anticipations have not been realized, we hasten to the conclusion that the world is fast sinking into hopeless corruption; that is, because the accounts which the Scriptures give have been found to be true, we are ready to suppose that the world is every year more and more distempered. Hence the peevishness of some—hence activities cramped—hence querulous complaints—hence, in a few cases, the very spirit of Ishmael, whose hand was against every man, while every man’s hand was against him.
SORROW AND ITS ORIGIN.
Against this, however, as against every form of error, we are carefully warned in the Word of God. “Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.”SORROW
AND ITS
ORIGIN. The truth is, they were not better—it is we that look at them from a different point, or try them by a different standard; in other words, we change. Our dreams have ended in the nothing whence they rose. We looked for only smiles and sunshine, and have had to grapple with very stern realities. We persisted in regarding this world as something very different from what the Word of God describes—a place where man’s only sure portion is grief; but have at length discovered that the Word of God is true. Hence our sorrow and disappointment; hence the morbid complaints, and the cheerless repinings of age not seldom succeed to the visions, the dreams, and the delusions of youth.
EXPLANATIONS.
But far from “saying that the former times were better than these,” we feel that never was there an age in which so much was done as in ours, to help forward the great cause of truth and the reclaiming of the world to God. EXPLANATIONS. We know that vice has been unmasked in most appalling forms; but that is because philanthropy has grappled with crime in its own dens, and dragged it into daylight, till thousands are revolted and appalled. We know that superstition is still trampling men in myriads into the dust, while the Word of God, and all that would elevate man from his deep degradation, is hated and put down wherever superstition has the power; but that is only because the systems which are antagonistic to the truth have been roused to more resolute efforts by the earnestness of the friends of man. And we know that oppression in many lands, is still goading multitudes to madness, immuring them in dungeons, or hurrying them to death; but that is only because the oppressor instinctively feels that the tide is rising which must eventually sweep him from his place.
PROOFS OF PROGRESS.
The struggles now made, then, to perpetuate the reign of bondage, and doom men to mental and spiritual vassalage for some centuries more, are symptomatic of a waning, not a waxing cause; and the philanthropist may accordingly rejoice. PROOFS OF
PROGRESS. Progression is the law of the universe; and all the powers of darkness cannot always, or long supersede it. If the bad be growing worse, the good are growing better, more strong, and more aggressive. They now realize their mission more than they did half a century ago. They are also more closely banded to promote it; so that, instead of joining in the cry that the former times were better than these, we are prompted to regard our day as signalized above most by its schemes of earnest philanthropy, its plans of mighty scope, and its luminous designs for gathering in the nations to the sway of the Prince of Peace. Now abideth faith, hope, and love, beyond most of the ages which are past: faith, which takes hold of Omnipotence, and therefore cannot be baffled; hope, which turns the future triumphs of the good and the true into present joy; and love, which exults in the prospect of man’s ultimate emancipation, according to the mind of God.
Meanwhile, all the crime beneath which our blighted earth is groaning, does not retard by a day the final completion of the eternal plan. Truth is spreading. Providence, hand in hand with grace, is slowly sapping the hoary systems which have long enthralled our race. Those who support the truth of God are more and more clearly ranged upon one side, and standing heart to heart in defence of the holy and the pure. Those who support error by oppression are more and more clearly ranged upon the other; and we need not feel more assured that the sun will rise in the firmament to-morrow, or that rivers will continue to hasten to the ocean, than that truth is slowly triumphing, and error gradually erecting its own funeral pile. Symptoms of these results appear equally manifest in the Church and in the world.
DOUBTS.
But in every department, men must labour for these ends. As God has given to every one his measure of power, he is to put it forth—or of light, he is to let it shine. The Christian indeed is pre-eminently a patriot. “Not one of us lives to himself;” and, in contemplating this subject, it has sometimes occurred to us to inquire whether the ministers of religion be sufficiently explicit, minute, and detailed in their lessons on the Sabbath. DOUBTS. Over thousands of congregations each recurring week, there are diffused from the pulpit, doctrines the most ennobling, allied, in many cases, to lessons the most cogent and pure. Line upon line is employed, if, by any means, some may be saved, and the truth of God carried, by the Spirit’s power, through the heart and the conscience to the hand and the life.
Withal, however, is there not reason to believe that there is still room for more precise and definite instructions than are sometimes conveyed? It is obviously one thing for a soul passively to acquiesce in a doctrine, and another thing to apply the truth to practice; to give it the control of the life, that man may be like-minded with God, and “pure as He is pure.”—There have been men in all ages who held a faultless creed, yet led a godless life; who would tithe their mint, their anise, and cummin, and yet forget the weightier matters of the law. There have been not a few who took rank in the Christian Church, who could not be trusted in the market-place. Some who had fallen into the hands of the public prosecutor, have, with all the indignation of injured innocence, resented it as an offence, when those who watch for the spiritual good of men ventured to prevent them from polluting the holy place. In one point of view, the world thus seems to be more careful or more high-toned than the Church; and that irresistibly suggests the question, Can a remedy be found for this sore evil? Without interfering for a day with the preaching of those doctrines which come from God as a light to guide us to Him, can aught be added to our present appliances, to rescue self-deluded men from their self-delusions, and at least render their number fewer in the different branches of the Holy Catholic Church?
THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
The times appear to be specially favourable for promoting such an object. THE SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES. It is a characteristic of our age, for which we have high reason to be thankful to God, that the spiritual welfare of man is largely regarded. It is now clearly seen that the true interests of one class are the true interests of all. It is no longer antagonism, it is co-operation; to a large extent, it is brotherhood and harmony; it is liberal things devised on the one hand, and rejoiced in upon the other, at least in the land in which it is our blessedness to live. Grave men in the Church, and powerful men in the State, are busy here; nay, royalty itself, does not disown the employment. The prince co-operates with the peer, and both together hold out the hand, not of lordly patronage—that is cold and repulsive—but of brotherly-kindness and love.
ENCOURAGEMENTS.
ENCOURAGEMENTS. We thus see at least the dawning of a state of things which has no doubt been too long retarded, to our shame; but which may be blessed by God, not to introduce an Utopia, or a golden age; not to roll away the need of labour, or the lot of suffering—these are component parts of man’s existence upon earth; but to soothe the sorrows, to dry the tears, and elevate the pursuits of those who might otherwise be woeworn and unfriended for life. In a word,
“The purple pride that scowls at wretchedness,”
is now scowled at in its turn, wherever the Word of God is free, and under its hallowing power, the brotherhood of man are becoming more manifestly brothers.
To help on these results, then, we would now try to bring sound doctrine into actual contact with men’s souls, that it may produce sound practice. “The form of sound words” is to be prized above every earthly thing, but unless these words lead to right actions, they leave us still in the condition of Chorazin and Bethsaida of old. We would therefore try to take the truth of God in our hand; we would go under