FREE INQUIRY SHOULD PRODUCE CHARITY. JUNE 28. 187 Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right ?--Faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity. ABSOLUTE freedom of inquiry is the best way of investigating the sense of scripture, the most probable mean of producing uniformity of opinion, and of rendering the gospel dispensation as intelligible to us in the nineteenth century, as, we presume, it was to the christians in the first. The effect of established systems in obstructing truth, is to the last degree deplorable; every one sees it in other churches, but scarcely any one suspects it in his own. Calvin, I question not, thought it almost impossible that the scriptures could ever have been so far perverted as to afford the Romanists any handle for their doctrine of transubstantiation, or that the understanding of any human being could have been so far debased, or rather so utterly annihilated, as to believe it for a moment; yet this same Calvin followed St. Augustine in the doctrine of absolute personal reprobation and election, inculcating it as a fundamental article of faith, with nearly the same unchristian zeal which infatuated him, when he fastened Servetus to the stake.-A suspicion of fallibility would have been an useful principle to the professors of christianity in every age; it would have choaked the spirit of persecution in its birth, and have rendered not only the church of Rome, but every church in Christendom more shy of assuming to itself the proud title of orthodox, and of branding every other with the opprobrious one of heterodox, than any of them have hitherto been. Still, you will probably rejoin, there must be many truths in the christian religion, concerning which no one ought to hesitate, inasmuch as, without a belief in them, he cannot be reputed a christian.-Reputed! by whom? By Jehovah, his Maker? By Jesus Christ his Lord, or by you?-Rash expositors of points of doubtful disputation! intolerant fabricators of metaphysical creeds, and incongruous systems of theology! Do you undertake to measure the extent of any man's understanding except your own, to estimate the strength and origin of his habits of thinking; to appreciate his merit or demerit in the use of the talent which God has given him, so as unerringly to pronounce that the belief of this or that doctrine is necessary to his salvation? What shall the church of Christ never be freed from the narrow minded contentions of bigots; from the insults of men who know not what spirit they are of, when they would stint the Omnipotent in the exercise of his mercy, and bar the doors of heaven against every sect but their own?-We trust that God who alone knows what every man is capable of, will be merciful to him that is in errour. We trust he will pardon the Unitarian, if he be in an errour, because he has fallen into it, from the dread of being an idolater, of giving that glory to another which he conceives to be due to God alone. If the worshipper of Jesus Christ be in an errour, we trust God will pardon his mistake, because he has fallen into it from a dread of disobeying what he conceives to be revealed concerning the nature of the Son, or commanded concering the honour to be given him. Both are actuated by the same principleTHE FEAR OF GOD ;-and though that principle impels them into different roads, it is our hope and belief, if they add to their faith, charity, thev will meet in heaven. 188 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY ONE PROOF OF ITS TRUTH. JUNE 29. A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation; I, the Lord, will hasten it in His time.-This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations. THE reception which Christ and his followers, with their doctrines, have met with in all ages, is an argument for their divine authority. This evidence does, as it were, embrace all the others, and gives a particular force to them. For it will be a strong confirmation of all the evidences for the Jewish and christian religions, if we can show, that the persons to whom they have been offered, have been influenced by them as much as there was reason to expect, admitting them to be true; and far more than could be expected, on supposition that they were false. The most illustrious instance of this, is the victory which the christian miracles and doctrines, with the sufferings of our Saviour and his followers, gained over the whole powers, first, of the Jewish state, and then of the Roman empire, in the primitive times. For here all ranks and kinds of men, princes, priests, Jewish and heathen, philosophers, populace, with all their associated prejudices from custom and education, and all their corrupt passions and lusts, with all the external advantages of learning, power, riches, honour, and in short, with every thing but truth, endeavoured to suppress the progress that Christ's religion made every day in the world; but were unable to do it. Yet still the evidence was but of a limited nature; it required to be set forth, attested, and explained, by the preacher, and to be attended to, and reflected upon, with some degree of impartiality, by the hearer and therefore, though the progress of it was quick, and the effect general, yet they were not instantaneous and universal. However, it is very evident, that any fraud, or false pretence, must soon have yielded to so great an opposition so circumstanced. The efficacy which the christian doctrine then had in reforming the lives of many thousands, is here to be considered as a principal branch of this argument, it being evidently the most difficult of all things, to convert men from vicious habits to virtuous ones, as every one may judge from what he feels in himself, as well as from what he sees in others; and whatever does this, cannot, as it seems to me, but come from God. The false religions, and various corruptions of the true, which have from time to time appeared in the world, have been enabled to do this in the imperfect manner in which they have done it, merely, as it seems to me, from that mixture of important truths, and good motives, which they have borrowed from real revelations, patriarchal, judaical, and christian. In like manner as the propagation of christianity, upon its first appearance in the world, evinces its divine original, so does the progress it has since made, and the reception which it meets with at present, amongst the several ranks and orders of men. The detail of this would run out to a great length. It may, however, be of some use, just to observe, that notwithstanding the great prevalence of infidelity in past times, it is seldom found to consist with an accurate knowledge of ancient history, sacred and profane, and never with an exalted piety and devotion to God.--And it is an incontestible evidence for christianity, that it has been universally embraced by all eminently pious persons, to whom it has been made known in a proper manner. THE CLOSE OF THE MONTH. JUNE 30. Our days are swifter than a post. 189 ANOTHER month is about closing. It goes to be numbered with them beyond the flood. It has carried up its report to the judge of heaven, and has become part of an indelible record. There are few who seriously consider how rapidly our lives hasten away; and fewer still who practically feel, that our condition in an eternal state is to be regulated by the virtue we acquire here. Let us bring the fact directly before us, that our stay is short and our duty momentous. As time is a traveller that never stops, he is one that never returns. Nothing can arrest him, and nothing can recal him. Deaf to all the cries of repentance, he resolutely refuses to come back, when he is once gone by. The days, that have winged their flight, are fled for ever. As he who should stand upon the river's bank, and call upon the wave that has rolled by him to flow back again, would call in vain; equally unheard and unheeded were the voice, that should attempt to recal departed time. Unavailing were the voice of man-I speak with reverence-unavailing were the voice of God. Departed life, Omnipotence can call back; but departed time is out of the reach of his hand, out of hearing of the command, of heaven itself. Although, therefore, the Giver of our time may bestow upon the prodigal of it, after having thrown away a thousand years, a thousand more; yet, it is in the power of Almighty God himself to relieve the loser of any portion of his time from the reflection, that, during that space of his existence, he existed without answering the ends of his creation, only by depriving him of the memory of the period, which he has thus mispent. Not a moment can be brought back to him, who has sent it from him stained with his vice, to have that stain taken out. There it stands and will stand for ever; for ever adhering to the history of things. As we value the pleasures of memory, this thought should make us walk circumspectly. What we do, is fixed for ever in the page of truth. The recording angel puts down eternal lines. What we do, can never be undone. Years following years may remain for us to employ as we please, but the years we have mispent, we can never improve. The page we have blotted, we can never make fair. Time to come we may redeem from similar misimprovement; but the past that has been lost, no diligence can redeem. The writer may erase the lines that displease him, in the volume he prepares for the public eye; the painter may expunge from his picture what he has ill delineated, or coloured amiss; but the moral agent cannot blot from the book of his life one single passage he has put down there, however offensive to the eye of his remembrance it may be. Since time is a treasure of such infinite value to us all; since, without intermission, it makes itself wings; and since, when once it has flown away, the fugitive is irrevocable; it is of the utmost importance, that we should be able to perceive its passage. In itself, it is imperceptible. It is not the object of any one of our senses. The progress of light is perceptible to the eye; but of the increase of time no sense affords us any information. The stream of water is seen to move, and heard to murmur: but the lapse of time is silent and unseen it flows without the whisper of a sound, and without the shadow of a form.-If, with our past experience, we yet waste our time, our condemnation will be double. Let them that love the Lord be as the sun, when he goeth forth in his might. THE season of Summer calls the vigorous mind to profound contemplations. Inestimable are those habits of thought and observation, which convert nature into the temple of God, and render all its different scenes expressive of the various attributes of the Almighty Mind. Every season speaks of the analogous character which we ought to maintain. It is now the pride and glory of the year. The earth is covered with plenteousness, and the sun is pursuing, like a giant, his course through the heavens, dispensing light and vigour over the world beneath him. Are there no classes or conditions of men, of whose character and duties this season is descriptive? Are there no moral lessons, which they who love the Lord, may gather from that sun which now goeth forth in his might? Is it not, in the first place, emblematic to us of the maturity of human life, and of the virtues which that season ought to display? To those of that age, the spring, with all its weakness, and all its dangers, is past ;-an unseen arm has conducted them through the dawn of their infant journey, and led them on to that mighty stage, where the honours of time and of eternity are to be won. Whatever may be the station or condition in which they are placed, there is yet to all some simple and evident duty which they are called to perform, some course which they are summoned to run; and what is far more, however narrow may be its bounds, or obscure its situation, there is some sphere to which their influence extends, and in which, like the summer sun, they may diffuse joy and happiness around them. In such seasons, let nature be their instructer; and, while they bless the useful light which pours gladness among the dwellings of men, let them remember that they also were made to bless and improve. Let them remember, that to them have now arisen the lengthened and the enlightened days of life, when every thing calls them to labour; that the breath of Heaven has ripened all their powers of mind and body into perfection; that there are eyes in Heaven and Earth, which look upon the course they are pursuing; and that the honours of time, and the hopes of immortality, alike depend upon the use which they make of the summer of their days. A second class of men, of whose character and duties the present season is descriptive, is that of those, whom the favour of nature, or the fortunate circumstances of education, have raised to knowledge, to wisdom, and to genius. They are, in the language of the gospel, the "lights of the world," the legislators of moral principle and speculative opinion; and, while others labour at the oar, amid the tempestuous sea of life, it is theirs to sit at the helm, and guide the vessel of society through the perils of the ocean, to extend the boundaries of human knowledge, and enlarge the sphere of human power; to give relief to pain, and consolation to wo; to fix the foundations of present prosperity, and awaken the ambition of immortal hope. Let them consider the sun, which now "goeth forth in his might," as the true emblem of their duty. Let them remember that they also may give light and joy to the moral world of men; and let them never forget, that in this they most resemble him, when they break through the clouds of ignorance and errour; and when they bring forward to their view the magnificence of nature, and the benevolence of the Eternal Mind which governs it. ADMIRABLE and invaluable as translations of the sacred scriptures are, he who has not perused them in their original language, has comparatively no adequate conception of their sublimity and excellence of the richness and energy of their expression of the fascinating simplicity of their historic narratives-of the sententious conciseness, and inimitable point of their didactic admonitions-of the tender and affecting pathos of their elegiac odes-of the seraphic ardour of their eucharistic, and the deep toned impressiveness of their penitential hymns-of the elevated and glowing strain of their triumphant songs-of the varied, luxuriant, and high wrought, yet chaste and graceful drapery of their enraptured predictions-or even the new treasures of divine knowledge and wisdom which they unfold to a mind imbued with piety and learning. Where, indeed, are there either sentiments or expressions so sublime, so pathetic, so striking, so impressive, in every form of composition, as are to be found in these precious records of heaven, even when read in vernacular translations? Yet thus to be acquainted with them, compared to the knowledge of them that is acquired by studying the Hebrew and Greek originals, is only to see the outlines of their features, instead of beholding them start as from the canvass on which they have been drawn to the life, by the pencil of the sacred artists. There are four grand arguments for the truth of the Bible: the miracles it records, the prophecies, the goodness of the doctrine, and the moral character of the penmen. The miracles flow from divine power; the prophecies from divine understanding; the excellence of the doctrine from divine goodness; and the moral character of the penmen from christian purity. Thus Christianity is built upon these four immoveable pillars, the power, the understanding, the goodness, and the purity of God. I add farther; the Bible must be the invention, either of good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God. It could not be the invention of good men or angels; for they neither would nor could make a book, and tell lies all the time they were writing it, saying, Thus saith the Lord, when it was their own invention. It could not be the invention of bad men or devils; for they would not make a book, which commands all duty, forbids all sin, and condemns their souls to hell. I therefore draw this conclusion, the Bible must be the word of God. Search diligently the word of eternal life, enriched and ennobled as it is with the chain and the accomplishment of its prophecies; with the splendour of its miracles; with the attestation of its martyrs; the consistency of its doctrines; the importance of its facts; the plenitude of its precepts; the treasury of its promises; the irradiations of the Spirit; the abundance of its consolations; the proportion of its parts; the symmetry of the whole altogether presenting such a fund of instruction to the mind, of light to the path, of document to the conduct, of satisfaction to the heart, as demonstrably prove it to be the instrument of God for the salvation of man. Unborrow'd glory gilds the sacred page, |