Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

SACRED POETRY.

THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES.

Do they, indeed, surround our path, the high,
The holy ones, the spirits whom we call
Departed, are they often by our side,

At golden morn, or in the still, deep night!

They who have wash'd their robes, once all impure,
White in atoning blood, who walk on high

The sapphire streets of heaven, and with sweet voices
Join in celestial song-do they come down,
From thrones and palaces of light, to linger
Invisible, 'mid scenes of former love?

Or from celestial hills look down to view

The homes that ence were theirs' of this dim earth?
Yes; they do mark our footsteps, as we glide
On to their happy bowers, oh! when we turn,
And look with eyes of fondness on the world-
The world of vanity-they pity us,

And wonder how we can, how once they could,
Bestow such love on its poor transient shades!
Perchance into our softening hearts they whisper
Some tale of real joy, or picture fair,

To our minds' eye, some scene of other lands,
To win us back to heaven; and then their task,
Their holy task, fulfilled, they spread their wings,
And, swifter than a sunbeam, dart again

Up to its blessed shores. But when they mark
The beings whom they loved as their own souls,
With steady foot, and heavenward gazing eye,
Their upward course pursuing, gladness thrills
Even through their happy bosoms.

Not alone
Do human spirits hover round this earth,-
Angelic creatures, all unseen, are walking
Amid our dwellings oft; their holy footsteps
From many a peril guard us, and their eyes
Behold our conduct. Oh! how strange they think it
That beings, with immortal souls like ours,
Should idly waste their energies sublime
On poorest trifles, and forget the prize
Of everlasting joy, to hunt some bauble,
Some very vanity! How they admire
The riches of that wisdom infinite,

And boundless love, that at so high a cost
Reclaimed such wretched creatures from their choice,
And freely gave them holiness and heaven!

But think, my soul, of Him, that higher witness,
Who ever compasseth thy path, whose eye
Surveys thine inmost thoughts, and penetrates
The dark recesses of thy deepest heart,

Thy Saviour and thy Judge! Oh let his presence
Dwell on thy ever, ever wakeful consciousness!

METRICAL VERSION OF HEBREWS XII. 18-29.

BY THE REV. ALEXANDER S. PATTERSON.

YE have not reach'd that threatening form,
The burning mount of fear;
Nor trumpet's sound, and lowering storm,
And words so dire to hear.

Wild scenes, and terrible! But now,
We Zion's heights have found,-
God's own Jerusalem on its brow;
And countless angels round

The assembled saints of earliest birth,
(A Church enroll'd in Heaven ;)
And souls to which the robes of worth
Untainted have been given,-

And God the Judge; and Him who stands
Surety of mercy's plan;

And blood than Abel's, which demands
More peaceful things for man.

Refuse not Him that speaks from high;
For if he spared not them
Who turn'd from a terrestrial cry,
Would He not us condemn?

O let us our's a kingdom sure—
Service our God will own,
Present, with fear and reverence pure,
Before his flaming throne!

MISCELLANEOUS.

Consistency commands Respect.—William Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland, was one of the most celebrated men in that country in the seventeenth century. The blameless character of his deportment corresponded with his piety, and his diligence in the discharge of the functions of his office was equalled by his general benevo lence. When the rebellion broke out, the respect which was entertained for him by the ruthless and frantie savages, whose will for the time was law, and whose brutality was unrestrained by government, prevented him from feeling the effects of their fury. In the whole county of Cavan, his was the only house which was unviolated, notwithstanding that its outbuildings, the church, and the church-yard, were filled with people, who had taken refuge beneath the shelter of his induence and name. At length, principally in consequence of the machinations of a Popish prelate, an order came frem the rebel council of state at Kilkenny, requiring him to dismiss the multitude who had surrounded him. This, however, he positively refused to do, declaring that he was determined at all hazards to share their fate. When it was intimated to him, that if this were his resolution, the messengers had orders to remove him to prison, he replied, "Here I am, the Lord do unto me as seemeth good to him; the will of the Lord be done." In the castle to which with many others he was taken, he administered the ordinances of religion to his fellow-prisoners; and rude, barbarous, and unrelenting as were his guards, they never disturbed him in his hallowed employ, and repeatedly told him that the sole reason of his confinement was that he was an Englishman. After having suffered this imprisonment for only three weeks, he was liberated, and soon afterwards died in the house of a clergyman, whose name was Sheridan.

A Hearer. The Rev. Mr Erskine mentions a fact which may afford a very useful hint to every hearer of the Gospel. A person who had been to publie wor ship, having returned home perhaps somewhat sooner than usual, was asked, by another member of the fanly who had not been there," Is all done? ""No!" replied he, "all is said; but all is not done!' little is commonly done of all that is heard! Blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it."

[ocr errors]

How

Published by JOHN JOHNSTONE, at the Offices of the Scommes CHRISTIAN HERALD, 104, High Street, Edinburgh, and 19, Glassford Street, Glasgow; JAMES NISHET & Co.. HAMILTON, ADAN & Co., and R. GROOMBRIDGE, London; W. CURRY, Junr. & Con Dublin; and W. M'COMB, Belfast; and sold by the Booksellers and Local Agents in all the Towns and Parishes of Scotland; and in the principal Towns in England and Ireland.

Subscribers in Edinburgh and Leith will have their copies de livered at their own residences regularly, by leaving their address with the Publisher, or with John Lindsay & Co., 7. South St AP drew Street.-Subscribers in Glasgow will, in like manner, hate their copies delivered, by leaving their addresses at the Publising Office there, 19, Glassford Street.

Subscription (payable in advance) per quarter, of twelve werd 1s. 6d.-per half-year, of twenty-four weeks, 38.-per year, of fo eight weeks, 6s.-Monthly Parts, containing four Numbers es stitched in a printed wrapper, price Sixpence.

Printed at the Steam-Press of Ballantyne & Co., from the Stere type Plates of Thomas Allan & Co.

!

[blocks in formation]

THE SCOTTISH EMIGRANT..
BY THE REV. GEORGE BURNS, D. D.,
Minister of Tweedsmuir.

Ir is indeed matter of high congratulation that the sympathies of our National Church have at length been awakened in behalf of her children, scattered throughout our transatlantic territories, and that a call is in course of being addressed from all her pulpits, to the people of this country, to give as God has prospered them, for the relief of that spiritual destitution which these wandering sheep of our Israel are doomed to experience. The case is one of the strongest and most affecting that has ever been submitted to Scottish patriotism, and Christian benevolence. I say Scottish patriotism, for every one who is truly animated by that generous emotion, (and where is the Scotsman whose breast does not beat high with the love of country?) every one who is truly animated by feelings of genuine patriotism, must long to witness the most valuable institutions of his native land fixing their roots and rearing their heads in every country under heaven. I said also Christian benevolence, for where is there a human being, whose bosom glows with but one spark of that heaven-descended principle, who can contemplate thousands and tens of thousands of immortal creatures "perishing for lack of knowledge," even within the territories and dependencies of a country called Christian, and yet whose eye fails to affect his heart? I am well aware that there are many readers, with high claims to sound intelligence, if not to religious feeling, who would be particularly pleased were I to enter into a detail of the comparative advantages and disadvantages attendant on emigration to the British North American Colonies; to point out their natural capabilities and commercial relations; to descant on the geography and natural history of the country at large, together with the peculiarities of its cities, towns, and hamlets; to exhibit, in glowing colours, the rivers and the lakes, the forests and the valleys which diversify its | surface; and, in fine, to depict the dress, habits, and general aspect of the Indian aborigines, and the native population. But a subject greater than all these is to engage our attention, and though the writer might be supposed in some measure qualified for such disquisitions, in consequence of a long residence in one of the most prominent cities and flourishing provinces of that interesting land, yet he is disposed to estimate the value of his opportunities chiefly from the local knowledge which they enabled him to acquire of the moral and spiritual circumstances of our countrymen there, and the testimony which they have thus enabled him to bear as to that" famine of the Word of God," which prevails almost throughout the whole land of their adoption. For the support of a few common schools a small legislative

PRICE 14d.

provision has been made, in addition to the efforts of the people in erecting school-houses, and affording a certain scanty maintenance for the teachers, who are generally of the very humblest pretensions, but with the exception of an inconsiderable, temporary, and precarious annual allowance from Government to certain Presbyterian ministers in the Canadas,—to one in Nova Scotia and one in New Brunswick,-nothing whatever is granted from the public funds for the support of religion in its purest form, throughout the length and breadth of British North America. And when we think of the straitened circumstances which most frequently compel our countrymen to emigrate; the utter destitution in which they are generally landed on a foreign shore, after defraying the expenses of the voyage, (if not bound, as a large proportion commonly are, to do work for their passage, after their arrival ;) the indescribable hardships and privations to which they are subjected in making a mere opening in the vast wilderness, and then rearing even a miserable hut for themselves and those consigned to their care; the awful separation made between the different settlements by the interminable forests, rendering unity of exertion altogether impossible, though the means of supporting the Gospel were the result of their combined operations, and occasioning the necessity for such a multiplicity of ministers and catechists to accomplish even a tithe of what we are accustomed to in this highly favoured land, as is quite sufficient to demonstrate the utter hopelessness of the attempt; and, in fine, when we consider that in most cases a mere subsistence, by the productions of the soil, is all that these hapless wanderers realise during the better half of their lives, if indeed they ever get beyond it at all, how are those to be supported who are employed in guiding their steps to "the better country, that is an heavenly?" It is required of those who are "put in trust with the ministry," to "give themselves wholly to the work," but how can they do so if, from the work, they derive no means of subsistence? And bow can they carry on any other occupation for a livelihood, when, from the beginning to the close of every week, they must be travelling from one clearing in the wood to another, answering the calls of those who are looking to them for spiritual sustenance, and, in the accomplishment of their arduous but godlike undertaking, often experiencing what the great apostle of the Gentiles was doomed to encounter in the prosecution of his ministry, "in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren. In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." In our colonies indeed, as well as throughout the United States, there are many itinerating preachers of different sects, or of no sect at

[ocr errors]

wants

all, who are literally "hewers of wood and drawers of | water," eking out the bare subsistence gained by the labour of their hands during the week, by the scanty pittance contributed at the close of their Sabbath services, who have all the poverty of the apostles, with few of their more attractive and valuable qualities, who have it not in their power to exercise any pastoral superintendence at all, even though they had both the will and the capacity to do so, acceptably as well as beneficially. Nay, there are many regularly ordained Presbyterian ministers in these regions of the West, who, as soon as their circumstances admit of it, betake themselves to agricultural or other pursuits in the first instance, to make up the deficiency of the inadequate and ill-paid remuneration promised them for their professional labours, but with the determination, at the same time, that, eventually, they will give themselves wholly to their farms or their merchandise, when these begin to yield them a return commensurate with their Now, is it to be supposed that persons in these harassing and secularising circumstances can find their minds in a condition for spiritual duties, or that those who attend on their Sabbath ministrations can expect to enjoy the pleasure and advantage of their week-day counsels? Can such a ministry be respectable or efficient, or really valuable? And is it to be wondered at, that while the love of many waxeth cold, their free-will offerings should gradually become few in number and tritling in amount, and that the labourers in the vineyard being unable, from the disadvantages inseparable from their situation, to "make full proof of their ministry," should hasten to make their escape from all the fearful responsibilities of the sacred office? happens, that in the midst of all that life and energy Thus it which are conspicuous in the new settlements the goodly plant of Christianity has taken no root, and is withering and dying for want of nourishment. But this is to be viewed as the bright side of the picture: here something has been done to secure the blessings of a Gospel ministry, and an oasis may be descried in the vast and gloomy wilderness. How hard, then, must be the fate of the Scottish emigrant who has removed from the full light of religious institutions, with which the land of his birth is so signally blest, to that deep and unbroken wilderness of heathenism, of which the physical condition of his adopted country presents so apt and striking an emblem! And yet, alas! how many abandon the one without a sigh, and plunge into the other without a murmur or complaint! Their case is the more deplorable that they are themselves unconscious of its wretchedness. The world at best is their grand object of attraction; for its sake they have left behind them the country of their fathers, and to secure its good things they regard as worthy of their best energies and unwearied efforts. Far be it from us to blame them for their industry, their contentment with the lot assigned them, and the cheerfulness with which they set themselves to the task of redeeming a portion of land from the forest which has waved over it from the era of the great Hood. But why this insensibility to their spiritual privations? That men compelled, for a length of time, to live without religious ordinances, should, through habit, become, in the end, reconciled to the want of then, is too easily conceived, as it is too frequently realised; and, hence, a fatal indifference can number among its victims a far larger proportion of our expatriated countrymen than open and avowed infidelity itself. This is, unquestionably, one of the gloomiest aspects in which their case can be contemplated. They are living in the pleasure of apathy, (if pleasure it can be called,) and "they are dead while they live." shall no efforts be put forth by their Christian "kinsAnd men according to the flesh," to disturb that false tranquillity, to break that stillness which portends a coming storm, to arouse from that lethargy which is the pre

lude of "the second death?" But, blessed be God, there are multitudes who have not thus "forgotten their first love," who find "nought that can compensate them in the abode of domestic piety;" who "look back for the calm and beauteous lustre which they left behind through the dim and distant recollection of many years, who bear in mournfully pleasing remembrance," the to the days of their cherished and well-taught boyhood;" solemnity of a father's parting voice, and all the tenderflame to be fanned? How are the sacred impressions ness of a mother's prayers." And how is the heavenly land of their exile to cause those things, which belong to be revived and perpetuated? What is there in the to "the new man," to live and grow in the soul? The sound of the axe may ring through the forest; the plough may pierce the sod which had before been undisturbed, save by the hunter's tread; the streams may be pent up in their narrow beds, and powers, not their nourishment and protection to man; villages, and towns, own, given them to turn the mill-wheel, and afford and cities may spring up and flourish; but while the smoke is seen arising from many a domestic hearth, where, alas! are the altars? pointing to heaven, and telling the distant traveller that he is approaching the abode of Christian, as well as of Where is the village spire its wonted joys? No temple, no missionary of salva civilized man? The Sabbath returns, but where are tion, no songs of Zion to usher in that blessed day. round the humble dwelling, but no voice of devotion The wind is heard roaring among the trees which surascends to heaven, except it be in the sighs and whispers of a broken heart. In such a scene the description of our justly admired Christian poet is fully realised. "But the sound of the church-going bell These valleys and rocks never heard; Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a kneil, Or smil'd when the Sabbath appear d."

66

of God's house," and were accustomed, in the days that And those who retain any "love for the habitation Lord," are ready to hang their harps upon the wilare gone, to join the Psalmist's declaration, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the lows and to weep when they remember Zion.” In the first generation religion wears itself away by to have existed. a gradual decline; in the second it is scarcely known fore, the prospect is shrouded in a more portentons gloom, and there is great danger that unless some inAs the population increases, theremediate and extraordinary efforts are made by the pious and benevolent in this and other Christian countries, their children and descendants, freed from all Christian those who have gone out from amongst us will, with restraints, become a nation of heathens, a race daily ripening to be outcasts from God. If so much is doing in this age of missionary zeal, for those in the dark places of the earth, with whom we are connected only as being members of the great family of mankind, surely neglected, merely because they are separated from the our countrymen and fellow-subjects ought not to be parent isle by the waters of the western main. God ment, tending to damp the ardour of Christian feeling, forbid that we should give utterance to a single sentiwhich has given birth, in our age and country, to se many associations for ameliorating the condition of safely affirmed, that next to those immediately within Pagan and idolatrous nations, but surely it may be the sphere of our personal and individual charities, and which strictly come under the designation of hest objects, the Scottish emigrant to our possessions abroad, has the strongest claim on the intercession of your pray ened Christian efforts. ers, the benefit of your contributions, of your enlig circumstances of their lot plead in behalf of thes silent, but not unmeaning, eloquence with which me Listen, for a moment, to Christian brethren. They bear in common with ea

66

[ocr errors]

selves a name which all hold dear, the name of Scots- | the light and the blessings of the Gospel were poured men; like us, they are the children of the same favour- around them in rich abundance in the land of their ed land, though, unlike us, compelled by less prosperous fathers; but now, having known the heart of a stranger, fortunes to seek in a foreign clime an unwilling exile; and an exile from all that a Christian holds dearest uptheir fathers, together with ours, trod the soil we now on earth, they appreciate the value of these advantages, inherit, and mingled, perhaps, each others blood in de- which they could not rightly estimate till deprived of fence of its religion and its laws; like us, they are the them, they hail with rapture every ray of heavenly children of sires who were the fathers of the Covenant, light which dawns upon their minds, and chequers and whose voices rose in the suppliant hymn, whose bosoms relieves the grim solitude of the desert. Would any braved the battle's strife in those fields of conflict, which, of you be willing to exchange situations with them? in a former age, sealed with blood the charter of Scot- and to exile yourselves from all that is peculiar, and land's faith and freedom. They appeal to us, moreover, cheering, and elevating, in Christian lands, that you as members of our National Church; they are not only, might live amid the horrors of a " darkness that might like ourselves, children of the same land, but they are be felt," and die unblest by a single visit from a mesworshippers at the same altar. The faith which they senger of peace? How would you feel were their cirprofess, is the faith of our Israel; the songs of praise in cumstances your own? Were you doomed to spend which they join, are the songs of our Zion. However silent Sabbaths, having no living voice to warn you of strong the claims which the natives of heathen lands "the things which belong to your peace," no ambassahave upon us, they cannot be stronger than those of our dor of heaven dispensing to you the bread and the water expatriated countrymen; the former, however pitiable of life? By contrast, then, be taught the value of your their state, can never experience that pang of sorrow, Christian privileges, that you may, at the same time, which gives to destitution half its bitterness; they can- learn rightly to estimate the extent of the Scottish eminot feel, that what they now have not was once their grant's loss, and deeply to share in the sympathies and own. But to these outcasts of our Church, this thought exertions of those who are employed in providing the must recur with painful frequency; and when in the means of his relief. Those who go forth as heralds of the distant land of their exile, they call to remembrance cross to so interesting a field of labour, must make great these high and holy privileges of their birthright, which sacrifices, and “endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus now unwillingly and guiltlessly they have forfeited, has Christ." They must abandon their friends and country, not the sorrow to which that recollection must give and choicest privileges, and most encouraging prosbirth, a stronger claim on our sympathy than even the pects, and commence their mission at a vast sacrifice. silent gloom of darkest Pagan land." As distance from They must brave the fury of the elements, and toil, and home has a tendency to call forth into more lively ex- study, and labour in season and out of season, and ercise the feelings of patriotism, and to rivet attachment preach the unsearchable riches of Christ," amid priva to national customs, national language, and national tions and hardships numerous and severe. And shall music, so it strengthens attachment to national institu- not we, who continue to enjoy the comforts of home, tions. And without being chargeable with injustice give them a place in our best affections, and do what towards those who really remain under the influence of we can to alleviate the pangs of separation, and to right religious principle, whatever may be their changes brighten those prospects which are so gloomy and apin respect of place, I may affirm, that, in general, love palling to nature? Are not Churches and Societies of country has the effect of creating a partiality for the bound to make strenuous efforts and costly sacrifices, religion of their fathers, in the minds of those who are not only to augment the pecuniary resources of those strangers to higher and nobler principles of regard. who have embarked in the glorious enterprise, but also Many who are altogether careless and indifferent about to advance religion at home, that the fountain of Chrisreal Christianity, manifest an inextinguishable affection tian benevolence may rise higher and send forth more for the religious forms and usages of the father-land; copious streams, that the number and piety of the misand not a few of those who were in the way of attend- sionaries may be greatly increased, and that thus a noble ing public worship, from habit or custom, and without army may be enlisted to storm the strongholds of Paganat all appreciating the boon of weekly Christian instruc-ism, and cause the banner of Zion's King to wave in the tion, while in this country, where the want of such a privilege is not felt, have been distinguished as leaders in carrying forward measures for securing the same privilege to themselves and their countrymen in other lands. There is, in short, a stronger predisposition for the reception of Christian truth, through the medium of the accredited representatives of our Church in foreign lands, than there is at home,-a circumstance which should act as a powerful stimulant to us all in our endeavours to supply, with faithful labourers, such remote and destitute parts of the vineyard. And O could I describe the intensity of delight with which the Scottish emigrant hears of the arrival of a Scottish minister, and the rapidity with which the tidings of a promised visit from such a quarter are spread through the widely scattered settlements; the warmth of affection with which we are received into the dwellings of these aliens from the land of their nativity; the assemblies of such humble worshippers in the woods and wilds, "full of life and interest, eyes moistened and glistening with varied emotions," you would rejoice in an opportunity of contributing to secure for them such high gratification and invaluable privileges. You would account no cruelty equal to that of disregarding the voice, which addresses from the wilderness afar these imploring accents, "Come over and help us!" Little did many of them know of the same exciteinent, when

remotest dependencies of the empire? While the cause which has now been pleaded is the cause of God and of human happiness, it must commend itself to every liberal and enlightened Christian; it must find an advocate in the breast of every true philanthropist.

DISCOURSE.

BY THE LATE REV. JOHN BROWN PATTERSON, A.M.,
Minister of Falkirk.

(Continued from page 684.)

"After that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep," &c.-JOHN xi, 11-23.

OUR Lord having thus encouraged his disciples to expect that the journey to Judea, which excited, in their bosoms, such alarm, would turn out to "the furtherance of their faith,"-would contribute to their spiritual improvement, and to their ultimate salvation, invites them to dismiss their fears, and presently address themselves to the way ; "nevertheless let us go unto him."

Perceiving, therefore, that their Master was

way to the latter,-whose conscience extorts obedience from a shrinking and recoiling heart,-who manfully puts his neck beneath the Master's yoke, and submits his shoulder to the Master's burden, when, if he allowed the nature, yet alive within him, to speak, it would pronounce these the reverse of easy, the reverse of light. Yet such obedience, though infinitely to be preferred to direct rebellion, is plainly very imperfect, very corrupt, very little accordant with the spirit of the Chris

turn our duty into our delight, to attract us to the keeping of God's commandments, by "the cords of love and the bands of a man,"-to put an end to that fatal and intestine war which passion has so long maintained with conscience, and, by bringing these two into harmony, making them tending into co-operating forces, to render obemove in one direction, changing them from conand "enlarge the heart to run in the way of God's dience at once more tranquil and more vigorous, commandments."

thoroughly and finally resolved to confront the peril, | warring with his duties, compels the former to give the disciples at length make up their minds, deadly as seemed the hazard, to meet it in his company. The first to express his sentiments upon the subject, we are told, was "Thomas, who is called Didymus," these two names, the one of which is Syriac and the other Greek, both having the same signification, that is, the twin. You have similar examples of the permutation of the two languages I have referred to, among the Jews of this era, in the proper names and designations of individuals, in the interchangeable use of such ap-tian dispensation, one great aim of which is to pellations as Cephas and Peter, that is, the rock; Tabitha and Dorcas, that is, the antelope; Messiah and Christ, that is the anointed. This disciple, then, whose character, as expressed in the few brief anecdotes recorded of him, seems to have been marked by a certain unsusceptibility of persuasion and pertinacity of opinion, exceeding the limits of rational and proper firmness, shows something of his characteristic obstinacy even in exhorting his brethren to comply with their Lord's injunction-" Thomas saith unto them, Let us also go and die with him,"-words, on which, I fear, more and more to acquire and to exemplify that Let us labour, my brethren, we cannot put a more favourable sense than this: spirit of uncomplaining, unmurmuring, approving, If it must be so, if our Master is determined to and delighted compliance with Christ's precepts, rush upon apparently inevitable death, we must and submission to Christ's appointments; that not, we cannot desert him, though we should be habit of counting "all his commandments, condragged to slaughter in his society. The spirit of cerning all things, to be right," and of "delightthe remark, if we have rightly caught it, you will ing in the law of God, after the inward maa," observe, is partly commendable, and partly the reverse. It is commendable, and to be imitated, in which shall prepare us even, should we require it, so far as it breathes such an intense attachment to fect heart and with a willing mind;" ready to to follow him to prison and to death, "with a perthe Saviour's person, and such a resolute determi-suffer for him the loss of all things; yea, nation to share his fate, as vanquished even the terrors of expected death. It is, on the other hand, to be blamed and avoided, in so far as it seems to intimate a lurking sentiment of dissatisfaction with Christ's command, as one that made too little allowance for the feelings and the safety of his followers,-a prescription which, since it had been issued and insisted on, it was proper and morally necessary to obey, but which human nature could not help feeling to be, in some measure, harsh and arbitrary, an injunction which, while of authority to commend the conduct, was not so apparently right and reasonable as to commend itself to the heart. Alas! my brethren, how much of our professed and overt obedience to Christ's law is tainted and polluted with this spirit of secret dislike and disapproval! How often, when we are impelled to what is right, or deterred from what is wrong, and that too from a higher principle than the mere dread of consequences, by a sense of duty and moral obligation, is there, nevertheless, a secret, low-voiced murmur at the strictness and the rigour of the Christian law, expressed, if not in the matter of our actions, yet in their manner, if not in the direct import of our words, yet in their accent and their tones,-or, if neither in uttered word nor in overt act, yet in hidden thoughts and stifled emotions! That Christian does, we readily confess, to a certain extent act well and creditably, who, in any case in which he feels his desires thus

"not

counting our own lives dear unto ourselves," if so and, with all the faith, and affection, and fortitude we may express to him our honour and our love; of Didymus, without the alloy, by which they to say, were tainted, of reluctance and secret murmuring, For "it is a faithful saying, if we die with him, "Let us also go and die with him." we shall also live with him; if we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we believe not, ie abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself."

have coincided with those of Thomas, at least The sentiments of the other disciples seem to they did not venture to propose any farther objec tion, but, with hearts distracted between hope and fear, accompanied their Master, as he set out towards the guilty city-the murderer of the prophets, the stoner of those who had been sent to her-whose bad pre-eminence was, "It cannot be that a prophet should perish out of Jerusalem.” After a journey, rich in important and interesting occurrences, some of which have been recorded by the other evangelists, they reached the neighbou hood of Bethany, a village in the immediate vicnity of the metropolis, or, as the evangelist marks the distance a little more minutely, Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off." village he had left, on last retiring from Jus & nigh us holy and beloved family, a brother and two s In the flourishing in health and strength, and muto love

[ocr errors]
« VorigeDoorgaan »