; it is not good in itself; it is an accompaniment of
the loss which we have incurred by sin. In that light it is proper to speak of
the Most High as adapting his legislation to the depraved condition of man; but
that is no more true of slavery than of redemption; everything in the treatment
of us by the Almighty is an exponent of our departure from our first estate."
"Now," said Mrs. North, "all this is a relief to me; for I have always been
sorely tried by remarks seemingly impugning the divine wisdom and goodness,
whenever slavery in the Bible has been under discussion." "Please give us an
outline," said Mr. North, "of the Hebrew legislation on this subject." He handed
me a Bible. "I will try and not be tedious," said I, "and will repeat to you in
few words the principal points of the Hebrew Code, with regard to involuntary
servitude. * * * * * "Slavery is the first thing named in the law given at
Sinai, after the moral law and a few simple directions as to altars. This is
noticeable. In the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, and in the twenty-fifth
chapter of Leviticus, we find the Hebrew slave-code. The following is a summary
of it:-- "1. Hebrews themselves might be bought and sold by Hebrews; but for six
years only, at farthest. If the jubilee year occurred at any time during these
six years, it cut short the term of service. "2. Hebrew paupers were an
exception to this rule. They could be retained till the year of jubilee next
ensuing. "3. Hebrew servants, married in servitude, if they went out free in the
seventh, or in the jubilee year, must go out alone, leaving their wives which
their masters had given them, and their children by these wives, (if any,)
behind them, as their masters' possession. If, however, they chose to remain
with their wives and children, the ear of the servant was bored with an awl to
the door-post, and his servitude became perpetual. "4. Hebrew servants might
also, from love to their masters, in like manner and by the same ceremony,
become servants forever. "5. Strangers and sojourners among the Hebrews, 'waxing
rich,' were allowed to buy Hebrews who were 'waxen poor,' and who were at
liberty to sell themselves to these sojourners or to the family of these
strangers. The jubilee year, however, terminated this servitude. The price of
sale was graduated according to the number of years previous to the jubilee
year. The kindred of the servant had the right of redeeming him, the price being
regulated in the same way. "6. In all these cases in which Hebrews were bought
and sold, there were special injunctions that they should not be treated 'with
rigor,' the reason assigned by the Most High being substantially the same in all
cases, namely, 'For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my
servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.'
"7. Liberal provision was to be made for the Hebrew servant at the termination
of his servitude. During his term of service, he was to be regarded and treated
'as an hired servant and a sojourner.' "8. Bondmen and bondmaids, as property,
without limitation of time, and transmissible as inheritance to children, might
be bought of surrounding nations. The children of sojourners also could be thus
acquired. To these the seventh year's and the fiftieth year's release did not
apply. "Now, Mr. North," said I, "let me proceed to try your faith somewhat. I
will see whether your confidence in divine revelation is sound, for nothing at
the present day has overthrown the faith of many like the manifest teachings of
the Bible with regard to slavery. You have felt that the Hebrew code is better
than ours, so far as it relates to slaves who were Hebrews. As to the slaves
from the heathen, we infer that they met 'with rigor,' or at least were liable
to it; for God continually enjoins it upon the Hebrews that they shall not use
rigor with their brethren. "Now let me mention some things which will try your
faith in revelation, if you are an abolitionist. "The Hebrews were allowed to
sell their servants to other people. "Thus they traded in flesh and blood. This
was prohibited in the case of a Hebrew maid-servant, whom a man had bought and
had made her his concubine. If she did not please him, it was said that--'to
sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power.' The inference is that
they sold their Gentile slaves, if they pleased, 'to a strange nation.' Again.
When a father or mother became poor, their creditor could take their children
for servants. Thus you read: 'Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of
the sons of the prophets unto Elisha saying, Thy servant my husband is dead, and
thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord; and the creditor is come to
take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.' This was according to the law of
Moses, in the twenty-fifth of Leviticus; 'bondmen,' however, meaning here a
servant for a term of years. See also the New Testament parable of the
unforgiving servant. "This was hard, it will seem to you and to all of us, that
if one became poor in Israel, his children could be attached. Thus the idea of
involuntary servitude, where no crime was, prevailed in the Theocracy. "But we
come now to something which draws harder upon our faith. "We find the Most High
prescribing, Exodus xxi. 20, 21, that a master who kills his servant under
chastisement shall be punished (but not put to death); and if the servant
survives a day or two, the master shall not even be 'punished' for the death of
his slave! "The reason which the Most High gives is this: 'For he is his money'!
"A human being, 'money'! An immortal soul, 'money'! God's image, 'money'! And
this the reasoning, these the very words of my Maker! Is it not astonishing, if
your principles are correct, that there has been no controversy for ages against
this? and that the Bible, with such passages in it should have retained its hold
on the human mind? 'He is his money'! It would have been no different had it
read: 'He is his cotton.' You see that the Most High recognized 'ownership,'
'property in man.' Why is it said, 'He is his money'? Poole (Synopsis)
says,--'that is, his possession bought with money; and therefore 1. Had a power
to chastise him according to his merit, which might be very great. 2. Is
sufficiently punished with his own loss. 3. May be presumed not to have done
this purposely or maliciously.' "Either and all of which explanations, or any
other which can be given, only bring more clearly to view the idea of 'money' as
a reason why the master is not to be punished, for causing the death of a slave
by whipping, if the slave happens to continue a day or two, no matter under what
mutilations and sufferings. "Furthermore. We find the Most High decreeing
perpetual bondage in certain cases, and more than all, as we have seen, the
forcible separation of husband and wife among slaves. Let me turn to Exodus xxi.
and read:-- "'1. Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.
"'2. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh
he shall go out free for nothing. "'3. If he came in by himself, he shall go out
by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. "'4. If his
master have given him a wife and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife
and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.' "I have
not finished my reading," said I; "but what do you say to that, Mr. North?"
"Read on," said he. "'5. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master,
my wife, and my children, I will not go out free: "'6. Then his master shall
bring him unto the judges, he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the
door-post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall
serve him forever.' "God decreed, therefore, that the marriage of a slave in
bondage, in those days, was dissoluble, as no other marriage was. Divorces among
the Hebrews, allowed for the hardness of their hearts, were not parallel to the
forcible separation of a slave from his wife under the hard necessity of choice
between perpetual bondage with a wife, or freedom without her. The merciful God
who kindly enacted, 'No man shall take the nether nor the upper millstone to
pledge: for he taketh a man's life to pledge,' and that a garment pawned should
be restored before sundown, that wages should not be withheld over night, yes,
the God who legislated about bird's-nests ordained the dissolution of the
marriage tie between slaves in certain cases, unless the slave husband was
willing for his wife's sake, to be a slave forever! "What do you say to this,
Mr. North?" I asked again. Said Mrs. North, "I begin to see the origin and cause
of infidelity among the abolitionists." "Tell me," said Mr. North, "how you view
it." "On stating this, once," said I, "in a public meeting, I raised a clamor.
Three or four men sprung to their feet, and one of them, who first caught the
chairman's eye, cried out, his face turning red, his eyes starting from their
sockets, his fist clenched, 'I demand of the gentleman whether he means to
approve of all the abominations of American slavery! Is he in favor of
separating husbands and wives, parents and children? Let us know it, Sir, if it
be so. No wonder that strong anti-slavery men turn infidels when they hear
Christian men defending American slavery from the Bible. No wonder that they
say, "The times demand, and we must have, an anti-slavery constitution, an
anti-slavery Bible, and an anti-slavery God." Mr. Moderator, will the gentleman
answer my question,--Do you mean to approve all the atrocities of American
slavery, on the ground that the Bible countenances them?' "I was never more calm
in my life. I replied, 'Mr. Chairman, taking for my warrant an inspired piece of
advice as to the best way of answering a man according to his folly, it would be
just, should I reply to the gentleman's question, Yes, I do. But the gentleman,
I perceive, is too much excited to hear me.' "He had flung himself round in his
seat, put his elbow on the back of it, and his hand through his hair; he then
flung himself round in the opposite direction, and put his arm and hand as
before, and he blew his nose with a sound like a trombone. "I then said, 'Mr.
Chairman, if all that the gentleman meant to ask was, Do you find any
countenance under any circumstances, for the relation of master and slave in the
divine legation of Moses,--and this was all which, as a fair man, not carried
away by a gust of passion, he should have asked me,--my answer was correct and
proper. If he wished to know my views of what is right and proper as to the
marriage relation of our slaves, he should have put the question in a different
shape. But first, Sir,' said I, 'if he dislikes the twenty-first chapter of
Exodus, his controversy must be with his God, not with me. Sinai was, let me
remind him, more of a place than Bunker Hill. I am not a friend of "oppression"
any more than the gentleman; but I trust that had I lived in Israel, I should
never have thought of being more humane than my Maker.' "I then proceeded to say
that (as before remarked to you) we are not warranted by the Bible to make men
slaves when we please; nor, if slavery exists, are we commanded to adopt the
rules and regulations of Hebrew slavery. "But we do learn from the Bible that
property in man is not in itself sinful,--not even to say of a man, 'He is my
money.' "Were it intrinsically wrong, God would not have legislated about it in
such ways; for granting, if you please, the untenable distinction about his 'not
appointing' slavery, but 'finding it in existence' and legislating for it, what
necessity could there have been for making such a law as that relating to the
boring of the ear, rather than giving the slave his wife and children and
suffering them all to go free? "No, Mr. North," said I, continuing our
conversation, "I cannot oppose the relation of master and slave as in itself
sinful; for then I become more righteous than God. But I must inquire whether it
is right, in each given case, to reduce men to bondage: shall that be, for
example, the mode in which prisoners of war shall be disposed of? or a
subjugated people? or criminals? or, in certain cases, debtors? In doing so,
there is no intrinsic sin; the act itself, under the circumstances, may be
exceedingly sinful; but the relation of ownership is not necessarily a sin.
This, I hold, is all that can be deduced from the Bible in favor of slavery: The
relation is not in itself sinful." "But," said Mr. North, "we sinned in stealing
these people from Africa; all sin should be immediately forsaken; therefore, set
the slaves free at once." I replied, "Let us apply that principle. You and I,
and a large company of passengers, are in a British ship, approaching our coast.
We find out, all at once, that the crew and half of the passengers stole the
ship. We gain the ascendency; we can do as we please. Now, as all sin must be
repented of at once, it is the duty of the passengers and crew to put the ship
about, and deliver it to the owners in Glasgow! Perhaps we should not think it
best to put in force the 'ruat coelum' doctrine, especially if we had had some
'ruat coelum' storms, and it was late in the season. But then we should actually
be enjoying the stolen property--the ship and its comforts--for several days,
with the belief that benevolence and justice to all concerned required us to
reach the end of the voyage before we took measures to perform that justice,
which, before, would have been practical folly. "Now, please, do not require
this illustration to go on all fours. All that I mean is this: A right thing may
be wrong, if done unseasonably, or in disregard of circumstances which have
supervened. "But to go a little further, and beyond mere expediency: Can you see
no difference between buying slaves, and making men slaves? While it would be
wicked for you to reduce people to slavery, is that the same as becoming owners
to those who are already in slavery? In one case, you could not apply the golden
rule; in the other, the golden rule would absolutely compel you, in many
instances, to buy slaves. Go to almost any place where slaves are sold, and they
will come to you, if they like your looks, and, by all the arts of persuasion,
entreat you to become their master. Having succeeded, step behind the scenes, if
you can, and hear them exulting that they 'fetched more' than this or that man.
Is there no difference between this and reducing free people to slavery?" "Say
yes, husband," said Mrs. North, "or I must say it for you." "So that, let me
add," said I, "in opposing slavery, I am necessarily confined to the evils and
abuses committed in the relationship of master. But, even in doing this, why
should I be meddlesome? We have a most offensive air and manner in our behavior
towards Southerners, in connection with their duties as masters. It is perfectly
disgusting. I may oppose slavery, on the grounds of political economy or for
national reasons. But if I mix up with it wrathful opposition to the sin, so
called, or the unrighteousness of holding property in man, it has no countenance
in the Bible. If I speak of it publicly, as a system fraught with evil, I must
discriminate; or they whom I would influence, knowing that I am mistaken, will
regard me as an infatuated enemy, who will effect more injury than I can repair.
As to Mr. Jefferson's testimony, there are as good and conscientious men at the
South in our day as Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Calhoun was as worthy a witness in all
respects." "Now tell us," said Mrs. North, "your sober convictions, apart from
this Northern controversy, about that twenty-first chapter of Exodus, where God
directs that slaves, in certain cases, shall be slaves forever; and, moreover,
in certain cases, that slave husbands may have their wives and children withheld
from them, and the husbands leave them forever. How do you reconcile this with
the justice and goodness of God?" I said to her, "To make the case fully appear,
before we converse upon it, hear this passage, Leviticus XXV. 44-46:--'Both thy
bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that
are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.' So, in the
next verses, 'The children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them
shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your
land; and they shall be your possession: And ye shall take them as an
inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they
shall be your bondmen forever; but over your brethren, the children of Israel,
ye shall not rule one over another with rigor.' "Here, and in all the divine
legislation on this subject, a distinction is made between Hebrews who became
slaves, and slaves who were foreigners, or of foreign extraction, though
resident in Israel. Slaves of Hebrew extraction might go free after six years,
and upon the death of the owner; and in every jubilee year they must all return
to freedom, and be free from every disability by reason of bondage, except where
the ear was bored. "Not so with the slaves of foreign extraction; nor even with
the Hebrew whose ear was bored, provided his wife was given him in slavery, and
he had elected to live with her rather than be free. Not even upon the death of
the owner could such slaves be manumitted, as was the case ordinarily with
regard to Hebrew slaves; but property in these Gentile slaves, and in Hebrew
slaves reduced to the same condition, God ordained should be an 'inheritance,'
passing down forever from father to child. "No jubilee trumpet was to cheer
their hearts. Think what the jubilee morning must have been to those slaves in
hopeless bondage, if bondage were necessarily such as many fancy. Our
abolitionists represent the bells and guns of our Fourth of July to be a hideous
mockery in the ears of the slaves; and multitudes of our good people ludicrously
fancy them as most miserable on that day, by the contrast of their enslaved
condition with our boasted Independence. Let us borrow this fancy, and apply it
to the Hebrew slave. "The jubilee trumpets, and all the joyous scenes of the
fiftieth year in Israel, caused multitudes of slaves in Israel, we will suppose,
to reflect, This Jehovah, God of Israel, has doomed us to hopeless bondage. We
are guilty of having been born so many degrees south or north, east or west, of
these Hebrews. We, by God's providence, are Gentiles. Our chiefs sold us, and
these Hebrews bought us. We were betrayed; we were driven out of our homes;
unjust wars were made upon us, to make us captives, that we might be sold. And
'the Lord's people' bought us, by his special edict (Lev. xxv. 44). Our
brother-servants, unfortunate Hebrews, get released in the jubilee year, except
these poor creatures who were so unfortunate as to be married in slavery, and,
not being willing to be divorced, had their ears fastened, with the ignominious
'awl,' to their master's door-post. God could have ordained that they, with
their wives and children, and we, with ours, should have release in the fiftieth
year. But, no! our bondage is forever, and so is theirs; and our children and
their children are to be servants forever. But we hold it to be a self-evident
truth that all men are born free and equal, and have an inalienable right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Slavery is the sum of all
villanies. Our master's will is our law; we are subject to his passions; we are
chattels; we 'are his money.' This is the language of your God,--the God whom
you worship; and not only so, but you circumcise us to worship Him! "Some
benevolent Levite, jealous for the character of his Maker, replies, 'But God did
not institute slavery; He found it in existence, and he only legislates about
it, and regulates it.' "A thousand groans are the prelude to the withering
answer which the slaves make to this apology for oppression. "'He broke your
bonds, it seems,' they cry, 'in Egypt, and in the Red Sea. Did He "find slavery"
on the opposite shore of the Red Sea? Why did he not merely "legislate for it,
and regulate it?" No, He enacted it. How dare you apologize for your God with
such a miserable pretext? He made the ordinance separating a husband from wife
and children, unless the husband would submit to the indignity of having his ear
bored and to the doom of perpetual bondage, in case his wife was a Gentile. If
he goes away, he must leave his wife and children. Great indulgence have you in
multiplying wives; that is winked at "for the hardness of your hearts;" but the
poor Hebrew must abandon his wife and family if he chooses freedom! They are his
master's "property," "his money," and God gave the servant these children,
knowing that they would be the "property" of another, and that he would have no
unencumbered right to them; and down through all ages they and their descendants
must be servants. And now you tell us, "God did not institute" this! He only
"found it!" He "regulated it!" Come, blow up your trumpet, reverend Levite! Go,
worship the God of whom you feel half ashamed. Do not ask us to worship and love
a Being who is bound by the laws of fate so that he cannot do otherwise, if he
would, than make one of us a slave forever, while the man who grinds with me at
the same mill, goes with his wife and children, forever free!'" "Those remarks
have the true Boston tone," said Mrs. North. "Yes," said I, "there were brave
men before Agamemnon, Horace tells us. There is slavery forever," said I, "or
the separation of husband and wife, father and children, unless the man would be
a slave forever. What 'partings' there must have been! What struggles in those
who concluded to take the fatal 'awl' through their ears, before they could make
up their minds to be slaves forever. See the hardship of the case. If the man
'loves his wife and children,' he may be a slave; that love would make him spend
and be spent for them in freedom, in his humble home, amid the sweets of
liberty; but no; if he loves his wife he must take the bitter draught of slavery
with his love. But if he hates her and his children, he may be free! What a
bounty on conjugal fickleness, on unnatural treatment of offspring!" "Was there
no Canada?" said Mrs. North, biting off her thread. "O, I recollect; Hagar went
there. I wonder if the angel who remanded her was removed from office, on his
return to heaven." "Come, wife," said Mr. North, "there is such a thing as being
converted too much. Please, Sir, will you answer the question as to the
consistency of all this with the divine wisdom and goodness?" "That," said I,
"is not the question which you wish to ask." "I do not understand you," said he;
"please to explain." "You wish to ask," said I, "how I reconcile these things
with your notions of wisdom and benevolence." "Why," said he, "I have my ideas
of divine wisdom and goodness, and I wish to make these things square with
them." "And that," said I, "is just the rock on which you all split. Your ideas
of the divine goodness must be based on a complete view of the revealed
character and conduct of God. But you and your friends say, 'this and that ought
to be, or ought not to be,' and you try your Maker by that measure. Now I say,
'he that reproveth God, let him answer it.' Are not the things which I have
quoted, parts of divine revelation, as much as the flood and the passover?" "I
see that they are," said Mr. North. "Do you believe that God is a spirit
infinite, eternal, unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice,
goodness, and truth?" "I do," said he. "You believe this notwithstanding the
apostasy, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the flood, and the extirpation
of the Canaanites." "I do," said he, "so long as I receive the Bible as the Word
of God." "I think," said Mrs. North, "that the loss of the 'Central America'
with her four hundred passengers, tries my faith in God full as much as a
heathen's having his ear bored to spend his days with his wife and children
among God's covenant people." "Then you do not worship the Goddess of Liberty,
Mrs. North," said I.--"'Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it. But if
thou mayest be made free, use it rather.'" "That," said she, "seems to express
my idea about bondage and freedom. Of course it is not, theoretically, a
blessing to be a slave. It may be, practically, to some. But what strikes me
oftentimes is the utter inability of an abolitionist to say to a slave, under
any circumstances, 'Care not for it.' His doctrine, rather, is, 'Art thou called
being a servant? If thou hast a Sharpe's rifle, or a John Brown's pike, use it
rather.' Or, 'Art thou called being a servant? If thou canst run for Canada, use
it rather.' Paul had not an abolitionist mind, that is very clear. But," she
continued, "do relieve my husband and enlighten me also, by giving us your views
about the Old Testament slavery, which I presume you can do without seeming to
arraign the character of God." I replied, "This is a sinful race, and we are
treated as such. Slavery is one of God's chastisements. Instead of destroying
every wicked nation by war, pestilence, or famine, he grants some of them a
reprieve, and commutes their punishment from death to bondage. Those whom he
allowed to be slaves to his people Israel were highly favored; they enjoyed a
blessing which came to them disguised by the sable cloud of servitude; but in
their endless happiness many of them will bless God for the bondage which joined
them to the nation of Israel. "I look upon our slaves as being here by a special
design of Providence, for some great purpose, to be disclosed at the right time.
Unless I take this view of it, I am embarrassed and greatly troubled;
'perplexed, but not in despair.' The great design of Providence in no wise
abates the sin of those who brought the slaves here, nor does it warrant us in
getting more of them. While this is true, I cannot resist the thought that God
has a controversy with this black race which is not yet finished. I believe that
God withholds from them a spirit and temper suited for freedom till he shall
have finished his marvellous designs. His destiny with the Jew, as a nation, to
the present day, is another illustration of his mysterious providence with
regard to a people. "As to the enactment which made the Hebrew servant a slave
for life, thus dooming even one of the covenant people to perpetual bondage, if
he had married in slavery, I see in it several things most clearly. "You will
have noticed that in every case in which a Hebrew was made a servant, poverty
was the ground of it. 'If thy brother be waxen poor,' he could sell himself,
either to a Hebrew or to a resident alien. He and his children could also be
taken for debt. This seems to us oppressive. "Let a family among us be reduced,
from any cause, to a condition in which they cannot maintain themselves, and
what follows? The children find employment, some of them in families, in various
kinds of domestic service. Indented apprenticeships in this commonwealth are
within the memory of all who are forty or fifty years of age. We remember the
very frequent advertisements: 'One cent reward. Ran away from the subscriber, an
indented apprentice,' etc. The descriptions of such fugitives, all for the sake
of absolving the master from liability for the absconding boy, and sometimes the
hunt that was made, with dogs to scent his tracks, when his return was desired,
are far within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. "In Israel, this descent of
a family from a prosperous to a decayed state, and the consequent servitude,
were used by the Most High to cultivate some of the best feelings of our nature.
It touched the finest sensibilities of the soul. Let me read from the fifteenth
of Deuteronomy:-- "'And if thy brother, an Hebrew man or an Hebrew woman, be
sold unto thee, and serve thee six years, then in the seventh year thou shalt
let him go free from thee. "'And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou
shalt not let him go away empty. "'Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy
flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press: of that wherewith the
Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember
that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed
thee: therefore I command thee this thing to-day. "'And if it shall be, if he
say unto thee, I will not go away from thee; because he loveth thee and thine
house, because he is well with thee, "'Then thou shalt take an awl and thrust it
through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant forever. And also
with thy maid-servant thou shalt do likewise. "'It shall not seem hard unto thee
when thou sendest him away free from thee: for he hath been worth a doubled
hired servant to thee, in serving thee six years; and the Lord thy God shall
bless thee in all that thou doest.' "Is not this very beautiful and touching,
Mrs. North?" She said nothing, but hid her face in her little babe's neck,
pretending to kiss it. But Mr. North wiped his eyes. "There is not much
barbarism in that," said he. "The golden rule," said I; "for this is the law and
the prophets. "The people to whom these touching precepts were given by the Most
High, and who were susceptible to these finest appeals, are, as we have said,
sometimes represented as a semi-barbarous people, so gross that God was obliged
to let them hold slaves! Now, could anything be more civilizing, refining,
elevating, than such relationships as this limited servitude of poor Hebrews
created? What scenes there must have been oftentimes, when the six years were
out, and the servant was about to depart, laden with gifts! And what a scene
when, with strong attachment to the family, the servant declined to be free, and
went to the door-post to have his ear pierced with the awl, to be a servant, and
not only so, but to be an inheritance forever! "Is this 'the sum of all
villanies,' Mr. North?" said I. "Yet it is 'slavery.' 'Auction-blocks,'
'whippings,' 'roastings,' 'separations of families,' are not 'slavery.' They are
its abuses; slavery can exist when they cease. I pray you, is such slavery as
the God of the Hebrews appointed, in such cases as these, 'forever,' an
unmitigated curse? "Now," said I, "go through our Southern country, and you will
find in every city, town, and village just such relationships between the whites
and the blacks as must have existed where these Hebrew laws had effect. Think of
the little slave-babe, and the Southern lady's letter, which have given occasion
to all our conversation. The Gospel, as it subdues and softens the human heart,
will make the relationship of involuntary servitude everywhere to be after this
pattern. Instead of exciting hatred and jealousy, and provoking war between the
whites and blacks, I am for bringing all the influences of the Gospel to bear
upon the hearts of the white population, to convert them into such masters as
God enjoined the Hebrews to be, and such as the Apostle to the Gentiles enjoined
upon Gentile slave-holders as their models. And I am filled with sorrow and
astonishment as I see some of the very best and most beloved men among us at the
North withholding missionaries and tracts from the Southern country, and--as
Gustavus's aunt said some of these do--calling it 'standing up for Jesus!'
"Now," said I, "if such were the injunctions of the Most High as to the manner
in which the Hebrews should treat their Hebrew slaves, it is easy to see that
such a habit with regard to them would serve greatly to mitigate the sorrows of
bondage on the part of Gentile slaves. And thus the curse of slavery, like sin,
and even death, is made, under the influences of religion, a means of
improvement, a source of blessing. Let but the sun shine on a pile of cloud, and
what folds of beauty and deep banks of snowy whiteness does it set forth, and,
at the close of day, all the exquisite tints which make the artist despair are
flung profusely upon that mass of vapor which but for the sun were a heap of
sable cloud. "The minister," said I, "who, Hattie tells us, classed 'Abraham the
slave-holder' with the 'murderer,' and the 'liar and swearer,' knew not what he
did. People who laugh and titter at the 'patriarchal institution,' need to
peruse the laws of Moses again, with a spirit akin to their beautiful tone; and
those who say that to hold a fellow-man as property is 'sin,' are not 'wiser
than Daniel,' but they make themselves wiser than God. "All who sustain the
relationship of owner to a human being," said I, "do well to read these
injunctions of the Most High, as very many of them do, applying them to
themselves. And it is also profitable to read how that a violation of these very
slave-laws was, in after years, one great cause of the divine wrath upon the
Hebrews. You will find, in the thirty-fourth of Jeremiah, that, not content with
having Gentile slaves, the Hebrews violated the law requiring them to release
each his Hebrew slaves once in seven years. "'I made a covenant with your
fathers,' God says, 'in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of
Egypt, saying, At the end of seven years let ye go every man his brother an
Hebrew which hath been sold unto thee. But ye turned and polluted my name, and
caused every man his servant to return, and brought them unto subjection. Ye
have not hearkened unto me in proclaiming a liberty every one to his
brother;--behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to
the pestilence, and to the famine.' "Thus it is evident that the relation of
master and servant was originally ordained and instituted by God as a benevolent
arrangement to all concerned,--not 'winked at,' or 'suffered,' like polygamy,
but ordained,--that it was full of blessings to all who fulfilled the duties of
the relation in the true spirit of the institution; and, moreover, it is true
that there are few curses which will be more intolerable than they will suffer
who make use of their fellow-men, in the image of God, for the purposes of
selfishness and sin; while those who feel their accountableness in this
relation, and discharge it in the spirit of the Bible, will find their hearts
refined and ennobled, and the relationship will be, to all concerned, a source
of blessings whose influences will bring peace to their souls when the grave of
the slave and that of his owner are looking up into the same heavens from the
common earth."


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  CHAPTER 37: THE TENURE
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CHAPTER VIII.
THE TENURE.
"One part, one little part, we dimly scan Through the dark medium of life's fevering dream; Yet dare arraign the whole stupendous plan If but that little part incongruous seem; Nor is that part, perhaps, what mortals deem; Oft from apparent ill our blessings rise."--BEATTIE, Minstrel.
Mr. North then said, "Let us change the subject a little. Please to tell us why, in your view, any slave who is so disposed may not run away. Would you not do so, if you were a slave, and were oppressed, or thought that you could mend your condition? Where did my master get his right and title to me? God did not institute American slavery as he did slavery among the Hebrews. If I were a slave to certain masters, South or North, I should probably run away at all hazards. I should not stop to debate the morality of the act. No human being would, in his heart blame me. It would be human nature, resisting under the infliction of pain. We catch hold of a dentist's hand when he is drawing a tooth. Perhaps there may be found some moral law against doing so!"
"But we are apt," said I, "to take these exceptional cases, and make a rule that includes them and all others. I have been present when intelligent gentlemen, Northerners and Southerners, have discussed this subject in the most friendly manner, though with great earnestness. Once I remember we spent an evening discussing the subject. I will, if you please, tell you about the conversation.
"I must take you, then, to an old mansion at the South, around which, and at such a distance from each other as to reveal a fine prospect, stood a growth of noble elms, a lawn spreading itself out before the house, and the large hall, or entry, serving for a tea-room, where seven or eight gentlemen, and as many ladies were assembled.
"A Southern physician, who had no slaves, took the ground that all the slaves had a right to walk off whenever they pleased. He did not see why we should hold them in bondage rather than they us, so far as right and justice were concerned. Some of the slave-holders were evidently much troubled in their thoughts, and did not speak strongly. My own feelings at first went with the physician and with his arguments; but I saw that he was not very clear, nor deep, and his friends who partly yielded to him, seemed to do so rather under the influence of conscientious feelings, than from any very well defined principles. This is the case with not a few at the South, and it was very common in Thomas Jefferson's days. But the large majority, who were of the contrary opinion, got the advantage in the argument, and it seemed to me went far toward convincing the physician, as they did me, that he was wrong.
"The company all seemed to look toward a judge who was present, to open the discussion with a statement of his views. He did so by saying, for substance, as follows:--
"'I will take it for granted,' said he, 'that we are agreed as to the unlawfulness of the slave-trade, past and present. We find the blacks here, as we come upon the stage. We are born into this relationship. It is an existing form of government in the Slave States.
"'Ownership in man is not contrary to the will of God. I also find it written that "Canaan shall be a servant." Hear these words of inspiration: "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." As the Japhetic race is to dwell in the tents of Shem, for example, England occupying India, so I believe the black race is under the divine sentence of servitude. Moreover, being perfectly convinced of the wrongfulness and the infinite mischief to all concerned of the forcible liberation of our slaves, I am assisted in settling, in my own mind, the question as to me right of individual slaves to escape from service, and our right to continue in this relationship, conforming ourselves in it always to the golden rule.
"'If it be the right of one, under ordinary circumstances, to depart, it is the right of all. But the government under which they live, in this commonwealth, recognizes slavery. The constitution and the general government protect us in maintaining it. The right of our servants to leave us at pleasure, which could not of course be done without violence, on both sides, implies the right of insurrection. It is impossible to define the cases in which insurrection is justifiable, but the general rule is that it is wrong. Government is a divine ordinance; men cannot capriciously overthrow or change it, at every turn of affairs which proves burdensome or even oppressive. God is jealous to maintain human government as an important element in his own administration. Men justly in authority, or established in it by time, or by consent, or by necessity, or by expediency, may properly feel that they are God's vicegerents. He is on their side; a parent, a teacher, a commander,--in short, he who rules, is, as it were, dispensing a law of the divine government, as truly as though he directed a force in nature. Hence, to disturb existing government is, in the sight of God, a heinous offence, unless circumstances plainly justify a revolution; otherwise, one might as well think to interfere with impunity and change the equinoxes, or the laws of refraction. It is well to consider what forms of government, and what forms of oppression under them, existed, when that divine word was written: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." This was written in view of the throne of the Caesars.
"'But it is very clear that when a people are in a condition to establish and maintain another form of government, there is no sin in their turning themselves into a new condition. In doing so, government, God's ordinance, evolves itself under a new form, and provided it is, really, government, and not anarchy, no sin may have been committed by the insurrection, or revolution, as an act. The result proved that government still existed, potentially, and was only changing its shape and adapting itself to the circumstances of the people. If a man or body of men assert that things among them are ready for such new evolutions, and so undertake to bring them about, they do it at their peril, and failing, they are indictable for treason; they may be true patriots, they may be conscientious men; the sympathies of many good people may be with them, but they have sinned against the great law which protects mankind from anarchy.
"'To apply this,' said the Judge, 'to our subject,--When the time comes that the blacks can truly say, "We are now your equals in all that is necessary to constitute a civil state, and we propose to take the government of this part of the country into our hands," we should still make several objections, which would be valid. The Constitutions of the States and of the United States must be changed before that can be done, and we will presume that this would involve a revolution. Moreover, this country belongs to the Anglo-Saxon race, with which foreigners of kindred stocks have intermingled, and they and we object to the presence of a black race as possessors of some of the states of the Union, even if it were constitutional. We do not propose to abandon our right and title to the soil, without a civil war, which would probably result in the extermination of one or the other party. If you are able to leave us at pleasure, the proper way will be to do it peaceably, and on just principles, to be agreed upon between us.
"'No such exigency as this,' said the Judge, 'is possible. It would be prevented or anticipated, and relief would be obtained while the necessity was on the increase and before it reached a solemn crisis.
"'One of three ways will, in my opinion,' said he, 'bring a solution to this problem of slavery.
"'One is, the insurrection of the slaves, the massacre of the whites, and the forcible seizure and possession of power by the blacks throughout the South. This would be a scene such as the earth has never witnessed. I have no fear that it can ever happen. But,' said he, addressing me, 'I presume that I know, Sir, how your people in the Free States, to a very considerable extent, think on this point. I will speak, by-and-by, of the other two ways in which slavery may find its great result. One, I say, is, by insurrection and then the extermination of the black race; for that would surely follow their temporary success if I can trust my apprehensions of the subject.'
"'Please, sir,' said I, 'let me hear what you think is 'very considerably' the sentiment at the North on this subject of insurrection.'
"'I presume sir,' said he, 'if the slaves should, some night, take possession of us, and demand a universal manumission, and we should refuse, and fire and sword and pillage and all manner of violence should ensue, and our persons and property should be at their will, vast multitudes of your people, including clergymen, would exclaim that the day of God's righteous vengeance had come, and they would say, Amen.'
"'So we interpret Thomas Jefferson's idea,' said I.
"'I think, Sir,' said he, 'that very many reasonable people of the North are of opinion that all the attributes of God are against any such procedure.
"'In the large sense in which nations speak to each other when they are asserting their rights, there is no objection to the first clause in the Declaration of Independence; but when you come to the people of a state, and one portion of that people rise and assert their right to break up the constitution of things under which they live, there is no more pertinency in that clause in the Declaration than there would be in giving us the reason for a revolution that all men are not far from five or six feet high. What they say may be true in the abstract, but it does not prove that men, having come into a state of society, involuntarily, if you please, have all the freedom and equality which they would have, if they were each an independent savage in the wilderness. Society is God's ordinance, not a compact. We have, all of us, lost some of our freedom and equality in the social state; now how far is it right that the blacks, being here, no matter how or why, should lose some of theirs? and how far is it right that we should take and keep some of it from them, whether for the good of all concerned, or for the good of ourselves, their civil superiors?--whose welfare, it may be observed, will continually affect theirs.'
"The Judge said that he believed that God had, in his mysterious providence, and of his sovereign pleasure, making use of the cupidity of white men, placed these blacks here in connection with us for their good as a race, and for the welfare of the world. He said that his mind could feel no peace on the subject of slavery, unless he viewed it in this light. In connection with the great industrial and commercial interests of our globe, and as an indispensable element in the supply of human wants, this abject race had been transported from their savage life in Africa, and had been made immensely useful to the whole civilized world. 'We agree, as I have said,' he continued, 'as to the immorality of those who brought them here; but he is not fit to reason on this subject, being destitute of all proper notions with regard to divine providence, who does not see in the results of slavery, both as to the civilized world and to negroes themselves, a wise, benevolent, and an Almighty Hand. Here my mind gets relief in contemplating this subject, not in abstract reasoning, not in logical premises and deductions, but by resting in Providence. There are mysteries in it,--as truly so as in the human apostasy, origin of evil, permission of sin, which confound my reasonings as to the benevolence of God; in which, however, I, nevertheless, maintain my firm belief. Here was the great defect in Mr. Jefferson's views of slavery. In the highest Christian sense, he was not qualified to understand this subject; he reasoned like one who did not take into view the providence and the purposes of God, even while he was saying what he did of there being "no attribute in the Almighty that would take part with us" in favor of slavery. Standing as I do by this providential view of the great subject, the assailants of slavery at the North seem to me, some of them, almost insane, and others, even ministers of the Gospel, shall I say it? more than unchristian;--there is a sort of blind, wild, French Jacobinical atheism in their feeling and behavior; while as to the rest, good people, they are misled by what Mr. Webster, in one of his speeches in the Senate, called "the constant rub-a-dub of the press,"--"no drum-head," he says, "in the longest day's march, having been more incessantly beaten than the feeling of the public in certain parts of the North." I cannot reason with these men,' continued the Judge, 'for I confess, at once, that I cannot demonstrate, either by logic or by mathematics, a modern quitclaim or warranty in holding slaves. In combating their illogical and unscriptural positions, I seem to them to be an advocate of the divine right of oppression,--which I am not. That it is best, however, and that it is right, for this relation to continue until God shall manifest some purpose to terminate it consistently with the good of all concerned, I am perfectly convinced and satisfied. I believe that it has reference to the great plan of mercy toward our world, and that when the object is accomplished, the providence of God will, in some way, make it known. It may be the case, no candid man and believer in revelation and divine providence will deny it to be possible, that this dispensation with regard to this colored race will continue for long ages to come, in the form of bondage. That they are now under a curse, and have been so for centuries, is apparent. When the curse is to be repealed, God only knows. I like to cherish the idea that some development is to be made of immense sources of wealth in Africa, that we have an embryo nation in the midst of us, whom God has been educating for a great enterprise on that continent, and when, like California and Australia, the voice of the Lord shall shake the wilderness of Africa, and open its doors, it may appear that American slavery has been the school in which God has been preparing a people to take it into their possession.
"'EMIGRATION, then,' said he, 'is the second of the three ways in which this problem of slavery may have its solution.
"'In preparation for this, I say, God may keep these Africans here much longer. He may need more territory on which to educate still larger numbers; and we may see Him extending slavery still further in our land and on our continent. So that there may be one other way in which the purposes of God will manifest themselves with regard to the colored race here, and that is by EXTENSION.
"'It may be that still greater portions of this land and continent are to be used, for ages to come, in the multiplication of the black race. I feel entirely calm with regard to the subject, believing that God has a plan in all this, and that it is wise and benevolent toward all who fear Him. While our relation to this people remains, the law of love, the golden rule, must preside over it. That does not require us to place the blacks on a level with us in our parlors, nor in our halls of legislation; and there may be disabilities properly attaching to them which, though they seem hard, are the inevitable consequence of a dependent, inferior condition. All this, however, has a benign effect upon us, if we will but act in a Christian manner, to make us gentle, kind, generous; and when this is the case, no state of society is happier than ours. Let Jacobinical principles, such as some of our Northern brethren inculcate, prevail here, and they at once destroy this benevolent relation. This relation will improve under the influence of the Gospel; it has wonderfully improved since Jefferson's day; and though the time may be long deferred, we shall no doubt see this colored race fulfilling some great purpose in the earth. I trust that our Northern friends will not precipitate things and destroy both whites and blacks; for a servile war would be one of extermination. Many of the Northern people I fear would acquiesce in it, provided especially, that we should be the exterminated party. This is clear, if words and actions are to be fairly interpreted.'
"'The colored people here, as a race,' said a planter, 'are under obligations to us as partakers in our civilization. No matter, for the present, how their ancestors came here;--that does not at all affect their present obligations to us for benefits received. Now it is not a matter of course that, having been thus benefited by us, they are at liberty to go away when they please. This we assert respecting them as a whole. Are not the blacks, as a race, so indebted to us that we ought to be consulted as to the time and manner of their departure? We say that they are. They do not morally possess the right, we think, to sever the relation when they please.'
"Said an elderly, venerable man, 'A white woman in the cars, in Pennsylvania, begged me to hold her infant child for her, while she fetched something for it. She ran off, leaving the child to me. My wife and I took the child home, and have been at pains and expense with it. I question the child's right to say, whenever it pleases, Sir, I propose to leave you. I have invested a good deal in him, have increased his value by his being with me, and he has no right to run off with it.'
"'But,' said the physician, 'how long should you feel that you have a right to his services?'
"'I will answer that,' said the gentleman, 'if you will say whether my general principle be correct. Have I, or have I not acquired just what all intelligent slave-holders call "property" in that youth, that is, a right to his services,--not dominion over his soul, nor a right to abuse him, nor in any way to injure him, but to use his services. Have I not acquired that right?'
"'I think you have,' said the physician, 'but with certain limitations.'
"'The limitations,' said Mr. W., 'certainly are not the wishes, nor caprices, nor the inclinations, of the boy;--do you think so?'
"'I agree with you,' said he.
"'That is all I contend for,' said Mr. W.
"'But,' said the physician, 'where is your title-deed from your Maker to own these fellow-creatures? Trace their history back, and they are here by fraud and violence.'
"'Thank you, Sir,' said Mr. W., 'that is just the case with my Penn. I came into possession of him through fraud and violence! I did not sin when he was thrown upon my hands; though I confess I said, he was--what we call slavery--an incubus. My right and title to the boy I have never been able to discover in any handwriting; the mother, surely, had no right to impose the child upon me; Providence, however, placed it in my hand. I might have given it immediate emancipation through the window, or at the next stopping place; or, I might have left the child on its mother's vacant seat, declining the trust; but I felt disposed to do as I have done.'
"'Now,' said the physician, 'will you please tell me, Sir, how long you feel at liberty to possess this boy as a satisfaction to you for your pains and expense?'
"'In the first place,' said Mr. W., 'I have a right to transfer my guardianship over him to another, if circumstances make it necessary. In doing so, I must be governed not by selfish motives, but by a benevolent regard to his welfare, allowing that he is not unreasonable and wicked. If when he comes of lawful age, he is judged to be still in need of guardianship, or it is expedient for the good of all concerned that he should be my ward indefinitely, the law makes me, if I choose, his guardian, with certain rights and obligations. Even if he could legally claim his freedom at his majority, circumstances might be such that all would say he was under moral obligations to remain with me. If I abuse him, he must consider before God how far it is his duty to bear affliction, and submit to oppression. There are cases in which none would condemn him, should he escape. But the rule is to "abide." He has not, under all the circumstances of our relation to each other, a right to walk off at pleasure.'
"The company agreed in this, though the physician made no remark. We conversed further on the antipathy of the Free States to a large increase among them of the colored population, ungrateful and perfidious Kansas, even, withholding civil and political equality from them; their condition in Canada; their relation to the whites in every state where they have gone to reside; and we concluded that the South was the best home for the black man,--that home to become better and better in proportion as the law of Christian benevolence prevailed. We agreed that if the South could be relieved of Northern interference, the condition of the colored people would be greatly improved, in many respects; especially, we regretted that now we did not have an enlightened public sentiment at the North to help the best part of the Southern people in effecting reformations and improving the laws and regulations. Now, the Northern influence is wholly nugatory, or positively adverse. The opinions and feelings of calm and candid neighbors and friends have great influence. This the South does not enjoy. The North is her passionate reprover; she is held to be, by many, her avowed enemy. In resistance, and in retaliation, compromises are broken, and every political advantage is grasped at in self-defence, by the South. Recrimination ensues, and civil war is threatened. The only remedy is the entire abandonment by the North of interference with this subject; but this cannot take place so long as the Northern people labor under their doctrinal error that it is a sin to hold property in man. Here is the root of the difficulty. We agreed that if reflecting people at the North would adopt Scriptural views on that point, peace would soon ensue; for all the discussions of the supposed or real evils in slavery, which would then be the sole objects of animadversion, would elicit truth, and tend to good. If the South felt that the North were truly her friend, they would both be found cooperating for the improvement and elevation of the colored race. Every form of oppression and selfishness would feel the withering rebuke of a just and enlightened universal public sentiment. But now that the quarrel runs high as to the sinfulness and wrongfulness of the relation itself, there is nothing for the South to do but to stand by their arms.
"One gentleman made some remarks which interested and instructed me more than anything that was said. He confessed that the whole subject of the relation of master and servant,--in a word, slavery, was, for a long time, a sore trouble to him, because he constantly found himself searching for his right, his warrant to hold his slaves. At last he resolved to study the Bible on the subject. He naturally turned to the last instructions of the Word of God with regard to it, and in Paul's injunctions to masters and servants, he found relief. There he perceived that God recognized the relationships of slavery, that the golden rule was enjoined, not to dissolve the relation, but to make it benevolent to all concerned. He found the Almighty establishing the relation of master and servant among his own chosen people, and decreeing that certain persons might be servants forever, being, as he himself terms them 'an inheritance forever.'
"Hereupon, he said, his troubles ceased. He gave up his speculations and casuistry, and concluded to take things as he found them and to make them better. He became more than ever the friend and patron of his servants, rendered to them, to the best of his ability that which was just and equal, felt in buying servants and in having them born in his household, somewhat as pastors of churches, he supposed, feel in receiving new members to be trained up for usefulness, here, and for heaven. He said that he had a hundred and seventy-five servants, and that he doubted whether there was a happier, or more virtuous, or more religious community anywhere.
"'But,' said the young Northern lady, who had recently come to be a teacher in the family where we visited, 'what will become of them when you die?'
"'Why, Miss,' said he, 'what will become of any household when the parents die? The truth is,' said he, 'I believe in a covenant-keeping God. I make a practice of praying for my servants, by name. I keep a list of them, and I read it, sometimes, when I read my Bible, and on the Sabbath, and on days set apart for religious services. I have asked God to be the God of my servants forever. I shall meet them at the bar of God, and I trust with a good conscience. Many of them have become Christians.'
"'Do you ever sell them?' said she.
"'I have parted with some of my servants to families,' he replied, 'where I knew that they would fare as well as with me. This was always with their consent, except in two or three cases of inveterate wickedness, when, instead of sending the fellows to the state-prison for life, as you would do at the North, I sold them to go to Red River, and was as willing to see them marched off, handcuffed, as you ever were to see villains in the custody of the officers. But had any of your good people from the North met them, an article would have appeared, perhaps, in all your papers, telling of the heart-rending spectacle,--three human beings, in a slave-coffle! going, they knew not where, into hopeless bondage! And had they escaped and fled to Boston, the tide of philanthropy there, in many benevolent bosoms, would have received new strength in the grateful accession of these worshipful fugitives from Southern cruelty. Whereas, all which love and kindness, and every form of indulgence, instruction, and discipline, tempered with mercy, could do, had been used with them in vain. One was a thief, the pest of the county, and had earned long years in a penitentiary; but slavery, you see, kept him at liberty! Another was brutally cruel to animals; another was the impersonation of laziness. Two of them would have helped John Brown, no doubt, had he come here, and they might have gained a Bunker Hill name, at the North, in an insurrection here, as champions of liberty.'
"This led to some remarks about the great economy which there is in the Southern mode of administering discipline and correction on the spot, and at once, instead of filling jails and houses of correction with felons. But to dwell on this would lead me too far into a new branch of our subject.
"This planter asked the young lady, the school-teacher, if tare and tret were in her arithmetic? Upon her saying 'yes, in the older books,' he told her that there was, seemingly, a good deal of tare and tret in God's providence, when accomplishing his great purposes; and that to fix the mind inordinately on evils and miseries incident to a great system and forgetting the main design, was like a man of business being so absorbed by the deductions and waste in a great staple as to forego the trade. He said that he thought the Northern mind ciphered too much in that part of moral arithmetic as to slavery.
"A very excellent gentleman from the District of Columbia who had held an important office under government, gave us some valuable information. He said that the extinction of slavery in New England was not because the institution was deemed to be immoral or sinful, but from other considerations and circumstances. It was abolished in Massachusetts, without doubt, by a clause, in the bill of rights, copied from the Declaration of Independence. In Berkshire, one township, he believed, sued another for the support and maintenance of a pauper slave, and the Supreme Court decided that the bill of rights abolished slavery. The question was as incidental, he said, as was the question in the Dred Scott case which the United States Supreme Court decided. This Massachusetts case was previous to any reports of decisions, and he had some doubt as to the form in which the suit was brought, but was sure as to the decision. The question as to abolishing slavery was not submitted to the people, nor to a Convention, nor to the Legislature.
"I was specially interested in his account of the way in which the slave-trade was prohibited by our excellent sister, Connecticut. It was done by a section prohibiting the importation of slaves by sea or land, preceded by the following preamble:--'And whereas the increase of slaves in this state is injurious to the poor, and inconvenient, Be it therefore enacted.' Another section of the same statute, he said, was preceded by the following words:--'And whereas sound policy requires that the abolition of slavery should be effected, as soon as may be consistent with the rights of individuals, and the public safety and welfare, Be it enacted,' etc. Then follows the provision that all black and mulatto children, born in slavery, in that state, after the first of March, 1784, shall be free at twenty-five years of age. Selling slaves, to be carried out of the state, was not prohibited before May, 1792; thus allowing more than eight years to the owners of slaves in Connecticut to sell their slaves to Southern purchasers! 'There seems to me,' he said, 'no evidence of superior humanity in this; nor was it repentance for slavery as a sin.' He thought that if we feel compelled, by our superior conscientiousness, to require any duty of the South, all that decency will allow us to demand is, that she tread in our steps.
"'I think,' said a planter, 'that if pity is due from one to the other, the South owes the larger debt to the North. There needs to be a great reformation, namely, The Gradual Emancipation of the Northern Mind from "Anti-slavery" Error.'
"'Our English friends, in their zeal against American slavery,' said a young lawyer, 'seem to forget that the English government, at the Peace of Utrecht, agreed to furnish Spain with four thousand negroes annually for thirty years.'
"'Poor human nature!' said the Judge. 'What should we all do, if we had not the sins of others to repent of and bewail?'
"There was a strong friend of temperance in the company from a north-western state. Travelling in the South for pleasure, some time ago, he was immediately struck with the comparative absence of intemperance among the slaves. On learning that the laws forbid the sale of intoxicating drink to them, and thinking of four millions of people in this land as delivered, in a great degree, from the curse of drunkenness, he says that he exclaimed: 'Pretty well for the "sum of all villanies." The class of people in the United States best defended against drunkenness are the slaves!' Some admonished him that the slaves did get liquor, and that white men ventured to tempt them. 'I don't care for that,' said he; 'of course, there are exceptions; the "sum of all villanies" is a Temperance Society!'
"A Northern gentleman, travelling through the South, said, 'As to the feelings of the North respecting a possible insurrection, I am satisfied, since visiting in different parts of the South, that a very common apprehension with us, respecting your liability to trouble from this source, is exaggerated by fancy.
"'We have a theoretical idea that you must be dwelling, as we commonly hear it said, with a volcano under your feet. Very many regard your slaves as a race of noble spirits, conscious of wrong, and burning with suppressed indignation, which is ready to break out at every chance. They think of you at the North as having guns and pistols and spears all about you, ready for use at any moment. But when I spend a night at your plantations, the owner and I the only white males, the wife and seven or eight young children having us for their only defenders against the seventy or hundred blacks, who are all about us in the quarters, the idea of danger has really never occurred to me; because my knowledge of the people has previously disarmed me of fear.'
"'Emissaries, white and black,' said a planter, 'can, make us trouble; but my belief is that we could live here to the end of time with these colored people, and be subject to fewer cases of insubordination by far than your corporations at the North suffer from in strikes. Your people, generally, have no proper idea of the black man's nature. God seems to have given him docility and gentleness, that he may be a slave till the time comes for him to be something else. So He has given the Jews their peculiarities, fitting them for His purposes with regard to them; and to the Irish laborer He has given his willingness and strength to dig, making him the builder of your railways. If we fulfil our trust, with regard to the blacks, according to the spirit and rules of the New Testament, I believe God will be our defender, and that all his attributes will be employed to maintain our authority over this people for his own great purposes. We have nothing to fear except from white fanatics, North and South.'
"'I have no idea,' said the Judge, 'of dooming every individual of this colored race to unalterable servitude. I am in favor of putting them in the way of developing any talent which any of them, from time to time, may exhibit. More of this, I am sure, would be done by us, if we were freed from the necessity of defending ourselves against Northern assaults upon our social system, involving, as these assaults do, peril to life, and to things dearer than life. But I see tenfold greater evils in all the plans of emancipation which have ever been proposed than in the present state of things.'
"The pastor of the place, who was present, had not taken much part in the discussion, though he had not purposely kept aloof from it. He was Southern born, inherited slaves, had given them their liberty one by one, and had recently returned from the North, where he had been to see two of them--the last of his household--embark as hired servants with families who were to travel in Europe.
"Some of us asked him about his visit to the North. Said he, 'I went to church one day, and was enjoying the devotional services, when all at once the minister broke out in prayer for the abolition of slavery. He presented the South before God as "oppressors," and prayed that they might at once repent, and "break every yoke," and "let the oppressed go free." I took him to be an immediate emancipationist, perhaps peculiar in his views. But in the afternoon I went into another church, and in prayer the minister began to pray "for all classes and conditions of men among us." I was glad to see, as I thought, charity beginning at home. But the next sentence took in our whole land; and the next was a downright swoop upon slavery; so that I regarded his previous petitions merely as spiral movements toward the South. If the good man's petitions had been heard, woe to him and to the North, and to the slaves, to say nothing of ourselves.
"'I stopped after service, and, without at first introducing myself, I asked him if he was in the habit of praying, as he had done to-day, for slave-holders. He said yes. I asked him if it was a general practice at the North. He thought it was. I inquired if he would have every slave liberated to-morrow, if he could effect it. "By all means," said he.--"Would they be better off?" said I.--"Undoubtedly they would," said he. "But that is not the question. Do right, if the heavens fall."--"What would become of them?" said I.--"Hire them," said he; "pay them wages; let husbands and wives live together; abolish auction-blocks, and"--"But," said I, "some of the very best of men in the world, at the South, are decidedly of the opinion that such emancipation would be the most barbarous thing that could be devised for the slaves."--"Are you a slave-holder?" said he.--"I was," said I; "but I have liberated my slaves, and I am in your city to see the last two of my servants sail with your fellow-citizens ---- and ----" (naming them).--"You don't say so!" said he. "What did you liberate them for?"--"I could not take proper care of them," said I, "situated as I am."--"But," said he, "did you do right in letting them go to sea as you did? One of them will get no good with that man for a master. I would rather be your dog than his child."--"Then," said I, "you have 'oppressors' at the North, it seems."--"Well," said he, "some of our people are not as good as they ought to be."--"It is so with us at the South," said I.--"Preach for me next Sabbath, Sir," said he.--"Are you going to stay over?"--"Why," said I, "my dear Sir, would you and your people like to hear a man preach for you whom you, if you made the prayer, would first pray for as an 'oppressor?'"--"But you are not an oppressor," said he.--"But I am in favor of what you call 'oppression,'" said I.--"One thing I could pray for with you," said I.--"What is that?" said he.--"Break every yoke," said I. "This I pray for always. But how many 'yokes,'" said I, "do you suppose there are at the South?"--"I forget the exact number of the slaves," said he, in the most artless manner.'
"Hereupon the company broke out into great merriment. After they had enjoyed their laughter awhile, my Northern lady-friend said, 'Did you preach for him?'
"'Yes,' said the pastor; 'and prayed for him too.
"'Walking through the streets of that place in the evening, I saw evidence that no minister nor citizen there was justified in casting the first stone at the South for immorality. I lifted up my heart in thanks to God that my sons were not exposed to the temptations of a Northern city. Being in the United States District Court there, several times, I had some revelations also with regard to the treatment and the condition of seamen in some Northern ships, which led me to the conclusion which I have often drawn,--that poor human nature is about the same, North and South.
"'So, when I conducted the services of public worship, I prayed for that city and for the young people, and alluded to the temptations which I had witnessed; and I referred also to mariners, and prayed for masters and officers of vessels who had such authority over the welfare and the lives of seamen; and I prayed that Christians in both sections of our land might pray for each other, considering each themselves, lest they also be tempted, and that they might not be self-righteous and accusatory; and that our eye might not be so filled with the evils of other sections of the land as not to see those which were at home.
"'After service the good brother said, "I suppose you referred in your prayer to my praying against the South, as you call it. Well," said he, confidentially, "the truth is, some of our people make this thing their religion, and they will not abide a man who does not pray against slavery." Some gentlemen, with their ladies, stopped to speak with me. One shook me by the hand most cordially. "We are glad to see our good Southern brethren," said he; "thankful to hear you preach so, and pray so, too," said he, with an additional shake and a significant look, while the rest were equally cordial with their assent. One of the gentlemen took me home with him. "This is most of it politics," said he, "and newspaper trade, this anti-slavery feeling. The people generally are not fanatics; they are kind and humane, and their sensibilities are touched by tales of distress."--"Especially Southern," said I. "Last eve I read in your papers four outrages which happened within fifteen miles of this city, and two in your city, which equalled, to say the least, in barbarity anything that ever comes to my knowledge among our people."
"'The next Sabbath, as I have since learned, my good brother was very comprehensive, discriminating, and impartial in his supplications. He really distinguished between those at the South who "oppress" their fellow-men, and those who "remember them that are in bonds as bound with them." But,' said the pastor, 'the most of those who use that latter expression at the North really think the Apostle had slaves, as a class, in mind. I have no such belief. I suppose that he referred to persecuted Christians, suffering imprisonment for their religion, and to all afflicted persons.
"'My landlord said to me,' he continued, '"They tell us you are afraid of free discussion at the South, that you are afraid to have your slaves hear some things, lest it should excite them to insurrection. How is this?"
"'I told him that the slaves, being the lower order of society with us, were not capable of so discriminating in that which promiscuous strangers should see fit to say to them as to make it safe to have them listen to every harangue or to every one who should set himself up to teach. "Of course," said I, "there are liabilities and dangers in our state of society. We must use prudence and caution. We have some loose powder in our magazine. No one denies this. What if one who was rebuked for carrying an open lamp into the magazine of a ship, should reproach the captain with being 'an enemy to the light,' and as 'loving darkness rather than light'?"
"'While at the North,' said he, 'I read Mr. Buckle on civilization, and I reflected upon the subject. Being in a great assembly, once or twice, listening to abolitionist orators, lay and clerical, and hearing their vile assaults on personal character, their vulgar and reckless ridicule of fifteen States of our Union, their affected, oracular way of saying the most trite things as though they were aphorisms, but reminding me of the piles of short stuff which you see round a saw-mill, and hearing the great throng applaud and shout, I asked myself whether we have really made any decided advances in civilization since the Hebrew Commonwealth. I really doubted whether those orators could have collected an audience of Hebrews even in the wilderness. Under the "Judges," the people were, at times, low enough to enjoy such drivelling. The willingness at the North to hear these men, and to applaud them, gave me a low idea of the state of society.'
"'But,' said I, 'confess now that you found specimens of cultivated life there such as you never saw surpassed.'
"'I did,' said he, 'many times. And I must tell you,' he added, 'of my enjoyment in looking on your pastures in autumn,--the sun shining aslant upon them of an afternoon,--and in noticing what shades of scarlet and crimson were given to the picture by the whortleberry leaves, which, I found, contributed most to the coloring of the landscape. I also saw a peculiarity of the whortleberry's flower, which, when stung by an insect sometimes swells to twenty-five times its natural size, and becomes a fungus.'
"'Now,' said I, 'why not apply this,--perhaps you were intending to do so,--and say that society at the North is generally like our whortleberry pastures in autumn, which pleased you so much, with here and there a fungus, made by the sting of radicalism.'
"A planter's Northern wife said, 'I should like to move the adoption of that simile.'
"'We will have it so,' said the Judge to me, 'if the lady and you tell us that we must.'
"'A fungus,' said I, 'gets more attention from one half of the people who go into the woods, than all the pure and beautiful garniture of the pastures.'
"The ladies of our company having been rallied for not having done their part in the conversation, and also, of course, having been complimented for keeping silence so long, the wife of one of the planters, a Northern lady, made this remark that considering how God, in his providence, had made such provision for the welfare of the human family through slavery in our land, and, in doing it, had shown mercy and salvation to so many hundreds of thousands of Africans, she thought it both ungrateful and narrow-minded in people anywhere to confine all their thoughts to the incidental evils of the slaves. She said that in the North she was not an abolitionist, but on coming to the South and finding things so different from that which her fancy had pictured, she had concluded to be very charitable toward the most of her Northern friends who she said were no more in the dark than she herself had been all her days, from reading newspapers and tales which had concealed one whole side of slavery from the view of Northern people. She added that she preferred life at the North without the blacks, but had found more disinterested benevolence toward them in one year at the South than she had charity to believe existed in the hearts of all the good people at the North toward them, counting in even the professional benevolence of the 'friends of the slave.'
"After refreshments, the pastor was called upon to read the Scriptures, and to offer prayer. He read the fifteenth chapter of Revelation. Never can I forget the impression which one of the verses in that chapter made upon me, in connection with some of the thoughts awakened by our conversation about the sovereignty of God as displayed in his dark and awful dispensations towards races, nations, and men: 'And the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles.' 'Those who are in any way associated with the administration of God's great judgments towards their fellow-men,' said he, 'have need of special purity; and their honor should be like the untarnished gold.'
"This pastor told me, during the repast, that one day, returning suddenly from his study in the church just after breakfast, to the house of one of the gentlemen present, with whom he lived, and who was one of the wealthiest men in the South, and passing through the parlor to get a book, he found the room darkened, and the lady of the house kneeling in prayer with her servants. He of course withdrew at once, but he learned afterward from one of the 'slaves,' that it was the lady's daily custom. He often thought of that incident when reading Northern religious newspapers and noticing their lamentations over 'slave-holding professors.'"
* * * * *
So much for my Southern visit.
Mrs. North said that in our next conversation she would suggest that we consider the relation of Christianity to Slavery. I told her that I had some night thoughts on that subject, which I would with pleasure submit, at another time.
As the rain continued, Mr. North and I resorted to the wood-pile in the shed for exercise, till dinner-time, Mrs. North following us to the door, and charging us not to converse upon this subject till she should be present.


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  CHAPTER 38: DISCUSSION IN PHILIMON'S CHURCH AT THE RETURN OF ONESIMUS
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CHAPTER IX. DISCUSSION IN PHILEMON'S CHURCH AT THE RETURN OF ONESIMUS. "My equal
will he be again Down in that cold, oblivious gloom, Where all the prostrate
ranks of men Crowd without fellowship,--the tomb." JAMES MONTGOMERY. "I will now
relate to you," said I, as we resumed our conversation, "the thoughts which came
to me one night as I lay awake meditating on this subject. I wrote them down the
next day. "The subject in our conversation which suggested them was, The
relation of Christianity to slavery. * * * * * "About the year A.D. 64, two men,
travellers from Rome, entered the city of Colosse, in Phrygia. Asia Minor, both
of them the bearers of letters from the Apostle Paul, then a prisoner at Rome.
"A Christian Church had been gathered at Colosse. Its pastor was probably
Archippus. Some think that Epaphras was his colleague. This church, according to
Dr. Lardner and others, was most probably gathered by the Apostle Paul himself.
Mount Cadmus rose behind the city, with its almost perpendicular side, and a
huge chasm in the mountain was the outlet of a torrent which flowed into the
river Lycus, on which the city was built, standing not far from the junction of
this river with the Moeander. "One of the two men who bore these letters was a
slave. His name was Onesimus. He robbed his master, Philemon, of Colosse, fled
to Rome, heard Paul preach, was converted, and now by the Apostle is sent back
to his master with a letter, in charge of Tychicus, who, with this Onesimus, was
the bearer of a letter to the Colossian Church. "Let us attend the
church-meeting. The pastor, Archippus, presides. Epaphras is at Rome. "What an
interesting company do we behold as we sit near the pastor's table, in full view
of the audience! The inhabitants of this place were noted for the worship of
Bacchus, and Cybele, mother of the gods; hence her name, Phrygia Mater. Every
kind of licentious language and actions was practised in the worship of these
deities, accompanied with a frantic rage called orgies, from the Greek word for
rage. This was a part of their religious worship. From among such people,
converts had been made to Christianity, together with some who had been turned
from Judaism. "The letter from the Apostle Paul is brought in and is laid on the
pastor's table, and some account is given of the manner in which it was
received. The letter is read. It refers the Colossians, at the close, to the
bearers, for further information and instructions. 'All my state shall Tychicus
declare unto you, who is a beloved brother and a faithful minister and
fellow-servant in the Lord. Whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that
he might know your estate, and comfort your hearts. With Onesimus, a faithful
and beloved brother, who is one of you. They shall make known unto you all
things which are done here.' "Tychicus relates his story, and, when he has
finished, Philemon, a member of the Church, addresses the meeting. He was
evidently a man of distinction in that community, as we infer from the large
number of persons in his household, (ver. 2,) his liberality to poor Christians,
(ver. 5, 7,) and from the marked respect and deference paid to him by the
Apostle. He also had received a letter from the Apostle, and he asks leave to
read it. "He then tells them that Onesimus is present; that he has been sent
back by the Apostle Paul, and with the full, cordial consent of Onesimus
himself. He would ask permission for Onesimus to say a few words. "'Come
hither,' says the pastor, 'and tell us what the Lord hath done for thee, and how
he hath had mercy on thee.' "'Let me wash the saints' feet,' says Onesimus, 'but
I am not worthy to teach in the church.' "He proceeds to tell them, in full, of
his escape from his master, after robbing him; of his meeting the Apostle at
Rome; of his conversion; of his voluntary return to spend his days, if such be
the will of God, as the servant of Philemon. "The account of these proceedings
reaches Laodicea, not far distant, to which place Paul had also sent a letter,
and the Colossians, agreeably to the Apostle's charge, exchange letters, and no
doubt the letter to Philemon is also read to the Church which is at Laodicea.
"Whereupon, we will suppose, a controversy at once springs up. There had already
appeared in this region of Phrygia, as we infer from the Epistle to the
Colossians, serious errors, among them a kind of angel worship and asceticism,
or abstinence from things lawful, and a state of things called Gnosis, (Eng.
knowledge,) or Gnosticism, a pervading spirit of worldly wisdom, science,
philosophy, which treated the simplicity which was in Christ as too rudimental
and plain for the human mind, and therefore sought to furnish it with
speculations and mysticism, to gratify its desires for a more extensive
spiritual knowledge than it seemed to many of them was provided for by
Christianity. "Among the speculations and theories of those days, we will
suppose that the idea began to prevail that Christianity was inconsistent with
holding a fellow-being in bondage. A motion is made in the Laodicean Church that
a committee be appointed to confer with the Colossian Church on the return of
Onesimus into slavery. Such a motion would have found ready advocates in the
Church at Laodicea, if, as at a later day, they were 'neither cold nor hot' in
religion; in which case any collateral subjects wholly or partly secular, would
have a charm for them. These supplied that lack of warmth which they were
conscious of as to religion; their church-meeting, no doubt, seemed to them
dull, unless a subject was introduced which gave opportunity for discussion, and
for things which gendered debate, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil
surmisings. "The result of the conference on the part of the Laodicean Committee
with the Colossian Church was, that a general meeting was appointed to discuss
the subject of the return of Onesimus into slavery. It was a private session of
members of the two churches. They claimed the privilege as Christians of
discussing any question relating to the government and the laws, taking care
that no spies were present; still, with all their precautions, false brethren
made trouble for them by giving private information to the civil authorities
against some of their number, whom they disliked; and this led to some
oppression and persecution. "But the meeting was fully attended. Two members of
the church who were faithful servants to slave-holding brethren were set to
guard the doors. The slaves were allowed to be present and listen to the
discussion. This was carried after much debate, some contending that it would
expose the Christians to just reprehension from the civil authorities; and
others maintaining that it would do the slaves good to hear such doctrines
advanced and enforced as would be quoted from the Apostle relating to masters
and servants. "The discussion was opened by a brother from Laodicea, an
office-bearer in the church, a private citizen, devoted to study, and an author
of some repute. He was formerly odist at the festivals of Cybele. His pieces
were collected and published under the title of 'Phrygian Canticles.' His name
was Olamus. "He took the ground that Christianity abrogated slavery. He quoted
the well known words of Paul, so familiar to all who had heard him preach: 'In
Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free;
but all are one in Christ.' 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath
sent me to preach deliverance to the captives, the opening of the prison doors
to them that are bound.' 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do
you even so to them.' "He maintained that to own a fellow-creature was
inconsistent with this law of equal love; that it was giving sanction to a
feature of barbarism; that, practically, slavery was the sum of all villanies;
an enormous wrong; a stupendous injustice. "If any one should reply that the
Mosaic institutions recognized slavery, he had one brief answer:--'which things
are done away in Christ.' Moses permitted this and some other things for the
hardness of their hearts. Polygamy was allowed by Moses, not by Christianity;
its spirit is against it; the bishop of a church must be 'the husband of one
wife;' slavery is certainly none the less contrary to the spirit of the gospel.
"But inasmuch as it is inexpedient to dissolve at once, and in all cases, the
relation of master and slave, he contended that while the relation continued, it
should be regulated by the laws which God himself once prescribed. Every seventh
year should be a year of release; every fiftieth, year should be a jubilee. And
as to fugitives, he would refer his brethren to that Divine injunction: 'Thou
shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master
unto thee; he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he
shall choose, in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not
oppress him.' "That a slave having escaped from his master could not rightfully
be sent back into bondage, was evident from these considerations: "All men are
born free and equal, and have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. If a slave sees fit to walk off, or run off, or ride off
on his master's beast, or sail off in his master's boat, he has a perfect right
to do so. Slavery is violence; every man may resist violence offered to his
person, except under process of law; the person cannot be taken except for
crime, or debt, or in war; every man owns his body and soul; the person cannot
become merchandise, except for the three causes above named, which he
acknowledged were justifiable causes of involuntary servitude at present. But to
forcibly seize a weaker man, or race, and hold them in bondage he declared to be
in violation of the laws of nature, and contrary to the Christian religion. "If
it should be replied that Paul the Apostle countenanced slavery by sending back
Onesimus, he would answer, that Paul was a Jew, and was not yet freed wholly
from Jewish practices and associations of ideas. Gnosticism has supervened upon
the rudimental childhood of spiritual truth. He believed in progress. It was
contrary to the instinct of human nature to send back a poor fugitive into
bondage, and he was glad for one that he lived in an age when the innate moral
sentiments, under the lucid teachings of our more transcendental scholars were
becoming more and more the all-sufficient guide in the affairs of life. He
would, therefore, publicly disclaim his allegiance to the teachings of the
Apostle Paul, if, upon reflection, Paul should insist that he was right in
remanding Onesimus to be Philemon's property 'forever;' it was well enough that
he should be sent back to restore what he had taken by theft, provided Philemon
would immediately release him; otherwise, to steal from Philemon was doing no
more than Philemon had done to him, in taking away that liberty which is the
birthright of every human being; and Onesimus probably stole merely to assist
his escape. He was justifiable in doing so. "If one should insist that there can
be no intrinsic wrong in holding a fellow-being as property because God allowed
Hebrews to sell themselves, and in certain cases to be servants forever, and
directed the Israelites to buy servants of the heathen round about them, who
should be an inheritance to the children of the Israelites, he would simply say
either that the whole pentateuch which contained such a libel on the divine
character, is thereby proved to be a forgery, or, that if the pentateuch is to
be received, it only proves that in condescension to a race of freebooters who
were employed, as the Israelites were, in bloody wars of extermination, slavery
was allowed them, to prevent, perhaps, worse evils, and in consistency with
their dark-minded, semi-barbarous condition. In this enlightened age when Greece
and Rome had shed superior light on human relationships and obligations, and
especially since Christ had promulgated the golden rule, the idea that man could
own a fellow-creature was so preposterous that he would be an infidel, nay, he
would go farther, he would be an atheist, rather than believe it. Our moral
instincts are our guide. They are the highest source of evidence that there is a
God, and they are a perfect indication as to what God and his requirements
should be. He was for passing a vote of disapprobation at the act of Paul the
Apostle in sending back Onesimus into bondage. Tell me not, said he, that the
Apostle calls him 'a brother beloved,' and 'one of you;' these honeyed phrases
are but coatings to a deadly poison. Slavery is evil, and only evil and that
continually. Disguise it as you will, Philemon holds property in Onesimus. By
the laws of Phrygia, he could put Onesimus to death for running away. He
deplored the act as a heavy blow at Christianity. It would countervail the
teachings of the Apostle. He sincerely hoped that the Epistle to Philemon would
not be preserved; for should it be collected hereafter, as possibly it may,
among Paul's letters, unborn ages might make it an apology for slavery, it would
abate the hatred of the world against the sum of all villanies. He would even be
in favor of a vote requesting Philemon to give Onesimus his liberty at once,
even without his consent, sending him back, with this most unwise and unblest
epistle to Philemon, to Paul, who says that he 'would have retained him,' but
would not without Philemon's consent. He did hope that the brethren would speak
their minds, be open-mouthed, and not be like dumb dogs. For his part he wanted
an anti-slavery religion. He acknowledged that the truths of the Gospel needed
the stimulant of freedom to give them life and power. "His remarks evidently
produced a great sensation, for a variety of reasons, as we may well suppose. "A
man took the floor in opposition to this Laodicean brother. He was a Jewish
convert, a member of the Colossian Church. His name was Theodotus. Born a Jew,
he had renounced his religion and became a Greek Sophist, practised law at Scio,
and heard Paul at Mars Hill, where, with Dionysius the Areopagite, with whom he
was visiting, he was converted. He had established himself at Colosse, in the
practice of law. He was unusually tall for a man of his descent, had beautifully
regular Jewish features, and was a captivating speaker. "He said that they had
'heard strange things to-day. If they are true, we have no foundation underneath
our feet. Every man's moral sentiments, it seems, are to be his guide. Where,
then, is our common appeal? For his part he believed that if God be our heavenly
Father, he has given his children an authentic book, a writing, for their guide,
unless he prefers to speak personally with them, or with their representatives.
When he ceased to speak by the prophets, he spoke to us by his Son; and now that
his Son is ascended, I believe,' said he, 'that inspired men are appointed to
guide us, and seeing that they cannot reach all by their living voice, I believe
that the evangelists and apostles are to furnish us with writings which shall be
inspired disclosures of God's will and our duty. The Old Testament is as truly
God's word as ever; Christ declared that not one jot or tittle should pass from
it, till all be fulfilled. Some of it is fulfilled, in him, the end of the
types; parts of it refer to local and temporary things; all which is not local
and temporary is still binding upon us. At least, the spirit of its laws is
benevolent and wise. Damascus and its scenes are too fresh in the memories of
the brethren to need that I should argue the inspiration of the Apostle to the
Gentiles. His miracles are known to us. Nay, what miracles are we ourselves,
reclaimed from the service of the devil, once the worshippers of Bacchus and of
our Phrygian mother; now, clothed, and in our right minds. The Apostle claims to
speak and act by divine authority. We must question everything, if we set aside
this claim. "'I maintain,' said he, 'that the Apostle Paul regards the holding a
fellow-creature as property to be consistent with Christianity. To prevent all
misunderstanding, however, let me declare that he insists on the golden rule as
the law of slave-holding, as of everything else; that he discountenances
oppression, that he warns and threatens us with regard to it; and that he
considers slave-holding as consistent with the Christian character and happiness
of master and slave. "'In the very Epistle just received by our Church, and by
the hands of Tychicus and Onesinius himself, from the Apostle, we find these
words: "Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not
with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God; and
whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men, knowing
that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve
the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he
hath done; and there is no respect of persons. Masters, give unto your servants
that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven."
"'Where, in this, is there a word that countenances the wrongfulness of being a
slave, or of holding men as slaves? He directs all his exhortations to the
duties which are to be performed in the relation, and he leaves the relation as
he finds it. He does not enjoin slavery; he treats it as something which belongs
to society, to government, and he leaves Christianity to regulate it as
circumstances shall make it proper. If any one says that the Apostle was afraid
to meddle with it, I reply, that there was never anything yet that Paul was
afraid to meddle with, if it was right to do so. He "meddled" with Diana of the
Ephesians and her craftsmen; he "meddled" with the "beasts" there; he "meddled"
with idolatry on Mars Hill at Athens, I being witness; he has been beaten,
stoned, imprisoned, and is now the second time before Nero for his life. Afraid
to "meddle" with slavery! I am ashamed of the man who makes the suggestion. He
who thinks it, has never yet understood him. "'Now, where in all his teachings
has he ever intimated that it is wrong to hold property in man? Nowhere; I
repeat it, nowhere. But is he ignorant of the nature of slavery? We all know
what has lately happened at Rome, in connection with slavery. The very year that
Paul arrives at Rome, the prefect of the city, Pedanius Secundus, was murdered
by his slave; and agreeably to the laws of slavery all the slaves belonging to
the prefect, a great number, women and children among them, were put to death
indiscriminately, though innocent of the crime.[A] Such is slavery under the
Apostle's eye; and yet'-- [Footnote A: Tacitus, Annals, xiv. 42.--A thrilling
tale. See Bohn's Classical Library, 53.] "'And, therefore,' interrupted the
Laodicean brother, 'the Apostle approves of murdering innocent slaves for the
sin of one. That is the conclusion to which your reasoning will bring us.'
"'Excusing the brother for interrupting me, I ask, Is that agreeable to the
plain facts in the case?' said the speaker. 'Are the abuses of parentage
chargeable upon the relationship of parent and child? Moreover, does not the
Apostle expressly teach us, in this Epistle, that such things are wrong? but
still, does he condemn the relation of master and slave? "'The tale of that
horrid butchery was present to the mind of the Apostle when he sends Onesimus
back into slavery. Moreover, he knew that by our laws Philemon could put
Onesimus to death; yet he sends him back. "'It is said by my brother that Paul
enunciated principles which in time would kill slavery, and therefore he did not
care to denounce it, but prudently let it alone. What else, I inquire, did Paul
fail to denounce? and why is this "enormous wrong," this "stupendous injustice,"
alone, left to die, without being attacked? No, Paul treated slavery as he did
all other forms of government; he did not denounce government, not even its
despotic forms; for he knew that a despotism may be the best form of government
in some circumstances. But he spoke against the abuse of power by rulers, and in
the same way he speaks against the abuse of power by the master. "'My brother
tells us that slavery is "the sum of all villanies." A comprehensive term,
truly. Let us admit the correctness of the phrase. "All villanies" includes all
"the works of the flesh," and the Apostle enumerates the principal of them,
where he says, "Now the works of the flesh are these;"--concluding his account
with the expression, "and such like." With unsparing denunciation, he portrays
each and every "villany," and shows how the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against it. "'But while he is thus bold and faithful with regard to "all
villanies" in particular, we cannot but think it strange that a thing which is
said to be the "sum" of them all, is nowhere spoken against by the Apostle! On
the contrary, he recognizes the duties which grow out of slave-holding. "'Let us
suppose him to do the same with regard to each villany which he does to that
which my brother calls the "sum" of them all. Then we should hear him say!
Murderers, do so and so; thieves, do so and so; and ye that are mutilated, do so
and so; and ye that are pillaged, do so and so. I am curious to know how my
brother will answer this. What are the religious "duties" of murderers and
thieves, but to repent, to forsake their evil ways at once, and to make lawful
reparation? And what are the "duties" of those whom murderers and thieves
assault, but to resist, and to seek the conviction of the evil-doer? Oh how
strange it seems for the Apostle to counsel masters and slaves to imitate their
"Master which is in heaven," in their relation to each other, if holding men in
bondage be "the sum of all villanies," and how strange for him to send Onesimus
back to the system to behave in it as Christ would act in his place! "'Onesimus
escapes, we will say, from a gang of murderers, or from a company of thieves,
and the Apostle's preaching is the means of his becoming a good man. Paul writes
a letter to the chief murderer of the gang, or to the captain of the robbers,
sends Onesimus back, and "beseeches" the brigand for "his son Onesimus," telling
him that now he receives him "forever," and then calls the desperado "our dearly
beloved fellow-laborer"! Why not, with equal propriety, if slavery be,
necessarily, as our brother describes it? There is some mistake in our brother's
theory. "'I venture to state the distinction which I think he overlooks, and
which, if observed, will relieve his difficulty. Paul never denounces
government; "the powers that be are ordained of God." He appeals to "Caesar"; he
goes before "Nero"; he never counsels insurrection, nor denounces government, in
whatever hands or under whatever forms it may be; but he enjoins principles and
duties which, if observed, would make "Caesars," even though they be "Neros,"
blessings, and their despotisms even would cease to be a curse. So with
slave-holding. It is incorporated into the state of society; it is, moreover, a
relation which can exist and no sin be committed under the relation; hence, it
is not sin in itself, any more than the throne of Nero is sin in itself; and the
Apostle speaks to the slave-holding Philemon as he would to a father receiving
back a wayward son. "'The claim of Philemon to Onesimus rests only on his having
purchased him. Who had a right to sell him? Trace the thing back, and you come
to fraud or violence, or some form of injustice to Onesimus in making him a
slave. Paul knew that this is the case with regard to every slave; yet he does
not "break every yoke," even when, as in this case, he had one so completely in
his hands, and could have broken it in pieces. "'But we will suppose, with my
brother, that the laws which God ordained for slavery should prevail under
Christianity, if slavery is to exist. Let every Phrygian, then, a
fellow-countryman who has lost his liberty, go free at the end of six years; and
at every fiftieth year, whether six years be completed or not, since the last
seventh year of release, let all such go free. This, for argument's sake, we
approve. But we must take the whole code. Every foreigner who becomes a slave,
and the child of every such slave, was to be an "inheritance forever." Husbands,
who are Phrygians, must choose, in certain cases, whether to go out free by
themselves, or remain in perpetual bondage with their wives and their offspring.
Paul knew the Jewish laws with regard to slavery; he knew how favorably they
compared with our code; but he says not a word on that score, and simply sends
Onesimus back to his bondage. "'Yet see how beautifully the spirit of Christ
works itself into the relation of master and slave, and into Paul's views and
feelings with regard to it. In his letter to our Church, he expressly names
Onesimus as one of the bearers of the epistle. He speaks of him as "one of you,"
a resident with us; and he calls this slave "a faithful and beloved brother." He
speaks to Philemon about him as "my son Onesimus whom I have begotten in my
bonds;" "thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels." "Not now as a
servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much
more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord." "If thou count me,
therefore, a partner, receive him as myself." "'What a comment is this on the
words: "In Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free." Not that there shall be
"no bond," according to the brother's interpretation; for then it would be
equally right to interpret the other part of the passage literally,--there is no
Jew, no Greek, and none free! How perfectly does the relation become absorbed by
that state of heart which makes it proper for Paul to say: "Art thou called
being a servant, care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it
rather." Notwithstanding this advice, he sends back this man-servant. "'Paul
might have manumitted Onesimus by his authority as an apostle; this, however,
would have been rebellion against government, for our laws recognize slavery.
"'My brother says that the Hebrew law forbade the surrender of a fugitive slave.
Yes, if the slave fled into Israel from a heathen master, he must not be sent
back to heathenism; but'-- "'But,' said the brother from Laodicea, 'there is no
limitation of that kind. I insist that it was of universal application to slaves
of all kinds.' "'Find the passage, if you please (in Deut. xxiii.),' said the
Colossian speaker. "The passage was found by the pastor, and was read, as
already quoted: 'Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant that is
escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee even among you, in
that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates where it liketh him best;
thou shalt not oppress him.' Deut. xxiii. 10, 15. "'Now,' said Theodotus, 'it is
absurd to say that God proclaimed to all the servants throughout Israel, If any
of you are dissatisfied, for any cause, and wish to run away, you may do so; and
wherever you wish to live, the people-of that place shall provide a residence
for you. After being there for ever so short a time, if you do not like it, you
may flee again; and so keep moving all your lifetime, the people everywhere
being obliged to allow you a place of abode. Did the Most High mean to encourage
such vagabondism? "'No; He merely provided that a fugitive from a heathen master
should not be sent away from the worship of Jehovah into heathenism.' "'That is
undoubtedly the true meaning,' said the pastor, 'if Theodotus will allow me to
put in a word. "Thee," in that passage, means Israel as a nation, not each man.'
"'I thank you, Sir,' said Theodotus; 'and now I maintain that the injunction not
to give up a fugitive to his heathen master, but to keep him in Israel, is a
powerful argument in favor of retaining slaves where they will be most benefited
in their spiritual concerns. God thus makes the soul of man and its eternal
welfare paramount to all external relations, including slavery.' "'May I
inquire, then,' said the Laodicean: 'Suppose that Philemon had been a cruel
heathen master, and Onesimus had fled for his life, would Paul have sent him
back?' "'If the case were clear and beyond doubt, I am not sure that he would,'
said Theodotus. 'While he would not counsel Onesimus to run away, yet I can only
say, that, fleeing from certain cruelty and death, I doubt if he would have been
remanded. But Paul told servants to be "subject to their masters," "not only to
the good and gentle, but also to the froward." He speaks to them of "suffering
wrongfully;" of "doing well, and suffering for it;" and he refers the suffering
slave to Christ, "who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered,
threatened not." Moreover, he says: "For even hereunto were ye called; because
Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his
steps." That is certainly death.' "'If Paul did not send Onesimus back to
Philemon, however, it would not be because it was wrong, in his view, for
Philemon to hold him in bondage; please observe this distinction; but, judging
the case by itself, he would decide whether the slave ought not, under the
circumstances, to have the right of asylum,--Paul himself having once been "let
down by a basket," to escape from the Damascenes. Paul and any other man would,
in certain cases, protect even a fugitive son or daughter from a father; and
this consistently with his recognition of the parental and filial relation.
"'Let me remind my brother, and you, my pastor, and my brethren, of one fact
which occurs to me at the moment. Manslayers, in cities of refuge, were to go
free at the death of the High Priest then in office; no such release, however,
was granted to the Gentile slaves, showing that slavery was not a crime in the
estimation of the Most High. Otherwise, He would have legislated for the
departure of slaves from their Hebrew masters, as He did for manslayers fleeing
from the avenger of blood. Excuse the digression. The thought struck me at the
moment.' "'I put it to the brother,' said the Laodicean, 'whether he himself
would not flee to Rome, were he a single man, if he should be made a slave to
that monster in human shape, Osander of Hieropolis?' "'I cannot say,' replied
the Colossian, 'what my temptations might be, nor how well I should resist them;
but slavery being incorporated into the government, and I being, in the
providence of God, sold into bondage to Osander,--I being either the child of a
slave, or one of those who are called "lawful captives,"--my race, or my capture
in war, or my indebtedness, or my crimes, subjecting me to bondage according to
the constitution of government, I ought to consider my slavery as the mode which
God had chosen for me to glorify him,--by my spirit and temper, by my words and
conduct, by my Christian example in everything, for the good of Osander's soul,
and the honor of religion. I believe that I should please God more by staying to
suffer, and even to die, than to run away. I doubt even the expediency of
running away, as a general rule. It implies a want of faith. He is the Christian
hero who stays where God has manifestly placed him. "'I know,' continued he,
'how easy it is to make this appear ridiculous; and also how often cases occur
in which flight, and even the taking of life, are proper, under extreme
hardships. It is frequently the case that a servant sees and feels his mental
superiority to the man who owns him. Now one may be so disgusted, and be so
constantly vexed and chafed at this, as to make out a strong case for escaping;
another, in the same circumstances, will feel that God has placed him in charge
of his master's soul, to please him well in all things though he be "froward."
Whether is better, to run off or to "abide"? There can be no doubt how the
Apostle would answer the question. Exceptional cases of extreme distress do not
make a rule; the rule is for each one to "abide" in the calling in which he is
called of God. See what perfect insubordination would everywhere follow if every
one who is oppressed, or believes himself to be oppressed, should flee: children
would desert their parents; husbands and wives would flee from each other, at
any supposed or real grievance. This is not the Christian rule. Patience and all
long-suffering, obedience, endurance, committing one's self to him that judgeth
righteously, is the temper and spirit of the Gospel. This is the tone-note of
the Sermon on the Mount. At the same time, who blames or judges harshly a man in
peril of his life if, in self-defence, he flees? I say that Paul would probably
judge every fugitive slave case by itself. One thing is clear: It is not his
rule to help a fugitive from slavery in his flight, as a matter of course. His
rule is evidently the reverse of this. I cannot argue with regard to the
exceptions. They generally provide each for itself. The New Testament rule is
for slaves not to run away; and for us, and for all men, not to encourage them
to do so; but to encourage them to return, and to deal with the masters on such
principles, and in such a fraternal, affectionate way, that the appeals to their
Christian sensibilities may permanently affect their consciences and hearts. "'I
stand by the record. Let me forsake it, and I am like Paul's ship when it was
driving up and down in Adria, and neither sun nor stars appeared. My impulses
were not given me as my guide. They are to be compared with the divine will.
Many questions may be asked which I cannot answer, and many difficulties
encompass this subject of slave-holding which I cannot solve. I abide by the
example and teachings of inspired men, and am safe in following them, even if I
cannot explain everything connected with their principles and conduct to the
satisfaction of others. I only know that if our masters and servants would take
the Apostle Paul's Epistle to Philemon as the rule of their spirit and life,
there would be no such thing as oppression, nor fugitive servants. Now, as to
revolutionizing society to eradicate slavery, I would no more attempt it than I
would try to dig down Cadmus to dislodge yonder snow and ice upon his top. The
sun will in due time melt them and pour them into the Lycus and the Moeander. So
the Gospel, when it has free course, will dissolve every chain, break every
yoke, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.' * * * * * "Philemon was now the
first to rise. "'I am the master to whom Paul the Apostle sends back my fugitive
servant. This man, Onesimus, is my brother in Christ; in heaven, it may be, I
shall see him far above me as a faithful servant of our common Lord. He has
given a proof of obedience to the Gospel, of submission, of patience and long
suffering, of implicit compliance with the rules of Christ, which excite my
Christian emulation. My endeavor shall be to imitate Onesimus as he has imitated
Christ, and to surpass him in likeness to that Lord who is meek and lowly in
heart. The bonds which hold Onesimus to me are no stronger than those which bind
me to him. (Great sensation and much emotion.) Can I ever treat this servant in
an unfeeling manner? Can I recklessly sell him? Can I deprive him of comforts?
Can I fail to provide for his highest happiness? God do so to me and more also,
if I prove deficient in these particulars. "'Let me ask, What would be the state
of things among us if the benign influences of Christian love pervaded every
case of slave-holding as, by the grace of God, I hope it will in my case? We
must have a serving class; our customs and laws ordain the relationship of
involuntary servitude, property in the services of others, by purchase of their
persons. While this is so, suppose that every servant is an Onesimus and every
master such as I ought to be, under the influence of the Apostle Paul's
directions! It is plain that in no way can we better promote the spiritual and
eternal good of certain men, as the times are, than by standing in the relation
of Christian masters to them. This is the great thing with Paul. We can mitigate
the sorrows of their bondage; we can compensate for the appointments of
providence reducing them to slavery, by making them the freemen of Christ. While
this state of things continues, it may be a blessing to both parties. God will
open a way for any change which he decrees in our social relation, in his own
time and manner. "'Now, let us suppose what would happen if, departing from the
rule and example of Paul, we follow the counsels of our good brother from
Laodicea. The community would be in constant excitement by the departure of
servants asserting each his natural liberty; laws would become rigid; hardships
would be multiplied; cruelties would be perpetuated; insurrections would become
frequent; sacrifices of servants, the innocent with the guilty, would be made to
deter from insubordination. Instead of the spirit of the Gospel in our
dwellings, alienations, suspicion, jealousy, wrangling, strife, and every form
of evil would prevail. He is no real friend of servant or master who would
enforce the principles of our Laodicean brother. I adhere to the Apostle. If
questioned as to my right to hold Onesimus in bondage, the answer immediately
suggested is that an inspired Apostle sanctions it in my case. If right in my
case, it is right in principle; for if slave-holding be a violation of rights, I
am guilty of that violation, however humane a master I may be. The Apostle does
not reprove me, nor require me to manumit Onesimus, but tells me that I now
receive him "forever," and he teaches me how to treat him. I could occupy your
time by arguing the abstract question relating to property in the services of
men,--but I rest my case for the present on the letter of Paul the Apostle,
brought to me by the hand of my fugitive servant, returning to what the laws
call his bonds. "'Let me add a few words, however, on the general subject, to
the argument of Theodotus. "'Our good brother from Laodicea tells us that
slavery and polygamy are "twin barbarisms." He argues that slavery was winked
at, like polygamy; was "suffered," by the Most High. But I propose to refute
this, and I will throw myself on your candor to judge if I succeed. "'God, in
Eden, appointed the marriage of one man and one woman to be the law of
matrimony. "And wherefore one?" says the prophet. "He had the residue of the
spirit," and could have ordained otherwise. "Wherefore one?" The answer is,
"that he might seek a godly seed." The arrangement was for the highest elevation
of the race. "'Polygamy is in direct conflict with the ordinance of God. Of
course God never ordained it. On the contrary, the appointment in Eden was
equivalent to a prohibitory act, which Jesus Christ revived, forbidding
polygamy, and the Apostles have enjoined upon us that we observe the law of
marriage as given in paradise. "'So much for polygamy. God never recognized it.
The edict requiring the marriage of a childless widow to the brother of her
husband, takes it for granted that a man would leave but one widow. "'But how is
it with slavery? God never forbade it; he recognized it; when He framed the
Jewish code it was perfectly easy to exclude slavery; but hardly are the Ten
Commandments out of his lips when He ordains slave-holding, gives particular
directions about it, decrees that certain persons shall be an inheritance
forever. Jesus Christ never uttered one word against slavery, though he did
against polygamy; the Apostles have never written nor preached to us against
slavery, but on the contrary here is the Apostle to the Gentiles sending back a
servant escaped from his master; and in that letter on the pastor's table he
enjoins duties on masters and slaves. I have confidence that my brother will not
again class slavery with polygamy, for it would be a reflection upon divine
wisdom and justice. "'One thing more. My brother says slavery is the sum of all
villanies. "'But did not the Most High God place his people in slavery for
seventy years, in Babylon? This does not prove that slavery is a good thing, in
itself; for by the same proof heathenism might be shown to be a blessing.
Slavery was a curse, a punishment; but still, God would not have made use of
slavery to punish his people, if, theoretically and practically, it is by
necessity all which my brother alleges. It surely did not, in that case, prove a
"villany" to Babylon. They were the best seventy years of their probationary
state, when that people held the Jews in captivity. Now I beg not to be
misunderstood nor to have my meaning perverted. I am not pleading for slavery. I
simply say that God would not have put his people, whom He had not cast off
forever, into slavery, if slavery, per se, were the sum of all villanies, or, if
the practical effect of it on them would be, necessarily, destruction, or
inconsistent with his purposes of benevolence. I will add, that every people and
every man, who hold others in bondage, should be admonished that when God puts
his captives, his bondmen, into their hands, He is most jealous of the manner in
which the trust is discharged. I do think, I say it here with all possible
emphasis, it is the most delicate, the most solemn, the most awful
responsibility, to stand in the relation of master to a bondman. * * * * * "No
further discussion was had at that time, the hour being late, and so the meeting
was closed with prayer and singing. Masters and servants joined to chant a hymn,
of which the following, written many years after by Gregory of Nazianzum, might
almost seem to be the expansion:-- "'Christ, my Lord, I come to bless Thee, Now
when day is veiled in night, Thou who knowest no beginning, Light of the eternal
light. "'Thou hast set the radiant heavens, With thy many lamps of brightness,
Filling all the vaults above; Day and night in turn subjecting To a brotherhood
of service, And a mutual law of love. "'Own me, then, at last, thy servant, When
thou com'st in majesty; Be to me a pitying Father, Let me find thy grace and
mercy; And to Thee all praise and glory Through the endless ages be.' "Leaning
on the arm of Onesimus, Philemon returned to bless his household. * * * * *
"Thus far," said I, "you have my Night Thoughts." I asked Mr. North if he
accepted the present New Testament Canon as correct? He said that he did. I then
inquired if he regarded the Scriptures as the only and sufficient rule of faith
and practice. To this he also agreed. I then asked him if he did not think that,
in making up the canon, that is, in directing what books and epistles should go
into it, God had reference to the wants of all coming times? He signified his
assent. I then asked his attention to a few thoughts connected with that point.
"Here is the Epistle to Philemon, placed by the hand of the Holy Spirit himself
in the Sacred Canon. It is on a small piece of parchment, easily lost; the wind
might have blown it from Philemon's table out of the window, beyond recovery; it
was not addressed to a Church, to be kept in its archives; it is a private
letter, subject to every change in the condition of a private citizen. Yet,
while the epistle to Laodicea, sent about the same time, is irrecoverably lost,
this little writing, addressed to a private man, goes into the Bible, by
direction of God! "Do you not suppose," said I, "that God had a meaning in this
beyond merely informing us how a master received a servant back to bondage?"
"What further purpose do you think there was in it?" said he. "I only know,"
said I, "that slave-holding was to be a subject, as has proved to be the case,
which would involve the interests of at least two of the continents of the
earth, one of them being then unknown. Here the Church of God was to have large
increase. Here, too, slavery was to exist, and to thrill the hearts of millions
of citizens from generation to generation. It is very remarkable that one book
of the Bible, which was to be made known to all nations by the commandment of
the everlasting God, for the obedience of faith, should be exclusively on the
subject of slavery, and that the whole burden of the Epistle should be, The
Rendition of a Fugitive Slave!" "This never occurred to me before," said Mr.
North. "Suppose," said I, "that instead of sending back Onesimus, the epistle
had been a private letter from Archippus at Colosse to Paul at Rome,
clandestinely aiding Onesimus to escape from Philemon, and that Paul had
received Onesimus and had harbored him, and had sent him forth as a missionary,
and that not one word of comment had appeared in the Bible discountenancing the
act. What would have happened then?" "Then," said Mrs. North, "one thing is
certain; the business of running off slaves to Canada would now have been more
brisk even than it is at present." "Why?" said I. "Simply because," said she,
"the New Testament would have sanctioned the practice of running off slaves."
"Why, then," said I, "does it not now equally countenance the 'running' of
slaves back to their masters?" "Please answer that for me, husband," said Mrs.
North. He smiled, and rose to put some coal on the fire. We waited for his
words. "Well," said he, "I do not know but it is all right, provided the master
be in each case a Philemon." "That is a good word," said I. "You show that the
Bible has an ascendency in your mind. You will be safe in following the Bible
wherever it leads you, even into slave-holding, if it goes so far. But I must
now question you a little. You may answer me or not, as you please. "One day a
black man appears at your door, and says, 'I have just escaped from the South. I
was owned by Rev. Professor A.B. of New Orleans. I preferred liberty to slavery,
and here I am.' Would you shelter him, and encourage his remaining here, and, if
necessary, send him to Canada?" "What would you have me do?" said he. "Take him
in," said I, "if you please, and give him some breakfast. You would not object
to this. After breakfast you have family prayers. 'Can you read, Nesimus?' you
inquire. 'O yes, master; missis and the young missises taught us all to read.'
Your little boy hands him, with the rest, a Testament, and names the place of
reading. Strange to say, yesterday you finished 'Titus,' and the portion to be
read in course is 'Philemon!'" "Almost a providence," said Mrs. North. "How
would you feel, Mr. North?" said I. "Why, feel? How should I feel?" said he.
"You will answer for me, perhaps, and say, 'Read Philemon; pray; and then say,
Come, Nesimus, I am going to send you back to Professor A.B. I will write a
letter to him, and pay your passage.'" "What objection would you make to this?"
said I. He thought a moment, and in the meanwhile his shrewd wife said,-- "Why,
husband, do you hesitate? Say this: 'What! I? and Bunker Hill within a day's
march of my house, and grandfather's old sword over my library door?'" "I am
sick of hearing about Bunker Hill in this connection," said he. "Any one would
think that it is one of the 'sacred mountains' in Holy Writ." "But," said his
wife, "If some of Paul's ancestors had had Bunker Hill privileges and
influences, do you think Paul would have written the Epistle to Philemon?
Unfortunate Apostle! Say," said his wife again, before he spoke, "that you
believe in progress, that that epistle might have been right enough in its day,
but that now 'we need an anti-slavery Bible and an anti-slavery God.'" She made
up a very expressive smile as she said it and stretched her work across her
knee. "Yes," said I, "the Bible is antiquated! God never gave a written
revelation to be a perpetual guide to the end of time! I can supersede the
Epistle to Philemon: Mrs. North, Hebrews; you, James; and another the whole of
the Old Testament." "Now," said Mr. North, "I will tell you what I have been
thinking of all this time. "I will put you into bondage in Algiers or Tunis.
Somebody has bought you or captured you. But by some means you escape to me at
Gibraltar. Now I will read 'Philemon' to you, and send you back to your Algerine
master. What objection can you make to this, as a believer in inspiration?" I
answered, "If I were a slave in my own country, and slavery existed in Algiers,
you would need to consider the relation which existed between this country and
Algiers. If the governments had treaties with each other, the surrender of
persons held to service in either of the countries would probably be provided
for, and then you would have to consider whether you would obey what is called
the 'higher law,' or yield me to the requisition of the proper authorities. This
brings up the question of the rendition of fugitive slaves, which we have just
considered. "But being free in my own country, and having been, therefore,
unlawfully sold into Algerine Slavery, or having been captured, or stolen, you
would, I trust, make proper resistance in my behalf." "But," said Mr. North,
"The ancestors of my fugitive friend Nesimus, were taken from freedom in their
own land and were reduced to slavery. Must he and his descendants be slaves
forever for the sin of the original captors, or for the misfortune of his
ancestors?" "Birth in slavery long established makes all the difference in the
world, Mr. North," said I. "If I am born in slavery, under a government
ordaining slavery, that is a different case from that of one taken out of a
passenger ship and sold as a slave." "Then if you and your wife," said he, "were
taken out of a passenger ship, and you should happen to have a child born in
slavery, that child must remain a slave, even if you go free?" "No, Sir," said
I; "the child born under such circumstances is as rightfully free as its
parents. But take this case: I, being captured and held as a slave, my master
gives me a wife, lawfully a slave. Then, the child born of her is lawfully a
slave. You see the distinction. God recognized it. The condition of both is a
limitation and qualification of natural rights. So the lapse of time qualifies
the right to collect debts, bring suits for libel, or slander, and for the right
of way, or for the possession of land. Will we live under law? or shall each man
or any set of men set up laws for their own conscience?" "Then," said he, "If a
slave-trader lands a cargo of slaves from Africa, at Florida, I have no right to
buy them; they are not lawfully slaves. Is that your belief?" "Assuredly," said
I; "and if the fugitive whom I have supposed you to be sending back to the
gentleman at New Orleans, were a fugitive from the cargo just imported from
Africa, you would be sustained by the law of the land in delivering him from
bondage; he was piratically taken; the laws would make him free, and punish his
captors, if the laws were faithfully executed." "But a poor fellow born in
slavery must remain a slave!" he replied. "He is not lawfully a slave," I said,
"if his parents were both of that cargo. But if his father had received a wife
from his master, then the child is lawfully a slave." "How do you establish that
distinction?" said he. "The child is born of one known to be, herself, lawfully
a slave. It is born under a constitution of government which recognizes slavery;
while that government provides for slavery, the child must submit or violate an
ordinance of God, unless freedom can be had by law, or by justifiable
revolution." "I feel constrained," said Mr. North "to hold that liberty is the
inalienable right of every human being, except in cases of crime." "You mean,"
said I, "that every human being is entitled to all the civil rights and
immunities which others enjoy." "Yes," said he, "in proportion to his age, and
his capacity. Minors, and the imbecile, are entitled to protection, but may not
be oppressed." "Ah," said I, "how soon you find your general rules intercepted
and qualified by circumstances. Minors, and the imbecile, then, may not be
admitted to equal privileges with us. But are not all men born free and equal?"
"Now let me add to 'minors' and 'the imbecile' one more class. There are two
races existing together in a certain country. One has always been, there, a
servile race. The other are the lords of the soil; the institutions of the
country are by their creation; they have acquired a perfect right and title to
the government. "You know, from all history, that two races never could, and
never did live together on the same soil, unless they intermarried, or one was
subject to the other. You admit this historical fact. "It is proposed, now, by
some, to give the subject race a right to vote and to hold office, so that their
equality in all things shall be acknowledged." "Pray," said Mr. North, "will you
object to this? Has not God 'made of one blood all nations of men'?" "Yes," I
replied, "but read on, in that same verse:--'and hath determined the bounds of
their habitation.' There is a law of races; races must have antipathies, unless
they intermarry; he who seeks to confound them may as well labor for the
conjugation of all the tribes of animals. He and his results would prove to be
monsters. "The Anglo Saxon race on this continent properly say to the Negro, 'If
by conquest you get possession of the land, we must, of course, succumb to you.
We are now in possession, and mean so to continue. Hard, therefore, as it seems
not to let you vote in parts of the country where your numbers are such as to
endanger our majority, or afford temptation to demagogues to inflame your
prejudices and passions by historical appeals to them, and severe as it may seem
not to let you form military companies, (which would also be mischievous in the
same way) we nevertheless propose to exclude you from this right of suffrage,
and from separate organizations, for our own defence, and that we may preserve
our institutions for our proper descendants. We are very sorry that our English
ancestors began to impose you upon us, and that Newport and Salem vessels
brought so many of you here into slavery; but we cannot think of requiting you
for this by jeoparding our own peace; nor would it be kind to you, as things
are, to be made prominent in any way as a class. When the Northern people are,
generally, your true friends, and cease to use you in an offensive manner, to
excite civil war, we shall join to elevate you in every way consistent with your
true interests.' "There will be cases of extreme hardship," said I, "if a slave,
fleeing from the South, however unjustifiably, nevertheless becomes surrounded
here with a family, and the owner comes and claims him. There are principles of
natural humanity which come into force at such a time to modify or set aside a
claim. I know, indeed, that to build a valuable house on land not mine, does not
vacate the land-owner's title; and, moreover, I know what may be alleged on the
principle illustrated by Paley, who speaks of a man finding a stick and
bestowing labor on it which is more in value than the stick itself. These cases
of slaves who have gained a settlement here, call for the utmost kindness and
forbearance between the sectional parties in controversy; clamor will never
settle them, nor the sword; but the reign of good feeling will cause justice to
flow down our streets like a river, and righteousness like an overflowing
stream." "As we have conversed a good deal upon this subject," said Mr. North,
"perhaps we may bring our conversation to a close as profitably as in any other
way by your telling us, summarily, what you think of this whole perplexing
subject; what would you have me believe; how ought a Christian man, who desires
to know and do the will of God, to feel and to act with regard to it? Good men,
I see, are divided about it; I respect your motives, I approve many of your
principles, I cannot object to your conclusions, in the main. Let us know what
you consider to be, probably, the ultimate issue of the whole subject." "I will
do so with pleasure," said I. "But," said Mrs. North, "let us wait till after
dinner." "As the storm is over," I said to her, "I must go home, but we will
have one more council fire, if you please, and end the subject." So in the
afternoon, my kind friends gave me their attention while I made my summing up in
the next and concluding chapter.


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  CHAPTER 39: THE FUTURE
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CHAPTER X.
THE FUTURE.
"It is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind rest in providence, move in charity, and turn upon the poles of truth."
LORD BACON.
"Slavery, as human nature now is, cannot be otherwise than one of the Almighty's curses upon any race which is subject to bondage.
"True, it may nevertheless, be an amelioration of their original state; they may fall into the hands of a Christian people, and hundreds of thousands of them be civilized, and be converted to Christianity; redeemed from a barbarous condition they may contribute immensely to the general good of the race both as producers and consumers. Wherever commerce needs them, unquestionably they will do more good to the world by being compelled to work than by wearing out their miserable and useless existence in Africa.
"All this may be true; still, is it not a curse to be hewers of wood and drawers of water? Does not God say to Israel that if they sin, they 'shall be the tail and not the head?' National degradation, exposing a people to be the prey and the captives of a superior race, is, of course, a curse, though, like death itself, and even sin, it may, by the grace of God, turn to good. Still, it is a curse.
"But in governing a fallen world like ours, God now and then ordains the subjection of one race to another; and he makes bondage one of his ordinances as truly as war. The extermination of the Canaanites by the sword, was an ordinance of Heaven. War is a part of God's method in governing the world; as well as sickness and death.
"I never had any sympathy for that amiable but weak concern for the character of God which represents him as finding slavery in existence and merely legislating about it, and doing the best he can with an inevitable evil. This view belongs to a system which makes God, as it seems to me, the most unhappy Being, continually striving to destroy that which sprung up contrary to his plan. To dwell on this, however, would lead us too far into theological questions.
"I tremble to think of our responsibility as a nation in being put in charge of a people with whom God has some terrible controversy for their own sins and those of their ancestors.
"Through our abuse of power, God may say to us, 'I was a little angry, and ye helped on the affliction.' God's purposes in having the chastised nation afflicted, will be accomplished, but He will punish every one who inflicts the chastisement with a selfish, unchristian spirit.
"Our people generally take it for granted that slavery is like one of the self-limiting diseases of childhood, to be outgrown, and to cease forever, in process of time, and before many years have passed away.
"The ground of this conclusion is a doctrinal error, namely, that slave-holding, the relation of master and servant, ownership, property in man, or by whatever name slavery may be designated, is in itself wrong, and that as soon as practicable it will be abjured and no man will stand to another in the relation of master, or owner. But whether for good or for ill, slavery will be in existence at the last day. We read that 'every bondman and every freeman' will see the sign of the Son of Man.
"But should slavery be at any time, or in any country, or part of a country, utterly extinguished, it will ever remain true that ownership, or property in man is not in itself wrong, and that it may be benevolent to all concerned. It is interesting to recollect that in proportion as human relations are cardinal, or vital, they approach most nearly to ownership, as in the case of parent and child. The highest relation of all, that between man and God, finds its most perfect expression in terms conveying the idea of ownership on the part of God. 'For ye are not your own;--therefore glorify God in your body and spirit which are God's.' If God should send one of us to a distant part of the universe, under the charge of an angel, where superior intelligence and wisdom were needful for our safety in temptation and amid the bewildering excitements of new scenes, ownership for the time being, absolute dominion over us, on the part of the angel, would be in the highest measure benevolent. In those days when universal love reigns, it is just as likely as not that there will be more 'ownership' in man than ever before. By ownership I mean such relationships as we see in the households of those who are represented in the letter of the Southern lady to her father. There we see the weak, the unfortunate, the dependent nature clinging to the stronger, and receiving support and comfort, and even honor, from those who in rendering kindness and in receiving service have their whole being refined and cultivated to the highest degree. There are no rigors in those relationships; everything which contributes to the welfare and happiness of a serving class is enjoyed, and all its liabilities to care and sorrow are removed, to as great a degree as ever happens in this world.
"Allowing that there are always to be inequalities of mind and condition, and that what we call menial services will need to be performed; that there must be those who will have a disposition and taste to work over a fire all day and prepare food; and that men of business or study will not all be able to groom their own horses and wash their vehicles; and that possibly the Coleridges and Southeys, and their friends the Joseph Cottles, may, from being absorbed in their ideal pursuits, still be ignorant of the way to get off a collar from a horse's neck, and must call upon a servant-girl to help them, we shall need those who will be glad to be servants forever, and who will require for their own security that their employers shall 'own' them, and thus be made responsible for their support and protection. This may always be necessary for the highest welfare of all concerned. But the history of this relationship in connection with our human nature has been such, to a great extent, that we associate with it only the idea of pillage, oppression, cruelty. Already there are cases without number in which no such idea would ever be suggested to a spectator, and they will increase in proportion as Christianity prevails. There is more real 'freedom' in thousands of these cases of nominal slavery than in thousands who are nominally free. How did it happen that the Hebrew servant, who chose to stay with his master rather than leave his wife and children, was not made nominally free, and apprenticed or hired? Why was his ear bored, and perpetual relations secured between him and his master?"
"For the master's security, I presume," said Mr. North.
"I should say," said I, "for the mutual benefit of both. The master then became responsible for him; his support was a lien on his estate, the children must always be responsible for his maintenance. The awl made its record in the master's door-post, as well as in the servant's ear.
"Now, suppose," said I, "that God chooses to supply this nation with menial servants to the end of time. Suppose that he has designed that one race, the African, shall be the source from which he will draw this supply, and that down through long generations he proposes to make this black race our servants, seeking at the same time, by means of this, their elevation, by connecting them with us, and keeping up the relation; and that for the permanence of the relation, and for the security of all concerned, there should be 'ownership,' such as he himself ordained when he prescribed the boring of the ear? For my part, I cannot see in this 'the sum of all villanies,' 'an enormous wrong,' 'a stupendous injustice.' Yet this would be slavery. I am not arguing for such a constitution of things. As was before observed, the whole black race may, in a few years, be swept off from the country; but who will undertake to say that, as the people of other nations have been employed by Providence to make our railroads and canals, the black race may not be employed for a much longer term to be our servants, both North and South, both East and West? And who will say that the tenure of 'ownership' may not be the wisest and most benevolent arrangement for all concerned? I repeat it, I am not arguing for this; I am only trying to show you that the present abuses in slavery are no valid argument against the relation itself; that this may remain when the abuses cease, and therefore that at the present time we ought to discriminate in our arguments against slavery, and direct our assaults, if we continue to be assailers, against its abuses."
"On one disagreeable subject," I said to him aside, "I will make this general remark: The Southern slaves are, as a whole, a religious people; their religion, indeed, is of a type corresponding to their condition. But still, if the South were one festering pool of iniquity, as many at the North fancy, would the colored people show such evidences as they do of moral and spiritual improvement? Look at Hayti. A very large majority of the children are not born in wedlock. Slavery is a moral restraint upon the Southern colored people. Evil as slavery is, it is, in many things, taking the slaves as they are, a comparative blessing."
"But," said Mr. North, "our people generally insist that abuses, oppression, cruelty, are so inherent in slavery that they cannot be removed without destroying the relation itself."
"Here," said I, "is the mistake under which Southerners perceive that we labor, and which prevents us from having the least influence with them.
"This, however, is unquestionably true: as human nature is, we would not choose to give men unlimited power over their fellow-men who are slaves. If, in the course of events, it is found by good men that the abuses flowing from such power are inevitable, that legislative enactments and public opinion cannot control the relation, their consciences will not be quiet till it is abolished. I am willing to confide this to men as good as we, acting as they will on their responsibility to God. It may be, that the system, stripped of everything which can be taken away, will be perpetuated, for the best good of the slave and his master.
"But," said I, "while this perpetual relation of the black race to us is possible, and may be the design of a benevolent God for our happiness and that of the Africans, and while I love to use it in replying to those who, with short-sighted and somewhat passionate reasoning, as I think, contend that slavery must utterly be rooted out of the land, I confess that my own thoughts turn to the Continent of Africa as the great object for which an all-wise God has permitted slavery to exist on our shores.
"I love to look at American slavery in connection with the future history of that great African continent, containing one hundred and fifty millions of people. History and discovered relics make the Ethiopian race to be older even than Egypt. The once powerful nations of Northern Africa, Numidia, Mauratania, as well as the Egyptian builders of pyramids, have disappeared, or they exist only in a few Coptic tribes; and even they are of doubtful origin. But the Ethiopian people, notwithstanding the slave-trade which has extended its degrading influence far and wide among them, and though civilization long since departed from their tribes, have continued to increase till now they are the most numerous of the human families except the Chinese. The slave-holding nations which have pillaged them forages, have not been able to destroy them. Ethiopia may well say, stretching out her hands to God, 'Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves.' It is sublime to think what triumphs of redemption there are yet to be on that African continent. But how little, apparently, from all that they ever say, do some of our abolitionist friends seem to think about Africa as a future jewel in Immanuel's diadem! Utterly foreign from all their thoughts appears to be the great plan of Providence which by means even of slavery in this land, has done so much to extend the work of human salvation among the African race. And there are some ministers of the Gospel and professed Christians, I regret to observe, who reply to all that you say about the vast proportion, to white converts, of converts among the colored people, in a manner which would awaken great fears in the most charitable breast with regard to their own personal interest in the salvation by Christ, did we not all know how far we may be blinded by passion. If you visit in the South, you will find that African missions take the deepest hold on the hearts of Southern Christians. The time will come, God hasten it! when they and we will be united in plans and efforts for the good of the African race.
"But I am not in favor of stealing Africans from their native land to bring them here, even though it were certain that the majority of them would be converted to God. We are not to do evil that good may come. If Providence makes it plain that tribes of them shall be removed to new districts of our country, suitable measures can and will be devised for that purpose. That they are better off here, even in slavery, than in their own land, under present circumstances, I do not see how any one can question; but that does not justify man-stealing. I remember to have seen a letter from a Missionary in Africa, in which he says, speaking of the slaves and of the South, 'Would that all Africa were there; would that tribes of this unhappy people could be transferred to the privileges which the slaves at the South enjoy. I would rather take my chance of a good or bad master, and be a slave at the South, than be as one of these heathen people. In saying this, I refer both to this world and the next'. I need not say, he is an enemy to the slave-trade.
"A missionary who had spent much time among the Zulu people, was appealed to by a zealous anti-slavery person to commiserate our slaves as being so much worse off than the Zulus. 'Madam,' said he, 'if our Zulus were in the condition of your slaves, eternity would not be long enough to give thanks.'
"Mrs. North," said I, "you will not impute it to mere gallantry when I appeal to you if we may not generally measure the refinement and elevation of society by the position of woman, and by the sentiments and manners of the other sex with regard to yours. The deference, the delicate attentions, the gentleness, the refinement of behavior, in word and act, which you inspire, are both the means and the evidence of the highest cultivation. In public and in private life, in assemblies, public conveyances, at table, around the evening lamp, in all the intercourse of the family, the susceptibility of impression, the restraints and the chastised utterances, in word and action, of husbands, fathers, brothers and friends, which are due to the presence of woman, are a correct gauge of civilization and refinement."
"All right," said Mr. North, bowing very politely to his wife.
"Nowhere," said I, "do we see this more conspicuously than in Southern society. Chivalry there seems to blend with the genial influences of Christianity, and together they give a tone and manner to Southern life which is peculiar.
"I am often struck with a Southern gentleman's reverence, here at the North, for the female sex. He is displeased at seeing daughters serving at table in boarding-houses kept by their worthy parents or widowed mothers. We, indeed, respect a young woman who serves us in this manner, (if we reflect at all,) and we resent rudeness or an unfeeling mode of addressing those who are in such situations. But the Southern gentleman goes further. He has, perhaps, not been accustomed to see the daughter of a white family serve. When a respectable young woman, therefore, at a boarding-house, brings him his tea, he feels impelled to rise and ask her to be seated, and to wait upon her. I have been an eye-witness to scenes of this kind, and have been much pleased and not a little amused at some exhibitions of the feeling. If our sentiments toward the sex, and their position in social life, mark the degree of civilization and cultivation in a community, I am compelled to accord a high degree of it to Southern society, in its best estate.
"This is one effect of slavery. It takes mothers, wives, daughters, away from occupations which, though honorable, do not always elevate them in the eyes of the other sex. Perhaps there is no value (and some will say it) in all this; that every labor and service is right and good for woman; and that we are to prefer a state of society where woman does these things with her own hands, instead of having them done for her, and that this is our only safeguard against luxury and degeneracy. I will not debate it. I am only showing that, tried by an ordinary test,--the position of woman,--Southerners are really not barbarians."
"I verily believe," said Mrs. North, "that if you take the Southern constitution and give it a Northern training, the result is as perfect a specimen of man or woman as is to be found on earth."
"People at the North," said I, "may, in their zeal against slavery, make light of the abounding sustenance which the slaves enjoy, and call it a low and gross thing in comparison with 'freedom;' but, in the view of all political economists and publicists, how to feed the lower classes is a great problem. It is solved in slavery.
"There is another topic," I added, "which is interesting and important.
"Here," said I, taking a newspaper-slip from my wallet, "is something which fairly made me weep. It is a picture of one of our poor, virtuous, honest New England homes, in which I would rather dwell and suffer, than be an 'oppressor' with my hundreds of slaves, and wealth counted by hundreds of thousands. A slave-holder, blessed be God, is not a synonyme of 'oppressor;' nor are the slaves as a matter of course 'oppressed.' Our people to a great extent think otherwise, and it is useful to see how we appear to others when this error leads us into folly. This little picture in the newspaper-slip gives us a transient look into an abode whose honest poverty and want are made more painful by evil-doing under the influence of fanaticism."
I then read to my friends the following from a Southern paper;--I here omit the names which are given in full:--
"The touching letter which was found on the body of ---- ----, one of the insurgents, from his sister in ----, ----, has been published. The following paragraph in that letter is a suggestive one:
"'Would you come home if you had the money to come with? Tell me what it would cost. Oh! I would be unspeakably happy if it were in my power to send you money, but we have been very poor this winter. I have not earned a half-dollar this winter. Mattie has had a very good place, where she has had seventy-five cents a week; she has not spent any of it in the family, only a very little for mother. Father has had very small pay, but I think he has more now; he is a watchman on the ---- ----, that runs from here to ----.'
"Here, says the Southern editor, is a family, one of thousands of families in New England in similar circumstances, where one daughter thinks it a 'very good place' where she can get seventy-five cents a week; another has not earned a half-dollar during the winter, and all are 'very poor;' yet the son and brother goes off and deserts a mother and sisters thus situated,--a mother and sisters who, though poor, have evidently the most affectionate feelings and tender sensibilities,--for the purpose of liberating a class of people, not one of whom knows anything of the want or privation from which his own family is suffering, or who would not look without contempt upon such remuneration as seemed the height of good fortune to the destitute sisters and mother of this abolitionist. When we bear in mind the intelligence and sensibilities which characterize the wives and daughters of the poorest classes equally with the richest in New England, it is most amazing that men should overlook such misery at their own doors--nay, should forsake their own kith and kin who are suffering under it--the mother who bore them, the sisters who love them with all a sister's tender and solicitous love, and run off to emancipate the fattest, sleekest, most contented and unambitious race under heaven."
"This shows," said I, "how God has set one thing over against another, in this world. You and Mrs. Worth and myself would rather be the poor honest 'watchman,' or earn our 'seventy-five cents a week,' with 'Mattie,' or even, with the loving sister who writes this letter, 'not' have 'earned a half-dollar this winter,' than be the 'sleekest' of well-fed slaves.
"Yet, when we are summing up the evils of slavery in the form of indictments, we must honestly confess that it is no small thing to feed a whole laboring class in one half of a great country with bread enough and to spare."
Mrs. North asked if I had ever seen a slave-mart, or if I knew much by observation of the domestic slave-trade.
"Yes," said I, "and it is in connection with this feature of slavery that we at the North are most easily and most painfully affected. Some of the most agonizing scenes are enacted at these auctions. They are a part of slavery; so is the domestic slave-trade, which is the necessary removal of the slaves from places where they cannot have employment, to regions where their labor is in demand. In no other way can they be disposed of, unless they are at once freed; and with many the evils of the domestic slave-trade are the most powerful argument in favor of emancipation. That there are grievous trials and sorrows, as well as wrongs and violence, in the disposal of slaves, is known to all. As to those who are to remain within the State, we are told to go, if we will, and inquire into the history of slaves who are to be publicly sold, and take the number of cases in which a wanton disregard of a slave's feelings can be detected. An owner is compelled to part with his property in his slave; or, the slave is taken for debt; estates are to be divided; an owner dies intestate; titles are to be settled, mortgages foreclosed, the number of the household is to be reduced; and for these and numerous other reasons new owners are to be sought for the slaves. Here is a man and his wife and children to be sold. There is a general interest felt in arranging the sale so that the family may be in the same neighborhood. This is for the interest of the owners; it promotes contentment and cheerfulness in the servants. Cases of hardship are the exceptions to the general rule in disposing of servants. Admitting all that can properly be said of such cases, and of the various other evils connected with it, the question recurs, What is to be done but increasingly to mitigate the sorrows of the bondmen, to cultivate a kind and generous disposition toward them, and to prepare them, as far and as fast as the good of all concerned will warrant, for any other condition which Providence may in time point out? My belief is, that if you take four millions of laboring people anywhere under the sun, and put down in separate columns the good and the evil in their conditions, the balance of welfare and happiness, from the supply of their wants, will be found to be greater among our Southern slaves than elsewhere. But, still, this leaves them slaves. My reply to myself, when I say this, is, They were so in their own land; or, they were in a condition of fearful degradation and misery. Their God is their judge; we have not increased their degradation; woe to us if we add needless sorrows to their lot. But as for thrusting them up to an ideal state of elevation, before their time and ours has come, I am not disposed to aid in it. Moreover, Southern Christians are doing all that we would do if in their place; I will not affect to be more humane or just than they; this is our great error.
"Here," said I, "is another view of the subject":
"In the sale of slaves (in America) nothing but labor is transferred. It passes from master to master, as it passes, in countries of hired labor, from employer to employer. The mode in which the transfer is made differs in the two systems of labor. The slave-laborer is never compelled to hunt for work and starve till he finds it. Is this an evil to the laborer? Would it be thought an evil, by the hired man in Europe, that his employer should be obliged, by-law, to find him another employer before dismissing him from service?
"But, it is said, the slave is too much exposed to the master's abuse of power; he is liable to wrongs without a remedy; and, so far, his condition is below that of the hired laborer.
"If this be true at all, it is true as regards the able-bodied hired man only. But take into the account children and women, those, for example, that work naked in coal-mines, or wives whose sufferings from the brutal treatment of husbands daily fill the reports of police courts; take these into the reckoning, and the difference in the consequences of abused power will be very small. The negro-slave is as thoroughly protected as any laborer in Europe. He is protected from every other man's wrong-doing by the ready interference of his master; he is guarded from the master's abuse by the laws of the land, and a vigilant, earnest public opinion. Let all cruelty be punished; let all abuse of power be restrained; but to abolish the relation of master and slave, because there are bad masters and ill-treated slaves, would not be a whit wiser than to abolish marriage, because there are brutal husbands and murdered wives.
"Yet, surely, it will be said, it must be admitted, after all, that slavery is an evil. Yes, certainly, it is an evil; but in the same sense only in which servitude or hired labor is an evil. To gain one's bread by the sweat of one's brow, is a curse. But it is a curse attended with a blessing. It is an evil that shuts out a greater evil. Labor for wages, labor for subsistence, and subjection to the authority of employer or master, are the conditions on which alone the laboring masses, white or black, can live with advantage to themselves and to society."--De Bow's Review, Jan. 1860, pp. 56, 57.
Mr. North asked if I did not think that the colored people should be assisted in their efforts to get an education.
"There are collegiate institutions," I told him, "for colored people, in Oxford, Pa., and in Xenia, O. With great sorrow have I observed, that applications to aid these institutions and to endow others for similar purposes have been received with coldness and distrust by many who could have made liberal contributions, for no other reason than the suspicion that they were designed by Abolitionists to thrust forward the colored man in an offensive manner. I have known the name of a leading Abolitionist to be the death of a subscription-paper for such an institution. This was a bitter prejudice. When philanthropy with regard to the colored race among us falls into its natural channel, we shall see the South and the North opening wide the doors of usefulness in every department for which the colored people shall, any of them, manifest an aptitude. The idea that this race is to be debarred from any and every development of which it is capable, is not entertained by any respectable people at the South. The negro at the South is not doomed, by the Christian people, to an inexorable fate. They will help him rise as fast and as far as God, in his providence, shows it to be his will to employ any or all of that race in other ways than those of servitude.
"'If American slavery,' says one, 'be the horrid system of cruelty, ignorance, and wickedness represented by some writers of fiction and paid defamers of our institutions, how happens it that those who have been reared in the midst of it, when freed and planted in Africa at once exhibit such capacity for self-government and self-education, and set such examples of good morals?
"'Have the negroes under British care at Sierra Leone made similar progress in improvement? Do the free colored subjects of Britain in the West Indies show the capacity, industry, and intelligence manifested by the Liberians, whose training was in the school of American servitude? Nor have the best specimens of this tutelage been sent out. Thousands and tens of thousands of colored servants in the Southern States are church-members, instructed in their duties by faithful Christian teachers, and the children are trained in the fear and love of God.'--I then observed,
"I have come to this conclusion: if Southern Christians say to us, as they do, Auction-blocks, separation of families, and similar features of slavery, in the limited and decreasing extent to which they prevail, are as odious to us as to you;--we tolerate these things as parts of a system which we all feel to be an evil, and which we are constantly striving to ameliorate;--I will leave the whole subject in their hands; I will trust them in this as I would in anything and everything; I feel absolved from all responsibility to God or to them with regard to the matter."
"Pray tell me," said Mrs. North, "what is all this discussion about 'the territories,' and keeping slavery out of them?"
"I told her that slavery, which fifteen States of the Union maintain as a part of their domestic life, is, by many of the people in the Free States, regarded as they regard the plague and death; they prescribe certain degrees of latitude as barriers to it, as though they enacted thus: 'North of 36° 30' whooping-cough is prohibited, measles are forbidden, cholera-morbus is forever interdicted.' They regard slave-holders as living in a moral pestilence, and seeking to carry it with them into new districts.
"But, practically," I said, "the thing will now regulate itself, and both sides are contending very much for an abstract right. It is a war of feeling, and no one knows where it will end. If the North would say, 'Free labor, which cannot thrive where slavery exists, requires an amicable division and allotment of the territorial regions; let us agree where our respective systems shall prevail,'--there would be no difficulty. But the effort has been to shut out slavery, as men use sanitary legislation and quarantine to keep out a pestilence. This is treating fifteen States of the Union as polluted and polluting. Hence they say, We cannot live together as one people, and we will not."
* * * * *
"What do you honestly think," said Mr. North, "is the true cause of our present national calamities?"
"They are owing," said I, "originally, to the peculiar state of feeling on the part of the North toward the South. This was not in consequence of injury experienced; for slavery had not inflicted injury upon the North; but, right or wrong, Northern disapprobation of slavery, and the ways of manifesting it, are the fountain-head of our present national trouble. Let great numbers in one section of such a nation as this conscientiously disapprove of their brethren in another section, and not only so, but hold them guilty of an immoral and an inhuman system, and deal with them in such ways as Conscience, that most merciless of inquisitors and persecutors, alone employs, and if the indicted section be not exasperated, it will be because the accusation is true,--that their system has destroyed their manhood."
"But my hope and belief," said he, "are, that all these changes are to result in the overthrow of slavery."
"I can only say," said I, in answer to such a remark, "that he who expects relief from our trouble through the eradication of slavery, and urges on secession and division as the means to effect it, is in danger of having his enthusiasm counted as fanaticism, if not madness."
"How I wish," said he, "that we could join and buy up these slaves and set them free."
"Kind and well meant as this proposal is," said I, "nothing is really more offensive to the South. It implies that her conscience is debauched by self-interest, and that by offering to remunerate her if she will part with what we call her ill-gotten booty we shall assist her to become virtuous. Such a proposal makes her feel that fanaticism has assumed the calmness which is its most hopeless symptom."
"Then," said he, "is the North to change all its opinions?"
I said, "If this implies the abandonment of moral or religious principle in the least degree, Never. Our only hope lies in our possibly being in the wrong, and in magnanimously changing our views and feelings, and our behavior. This, upon conviction, it will be most noble to do for its own sake, leaving the effect of it to Him by whom actions are weighed, and to those who, we shall have concluded, are naturally as magnanimous and just as we, and who, if guilty of oppression, were liable to the very same accusation when we first confederated with them, and when Northern slave-importers put their hands with Southern slave-holders to the Declaration of Independence, both averring that all men are created free and equal.
"We seem now to have concluded that we have put ourselves entirely right, and that our Southern brethren are entirely wrong."
"I cannot feel," said Mr. North, "that we are to blame for having our opinions, and for expressing them honestly and fearlessly. What more have we done?"
I replied, "They say that we have held them up to universal execration; that we have quoted, with readiness, the testimony of foreign nations against them,--of nations who know nothing of domestic slavery like ours, mixed up with the qualifying influences of our own civilization; that our imaginative literature has made them odious, associating cruelty and vulgarity with the relation of slave-holding; that we have labored to cripple their Institution, hoping to destroy it; that we have striven to save the District of Columbia from their system as from corruption; that a thousand millions of dollars of their property we have treated as contraband, and have made it perilous for them to recover it; that we have lain in wait and molested them in their transit through our borders, with their servants, to embark for sea. We dispute their right to go with their servants into territories jointly acquired, and belonging by constitutional right equally to them as to ourselves. This, they say, has not been a just and sincere demand for an equitable division of territory in view of the naturally conflicting interests of slave labor and free, but rather a vindictive determination to hem in the slave-holder, to force the scorpion into fires where he shall die of his own sting, or,--to borrow the metaphor, with the language, of a present Senator from Massachusetts,--where the 'poisoned rat shall die in his own hole.'
"Two confederacies or one, our prospect is fearful if we continue to feel and act toward each other after this temper, and to cherish our respective grievances."
"There is another side to all this," said Mr. North. "I ascribe the excitement at the South to the loss on their part of political power, or to a grasping spirit which breaks compromises, and which requires that the national legislation be always shaped in its favor."
"But," said I, "if we can trust the convictions of just men, in private life, at the South,--men removed from all suspicion as to the purity of their motives,--it is certain that our Northern feelings toward slave-holders, and the expressions of those feelings in ways which have been applauded among us for many years, are the real causes of the irritation and exasperation which have brought us to the present brink.
"Now, as these two sections must continue to exist, side by side, they will go on to repel each other until either slavery ceases, or a change of feeling takes place in the non-slaveholding section. Secession and permanent division will not cure the trouble, but will increase it. Moreover, the contrariety of feeling between people in the non-slaveholding States, made intense by the departure of the Southern section, may inaugurate hostilities among ourselves more fearful than those which drive away the Southern people.
"Perhaps we are to be two nations. I cannot but regard this as the greatest calamity which will have happened to the cause of human improvement. Nor do I see how it will help Northern philanthropy, nor the negro; but it may be greatly for his injury. The truth is, we must live together for self-defence against each other, if from no other consideration. Israel began its downfall in secession, which was compelled by Rehoboam.
"But," said I, "let us contemplate a different issue. Let us think what a result it will be if such a government as ours, whose speedy ruin has been so often predicted and is still confidently looked for, shall pass through these trials and dangers without bloodshed, and we become again a united people. Self-government will then have vindicated itself; constitutional liberty will have triumphed; arms and coercion will lose their old authority and power; for there will be an example of a republican people recovering from convulsions which would have demolished any throne or power which trusted in the sword. The serf-boats in ports of the Bay of Bengal, which ride the swift, enormous surges, are not nailed, but their parts are lashed one to another, and thus the boats yield easily to the force of the water. Our government has been likened to them; and now, by yielding, one part to another, where a theoretically stronger government would have used coercion, we shall, if it please God, pass safely through these fearful hazards, furnishing a demonstration, which God may have been preparing by us for the instruction of mankind, that fraternal blood is not the best nourishment of the tree of liberty, and that 'wisdom,' resulting in the victories of peace, 'is better than weapons of war.'
"I look, therefore, toward some change in Northern feelings with regard to the South. A change in this respect will end our troubles. Opinions may not be wholly reversed; people born and bred under totally different institutions may not, for they cannot wholly, yield their convictions on controverted sectional topics, even when they cherish mutual respect and deference; but, the belief that the North will change its feelings toward the South and its institutions, under a modification of views entirely consistent with independence of judgment and self-respect, and that the South will not be wanting in a corresponding temper, rests on the same conviction as that God does not intend to destroy us by each other's hands, nor to make the life of the two sections weary with perpetual hatred and strife."
* * * * *
"Our form of government, Mr. North," said I, "is the very best on earth if it goes well, and the worst if it goes ill. We have no standing army to fight for an administration as for a throne or dynasty; so that if a State secedes, the question is how to coerce that people, if it be best to attempt it. Citizens do not like to march against their brethren. Think of our taking up arms against our correspondents; against people that have gone from our churches and settled in that State; against cousins, and brothers-in-law, and people who lived or did business under the same roofs with us."
"It is awkward, indeed," said Mr. North, "especially if they simply withdraw and hold the fortifications of the general government, in their own territory, to keep the government from destroying their lives."
"Why, yes," said Mrs. North, "it would be simple in them, after seceding, to suffer themselves to be bombarded. But have they any right to secede?"
"As to that," said Mr. North, "my mind has been much exercised of late with this thought: I have always advocated the right of the negroes to make insurrection, or to flee from oppression. But now their masters complain of being oppressed by the North. Why have not the masters the same right to secede from their government as the negro from his?"
"Well, husband," said his wife, "I think that you are getting on fast."
"Why," said I, "Mr. North, is not slavery 'the sum of all villanies?' Did the negro ever consent to his form of government?"
"Well," said he, "I never consented to be born; I find myself in existence; I have no more consented to the government of the United States than I suppose the negroes, generally, have submitted to their civil condition. My question is, Who shall decide when the Southern masters say, We are intolerably oppressed; we are under a yoke; 'break every yoke!' 'let the oppressed go free!' If I interpose and say, 'You are not oppressed; you are better off as you now are,' is not this the reply of the masters when we seek to free their slaves? Do we not say that the oppressed must be the judges of their necessity? And why may I coerce the master, if it be wrong for him to coerce the negro?"
"I must let you, work out that question at your leisure, and on your own principles," said I.--"We were speaking of seizing and holding the forts and arsenals. The French proverb says, 'It is the first step that costs.' Seceding involves the necessity of seizing the forts. If they who do this embarrass other persons in their lawful rights, they must risk the consequences; but if they secede from the government, the question is, Do circumstances justify a revolution? for secession is revolution. Is revolution justifiable in the present case?
"But not to discuss that question," said I, "all that I wished to say was this, that our government seems admirably suited for a people who will behave well under it. We can take care of isolated cases of rebellion. But if any important part of the country rises up and departs, it is exceedingly difficult to know what to do. Prevention is excellent; but cure is next to impossible. So long as there is a general acquiescence in the exercise of executive power against insurrectionists, one or more, we have a general government; but when States depart, we are a house divided against itself. We find that we have been living, as it were, not so much under paternal authority, as under fraternal rule. If broken irretrievably, the alternative is to be divided, or for one part of the country to coerce its neighbors and brethren. This we find to be extremely inconvenient and really impracticable without civil war; and after the war,--whose horrors, in our case, can never be pictured,--we would either find ourselves in the same divided state as before, or if politically united, it will have been effected at a cost which it is fearful to contemplate.
"So that we are illustrating the question, whether such a government as ours is really practicable,--whether a people can govern themselves. Already we hear it said, 'We have no government.' The explanation is, We are not disposed to destroy each other's lives to preserve the confederation. We can have a monarchy, with its 'divine right,' and with its standing army, if we choose; or, if we remain as a republic, we must be liable to just our present exigency. Our only defence, then, consists in mutual conciliation and agreement.
"What a land this is," said I, "with its diversified interests and its unparalleled variety of products,--its agriculture, mechanic arts, science, and literature. Separation will embarrass every form of intercourse, and make us hostile."
"Jews and Samaritans," said Mrs. North. "And all for an idea!"
"Yes," said I, "and for an idea which to one whole section, and to a very large part of the people in the other section, is false.--Four millions of negroes are destroying us. As a foreign writer said, 'In trying to give liberty to the negro, we are losing our own.'"
Said Mrs. North, "Can nothing be done to save us?"
"Bishop Butler tells us, Mrs. North," said I, "that a nation may be insane as well as an individual. But reason seems to be returning in some quarters. Secession and its consequences are having a wonderful effect to open the eyes of people. John Brown's foray and its end were a providential demonstration of certain errors, which we may conclude will not soon be revived. Secession is now leading the world to look more narrowly into the subject of negro slavery. Let me read to you these extracts from a recent number of 'Le Pays,' Paris. The writer is arguing that Europe must recognize the Southern confederacy:
'But in awaiting these results which would flow from the cordial welcome given by Europe to the new confederation, let true philanthropists be assured that they are wonderfully mistaken in regard to the real condition of the blacks of the South. We willingly admit that their error is pardonable, for they have learned the relations of master and slave only from "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Shall we look for that condition in the lucubrations of that romance, raised to the importance of a philosophic dissertation, but leading public opinion astray, provoking revolution, and necessitating incendiarism and revolution? A romance is a work of fancy, which one cannot refute, and which cannot serve as a basis to any argument. In our discussion, we must seek elsewhere for authorities and material. Facts are eloquent, and statistics teach us that, under the superintendence of those masters,--so cruel and so terrible, if we are to believe "Uncle Tom,"--the black population of the South increases regularly in a greater proportion than the white; while in the Antilles, in Africa, and especially in the so very philanthropic States of the North, the black race decreases in a deplorable proportion.
'The condition of those blacks is assuredly better than that of the agricultural laborers in many parts of Europe. Their morality is far superior to that of the free negroes of the North; the planters encourage marriage, and thus endeavor to develop among them a sense of the family relation, with a view of attaching them to the domestic hearth, consequently to the family of the master. It will be then observed that in such a state of things the interests of the planter, in default of any other motive, promotes the advancement and well-being of the slave. Certainly, we believe it possible still to ameliorate their condition. It is with that view, even, that the South has labored for so long a time to prepare them for a higher civilization.
'In no part, perhaps, of the continent, regard being had to the population, do there exist men more eminent and gifted, with nobler or more generous sentiments, than in the Southern States. No country possesses lovelier, kinder hearted, and more distinguished women. To commence with the immortal Washington, the list of statesmen who have taken part in the government of the United States shows that all those who have shed a lustre on the country, and won the admiration of Europe, owed their being to that much abused South.
'Is it true that so much distinction, talent, and grandeur of soul could have sprung from all the vices, from the cruelty and corruption which one would fain attribute now to the Southern people? The laws of inflexible logic refute these false imputations. And--strange coincidence--while Southern men presided over the destinies of the Union, its gigantic prosperity was the astonishment of the world. In the hands of Northern men, that edifice, raised with so much care and labor by their predecessors, comes crashing down, threatening to carry with it in its fall the industrial future of every other nation. For long years the constant efforts of the North, and a certain foreign country, to spread among the blacks incendiary pamphlets and tracts have powerfully contributed to suspend every Southern movement towards emancipation. Its people have been compelled to close their ears to ideas which threatened their very existence.'"
"But," said Mr. North, "here we have been, for thirty years or more, living on an anti-slavery excitement. Grant that it is all wrong; will you ask or expect that we shall change all at once? in a week? or in a month? or in a year? We will not kneel to anybody; if we change, it must be upon conviction."
"I strike hands with you there," said I, "most heartily. Our Southern friends must understand this; they must now approach us once more with reason and persuasion. The people at large are in a frame to be reasoned with and persuaded; for if we can do anything within the bounds of reason to retain the South in the Union, it will be done. We will say of concession as the antithesis of secession, as was said of two other things: 'Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute.' I think that both sections need forgiveness of God, and of each other."
"Well," said Mr. North, "after all we shall get along and get through, even if there should be a separation."
"Mr. Worth," said I, "when you were studying Cicero, could you understand--for I could not--how he and other patriots could feel so strongly about the fortunes of their country as to declare--which they frequently do--that they would rather die than survive their country's honor? It has come to me vividly of late. I see it and feel it. The sunshine will seem to have gone out of our life when we become two unfriendly nations.
"It is easy," said I, "for it gratifies some of the lower passions, to ridicule a whole section of the country for their act of secession or a disposition towards it; to boast that the South cannot do without us; to prophesy that they will get sick of it, and wish to return; to express wonder that they should feel so much hurt; to remind them that, if they will do as we have always counselled them, there would be no trouble; and there is a temptation to say, as friends in a quarrel will hastily say, Let them go. But when they are irrecoverably gone, justifiably or not, I tell you, Mr. North, there will be mourning in our streets. I know, indeed, that there are some among us to whom it will be a carnival; but--"
"They will have a long Lent after it," said Mrs. North; "pray excuse me."
"Ties of kindred," said I, "patriotism, Christian friendships, will not go down to hopeless graves without leaving behind them sorrows ending only with life.
"It appears to me," said I, "that our ship is where nothing but an immediate calm and then a change of the wind, can save us. If we become two nations, it may be for judgment and destruction; and it may be for some great, ultimate good. But it will be hard parting. To think of having no South! and of their having no North! We shall each become provincial. We are wonderfully fitted to qualify and improve each the other. How strange it would be to have these two sections love each other! No one among us under twenty-five years of age, has probably ever thought of us but as in controversy."
"Speaking of Southern life," said Mrs. North, "I have not seen our friend Grant since he came back from the South."
"I have seen him," said I, "and have heard his story. He made his home with an old friend, a clergyman. It was known that he was a stranger, and at once he was made to feel at home by many of the citizens. The morning after he arrived, Jack, a servant of a neighboring family, came into the breakfast-room, with a waiter filled with dishes, which he deposited on the side-board. 'Master and Missis send their compliments, and want to know how the family is, and how Mr. Grant is this morning.' Now they had never seen Mr. Grant; but they knew that he had arrived the night before. 'Well, Jack,' says Mrs. ----, 'I see you have got some good things for us.' 'O, not much, Missis; but they thought you and Mr. Grant would excuse 'em for sending it.' So there were deposited on the breakfast-table, 'big hominy' in one or two shapes, rare fish, puff-muffins, and several dishes which called for Jack's interpretations. 'And Master says, shall he send the carriage round for you this forenoon? and he will call himself.' The evening talk was interrupted by a black woman, all smiles, bearing a waiter of ice-cream and other refreshments, from another house; and so the visit was a succession of surprises from families who, at the South, count each other's guests their own. Mr. Grant was a strong anti-secessionist, and he spent much breath in arguing with the people in private. On his return to his room, one day, he found a glass dish on the table, filled with japonicas, camellias, roses, and other early flowers, with the card of a married lady,--with whom he had had a debate,--inscribed, 'From the hottest of the Secessionists.' He seems modified in his views a little about 'the sum of all villanies,' since his return."
"Yes," said Mrs. North, "and the people here explain it by saying, 'O, he was fêted, and flattered.'
"Yes," she continued, "some of our people will sacrifice their confidence in man or angel, rather than believe anything good about slavery."
I said to her, "Add the Bible to those witnesses, Mrs. North."
"Husband," said she, "please reach me that long, thin, brown-covered book on the what-not." She then read an extract from the sixty-third page; it was a book by one now deceased, called, "Experience as a Minister":
"I had not been long a minister, before I found this worship of the Bible as a fetish hindering me at every step. If I declared the Constancy of Nature's Laws, and sought therein great argument for the Constancy of God, all the miracles came and held their mythologic finger up. Even Slavery was 'of God,' for the divine statutes in the Old Testament admitted the principle that man might own a man, as well as a garden or an ox, and provided for the measure. Moses and the Prophets were on its side; and neither Paul of Tarsus, nor Jesus of Nazareth, uttered a direct word against it."
* * * * *
"But here is the sun!" said I.
"We are all more cheerful," said Mrs. North, "than we were when he left us; for we have been able to converse on a trying and perplexing subject with good feelings."
"Now," said I, "here is the Southern lady's letter, which has given occasion to all our conversation."
"It has also introduced us," said Mr. North, "to that goose, Gustavus, and to his good aunt."
"What shall I say to the Southern lady," said I, "if I write to her father?"
"Tell her," said Mrs. North, "that if she comes to the North she must come directly to our house and make it her home. If you will allow me, I will put a note into your envelope to that effect. I shall beg her to bring Kate with her. Wouldn't I love to see Kate!"
"My dear," said Mr. North, "do you know what a time there would be if the lady should bring Kate with her?"
"The good time coming! I think it would be," said his wife, "to see the Southern lady and her Kate under our roof."
"Why," Paid he, "we should all have to go to court?"
"Well, that would be interesting," said she; "but for what?"
"Why," said he, "you know that this is free soil: Kate is a slave; she can have her freedom for nothing if she comes here. Some of our Massachusetts gentlemen are as chivalrous and attentive to Southern colored people, as our good friend tells us Southern gentlemen are to a white woman: a committee would wait on Kate, with an officer of the peace, and invite her to visit the court-house with them, to be presented with 'freedom'; and Kate's mistress must go with her, to show that she is not restraining Kate of her liberty."
"Why," said Mrs. North, "if I could not be allowed, in visiting Sharon Springs, to take Judith with me to give me my baths, because she is free, I should call it barbarism. Who was that gentleman that broke his collar-bone and seat to you, husband, to get him a nurse?"
Mr. North said it was a student in a medical school, from the South.
"Did you find him a nurse?" said she.
"Yes," he replied; "but he groaned and said, 'Mother wanted to send on my mammy that nursed me, but your laws will not allow her to come. Now,' said he, 'mammy will not tamper with your servants here, and entice them away, as free colored men might do to our slaves if they landed at the South from your vessels. O, mammy,' said he, 'if I had your 'arbs and your nursing, what a pleasure it would be to be sick.'"
"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. North. "What did you say to him?"
"O," said he, "I told him that we lived under different institutions; and that when we are among the Romans we must do as the Romans do."
"Well," said Mrs. North, "if all such prohibitions are not downright impertinence, then I will give up."
"It's the law of the land, here," said her husband.
"Is there no 'Higher Law' in such a case?" said she. "'Higher Law,' I believe, is sometimes the rule in Massachusetts."
"Some of our most estimable colored fellow-citizens would attend her," said I, "and tempt her by their own prosperity and happiness in freedom, at the North, to cast in her lot with them and abandon her Southern home, her mistress, and her little charge, Susan; and her own little Cygnet's grave. They would send her, if she wished, free of charge, to Canada, and leave her there. She could be perfectly free."
"Now, what is all this for?" said Mrs. North. "Do the people here really believe that Kate is 'oppressed?' that her mistress is a tyrant? that Kate is a victim to the 'sum of all villanies?' that she buffers an 'enormous wrong?' that her mistress does her a 'stupendous injustice?' If they wish for objects of charity, and will go with me, I will engage to supply them with 'the oppressed' in any quantity, with some of 'the down-trodden' also."
"But, my dear Mrs. North," said I, "''tis distance lends enchantment to the view.' Besides, to get a slave away from a Southerner is worth unspeakably more to the cause of human happiness than to help scores of Northern people."
"But to be serious," said Mr. North, "we are afraid that slave-holding may get a foothold in Massachusetts; so we have to challenge every one who comes here with a slave, to show proof that he or she is not holding the servant to involuntary servitude among us."
"But," said Mrs. North, "are the people so conscientiously fearful lest bondage should get established here in Massachusetts? Is that the true reason for hurrying every colored servant, who travels here with his or her invalid master or mistress, before a court to know if he or she would not prefer to quit the family and the South? It seems to me we are sadly wanting in good manners."
"Now, please do not smile at your good wife for her simplicity, Mr. North," said I, "for I suppose that you are thinking, What have 'good manners' to do with the 'cause of freedom'? She is right in her impressions; a lady's sense of propriety against all the world."
"Do publish the Southern lady's letter by all means," said Mrs. North.
"How surprised she would be," said I, "to see it in print, or to know that it had wandered here, and was taking part in the discussions about slavery."
"The letter," said Mrs. North, "would, just now, seem like Noah's poor little dove, wandering over wrecks and desolations."
"True," said I, "and to finish the illusion, it might come back to her after many days, and lo! in its mouth an olive-leaf plucked off!"
"Give my love to her," said Mrs. North; "her letter has made me a better and happier woman. Now I love my whole country. I do justice in my feelings to hundreds of thousands whom I have hitherto regarded as perverse. I now see God's wonder-working providence in connection with the slave. It seems plain to me in what way the Union can be saved, and that is, by the general prevalence at the North of such views about slavery as the very best people at the South declare to be just and right."
"You would be deemed simple for saying that, Mrs. North," said I. "But you are right."
"Three things," she continued, after a moment's pause, "are more strongly impressed on my mind; please see if I am right:--That the relation of master and slave is not in itself sinful; That good people at the South feel toward injustice and cruelty precisely like us; and, That Southern Christians can correct all the evils in slavery, or abolish it, if necessary, better without our aid than with it."
"Mrs. North," said I, "unless we accept those propositions, the North and South never can live together in peace; and if we separate, the Northern conscience will be in a worse condition than ever, and we shall have long wars."
"It is a marvellous thing to me," said she, "as I now view it, that our good Christian people here are not willing to confide in that which good Southern Christian people say about slavery. We should trust their judgments, their moral sentiments, their consciences, on any other subject. How is it that when men and women, who are the excellent of the earth, tell us the results of their observation, experience, and reflections, with regard to slavery, we treat them as we do? When ill-mannered people, who must be vituperative and saucy to every body and in every thing, behave thus, it is not surprising; but I cannot explain why truly good men should not either adopt the deliberate sentiments of good people at the South, or at least consent to leave the subject, if beyond their faith or discernment, to the responsibility of Southern Christians. I condemn myself in saying this. But having myself been converted, I have hope for everybody."
During this talk, Mr. North was affected somewhat as he said his wife was when he first read the Southern lady's letter to her. He was a little incoherent by reason of his emotions; but he made out to say something about the sweetness and the strength of reconciled affections, and of the happiness which there would be when it should be proclaimed that the North and the South are once more friends.
"What is your whole name, Mrs. North?" said I; "for I shall wish to speak of you to the Southern lady, if I write to her father."
"My Christian name," said she, "is Patience."
"PATIENCE NORTH!" I said to myself, once or twice, as I stood at the parlor door. I was musing upon the name perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, and when I looked up, they were each both smiling at me and crying.
We shook hands, and I went my way.
THE END.
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The Sable Cloud, by Nehemiah Adams
A free ebook from http://manybooks.net/


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 40: VARIOUS TREATISES
========================================================================

|RESULT OF COUNCIL HELP IN THE LECTURE ROOM OF THE ESSEX-STREET CHURCH, BOSTON,
JAN. 31, FEB. 8, 15, A.VD 21, 1866. BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES. 1866. Entered
according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by NICHOLS AND N O Y E S, In the
Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SONS.|

---> Contents <--- DCox
1. Dissimive Counsel and their Decision
2. Christian Reconsecration by Alden
3. The Worldiness of Nominal Christian by Webb
4. Duty of Christians to Unite with Some Church and Unite where they statredly Worship by Fay
5. Duty of Daily Secret Prayer and Daily Study of Bible by Manning
6. Revivals of Religion by Todd
7. Divine Sovereignty in Human Salvation by Baker
8. Christian's Duty to Work for Saving of Souls by Bingham
9. Duty of a More Strict Observance of Sabbath by Blagden
10. Power and Office of the Holy Spirit by Adams
11. Power of Prayer by Kirk


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 41: DISSIMIVE COUSEL AND THEIR DECISION
========================================================================

DEAR CHRISTIAN BRETHREN, You are aware that there seems to be a growing desire
and expectation among us with regard to an increase of attention to the subject
of personal salvation by Christ, and that Christians are consulting with one
another as to the best ways of promoting it. In former years, our Churches, with
their Pastors, were accustomed to confer and act together with regard to the
interests of religion in Boston. A united action on this subject serves to give
strength to such measures as may be deemed desk-able. And whereas it is
consonant with our Congregational usage that some one Church should take the
first step when the Churches are invited to council together, and it having been
suggested by some who are interested in this movement, that the Church whose
Pastor has had the longest term of pastoral service in one Church could, with
common assent, properly issue the Letter Missive for this purpose: We do,
therefore, as a sister Church, affectionately invite you to be present, by your
Pastor and three Delegates, at an Ecclesiastical Council, in the Lecture-room of
this Church, on WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JANUARY THE THIRTY-FIRST, instant, at a
quarter past three o'clock, to devise and recommend such practical measures as
the Council may judge best adapted to extend a knowledge of salvation by our
Lord Jesus Christ among the population of this city, and to impress the claims
of the Gospel upon their consciences and hearts. With cordial affection, your
brethren in Christ, In behalf of the Union Church, N. ADAMS, Pastor. DANIEL W.
JOB, Clerk (pro tern.). [ 3] THE COUNCIL WILL CONSIST OF THE ORTHODOX
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES OF BOSTON, viz.: CHURCHES. PASTORS. OLD SOUTH - Rev. G.
W. Blagden. D. D., and Rev. J. M. Manning. PARK STREET - Rev. A. L. Stone, D.
D.* UNION - Rev. N. Adams, D. D. PHILLIPS - Rev. E. K. Alden. BERKELEY STREET -
Rev. H. M. Dexter, D. D. SALEM - Rev. S. P. Fay, Acting Pastor. MARINERS'
CENTRAL - Rev. J. E. Todd. MAVERICK - Rev. J. S. Bingham. MOUNT VERNON - Rev. E.
N. Kirk, D. D. SHAWMUT - Rev. E. B. Webb, D. D. SPRINGFIELD STREET .... E STREET
- Rev. A. R. Baker, Acting Pastor. CHAMBERS STREET - Rev. G. W. Blagden, D. D..
and Rev. J. M. Manning. * Rev. Dr. Stone having resigned the pastoral charge of
the Park-street Church, subject to the action of a Council, he is hereby invited
as an honorary member, in the event of his dismission. RESULT. PURSUANT to
letters missive of which the foregoing was the form, the Congregational Churches
of Boston met in Council, by their Pastors and specified number of Delegates, at
the appointed time and place, for the purpose of considering the state of
religion, and devising and recommending practical measures for the furtherance
of the Gospel in this city; and having held several sessions of a deeply
devotional as well as a deliberative character, and having listened to important
reports of committees appointed to set forth the defects in our religious
condition, their causes and their remedies, and having heard these subjects
freely remarked upon and discussed, and having humbly and earnestly sought the
Divine guidance, came to the following RESULT. For the feelings among Christians
which led to- the call of this Council, for our assembling, for the spiritual
interest and power of our sessions, increasing to their close, and for the
influence of these things upon the Churches, manifest and already extensive, we
are profoundly grateful to the Head of the Church. We feel that in these things
some of the true purposes of this Council have been already accomplished. What
further measures for the promotion of a deeper and more extensive religious
interest ' among us may be expedient, is an important but difficult question.
Different measures are suited to different times, and to Churches and
neighborhoods of different character and condition; and therefore we are
compelled to pass by many measures which are not of general applicability, and
do not meet with universal approval. We call the attention of the Churches to
the imperative duty of entering upon new and more earnest courses of action. We
are beset on the one side by rationalism and infidelity, on the other side by
superstition, on every side by worldliness, ungodliness and vice. Multitudes
around us, including many united to us by the strongest ties, are without any
interest in the Saviour, and are, therefore, in the way to everlasting ruin. At
the same time, wordliness has crept into our Churches, the love of many has
grown cold, and a wicked and fatal indifference and inactivity has paralyzed
their energies. We do, therefore, by their love of Christ, by their compassion
for the perishing, by their hope of salvation, affectionately and solemnly
adjure our Churches to employ such prompt, new and decided measures for the
advance of the kingdom of Christ in and around them, as the Spirit of Christ
which is in each shall suggest; and we do affectionately and solemnly adjure
each of our Church members to enter at once upon a deeper and more thorough
humiliation and repentance before God, a more entire separation of heart and
life from the world, and a more faithful and earnest personal activity in the
work of saving souls. We feel that our first duty is, to point out
affectionately but very plainly, some of the causes of this coldness,
indifference and inactivity which we all so deeply deplore. We all acknowledge
the general truth, that if there is ever to be a revival in a Church, it must
commence in the hearts of its members. We cannot hope for God's blessing upon
the meetings and the prayers of nominal Christians who are daily sinning against
their Maker, and whose daily lives are devoted to the service of mammon; such
prayers are empty forms, without reverence, or love, or faith. The sins of
individual Christians are the cause of this condition of the Churches of Christ.
While we rejoice to know and to acknowledge the unaffected piety, the simple
faith and holy lives of so many Christians, we are also aware that the most
earnest and the most devoted are those who are most alarmed at the general
condition of the Churches. There are many of the nominal members of the Churches
of Christ whose daily lives are at war with the plain commands of the Gospel. Do
they love God supremely? Are their affections set upon heavenly things? They do
not endeavor to renounce the sinful customs and vanities of this world; but they
allow the solemn realities of religion to become secondary to the duties and
pleasures of the passing hour. Parents neglect family worship and faithful
religious instruction in their families; they disregard the eternal welfare and
the salvation of the immortal souls of their children, and make their duties to
God subordinate to the friendships, the claims, the pleasures and the
frivolities of social life. Trifling causes, which do not keep the lovers of
pleasure from theatres and balls and parties, are sufficient to prevent nominal
Christians from attending the services of God's sanctuary and the weekly
meetings for prayer. Prominent among the evils with regard to which there can be
no trifling and no compromise, are two. We refer to the neglect of daily secret
prayer and of the daily study of God's Word. We desire to express our settled
conviction, that daily secret prayer (not a formal lip service, but a real and
consecrated communion with our Heavenly Father,) is as essential to a true
Christian life as vital air is to the life of the body; and that a daily study
of the Bible, with prayer for God's blessing upon the study of His own Word, is
indispensable to growth in grace, and, indeed, to any really religious life. We
have reason to believe that both of these vital points are daily neglected, to
the endangering of many souls. In connection with these duties we wish to bring
forward into prominent view one great cause of the want of progress in the
Church of Christ on earth. This is, that with but comparatively few exceptions,
our members are not working for the cause of Christ and His kingdom. What
different results we might expect if every Christian were earnestly at work for
the saving of souls! We believe that this is a plain Christian duty which cannot
be neglected of evaded, that it is essential to a true Christian life, and that
the only truly happy Christians are always working Christians. RECOMMENDATIONS.
RENEWAL OF COVENANT. In view of the painful declension in the Churches, and of
the solemn responsibilities of this hour, when all around us we can hear of the
coming power and glory of God, we do solemnly and earnestly recommend to each
one of you, our Christian brethren and sisters, that you study carefully, and
with earnest prayer, your covenant with God. Your conscience will instruct you
as to your fidelity to the vows which you once took upon yourself in the
presence of God and of His holy angels. If you feel that you have broken your
covenant and neglected your duties, you must return, as a penitent sinner, to
the one strait and narrow way. You must humble yourself before your Maker, and
repent, and seek forgiveness and mercy through the atoning sacrifice of Christ,
until you receive that free pardon which He gives to all who in sincerity and
humility come to Him; and then you will be enabled by a sincere and heartfelt
reconsecration of yourself -to Christ, to become a living member of the Church
to which you now are an occasion of grief and reproach. We know that this
reconsecration is possible to every individual Christian, not as an empty form,
nor by any public profession only, but after sincere self-humiliation, and a new
pardon, and a glad reconciliation with God. In order that this individual duty
of humiliation and repentance, and of a new consecration to the service and
glory of God may, in the most solemn manner, be brought home to the heart and
conscience of every Christian, we recommend that all our Churches should
simultaneously, on the third Sabbath of March, solemnly renew their covenant
with God and with each other, and that this day should be devoted by every
Christian to conscientious and searching self-examination, and to sincere
humiliation before God. In order that this reconsecration may be general and
effectual, we suggest that early notice should be given so far as possible, to
every member of the Churches, and that one or more appropriate sermons be
preached in each Church on or before the appointed day. UNION COMMUNION. We
recommend also that in the evening of this day there should be united communion
services in the Park-street Church, designed solely for the members of the
Churches represented in this Council, in which they may join in token of their
brotherly love, and union in Christ, as well as to seek the Divine blessing upon
their solemn vows of reconsecration to the service and glory of God. ADDRESSES
TO CHURCH MEMBERS. In order that the dangers and temptations to which Christians
are exposed, the causes of coldness in our Churches, and the means through which
we hope for a renewal of the work of the Holy Spirit among us, may be plainly
set before the members of our Churches, we recommend that addresses by the
Pastors be prepared and printed for distribution in every Church, upon the
following subjects: 1. The Duty of a More Strict Observance of the Sabbath, by
Rev. Dr. BLAGDEN. 2. The Power and Office of the Holy Spirit, by Rev. Dr. ADAMS.
3. The Power of Prayer, by Rev. Dr. KIRK. 4. The Christian's Reconsecration, by
Rev. Mr. ALDEN. 5. The Worldliness of Nominal Christians, by Rev. Dr; WEBB. 6.
The Spread of the Gospel in the City among the Poor and those who habitually
neglect the Services of the Sabbath, by Rev. Dr. DEXTER. 7. The Christian's Duty
to work for the Saving of Souls, by Rev. Mr. BINGHAM. 8. Revivals of Religion,
by Rev. Mr. TODD. 9. The Duty of Daily Secret Prayer and Daily Study of the
Bible, by Rev. Mr. MANNING. 10. The Duty of Christians to unite with some
Church, and the Duty of Church Members to unite with the Church where they
statedly worship, by Rev. Mr. FAY. 11. The Divine Sovereignty in its Relation to
Human Salvation, by Rev. Mr. BAKER. OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. "We are convinced
that the services of the Lord's Day ought to be considered supreme above all
other times and means of grace. The members of our Churches should keep God's
Sabbaths holy, and reverence His sanctuary by attending on both the services
usually held. We know that these great duties are too much neglected. PREACHING.
We believe that it is desirable that the Pastors should select subjects for
their sermons such, as the present hour seems to demand: and we recommend great
plainness and distinctness in preaching upon those grand and solemn doctrines of
the Bible: Man's total alienation from God; the Divine justice in the eternal
punishment of the wicked; the new birth; salvation through faith in Christ.
These primal truths of God's Word, and Christ's stern and awful warnings against
a nominal and merely formal worship of God should be preached afresh without any
compromises with pride, heresy or worldliness; and God's ministers should be
sustained and supported by Christians in this high duty. UNION AMONG CHURCHES.
We recommend that every means should be taken to bring about a more fraternal
union and practical sympathy and co-operation between all our Churches in the
city. A more familiar intercourse and more frequent associations will bring
about these desirable results. Mutual regard and respect and acquaintance should
be cultivated, in every manner, and as some of the means to insure these
objects, we recommend: combined or union prayer meetings; informal delegations
of members from one Church to another at the usual social meetings; united
public services as occasion may offer; occasional unions in the communion
services; and more frequent exchanges among the Pastors. PRAYER FOR THE HOLY
SPIRIT. We need a higher faith in the prevailing power of prayer. If the five
thousand members of our Churches were awakened to the solemn responsibilities of
the present moment, and were all united in fervent daily prayers for God's
blessing, we should not require councils, or need to suggest reforms. We
therefore earnestly adjure all who love the Lord Jesus Christ that they do
daily, with deep earnestness and trusting faith, strive earnestly in prayer for
the manifest presence and power of the Holy Spirit in all our Churches. EXTRA
MEETINGS. We are disposed to believe that much of the force and efficiency of
the Sabbath services is lost because the hearers during the week are given up to
the world, and the solemn impressions of the Sabbath are effaced. We therefore
recommend that each Church should increase the number of its social prayer
meetings: and that for the present these meetings should usually be devoted to
prayers for the Holy Spirit and for the conversion of the impenitent. We suggest
also that increased efforts should be made by Christians to induce the
unconverted to attend these meetings. GENERAL VISITATION. We recommend that in
each Church competent and experienced Christians shall be appointed to visit the
members, for the purpose of conversing with them on the subject of personal
religion, for their mutual profit. In this way the hearts of true Christians may
be encouraged and quickened, and the unfaithful may be won back to duty and
their first love. It would be well for the visitors to go forth two and two, as
the Lord appointed, a few members of the Church being assigned to each pair.
Simultaneous neighborhood prayer meetings, or a special Church meeting might
profitably close the work. SPECIAL AND PROTRACTED MEETINGS. The subject of
special meetings in the daytime during the week, and of protracted meetings,
seems to depend so much upon the spiritual state, and the situation in other
respects, of our several Churches, that we think it best to make this suggestion
only, that whenever any Church shall appoint such meetings, it is the duty of
all sister Churches, so far as it may be convenient, to co-operate sincerely,
and assist them. SABBATH SCHOOLS. We recommend a more general and faithful
attendance upon the Sabbath Schools, especially on the part of adults. Every
member of our congregations, and especially every Christian, for whom it is
possible, should be connected with some Sabbath School, as a teacher- or a
scholar. The Sabbath School ought to be employed as a means of drawing children
and others into the services of the sanctuary, and not as an independent and
superior instrumentality of grace. We suggest also, that the Sabbath School
should be made less a means of merely interesting and amusing the children, and
more a means of instructing them and bringing them to Christ; and that every
Sabbath School teacher is bound to use the most diligent and faithful efforts to
bring the children to a personal interest in the Saviour. CITY MISSIONARY
SOCIETY. We recommend a more earnest attention on the part of every Church to
the wants and claims of the City Missionary Society. The number of missionaries
needs to be increased; and the means of enabling them to minister temporal
relief, as it opens a direct road for the Gospel to the hearts of the suffering,
should be liberally supplied. Every Church ought to have missionaries of its own
employed under the general direction of this Society. LAY PREACHERS. If any
Church can procure from among its own members, or elsewhere, suitable men to
preach Christ in mission chapels, halls, or vestries, as lay preachers under the
supervision and with the co-operation of the Pastor, we earnestly recommend the
employment of such assistance. NEW CHURCHES, ETC. In view of the dense and
neglected population in the north part of the city, it would be obviously
unfaithful to the Master, should our Churches cease to maintain vigorously our
faith and polity in that part of the city; while the rapid growth of the city,
in our judgment, requires the immediate erection of a new meetinghouse and the
consequent organization of a new Church of our order at the extreme South End,
and also at East Boston. DISTRICTING THE CITY. We believe that the apportionment
of the city into districts, and the assignment of a district to each Church for
its religious care, is already in progress. We recommend each church to accept
the field of labor which shall be offered it, and enter with alacrity and vigor
upon the work. The religious condition of every family should be known; and not
a child unconnected with any Sabbath School should be left unsought; not a
stranger in the city should be left to its temptations and snares, uncaught by a
Christian hand; and not an individual should be permitted to pass through and
out of life, within the bounds of the district, without having distinctly and
repeatedly presented to him, the knowledge and offers of Christ's salvation.
Such a work will call for much self-denying labor on the part of the whole
Church; and we do, in the most solemn manner, and by the most sacred
considerations, urge the Churches to come up heartily to the work. Let every
Christian feel that there is something for him, or her, to do. Let some work be
assigned to each, according to his or her several ability. Let every Christian
remember, that not only among the poor and lost, but at home and by the way, in
business circles and among his friends, he is under the strongest obligations to
preach Christ, with modesty, wisdom, meekness and love, not only by his works
but with his lips. ENCOURAGEMENT TO LABOR. We call the attention of the Churches
to the fact that at the present time we have special encouragement to labor.
There seems to be a readiness in the minds of men to listen to the Gospel. There
seems to be a general expectation of an unusual outpouring of the Spirit. All
around us showers of grace are falling. In all of our Churches there is an
element of faithfulness and prayer; in some of them there is an unusually tender
and solemn state of feeling. In our own sessions and their influence we believe
that we have seen indications that the Lord is with us, and going before us. Let
us, then, Pastors and Churches, awake to the responsibilities and privileges of
the hour. The time is short; the reward is great; and lo! Christ is with us
alway. Addresses to Church Members Are in preparation, as follows, viz.: 1. The
Duty of a more Strict Observance of the Sabbath, by Rev. Dr. BLAGDEN. 2. The
Power and Office of the Holy Spirit, by Rev. Dr. ADAMS. 3. The Power of Prayer,
by Rev. Dr. KIRK. 4. The Christian's Reconsecration, by Rev. Mr. ALDEN. 5. The
Worldliness of Nominal Christians, by Rev. Dr. "WEBB. 6. The Spread of the
Gospel in the City among the Poor and those who habitually neglect the Services
of the Sabbath, by Rev. Dr. DEXTER. 7. The Christian's Duty to work for the
.Saving of Souls, by Rev. Mr. BINGHAM. 8. Revivals of Religion, by Rev. Mr.
TODD. 9. The Duty of Daily Secret Prayer and Daily Study of the Bible, by Rev.
Mr. MANNING. 10. The Duty of Christians to unite with some Church, and the Duty
of Church Members to unite with the Church where they statedly worship, by Rev.
Mr. FAY. 11. The Divine Sovereignty in its Relation to Human Salvation, by Rev.
Mr. BAKER. In accordance with the recommendation of the Council, the Addresses
named above will be printed without delay, for the purpose suggested. The first
of the series, by Rev. Mr. ALDEN, will be issued in a few days.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 42: CHRISTIAN RECONSECRATION
========================================================================

THE CHRISTIAN'S RECONSECRATION. BY REV. E. K. ALDEN. BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES.
1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by NICHOLS AND
NOYES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SONS. UPON
the twelfth day of January 1723, Jonathan Edwards, being then nineteen years of
age, wrote the following words: "I have this day solemnly renewed nay baptismal
covenant and self-dedication, which I renewed when I was received into the
communion of the Church. I have been before God; and have given myself, all that
I am and have, to God, so that I am not in any respect my own: I can claim no
right in myself, no right in this understanding, this will, these affections
that are in me; neither have I any right to this body, or any of its members; no
right to this tongue, these hands, or feet; no right to these senses, these
eyes, these ears, this smell, or taste. I have given myself clear away, and have
not retained any thing as my own. I {3} {4} have been to God this morning, and
told Him that I gave myself wholly to Him. I have given every power to Him; so
that, for the future, I will challenge or claim no right in myself in any
respect. I have this morning told Him that I did take Him for my whole portion
and felicity, looking on nothing else as any part of my happiness, nor acting as
if it were; and His law as the constant rule of my obedience; and would fight
with all my might against the world, the flesh, and the devil, to the end of my
life. And did believe in Jesus Christ, and receive Him as a Prince and a
Saviour; and would adhere to the faith and obedience of the Gospel, how
hazardous and difficult soever the profession and practice of it may be. That I
did receive the blessed Spirit as my Teacher, Sanctifier, and only Comforter;
and cherish all His motions to enlighten, purify, confirm, comfort and assist
me. This I have done. And I pray God, for the sake of Christ, to look upon it as
a self-dedication; and to receive me now as entirely His own, and deal with me
in all respects as such, whether He afflicts me or prospers me, or whatever He
pleases to do with me who am His. Now henceforth I am not to act in any respect
as my own. I shall act as my own, if I ever make use of any of my powers to any
thing that is not to the glory of God, or do not make the glorifying of Him my
whole and entire business; if I murmur in the least at afflictions; if I grieve
at the prosperity of others; if I am in any way uncharitable; if I am angry
because of injuries; if I revenge my own cause; if I do any thing purely to
please myself, or avoid any thing for the sake of my ease, or omit any thing
because it is great self denial; if I trust to myself; if I take any of the
praise of any good that I do, or, rather, God does by me; or if I am any way
proud. . . Resolved, frequently to renew the dedication of myself to God, which
was made at my baptism, and which I solemnly renewed when I was received into
the communion of the Church; and which I have solemnly ratified this twelfth day
of January 1723. Resolved, never to act as if I were any way my own, but
entirely and altogether God's." Upon -the twenty-fifth of July 1805, Edward Pay
son, being upon that day twenty-two years of age, wrote the following words: "
Having resolved this day to dedicate myself to my Creator, in a serious and
solemn manner, by a written covenant, I took a review of my past life, and of
the numerous mercies by which it has been distinguished. Then, with sincerity as
I humbly hope, I took the Lord to be my God, and engaged to love, serve, and
obey Him. Relying on the assistance of His Holy Spirit, I engaged to take the
Holy Scriptures as the rule of my conduct, the Lord Jesus Christ to be my
Saviour, and the Spirit of all grace and consolation as my Guide and Sanctifier.
The vows of God are on me." Upon the first of May 1807, he renewed this
dedication of himself to God in a solemn Confession and form of Covenant,
closing thus: " As a testimony of my sincere and hearty consent to this
covenant, of my hope and desire to see the blessings of it, and as a swift
witness against me if I depart from it, I do now, before God and the holy
angels, subscribe with my hands unto the Lord. Edward Payson. . . . And may this
covenant be ratified in Heaven! And do thou remember, my soul! that the vows of
God are upon thee. . . . Having drawn up the above covenant, I spread it before
the Lord; and, after confession of sins, -and seeking pardon through the blood
of Christ, I did solemnly accept it before Him, as my free act and deed; and
embraced Christ in it as the only ground of my hope." These are illustrations of
a Christian's reconsecration, a practical commentary upon the apostolic
precepts: “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your
reasonable service. . . . Yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from
the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. . . . Know
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, Which is in you, Which ye
have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore,
glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." Reconsecration
supposes a first consecration. There was a time when, as an anxious sinner
oppressed with a sense of guilt and peril, despairing of human help, you beheld
the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world; you accepted Him as a
personal Redeemer, you recognized His claim to your entire being, and you
dedicated yourself to His service. That hallowed hour may be but recent in your
experience, or it. may be that for many years you have been active in various
departments of Christian usefulness; you have enjoyed continuous and comforting
evidence that you are a child of God, or, perhaps, your mind has been at times
perplexed and darkened; you have maintained a consistent Christian deportment in
the eyes of your fellow-men, or, possibly, the fervor of your first love may
have declined, and you have been led astray by the corruptions of your own
heart, and the temptations of the world. Whatever and wherever you now may be in
the Christian pilgrimage, permit me to suggest for your candid consideration the
value of a solemn personal act of reconsecration to the Lord Jesus Christ. I.
There are some Christians in whose early experience the idea of consecration is
not prominent. They believe in Christ as a Saviour through whom they receive
forgiveness of sins and adoption into the household of God. They know, in some
measure, the peace of those who are justified by faith, and rejoice in the hope
of the glory of God. But they do not, with the same definiteness, apprehend
Christ as their Master, to Whom they belong, and in Whose service they dedicate
their entire energies to practical personal obedience. This thought does not
thoroughly take possession of their souls, and decide the conduct of their
lives. They are not conscious of a distinct renunciation of the world,
deliberately forsaking all f its attractions, and choosing a life of
self-denial, as disciples of Christ. They may live many years, knowing at times
genuine Christian" emotion and affection; and yet may not thoroughly surrender
every thing to the service of Christ, and enter vigorously upon the Christian
work. Some are puzzled and perplexed by the call to an entire dedication of
thought, purpose, energy, time, property, business, every thing, to Christ, and
confess to themselves and to others that they do not understand what it means.
They are conscious that it is, in many of its aspects, a new question, and that
they have never fully grappled with its requirements. But, as the question
begins to present itself in its true significance, and they perceive its
fundamental nature, and become aware that it is searching to the innermost
motive of their hearts, not unfrequently their whole religious experience is
upheaved by it, they take the question up prayerfully and conscientiously in the
fear of God; and when, yielding to its claims, they do indeed dedicate their
entire being practically and for ever to the service of Christ, the act marks in
their history a new and momentous era. II. There are some who begin the
Christian life with a definite act of self-dedication to God, but who fail to
retain the idea as an influential power amid the exposures of the world. Of the
multitudes awakened to serious thought, who have read " The Rise and Progress of
Religion in the Soul," by Philip Doddridge, not a few, endeavoring in all
simplicity to follow his directions, have paused as they concluded the
seventeenth chapter, and then and there for themselves have transcribed and
signed some form of " self-dedication to the service of God." They have done it
with seriousness and prayer, and have never forgotten the impressions of the
hour. Probably something of this style of dedication has been known by a
considerable number of persons who have been hopefully converted during
childhood or early youth. Occasionally, there is one who records that he signs
this private covenant of his soul with God with his own blood. The years roll
on, and this young, ardent disciple has gone forth to his work in life,
determined to be entirely dedicated to the service of Christ, according to the
spirit of the covenant into which he has entered with the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost. But he finds that he has very feebly comprehended what those
solemn words included; that it is quite a different matter in youth, in the
solitude of private meditation, to transcribe such a covenant, and to sign it
upon the knees before God, and in mature years, amid all the exposures of
earth's ambition and wealth, to observe that covenant in daily life and
conversation. There are some, indeed, who never give over this purpose; who hold
themselves steadily to their vows during all their days; and who frequently
renew their consecration, with a clearer apprehension of its meaning and with
increasing solemnity, to the end of life. But it is a fact to which many will
testify in sadness, that the personal dedication which they made to God in the
days of their youthful religious fervor, long since lost its practical power in
their Christian experience. “The cares of the world, the deceitfulness of
riches, and the lusts of other things, entering in have choked the word, and it
has become unfruitful." The glow of tender personal love to Christ has passed
away. They have not cherished the thought of His presence as they have journeyed
along their pilgrimage. They have been living, in a great degree, for
themselves, consulting their own ease and convenience, turning aside from the
path of daily self-denial, gradually conforming to the world, ceasing the
strenuous endeavor to be entirely free from sin and entirely godly in heart and
life, until by and by, awakened in the midst of their days to consider where
they are in the Christian life, they find themselves absorbed in selfish and
worldly plans; and the idea of an entire self-dedication to the service of God,
into which they once 'entered with alacrity, is wellnigh appalling to them. They
wonder how they ever subscribed to such a covenant, and are almost ready to
protest against the act as sacrilege. As they apprehend it now, its significance
becomes awful. They begin to reason with themselves, and ask, Does every thing I
have belong to God? Am I only a steward using God's property sacredly for His
service? Am I living, speaking, transacting business, regulating all my affairs
on that principle? If this is the test of Christian discipleship, what is my
evidence of piety worth? Some refuse to yield to the searching power of such
questions as these, administering to themselves a delusive comfort in the hasty
assertion, that entire consecration is an impossibility, and need not be
attempted; but others bow down beneath this startling revelation of their own
selfishness and pride, submit themselves to the word which pierces even to the
dividing asunder of soul and spirit, cry earnestly to God for mercy, mourn
bitterly as they meet the eye of the Saviour they have grieved, and at length
know in their own experience the priceless worth of a genuine reconsecration.
III. There are some striving to follow on to know the Lord, who become conscious
that their practical ideal of the Christian life is changing, their views are
enlarging, they are hungering and thirsting for a type of Christian experience
to which they have not yet attained, and which yet seems attainable: they want,
as far as it can be known on earth, the full liberty of a child of God; and they
find themselves in prayer, meditation, and Christian labor, perpetually impelled
toward the endeavor to be consciously and entirely Christ's, " body, soul, and
spirit." As one of the helps in this direction, they learn, perhaps after
protracted and weary struggles, that there is a wondrous power, while in this
attitude of thought, in appropriating the Lord Jesus Christ as an atoning
Saviour anew, in recognizing God's right to all we have and are anew, in
receiving in a special sense the personal anointing of the Holy Ghost anew, and
in accepting the fulness of promises, as they are dawning upon the illumined
soul in a richer and more glorious significance, anew. " Resolved," writes
Edwards, " to improve every opportunity when I am in my best and happiest frame
of mind, to cast and venture my soul on the Lord Jesus Christ; to trust and
confide in Him, and consecrate myself wholly to Him." " In order to maintain
this habitual delightful sense of God," writes Doddridge, " ] would frequently
renew my dedication to Him, in that covenant on which all my hopes depend, and
my resolutions for universal zealous obedience. I will study redeeming love
more, and habitually resign myself and all my concerns to the Divine disposal.
... blessed Spirit! graciously descend on my polluted heart. Strike the flint,
thou almighty arm of the Lord 1 that the waters may flow forth. I come to humble
myself before God; I come to renew my resolutions against sin; I come to refer
my concerns to Him; I come to seal my engagements to be the Lord's." This is the
man who wrote the familiar hymn, whose final stanza begins, “High Heaven that
heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily hear.' 1 ' 1. Whitefield
writes, in the maturity of his life, after long years of fervent laborious
service for Christ, “I intend, by God's assistance, now to begin; for as yet,
alas! I have done nothing. Oh that 1 may begin in earnest! God quicken my tardy
pace, and help me to do much work in little time! " Occasionally it is an epoch
in the Christian life from which some believers date a remarkable change in the
joyous consciousness of their souls, when after a painful strife for entire
consecration to Christ, at length, with all simplicity of faith, they receive a
consecration from Christ: when yielding to what they perceive are His
acknowledged claims, they hear Him saying, " Ye have not chosen Me, but I have
chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that
your fruit should remain. ... As My Father hath sent Me, so send I you." Calvin,
in his Commentary on the First Epistle of John, exclaims, " I have not sued Thee
by niy love, Christ! Thou hast loved me of Thy free will. Thou hast shone into
my soul, and then every thing that dazzled my eyes by a false splendor
immediately disappeared, or at least I take no count of it." Here the
Christian's reconsecration and his re-acceptance of the unsearchable riches of
Christ sweetly blend together; and what is regarded as that difficult act of
self-abdication is found to be a precious act of childlike faith, leading into
all the joy and peace of believing. This idea is finely illustrated in the
account, given by President Edwards, of the remarkable transports of one whose
fresh experience, though she had been a devoted Christian for twenty-seven
years, he thus relates; They began near three years ago, in a great increase, in
an extraordinary self-dedication and renunciation of the world and resignation
of all to God, made in a great view of God's excellency, and high exercise of
love to Him, and rest and joy in Him, . . . and began in a yet higher degree,
about a year and a half ago, upon another new resignation of all to God, with a
yet greater fervency and delight of soul, . . . and began in a much higher
degree still, the last winter, upon another resignation and acceptance of God,
as the only portion and happiness of the soul, wherein the whole world, with the
dearest enjoyments in it, were renounced as dirt and dung; and all that is
pleasant and glorious, and all that is terrible in this world, seemed perfectly
to vanish into nothing; and nothing to be left but God, in Whom the soul was
perfectly swallowed up as in an infinite ocean of blessedness." Is there such a
self-dedication of the soul to God as this? Are there such reconsecrations of
the already renewed and partially sanctified believer as these, followed by “a
constant sweet peace and calm and serenity of soul, without any cloud to
interrupt it, ... a wonderful access to God by prayer, as it were seeing Him,
and sensibly, immediately conversing with Him; as much, oftentimes, as if Christ
were here upon earth, ... all sorrow and sighing fled away, except grief for
past sins and for remaining corruption, and that Christ is loved no more, and
that God is no more honored in the world, and a compassionate grief toward
fellow-creatures, a daily sensible doing and suffering every thing for God, . .
. doing all as the service of love, and so doing it with a continual,
uninterrupted cheerfulness, peace and joy? ' Well may we exclaim, with the
narrator of this experience, " If such things are enthusiasm and the fruits of a
distempered brain, let my brain be evermore possessed of that happy distemper!
If this be distraction, I pray God that the world of mankind may be all seized
with this benign, meek, beneficent, beatifical, glorious distraction! ' It does
not become one Christian believer to mark out the precise method in which
another shall for himself perform this solemn act of personal reconsecration to
God. The method will differ according to the constitutional temperament and
external circumstances of each individual, and will also be modified by
peculiarities of past religious experience. Let each one select his own method.
It may be by means of some written form of covenant signed and sealed as in the
Divine presence; it may be by making an inventory of all one has and is, and
specifically dedicating property, business, time, reading, recreation,* family,
person, body, and mind to God; it may be in the forgetting of what is behind,
and a new and full acceptance of Christ as all in all; it may be in connection
with agonizing supplication; it may be in simple, quiet trust: but in some form
let it be a transaction between each individual and God, the genuine outpouring
of the soul with the sincerity of one meeting his Lord face to face, and
henceforth knowing Him in the fellowship of a loved and loving child. Come then,
longing disciple! not merely to make a consecration, but also to receive a
consecration. Your Lord and Master is setting you apart anew for His own work,
and will bestow upon you of His own fullness. For it is the blessedness of
yielding up all to God, that henceforth you receive all from God; and, if you
are His, He also is yours. Not, then, with timid and * " Let me consecrate my
sleep and all ray recreations to God, and seek them for his sake." Doddridye.
hesitating steps, but with joyous thanksgivings, amazed at our own sinful
distrust, hastening to fall down penitently and confess our sin, hastening to
receive the Divine benediction waiting to be bestowed upon us, let us now
approach the altar of our God, blessing Him that it is our privilege, with a
clearer apprehension of the significance of the act, to present our bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service.
Almighty God! Whose I am by creation, preservation, and redemption, I do now bow
before Thee, a sinner utterly unworthy, renouncing self, appropriating anew to
my own soul the blood of the atonement; accepting anew the Lord Jesus Christ as
the way, the truth, and the life; acknowledging Thee, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, as my gracious, ever-present God. I do now surrender every member of my
body and every faculty of my mind to Thee, to be used by Thee as 'Thou shalt
please. I give to Thee, without reservation, my time, my business, my earthly
possessions, receiving all that Thou shalt bestow as a sacred trust to be
employed in Thy service. To the extension of Thy kingdom in the world, to the
salvation of my fellow-men, to the glory of Christ, my Saviour, I devote, with
thankfulness of heart, all I have and am. I accept Thy blessing, Thy guidance,
Thy constant presence, Holy Comforter, to be with me and in me evermore to the
end. And as I now feel Thy hand, Divine Redeemer, laid upon my head
re-dedicating me to Thy service, accept the dedication. “God forbid that I
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom the world is
crucified unto me, and I unto the world." "THY VOWS ARE UPON ME, GOD I "
COVENANT. [The folio-wing form of covenant has been prepared, by Rev. Dr. KIRK,
on the basis of one which was written by President EDWARDS. It is inserted here
for those who may desire to use such a form. ] IN the name of my God and
Saviour, "Who promises me strength for all my work, I hereby enter into this
covenant. Acknowledging my unworthiness and His infinite goodness; deeply
lamenting my present unhappy distance from Him; fervently imploring the
forgiveness of all my sins, and entreating for Christ's sake to be called a
child of God, I hereby renounce the world as my portion; all the pleasures,
honors, and profits of sin; and take the Lord to be my portion and my Saviour. I
engage to make it my supreme design, to exalt God above all creatures in my own
view, and in the view of all men. I will endeavor evermore to stand upon the
foundation God has laid in Zion, the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
as the ground of my peaceful relations with God. I engage, in all my
conversation and intercourse with others, to deal honestly, justly, and
uprightly; never overreaching or defrauding in any matter, nor wilfully injuring
them in their interest. I engage to give no just cause of offence to any; either
by negligently withholding from him his dues, or by speaking evil of him, or
needlessly mentioning his faults, or by allowing a spirit of ill-will or any
unkind feeling, or by maintaining a party spirit. I engage to obey the Lord's
command, "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy
brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go
thy way: first be reconciled to thy brother; and then come, and offer thy gift."
I engage to avoid all those pastimes, which, upon sober and prayerful
consideration, seem to me inconsistent with a devout religious spirit and close
walking with God. I engage to promote, in myself and others, all generous, pure,
heavenly dispositions; to walk in my house in the fear of the Lord. I engage to
put away, as far as is in my power, within me and around me, every thing that
hinders my own growth in holiness and the conversion of others to God.
Cheerfully and gratefully I lay myself, and all I am and own, at the feet of Him
who redeemed me with His precious blood, engaging to follow Him, and bearing the
cross He places upon me. By this covenant I will frequently examine myself, and
review my life; occasionally renewing it with prayer and fasting. To God the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the God of grace and salvation, I hereby devote
myself for time and eternity. Amen. Addresses to Church Members Are in
preparation, as follows. viz.: 1. The Duty of a more Strict Observance of the
Sabbath, by Rev. Dr. BLAGDEN. 2. The Power and Office of the Holy Spirit, by
Kev. Dr. ADAMS. 3. The Power of Prayer, by Rev. Dr. KIRK. 4. The Christian's
Reconsecration, by Rev. Mr. ALDEN. 5. The Worldliness of Nominal Christians, by
Rev. Dr. TV EBB. 6. The Spread of the Gospel in the City among the Poor and
those who habitually neglect the Services of the Sabbath, by Rev. Dr. DEXTER. 7.
The Christian's Duty to work for the Saving of Souls, by Rev. Mr. BINGHAM. 8.
Revivals of Religion, by Rev. Mr. TODD. 9. The Duty of Daily Secret Prayer and
Daily Study of the Bible, by Rev. Mr. MANNING. 10. The Duty of Christians to
unite with some Church, and the Duty of Church Members to unite with the Church
where they statedly worship, by Rev. Mr. FAY. 11. The 'Divine Sovereignty in its
Relation to Human Salvation, by Rev. BAKER. In accordance with the
recommendation of the Council, the Addresses named above will be printed without
delay, for the purpose suggested. The first of the series, by Rev. Mr. ALDEN,
will be issued in a few days.


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  CHAPTER 43: THE WORLDINESS OF NOMINAL CHIRSITAN
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THE WORLDLINESS OF NOMINAL CHRISTIANS. BY REV. E. B. WEBB. D. D. Published by
Vote of the Congregational Council. BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES. 1866. Entered
according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by NICHOLS AND NOYES, In the
Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SONS. JOHN, writing to
fathers and young men, uses this language, terse and decisive: " Love not the
world, neither the things that are in the world* If any man love the world, the
love of the Father is not in him" Is there occasion for Christians now to take
this stringent exhortation home to their own heart and life? and are we ready to
apply a test so incisive and irresistible? It seems to be taken for granted,
that the members of our churches are worldly-minded. It is a root disease,
blighting our strength, and repelling the Divine approaches. It is a guilty
state, calling for self-scrutiny, immediate repentance, and practical reform.
How many are willing to look into this matter, and determine what spirit they
are of? Are you? Let us see. Paul makes a clear, sharp distinction between the
flesh and the Spirit: “To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually
minded is life and peace." And the test he puts in this way: “They that are
after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the
Spirit, the things of the Spirit." Now, we are not going into the street for
evidence; nor into places of business, nor into places of pleasure, nor into
circles of friendship, to note the conversation; nor into Christian homes, to
learn, from the tastes and habits of the children, what is the dominant spirit
of the parents. This might be very conclusive, and still very superficial. Let
me put it and leave it to every one's own conscience: Say, brother, in the
presence of God, and to Him who searches the heart, have you been spiritually
minded or worldly-minded? “No man can serve two masters." “Ye cannot serve God
and mammon." Either the love of the world or the love of God must be uppermost.
And, if a man love the world, “how dwelleth the love of God in him?” Paul puts
the test still further: “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so
be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." There is a difference between a
dwelling and an inn. The one is a place for transient visitors; the other, a
permanent abode, a home. Now, we have had a great many good thoughts during the
last half-dozen years; but have our hearts been any thing more than an inn, into
which they have entered and from which they have departed like transient
visitors? Jesus was constrained to abide with the two disciples till they knew
Him, and had a message for those at Jerusalem. Have you constrained Him to abide
with you? Or is this all that you know, that He has occasionally passed by? The
Comforter was given expressly to " abide ': with you for ever. You know how He
lifts the soul into sympathy with Jesus; how the world seems but vanity and
ashes, and the kingdom of heaven real and precious, when He is present. Has your
heart been a home for the Comforter? Blessed companionship! happy home! Or does
all this sound like talk about dreamland, or a vision of the future yet to be
overtaken? If further evidence of our want of the spiritual mind is required, we
have it in the fact, that the peculiar, distinguishing doctrines of the gospel
are assented to rather than believed. As a dead chieftain in the camp, they
inspire no awe; as an opinion about the height of the Andes, they feed the
strength of no supreme conviction. But these vital truths of the gospel, such as
the guilt of all men; forgiveness only through faith in the blood of Christ
crucified; native depravity, and regeneration by the Holy Ghost; a day of
judgment; a final and eternal separation of the righteous and the wicked, these
are not dead theories, not the footballs of human speculation, but living truths
for living men to confront and grapple with, ay, rather, truths to be received
in mastery of the conscience and will, heart and life, of every rational
creature. And not only these, but the principles which should govern our daily
life are equally ignored, if not equally offensive. We are ready to soften down
the doctrines, and indulge, with many plausible excuses, the desire for personal
ease and sensual gratification. Jesus said unto his disciples, " If any man will
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow
me." Now, where are the cross-bearers in this ease-loving, pleasure-seeking age?
Are there none? yes, here and there one. But put the test just quoted, and put
this further test: " If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother
and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he
cannot be my disciple." Do you really put your Saviour before yourself? Do you
consciously subordinate all family considerations to the interests of Christ's
kingdom? You may decide, if you will, what spirit you are of. Dear brethren,
shall we fly from this subject to something more agreeable? or shall we
tremblingly put the test, and abide the issue? Still further, keeping to our own
hearts, let us examine our aims. For what, for whom, are we living? You know the
Scripture: “If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above." "
Take no thought for the body, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or what
ye shall put on, but" think about this, do this, u seek ye first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness." Brethren, it is a fearful thing not to be in
sympathy with Jesus. Are we aiming at his ends? " Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." Now,
brother, have you not been devoted for some years past, mind and heart, to
material possessions and worldly pleasures? Can you claim confidence in your
self knowledge, and admit any thing else? If, in all this struggling and
crowding and jostling, you have been aiming to advance the cause of Christ, and,
in a spirit of self-denial, serenely laying up treasure in heaven, God be
praised; but have you? We do not suppose that Christians are guilty of gross
sins or inconsistencies. We take it for granted that they avoid all sharp
practice, and doubtful indulgences, and open selfishness. But he who goes no
further than this has a most imperfect idea of Christ, and of the believer's
relation to Him. He who stops with the outward, has not even approached the
Divine life; and “knows nothing as he ought to know it." And now let us turn to
look at some of the consequences of worldliness: 1. It excites the displeasure
of the Lord Jesus Christ. When the Lord talked to Peter about going to Jerusalem
and suffering at the hands of the chief priests and elders, and about being
killed, and raised again 011 the third day, that disciple would change the
subject, and avoid the predictions. But the Lord, whose heart was set on the
prosperity of His kingdom, though it must prosper through self-denial and
self-sacrifice, was offended with Peter, and turned His face from him with this
rebuke: " Thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of
men." To enjoy Christ's favor, we must have His spirit. To share His fellowship,
we must share his purposes. Napoleon once said, “Jerusalem is not in the line of
my operations." But, if we would stand in the presence of Jesus, and enjoy His
face, we must be ready to sympathize with Him in all His expectations, and go
wherever He shall lead. What can compensate for the displeasure of the Lord? 2.
Another result of worldliness is an utter want of confidence in the use and
efficacy of the simple, essential truths of the gospel. To suffer, to die, "
that be far from Thee, Lord." To rely upon the doctrines, to resort to prayer,
to expect the presence and conscious influence of the Holy Ghost, " that be far
from our confidence," is the practical testimony of the nominal Christian. And,
instead, he relies upon mere human talent or influence or eloquence to advance
the cause of Christ, and resorts to mere worldly contrivances, and panders to a
depraved popular taste. As well advance the spring, and loose the streams, and
clothe the valleys with golden harvests, with a fire of brush and a garden hose.
How can one have confidence in spiritual powers and persons, when he has lost
all spiritual perception and affinity? How can his interest be any thing but
transient, or his experience any thing but shallow? 3. Another effect of
worldly-mindedness is ignorance of the Holy Spirit's special presence. It must
be a poetic mind to recognize the poet. It requires a spiritual mind to
recognize the Spirit's presence. Christ agonized in the garden, but the
disciples had not sympathy enough with Him to keep awake. He came and stood
beside them, and bent over them, with words on His tongue that would have
thrilled their hearts and gladdened all their future; but they were ignorant and
unconscious of His presence. And that was a lost opportunity, a loss never to be
made up, an occasion never to be repeated. Just so, within the last few years,
the Spirit has been present again and again, present to open the Scriptures,
present to quicken and comfort and convert the soul; but worldliness has held
every sense fast locked in sleep. “Oh that thou hadst known the times of thy
visitation!” Brethren, is it not “high time to awake out of sleep," and listen
for the sound of descending wings? 4. Another effect of worldly mindedness is,
that the believer is obliged to go over the whole question of his own conversion
every time the Spirit is really poured out. While all are in the dark together,
one man's foundation is as good as another. But, as soon as the light begins to
shine, the worldly mind is in trouble. Thoughts, affections, aspirations, have
been elsewhere; and now a painful want, a miserable uncertainty, is revealed. Of
course, such a Christian can do no good. He has no strength, no confidence in
himself. Like a beam of light, severed from the sun, separated from Christ, his
light is darkness. He has no voice, no burden of prayer, for others; all his
anxiety is to hear for himself, “Thy sins be forgiven thee." And thus it is,
over and over again, every time the Spirit is forced upon him. 5. And hence
another result is very few additions to the Church. And even those who suppose
themselves converted find so little difference between the Church and the world,
that they can hardly decide to change their relation. On the other hand, the
young from Christian families are brought over to card-playing and
wine-drinking; children spend their sabbaths, or a portion of them, where they
are taught to call their fathers' faith illiberal, bigoted, puritanic; operas
flourish, theatres multiply, and Christians relax their watchfulness and yield
to the magnetism of pleasure, and follow their children. Behold the result! The
Church as impotent as a debating society; the sharp gratifications of sense
sought and enjoyed, instead of the fruits of the Spirit and the peace of God in
the soul; Zion trailing her beautiful garments in the dust; and almost no
conversions from the world. Again and again, the atmosphere of our worshipping
assemblies seems agitated, as by the emotions of the Divine heart; but it is as
when the sunshine and the dew visit the rock. There is no springing foliage, no
fruit. To be sure, there are, here and there, conversions among us, and, from
time to time, a few inquirers; but the appalling confession forced to the lips
even then is, “The children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to
bring forth." And now, brethren, what shall be done? We must go back to the
point of departure. When Bunyan's Christian got out of the way and found himself
in sore trouble, his burden growing heavier instead of lighter, Evangelist told
him he must go back, and enter the path to the wicketgate, where he left it.
“Then did Christian address himself to go back." And then what? How shall we
prevent a repetition of this turning aside and turning back from the narrow way?
We must have the love of God as the supreme and masterful affection of our soul.
The love of the world must be eradicated from the heart. And this can be done
only by enthroning a new spiritual affection. Chalmers's phrase, set as the
title of a sermon, " The expulsive power of a new affection," contains the whole
philosophy of a holy, devout Christian life. We must know this “power" in a
conscious daily experience. To love God according to His character and worth is
to subdue and extirpate every other affection. Then the Christian's course will
be onward and upward, like the sun, and 110 more steps backward, and no more
aside. "As by the light of opening day The stars are all concealed; So earthly
pleasures fade away When Jesus is revealed." “Love not the world, neither the
things of the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in
him." 4. Published by direction of the Congregational Churches of Button.


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  CHAPTER 44: DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO UNITE WITH SOME CHURCH AND UNITE WHERE THEY STATREDLY WORSHIP
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THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO UNITE WITH SOME CHURCH; AND THE DUTY OF CHURCH MEMBERS
TO UNITE WITH THE CHURCH WHERE THEY STATEDLY WORSHIP. BY REV. S. P. FAY. BOSTON:
NICHOLS AND NOYES. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 18G
6, by NICHOLS AND NOYES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND
PONS. The Duty of Christians and Church Members WE are told, in Acts 4:23, that,
as soon as Peter and John had been dismissed by the chief priests, “they went to
their own company," they went to their old friends, and returned to their
Churchfellowship. They neither thought themselves exalted above their brethren,
nor were they deterred from joining their own company, either by their desire of
ease or by the fear of the wrath of their rulers. If they had followed their own
personal wishes, they might have retired to their closets, and spent their time
in quiet, peaceful retirement; but they were men in a public station, and must
seek the public good also. They knew that their place was with their own
company; and, in going “to their own company," they revealed a law of our
nature. It is this, that we associate with those of our own kind. We choose our
social circle; we choose our party. We unite ourselves with those who are most
like ourselves. We may not be able to agree with them in all points, to indorse
every thing that the majority receive; but we go with those in politics and
social life, that, in most particulars, are of our " own company." Much more in
religious matters, " being let go ' from the bondage of sin, should we " go to
our own company." I wish to apply this principle to those who think they have
accepted the plan of salvation by Jesus Christ, and are seeking to lead lives of
secret devotion, but who have made 110 public choice of the side on which they
stand. They think they have accepted Christ as their Saviour, but do not join
themselves with His followers. They seek to serve Christ in secret, but leave
the Christian community utterly in doubt to which party they belong. They hope
that they are Christians; but, if they are, they refuse "to go to their own
company." Now, I maintain, and wish to illustrate and enforce the principle,
first, that it is the duty of every Christian to unite with some Church; and,
secondly, that it is his duty to unite with the Church where he statedly
worships. In the New Testament, we find the Church referred to under two ideas.
(1.) The Church as the aggregate of true believers. This includes all those who
have been redeemed by Christ, and of which Christ is the spiritual Head: all who
are regenerated by the Holy Ghost, and only such, belong to this Church,
universal and invisible. It is the assembly of believers, and it is evident'
that onlv believers do in fact belong to it. Others may profess to do so, and
the genuineness of their profession may not be suspected; but the revelations of
the last day will discover the mistake, and show that they never were members of
the true Church, however they might be called by the name of Christ. The only
means of access into this Church is regeneration by the Spirit of God. " He that
climbeth up some other way is a thief and a robber." But, (2) besides this
spiritual body, there is the Church as an association of professed disciples, an
organized, localized, officered body, into which are to be gathered all those
who are supposed to be the true disciples of Christ. Such was the " Church of
God which was at Corinth," " the Church of Laodicea," each of " the seven
Churches of Asia." When Christ gave to His followers a rule of discipline for
His Church, in Matthew 18:15-18, they understood that all believers, who in
their totality would constitute the one enduring Church, would also enter into
forms of association, under mutual obligations and responsibilities. I have not
space to develop the idea at length, and can only say that the truth is
abundantly and clearly established in the New Testament, that Christ meant that
all such as profess to be real saints, and appear to be so in the eye of
Christian charity, should be gathered into and constitute a gospel Church. This
is meant by the Church when Christ says to Peter, “Upon this rock will I build
my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The idea is
fundamental that this visible Church is not a voluntary and human association.
It is a distinct and entirely different society and kingdom from civil, worldly
associations and confederations: it is of Divine authority. It is called, in the
Scriptures, " the kingdom of heaven," " the kingdom of God and of Christ," Who
said, “My kingdom is not of this world." Christ is the Founder and Head of the
Church. He " loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might present it
to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing,"
and tfc God hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over
all things to the Church." If, now, the visible Church is of Divine authority,
and is organized by the command, and according to the rules, of Christ, for the
perfecting of His saints and the observance of His ordinances, then it follows
that the disciples of Christ are not at liberty to belong to it or not. They are
bound, by every relationship to Christ, to belong to it. But there are special
reasons why all who have been regenerated by the Holy Ghost will naturally go to
their own company, the Church. 1. A very obvious and conclusive reason is,
because the Saviour commands it. Simple, prompt obedience to all of God's
commands is the chief characteristic of every true child. It is hard to see
where one can get the evidence of adoption without obedience. The Bible does not
leave you at liberty to follow your inclinations or caprices. You are bound to
obey the commands of the Master at all hazards. Christ says, "If ye love Me, ye
will keep My commandments." Now, the command is most plain and positive: “Take,
eat; this is My body broken for you." This was a general command, given to all
disciples, because the sacrament itself was designed for all disciples. If you
are a disciple, the command is addressed to you. Put, now, this command with
that other strong statement of our Saviour, " Whosoever, therefore, shall
confess Me before men, him will I confess before My Father Which is in heaven;
but whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father
Which is in heaven." The expression, “before men," shows the act here referred
to, to be a public one. It is a clear declaration, that, if we refuse to obey
the Divine command to confess Christ before men, Christ will deny before His
Father that we are His disciples. This is in exact agreement with the principle
laid down in 2 Corinthians 6:1-18, respecting separation from the world; and the
conclusion of the apostle is, " Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye
separate, saith the Lord." Do you say, “I am not good enough to eat of the bread
and drink of the cup "? But God knew just how bad you were, when He commanded
you to “eat." He knew what even the wife of your bosom did not know. If you are
a disciple, He commands you 'to come to His table, and He assures you that His
blood shall cleanse from all stain and spot. He says, “Come; because I live, you
shall live also." But you ask, "If I join the Church, shall I not bring dishonor
upon it? If I make a profession of religion, shall I not make matters worse for
the side I pretend to take? If I knew I could live a consistent religious life,
I would make a profession; but I do not wish to lead a life that would dishonor
Christ." But what are you now doing but dishonoring Christ? Is the obligation to
obey Christ, on those in the Church more than on those out of the Church? Is not
every disciple a child of God, and under one law? A man that stays away from
duty and from God dishonors the cause of God, whether he is in the Church or out
of it. You cannot bring half as much dishonor upon the cause of Christ by trying
to obey Him, as you do now while you publicly refuse to obey the command to eat
and drink " in remembrance" of Christ. 2. Christ has not only commanded us to
eat and drink, but He has enjoined it upon us under the most impressive
conditions. “This do in remembrance of Me." It was His dying command; this fact
ought to bind us to obedience. “He died for us, that they which live should not
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him Who died for them and rose again."
Look at the facts. You were dead in sinfulness, in guilt, under the law. God was
against you, a holy God, and you unholy. You were proud, prayerless, and
ungodly. But Christ came and died, that you might live: He spoke to you in love.
That love was the procuring cause of all your mercies here and hopes hereafter.
He established the Church, and instituted the sacrament on purpose to
commemorate that wondrous love; and, with His dying lips, He asks you to eat and
drink in remembrance of Him. Can any Christian heart refuse to obey the command?
Will not the love of Christ constrain you to do this act in remembrance of Him?
This is one of the first things that a man should do, when God has delivered him
from the bondage of sin and the power of the Devil. It is the least that he can
do. Nobody else has suffered so much on his account as Christ; nobody else has
such a claim upon his remembrance. When Christ has accepted him, and promised to
save him, and healed his lusts and his appetites, there is nothing more rational
and right than that he should stand up and take the vows of Christ upon him.
Under such circumstances, silence and hiding God's work in the soul is
monstrously ungrateful and wicked. And therefore, when Christ says, " Do this in
remembrance of me," He commands you to do that which accords with every
sentiment of gratitude, and with every sense of justice. 3. It is a testimony to
the Divine cause, to God's law and Christ's kingdom in this world, that you are
in duty bound to give. There are two opposing forces in this world, and there is
no third party: God and mammon, righteousness and sin, the Church and the world,
these are drawn up in sharp and bitter warfare. Our Master declared that this
world was the battle-field on which God and Satan were in conflict; and He says,
" He that is not with me is against me." The conflict is still going on unabated
in your day and mine. We are born into a world where struggle and strife are the
law of moral growth. We are born into a world where two great contending
influences right and wrong are seeking to overthrow each other; and the conflict
will go on. You can take your choice as to which side you will be arrayed upon.
You cannot take your choice as to whether you will be arrayed upon either or
not. There is no middle ground. You are not at liberty, in this matter, to be
indifferent. Under the circumstances in which you are placed, indifference is a
sin. When the eternal welfare of your own friends and children is involved in
your example, indifference is a crime. You are bound to determine which side you
will take. God established the Church, that he might gather into it all who are
His friends. He says to every man, “Choose you this day whom you will serve."
Oh, how many there are in these congregations, who have been standing for a long
while, feeling that they ought to be Christians, and that they ought to let it
be known that they are Christians! but they have been ashamed of the service of
Christ, they have been ashamed of themselves. They have been standing irresolute
and uncommitted. They have not represented Christ before men. Whatsoever good
things they may have had in the family, they have hid their light “under a
bushel." Men do not think they are Christians, even though they may be; and it
is time that you came out, and acknowledged your allegiance to Christ. It is
time that the sanctuary became a safe place; for you are in danger of wearing
out your heart and conscience. You are in danger of wearing out your
susceptibility to truths that are most sacred. Woe be to you, if you have no
taste for the bread or water of life, or for the fruit of the tree of life! Woe
be to him who has lost conscience and faith and love and aspiration! and, under
the circumstances in which God has placed you, you cannot help losing all these
and more, by your continued refusal to give this public testimony to the Divine
cause. The sense of gratitude must compel you to this course. You are the
perpetual recipient of God's mercies. Christ has redeemed you from sin. There is
not one moment in which He does not brood over you with His thoughts of love.
And by what public act on your part has there been manifested any love or
gratitude or recognition, that answered to the noble affection which He has
displayed towards you? I do not ask you whether you believe in this Church or
that, whether you hold to this doctrine or that: I present to you this love of
God that has upheld you all the days of your life, and then lay before you the
command of Christ, " Do this in remembrance of me," and ask you this question:
Can you, with reason, with honor, with gratitude, with any sentiment that man
ought to cherish, be indifferent to it? Can you refuse this act of public
recognition of the love of God towards you? But I must pass now to speak of “the
duty of Church members to unite with the Church where they statedly worship."
Instability is one of the marked characteristics of our times. Men change their
opinions and their pursuits, their residences and their connections, political,
social, and religious, almost as easily as they change their dress. Hence the
counsel of the Apostle, to be “steadfast, immovable," has gone into disrepute,
so that the Christian world “abounds " less than it ought " in the work of the
Lord." Multitudes of Christians, in “good and regular standing," move their
residence, but leave their covenant vows and Church relations at home. They give
two reasons for doing so:1. Because they love the Church of their first espousal
to Christ so much that they cannot endure to take their names from it. But if
you have taken your personal presence and services from it, if your personal
influence cannot be given to it, of what value is your name to it? It can only
go to swell the list of those, who, being away from the watch and care of the
Church, in scenes and temptations unknown to it, are a source of constant
anxiety to every faithful Church. Nothing gives a Church, that is true to its
Covenant vows, so much anxiety as its column of " absentees." Hence, a true and
right love for the Church would constrain you to take your name from that list,
if, in the providence of God, you are compelled to forsake it, in regard to your
bodily presence and personal helpfulness. Because they are uncertain how long
they shall remain in a given place. But, if you remain long enough to take the
trouble to move your goods, your residence, your family, you surely can take the
trouble to remove your Church relationship, which can be done simply for the
asking. This were better if you were to remove every six months. Your letter
will be your introduction into the new Christian community. It will give you a
spiritual home while you stay. And the re-examination as to your faith, and the
reasons for your hope, and the reconsecration of yourself to the new Church,
will tend to make you a live Christian. I think there is something in the column
of “absent," as given by the statistical Secretary in the “Congregational
Quarterly," to make our Churches sad. This column is imperfect, because many
Churches do not give their “absentees." In Massachusetts, nineteen Churches
reporting 4, 172 members do not give the number of" absentees." Deducting this
from the total, and you find 71, 246, of whom 11, 706 are absentees; i. e.,
one-sixth of the whole are absentees. Our own Churches in this city report
(Mariner's Church not counted) 4, 960 members. Of these, the Old South and
Central Church, with a membership of 718 do not give the number of " absentees;
' deducting these two Churches, and out of a membership of 4, 242 we find 889
absentees. Where are these absent ones? Who is watching over them, and seeking
their edification as we covenanted to do? Are they guilty of a breach of
covenant in withdrawing “from the watch and communion of the saints "? But other
Churches send their members to us also. Let any Church in our city make an
accurate estimate of the number of Church members elsewhere, who are worshipping
with it without taking letters to it, and the result will be most significant.
One who was a pastor in one of our neighboring Churches, searched this matter
out carefully, and found this class forty per cent of the whole number belonging
to his Church. It is to be feared that this case is not an exceptional one.
There is thing wrong here. There is a defect somewhere. Either Churches are
unfaithful to their covenant vows, or there is a sad depreciation of this solemn
value of covenant vows on the part of the absent themselves. The evil of this
whole matter is, that it is a practical disowning of the Church relation. It is
true, in theory, that these can never “be as they have been." The solemn vows
“go with them through life and accompany them to the bar of God." They are
everywhere and always accountable to God for the manner in which they keep these
vows. But they are vows made to be kept in connection with the visible Church.
Yet the Church at home cannot watch over them, and they cannot labor in
connection with it, and they refuse to unite themselves with the people of God
where they are. Are they not practically removed from the watch and care of the
Church? There is something in our very nature which forces us to feel less
perfectly an obligation which we do not acknoiuledge with those with whom we
worship. Our vows do not bind us so perfectly, because we have not renewed our
promise to keep them where God has cast our lot. Then, also, it brings upon us
the weakness of & divided heart. The vows of the professed follower of Christ
bind him to give his affections and energies to the Church where his name is
recorded. But his bodily presence and his daily interests bind him to the Church
where he worships; and so, by a law of our nature, in this divided state of his
heart his labors are paralyzed. His sympathy cannot flow forth strongly; and so,
by a .natural consequence, he becomes absorbed in pleasures, or in the
acquisition of honor, or in the accumulation of wealth. No man will labor with
all his heart for the Master where he resides, unless the covenant vows of God
are upon him. This is why God requires us to become His by taking upon ourselves
the obligation, and pronouncing the voluntary pledge, the recorded and
blood-sealed oath. In going from the familiar home of his early consecration,
the Christian needs to carry his armor with him, and put it on, and openly range
himself shoulder to shoulder with the followers of Christ. He must unite himself
with the people of God where he is, and make to himself a new home for his
faith, and a new field for his Christian service. The exigencies of no man's
condition can be met by a hidden and secret Christian life, or by an occasional,
incidental, and easy effort, or by worshipping here today and there to-morrow.
That is not complying with the exhortation of Christ to “strive to enter in at
the strait gate." The gate was designed expressly for entering; and God desires
that men shall enter, and has established His Church, and made arrangements for
all to enter, and He says, “strive, agonize to enter in," i. e., put forth every
effort. When the mild and calm Saviour speaks thus, I know that there is peril
about; I know that there is danger which may well arrest the attention and call
out the utmost skill and exertion of man. No Church 110 Christian man, can
afford to be indifferent in regard to these covenant vows. In the midst of peril
and the thunder of excitement in a city like this, that man is especially in
danger who is least awake. No man can afford to live without taking these
covenant vows fully upon himself. No man can afford to treat the question of his
soul's welfare as you do who make no profession, or you who think you can live
and prosper without carrying the covenant vows with you wherever you go. You are
drifting on towards the ocean of eternity with the idea, perhaps, that you are
about as well off as other people. You look about you, and see a great many
people who are living as you do, while they hope they are Christians, and
perhaps have recorded their vows some hundreds of miles away; and you say, " I
am as good as they are, and, if they go to heaven, I shall." But suppose that
neither of you are going there. Our Lord declares that there are many who will
go up in the last day, and say, " Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy
name, and in Thy name cast out devils, and in Thy name done many wonderful
works? ' and who will hear the response, " I never knew you." All the
probabilities certainly are that this number will be largely taken from those
who have never confessed Christ before men, or, having confessed Him, are living
in careless neglect of their Church relations. By all the honor that is in you,
by all the truth that is in you, by the hope of your soul's health and
happiness, I beseech of you to flee within the sacred enclosure of the Church. "
Take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the
evil day, and, having done all, to stand." Published by direction of the
Congregational Churches of Boston.


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  CHAPTER 45: DUTY OF DAILY SERCRET PRAYER AND DAILY STUDY OF BIBLE
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THE DUTY OF DAILY SECRET PRAYER AND DAILY STUDY OF THE BIBLE. REV. J. M.
MANNING. BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress,
in the year 1866, by NICHOLS AND NOTES, In the Clerk's Office of the District
Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
JOHN WILSON AND SONS. ALONE WITH GOD. A TIME comes, in the experience of every
true Christian, when the words, " enter into thy closet," are no more the stern
command which they once were, but one of the sweetest of all Christ's
invitations. The moments set apart for our secret devotions are “the children's
hour ' in the Divine family. You know how it is wont to be in the household
where love reigns. The child grows weary of playing, and steals away to the door
of the room in which the father is. It finds that door ajar, and hears, from
within, a voice of welcome. And so, entering in and having shut the door, it
climbs upon the father's knees, is folded in his arms, and hangs about his neck,
interchanging kisses of affection with him, and hearing tender replies to all
its little story of wants and troubles, till its heart is made to overflow with
comfort and gladness. And is it at all otherwise, only unspeakably more blessed,
with the soul which has learned to turn toward God, and say, “Abba, Father"?
That new-born soul is forced to pass much of its time in a temporal world, where
it finds many disturbances. It is driven hither and thither by unholy impulses.
It is tossed up and down upon a sea of temptations. It is deceived, misled,
betrayed, 'disappointed, until it cries out, as did the poor Prodigal, for its
Father. And that Father, “Who seeth in secret," hears the cry of the distressed
child. He is near it, in the calm and retired place, saying, " Enter in, thou
bewildered and helpless one, and rest thee for an hour, communing with Me. Has
the storm dealt hardly with thy little bark? Here, in ' thy closet,' is its
haven of peaceful waters. Have the archers shot at thee, and art thou sorely
wounded? Here, in ' thy closet,' is the balm of Gilead. Thy spirit hungers for
food which the world cannot give: here it is, ' the bread of heaven,' of which
if a man eat, he shall never hunger. Poor child of immortality, thou art
thirsty; and here is the water of life,' which, if thou drink it, shall be in
thee a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Come, thou weary child,
born of Mine own Spirit, t and refresh thee in thy Father's love! ' Enter into
thy closet,' and be alone with Me in that secret place, until thou shalt learn
how much more ready than any earthly parent I am to give good gifts unto My
children." Such, though alas! how unworthily spoken by my poor lips, is the mind
of the Father towards us, when He bids us enter into our closet, and shut the
door, and pray in secret to Him. This meeting with the Father in secret, in
order to fulfil its blessed purpose, must be distinguished by three things, the
reading of the Scriptures, self-examination, prayer. These may be considered
separately, though, in experience, each of them involves the other two. You
cannot examine yourself in the light of God, without praying all the time,
“Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me." Together with
your reading of the Scriptures goes forward that process of your own thoughts, "
accusing, or else excusing, one another." And even while you pray, uttering the
weakness and longings of which you are conscious, you find no words but those of
the Spirit adequate to your groanings. As a vessel escapes from the tempest into
its quiet harbor by means of three things, ballast to keep it low in the water,
sails to catch the wind, and a helm to guide its course, so the Christian
returns into his rest in the closet by means of self-examination, prayer, and
reading of the Scriptures, all helping together. It is the Scriptures, read with
a docile spirit, that hold him to his course; it -is beholding himself in the
light of God that keeps him low in his own thoughts; it is crying, " Abba,
Father," that bears him consciously on into his rest. Each of these exercises so
involves the others, that, if you are diligent in either of them, you will be in
all; and, if you neglect either one, you will become negligent of them all. As
soon as you begin to examine yourself, you will look for the perfect standard
with which to compare your life and character. As soon as you begin to know that
standard, you will begin to cry, " God be merciful to me a sinner." If you tell
me that you never pray, then I know that you are not a faithful student of the
Bible and your own heart. If I could persuade you to attend to either of these
duties as you should, I might feel sure that you would soon be attending to them
all. And what words of persuasion shall I speak? But hold a moment,
fellow-disciple, and consider what I am proposing to do. Persuade you, who
profess to be God's child, to have a time and place for meeting with that
Father! Can it be that any such persuasion is needed? Oh, where is my charity!
do I not, with cruel tongue, speak evil against you falsely, when I intimate
that you have not daily communings with God, in your closet? Persuading you, at
this late day, to do that in which the new life begins, and which is its light
of life for evermore! The conversion of the apostle Paul was proved by his
praying. The Lord said to His servant Ananias, " Arise, and go into the street
which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul,
of Tarsus; for, behold, he prayeth." Ananias need be afraid of him no longer. He
had been born into God's family: God had begotten him, through the Spirit, to be
a dear child; and the voice of that sonship in him was a prayer, feebly lisped
in the dawn of the truth that God was his Father, and to be spoken more
articulately, and with a richer fulness, as he grew toward the stature of a man
in Christ Jesus. A prayerless Christian! that seems impossible. To be a
Christian is to partake of the life of Christ. But the life of Christ was that
of a Divine sonship in humanity. That sonship was a being in the Father as His
dear child, knowing Him, and being known of Him, as in this tender fellowship, a
fellowship which was expressed by the Son in prayer, and by the Father in
hearing and answering that prayer. So, if you pray not, as Christ did, what can
we say but that you have no part in, Him? Can you be God's child if you never
call on Him as your Father? if, when you hear Him say, " Seek My face/' you
answer not, "Lord, Thy face will I seek"? If you have been born of the free
woman, how is it that you speak not the language of the free woman? Should not
the children of Canaan use the speech of Canaan? Let God decide the question. I
see not how it can be, yet will assume as true what a Council of Pastors and
Delegates, representing five thousand Church-members, has said of the
prayerlessness of Christians. It may, in some mysterious manner, be true, that
you are a child of God, though you have not the power to call Him Father. The
Holy Spirit, let us assume, may have begotten you from the dead, and made you a
partaker of Christ's life, though you are not conscious of such a life, " hid
with Christ in God." Granting that this life of sonship is in you, though so
stupefied by worldliness as to have no longing unto the Father, no filial
impulse to go and meet that Father in the secrecy of the closet; how, then,
shall you be persuaded to make that closet your daily resort, till the heart of
the child in you shall find its voice in finding the heart of the Father? First,
think. upon the life of Christ, and how large a space in that life was filled by
His secret communion with God. He prayed so much, and entered so fully into the
mind of the Father, as to seem almost to carry His closet about with Him
wherever He went. Appearing outwardly to men, in temporal form and vesture, He
yet inhabited eternity, dwelt "in the bosom of the Father." This spiritual
indwelling was that which most filled His consciousness; so that, even in the
midst of earthly disturbances, He could at any moment make Himself alone with
God. We read of Him as absorbed in works of love; yet, even while performing
those works, rejoicing in spirit, and saying, " I thank Thee, Father, Lord of
heaven and earth: ' ' saying these words in such a way as to indicate that
nothing temporal, but only the eternal, was in His thoughts, no consciousness of
any thing but a being in the Father, Who was also in Him. So at the grave of
Lazarus, while touched with the sorrow of Mary and Martha, and while the company
of Jews present were angrily watching Him, this whole scene being shut out from
the sanctuary of His spirit, " He lifted up His eyes, and said, Father, I thank
Thee that Thou hast heard Me; and I knew that Thou nearest Me always." This was
to Him a praying in secret, and His prayer was answered openly in the coming
forth of His friend from the grave. In like manner, when He prayed for His
disciples at the Last Supper, all His words came out of eternity and the
Father's bosom. Nothing earthly or temporal disturbs Him. He is conscious only
of being in the high sphere and region of His own divinity, as a beloved Son
communing with the infinite Father, praying in the secrecy of His spirit. Yet
even Christ, thus always in secret with the Father, had His hours for going away
by Himself and praying. We read of Him in a certain place, that “He was alone
praying." The whole tenor of His life, as sketched by Luke, was this: " In the
day-time He was teaching in the temple; and at night He went out, and abode in
the mount that is called the Mount of Olives." When He came to His disciples in
the fourth watch of the night, walking to their drowning ship on the boiling
waves, they knew that He came out of His place of prayer, where He had been
“abiding under the shadow of the Almighty." "And it came to pass in those days,"
says one of the Evangelists, " that He went out into a mountain to pray, and
continued all night in prayer." After His baptism, being consecrated to His
redeeming work by the coming of the Spirit upon Him, He went away into the
wilderness, and was there forty days and forty nights alone with the beasts of
the earth. Oh, how those long hours of communion with God strengthened Him to
vanquish the Tempter, to hold fast His faith that He was the Son of God; to
undertake for lost men, who, as He foresaw, would lay on Him .the burden of
their hatred and scorn, and nail Him in their wrath to the shameful cross! And
when He saw that cross prepared, waiting that He might be lifted up upon it, He
went over the brook into a place where was a garden; and there, curtained by the
night and the shadows of the olive-trees, He girded himself for the sacrifice.
"Being in an agony, He prayed." And then He came to His disciples, and found
them sleeping; whereupon He went away again and prayed; and then again the third
time, in the very same words; until at last He overcame His great sorrow, found
Himself able to drink the cup which might not pass from Him, could respond
perfectly to the judgment of the Father against sin, saying, " Thy will, not
Mine, be done! " Now, if the holy Son of God, who was without sin or sinful
taint, and Who dwelt in the bosom of the Father, was wont thus to feed the
sources of His spiritual life by setting apart hours for drawing near to God in
prayer, how should we do, who are by nature strangers, the children of God only
by a second birth, but feebly conscious as yet of the new life in us, and prone
to evil? If He needed that strengthening which conies by abiding in the Father,
then we should not dare trust ourselves a day, no, nor an hour, without it. He
is not ashamed to call us brethren, though so little of His consciousness of
sonship is in us. That consciousness was so vivid and constant in Him as to
enable Him, amid scenes of the greatest confusion, to call God “Father." But we,
even in the still hour of meditation, can hardly lisp the infant's cry, “Abba,
Father." Oh, then, if we would meet the brotherliness which is in Christ, and,
together with Him, would have our life hid in God, calling God "Father" with the
full and articulate voice of our spirits, must we not again and again, and often
and regularly, with the outgoings of the morning and evening, and " in season
and out of season," enter into our closet, and shut the door, and pray to our
Father who seeth in secret? Turning now from Christ to those who have most
nearly resembled Him in being the children of God, we shall find that in the
closet was the hiding of their power. "Enoch walked with God." And this life of
prayer, which he lived in a wicked age, gave him power to be translated, that he
should not see death. Abraham had so much of this spirit, and communed with the
Lord so often in secret places, that he was called “the friend of God." Jacob
was named Israel, because he wrestled in prayer till he prevailed. When Moses
came down out of the mount, his face shone so that the people were afraid to
meet him; and that shining, so dreadful to consciences defiled by idolatry, was
but the outward glow of a soul irradiated by the light of God, and filled and
suffused with almighty power by being so long in the companionship of Jehovah.
Such was the empowering of which Samuel, and Elijah, and Daniel, and Isaiah, and
even Jeremiah, were conscious by entering into prayer before God. Herein was
their inspiration; this the live coal, from off the altar, which touched their
lips. Take out of the record of those holy men of old the accounts we have of
their secret prayers and longings unto God, and the charm of that record, would
be gone. The little remnant of outward fact would be dull and stale. You can no
more think of those men without tracing all their wondrous words and works to
the fountain of communion with God, than you can think of a river as possible
without a source, or of the light of day as existing without a sun. Whom did God
make ruler of His people, so that the kings of the earth feared him, and call “a
man after His own heart," but David? David, full of evil impulses, yet who loved
to " draw nigh to God; ' whose sweet Psalms, the joy of all burdened hearts, are
but the voice of his own heart praying in secret; who called upon the Lord in
the morning, at evening, and during the night-watches; who envied the bird that
had her nest in the wall of the house of prayer; whose " heart panted after
God," and " cried out for the living God;” “who was constantly exclaiming, "
When shall I come, and appear before God?” How almost sadly we read, " The
prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended," feeling that then his life must
have ended; or, if he lived after he had ceased to pray, that he must have been
a weak and miserable old man, all the sweet freshness and strength of his early
manhood having gone from him! The words “human strength" seem at times to have
no meaning. All our strength is weakness, and "power belongeth unto God;” and it
is in His strength only that we feel ourselves to be really strong. And it is
our prayer, the voice of the child in us longing unto its Father, that makes us
conscious of receiving God's strength, even as the branch receives the life of
the vine, by abiding in it. There is nothing men desire so much as the
consciousness of power. This explains their indecent "haste to be rich," and
scramblings for office or for the magic of a great name. But no such
consciousness of power comes by these means, as comes to the Christian when he
feels himself empowered from on high. This is the power of God in his soul, a
spiritual might, by which he can do all things, subduing his own evil nature, "
overcoming the world," "bearing all things, hoping all things, believing all
things, enduring all things." "In us, that is, in our flesh, dwelleth no good
thing; ' nor have we any power of ourselves, either to do or think any thing as
we ought, save as God works in us, "both to will and to do of His good
pleasure." And this inworking comes through prayer, being that " secret of the
Lord” which is "with them that fear Him." And oh, what pleasure they have with
whom this secret ever abides! I have no doubt that we here lay open the source
of all that is greatest, purest, and best of man's doing. Out of this dwelling
in God as a dear child, came the “Confessions” of Augustine, the sermons of
Massillon, the “Thoughts” of Pascal, the conceptions of Michael Angelo, the
sustained fervor of Whitfield. The singing men and singing women, whose hymns
make melody in the Churches all round the world, have caught their inspiration
in that secret fellowship of God into which prayer is the appointed way. We
understand the patriotism of Washington, the missionary zeal of Brainerd, the
courage of Luther, and the patience of the great company of saints " of whom the
world was not worthy," by knowing that they went often, arid were always going,
into see-ret places of prayer; where the spirit of the child in them uttered
itself beseechingly, till they felt the life of the Father raising them up into
" newness of life," and His Spirit witnessing with theirs that they were born of
Him. Let it be distinctly noticed that Christ, and those His brethren who have
most largely shared in His experience of sonship, have never felt any
embarrassment in coming before God to pray, as though their asking were a
doubting of the Divine goodness, or a putting of their private wish in the way
of changeless decrees. If God were a law of nature, or a fate, we might feel an
impropriety in prayer. But He is our Father; and He is ready to do for us above
all that we are able to ask, or even to think; and, when we are brought into
perfect accord with Him in the way of childlike prayer, only then do we grasp
the truth of this exceeding readiness to bless; and in this knowing of God as
our un withholding Father is that " eternal life ' which is both the hearing and
answering of prayer, and to which there need be added no other granting of our
requests. " Do you pray as a child of God,, whose first and nearest relationship
is to God, your Father; whose most deeply felt interests are bound up in that
relation, in what lies within the circle of that relation contemplated in
itself? Do you pray as one to whom the mind of God towards you and your own mind
towards Him are the most important elements of existence, and whose other
interests in existence are as outer circles around this central interest; so
that you see yourself, and your family, and your friends, and your country, and
your race, with the eyes, because with the heart, of one who ' loves the Lord
his God with all his heart and mind and soul and strength '? Is this at least
your ideal for yourself; what you are seeking to realize, to realize for its own
sake, not for any consequences of it in time or eternity? for, whatever the
blessed consequences of its realization will be, they shall be far, and for ever
inferior and secondary to itself." * But perhaps you plead that I have, in these
remarks, transcended any thing you have ever experienced of the rewards of
secret prayer. You have many times consecrated a closet, but have always
forsaken it after a brief trial; for you found no upliftings of soul, no
inspirations, no enlarging^ of your joy and strength, such as I have described.
Let us see, then, if the causes of your discouragement cannot be laid open; and
if you cannot be put in such a way of performing this duty as never again to
neglect it, but, on the contrary, to esteem it the one pleasure of your * John
McLeod Campbell, life, with which you shall allow no engagements or stress of
worldly business to interfere. Your closet is a dreary and barren place for just
this: you do not, as God's child, so experience daily your own weakness as to
feel driven to your Father for strength. And why is not this experience of
weakness constantly yours? Because your new life is not a conflict with the
powers of darkness, with which you are unable to cope, save in the strength of
God. It is the consciousness that the battle is going against him, that causes
the child of God to take refuge in his “Strong Tower." Oh blessed danger, that
forces us to fly into our “Fortress," where we find the peace which passeth
understanding! If you, compassed about with infirmities, are daily striving to
live the life of the holy Son of God, then are you in a conflict which is
continually forcing from you the prayer, “Father, save me from this hour." Are
you not driven every day to the utterance of such “strong crying with tears "?
Then you cannot be struggling to put down all your evil thoughts, to overcome
the world, to convert sinners from the error of their ways, and to bear about
the dying and the life of Christ daily in your mortal body. The sons of God do
perpetually experience that they are utterly weak, powerless to be in perfect
accord with the mind of the Father. Billows go over their head, and they are all
the time ready to perish. Not allowing themselves to be drifted along in the
currents of worldliness, but being in the way of their holy purpose to be
conformed to God, they have such experience of weakness as to be ever crying, "
Father, Abba Father, keep us through Thine own name, for we are Thy children;
calm us, strengthen us, lead us, give us the victory over foes too mighty for
our strength." And, finding that prayer answered, daily answered in their
closet, where they pray to the Father in secret, answered with such
consciousness of deliverance, and of incomings of peace, joy, and strength, the
bitterest deprivation of their life would be not to be allowed to pray, while in
praying they receive a thousand-fold for all their conflicts and troubles.
“Father, I'm now alone with Thee! Thy voice to hear, Thy face to see, And feel
Thy presence near; It is not Fancy's lovely dream, Though wondrous e'en to Faith
it seem, That Thou dost wait me here. A moment from this outward life, Its
service, self-denial, strife, I joyfully retreat; My soul, through intercourse
with Thee, Strengthened, refreshed, and calmed shall be, Its scenes again to
meet. How sweet, how solemn, thus to lie, And feel Jehovah's searching eye On me
well pleased can rest! Because with His beloved Son The Father's grace has made
me one, I must be always blest. The secret pangs I could not tell To dearest
friend, Thou knowest well; They claim Thy gracious heart; Thou dost remove with
tender care, Or sweetly give me strength to bear The sanctifying smart. Thy
presence has a wondrous power! The sharpest thorn becomes a flower, And breathes
a sweet perfume; Whate'er looked dark and sad before "With happy light shines
silvered o'er; There's no such thing as gloom! "

ADDRESSES TO CHURCH MEMBERS BY THE CONGREGATIONAL PASTORS OF BOSTON, RECOMMENDED
BY THE Boston Congregational Council. The following are now published, and ready
for delivery: No. 1. THE RESULT OF COUNCIL. Complete. No. 2. THE CHRISTIAN'S
RECONSECRATION. By Rev. E. K. ALDEN, Pastor of Phillips Church. No. 3. THE
WORLDLINESS OF NOMINAL CHRISTIANS. By Rev. Dr. WEBB, Pastor of Shawmut Church.
No. 4. THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO UNITE WITH SOME CHURCH, AND THE DUTY OF
CHURCH-MEMBERS TO UNITE WITH THE CHURCH WHERE THEY STATEDLY WORSHIP. By Rev. S.
P. FAY, Pastor of Salem Church. THE DUTY OF DAILY SECRET PRAYER and DAILY STUDY
OF THE BIBLE. By Rev. J. M. MANNING. The remaining Addresses will follow at
intervals of about one week; viz: REVIVALS OF RELIGION. By Rev. J. E. TODD. THE
SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL IN THE CITY AMONG THE POOR, AND THOSE WHO HABITUALLY
NEGLECT THE SERVICES OF THE SABBATH. By Rev. Dr. DEXTER. THE CHRISTIAN'S DUTY TO
WORK FOR THE SAVING OF SOULS. By Rev. Mr. BINGHAM. THE DUTY OF A MORE STRICT
OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. By Rev. Dr. BLAGDEN. THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY
SPIRIT. By Rev. Dr. ADAMS. THE POWER OF PRAYER. By Rev. Dr. KIRK. THE DIVINE
SOVEREIGNTY IN ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SALVATION. By Rev. Mr. BAKER.


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  CHAPTER 46: REVIVALS OF RELIGION
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REVIVALS OF RELIGION. BY Rev. J. E. TODD. BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES. 1866.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by NICHOLS AND NOTES, In
the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BT JOHN WILSON AND SONS. REVIVALS OF
RELIGION. ALONE WITH GOD. Number 6. Published by direction of the Congregational
Churches of Boston. Are revivals desirable? IT is too late to discuss this
question. As well might we discuss the desirableness of summer showers. It is
evident that they are a part, and a blessed part, of the Divine administration.
It may be said that religious interest ought to be continual rather than fitful;
that it would be better for a Church to be perpetually alive, rather than
occasionally revived. But an occasional increase of interest does not
necessitate a low state of religion at ordinary times. And the question is, not
what might be, but what, in the present imperfect state of sanctified human
nature and under the present dispensation of the Spirit, is possible. From the
day of Pentecost until now, the growth, and even the existence, of the Church
has been largely owing to revivals. Whatever of life and earnestness there is in
any of our Churches has originated in and been fed by revivals. Most of those
who have been redeemed from off the face of the earth were converted in
revivals: almost every faithful minister of the Gospel and missionary has traced
his conversion to a revival. And the hope of the Church for the future is in
revivals. If ever the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdom of our
Lord; if ever the Church of Christ is to be redeemed from schism, heresy, and
worldliness, and made pure, earnest, and living; if ever our impenitent friends
are to be brought to Christ; if ever we ourselves are to make the highest
Christian attainments here, it will be through revivals. How do revivals come?
They are given by God, not created by men. They are produced by the spontaneous
movements of that sovereign Spirit, Who, like the wind, "bloweth as He listeth."
They are not produced by human efforts. But God loves to work through means; and
He has made the visitations of His grace dependent, for the most part, upon
certain action on the part of His people. To say that a revival may at any time
be secured by the use of the right means, is not to limit the sovereignty of
God; for it is He Who gives the disposition to use the means. To say that a
revival may not be secured at any time by the use. of the right means, is to
cast discredit upon the promises. If, then, a greatly needed revival fails to
come, some of us are in fault. Who is it? Is it you ? Do you want one?
Undoubtedly your answer is, Yes. You would like to see a great revival in
progress; you often pray, " Lord, revive Thy work; ' " Pour out Thy Spirit upon
us." But are you in earnest? Do you mean what you say? How much do you want a
revival? There is, certainly, need enough of a revival. Worldliness and sloth
have half paralyzed the Churches; the love of many has grown cold, they have
forgotten their first love; infidelity and idolatry and wickedness are rapidly
increasing around us; vast multitudes are living near us without God, and
passing in endless procession from us to His bar to be condemned and punished
for ever. You have personal reasons for desiring a revival; your own soul needs
to be refreshed with a new anointing from on high; you have very dear friends,
and not a few of them, of whom you know that there is no reasonable hope that
they will ever be converted and saved from the wrath to come, unless in a
revival. Are your desires for a revival proportioned to the urgency of the need?
Is there an earnestness in your prayers, springing out of a conviction that some
of your best friends are on the brink of hell? Does the condition of. the
community rest with an insupportable weight upon your heart? Some years ago, one
said, “I feel, that, if we do not have a revival soon, I shall die! ' Is that
your feeling? Are you crying mightily unto God, if so be that we perish not, or
are you asleep in the sides of the ship? How much are you willing to do and
sacrifice in order to secure a revival? Will you help to secure a revival? In
reply, you ask, “What must I do?” 1. You must prepare your own heart. If you had
grieved your own father, and driven him away from your dwelling, by disregarding
his wishes and contemning his person, and introducing into your home companions
and occupations and scenes that he abhorred, and if you wished to have him again
visit you, you would humble yourself, you would ask forgiveness, you would show
contrition; and you would put away all that he abhorred, you would assure him
that he might return without fear of finding in your house the things which were
offensive to him. If you wish the Spirit to come, you must humble yourself
before God, you must confess your sins with sincere sorrow and abhorrence for
them, you must seek forgiveness anew through the blood of Jesus; and you must
not only humble yourself, you must put away evil. When Jacob went up to Bethel
to meet God, his command to his family was, " Put away the strange gods, and be
clean, and change your garments." Before God would come down to Israel on Sinai,
they had to sanctify themselves, and wash their clothes. If you wish for a visit
from the Spirit, you must put away evil. If you are angry with any one, you must
become reconciled to him. If you have wronged any one, you must go to him and "
confess your faults ' frankly, humbly, and whether there has been wrong on his
part or no, and whether there is penitence in him or no. And not only so, but
you must, so far as possible, make restitution, prompt, cheerful, and complete.
You cannot be forgiven the wrong, while you still possess that for which you did
the wrong. "May one be pardoned, and retain the offence?" You cannot clear
yourself till you have restored, and, like Zaccheus, “fourfold." If you have
neglected any duty, you must take it up. If you are indulging in any forbidden
pleasure, or in any sin, open or secret, you must drop it. If you have set your
affections upon social position, property, reputation, or any worldly eminence,
and have in thought and conduct bowed down to the creature, you must tear from
the throne of your heart the dearest and every idol. If you do not, the Spirit
will not visit you, and perhaps he will not visit your Church. By secretly
taking some of the forbidden spoil, Achan took the victory from the banners of
Israel, and "troubled" the people of God. Who is it, that, by his secret lust
after the things of this world, is preventing the Lord from going forth with His
people, and hindering the triumphs of His grace? Is it you? 2. You must apply
yourself to seeking and expecting the Spirit. Suppose, that, when Jesus was on
earth, He had come one day to a village, and had found, that, although His
coming had been expected, yet the villagers, instead of being all gathered "
waiting for Him," were all scattered, " one to his farm and another to his
merchandise," one to his shop and another to his net, some to the amphitheatre
to see the sports and others to a feast to mingle in the revels. Do you. think
that He could have tarried long, or done there " many mighty works "? Do you
imagine that there would ever have been any Pentecost, if the disciples, instead
of all " continuing with one accord in one place," had been scattered, some to
their business and some to their amusements, these to the temple and those to
the palace? Revivals usually commence, and exert their greatest power, in public
religious assemblies. If you want a revival, you must, for the time, leave
concerts and lectures, operas and plays, dinners and parties, whether they are
right or wrong, innocent or injurious; you must, for the time, give up as much
as you consistently can of your business and daily occupation, and resort to the
assemblies of the people of God, to where the multitudes are waiting and praying
for the promise of the Father. Suppose that all the members of one Church should
begin with one accord to meet together in one place in prayer and supplication;
have you the least doubt what the speedy result would be? And can you for slight
cause absent yourself? And suppose that every one should be ready with some
exhortation or prayer; do you not know that the effect of the very first meeting
would be electric? And yet you can sit silent! But you “have not the talent."
Possibly you are hiding it. But grant it; you can, at least, pray. There never
yet was one whose heart the Lord had touched, who was unable to speak to Him.
Forget that there are others around you; see " no man save Jesus only." Oh,
these silent Christians! Do you know the distinguishing characteristic of the
guest who had not on the wedding- garment? “HE WAS SPEECHLESS." 3. You must
sustain the right kind of preaching. Truth, and truth presented in public
address, is a mighty and chosen instrument of God for reaching the consciences
and hearts of men. But it is not every kind of preaching which tends to produce
a revival. It is not by elaborate periods of eloquence, by graphic descriptions,
by flights of poetry, by theological discussions, by political tirades, by moral
lectures, by literary essays, or by pious remarks, that sinners are ever going
to be awakened and converted. This can only be accomplished by the tender and
affectionate, but simple, plain, direct, forcible presentations of the truths of
the Gospel, the holiness of God, the wickedness of the natural heart, the
judgment, and wrath to come, pardon and salvation through the crucified Saviour,
the guilt of resisting the Holy Ghost, the unsearchable riches of Christ; and by
kind and meek, but yet plain and severe rebukes of every form of sin, and
earnest pleadings for practical holiness. Is this the kind of preaching that you
want to hear? Will you sustain God's ministers in it? Will you even demand that
the preaching of the word of life to dying men shall be of that stamp? Or are
you restive and impatient under it, disposed to depreciate and speak against it,
angry and defiant when your own conscience is disturbed? How much do you want a
revival? Perhaps you would rather that your minister should preach poetical and
ingenious and smooth and pleasant things, and that your friends should slumber
on undisturbed till they awake in hell. 4. You must PRAY for a revival. How rich
the promises!" If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them
that ask Him! ' " Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and
it shall be opened unto you." You do, often, pray for the out-pouring of the
Spirit. Yes, but how? It is not the occasional repetition of the hackneyed
phrases of the prayer-meeting, which is to bring a revival. In every meeting for
prayer, every time that you kneel at the family altar, every time that you go to
your closet, as often as your heart ascends to the throne of grace, you must
pray for a revival; and that, not with cold and formal words, but with the
earnestness of a heart that is oppressed and wearied and aching with the burden
of perishing souls, with a profound sense of the dependence of man upon the
grace of God, with an unwavering faith in the promises, with the pleadings of a
bleeding heart, and a " soul breaking for the longing that it hath at all
times," " with strong crying and tears unto Him that is able to save," "with
groanings that cannot be uttered." Do you know HOW to pray? How would you plead
with the Governor for a father or a son condemned to die? And what will you say*
to God for dear ones whom He may this very night, not deliver unto death, but
"cast soul and body into hell "? 5. You must WORK for a revival. It is time that
God only can convert. He sends the quickening light and showers; but man must
sow the seed. Is it not wonderful presumption which enables us, after having
done not one thing to lead any soul to Christ, to go to God, and coolly pray, in
measured tones, "Revive Thy work "? What tender and almighty pity that holds
back the thunderbolts from those who burn such strange incense before Him! You
have an unconverted brother: go and tell him that you have " found the Christ,"
and bid him "come and see." You have young men in your employ: "run, speak to
that young man." You have a class in the Sabbath School: point the children
plainly, tenderly, to the great Shepherd. You have a beloved friend who is still
unreconciled to God: go and talk with him, tremblingly, it may be, but
faithfully, affectionately, tearfully. Or, if you have reason to fear that your
words may do more harm than good, seek to bring other influences to bear upon
him, or, at least, go and tell Jesus. But be not too timid. It may be that he is
waiting and wishing for some one to take him by the hand, and lead him to
Christ, and wondering that "no man cares for his soul." Speak to Christians as
well as to the unconverted; it may be that you will encourage, quicken, reclaim,
comfort, or strengthen something that is "ready to die." If you have received
any thing, if you hope for any thing from the Lord, improve every suitable
opportunity, watch for opportunities, make opportunities, to speak for Jesus!
Tell "every morning of His loving kindness, every night of His faithfulness."
Oh, the words that we speak for Jesus cannot die; though they may seem to
accomplish nothing here, they will come back to us hereafter in everlasting
strains of music. Let your every going forth be that of a sower of the word. "In
the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for thou
knowest not whether shall prosper either this or that, or whether they both
shall be alike good." Cast it on the "troubled sea," as well as on the good
ground, and in likeliest spots: it may be that you will find it after many days.
It is not possible that God should withhold all increase from the planting of
love and the watering of tears. “He that goeth forth, and weepeth, bearing
precious seed, shall doubtless return again with, joy, bringing his sheaves with
him." But if, with all your labors and prayers, you shall fail to secure a
revival, or even the salvation of a single soul, you will, at least, win the
approbation, yes, the gratitude, of Christ; and when you come to stand before
Him, and bathe His feet with tears of disappointment in having been able to
accomplish little for Him, you will hear from His lips some such words of loving
praise and everlasting welcome, and recommendation to the deepest and tenderest
sympathies of His followers, as He pronounced over her who anointed His body for
its burial, " She hath done what she could." Addresses to Church Members BY THE
CONGREGATIONAL PASTORS OF BOSTON, RECOMMENDED BY THE Boston Congregational
Council. The following are now published, and ready for delivery: No. 1. THE
RESULT OF COUNCIL. Complete. No. 2. THE CHRISTIAN'S RECONSECRATION. By Rev. E.
K. ALDEN, Pastor of Phillips Church. No. 3. THE WORLDLINESS OP NOMINAL
CHRISTIANS. By Rev. Dr. WEBB, Pastor of Shawmut Church. No. 4. THE DUTY OF
CHRISTIANS TO UNITE WITH SOME CHURCH, AND THE DUTY OF CHURCH-MEMBERS TO UNITE
WITH THE CHURCH WHERE THEY STATEDLY WORSHIP. By Rev. S. P. FAY, Pastor of Salem
Church. THE DUTY OF DA ,Y SECRET PRAYER and DAILY STUDY OF THE BIBLE. By Rev. J.
M. MANNING. REVIVALS OF RELIGION. By Rev. J. E. TODD. The remaining Addresses
will follow at intervals of about one week viz THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL IN THE
CITY AMONG THE POOR, AND THOSE WHO HABITUALLY NEGLECT THE SERVICES OF THE
SABBATH. By Rev. Dr. DEXTER. THE CHRISTIAN'S DUTY TO WORK FOR THE SAVING OF
SOULS. By Rev. Mr. BINGHAM. THE DUTY OF A MORE STRICT OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH.
By Rev. Dr. BLAGDEN. THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. By Rev. Dr. ADAMS.
THE POWER OF PRAYER. By Rev. Dr. KIRK. THE DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY IN ITS RELATION TO
HUMAN SALVATION. By Rev. Mr. BAKER.


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  CHAPTER 47: DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY IN HUMAN SALVATION
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DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY IN HUMAN SALVATION. BY REV. A. R. BAKER. BOSTON: NICHOLS AND
NOYES. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by NICHOLS
AND NOYES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SONS.
DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY IN HUMAN SALTATION. Number 7. Published by direction of the
Congregational Churches of Boston. What is the sovereignty of God? SOVEREIGNTY
enters into the very idea of government, which, within its own sphere, has one,
and can have but one, highest power, one supreme authority. This may exist in an
individual, or in a plurality of persons. In. every well-regulated household, it
is in the head of the family, whose laws are exempt from foreign control,
subordinate only to those of the State and of God, and demand prompt and
implicit obedience. In schools and seminaries of learning, it resides in the
Principal, who is responsible to the supervisors of education, and to those for
whom they act. In the Commonwealth, it is vested in the Governor, who approves
and authenticates, or defeats, the bills of the Legislature; who signs and
executes, commutes or remits, the sentences of the Judges; who affixes the seal
of the State to the commission of its subordinate officers, and gives them
authority. In the Republic, it is exercised by the President, who, in addition
to all such acts which he performs for the nation, commands her army and navy,
pardons or punishes transgressors of her laws. In the world, it is in God, Who
“works all things after the counsel of His will," and Who " does according to
His pleasure in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth." This
is His Own definition, from which we learn that God's sovereignty is not
caprice, or action without good reason; nor arbitrariness, or action for the
mere display of authority: but it is intelligent action, exhibiting the will of
the highest power. Divine sovereignty is God's government of the world according
to His will, so as to fulfil His purpose in all creatures and events; it implies
“His perfect right to govern and dispose of them in conformity with His Own good
pleasure." It also implies God's right to command, and our duty to obey. In
respect to the system of redemption, to the salvation of men, His language is
more precise and specific: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy; and I
will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So, then, it is not of him
that walketh, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." Here
sovereignty is exercised in pardoning the guilty, saving the lost. But what are
the characteristics of Divine sovereignty? In a family, a school, a state, and
in every government, we learn the character and plan of the sovereign from his
own declarations and acts. Thus we call Tarquin, the Proud; Julian, the Cruel;
Job, the Patient Man; Abraham, the Faithful; Solomon, the Wise. So the
sovereignty of God bears the impress of His Own character, holy, wise, and
powerful. It is intelligent, for “His understanding is infinite; " powerful, for
He is " almighty; " universal, for He "filleth all in all; " uniform, for He is
" the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; " wise, for He abounds " in all
wisdom and prudence; ' faithful, for He always fulfils His promises and
threatenings; righteous, for " He sitteth upon the throne of His holiness; '
benevolent, for " He is good," supremely good, and "His tender mercies are over
all His works; ' compassionate, for " His mercy endureth for ever; " glorious,
for He is " the King of glory; ' praiseworthy: " Let every thing that hath
breath praise the Lord," and all may shout, with the heavenly hosts, " Alleluia;
salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, be unto the Lord our God." Such is
the adorable sovereignty of God. But does He reign supreme in the kingdom of
grace? It is eminently desirable that God should rule in this kingdom, with a
comprehensiveness embracing the whole plan, with a minuteness extending to every
son and daughter of Adam, to every display of His mercy towards each of them.
What would you not give to have these qualities always distinguish the
sovereignty that rules your family, sanctifying your social relations,
multiplying and sweetening the joys of home; converting your habitation into a
Bethel, into “the gate of heaven "? What a blessing, if you could have such
sovereignty preside over the schools which you attend or sustain! How it would
aid the acquisition and communication of knowledge; lighten or remove the burden
of discipline; and subordinate education, in the largest, best sense of that
word, to the wisest and most benevolent of purposes! If you knew that such
sovereignty would always preside over the nation, how that assurance would
relieve the fears of your loyal heart, and confirm your faith in the ultimate
attainment of the highest consistent welfare of each citizen and of the whole
nation! Any people, blessed with the right of elective franchise, would act
wisely in choosing a person possessed, as far as possible, of such qualities to
rule over them. None but bad men and criminals fear the legitimate exercise of
such authority. You cannot but esteem it a blessing that a sovereign God has
created and rules the material universe; the clouds which are His chariot; the
stormy wind which He directs; the ocean that rolls in the hollow of His hand;
the sun, moon, and stars that shine to His praise; "Arcturus, Orion, Pleiades,
and the chambers of the south " which .He made; all planets and systems
revolving harmoniously at His command: yea, that He governs all the objects of
nature, from the falling of a hair to the destruction of a world; and all the
events of providence, however trivial or momentous in our esteem. All things are
open to His inspection; all, subject to His control. “Thou, even Thou, art Lord
alone; Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts; the
earth, and all things that are therein; and thou preservest them all; and the
host of heaven worshippeth Thee." It is much more desirable that this adorable
Sovereign should reign in the kingdom of grace, to which both nature and
providence are subservient. These are but the scaffolding of God's temple, to be
removed when its head-stone shall have been laid with shouting, " Grace, grace
unto it; " when Jesus, Who " holds the stars in His right hand," and " walks
among the golden candlesticks, " shall have put down all rule, and all authority
and power; and when " every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, shall be heard, saying, '
Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the
throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.' Then Christ will appear as He is
in truth, " all in all; ' and salvation by His grace, the end for which the
sovereign Ruler made and governs all things, the theme most worthy the
aspirations and endeavors of mankind and the praise of " the just made perfect."
Every child of God looks on the land and sea, on the starry heavens, and the
various objects of nature, and sings, “My Father made them all." He sees God's
hand in every event of providence; and, though "clouds and darkness are':
sometimes “round about Him," he rests on the assurance, “righteousness and
judgment are the habitation of His throne." In his devotions, he acknowledges
and celebrates sovereign grace, which transformed him from a "vessel of wrath”
into one of mercy, from an enemy to a friend, from an alien to a child and heir.
He prays with David, “Uphold me with Thy free Spirit; then will I teach
transgressors Thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto Thee." With the
beloved disciple, he says, I was “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." He cries, with Paul, “It is not of
him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." "Hath
not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto
honor and another unto dishonor?" "We are His workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus unto good works." We are enabled “to will and also to do of His good
pleasure." With intensity of emotion, he repeats the words of his Divine Master,
“I can of Mine Own Self do nothing; “but adds, with the apostle, “I can do all
things through Christ Which strengtheneth me.” Christ, then, is “Head over all
things to the Church." He is " the true Vine, ' imparting to each branch life
and productiveness; the Alpha and Omega of every man's salvation. God is a
Sovereign in the kingdom of grace, as well as in nature and providence. But how
is His sovereignty displayed in our salvation? 1. By the gracious plan which His
wisdom devised, His love adopted, His faithfulness and grace carry steadily
onward, and are pledged to consummate. We, His intelligent creatures, act by
design. If we are faithful parents, we educate our children, and settle them
according to the purposes of our wisdom and love. Are we to construct for
ourselves a habitation? We make known our wants to an architect, who draws a
plan which we adopt and execute. "Every house is builded by some man; but He
that built all things is God." But, if we build houses and ships by plans and
according to purposes previously adopted, shall we not concede to God the right
to form and govern the world and the Church according to the counsel of His
mind? The patriarch of Uz says of God, "What His soul desireth, even that He
doeth." God Himself adds, “My counsel shall stand; and I will do all My
pleasure." But, respecting the system of grace and mediation, the Bible is full
and explicit: "Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom
He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also
glorified." Every step in the process of salvation develops His plan, and
teaches the good pleasure of His will. So reasoned the apostle, who contemplated
this theme, as we should do, with wonder and admiration: “Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as He hath chosen us in Him,
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame
before Him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by
Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the
praise of the glory of His grace. " If any thing can move the soul to its lowest
depths, it is the thought that God so loved it from eternity, and out of His
mere good pleasure, as to cherish toward it designs of mercy, and to adopt a
plan whereby it may be saved, may sing and shine before Him for ever and ever.
In the formation of that plan, God had no counsellor, but acted in the exercise
of His adorable sovereignty. 2. But this is also displayed by the covenants
which He formed and revealed in fulfilment of His plan. These are reducible to
two, the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace. In the first of these, He
formed angels, created mankind, and proffered eternal life on condition of
perfect obedience. What the law says to one, it says to all: He that obeyeth
shall live (Galatians 3:12); but " the soul that sinneth, it shall die '
(Ezekiel 18:20). Lucifer and others of the heavenly host fell from the
privileges of this Divine constitution. So also did our first parents. By their
“disobedience," " many were made sinners; ' that is, all their posterity were
corrupted, constituted sinners, and brought under the wrath and curse of a
broken law, so ruined that no works of future obedience could save them. Here,
whatever link you strike, the tenth or ten thousandth breaks the chain alike.
“By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified." "All have sinned, and
come short of the glory of God." Sin ruined this provision for human salvation.
But God's love did what it always intended to do: it promulgated a system of
mediation, a covenant of grace in which eternal life is freely offered us, and
even urged upon our acceptance, on condition of faith. “By grace are ye saved
through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." Of these two
covenants, the first admitted of no modification, but was complete from the
moment of its proclamation. The second was gradually developed; it rose and
increased like the king of day. Adam and the antediluvians saw only the morning
star of redemption; Abraham and other patriarchs, the early dawn; Moses and the
prophets, the brightening light; while the disciples of Christ behold " the Sun
of righteousness," rising and shining in the greatness of His strength. Hear how
God speaks of justification by each of these covenants: "Moses describeth the
righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth these things shall
live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise. ...
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine
heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Of each
covenant salvation is the end. Both were adopted out of His mere good pleasure,
and express His holy sovereignty. “God, willing to show His wrath and to make
His power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to
destruction, that he might make known the riches of His glory, on the vessels of
mercy." Mark the words: " endured with much long-suffering" the guilt and misery
of some of His accountable creatures that He might more clearly reveal His
glorious sovereignty in the salvation of others; even as the sun, in his march
through the heavens, appears brighter in contrast with the dark spots on his
disk. Like prisons and dungeons in civil government, hell is a dark spot in the
universe; but it is necessary for persistent covenant-breakers; sovereignty
subordinates it to the highest general good: and therefore all may sing,
"Alleluia; for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." 3. The adorable sovereignty of
God appointed Christ the Mediator of the covenant of grace. Sin cut us off from
access to God, from His favor that is life, and His loving kindness that is
better than life. God would deliver us; but how could He, without the subversion
of supreme authority, the compromise of right, the evasion of the threatened
penalty? We needed some one to satisfy for our offences, to atone for our sins,
and to procure for us free forgiveness. All had sinned; not one of the human
race could make satisfaction for the rest. Angels could not; for they must keep
the law constantly and perfectly, to secure their own salvation. Who could or
would undertake the mighty work? When God inquired, “Whom shall I send, and who
will go for Us? ' His eternal Son replied, " Here am I: send Me." God, in the
exercise of His holy sovereignty, “laid help upon One that is mighty," " Jesus
Christ the righteous." He chose and appointed Him our Mediator, a Day's-man, an
Umpire between Himself and us, human, and therefore able to comprehend our guilt
and misery imputed to Him; Divine, and therefore capable of understanding
perfectly the claims to be met and satisfied; Immanuel, the God-man who laid one
hand on the throne and the other on the footstool, and became the way perfect
and entire, whereby Divine mercy could be consistently conveyed to us, and our
prayers and praises ascend to Him. " Such an High Priest became us, Who is holy,
harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;
Who needeth not daily, as other high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for
His Own sins, and then for the people's: for this He did once, when He offered
up Himself." "Him God set forth to be a propitiation, to declare His
righteousness for the remission" of our sins. He died our death, and exhausted
our curse, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, and that God
might be just, and yet justify us miserable offenders. We adore the sovereignty
which selected Him for our Mediator, the only Personage that could make an
atonement for our sins; and when we think of Him laying aside the glory He had
with the Father before the world was, veiling His divinity with humanity,
suffering, praying, groaning, bleeding, dying for our sins, rising for our
justification, ascending to heaven, and preparing mansions for our everlasting
abode, we exclaim, with the chief of the apostles, "Oh, the depth of the riches,
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! ' 4. Sovereignty selected fallen men,
rather than apostate angels, to be the objects of Divine mercy. Angels existed
before the creation of mankind; for, when God laid the corner-stone and
foundation of this world, they celebrated the event. “The morning stars sang
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." In the scale of being, they
were originally exalted far above us, and probably possessed minds endowed with
faculties more enlarged, knowledge and wisdom more profound; and they were
capable of service more pure and exalted. Why, then, did God pass by the angels
who fell, and “whom He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto
the judgment of the great day," and provide redemption for mankind? Why took
Christ on Him the nature, not of angels, but of the seed of Abraham? Reason and
speculate as we may on these questions, they resolve themselves at last into
this: "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Thy sight." 5. The amiable
sovereignty of God fixed the simplest conditions to our pardon and eternal life.
It is the prerogative of the highest power to specify the terms on which its
clemency may be enjoyed. This belongs to parents in the family, to the Governor
in the state, to the President in the nation. And that power displays its
magnanimity and glory by making the terms as simple and easy of compliance as
may be consistent with the general good and the personal welfare of its subject.
If a parent forgives his disobedient child without a confession of his fault and
a pledge of reformation, he weakens family government, and encourages
waywardness. If a chief magistrate pardons criminals while a spirit of
insubordination still reigns in their hearts, it is presumption for him to
expect social order and general tranquillity in the nation. So in the moral
government of God, and under the reign of grace, we who have sinned cannot enjoy
the smile of Divine favor, till we " put away sin by righteousness, and iniquity
by turning unto the Lord;' till our rebellion against God is succeeded by
loyalty to Him; till our impenitence yields to godly sorrow, our unbelief to a
childlike trust, our carnality to spirituality, our heart of stone to one of
flesh. Therefore God's sovereignty, which commands us to make a new heart and a
new spirit, to repent, believe, and obey the Gospel, speaks with the wisest
reference to our good, to the welfare of Christ's kingdom and to the glory of
the Lord. It specifies the simplest conditions on which grace can be received
and enjoyed. As the drunkard must reform before he can inherit the blessings
which reward temperance, so every sinner must become holy, his heart must beat
in unison with God's; he must love what God loves, and hate what He hates; and
he himself must be refashioned in the moral image which he lost by the fall, or
he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Through this gate every man must pass or
perish. 6. Out of His mere good pleasure, God sent His Spirit to dispose and
enable us to comply with these conditions of life everlasting . Sin has so
debased and enfeebled us that we cannot do the good we would. “Ye cannot serve
the Lord; for He is a holy God." Of yourself alone, you cannot make you a new
heart, repent, believe, or obey the Gospel. The Saviour says, “No man can come
to Me, except the Father Which hath sent Me draw him." He draws you by His
Spirit, by the prayers of His people, by the institutions of religion, and the
means of grace. If you imagine you are both able and willing to perform these
duties, make the attempt; and the experiment will be likely to convince you that
you must have such help as the Holy Spirit alone can render. The Bible compares
this Divine Helper to the wind or atmosphere which circles and pervades every
material object, but which you must inhale in order to sustain your animal life.
Yet God was under no obligation to send you His Spirit; or, having sent it, to
continue His gracious strivings a moment, especially after your grieving and
resisting Him. The gift and operation of the Spirit are expressions of Divine
sovereignty: so, too, are all His whispers in the recesses of your mind, all His
calls to repentance, all His impulses to faith, all His motives to obedience,
all His earnest pleadings by the voice of providence, and the living ministry,
all the intercessions which He inspired in your behalf. Each of these is a
witness of His good pleasure, a fresh proclamation of His desire for your
salvation, a new endeavor to lead you to Christ, to give you the new heart which
you are commanded to make, the repentance and faith which you are required to
put forth, and the salvation which you should work out; for it is God that
worketh in you and with you, and disposes and enables you to work out obedience.
7. In the exercise of His holy sovereignty, God makes distinctions in the
display of His grace. He chose Noah, before other antediluvians, to preserve His
Church from the flood; formed His covenant with Abraham, rather than with any of
his contemporaries; called the Jews, in preference to other nations, to be His
peculiar people; chose David, out of the sons of Jesse, to rule His kingdom;
Mary to be the mother of the infant Saviour; Paul, before other persecutors, to
become the chief of the apostles; Christians at Antioch, before other disciples,
to commence Foreign Missions. In the economy of His grace, does He not now do
more for our nation than for the tribes of Central Africa; more for one church,
family, and individual than for another? Does any one doubt whether he bestowed
grace on John, the beloved disciple, not received by Judas Iscariot? Now, as of
old, what diversity in the endowments of God's people! By the same Spirit, " to
one is given the word of wisdom; to another, the word of knowledge; to another,
the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discerning of
spirits; to another, divers kinds of tongues: to every man severally as He
will." He imparts to one convert a quicker perception of sin; to a second, more
adorable views of Christ; to a third, clearer and more comprehensive
conceptions, of the plan and covenants of God; to a fourth, overflowing love; to
a fifth, stronger faith; to a sixth, a larger measure of humility; to a seventh,
more steadfastness or zeal. There are “diversities of operation, but the same
Spirit working all in all," and calling each to improve his peculiar gifts, and
to perform the special service for which they qualify him. All such distinctions
display His sovereign grace, and prepare each of its subjects for the part he is
to sing in the new song of heaven. Who 'will not rejoice in the display of
Divine sovereignty in human salvation? Has not God a right to do what He will
with His Own? Had He not a perfect right to create the world according to His
eternal purpose? to form both angels and men, and to endow the mind of each
according to the good pleasure of His will? to place them all under the covenant
of works? and, when they fell by sinning against Him, to reveal to mankind a
system of grace? to elect His Own Son as our Mediator? to allow Him to become
incarnate, to suffer and die, for our redemption? God Himself asks, " Is thine
eye evil because I am good? ' Who doubts His right to pass by the angels that
fell, and to show mercy to men? to offer salvation to you and to me on the
simplest possible conditions? to send His Spirit to help us comply with the
terms of pardon and eternal life? to make or to allow all the distinctions which
we witness in the display of grace? Why, then, should any object to His
sovereignty in our salvation? Is its action mysterious? Of course, the finite
cannot embrace the Infinite. Yet we believe and act constantly 011 what we very
imperfectly comprehend. We know not how our body and soul are united in one
person; but we believe the fact of that union, and daily act upon it. In our
childhood, we could not always comprehend the principles on which our parents
issued their commands; but our confidence, working by love, prompted obedience.
“Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
" How can God's sovereignty make Him appear a partial Being? He has clearly
revealed His will; He sincerely invites all to accept proffered mercy; He gave
His Son to redeem and save the lost, sent His Spirit and commissioned His Church
to call mankind, and is faithful in the execution of His promises and
threatenings. He nowhere approves of sin, but suffers it for a season to exist,
even as wise earthly rulers sometimes allow the transgression of their laws for
a short period, either in the hope of overcoming evil with good, or to render
more manifest the necessity and justice of punishment. He treats all men better
than they deserve, and has good and sufficient reasons for all the distinction
which He makes in the economy of His grace. If any unreconciled heart object,
inspiration answers, " Nay, man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall
the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus?
“Underlying this objection is the old man, which is corrupt, and in arms against
his supreme Ruler.” Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth; but
woe to him that striveth with his Maker!” He must surrender, or perish. Does the
sovereignty of God in salvation interfere with the freedom of man? No; as well
ask, whether the laws of the solar system, and the revolution of the planets,
interfere with the activity of the inhabitants of the earth; whether the
currents of the ocean hinder the action of the fish that swim therein; whether
the wind prevents the flight of birds through the air; whether the plan of a
campaign destroys the responsibility of the officers and men who execute it;
whether the authority of a wise and loving father suspends the personal
accountability of his own offspring. When parents live and act in their
children, earthly rulers in their subjects, think it not strange that " God
works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure" You are to work out what He
works in you. Let His promise encourage, sustain, and crown with success, your
endeavors to obtain eternal life. What are the special duties to which the
sovereignty of God in salvation now calls you? A faithful use of all the means
of grace. These are the tools of this Divine art, the appointed instruments of
salvation, by which a sovereign God works in you the salvation which He requires
you to work out “with fear and trembling." If you are a believer, and would
mature your faith and piety; or if you are an unbeliever, " without God and
without hope in the world," and would be saved by Christ and His gospel,
sanctify the Sabbath, remembering the day to keep it holy. Attend regularly and
faithfully public worship, " in season and out of season; " for " Thy way, God,
is in the sanctuary," His way of instruction in Divine knowledge, of
consolation, and of salvation. " Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye
have eternal life." Like the Bereans, try the sermons you hear by this Divine
standard, appealing “to the law and to the testimony; if they speak not
according to this word, it is because there is no truth in them." Pray, like the
poor publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner; ' for every one who asks in such
a spirit is heard and blessed. But God's adorable sovereignty in salvation calls
you to comply with the conditions of mercy. Your inviting Saviour cries in your
ear, "Come unto Me;' " take My yoke upon you: ' that is, " Submit yourself as a
loyal subject unto My government; yield your will in sweet submission to Mine;
confess and forsake your sins; return unto Me, and I will return unto you.
Repent, believe, and obey the gospel: for i behold, now is the accepted time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.' If you verbally or practically reply, "
No, not now" you really, and so long as you continue of the same mind, rebel
against His supreme authority; you return His ocean love with hatred; you hinder
prayer in your behalf; you resist and grieve His waiting, striving Spirit. Every
moment you do this, you hazard your soul; that lost, what can you account gain?
All is lost, irrecoverably and for ever lost! But you need not, you must not,
longer incur that awful risk; you must not allow the favored moment, " big with
mercy," to pass unimproved, and to force from you the lamentation, " The harvest
is passed, the summer is ended, and I am not saved." God forbids it; " the
Spirit and the Bride" forbid it; your own reason and conscience forbid it. Come,
like the prodigal, to your offended Sovereign, and say, " Father, I have sinned
against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son: make
me as one of Thy hired servants." Then He will meet and embrace you, will make
you His child and heir; heaven will rejoice; and you yourself will join in the
song, “Worthy is the Lamb! " Addresses to Church BY THE CONGREGATIONAL PASTORS
OF BOSTON, RECOMMENDED BY THE Boston Congregational Council. The following are
now published, and ready for delivery: No. 1. THE RESULT or COUNCIL. Complete.
No. 2. THE CHRISTIAN'S RECONSECRATION. By Rev. E. K. ALDEN, Pastor of Phillips
Church. No. 3. THE WORLDLINESS OF NOMINAL CHRISTIANS. By Rev. Dr. WEBB, Pastor
of Shawmut Church. No. 4. THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO UNITE WITH SOME CHURCH, AND
THE DUTY OF CHURCH-MEMBERS TO UNITE WITH THE CHURCH WHERE THEY STATEDLY WORSHIP.
By Rev. S. P. FAY, Pastor of Salem Church. No. 5. THE DUTY OF DAILY SECRET
PRAYER and DAILY STUDY OF THE BIBLE. By Rev. J. M. MANNING. No. 6. REVIVALS OF
RELIGION. By Rev. J. E. TODD. No. 7. THE DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY IN ITS RELATION TO
HUMAN SALVATION. By Rev. Mr. BAKER. The remaining Addresses will follow at
intervals of about one week; viz: THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL IN THE CITY AMONG THE
POOR, AND THOSE WHO HABITUALLY NEGLECT THE SERVICES OF THE SABBATH. By Rev. Dr.
DEXTER. THE CHRISTIAN'S DUTY TO WORK FOR THE SAVING or SOULS. By Rev. Mr.
BINGHAM. THE DUTY OF A MORE STRICT OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. By Rev. Dr.
BLAGDEN. THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. By Rev. Dr. ADAMS. THE POWER
OF PRAYER. By Rev. Dr. KIRK.


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  CHAPTER 48: CHRISTIAN'S DUTY TO WORK FOR SAVING OF SOULS
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THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO LABOR FOR THE SALVATION OF SOULS. BY REV. J. S.
BINGHAM. BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES. 1866.Entered according to Act of Congress,
in the year 1866, by NICHOLS AND NO YES, In the Clerk's Office of the District
Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
JOHN WILSON AND SONS. Number 11. Published by direction of the Congregational
Churches of Boston. IT will be taken for granted in the work now in hand, that
souls still in the bondage of sin need to be saved. We shall assume, that, if
Jesus came to seek and save the lost, there were lost to be sought and saved. We
are not to attempt to prove the urgency of a work which has no existence. Souls
which have not been renewed by the regenerating power of the grace of God are in
a state of condemnation and death, and must be rescued; or that condition will
prove an eternal one. We shall assume the importance of the work on earth, from
the nature of the case, and the teachings of Christ. The only point now before
us is, On whom is the responsibility devolved of laboring to secure the result?
Here is a work to be done: who is to do it? Is the duty resting on a set-apart
and ordained few, or on the redeemed and consecrated many? We believe every
Christian to be under the highest obligations to labor for the rescue of those
still unsaved. With these assumptions and qualifications, we may, perhaps, with
profit, consider some reasons, why it is the duty of Christians to labor for the
salvation of souls. 1. And we shall discover the first reason in the fact, that
the Christian has struck the same law of action that actuates the Divine mind,
which law is: what can be wisely done for the salvation of souls ought to be
done. So deep is the love of God, so pure is His compassion, and so determined
His opposition to sin, that truthfulness to His own nature requires Him to do
all He can wisely do to arrest its progress; and save those who have thrown
themselves into its power, and subjected themselves to its fearful results. For
“sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death, " death to manhood, death to
human affection, death to sonship with God, and all its present and eternal
rewards and privileges. It did not seem right to the Divine mind to allow the
sinner to remain in this state of moral and spiritual ruin into which he had
voluntarily plunged himself. Not that the law was unholy or unreasonable; not
that the retributions for its breach were not ordained in infinite wisdom, love,
and righteousness; but that, if any thing could be done in harmony with the
eternal principles of Divine economy in moral and spiritual relations, it ought
to be done. God could not be true to Himself, true to His own ideas of
redemption, which ideas are as fundamental as those of the creation of moral
beings, and leave the sinner to perish without His intervention, Sis working to
save him. Hence Jesus “was slain, from the foundation of the world." This could
be done. The law could not be changed; its retributions could not be annulled,
for these were in their nature immutable; but Jesus could come and receive the
consequences of the sinner's guilt upon His own heart, and send back a current
of life from that heart to regenerate and redeem the sinner. This He could do,
and not move a single line in the infinite survey of Divine economy. And because
He could do it, He was impelled by the law of dutifulness to Himself to say,
“Lo! I come." Hence He says, " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things,
and to enter into His glory? ' as much as to say, It was needful for Christ to
endure what He has for the sinner, in order to unfold the true glory of the
Divine nature, and -satisfy its yearning love. But the Christian, by virtue of
his regeneration and consecration, has received the same spirit, and become
permeated with the same ideas and principles. The same mind which was in Christ
is in him. The same law of action, the same law of sacrifice, moves him. If
Jesus felt that truthfulness to the Divine nature in Him required Him to do what
He has done to save the sinner; if, in this sense, He felt He must do what could
and, therefore, ought to be done, the same spirit and principle will actuate and
energize the Christian, every Christian. If Christ came to seek and to save the
lost, because He was constrained by the yearning of His own eternal love, the
same love must and will constrain His disciple. Here then is the foundation of
Christian duty in this regard. It rests on this principle: it is not right, is
not consistent with the nature and character of " our Father ' to permit the
sinner to live and perish in his sins without doing all that can be wisely done
for his redemption. We say wisely, because it is manifest that what cannot be
wisely done, in moral relations, cannot be done at all. This is the ground of
God's action. It must be the ground of duty for the Christian. He cannot be true
to God; true to his own nature, now renewed, and sanctified; true to the needs
of his fellow-men, without going to the extreme boundary of his capacity in
laboring for the salvation of souls. This, if we mistake not, is the highest
idea of duty. It fuses sympathy and love with unchangeable righteousness. It
declares, it is not right to permit our neighbor to commit moral suicide. It is
not right to allow our children to perish in the flames, although they are very
wicked children; and have disobeyed our kind, but positive, instructions, and
set the house on fire over their heads. It demands of us to rush into the
flames, and pluck men as brands from the burning. It charges us to hedge up the
ruinous way of the sinner with every possible means of grace, with Bibles and
sermons, with expostulations and arguments, with entreaties and prayers, with
floods of tears, and the gushing blood of agony, if so be he may be arrested in
his mad career of death, and turned back into the wav of holiness and life. It
bids us plead, "Father, forgive them: they know not what they do." It bids us
stand between the living and the dead, and stay the sweeping malady. If men are
so far gone as to be utterly indifferent to the claims of God, and completely
reckless in regard to their own eternal interests, we must be all the more in
earnest. Out into the highways and hedges of the country, the streets and lanes
of the city, must we urge our way; and compel the most thoughtless to think, the
most hardened to feel, and the most stubborn to yield. As God did not wait for
perishing sinners to apply for His redemption in saving grace, so Christians
must not wait for awakened sinners to ask to be guided to the fountain of
salvation. We must go, unasked; we must persevere, although resisted. We have
thrown ourselves into the current of infinite love, demanding, as a duty, the
utmost that can be done to save the sinner. And this principle presses upon, and
springs up within, every Christian, without exception. It conquers all
reluctance and timidity, all reserve and natural frigidness. It bursts forth,
like a blazing Hecla, amid gathering icebergs and snow-capped mountains. So deep
and mighty is the vital force, so perfectly is the life united to, and “hidden
with, Christ in God," that it must have utterance. It is a law of duty springing
from the heart, as well as the wisdom, of God; inspiring every heart which has
ever felt the regenerating power of saving grace. 2 But we may see another
reason for this in the fact, that Christians are now the body of Christ on
earth. "While Jesus our Lord was here in person," He possessed a body in which
he went about doing good." In this, He manifested God in the flesh. In this, He
glorified, unfolded, brought out to view, the nature and thoughts of God. In
this, He developed the power of Divinity working through the agency of humanity,
a Divine soul revealing itself as united with, and exercising complete control
over, a human soul and body. But that soul, and that body spiritualized, Christ
has taken with Him to heaven. In the place of this humanity, in the place of
this human soul and body, He has placed His believers. Every Christian is now
the humanity, the body, the objectiveness, the manifestation of Christ in the
flesh, in the place where in the providence of God he may be located. Christians
are now His willing feet, His outstretched hands, His persuasive lips, His
tremulous voice, His weeping eyes. His yearning, redeeming, agonizing love is
now to be manifested through the life and preaching and prayers of His
disciples. His Spirit uses Philip as His earthly humanity to guide the inquiring
eunuch to the Saviour he sought; He uses Peter as His body at Jerusalem and
Cesar ea; Paul, at Damascus, Ephesus, Athens, and Rome; and His disciples,
everywhere " scattered abroad," " preaching the word." His Spirit enters into
His disciples, and inspires them as preachers, writers, publishers, teachers,
and laborers in every department of work for the relief of human woe, and the
salvation of ruined souls. In His name, in His power, and in His stead, they go
forth; and, if they abide in Him, whatsoever they shall ask shall be done for
them. If His Spirit strives within them in “groanings which cannot be uttered,"
how speedily will He answer them! If then Christians are faithful, and really
consecrated to their work, His work, Christ will have as many souls and bodies,
through which to seek the lost, as there are believers in Him. This has been
adopted as the best and closing dispensation in God's kingdom on earth. It has
seemed best thus to blend Divinity with human thought, sympathy, love, and
faith, in the work of saving souls. It was expedient for Christ in person to go
away in order that the Holy Ghost, whom He would send in his name, might be
conferred upon the whole Church; and the gospel be more universally preached to
every creature. For as, in the physical world God can most wisely erect temples,
construct ships, and build railroads through the agency of the skill and
workmanship of man, while He carves out the continents and lifts up the
mountains without such agency; so can He, in the spiritual world, best redeem
and save sinners through the cooperation of those already rescued. Having chosen
this plan as the best, as His choosing it proves, the duty is imperative upon
every one who has been reached and quickened by the power of God, most earnestly
and faithfully to manifest His love in every appointed way. If Christians are
true temples of the Holy Ghost; if He abides with them continually, and is ever
struggling in their souls to be uttered; if He strives to make the humanity in
which He lives speak His words, obey His guidance, and breathe His petitions; if
God is stretching out His hands of compassion to the perishing through those who
have covenanted with Him, as much as in them lies, to represent and make
effectual His unceasing love and pardoning grace, can there be any question
respecting duty? If Christians are to be so many editions of the life of Christ;
so many living commentaries on His teachings; so many illustrations of the
meaning of " regeneration, sanctincation, and redemption; " so many wills,
repeating all along the whole line of humanity, the commands, the warnings, and
the invitations of God, is there still any ground for debate concerning duty?
There is no avoiding the obligation save in renouncing allegiance to God,
separating ourselves from Christ, and refusing to be the temples of the Holy
Ghost. If we are not laboring for the salvation of souls, we are not the body of
Christ, and we do not bear the fruit of His heart. We are only nominal branches;
and must, sooner or later, be removed. 3. We shall discover another reason for
this duty in the peculiar efficiency of its earnest discharge. If God has made
any thing clear in these days, it is the amazing power of the people. The idea
of the Divine right of a few to govern the many is exploded. The governing and
redeeming power of the people is most signally owned of God as His own
appointment. When He has secured in the hearts of the people " a mind to work,"
His great designs of human salvation and elevation are rapidly achieved. When
this marvellous latent energy can be aroused, quickened, and brought out into
wise and earnest work, the most glorious results are witnessed. We see this in
times of revival. Christians as a body are then at work, as they ought to be all
the time, " every one over against his own house," and in his place of business,
with his neighbors, in the "people's meeting" for conference and prayer. The
masses of impenitent persons are moved because the Spirit of God in the masses
of Christians has utterance. Many souls are saved because many are working and
praying to that end. It is not the minister and a few " leading members ' only
who are now at work manifesting the love of Christ, but the democratic element
of power is now in active operation. The constitution of the human heart is the
same as before; the truth is the same; God is the same; His readiness to hear
and answer prayer, and reward labor, is only the same: but the people are
changed. They are now personally laboring directly to save souls; and so long as
they continue in that work will the revival continue, whether it be for weeks,
months, or years. There will be greater manifestations of the Spirit's presence
at some times than at others, but the real work will go on continually. It is
the perpetual, personal labor of every Christian which occasions the leaven
rapidly to leaven the whole lump. The leavened works on that portion of the
unleavened with which it conies in contact. Christians are scattered through the
whole community, in which the gospel has attained a good measure of success; and
the Spirit of God has thus a humanity, through which to work in every department
of society. Sinners will cavil over the Bible, give away preaching, and question
the printed page; but the consistent, earnest, warm-hearted Christian, who
personally cares for their souls, gains access to the heart, and leads them into
the kingdom of God. Bibles and well-selected libraries are priceless treasures
on shipboard, but a skilful, resolute, courageous, Christian sailor, who lives
and talks the Bible, and converses with his shipmates concerning the eternal
interests of their souls, will accomplish more than they all. What then shall we
say concerning his duty? What shall we say of the duty of every Christian who
has any mode of personal access to men? What shall we say of the duty of
Christians scattered abroad, and daily coming in contact with those who never
visit the sanctuary, or come within the reach of any other means of grace? The
press and the pulpit can do much, but the working people can do immeasurably
more. They can make every house and work-shop, every market-place and highway, a
place of " speaking for Jesus." Instead of leaving their avocations because they
are converted, they make the fact, that men must meet them on business in these
avocations, an occasion for doing something for the salvation o their souls. Men
are shy of those who make it their profession to save souls, but feel at home
with their daily associates; and a few words from these will often have more
power over them than the most elaborate sermons. And men are never too much in a
hurry to speak or hear a word in this direction, if that is made the engrossing
topic. When we were struggling to save the nation, we were never too much in
haste to say, "Good news to-day; ' "Glorious victory, that!' "God is helping
us." So when Christians make the salvation of souls the great business of life,
and all transactions in the things needful for the body only its incidentals,
they always will find time to say, "Come to Jesus;" "I hope you love the
Saviour." If Christians will surrender themselves to be used by the Spirit of
God, and permit Christ to speak through them at all times and in all places, we
shall see the kingdom of God coming with power and glory. If every individual
Christian will reduce this, his chief business, to system, throwing his
inventive power into it to discover the best means he can use; if he will throw
his entire human force, sanctified and permeated by the Divine, into this work,
the will of God will soon be done on earth as in heaven. Should every Christian,
like a man of business, carry his pocket-memorandum with its list of " persons
to be seen; ' " individuals to be conversed with today; “subjects for this
week's prayers; " " cases of conversion ascertained; ' " urgent, present
demands; ' " persons not to be unduly urged;' there can be no estimate of the
results. There can be no more question of success in this matter than in any
other in which men rightly and earnestly engage. God has determined to bless
persevering work; He always has crowned it; He will He does, now. It is in
harmony with His own action, and the laws of the human mind. It imparts life and
vigor to the laborer. It intensifies his consecration, and hastens his
sanctification. It gives directness in effort, and peculiar power and prevalence
in prayer. He has an object in his will, a burden upon his heart, and a glorious
result in his faith. He has struck the idea of Jesus, when He pleads, " I pray
not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world." There is work to be done;
souls to be saved; Divine love to be carried to the perishing; Christ's work on
earth to be perpetuated, and advanced to complete triumph through human forces.
With every Christian thus laboring, praying, and trusting in God, there is no
more doubt, that every Christian Church in the world can double its numbers each
successive year, than there can be doubt in the promises and faithfulness of
God. This is bringing in " all the tithes," this is doing all we know how to do;
and the windows of heaven will surely be opened over us, and a blessing poured
out which there shall not be room to receive. Is there then any question of
duty? We, the people, possess the most effective power through which the Holy
Spirit can bring the truth to bear upon the heart of unregenerate men. We
possess human sympathy, and human experience, the experience of being once lost,
but now found; once wrecked, but now rescued; once " starving prisoners," but
now at home, amid its peace and plenty and unspeakable joy. And shall we forget
the lost, still wandering; the wrecked, still tossing amid the breakers; the
prisoners, still starving? Shall we smother all this force, and " quench the
Spirit" who would use it to save souls? Oh! it is time to act. It is time to "
do with our might." It is time to do, because we can. It is time to avoid the
curse of not doing. We cannot always live on Icing forgiven. We must some time
find our meat in doing the will of our Father in heaven. Shall we begin now? Let
us do it, and we shall soon receive the Saviour's forgiving " Come, ye blessed,"
and His approving " Well done."


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  CHAPTER 49: DUTY OF A MORE STRICT OBSERVANCE OF SABBATH
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THE DUTY OF A MORE STRICT OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. BY REV. G. W. BLAGDEN, D.
D. BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the
year 1866, by NICHOLS AND NOYES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of
the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND FEINTED BY JOHN WILSON
AND SONS. THE DUTY OF A MORE STRICT OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. Is the keeping of
the Sabbath, now, commanded by Divine authority; or, is it only a duty required
by a wise expediency, but not Divinely, and absolutely, commanded under the
Gospel of Christ? In reply to this inquiry, I shall try to show that the
remembrance of the Sabbath day, " to keep it holy," is now required of all
believers in Jesus, by the law of God as it is magnified and made honorable in
the Gospel; and that the manner in which this is done leads" us to right
conclusions respecting the ways in which we should fulfil " the duty of a more
strict observance of the day." I. The Lord Jesus declared, on one occasion, that
the “Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath day." What does such a declaration imply?
It implies that Jesus, as the Son of man, possessed and exercised authority to
regulate the keeping of the Sabbath. He spoke the words in asserting His
authority to do this, for He was then correcting the false views the Pharisees
entertained of its observance. They supposed it unlawful for His disciples, in
passing through the corn-fields on the Sabbath, when engaged with Him, their
Lord and Master, in works of love and mercy to men, to pluck the ears of corn
and satisfy IJieir hunger. But He assured them, from facts in their own history,
that the spirit of the law of the Sabbath permitted such necessary acts. He
alluded to the act of David and those who were with him, in entering, when they
were an hungered, the house of God, and eating the shewbread, which it was
lawful, commonly, for only the priests to eat; and He cited the conduct of the
priests as being harmless, when they, on the Sabbath day, did certain acts which
might seem to profane it, thus showing His hearers, as He is recorded in the
Gospel of Mark as having distinctly declared, that " the Sabbath was made for
man, and not man for the Sabbath." It was designed and adapted to promote alike
the holiness and the comfort of men; and therefore permitted, and even required,
those acts which were needful to renew and preserve the vigor and health of
their bodies, that they might the more fully and faithfully worship and serve
God, and do good to man on His holy day with all the powers of their souls.
Therefore, in His own words, if they had known what this meaneth, "I will have
mercy and not sacrifice," they would not have condemned the guiltless. The
declaration that the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath day, also implies, that
Christ, the Son of man, came not to destroy, but to fulfil the law of the
Sabbath. This law is clearly contained in the fourth commandment of the moral
law, given by Jehovah to Moses amid the solemn scenes of Mount Sinai. Of this,
Jesus said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away; but one jot or tittle shall in no
wise pass from the law, until all shall be fulfilled." Unless it can be shown
that this particular command of the law, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
holy," has been clearly repealed and annulled by the Saviour in His Gospel, it
is still, binding on all who believe in His name. But this cannot be shown. So
far from this, it seems evident from the whole tenor of His words to the Jews,
at various times, respecting the Sabbath, that He always spoke of it as an
institution which was ever to continue under the gospel, as it had done under
the law. He corrected their superstitious and self-righteous errors respecting
it; but, in doing this, He always implied that it must continue to be kept in
its true spirit. We may apply to His declaration, that He is Lord even of the
Sabbath day, the same principle of reasoning which He also applied to His Own
citation from the Old Testament respecting the resurrection from the dead,
saying, " Touching the resurrection from the dead, have ye not read that which
was spoken unto you by God, saying 6 1 am the God of Abraham, and the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob? ' God is not the God of the dead, but of the
living." So here we may say, that, as it is directly affirmed by our Lord, that
He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it, and as the keeping of the
Sabbath is a commandment of the law, when Jesus declares that the Son of man is
Lord also of the Sabbath" day, He is Lord not of a dead, but of a living day. In
correcting and reproving the false ideas of the Pharisees respecting it, He only
restored it from the letter which killeth to the spirit that giveth life,
causing the ministration written and engraven in stones, which was glorious, to
have no glory by reason of the glory that excelleth. On the same principle, we
may say, what some of the most pious and learned commentators on the text have
said, that the declaration may have been designed by our Lord as a prophetic
intimation of the fact, that the Gospel was, in its process of magnifying the
law of God and making it honorable, to change the seventh-day Sabbath of the
law, into the first-day Sabbath of the gospel, called repeatedly the first day
of the week, and, in the book of the Revelation of John, " the Lord's day."
Possibly, if not probably, this was intimated by David in the 118th Psalm, the
versification of which by Dr. Watts, we often sing in our worship of God: “This
is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." We say,
then, in great confidence, that, if any one will take the facts stated in the
Bible respecting the Sabbath day; if he will take the fact that the keeping of
it is directly commanded in the moral law of God; that Jesus declared
repeatedly, in the Gospel, that this law shall never pass away; and His apostle,
that we do not make void the law through faith, but establish the law; that in
all our Saviour's instructions respecting the Sabbath, exposing and correcting
Jewish errors respecting it, He never intimated, in a single instance, that it
was not then binding upon men; that He declared Himself, as the Son of man, to
be Lord of the Sabbath, and that it was made for man; that the disciples and
first Christians, after His death and resurrection, evidently paid marked
attention to the first day of the week; that He Himself first met with them on
that day, after He rose from the dead; that they also met on that day to break
bread, or, as we have the best reasons to believe, partake of the Lord's Supper;
that Paul preached to them on that day; that he afterwards directed the members
of the Church in Corinth each to lay by on that day, as God had prospered him, a
portion of his earthly possessions for the necessities of the saints, and to aid
in advancing the gospel; and that the last of the apostles, John, " the disciple
whom Jesus loved," wrote, in recording the last words of His Lord to all His
Churches in all ages to the end of time, that he was in the Spirit on the Lord's
day, and that the Lord appeared to him in a special manner then, and gave him
special messages to deliver to the Churches, when we place all these interesting
and remarkable facts together, and draw from them the general rule which a fair
comparison of them with one another seems clearly to demand, the satisfactory
conclusion must be, that the Sabbath is now binding on all men, and on every
man, to be remembered and kept holy as a commandment of the moral law of God,
which shall never pass away; that Jesus, the Son of man, is Lord of the day; and
that He has exercised His lordship, not by annulling it, but, by giving to men,
in His own person, and through the practice of His apostles, a larger and more
intelligent liberty respecting the manner of keeping it; but no license to
desecrate and neglect it. He has shown that the precise day on which a seventh
portion of time shall be hallowed in the special worship of God, and the
learning and doing of His will, is not important in the spirit of a true
obedience to His commandment, as it is made impossible for all men, in all
places, from the daily revolutions of the earth upon its axis in its orbit round
the sun. He has, therefore, by leading His disciples to keep the first, instead
of the seventh day of the week, enlarged and not contracted the blessedness and
power of the motives for keeping it holy by making it commemorate the finishing
of the work of redemption, as well as the work of the' natural creation. And He,
therefore, by His Holy Spirit, led an apostle to teach men, in the liberty of
the gospel, to rise above, and be superior to those self-complacent and
contracted reasonings of the Jews, which, making the precise time, in which it
must be kept, essential, fell into the error rebuked in the Epistle to the
Colossians: "Let no man, therefore, judge you in. meat, or in drink, or in
respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: which are a
shadow of things to come; but the body is Christ," Paul thus agreeing, in the
teachings of his Epistle, with the remarkable declaration of Jesus, that " the
Son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath day." Of this, as we think, very strong
evidence from the Bible of the binding obligation of the law of the Sabbath, as
a moral, and not a positive or temporary, institution, under the Gospel of
Christ, there are two facts, one of a historical, and the other of a natural or
physiological kind, strongly corroborative. The historical fact is, that from
the earliest history of the Christian Churches, the first day of the week has
been reverenced by being devoted, as the Lord's day, to be a Sabbath or day of
rest from the earthly toils of other days, and passed in the worship and
enjoyment of God in Christ. And the natural or physiological fact is, that the
direct testimony of a great number of the most learned and impartial men, sought
and given with direct reference to this subject, testimony thus given by
statesmen, physicians, lawyers, machinists, merchants, and intelligent men from
other departments of life, agrees in affirming, that man and beast most
evidently need the rest and recreation of one day in seven, for the restoration
and vigor of their health and energy, otherwise exhausted by the perpetual toils
and cares of life. To this it may be added, that when the deistical
philosophers, in a nominally Christian nation, not yet a century ago, attempted
to abolish the Christian Sabbath, they were so deeply convinced of the natural
need of men of some similar institution, that they appointed one day in ten as a
season for similar needed rest and recreation, and change of employment, thus
bearing their unwilling testimony to the truth that the Sabbath was made for
man. II. With these evidences, then, of its Divine authority, as it is confirmed
by the precepts and practice of Jesus and His apostles, and the history of all
the Churches of Christ, we are prepared to consider the duty of its " more
strict observance." This implies that its observance among us has been, and is,
too greatly neglected, and needs to be more strict. Need I go into details to
show that this is true? Is it not evident to every serious observer of the
habits of our country and commonwealth and city, that the neglect of the worship
of God on the Sabbath, and the positive and unnecessary breaking of its rest, by
various practices, has of late years greatly increased? In our own city and
vicinity we are certainly coming very near, under fair and plausible names, to
theatrical performances on the evening of the Lord's day; to political harangues
during the day and evening, sometimes from the lips of professed preachers of
the Gospel; to habitual drives for pleasure; and a great neglect of attendance
on the public worship of God, and the hearing of His Word, by private persons.
Without speaking farther of what all know, let us inquire what we ought to do
far the more strict observance of the day. To this inquiry it may be said,
generally, that, as it is a day of rest on earth, in which men may, in the use
of its means, be preparing to enter into the rest of heaven, and as they are
specially encouraged and aided by the day to come unto Christ, the Lord of the
Sabbath, and find " rest unto their souls," which shall thus prepare them for
rest eternal; so, whatever duties lead them most directly and perfectly to rest
in Christ must be, so far as practicable, done; and all acts which hinder them
from thus coming unto Him, and finding rest unto their souls, on this day of
rest, ought to be, so far as practicable, avoided. In doing these duties, and
abstaining from these unnecessary practices, we are ever to keep in mind that
the Gospel teaches us that we are in a world of discipline; in which, for our
highest good, we are to be continually tried, in our characters and conduct, by
questions respecting truth and duty. On this account our path is not, and ought
not to be, always and clearly “chalked out for us." Good is not to be done
altogether or mainly by law, but by the Gospel. Some men among us are always
relying on law too much. They would, in this sense, go back to the " weak and
beggarly elements of this world," by specifying in distinct rules what may be
done or left undone respecting the forms and institutions of religion, and, of
course, in regard to the keeping of the Sabbath, instead of leaving the conduct
to be prompted and governed by the intelligence of Christian love. The tendency
of such legal action, respecting Christian duty, is to make the manners of men
stiff, and suspicious, and censorious; not free, natural, confiding, kind and
charitable. We are ever to remember, that, in respect to all the forms and
institutions of religion, we “have been called unto liberty; only we should use
not our liberty as an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." In
regard to the keeping of the Sabbath, therefore, we are to feel, and act as if
we felt, that we are “not under law, but under grace." "We are to keep it, from
the promptings of supreme love, and ever-operative gratitude and praise to God,
in Christ; regarding it not as a yoke, but as a privilege; and well assured that
when men are under the influence of the love and service of Jesus, they need not
fear that they shall not arrive at clear and satisfactory views of truth and
duty, respecting the keeping of the Lord's day. There ought to be among us a
more strict observance of the Sabbath, under the influence of this love and
liberty of the Gospel, in OUT public, social, domestic, and personal duties
respecting it. By our PUBLIC duties respecting it, I would be understood to mean
the influence we may properly exert on the acts of the government under which we
live. It is plain that for its acts, each of us, as a subject of it, can be only
indirectly and partly accountable. And this, our accountability, must be
proportioned to the degree of influence we can exert in directing its action.
This is, in most cases, small in degree, and very limited in extent. To whatever
degree and extent it can be effectual, we are accountable, and no farther. But,
to that degree and extent, we ought to exert our influence in promoting the
public keeping of the Lord's day. By the truths we embrace, and strive to
promote respecting it; by our personal example in keeping it; by the character
of the persons we aid in placing in positions of public trust, we can, and ought
to strive to, promote its public observance. After having faithfully made such
efforts, our personal accountability for what may be done by government, ceases.
But whatever influence we can wield ought to be used to the extent of our
ability. In this way the Churches of Christian disciples, and private believers
in Jesus, as they increase in numbers and influence in a nation, shall
gradually, but surely make the government what the people are; and gradually,
but surely, the rulers, of whatever form the government may be, whether despotic
or democratic, shall be eventually wise men, ruling in the fear of the Lord,
keeping His Sabbaths and reverencing His sanctuary, knowing that He is the Lord.
In our own government does not much need to be done, in such ways, to promote
the better observance of this holy time? It is thus, also, with regard to our
SOCIAL duties in keeping the Sabbath. In these I would include particularly the
acts of the city, or town, or village, in which each of us may reside; and the
various circles, whether of organized associations, or of a smaller kind, with
which individuals may be connected. In these, much more efficaciously than in
any departments of the public government, each person may exert an influence for
good. In any official position he may hold, either permanently, or only for a
limited time, each private disciple carf, in many ways, directly or indirectly,
by his word, his acts, his example, do much to promote the observance of God's
Sabbath, and the reverence of His sanctuary. This may be done, in any such
bodies as are formed to advance public ends and private interests, like
manufacturing companies, or railroad and steamboat associations. In any of those
combinations of men where the personal influence, or the vote of an individual,
can be intelligently and wisely used, to promote the keeping of the Sabbath, it
ought, in conformity with the principles of the Gospel already stated, to be
done. I say, on the principles of the Gospel already stated, meaning by this,
those principles which show us that we are under a dispensation of things, in a
world of trial, where questions of truth and duty often arise in which it is
difficult to decide what course of action, respecting the keeping of His
Sabbaths, may be most pleasing to God, and, therefore, of the highest benefit to
man. Whatever may be the decisions of a truly Christian wisdom on such subjects,
what I wish to say is this: that all who would keep the Sabbath socially, in the
light and liberty of the Gospel, must be prepared to find questions of religious
duty sometimes arising, which call not for quick and rash decisions, and
stringent laws, but for humble, patient, prayerful watchfulness; and a firmer
reliance on the ultimate influence of Christian faith, working by love, in men,
than on laws quickly enacted, and sternly enforced. God will have mercy, and not
sacrifice. We must have moral courage enough to be kind and forbearing and
long-suffering to man in all our zeal for God. In our DOMESTIC relations, by
which are meant those of the family-circle, in our respective households, the
influence, good or bad, of every member, in regard to the Sabbath, is most
directly exerted by one's self, and felt by others. To this, therefore, the
fourth commandment of the law of God directly refers, and is now binding: "In it
thou shalt not do any work; thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy
man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is
within thy gates." Regard should be had, in all domestic arrangements, to the
religious good and bodily rest of servants. How interesting and instructive it
is, thus to have the law of God magnified and made honorable, as it is, by the
Gospel, entering, by faith in Christ, our families, and commanding us, in the
name of the Lord of the Sabbath day, to keep it holy; thus blessing all the
families of the earth by its sacred rest; in which the parents and children, one
day in every seven, take sweet counsel in their home, and go to the house of God
in company. What a fountain of purity and peace is thus opened, by the
arrangement of God, in every household, from which streams of blessed influence
shall flow out into all the masses of a nation, and make glad the city of God.
“Happy is that people that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people whose
God is the Lord." In our PERSONAL and private habits, ought there not to be a
more strict observance of the Sabbath? In our time of rising in the morning; in
the kind of books we read; in the nature of the thoughts and imaginations we
indulge; in the regularity and number of the times in which we attend the public
worship of God; in the kind of silent, yet great influence we thus exert on all
whom we love in our domestic circle, ought there not to be more faithfulness? In
prayer to God, and the searching of the Scriptures, ought not each of us to be
more faithful, fervent, diligent? Should we not avoid the tendency to indolence,
in which, during its hours, we may be tempted to indulge? There are several very
important, practical inferences, which might, were there time, be drawn from
this subject, as thus presented. One of them, were I to attempt to speak of
them, would be the evidence it gives of the Di vine nature and authority of
Jesus. He is Lord even of the Sabbath day, which day we are commanded to
remember and keep holy, in God's eternal law. But let me only speak, in closing,
of the blessed opportunity afforded to every person, in a Christian land, by the
weekly recurrence of each Sabbath, for coming unto Jesus, the Lord of the
Sabbath, and finding rest unto the soul! Possibly, it might be said, with truth,
that our Lord's frequent cures of the maladies of men, when He was on earth, on
the Sabbath day, were designed to direct our attention to this blessed truth. On
this day He healed the man with the withered hand; on this day He loosed the
woman who " had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together,
and could in no wise lift up herself;" on this day He commanded the man who had
been waiting a long time at the pool of Bethesda, and had an infirmity thirty
and eight years, to rise, take up his bed, and walk; and immediately he was made
whole, and took up his bed and walked. “And on the same day was the Sabbath." It
was on the Sabbath day that Jesus made clay, and opened the eyes of the man who
was blind from his birth. It was on the Sabbath day that He went into the
synagogue, in Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and "stood up for to read;
': and when He had opened the book He found the place where it is written, " The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel
to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance
to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them
that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." “And He began to
say unto them, ‘This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.'” So now, in
our time, He comes by His Word, His preachers, His Spirit, in the rest of every
Sabbath day, of which He is the Lord, to heal the diseases of the souls of men;
to cause the spiritually blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk; to
heal the broken-hearted; to deliver men from the slavery of sin; to set at
liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Addresses to Churches By THE CONGREGATIONAL PASTORS OF BOSTON, Boston
Congregational Council. The following are now published, and ready for delivery:
No. 1. THE RESULT OF COUNCIL. Complete. No. 2. THE CHRISTIAN'S RECONSECRATION.
By Rev. E. K. ALDEN, Pastor of Phillips Church. No. 3. THE WORLDLINESS OF
NOMINAL CHRISTIANS. By Rev. Dr. WEBB, Pastor of Shawmut Church. No. 4. THE DUTY
OF CHRISTIANS TO UNITE WITH SOME CHURCH, AND THE DUTY OF CHURCH-MEMBERS TO
UNITE' WITH THE CHURCH WHERE THEY STATEDLY WORSHIP. By Rev. S. P. FAY, Pastor of
Salem Church. No. 5. THE DUTY OF DAILY SECRET PRAYER and DAILY STUDY OF THE
BIBLE. By Rev. J. M. Manning No. 6. REVIVALS OF RELIGION. By Rev. J. E. Tone.
No. 7. THE DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY' IN ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SALVATION. By Rev. Mr.
BAKER. No. 8. THE DUTY OF A MORE STRICT OBSER\ THE SABBATH. Bv Rev. Dr. BLAGDEN.
The remaining Addresses will follow at intervals of about one week THE SPREAD OF
THE CITY AMONG THE POOR, AND THOSE WHO HABITUALLY NEGLECT THE SERVICES OF THE
SABBATH By Rev. Dr. DEXTER THE CHRISTIAN’S DUTY TO WORK FOR OF THE SAVING OF
SOULS. By Rev. Mr. BINGHAM. THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. By Rev. Dr.
ADAMS. THE POWER OF PRAYER Rev. Dr. KIRK. TAGS: [ChurchMembership]


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  CHAPTER 50: POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
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THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. BY REV. N. ADAMS, D. D. BOSTON: NICHOLS
AND NOYES. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
NICHOLS AND NOTES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District
of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SONS.
Number 10. Published by direction of the Congregational Churches of Boston.
DURING those tender and endearing moments when the Saviour was preparing the
disciples for his own departure, He promised them "another Comforter," who
should abide with them for ever. This implies that He himself had been a
Comforter. And what a Comforter Jesus is, let the experience of the eleven
disciples, and the sorrowing hearts of eighteen centuries, testify. No one
epithet can express the fulness of Christ or of the Holy Spirit; yet, of all the
words in our tongue proposed as the rendering of this designation of the Holy
Spirit by the Saviour, none is more beautiful, more comprehensive, and, on the
whole, more just to the original, than the word " Comforter." "Another
Comforter." Progress is the law in the works of God. Another Comforter,
therefore, we may be sure would cause the disciples no painful perception of
inferiority, or sense of loss. Not many days after, they found themselves,
unlearned and ignorant men, addressing people in strange languages. Words spoken
by them made converts by thousands, in one day, to the crucified One. Yet this
by no means constituted their chief joy. That which happens to one's own soul
has an interest for him beyond all outward phenomena. The Great Teacher seems to
imply this when He says, " Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not, that the
spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written
in heaven." These disciples came, in one hour, to a consciousness of wonderful
enlargement in their spiritual perceptions. The whole life of Jesus, especially
words and actions of his till then comparatively obscure, were as when the
flames of many gas-burners are raised at once by a single motion. Suddenly these
men were in a new spiritual world; and the light of it was He of whom, in
relation to heaven, it is said, “the Lamb is the light thereof." Happy, happy
men! conscious of a new spiritual state surpassing in value the mere gift of
tongues and influence over a multitude! “They were all filled with the Holy
Ghost." Had the gift of tongues been the chief part of the Holy Spirit's work in
the apostles, there would be ground for the apprehension that the excellent
greatness in this gift of another Comforter was confined to the early Church.
But no; miracles were the least part of His intention, a mere alphabet in his
communications to the objects of his grace. Not to the first disciples alone,
therefore, did the gift of the Comforter appertain. For said Jesus, “Neither
pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through
their word." You, dear Christian friend, are in all respects as truly included
in the gift of the Comforter as were the eleven disciples. These pages are
designed to assist you in your conceptions of Him. May He guide us into all
truth! WHO is IT, who must He be, that is capable of taking up the work of the
GOD-MAN and carrying it on to perfection? To make atonement for sin, chief as it
is among the works of God, does not bring into view the same executive
attributes which are employed in dealing with human minds, one by one; in
adapting the method of recovery to the peculiarities of each; and in carrying on
the work of grace through the vicissitudes of personal history. Who must He be
that creates successive dispensations of thought among men; controls the
wonderful tides of religious feeling; brings on those seasons of wide-spread,
irresistible impression concerning things spiritual and eternal; and, at the
same time, is conversant with every mood of private thought and feeling in every
awakening sinner and in every saint? It is He, it can only be He of whom it is
said, “For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God."
PERSONALITY AND DEITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. All the attributes of personality are
manifest in Him. He is a Divine Person. We are baptized in His name; in his name
we are blessed, as in the name of the Father and of the Son. The only sin which
is unpardonable is committed against Him. He is not therefore “Divine
influence." Christ would not need to go away that "Divine influence" might come.
It is noticeable that the Bible never speaks as we do of “the influences of the
Holy Spirit," but always refers to Him as a Person. “I will send Him unto you."
HIS POWER ILLUSTRATED. One illustration of the power with which the Holy Spirit
works in human hearts, is seen in the rapid advancement of the first converts to
Christianity. It is wonderful that the Epistles of the New Testament, which were
to be the sufficient source of instruction for the Church of God in all times,
should have been addressed to people so newly lifted out of heathenism. No such
progress is made under the influence of letters as these converts from idolatrv
must have it made, who were competent so soon to understand, for example, the
Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians. Such is the scale on which the Holy
Spirit sets forward the human mind and heart. Creation only affords a parallel:
"God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath sinned in our
hearts." We have all been struck with the sudden improvement in the minds, as
well as characters, of people newly converted, their good sense, their just
perceptions. “The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding
unto the simple." The infinite ease of the Holy Spirit's operation is full of
encouragement. He does with one gentle thought, one secret, silent impression,
that which reasoning and persuasion had utterly failed to accomplish. Often we
expect a difficult work with a stubborn soul, but find it done. Laboring with
great pains for a revival of religion in a Church and congregation, and meeting
seemingly insuperable obstacles in the characters and conduct of many, all at
once you find your utmost hopes surpassed, and praise breaks forth " unto Him
that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,
according to the power that worketh in us." We should begin every effort for the
spiritual good of others with a calm sense of entire dependence upon the Holy
Spirit, and of his almighty power, and saying, " So then neither is he that
planteth, any thing, neither he that watereth." Thus we should pray and labor.
Then we can continue; our efforts will be healthful; the excitement ministered
by success will be the excitement of bracing air; and the joy of the Lord will
be our strength. To the Holy Spirit belong all the appliances to be used in the
conversion of the world. The Holy Spirit is appointed to be the author of our
whole spiritual experience. It is the Holy Spirit who makes the Saviour all that
He is to us. What did we know of Christ till the Holy Spirit fulfilled that
promise, "He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you"? Repentance and
faith, with all the exercises of our renewed nature, are, from first to last,
the work of the Holy Spirit. No more directly dependent are we on Christ for
atoning blood than upon the Spirit for religious experience. Sanctification is
from Him as peculiarly as justification is by Christ. And as " the Father
judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son," so the Father and
the Son have committed the entire work of " communion ' to the Holy Spirit, this
" communion?: including even our fellowship with the Father and the Son; for as
" no man knoweth who the Father is but the Son and he to whom the Son will
reveal Him," so every act of love on our part toward God and Christ is by the
Holy Spirit. Blessed Spirit! how little do we thank and love Thee! Beautiful,
yea, how touching, is thy humility, so willing to be subordinate, so little
recognized by many of thine own! Like the parables, thy comparatively hidden
nature may be intended to excite our faith, and draw us on to further knowledge.
It is with Thee as it was with Him preceding Thee, who "came unto his own and
his own received Him not." Thou " seven Spirits which are before his throne! '
Thou multiplicity, variety, and infinitude of spiritual powers and offices! it
is only when we are spiritually-minded that we appreciate Thee! Silent, unseen,
thy subordination also prevents us in a measure from thinking of Thee as we do
of the Father and of the Son; and yet are we not baptized in thy name also? and
in thy name we are blessed! Nothing hinders us from believing that it was the
third Person in the Godhead who is spoken of in Genesis 1:2 : “And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters." Incubating upon chaos, if then and there
He deposited the seeds of things in the new elements, and created the original
models of all forms in nature, organizing life in its endless manifestations, it
was in beautiful correspondence with his work, which is still greater, in the
moral creation, is the author of regeneration, and of every thing which
accompanies and flows from it. We see his work in the religious emotions
experienced by the people of God, from the patriarch to the lisping child, from
the first pang in conviction of sin, through the day-break of the new-born soul
with its penitence, faith, and hope, its conflicts, its victories, its
discoveries, its spirit of adoption, its growing likeness to Christ. All this is
his immediate work. Creator Spirit! to be a born of" Thee, to be "led by " Thee,
to be "sanctified by”: Thee, to have intercession made in us by Thee, and to be
"sealed” by Thee to the day of redemption, is worthy to be, as it is, the
purchase and the gift even of the incarnation and the cross! HE MADE THE BIBLE.
The Bible is the work of the Holy Spirit as distinctively as the cross pertains
to Christ. It was proposed to make a book for the human race. Was there ever a
more difficult undertaking? It is finished. Its plan, its details, none but
infinite wisdom could arrange. Who should write it; what its contents should be;
how much of history, and what histories; how much of legislation, of biography,
prophecy, maxim, song; and in what ages, what countries, amid what manners and
customs it should be composed; what length of time it should cover; and, no less
difficult than all, what should be left out of it; in a word, how it should be,
on the whole, best adapted to the use of all peoples and languages in every
condition and stage of life, all this was solved by Him to whom we owe the
Bible. He devised the narrative of Joseph. He prepared the books of Esther and
Ruth. He indited the Apocalypse. He taught Moses, inspired Daniel, inflamed
Isaiah, breathed upon John. Sometimes we see a man doing a difficult work with
an ingenious instrument devised and shaped by himself. The Holy Spirit made the
Bible as the great instrument in his work. He made it for you, foreseeing your
necessities; He helps you in reading it. Descending from the contemplation of it
as a masterpiece of infinite wisdom, select one of its writers, and think what
the communion of the Holy Ghost must have been with him, for example, David. "
Now these be the last words of David. David, the son of Jesse, said, and the man
that was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet
psalmist of Israel, said, ' The Spirit of God spake by me and his word was in my
tongue.' This was his most grateful recollection when reviewing life. In the
progress of divine tuition, shall we not each of us, fellow-heirs of life! have
received from the same Holy Spirit, who "dwelleth with " us " and shall be in "
us, as much of communion, and as many great, ennobling, rapturous, and
peace-inspiring thoughts as fell to the lot of David? One purpose of God in
raising him up and endowing him, seems to have been to show us what He will
hereafter do in spiritual things to all who love Him. “I will give you," says
He, " the sure mercies of David." THE INTERCESSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. His
connection with our private, spiritual life is brought to view when it is said,
" Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we
should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us
with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the heart knoweth
what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession in the saints
according to the will of God." The meaning of this passage is not that the Holy
Spirit intercedes in heaven for us. “For there is one God, and one mediator
between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus." The Holy Spirit makes intercession
“for us," by filling us with spiritual emotions so deep and strong that we
cannot utter them except in "groanings." They are not unintelligible to God. He
discerns their meaning more clearly than the laboring soul itself can either
express or comprehend the object of the Holy Spirit when filling us with these
earnest desires; and God regards these desires, because the Holy Spirit excites
them. It seems, indeed, a singular way of helping our infirmities, to make us
feel them all the more, and until we groan; yet this is the divine method, for,
“when I am weak, then am I strong. " When our Christian feelings are such that
words seem weak, the Holy Spirit is making intercession for us, by working in
us. What encouragement there is in having the apostle Paul say, " We know not
what we should pray for as we ought! ' and in perceiving that lie had the same
spiritual " infirmities," and the same need of the Comforter, as we. His
PRESENCE WITH A CHURCH. The chief desire and effort of every Christian Church
should be to secure his constant presence. Every thing which tends to disturb
harmony, and to make alienation and contention, is quenched by his indwelling in
the hearts of Christians. Long-standing griefs and seemingly insuperable
difficulties melt away at his coming. In honor "preferring one another," and
bearing one another's burdens, there are no jealousies and envyings; mutual love
prevails over every tendency to alienation. Weaknesses and faults in others
cultivate the Christian graces of each. There is nothing, perhaps, in effect, so
much like heaven as this. Our Congregational Church-organization offers peculiar
opportunities for such experience; for the government not being vested in one
man, or in a select body, the whole brotherhood have opportunities in their
frequent intercourse to manifest those graces of the Spirit which Christian
communion is fitted to develop. On the other hand, the liberty and equality
conferred on all expose us to peculiar temptations; and, unless the Holy Spirit
rules in our hearts, scenes may be enacted which will remind you that “there was
war in heaven." But praying and laboring with one heart and one mind for the
constant presence of the Holy Spirit, and being -led by Him, the members of a
Church become "a holy temple in the Lord;” to which others are brought, and are
"builded together” with them "for an habitation of God through the Spirit." THE
MINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT REACHES THROUGH TIME. The work of redemption is to be
finished by the Holy Spirit. Some ascribe the termination of efforts for the
world's conversion to the interposition of Christ in person. We cannot properly
enter here upon the consideration of this subject, but we may be sure that the
third Person in the Godhead will not fail of his worthy share in the plan of
salvation. The ministration of the Spirit is spoken of (2 Corinthians 3:1-18),
in antithesis to the old dispensation, as though it would be the complement of
the great redemptive work. Compared with the former dispensation it is to be
“the rather glorious." The conception is sublime of this unseen Spirit carrying
on, by his mysterious agency, and in perfect consistency with the free agency of
men, good and bad, the stupendous work of subduing the world to Christ. So He
fulfils the Saviour's comparison of Him to the wind, which breathes on the
softly-bending corn, or stirs the differing murmurs in the leaves of different
trees, or comes as the tradewind of commerce, or moves, at one and the same
moment, all ships on every sea and ocean, from whatever quarter, and to whatever
point they sail. Surely his name, also, shall be called “Wonderful." The very
close of the Bible and of prophecy echoes his voice: “And the Spirit and the
bride say, Come; ' for the honor due to his name requires that his work in
redemption continue to the end, and be commensurate with that of the Father and
the Son. HE IS "THE ETERNAL SPIRIT." The future relation of the Holy Spirit to
the redeemed in heaven is a pleasing subject of contemplation. Never can your
love to your Redeemer fail of vast accessions through the ages of your heavenly
experience; it cannot be supplanted; on the contrary, the love which the Holy
Spirit will receive from you will spring from sources which must enhance the
love which you will feel toward the Father and the Son. But when we come to
know, in full, the personal connection which the Holy Spirit had with us, then
Bethlehem, Gethsemane and Calvary will, perhaps, have their counterparts in
places, seasons, and events of spiritual history, identified with the work of
the Holy Spirit. “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake
and for the love of the Spirit," says Paul. Indeed, He must be a loving Spirit
who does such acts of loving-kindness, so patiently, so gently, so tenderly,
that the affection excited by our misdeeds and perverseness is not wrath but
grief, because it is said, “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye
are sealed unto the day of redemption." Of course, the third Person in the
Godhead does not merely accomplish an earthly mission for our souls; He will
have a relation, no doubt, to our whole spiritual existence for ever. If
conversion, if repentance, and faith, and the fruits of the Spirit, in our
imperfect state be so wonderful, viewed as mental experiences, what must our
experiences in heaven be, with the author of these present experiences still in
some specific relation to us corresponding to his work, here as Comforter! There
we shall begin aright; all our mistakes and follies, prejudices and antipathies,
will be removed; we shall have no bias to evil, no law in our members warring
against the law of our mind. It will be the Holy Spirit Who will have set us
right. Personal indebtedness to those who taught us useful knowledge here, who
formed our opinions, led us into the path of discovery, and stimulated our
powers, is a faint representation of our love and gratitude to Him who, we shall
then see, was, in all the history of our minds and hearts, and in every sense of
the word, our "Comforter." Every Christian has implanted in him now the germ of
each perfection which he will have in heaven. Hence the Holy Spirit is said to
be " the earnest of our inheritance, the pledge of the purchased possession; '
and, when we believed, we are said to have been " sealed with that Holy Spirit
of promise," like the wine which receives the vintner's seal and is left to
develop itself, only that there is in the soul a constant presence and agency of
the Comforter. Regenerated persons, therefore, are “a chosen generation, a royal
priesthood, a peculiar people." Poor, ignorant, lowly, though some of them may
be, they are higher than the kings of the earth who are yet in their sins.
Leading others to be of this "chosen generation“ is the work in which we aid
when we bring a soul to God. " For we are laborers together with God." Of such
and of their labors, the Saviour said, "And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and
gathereth fruit unto life eternal." THE WORLD DOES NOT KNOW HIM. "Whom the world
cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him." Infinite loss,
never to know Him! “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, for they are
spiritually discerned." Such were we. None can express or estimate the
difference made in us by regeneration. This work of the Holy Spirit in us is
likened to the creation of light; more than once it is ascribed to the same
power which raised up Jesus from the dead. Have you had this new birth? Then God
has done the greatest work in you which He ever accomplishes in the soul of man.
What if God should visibly make an angel of some one whom we know and love! Let
Him regenerate your soul, and hereafter you will have no occasion to covet an
angel's nature, or his bliss. But in further contrast to the world's ignorance,
the Holy Spirit imparts to ministers and Christians that indescribable gift
called “unction." In preaching, in praying, in conversation, in spirit, in
manner, in one's whole influence upon others, this indefinable gift does more
than genius, or talent, or learning, or zeal. It cannot be affected; the
possessor is unconscious of it; the observer cannot tell what it is; but the
Holy Spirit bestows it upon all in whom He specially loves to dwell. But the
soul which never receives the Holy Ghost, will be in endless chaos. Disorder and
darkness will possess it. For if we are born but once, we shall die twice; and
if we are born twice, we shall die but once. " On such the second death hath no
power." SUBORDINATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. To the regenerate it may be useful to
say, that subordination on the part of the Holy Spirit, so plainly declared, is
a beautiful and powerful example of the same thing among Christians.
Subordination in Christ is used by the apostle for the same purpose. “Let the
same mind be in you which Was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God
thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation,
and took upon Him the form of a servant." This was suggested by the exhortation,
“Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of
others." With our Redeemer making himself of no reputation, but humbling
himself; with our Sanctifier subordinating himself, surely we should ever be
gentle and kind, seeking not our own, " but every man another's wealth."
UNCONDITIONAL PROMISE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. The Holy Spirit is the only gift which
is unconditionally promised. We may pray for life or health or any other
blessing, and it may not be consistent for God to grant our prayer. But such are
the arrangements of Divine providence and grace, that sincere desires for the
Holy Spirit can no more be disregarded than the desire of a child for food. To
disregard our desires for the Holy Spirit is compared by Christ to the act of
putting a stone into the hand of a child beseeching for bread; or imposing upon
his ignorance by giving him, instead of a fish, a scorpion, which he would not
know enough to distinguish from a fish. Such is the blessed Redeemer's assurance
to every soul who reads these lines, that a true desire for the greatest and
best gift which God can impart can never be preferred in vain. Those words of
Christ, "The wind bloweth where it listeth; so is every one that is born of the
Spirit," are not limited to conversion. Every one that is born of the Spirit
will enjoy through life this mysterious agency of the Spirit. This should
comfort and encourage those who are afraid, that, if they become Christians,
they shall not persevere. Is not the atonement for your sins a divine work, and
a full, complete provision for your justification? The Holy Spirit will complete
his work, as surely as Christ has completed his. Only do with regard to Him as
you have done in believing in Christ; that is, place your entire dependence, for
continuance and progress, upon the Holy Spirit; and you “shall never fall." God
will “go before thee, and be thy rearward." What a stupendous plan of redemption
this is, dear Christian friends, in which we believe! You are the subjects of
that plan. It is worthy to be considered that the mode of the divine existence
is disclosed to us only in connection with the development of redemption. The
revelation, that Christ " was in the beginning with God and was God," seems to
be made because a knowledge of the way of salvation rendered it necessary that
this should appear. We learn the deity of the Holy Spirit chiefly in connection
with his work in our souls. Let us consider what it is to be a member of the
race whose history thus brings to view the mystery of the Godhead; and what it
is to be one of that chosen number to whom alone this stupendous work is
applied. Consider, too, that such a scheme of salvation, in which the Godhead is
thus occupied, must have a counterpart of perdition corresponding to this
salvation. What exaggeration, what superfluity of effort, what unnecessary
endeavor, there would seem to be here, if all men can after all be saved by
discipline! To have been an object of this redemption, but to fail of being
redeemed, and for ever to be sinking as low as, by redemption, you would have
been exalted, will be intolerable, more so, even, than the experience of those
who fell from heaven and had no Redeemer. If you who read these lines are not a
partaker of the grace which the Holy Spirit imparts, you still may be. He has
not withdrawn from you, for a subject like this would not attract and hold your
attention, and awaken desire, were you given up to hardness of heart. Even you
can be born again. With infinite ease, the Comforter can make you a new
creature. Were there nothing supernatural in conversion, Christ would not have
thrown such a mystery about a religious change as He does in his comparison of
it to the wind. He calls it, also, being “born again." There is a divine,
supernatural element, in conversion^ and it is the best part of it. If God
creates you anew, that new creation is as indestructible as the soul itself. Let
me beg of you to pause just here, wherever you are, close your eyes, and address
a prayer to the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. It is He who will have put it into
your heart thus to pray; therefore, He is waiting to seal you to the day of
redemption. Your views and feelings, your temper, disposition, frames of mind,
tones of voice, in short, your whole consciousness, will be under his direction.
He is so essential, that Christ left the world in order that the Holy Spirit
might come. He has long striven with you, patiently, and with great forbearance.
If the only sin which is unpardonable is a sin against Him, all sins against
Him, it would seem, must have peculiar heinousness. For He is the ultimate
remedy; the cross itself is in vain without Him. Let Him prevail with you. He
will be to you all that Christ was to the disciples. He is " the earnest of
heaven in our hearts.' The Man Christ Jesus owed every thing to Him. So will
you, present grace, and, in its largest sense, " communion' here; and, " He will
show you things to come." COME, thou HOLY SPIRIT! come, And, from thine eternal
home, Shed the ray of light divine: Come, thou Father of the poor, Come, thou
Source of all our store, Come, within our bosoms shine. Thou, of comforters the
best; Thou, the soul's most welcome guest; Sweet refreshment here below! In our
labor, rest most sweet; Grateful shadow from the heat; Solace in the midst of
woe. O most blessed Light divine! Shine within these hearts of thine, And our
inmost being fill: If thou take thy grace away. Nothing pure in man will stay;
All our good is turned to ill. Heal our wounds, our strength renew, On our
dryness pour thy dew, Wash the stains of guilt away: Bend the stubborn heart and
will. Melt the frozen, warm the chill. Guide the steps that go astray. On the
faithful who adore And confess thee, evermore, In thy sevenfold gifts descend:
Give them virtue's sure reward; Give them thy salvation. LORD; Give them joys
that never end. HYMNS ANCIENT AND MODERN.


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  CHAPTER 51: POWER OF PRAYER
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THE POWER OF PRAYER. BY REV. E. N. KIRK, D. D. BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES. 1866.
Entered according to Act of Congress,- in the year 1866 , by NICHOLS AND NOYES,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
CAM BRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SONS. Number 9. Published
by direction of tin- Congregational Churches of Boston. IN nothing is the world
more opposed to Christ than in His revelation of mysteries to be believed and
acted in daily life. And when a worldly person embraces His religion in name
merely, as is frequently done, the very first step is to strip it of mysteries
and reduce it to a philosophy or a science, to something that can be seen by the
eyes, or demonstrated to the understanding, and thus relieve him of the
inconvenience of appearing unreasonable to other worldly persons. Faith, or the
belief of that which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath entered into
the heart of man" by invention or discovery, the world utterly discards.
Prominent among the mysteries of the Gospel is Prayer; not so much when
considered as adoration, confession, thanksgiving, or even supplication; not at
all, when considered as a direct means of refining our own hearts; but as a
POWER, a power over God; that is the mystery in which faith believes. Considered
as a privilege, prayer is wonderful; but as a force, it transcends all our
earthly wisdom, and can be recognized by Faith alone. We see, for instance, the
man Moses staying the arm of Omnipotence just uplifted to strike down a guilty
race, as described in Numbers xiv. 11. Was it science, or statesmanship, or
military prowess, poetic talent or eloquence, that saved that people? No, it was
the power of prayer. “And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word"
We see Abraham pleading for the people of Sodom, and reducing, step by step, the
conditions of their salvation to narrower and easier terms. We see Elijah, a man
like ourselves, shutting the windows of heaven for more than three years; then,
bowed on Carmel, controlling the forces of nature simply by the power of prayer,
and bringing down the rain that saved a nation from destruction. Read the record
of David's experience, in his Psalms. Hearken to that voice of pleading which
comes down to us from the early ages, and observe the soul putting forth the
energy of faith successfully; "Make haste to help me: innumerable evils have
compassed me: be pleased, Lord! to deliver me; Be not silent to me, lest I
become like them that go down to the pit." Indeed, the Psalms very frequently
are a record of prayer for personal deliverance; almost uniformly ending with a
grateful record of the answer given to each petition. They are monuments of the
power of prayer. Nay, it is remarkable that there is scarcely one definite
prayer recorded, the answer to which is not equally registered. Esther, Daniel,
Gideon, Samuel, Nehemiah, Hezekiah, and many others, are described as having,
like Jacob, “power with God." This view of prayer was frequently presented by
our Saviour in His instructions. Notice these words in Luke 11:9, “Ask," "
seek," " knock," in their connection, and you see that they are climactic;
indicating increasing earnestness and importunity. The hour is late: the family
are in bed. The man does not rise for a simple request from his friend. He even
presents reasons against rising. But, at length, the Lord says, it is
"importunity" that makes him yield. The same object He had in view in the
parable of the widow; the judge yielded to nothing but her importunity: " He
spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray and not
faint." And what is it makes them tend to faint, but God's long delay, and that
resistance by which He tests their faith? Jacob was resisted. The woman of
Syrophenicia was resisted: the widow before the judge was resisted: the friend
was at first refused, and reasons were given for not granting his request. The
faithful student of Scripture cannot fail to mark that these are illustrations
of one kind or degree of prayer. The immediate measure introducing the Christian
dispensation was, by the Lord's direct orders, a protracted prayer-meeting.
Peter was released from prison by the prayers of the Church. James declared that
the prayer of faith should save the sick. These instances are sufficient to show
that the Scriptures reveal the power of prayer; declaring that man by believing
prayer has power over the weather, over the angels, over diseases, over God
Himself, within defined limits. But many refuse to believe this principle on
either of the two grounds, God's testimony or man's experience. They require
what is to them more authoritative and conclusive, a philosophical explanation
why and how God is moved by prayer. This, however, is to abandon the sphere of
faith and the supernatural. Semi-rationalists admit that prayer benefits the
suppliant directly, but its power over God they deny. Supposing themselves to be
believers, they have only the faith of science; not that of either ordinary life
or religion. They adopt the false principle in this matter, of believing only
what they can explain; which should make them atheists, for they do not know how
or why God exists. We may perplex our minds with a host of objections and
difficulties about an unoriginated, infinite life and personality; still, faith
believes there is such a life and personality. Pure rationalism must be
atheistic. He that waits to pray until he can discover reasons and explanations
full and satisfactory why and how man has power with his Creator will probably
never exercise that power. He that counts for nothing the teachings, testimony,
and promises of God's word cannot pray in faith or “in the Holy Ghost." (Jude
1:20) This is a vital point in the Christian religion. If the strong men of
prayer, like Moses, Elijah, David, Daniel, and Paul, especially if the woman of
Syrophenicia, had withheld their belief in the efficacy of prayer until they had
made a logical argument proving it, we should never have had the history of
their glorious achievements. The roll of honor, in the eleventh chapter of
Hebrews, had never been written, if the illustrious men it commends had been
rationalists. If any one insists that God is unchangeable in such a sense that
our suffering and supplication do not affect both His sensibilities and His
will, we refer them to the earthly life of Him who, as Son of man, took our
places and undertook our cause. There they may discover in His redemptive work
the most conclusive and most impressive exhibition of importunity and its power
with God, the most complete overthrowing of the objections to importunate
prayer. Two branches of it had "power with God" even more than with men, the
Atonement and Prayer. Why could not God forgive us, as a kind Father, without
the intervention of the humiliating incarnation of His Son; the life of the “Man
of sorrows; " the scenes of the garden, and the hill of Golgotha? Proud Reason,
take off thy shoes here, for the ground is holy. The sacrifice of Jesus is the
indispensable medium of our salvation. Why did the Father exact it? Whether we
can answer it or not, the fact remains, "He spared not His Son," even for His "
crying." Then turn to His praying. He surely found it necessary to be
importunate. Sweating as it were great drops of blood, thrice He fell upon His
face, crying for release from the cup of anguish. “He offered up prayer and
supplication with strong crying and tears." “And, being in an agony, He prayed
more earnestly. ' Why may not the same necessity be laid on them who are made
one with Him, called to bear His cross, and drink His cup, and follow Him,
"filling up what is behind of the sufferings of Christ"? Why may not there be in
the Divine nature a demand for more than mere desire on the part of him who
would secure the exercise of Divine mercy toward sinners? No one can
intelligently affirm that there is not. Brethren, believe the word of God when
it declares, "Ask, and ye shall receive." If you can discover why you shall
receive, it is very well. But do not wait for that. “Believe; for all things are
possible to him that believeth." Guard against that spirit which saturates the
very atmosphere of this metropolis, the spirit that demands stronger reasons for
believing any proposition than that it is founded upon the testimony of the
Bible. The moment you yield to it, you have crossed over the line that separates
the kingdom of Christ from the world. Take your position either as an
unbeliever, and say, “I believe only what I can prove; ' or as a believer, and
say, “I believe the words of Christ as recorded in the Scriptures." If any one
affirms that prayer, and especially importunate prayer, is dictating to God,
tell him it is no more so than planting grain; for He has ordained both to be
the immediate means of securing certain desired results. If any one asks you
whether any person can obtain any thing he wants by praying for it, reply to
him, that this is not implied in the Scriptural view of prayer, or any
Scriptural promise. There are limitations and conditions and relations of
prevailing prayer which guard it against such an absurdity. If any one inquires
how we can reconcile the promises of answer to the prayer of faith, with the
fact that the children of believing parents have died in impenitence, we
certainly have a right to reply, You do not know that those parents ever prayed
according to God's requirements. “But," it may then be replied, "this makes it
always uncertain to any person, because he is not sure he has complied with all
the conditions of the promises." To this we answer, The case is exactly parallel
with that of salvation itself. To low degrees of faith, uncertainty of the
result is always attached. Faith, in its higher exercise, alone can bring
certainty. Others have asked, if the warnings against using “vain repetitions' 1
do not meet this case. By no means. Vain repetitions are words used as charms,
of which so many specimens may be found in the various superstitions of the
world. Others find a difficulty in this passage, “Your heavenly Father knoweth
of what things ye have need before ye ask." "Why, then, pray and importune?”
they say. Our first reply is, that whether we can answer this inquiry or not, we
can safely affirm, that it was not designed to discourage, but to encourage
prayer. Our second reply is, in the language of another, “Superstition places
the reason of the hearing of prayer not in the grace of God, but in its own
godless work. Unbelief deduces the uselessness of prayer from the omniscience of
God, in Whom it does not itself believe. Faith rests its poor prayer precisely
on this holy, gracious, Divine knowledge. Thus our Lord teaches us to pray in
faith because God knows, before the petition, what we need; and, consequently,
can Himself prompt the acceptable prayer, and fulfil it accordingly. These words
of the Saviour are to be taken as the reason which prevents the Christian from
praying after the heathen manner." (Olshausen in loc.) If God were not
acquainted with all our wants, He could not command our adoration or confidence.
What, then, are THE ELEMENTS OF PREVAILING PRAYER? 1. Faith. “He that cometh to
God must believe " two propositions: ".that God is, and that He is the Rewarder
of them who diligently seek Him." In other words, he must believe in the power
of prayer; that if he diligently and properly seeks of God a certain blessing,
he will get it, so far as that blessing lies within the scope of express
promise. Look at the Syrophenician woman's wonderful prayer: she definitely
expected to be answered. Nothing daunted or discouraged her, though her faith
was put to the severest tests. Yet this woman had nothing but the promise
furnished by the Saviour's character and disposition, for it was understood in
her day that His personal mission was to the Jews alone. We have what she knew
nothing of, the name of Christ as our plea. We know that 'He has removed every
barrier from our way to the mercyseat. And we know that the promises of God to
us are all "in Him, yea and amen," promises covering every point of human
necessity. Some of these are unconditional and general. We say “unconditional,"
and yet not one of them will be fulfilled but in answer to prayer, not even that
which declares that Christ will subdue the world to Himself. There are other
promises directly and wholly conditioned on prayer. When, therefore, we have
prayed for the objects they contain, we must expect them. Some are limited by
other conditions. Expectation of their fulfilment, in cases where such
conditions are not complied with, is not faith, but presumption; like the
expectations of those who look for heaven without meeting the requirements of
the Gospel. Then again, we must not fix a time or a mode of answering a prayer
where God has not; but “hope against hope," and place promises against
providences. But God is honored by a faith that expects His actions ultimately,
whatever He may be doing at present, to be as good and gracious as His word, and
a fulfilment of them; a faith which believes He is able, willing, and desirous
to do all He has promised to do. 2. Intense desire is an element of the higher
grade of prayer. This the Saviour indicated when He remarked concerning demons,
that His disciples had not faith to exorcise them, "this kind goeth not out but
by fasting and prayer." Ordinary desire is here not sufficiently strong.
Ordinary prayer is here unavailing. That woman of Canaan had probably endured a
long trial with her daughter. Night and day, the child's agony had racked her
spirit. And now she comes to pour out the grief of months, perhaps of years, in
one gushing prayer. And she could afford to spend that precious moment on
nothing else, "Lord, my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil." Some good
men have been averse to the representation of prayer as an expression of intense
desire, even to agony. But they surely have overlooked the history of Jacob, of
Hannah, of Mordecai, of Hezekiah, of Paul, nay, of the Lord Himself, who offered
up prayer “with strong crying and tears." Do these brethren deny that we are
permitted in this very matter to “fill up what is behind of the sufferings of
Christ"? If He is not our pattern in praying, in what respects are we to imitate
Him? And, if we come down from this height, we shall find that, in every
subsequent age, the most eminent of His servants have been distinguished for
intense desires for His glory, and for their own spiritual good, and the
salvation of others. This importunate prayer makes the crisis in the history of
almost every converted soul. To cite thousands of instances would be easy.
Augustine, Brainerd, Whitfield, came into the kingdom of God in the agony of
prayer. Then, every great revival of religion that has blessed our world, every
great stage in the advance of the kingdom of Christ, has been preceded, not by
gentle requests merely, but by what has properly been called the agony of
prayer. Such was the case when the captive Church was released and returned to
Palestine, in answer to the prayer of Daniel and Nehemiah. It was so in the
Reformation that blessed our world in the sixteenth century. Of the many modern
specimens of the power of prayer, I present one instance in which the challenge
was made by scepticism to faith. The Rev. A. B. Earle was preaching in Oneonta,
N. Y., about the year 1850. He had insisted strongly in his discourse, one day,
on the efficacy of earnest, determined, persevering prayer in securing the
conversion of men. At the close of the sermon, Mr. Otis a lawyer, a notorious
sceptic, who had confirmed many in his own views arose, and addressed the
preacher with this remark, "Mr. Earle, I do not believe a word of the doctrine
you have been asserting. Now, if you wish to try it on a hard case, try it on
me." The preacher replied, “Mr. Otis, come forward here, and present yourself as
asking the prayers of God's people." He refused to come. The preacher then
requested all the Church to retire to their closets at a specified hour, and
begged him to remember the hour, in which they should pray specially for his
conversion. In the course of the third day from that, he arose in the midst of
the congregation, and said, " I may as well break the ice now as at any time; I
wish somebody to pray for me." Mr. Earle then said, “Will you come to this front
seat that we may pray for you?” He replied, “Any where, if some one will pray
for me." He came forward: and, kneeling, he filled the house with his sobs.
To-day he is preaching, in the ranks of the Methodist ministry, that Gospel he
once despised. If the full history of the recent Rebellion could be written, we
cannot entertain a doubt, that the world would see that, even more gloriously
than the patriotism and skill and material resources of the government and
people, the power of prayer is set forth by it. If ever a President was
remembered in prayer, Mr. Lincoln was. If ever earnest, intense prayer ascended
to heaven, it was from April 1861, to April 1865, for the life of this nation.
3. Patient importunity is another characteristic of powerful or prevailing
prayer. It is remarkable that a man of such gigantic intellect as Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, misled by the speculations of German philosophers, should yet have
had such views of the grandeur, solemnity, "and power of earnest prayer as at
once bringing the greatest blessings to the earth, and most profoundly taxing
the sensibilities of the heart. He once made this remark to De Quincey: “Prayer
with the whole soul is the highest energy of which the human heart is capable;
and therefore the great mass of worldly men are absolutely incapable of prayer."
Long afterward he said to his nephew: " I have no difficulty in [believing in]
forgiveness. Neither do I find or reckon most solemn faith in God, as a real
object, the most arduous act of reason and will. Oh no! it is to pray, to pray
as God would have us: this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul.
Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the
will; to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and
verily do the thing He pleaseth thereupon, this is the last, the greatest
achievement of a Christian's warfare on earth." And then, bursting into tears,
he begged his nephew to pray for him. Yes, brethren, this is the great truth the
Church needs now to comprehend to achieve her final victory. “This kind goeth
not out but by fasting and prayer;" there are demons commanding the strongholds
of the world that can be cast out only by the highest kind of prayer. We have
not outlived the Old Testament. There we have, among others, this striking
exhibition of the power of importunate prayer. There we see that God sometimes
offers resistance to the suppliant, and yet yields to importunity, as in the
case of Abraham's grandson whose birth-name was Jacob, afterward changed to
Israel. There certainly has been too little made of his remarkable experience,
and of that name by which he was finally known, by which the ancient people of
God were known, and which has been transferred to the Church of the new
dispensation. Let us recall the meaning of that new title; and the circumstances
in view of which it was conferred. Israel is a Heaven-chosen, Heaven imparted
name. The man who bore it was at his birth called Jacob, from the prophetic
action he then performed of seizing his twin-brother by the heel; and the name
in the Hebrew tongue is equivalent to Supplanter. Out of his basely supplanting
Esau came the miseries of his youth and early manhood. But out of the wonderful
faith he manifested when those miseries were culminating at the ford Jabbok,
came the new name Israel. Returning from the north with his large family, his
flocks and herds, he was informed, as he approached the Jordan, that the
outraged Esau was coming to meet him. Weak, from the sense of his own unfairness
toward his brother, aware of his inability to make a military defence, he
adopted the only two measures left to him: a judicious attempt to appease his
brother, and an appeal to the God of Abraham. Of the first we need not now
speak, as our attention is here turned to the most mysterious feature of prayer;
that is, its power as exhibited in this man. And we must first be assured that
this mysterious wrestling with the angel was prayer; of which we are made sure
by several statements in the Scriptures. The first is, that Jacob was seeking a
blessing. His language, “Deliver me, I pray Thee, from my brother," "I will not
let Thee go, except Thou bless me," expresses his object in struggling. And
again, “The angel," it is said, " blessed him there." And then again, the
prophet Hosea (Hosea 12:3-4) distinctly states that " he made supplication unto
" God. The question then arises, Was the angel the Son of God, the Jehovah of
the Old Testament? This is equally determined by the Word of God. Jacob would
not have asked a mere angel to change Esau's- vengeful heart; for that was
manifestly the blessing he sought and obtained. Again, he is said to have had "
power with God' in this contest. And he declares he had seen God face to face in
it. Then Hosea makes the angel and God identical: “He had power with God; yea,
he had power over the angel, and prevailed." The next point of interest in this
wonderful story is, that God resisted Jacob. That was the intention of His
assuming the attitude of a wrestler, holding Jacob all night in the contest,
laming his thigh, and at length asking to be released from his grasp. On this
point we must dwell a moment, for the sake of those who are averse to this view
of prayer. Their reasoning, like much other, contradicts the Scriptures, and the
experience of the most eminent children of God. It contradicts the word of God.
Jacob did not get the blessing for simply asking: he wrestled all night. And
God, so far from censuring him for it, gave him the blessing because of his
importunity; He removed the old name " Supplanter," and gave him a new name,
Prince of God. And that name Israel has now become the permanent title of the
Church of God. We are not Jacobites, but Israelites; not supplanters, but a race
having “power with God and men ' by the importunity of believing prayer. The
prayer of Hannah was a long-continued, weeping prayer. The prayer of the prophet
Jonah was a prayer of anguish uttered, as he expressed it, out of " the belly of
hell:” "I cried by reason of my affliction unto the Lord, and He heard me." 4.
Humility. As we see it illustrated in the woman of Syrophenicia. At first the
Lord appeared to neglect her. Then He reasoned with the disciples against her
petitions. Then He reasoned more directly to her against it, and added to this a
wound through her national feelings. But all the time her soul was poised and
collected in the strength of meekness. She manifested none of the impatience,
the sensitiveness, or the exacting spirit, of pride. She recognized herself to
be purely a suppliant, and the Saviour to be the Master of His own power and
possessions. He might choose His own time and way of bestowing His gifts. This
agrees with intense earnestness, and is indispensable to prevailing with God. 5.
Obedience. The spirit of entire submission to God's will; the determination to
do whatever He makes it manifest He would have us do. If we ask for a revival of
religion, and have not given up our choice and determination of the way in which
it shall come, and the kind and amount of labor we are to perform, we cannot
reasonably expect to prevail with God. “Obedience is better than sacrifice “in
His sight. We may omit the words in importunate prayer, but we must never omit
the sentiment and purpose they express: “Thy will be done." If you are seeking
the conversion of your children, you must give up your will about their worldly
interests, and the way in which God shall convert them, saying, “Not my will,
but Thine be done." Brethren, our work is before us; the most important portion
of which is prayer. If we want power with God like Jacob, we must pray like him.
If we want spiritual power with men, we must pray like him. The language of our
hearts must be, “I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me." There are tithes
of importunate prayer yet to be brought into the Lord's storehouse, before He
will “open the windows of heaven, and pour out a blessing that there shall not
be room enough to receive it." Who are Israel's descendants? They are the
Princes of God, who have " power with God and with man," and have " prevailed '
in prayer. As such they will be known in heaven. And for what have we come to
such a time as this, if not to call forth that mightiest of human agencies, to
exert the power of prayer to its utmost extent? Our city calls for it. Our
country calls for it. Prayer can reconstruct this country; not without
statesmanship, but by making it wise and efficient, by subduing passion and
prejudice, and attaching the hearts of the entire people to the government, and
to one another. The Church demands it: perishing souls demand it. Let us pray
“the prayer of faith," “the fervent, effectual prayer of a righteous man, that
availeth much," that has power with God and with men. For our own sakes let us
covet the blessedness of partaking with our blessed Lord, in so far as it be
assigned to us, of those sufferings " which are behind." Surely they must live
the nearest to Him who most fully share the sympathy that brought Him to this
earth, and the burden-bearing that culminated on the cross. Let us pray the
prayer of faith for the immediate coming of the Lord, not in His body, but by
His Holy Spirit, to raise the human race to a higher level, and to bring to pass
the saying that is written: “Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He
will dwell with them."


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  CHAPTER 52: - ADAMS, NEHEMIAH - LIBRARY
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Adams, Nehemiah - Library

Adams, Nehemiah - Bertha and Her Baptism Adams, Nehemiah - Catherine (Death)
Adams, Nehemiah - Endless Punishment Scriptural Argument Adams, Nehemiah - The
Sable Cloud Adams, Nehemiah - Various Treatises S. Power and Office of the Holy
Spirit


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  CHAPTER 53: S.   THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
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THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. BY REV. N. ADAMS, D.D. BOSTON: NICHOLS
AND NOYES. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
NICHOLS AND NOTES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District
of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SONS.
THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. DURING those tender and endearing
moments when the Saviour was preparing the disciples for his own departure, He
promised them "another Comforter," who should abide with them for ever. This
implies that He himself had been a Comforter. And what a Comforter Jesus is, let
the experience of the eleven disciples, and the sorrowing hearts of eighteen
centuries, testify. No one epithet can express the fulness of Christ or of the
Holy Spirit; yet, of all the words in our tongue proposed as the rendering of
this designation of the Holy Spirit by the Saviour, none is more beautiful, more
comprehensive, and, on the whole, more just to the original, than the word "
Comforter." "Another Comforter." Progress is the law in the works of God.
Another Comforter, therefore, we may be sure would cause the disciples no
painful perception of inferiority, or sense of loss. Not many days after, they
found themselves, unlearned and ignorant men, addressing people in strange
languages. Words spoken by them made converts by thousands, in one day, to the
crucified One. Yet this by no means constituted their chief joy. That which
happens to one's own soul has an interest for him beyond all outward phenomena.
The Great Teacher seems to imply this when He says, " Notwithstanding, in this
rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because
your names are written in heaven." These disciples came, in one hour, to a
consciousness of wonderful enlargement in their spiritual perceptions. The whole
life of Jesus, especially words and actions of his till then comparatively
obscure, were as when the flames of many gas-burners are raised at once by a
single motion. Suddenly these men were in a new spiritual world; and the light
of it was He of whom, in relation to heaven, it is said, “the Lamb is the light
thereof." Happy, happy men! conscious of a new spiritual state surpassing in
value the mere gift of tongues and influence over a multitude! “They were all
filled with the Holy Ghost." Had the gift of tongues been the chief part of the
Holy Spirit's work in the apostles, there would be ground for the apprehension
that the excellent greatness in this gift of another Comforter was confined to
the early Church. But no; miracles were the least part of His intention, a mere
alphabet in his communications to the objects of his grace. Not to the first
disciples alone, therefore, did the gift of the Comforter appertain. For said
Jesus, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on
me through their word." You, dear Christian friend, are in all respects as truly
included in the gift of the Comforter as were the eleven disciples. These pages
are designed to assist you in your conceptions of Him. May He guide us into all
truth! WHO is IT, who must He be, that is capable of taking up the work of the
GOD-MAN and carrying it on to perfection? To make atonement for sin, chief as it
is among the works of God, does not bring into view the same executive
attributes which are employed in dealing with human minds, one by one; in
adapting the method of recovery to the peculiarities of each; and in carrying on
the work of grace through the vicissitudes of personal history. Who must He be
that creates successive dispensations of thought among men; controls the
wonderful tides of religious feeling; brings on those seasons of wide-spread,
irresistible impression concerning things spiritual and eternal; and, at the
same time, is conversant with every mood of private thought and feeling in every
awakening sinner and in every saint? It is He, it can only be He of whom it is
said, “For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God."
PERSONALITY AND DEITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. All the attributes of personality are
manifest in Him. He is a Divine Person. We are baptized in His name; in his name
we are blessed, as in the name of the Father and of the Son. The only sin which
is unpardonable is committed against Him. He is not therefore “Divine
influence." Christ would not need to go away that "Divine influence" might come.
It is noticeable that the Bible never speaks as we do of “the influences of the
Holy Spirit," but always refers to Him as a Person. “I will send Him unto you."
HIS POWER ILLUSTRATED. One illustration of the power with which the Holy Spirit
works in human hearts, is seen in the rapid advancement of the first converts to
Christianity. It is wonderful that the Epistles of the New Testament, which were
to be the sufficient source of instruction for the Church of God in all times,
should have been addressed to people so newly lifted out of heathenism. No such
progress is made under the influence of letters as these converts from idolatrv
must have it made, who were competent so soon to understand, for example, the
Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians. Such is the scale on which the Holy
Spirit sets forward the human mind and heart. Creation only affords a parallel:
"God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath sinned in our
hearts." We have all been struck with the sudden improvement in the minds, as
well as characters, of people newly converted, their good sense, their just
perceptions. “The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding
unto the simple." The infinite ease of the Holy Spirit's operation is full of
encouragement. He does with one gentle thought, one secret, silent impression,
that which reasoning and persuasion had utterly failed to accomplish. Often we
expect a difficult work with a stubborn soul, but find it done. Laboring with
great pains for a revival of religion in a Church and congregation, and meeting
seemingly insuperable obstacles in the characters and conduct of many, all at
once you find your utmost hopes surpassed, and praise breaks forth " unto Him
that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,
according to the power that worketh in us." We should begin every effort for the
spiritual good of others with a calm sense of entire dependence upon the Holy
Spirit, and of his almighty power, and saying, " So then neither is he that
planteth, any thing, neither he that watereth." Thus we should pray and labor.
Then we can continue; our efforts will be healthful; the excitement ministered
by success will be the excitement of bracing air; and the joy of the Lord will
be our strength. To the Holy Spirit belong all the appliances to be used in the
conversion of the world. The Holy Spirit is appointed to be the author of our
whole spiritual experience. It is the Holy Spirit who makes the Saviour all that
He is to us. What did we know of Christ till the Holy Spirit fulfilled that
promise, "He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you"? Repentance and
faith, with all the exercises of our renewed nature, are, from first to last,
the work of the Holy Spirit. No more directly dependent are we on Christ for
atoning blood than upon the Spirit for religious experience. Sanctification is
from Him as peculiarly as justification is by Christ. And as " the Father
judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son," so the Father and
the Son have committed the entire work of " communion ' to the Holy Spirit, this
" communion?: including even our fellowship with the Father and the Son; for as
" no man knoweth who the Father is but the Son and he to whom the Son will
reveal Him," so every act of love on our part toward God and Christ is by the
Holy Spirit. Blessed Spirit! how little do we thank and love Thee! Beautiful,
yea, how touching, is thy humility, so willing to be subordinate, so little
recognized by many of thine own! Like the parables, thy comparatively hidden
nature may be intended to excite our faith, and draw us on to further knowledge.
It is with Thee as it was with Him preceding Thee, who "came unto his own and
his own received Him not." Thou " seven Spirits which are before his throne! '
Thou multiplicity, variety, and infinitude of spiritual powers and offices! it
is only when we are spiritually-minded that we appreciate Thee! Silent, unseen,
thy subordination also prevents us in a measure from thinking of Thee as we do
of the Father and of the Son; and yet are we not baptized in thy name also? and
in thy name we are blessed! Nothing hinders us from believing that it was the
third Person in the Godhead who is spoken of in Genesis 1:2 : “And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters." Incubating upon chaos, if then and there
He deposited the seeds of things in the new elements, and created the original
models of all forms in nature, organizing life in its endless manifestations, it
was in beautiful correspondence with his work, which is still greater, in the
moral creation, is the author of regeneration, and of every thing which
accompanies and flows from it. We see his work in the religious emotions
experienced by the people of God, from the patriarch to the lisping child, from
the first pang in conviction of sin, through the day-break of the new-born soul
with its penitence, faith, and hope, its conflicts, its victories, its
discoveries, its spirit of adoption, its growing likeness to Christ. All this is
his immediate work. Creator Spirit! to be a born of" Thee, to be "led by " Thee,
to be "sanctified by”: Thee, to have intercession made in us by Thee, and to be
"sealed” by Thee to the day of redemption, is worthy to be, as it is, the
purchase and the gift even of the incarnation and the cross! HE MADE THE BIBLE.
The Bible is the work of the Holy Spirit as distinctively as the cross pertains
to Christ. It was proposed to make a book for the human race. Was there ever a
more difficult undertaking? It is finished. Its plan, its details, none but
infinite wisdom could arrange. Who should write it; what its contents should be;
how much of history, and what histories; how much of legislation, of biography,
prophecy, maxim, song; and in what ages, what countries, amid what manners and
customs it should be composed; what length of time it should cover; and, no less
difficult than all, what should be left out of it; in a word, how it should be,
on the whole, best adapted to the use of all peoples and languages in every
condition and stage of life, all this was solved by Him to whom we owe the
Bible. He devised the narrative of Joseph. He prepared the books of Esther and
Ruth. He indited the Apocalypse. He taught Moses, inspired Daniel, inflamed
Isaiah, breathed upon John. Sometimes we see a man doing a difficult work with
an ingenious instrument devised and shaped by himself. The Holy Spirit made the
Bible as the great instrument in his work. He made it for you, foreseeing your
necessities; He helps you in reading it. Descending from the contemplation of it
as a masterpiece of infinite wisdom, select one of its writers, and think what
the communion of the Holy Ghost must have been with him, for example, David. "
Now these be the last words of David. David, the son of Jesse, said, and the man
that was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet
psalmist of Israel, said, ' The Spirit of God spake by me and his word was in my
tongue.' This was his most grateful recollection when reviewing life. In the
progress of divine tuition, shall we not each of us, fellow-heirs of life! have
received from the same Holy Spirit, who "dwelleth with " us " and shall be in "
us, as much of communion, and as many great, ennobling, rapturous, and
peace-inspiring thoughts as fell to the lot of David? One purpose of God in
raising him up and endowing him, seems to have been to show us what He will
hereafter do in spiritual things to all who love Him. “I will give you," says
He, " the sure mercies of David." THE INTERCESSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. His
connection with our private, spiritual life is brought to view when it is said,
" Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we
should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us
with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the heart knoweth
what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession in the saints
according to the will of God." The meaning of this passage is not that the Holy
Spirit intercedes in heaven for us. “For there is one God, and one mediator
between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus." The Holy Spirit makes intercession
“for us," by filling us with spiritual emotions so deep and strong that we
cannot utter them except in "groanings." They are not unintelligible to God. He
discerns their meaning more clearly than the laboring soul itself can either
express or comprehend the object of the Holy Spirit when filling us with these
earnest desires; and God regards these desires, because the Holy Spirit excites
them. It seems, indeed, a singular way of helping our infirmities, to make us
feel them all the more, and until we groan; yet this is the divine method, for,
“when I am weak, then am I strong. " When our Christian feelings are such that
words seem weak, the Holy Spirit is making intercession for us, by working in
us. What encouragement there is in having the apostle Paul say, " We know not
what we should pray for as we ought! ' and in perceiving that lie had the same
spiritual " infirmities," and the same need of the Comforter, as we. His
PRESENCE WITH A CHURCH. The chief desire and effort of every Christian Church
should be to secure his constant presence. Every thing which tends to disturb
harmony, and to make alienation and contention, is quenched by his indwelling in
the hearts of Christians. Long-standing griefs and seemingly insuperable
difficulties melt away at his coming. In honor "preferring one another," and
bearing one another's burdens, there are no jealousies and envyings; mutual love
prevails over every tendency to alienation. Weaknesses and faults in others
cultivate the Christian graces of each. There is nothing, perhaps, in effect, so
much like heaven as this. Our Congregational Church-organization offers peculiar
opportunities for such experience; for the government not being vested in one
man, or in a select body, the whole brotherhood have opportunities in their
frequent intercourse to manifest those graces of the Spirit which Christian
communion is fitted to develop. On the other hand, the liberty and equality
conferred on all expose us to peculiar temptations; and, unless the Holy Spirit
rules in our hearts, scenes may be enacted which will remind you that “there was
war in heaven." But praying and laboring with one heart and one mind for the
constant presence of the Holy Spirit, and being -led by Him, the members of a
Church become "a holy temple in the Lord;” to which others are brought, and are
"builded together” with them "for an habitation of God through the Spirit." THE
MINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT REACHES THROUGH TIME. The work of redemption is to be
finished by the Holy Spirit. Some ascribe the termination of efforts for the
world's conversion to the interposition of Christ in person. We cannot properly
enter here upon the consideration of this subject, but we may be sure that the
third Person in the Godhead will not fail of his worthy share in the plan of
salvation. The ministration of the Spirit is spoken of (2 Corinthians 3:18), in
antithesis to the old dispensation, as though it would be the complement of the
great redemptive work. Compared with the former dispensation it is to be “the
rather glorious." The conception is sublime of this unseen Spirit carrying on,
by his mysterious agency, and in perfect consistency with the free agency of
men, good and bad, the stupendous work of subduing the world to Christ. So He
fulfils the Saviour's comparison of Him to the wind, which breathes on the
softly-bending corn, or stirs the differing murmurs in the leaves of different
trees, or comes as the tradewind of commerce, or moves, at one and the same
moment, all ships on every sea and ocean, from whatever quarter, and to whatever
point they sail. Surely his name, also, shall be called “Wonderful." The very
close of the Bible and of prophecy echoes his voice: “And the Spirit and the
bride say, Come; ' for the honor due to his name requires that his work in
redemption continue to the end, and be commensurate with that of the Father and
the Son. HE IS "THE ETERNAL SPIRIT." The future relation of the Holy Spirit to
the redeemed in heaven is a pleasing subject of contemplation. Never can your
love to your Redeemer fail of vast accessions through the ages of your heavenly
experience; it cannot be supplanted; on the contrary, the love which the Holy
Spirit will receive from you will spring from sources which must enhance the
love which you will feel toward the Father and the Son. But when we come to
know, in full, the personal connection which the Holy Spirit had with us, then
Bethlehem, Gethsemane and Calvary will, perhaps, have their counterparts in
places, seasons, and events of spiritual history, identified with the work of
the Holy Spirit. “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake
and for the love of the Spirit," says Paul. Indeed, He must be a loving Spirit
who does such acts of loving-kindness, so patiently, so gently, so tenderly,
that the affection excited by our misdeeds and perverseness is not wrath but
grief, because it is said, “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye
are sealed unto the day of redemption." Of course, the third Person in the
Godhead does not merely accomplish an earthly mission for our souls; He will
have a relation, no doubt, to our whole spiritual existence for ever. If
conversion, if repentance, and faith, and the fruits of the Spirit, in our
imperfect state be so wonderful, viewed as mental experiences, what must our
experiences in heaven be, with the author of these present experiences still in
some specific relation to us corresponding to his work, here as Comforter! There
we shall begin aright; all our mistakes and follies, prejudices and antipathies,
will be removed; we shall have no bias to evil, no law in our members warring
against the law of our mind. It will be the Holy Spirit Who will have set us
right. Personal indebtedness to those who taught us useful knowledge here, who
formed our opinions, led us into the path of discovery, and stimulated our
powers, is a faint representation of our love and gratitude to Him who, we shall
then see, was, in all the history of our minds and hearts, and in every sense of
the word, our "Comforter." Every Christian has implanted in him now the germ of
each perfection which he will have in heaven. Hence the Holy Spirit is said to
be " the earnest of our inheritance, the pledge of the purchased possession; '
and, when we believed, we are said to have been " sealed with that Holy Spirit
of promise," like the wine which receives the vintner's seal and is left to
develop itself, only that there is in the soul a constant presence and agency of
the Comforter. Regenerated persons, therefore, are “a chosen generation, a royal
priesthood, a peculiar people." Poor, ignorant, lowly, though some of them may
be, they are higher than the kings of the earth who are yet in their sins.
Leading others to be of this "chosen generation“ is the work in which we aid
when we bring a soul to God. " For we are laborers together with God." Of such
and of their labors, the Saviour said, "And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and
gathereth fruit unto life eternal." THE WORLD DOES NOT KNOW HIM. "Whom the world
cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him." Infinite loss,
never to know Him! “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, for they are
spiritually discerned." Such were we. None can express or estimate the
difference made in us by regeneration. This work of the Holy Spirit in us is
likened to the creation of light; more than once it is ascribed to the same
power which raised up Jesus from the dead. Have you had this new birth? Then God
has done the greatest work in you which He ever accomplishes in the soul of man.
What if God should visibly make an angel of some one whom we know and love! Let
Him regenerate your soul, and hereafter you will have no occasion to covet an
angel's nature, or his bliss. But in further contrast to the world's ignorance,
the Holy Spirit imparts to ministers and Christians that indescribable gift
called “unction." In preaching, in praying, in conversation, in spirit, in
manner, in one's whole influence upon others, this indefinable gift does more
than genius, or talent, or learning, or zeal. It cannot be affected; the
possessor is unconscious of it; the observer cannot tell what it is; but the
Holy Spirit bestows it upon all in whom He specially loves to dwell. But the
soul which never receives the Holy Ghost, will be in endless chaos. Disorder and
darkness will possess it. For if we are born but once, we shall die twice; and
if we are born twice, we shall die but once. " On such the second death hath no
power." SUBORDINATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. To the regenerate it may be useful to
say, that subordination on the part of the Holy Spirit, so plainly declared, is
a beautiful and powerful example of the same thing among Christians.
Subordination in Christ is used by the apostle for the same purpose. “Let the
same mind be in you which Was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God
thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation,
and took upon Him the form of a servant." This was suggested by the exhortation,
“Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of
others." With our Redeemer making himself of no reputation, but humbling
himself; with our Sanctifier subordinating himself, surely we should ever be
gentle and kind, seeking not our own, " but every man another's wealth."
UNCONDITIONAL PROMISE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. The Holy Spirit is the only gift which
is unconditionally promised. We may pray for life or health or any other
blessing, and it may not be consistent for God to grant our prayer. But such are
the arrangements of Divine providence and grace, that sincere desires for the
Holy Spirit can no more be disregarded than the desire of a child for food. To
disregard our desires for the Holy Spirit is compared by Christ to the act of
putting a stone into the hand of a child beseeching for bread; or imposing upon
his ignorance by giving him, instead of a fish, a scorpion, which he would not
know enough to distinguish from a fish. Such is the blessed Redeemer's assurance
to every soul who reads these lines, that a true desire for the greatest and
best gift which God can impart can never be preferred in vain. Those words of
Christ, "The wind bloweth where it listeth; so is every one that is born of the
Spirit," are not limited to conversion. Every one that is born of the Spirit
will enjoy through life this mysterious agency of the Spirit. This should
comfort and encourage those who are afraid, that, if they become Christians,
they shall not persevere. Is not the atonement for your sins a divine work, and
a full, complete provision for your justification? The Holy Spirit will complete
his work, as surely as Christ has completed his. Only do with regard to Him as
you have done in believing in Christ; that is, place your entire dependence, for
continuance and progress, upon the Holy Spirit; and you “shall never fall." God
will “go before thee, and be thy rearward." What a stupendous plan of redemption
this is, dear Christian friends, in which we believe! You are the subjects of
that plan. It is worthy to be considered that the mode of the divine existence
is disclosed to us only in connection with the development of redemption. The
revelation, that Christ " was in the beginning with God and was God," seems to
be made because a knowledge of the way of salvation rendered it necessary that
this should appear. We learn the deity of the Holy Spirit chiefly in connection
with his work in our souls. Let us consider what it is to be a member of the
race whose history thus brings to view the mystery of the Godhead; and what it
is to be one of that chosen number to whom alone this stupendous work is
applied. Consider, too, that such a scheme of salvation, in which the Godhead is
thus occupied, must have a counterpart of perdition corresponding to this
salvation. What exaggeration, what superfluity of effort, what unnecessary
endeavor, there would seem to be here, if all men can after all be saved by
discipline! To have been an object of this redemption, but to fail of being
redeemed, and for ever to be sinking as low as, by redemption, you would have
been exalted, will be intolerable, more so, even, than the experience of those
who fell from heaven and had no Redeemer. If you who read these lines are not a
partaker of the grace which the Holy Spirit imparts, you still may be. He has
not withdrawn from you, for a subject like this would not attract and hold your
attention, and awaken desire, were you given up to hardness of heart. Even you
can be born again. With infinite ease, the Comforter can make you a new
creature. Were there nothing supernatural in conversion, Christ would not have
thrown such a mystery about a religious change as He does in his comparison of
it to the wind. He calls it, also, being “born again." There is a divine,
supernatural element, in conversion^ and it is the best part of it. If God
creates you anew, that new creation is as indestructible as the soul itself. Let
me beg of you to pause just here, wherever you are, close your eyes, and address
a prayer to the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. It is He who will have put it into
your heart thus to pray; therefore, He is waiting to seal you to the day of
redemption. Your views and feelings, your temper, disposition, frames of mind,
tones of voice, in short, your whole consciousness, will be under his direction.
He is so essential, that Christ left the world in order that the Holy Spirit
might come. He has long striven with you, patiently, and with great forbearance.
If the only sin which is unpardonable is a sin against Him, all sins against
Him, it would seem, must have peculiar heinousness. For He is the ultimate
remedy; the cross itself is in vain without Him. Let Him prevail with you. He
will be to you all that Christ was to the disciples. He is " the earnest of
heaven in our hearts.' The Man Christ Jesus owed every thing to Him. So will
you, present grace, and, in its largest sense, " communion' here; and, " He will
show you things to come." COME, thou HOLY SPIRIT! come, And, from thine eternal
home, Shed the ray of light divine: Come, thou Father of the poor, Come, thou
Source of all our store, Come, within our bosoms shine. Thou, of comforters the
best; Thou, the soul's most welcome guest; Sweet refreshment here below! In our
labor, rest most sweet; Grateful shadow from the heat; Solace in the midst of
woe. O most blessed Light divine! Shine within these hearts of thine, And our
inmost being fill: If thou take thy grace away. Nothing pure in man will stay;
All our good is turned to ill. Heal our wounds, our strength renew, On our
dryness pour thy dew, Wash the stains of guilt away: Bend the stubborn heart and
will. Melt the frozen, warm the chill. Guide the steps that go astray. On the
faithful who adore And confess thee, evermore, In thy sevenfold gifts descend:
Give them virtue's sure reward; Give them thy salvation. LORD; Give them joys
that never end. HYMNS ANCIENT AND MODERN.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-nehemiah-adams/
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