Слике страница
PDF
ePub

eternity open to receive him, and that he touches upon that terrible futurity against which he seemed so fortified-ah! he then becomes either weak, trembling, dissolved in tears, raising up suppliant hands to heaven!-or, gloomy, silent, agitated, revolving within himself the most dreadful thoughts, and no longer expecting more consolation or mercy from his weak tears and lamentations, than from his frenzies and despair!

In

Yes, my brethren! this unfortunate wretch,-who had always lulled himself in his excesses, always flattered himself that one good moment alone was necessary, one sentiment of compunction before death, to appease the anger of God,-despairs then of His clemency. În vain is he told of His eternal mercies; he feels to what a degree he is unworthy of them. In vain the minister of the Church endeavours to soothe his terrors, by opening to him the bosom of divine mercy; these promises touch him little, because he knows well that the charity of the Church, which never despairs of salvation for its children, cannot, however, alter the awful judgments of the justice of God. In vain is he promised forgiveness of his crimes-a secret and terrible voice resounds from the bottom of his heart, and tells him that there is no salvation for the impious, and that he can have no dependence upon promises which are given to his miseries, rather than to the truth. In vain is he exhorted to apply to those last remedies which the Church offers to the dying; he regards them as desperate reliefs, which are hazarded when hope is over, and which are bestowed more for the consolation of the living, than from any prospect of utility to those who are departing. Servants of Jesus Christ are called in to support him in this last moment; whilst all he is enabled to do, is, secretly to envy their lot, and to detest the misery of his own: his friends and relations are assembled round his bed to receive his last sighs, and he turns away from them his eyes, because he finds still amidst them the remembrance of his crimes. Death, however, approaches: the minister endeavours to support, by prayer, that spark of life which still remains: "Depart, Christian soul!" says he: he says not to him, Prince, grandee of the world, depart!" During his life, the public monuments were hardly sufficient for the number and pride of his titles. In this last moment, they give him that title alone which he had received in baptism; the only one to which he had paid no attention, and the only one which can remain to him for ever. 66 Depart, Christian soul!". . . Alas! he had lived as if the body had formed his only being and

66

treasure; he had even tried to persuade himself that his soul was nothing; that man is only a composition of flesh and blood, and that everything perishes with us. He is now informed that it is his body which is nothing but a morsel of clay, now on the point of crumbling into pieces; and that his only immortal being is that soul,-that image of the Divinity, that intelligence, alone capable of knowing and loving its Creator,-which now prepares to quit its earthly mansion, and appear before His awful tribunal. "Depart, Christian soul!" You had looked upon the earth as your country, and it was only a place of pilgrimage from which you must depart. The Church thought to have announced glad tidings to you, the expiration of your exilement,-in announcing the dissolution of your earthly frame. Alas! and it only brings you melancholy and frightful news, and opens the commencement of your miseries and anguish.

I

Then the expiring sinner, finding, in the remembrance of the past, only regrets which overwhelm him; in all which takes place around him, only images which afflict him; in the thoughts of futurity, only horrors which appal him; no longer knowing to whom to have recourse; neither to created beings, who now leave him; nor to the world, which vanishes; nor to men, who cannot save him from death; nor to the just God, whom he looks upon as a declared enemy, and from whom he has no indulgence to expect:-a thousand horrors occupy his thoughts; he torments, he agitates himself, in order to fly from Death which grasps him, or at least to fly from himself. From his expiring eyes issues something, know not what, of dark and gloomy, which expresses the fury of his soul; in his anguish he utters words, interrupted by sobs, which are unintelligible, and to which they know not whether repentance or despair gives birth. He is seized with convulsions, which they are ignorant whether to ascribe to the actual dissolution of his body, or to the soul which feels the approach of its Judge. He deeply sighs; and they know not whether the remembrance of his past crimes, or the despair at quitting life, forces from him such groans of anguish. At last, in the midst of these melancholy exertions, his eyes fix, his features change, his countenance becomes disfigured, his livid lips convulsively separate; his whole frame quivers; and, by this last effort, his unfortunate soul tears itself reluctantly from that body of clay, falls into the hands of its God, and finds itself alone at the foot of the awful tribunal.

[blocks in formation]

WHEN our Redeemer expired on the cross, sympathising nature was convulsed! The sun was suddenly enveloped in midnight darkness, and confusion reigned! But I shall pass these terrific events, in order to lead your attention to more important objects. The cross erected on Mount Calvary was the standard of victory, to which even Thought was to be led captive, and before which Imaginations were to be cast down; that is to say, human wisdom and sceptic reluctance. No voice sublime was heard sounding from a thunder-bearing cloud, as of old from the heights of Sinai! No approach was observed of that formidable Majesty, before whom the mountains melt as wax! Where, where was the warlike preparation of that power, which was to subdue the world? See the whole artillery collected on Mount Calvary-in the exhibition of a cross, of an agonising Sufferer, and a crown of thorns.

Religious truth was exiled from the earth, and idolatry sat brooding over the moral world. The Egyptians, the fathers of philosophy; the Grecians, the inventors of the fine arts; the Romans, the conquerors of the universe; were all unfortunately celebrated for the perversion of religious worship,-for the gross errors they admitted into their belief, and the indignities they offered to the true religion. Minerals, vegetables, animals, the elements, became objects of adoration; even abstract visionary forms, such as fevers and distempers, received the honours of deification; and to the most infamous vices, and dissolute passions, altars were erected. The world, which God had made to manifest His power, seemed to have become a temple of idols, where every thing was god-but God Himself!

The mystery of the crucifixion was the remedy the Almighty ordained for this universal idolatry. He knew the mind of man, and knew that it was not by reasoning that an error must be destroyed, which reasoning had not established. Idolatry prevailed by the suppression of reason; by suffering the senses to predominate, which are apt to clothe everything with the qualities with which they are affected. Men gave the Divinity their own figure, and attributed to Him their vices and passions. Reasoning had no share in so brutal an error, it was a subversion of reason, a delirium, a phrensy. Argue with a phrenetic person, you do but the more provoke him, and render the distemper incurable. Neither will reasoning cure the delirium of idolatry. What has learned

antiquity gained by her elaborate discourses? her reasonings so artfully framed? Did Plato, with that eloquence which was styled divine, overthrow one single altar where monstrous divinities were worshiped?

Experience hath shown, that the overthrow of idolatry could not be the work of reason alone. Far from committing to human wisdom the cure of such a malady, God completed its confusion by the mystery of the Cross. Idolatry (if rightly understood) took its rise from that profound selfattachment inherent in our nature. Thus it was that the Pagan mythology teemed with deities, who were subject to human passions, weaknesses, and vices. When the mysterious Cross displayed to the world an agonising Redeemer, incredulity exclaimed, it was foolishness! But the darkening sun, nature convulsed, the dead arising from their graves, said, it was wisdom!

VII.- -ON DEATH.-Blair.

CHILDREN of men! it is well known to you that you are a mortal race. Death is the law of your nature, the tribute of your being, the debt which all are bound to pay. On these terms you received life-that you should be ready to give it up, when Providence calls you to make room for others; who, in like manner, when their time is come, shall follow you. He who is unwilling to submit to death, when heaven decrees it, deserves not to have lived. You might as reasonably complain that you did not live before the time appointed for your coming into the world, as lament that you are not to live longer, when the period of your quitting it is arrived. What Divine Providence hath made necessary, human prudence ought to comply with cheerfully. Submit, at any rate, you must; and is it not better to follow of your own accord, than to be dragged reluctantly and by force? What privilege have you to plead, or what reason to urge, why you should possess an exemption from the common doom? All things around you are mortal and perishing. Cities, states, and empires, have their periods set. The proudest monuments of human art moulder into dust. Even the works of nature wax

old and decay.

In the midst of this universal tendency to change, could you expect that, to your frame alone, a permanent duratior should be given? All who have gone before you have submitted to the stroke of death. All who come after you shall

undergo the same fate. The great and the good, the prince and the peasant, the renowned and the obscure, travel alike the road which leads to the grave. At the moment when you expire, thousands throughout the world shall, with you, be yielding up their breath. Can that be held to be a great calamity, which is common to you, with every thing that lives on earth? which is an event as much according to the course of nature, as it is that leaves should fall in autumn, or that fruit should drop from the tree when it is fully ripe?

The pain of death cannot be very long, and is probably less severe than what you have at other times experienced. The pomp of death is more terrifying than death itself. It is to the weakness of our imagination that it owes its chief of power dejecting the spirits; for, when the force of the mind is roused, there are few passions in our nature that have not been able to overcome the fear of death. Honour has defied death; Love has despised it; Shame has rushed upon it; Revenge has disregarded it; Grief has, a thousand times, wished for its approach. Is it not strange that Reason and Virtue cannot give strength to surmount that fear, which, even in feeble minds, so many passions have conquered? What inconsistency is there in complaining so much of the evils of life, and being at the same time so afraid of what is to terminate them all! Who can tell whether his future life might not teem with disasters and miseries, as yet unknown, were it to be prolonged according to his wish?

At any rate, is it desirable to draw life out to the last dregs, and to wait till old age pour upon you its whole store of diseases and sorrows? You lament that you are to die; but, did you view your situation properly, you would have much greater cause to lament, if you were chained to this life for two or three hundred years, without possibility of release. Expect, therefore, calmly, that which is natural in itself, and which must be fit,-because it is the appointment of heaven! Perform your duty as a good subject to the Deity, during the time allotted to you; and rejoice that a period is fixed for your dismission from the present warfare. Remember, that a slavish dread of death destroys all the comfort of that life which you seek to preserve. Better to undergo the stroke of death at once, than to live in perpetual misery from the fear of dying.

« ПретходнаНастави »