THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

NO. XLI.

NEW SERIES-NO. XI.

NOVEMBER, 1830.

ART. I.-Christian Consolations. An Offering of Sympathy to Parents bereaved of their Children, and to others under Affliction; being a Collection from Manuscripts and Letters not before published; with an Appendix of Selections. Boston: S. Dickinson, 1830. 18mo. pp. 224.

We wish to give our passing commendation to this little volume, though our purpose in the following article is to add somet thoughts of our own to this Offering of Sympathy, rather than to draw extracts from the volume itself. The work is chiefly made up of contributions from several of our clergy, whose names will doubtless be sufficient to recommend it to general perusal. We acknowledge our obligations to the compiler, for having taken the trouble to gather from his brethren, this collection of wise and excellent thoughts, expressed in words which well deserve to be denominated words fitly spoken." We find in these compositions the calmness, tenderness and delicacy that belong preeminently to christian consolations.' There is none of that minute and circumstantial detail, that tearing open of the wounds of affliction, which can be exceeded, in impropriety and painfulness, only by that horror in private life, the horror of formal condolence. As to this latter method of offering consolation, indeed, we are tempted to say, in passing, that we know not why the experience of every deeply afflicted mind does not satisfy it, at once and forever, that all words but those of the most intimate friendship must be an

VOL. IX.-N. S. VOL. IV. NO. II.

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unwelcome intrusion into the sanctuary of private sorrow. The customs of society may, perhaps, have made these formal visits of condolence a requisite manifestation of sympathy; but if so, we cannot hesitate to say that the customs of society, in this respect, ought to be changed. As evidence of sympathy, in such circumstances, they cannot be needed; to question the existence of the feeling, is to distrust the attributes of common humanity.

Indeed, the impotence of all words to comfort the bereaved, the necessity, by them most deeply felt, of entering into solemn and still communion with their own hearts and with their God, may dispose them, for a time, to look coldly upon books of consolation. But when the first burst of grief is over,

are ended, 'the overflowing of the waters has passed by,' it will be grateful to most minds, to commune with the thoughts of the wise and pious; and for such a purpose we can heartily commend the volume before us, as containing much that is fitted to guide and sustain the troubled and sorrowful, expressed in the appropriate language of christian advice and consolation, and often with great beauty and pathos.

We shall now proceed to offer some reflections of our own, on the great subject to which it has principal reference-death. We have thought that there are many erroneous impressions prevailing, with regard to this solemn event; and it will be our principal business to examine them.

Christianity was designed to introduce into the world, new views and feelings concerning death. We seem to see its character and office typified in the visit of Jesus to the house of Mary and Martha, on occasion of the death of their brother. It was a house of affliction. Wailing and lamentation were heard in it, as they are, at one time or another, in all the dwellings of this world. But our blessed Saviour approached it in the calm consciousness that he was commissioned with a doctrine and clothed with a power that would triumph over death; that death, in fact, was not the end nor the interruption of existence; that death, indeed, was only death in appearance, while in reality the spirit's life is progressive, ever continued, immortal. What less do his words import, than the annunciation to the world of this new view of mortality? 'I am the

resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die '-shall die not, at all, forever! The apostles, in like manner, evidently considered themselves as commissioned to teach new views of death. They taught the christian converts to 6 sorrow not as others who had no hope.' They represented the coming of Christ as designed to 'deliver those, who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage.'

The severity of this bondage in the ancient world, is sufficiently apparent from its funereal customs, and the whole tenor of its writings, and from the very terms by which they represented death as the great calamity of human existence. That language which has conveyed to us the largest portion of ancient literature, contains more than thirty epithets, all indicative of the deepest dejection and dread, which were familiarly and constantly applied to this event. Death was denominated the terrible, the mournful, the inexorable, the insatiable. It was cold, cruel, bitter, merciless death. It was represented as deaf to the cries of mortals, unpitying to their miseries. It was the dire necessity, the dark day, the fatal calamity, the iron sleep, the eternal night. Imagination can scarcely conceive of anything more appalling than the scenes of lamentation to which this event gave rise among heathen nations; which came to be a matter of custom and form, indeed, but which could never have been a matter of custom and form, without having originated in the most horrible ideas of the reality. In the houses of the deceased, for days together, their relations set up the most dismal wailings and outcries of grief. They upbraided the very dead with ingratitude and cruelty for leaving them; so unreasonable and violent was their sorrow. Nor can we easily blame them, if we consider their actual and effective belief. Heaven was to them scarcely more than a dream of poetry. The future world was a world of shadows. In that dim and solemn land of vision, a train of unsubstantial phantoms passed before their eyes; but no living thought or feeling was there-the termination of life was the end of all reality. If it were so, indeed; if this conscious being were to cease at death; if every cherished thought and feeling, which we grasp with all the strength of our souls, were doomed to utter extinction; if the venerated and the loved were to be lost beyond recovery; if all this were true, human nature

could not refuse to its sad fate the tribute of inconsolable sorrow. If all this were true, we might justly say,-Speak not to us of consolation-there is no consolation; there is no support for such a lot; nothing but dulness can bear it; nothing but indifference can tolerate it, and nothing but idiocy, we were ready to say, could be indifferent to it.

But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory' over these awful and overwhelming anticipations. Christianity, we repeat, was designed to introduce into the world new views of death and futurity.

But in this, as in several other respects, we apprehend, that it has made as yet but a feeble impression upon the mass of those who have received it. We have not yet partaken of the cheerfulness, tranquillity, and triumph of him, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light in the gospel.' We have not so 'lived and believed' in Jesus, as triumphantly to feel that we shall never die!' There is more, we are tempted to say, of heathen despondency and dread among us, than of christian hope and trust.

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Indeed, the usual treatment of the subject of death, is one, as we apprehend, which is scarcely in accordance with the spirit of the christian religion. The place which the fear of death occupies in the religious emotions of multitudes, is one which Christianity by no means assigns to it. A consideration of this event, a dread of it, an activity awakened by this dread, a mournful countenance when it is mentioned, and tears shed at a funeral, with many, form too large a part of the whole sum and evidence of their piety. To think of death is too often considered as the very beginning of religion; to prepare for it, as the very business of religion, and to pass safely through that great ordeal, as the very end of it. Surely, the great object of our religion is not to make us ready for some temporary exigency, nor to meet one dreadful event or moment, but to prepare for the sublime happiness and glory of an immortal life. This glorious aim would justly inspire, cheer, and elevate the soul; but to fix its attention too much upon one point in time, however serious, interesting, and trying in our moral progress and account--thus to fix the attention upon one point of dreadful apprehension, must narrow, depress, and darken the whole noble work of religious endeavour, faith, and fidelity. What effect this tendency of religious sentiment has had, both upon the prevailing religion and irreligion of the times, is a very

serious and interesting inquiry, but one which we cannot now pursue much into detail, beyond the hints that will naturally arise in the prosecution of the subject. We will only observe for the present, that mistaken and exaggerated ideas of the evil of death, tend evidently to prevent the calm and settled expectation of dying, and rational and just views of the preparation for it. They are fitted to make the impression, that, to be prepared to die, we need some qualification analogous to so dreadful an event; that we need a state of mind altogether unusual, altogether beyond the simple tenor of a good life, altogether different from the calm and conscientious performance of our common duties. Thus, these ideas of death tend to resolve religion into a kind of unnatural excitement or overwhelming agitation. They also occasion the world infinite unhappiness; and, what is worse, an unhappiness closely associated with religion. That bondage through fear of death, from which Christianity was intended to relieve us, still lays its iron yoke upon the timid, the thoughtful, and the anxious; while to the careless multitude, who need to be impressed, an image is presented, which is, at once, the more terrific and the more useless, because they cannot discern the form thereof,' and can give it no steadfast attention.

We must also express our apprehension, that this subject has not always received a proper treatment from the pulpit. Death, it may be, has not been spoken of, in that calm and temperate, though solemn manner, that becomes the christian preacher. It may have been, sometimes, the argument of his impatience or his displeasure. It may have been made the occasion for eloquence or declamation, when it should have been of calm instruction or sober and wise admonition. He who regards death as the greatest of calamities, as the most terrible thing that can befall us, has not yet learned Christianity. Sin is worse; odious and besetting vice is worse; and, to a good man, there may be many things in life that are worse than death; especially inaction, unprofitableness, and to disgrace his sacred calling. He who is ever resorting to this subject as a last argument, and on all occasions presenting it to terrify men into their duty, is yet in the childhood of the christian life, if not among the weak and beggarly elements of a still earlier dispensation.

We must, also, venture to question much that often passes around the beds of the dying. The last scene should be as