But let us consider whether it be true that the business of this life is a bad preparation for another. Could the God who "knoweth our eternal life"-its nature and duration-have placed us under a necessity of attending to earthly things, if these were to unfit us for that life eternal? And might we not complain, if we did think so, that He who calls Himself a loving Father, betrays His poor helpless ones, when we see how He calls them away when most busily engaged in secular concerns-when the mind is evidently immersed in thoughts of this life? Can He who orders all things in perfect wisdom summon them when least prepared? This cannot be. A fatal error clings to the idea of any special preparation for death: the error of anxiously attending to what we do, and madly neglecting what we are. It is the real being to which God ever looks, and to this death will oblige us also to look. This may be more or less disguised ali through our earthly life; and therefore does the Word of God so urgently counsel us to purify and reform the heart-to "worship Him in spirit and in truth.” The constant tendency of human nature is to hide inward being by outward observances; but oh! let us remember in time, that if religious observances are the main part of our worship, they will be of no avail— nay, they may fearfully harm us as a means of self-deception; for when we die we can carry none of our forms away with us, nor can the pomp of our devotions follow us. Unless meek obedience and humble love to the God we so worship has actuated our external religion, it will then prove to have been worse than useless; unless our spirits cleave stedfastly to Him, all professed adherence must be fruitless, when that spirit is stripped of every disguise. It is vain to arrest the will in the midst of common and innocent action, with the inquiry, "How will this employment bear upon my eternity ?" for that is a question which we cannot answer; and in one sense we cannot prepare for that, being wholly ignorant of the kind of existence upon which the disembodied enter. We are in truth unable to conform the employments of this life to any ideal standard of what will best harmonize with a future state. And in our gross darkness about that future, it seems to me a hazardous risk to contemn any part of that complicated nature which God has bestowed for our welfare on earth. The common notion of heaven is so made up of negatives, and of hopes which only imagination can grasp, that we are too prone to think of it as a state of sacred quiescence-blissful form, sinlessness and holy love, and the Divine presence-but not answering to the manifold powers which we are conscious of possessing here. But such a notion is unwarranted, for in another world all pure aspirations may be gratified-all, of which we now feel the germs, may find objects and due expansion; it may be for our eternal good that to the very verge of life-we cultivate and enlarge the intellect which feels so homeless here. It is not of varied interests and many-ended occupation that we need be afraid, if these are directed by the master motive, which studies how to satisfy the will of God; for a principle is strengthened by varied adaptation, and enfeebled by uniform exercise. Whatever is the fault which we most frequently commit, the weakness to which we so often yield, that we sometimes feel ashamed to mention it again in our prayers-of that we may well be afraid; for that, without anything worse, may fill us with dread when death flashes insight through us. We have no reason for thinking that death interferes with any mental habit. We can take nothing away with us but what we are. So that the really momentous question is not what follows after death, but what is our spiritual state now; for this at any instant may be made manifest and incurable. What are our opinions and sentiments, what our habits of inner life? Opinion may be modified by increase of knowledge; sentiments altered by circumstances over which we have no control; but habit, that appears to resist every influence, even the Almighty's; and in accustoming ourselves to any course, good or evil, we doom ourselves to a perpetual inclination in that same direction, so long as it is possible for the will to find means to perform its habitual purpose. If we remember that no habit can be improvised, and remember too what the mind suffers, even in its muffled condition here, when we are in a sphere for which we are quite unprepared, the dread importance of habits will be seen. How are we now feeling? Is God our God, owned by inward devotion and careful obedience? and do we follow Jesus daily, entreating Him to give us that eternal life which may be shared with Him now, among all our miseries and imperfections ? and do we find proof of that life being kindled, by the unfeigned love of our hearts for all His creatures? Unless we have confidence towards Him on these grounds we are in danger; not because we enjoy this seeming life, and busily occupy ourselves with this world's interests-since for that we were evidently intended-but because we will not come to Him, and have life indeed. When we dwell in Him, and He in us, we can sincerely say, "Let come on me what may-be it death, slow or sudden-in that unknown world I shall find Him whom my soul loveth; for He has said, 'Where I am there shall my servant be:' when He calls He will have prepared a place for me, and meanwhile I will be busy here: not wrapped in aimless meditation, like a Bhuddist devotee, but active and joyous, doing my Father's business in my own generation. And when He calls, doubtless it will be for a peculiar purpose; what happens after death can be no exception to the usual course of His wise providence ('for of His kingdom shall be no end'). He will have gracious need of my powers beyond the short span of this unexplained earthly being. Death will but shut up and seal my doings and words here, while it sets me free for a new career, invisible to those I leave behind, but none the less actual, and full of intenser life." Thus to a Christian who is conscious of being truly one with Christ, a very member of His mystical body, that from its head receives directing influence, and on all its fellow-members bestows-in a small measure, but willinglythe faintest reflection of the sympathy of Christ-death is not fearful. From that blessed union nothing can divide us contrary to our own will: and though all externals are doomed to perish, the spirit is no longer "poor and blind, and naked and miserable," for Jesus clothes it with His fulness, and in nature's most awful conflict His power will give us victory. Oh! you who read these words, arrest, I pray you, all other thoughts, till that time is imagined when He only can be your strength and your salvation. Consider betimes, now-for to-morrow you may feel what to-day you merely think of-consider if you could dare to find yourself without God in the unexplored world, to which every morning brings you closer? It may have proved very possible-disastrously easy-here to live estranged from the God who hideth Himself; but when all worldly friends, and all worldly distractions vanish, and you are alone with God and an immortal memory of all His mercy and past forbearance, and unwearied entreaties to believe, and obey, and trust in Him, and you see at last why omniscient love so besought you to have mercy on your own soul-oh! how will it be then? Do not flinch from the question. If the thought so pains that you recoil from it, what will the experience be? You will be the same spirit then that you are now; those habits of mind which characterize you will fix your fate then, and every minute you are making for yourself an eternity either more blissful or more agonizing. "Now! It is gone-our brief hours travel post, Each with its thought or deed, its why or how; If bodily death is fearful, what must that death be of which it is the image, and what must a spirit be and appear that has cut itself off from the living God? You may come to a terrible knowledge of this, when the merest trifle you now look at the inkstand you use, the carpet you tread, the plant whose lovely blossoms please your eye-are remaining where they were; and you, who can now 'seek the forgiveness of God by prayer-by doing His will, and laying hold of eternal life-may have vanished out of your place, leaving all your dearest treasures to the power of survivors. Therefore I plead, therefore I entreat, do not say * Coleridge. with regard to your own death, "The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are afar off." For well you know that at any moment the Lord God may say, "There shall none of my words be prolonged any more, but the word which I have spoken shall be done." * "Oh, let us be ready for shipping against the time our Lord's wind and tide calls for us! Death is the last thief, that shall come without din or noise of feet, and take our souls away; and we shall take our leave of time, and face eternity."+ BY THE AUTHOR OF "MORNING CLOUDS." Abel's Sacrifice. A TRAVELLER, sometimes, has to pass through a valley, full of grandeur and beauty, covered on either side by a curtain of mist; dim outlines of the mountains being all that he can discover beyond the rocky roadway on which he walks. But, towards eventide, the weather clears up, -the clouds melt away, the sun bursts forth, and then the forms of the nether and the upper hills stand out like chiselled masses; and the sides of the moss-sheeted rocks are seen dappled with arbutis, and holly, and oak,-gold and emerald are lying in huge masses upon the slopes, and like mines within the dells. The cataract is revealed as a gush of frosted silver, and the lakes are beheld spreading out themselves under the afternoon sunshine, and reflecting back the forms and colours which diversify their banks and borders. Just so we found it, one autumn day, on the Lakes of Killarney— gleams of glorious light in the afternoon, illuminating what had been in the morning confused, obscure, or hidden. Like that we find it still, in reading first Genesis alone, and then Genesis and Hebrews together. We walk through the old Mosaic history, and get some notion of the outer life of the Patriarchs-of Noah and Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob. What in their story lies close upon the experience of one's own daily life, can be understood, but not much, for mist, can we see, till we turn to what the Gospels teach-what the Epistles communicate what Paul in the Hebrews tells; then the sun breaks out! What an insight is given into the spiritual life of the good men of old! What wonders are discovered in them and around them! The short biography of Abel yields a deep meaning, which we should not have thought of, reading it alone. "He being dead yet speaketh." All the dead have voices. As you look on the cold clay of your loved ones, wrapped up in their coffins, as you gaze through the opening left * Ezekiel xii. 27, 28. + Rutherford's Letters. by the only half-closed lid, from the moveless lips there comes what is more heart-touching than any words which ever sounded thence, when the life-blood was flowing there in healthy crimson. To the ear of sense, the churchyard is a very silent spot, in the country more so than in the city; no hum of busy wayfarers anywhere near, only the tinkling of the sheep-bell, or the warble of the wood-bird; perhaps, not that. But what thrilling admonitions and appeals come from beneath the hillocks and the stones; all the more thrilling for nature's silence and solitude. Yes, all the dead have voices. Some peculiar and emphatic. You hear their tones in traditions and books, in lives and histories, in old speeches, in ancient songs. Dead Englishmen are preaching sermons more impressive than any living Englishman can utter. Dead Israelites, sages and sufferers, thinkers and doers, martyrs and confessors, are speaking to us every Sunday, every day, -from the pulpit, from the closet. We hope our readers rarely let the four-and-twenty hours pass without sitting down to hear what these inspired men have to say. Abel speaks. The blood that his brother spilt cried to Heaven, and God heard it; and he did not leave off speaking when the purple stains on the grass were washed out by the showers of heaven. And what is so remarkable, Abel is better understood now than he was at first. The voice has grown clearer, now that it has spoken nearly six thousand years, than when it was listened to by his poor surviving parents, or by Moses who wrote down the few traditions of his life. Abel's sacrifice is the organ of his long-lasting utterance. "By it he being dead yet speaketh." I. The responsibility of the past cannot be met without the sacrifice of another.-Abel's past responsibility was connected with guilt. He was, no doubt, what we call a good man, but "there is no man who doeth good and sinneth not." We can easily imagine that he was obedient to his parents; that (through teaching, human and Divine-through grace mysteriously operating on his soul) he lived a comparatively innocent, virtuous, and devout life. But, according to the general teaching of Scripture, he must have done, or said, or thought something wrong. We conceive of Abel as one of the best of men, yet not perfect, at the very best. All his obligations he had not fulfilled. Bonds of duty were burst-torn, ravelled out. "I have sinned," was a confession he had to make. Law,-whatever might be his imperfect conceptions of it,-there it stood, frowning upon him amidst the smiles of nature. Trees, flowers, and stars, assured him of God's goodness; but in the moral world, then, as ever, there was a perfect, absolute, unalterable righteousness, lying at the root of things, pointed against all evil, not to be reconciled to it even in its highest ways of working. Guilt, however Abel might think about it, existed as a fact, -a stern, dark, angry fact, not to be annihilated by any power of his. . |