Part 10

Thwarted enthusiasm naturally generates impious petulance. If we encumber the Providence of God with unwarranted expectations, it will be difficult not so to murmur under disappointment as those do who think themselves defrauded of their right. In truth, amidst the sharpness of sudden calamity, or the pressure of continued adversity, the most sane minds are tempted to indulge repinings which reason, not less than piety, utterly condemns. The imputation of defective wisdom, or justice, or goodness, to the Being of whom we can form no notion apart from the idea of absolute knowledge, rectitude, and benevolence, is too absurd to need a formal refutation; and yet how often does it survive all the rebukes of good sense and religion! So egregious an error could not find a moment's lodgment in the heart, if it did not meet a surface of adhesion where presumption has been torn away. The exaggerations of self-love not quelled, but rather inflated by an enthusiastic piety, inspire feelings of personal importance so enormous, that even the infinitude of the divine attributes is made to shrink down to the measure of comparison with man. When illusions such as these are rent and scattered, how pitiable is the conscious destitution and meanness of the denuded spirit! with how cruel a shock does it fall back upon its true place in the vast system of providence!

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Whoever entertains, as every Christian ought, a strong and consoling belief of the doctrine of a Particular Providence, which cares for the welfare of each, should not forget to connect with that belief some general notions, at least, of that system of Universal Providence which secures individual interests, consistently with the well-being of the whole. Such notions, though very defective, or even in part erroneous, may serve first to check presumption, and then to impose silence upon those murmurs which are its offspring.

A law of subordination manifestly pervades that part of the government of God with which we are acquainted, and may fairly be supposed to prevail elsewhere. Lesser interests are the component parts of greater; and so closely are the individual fates of the human family interwoven, that each member, however insignificant he may seem, sustains a real relationship of influence to the community. The lot of each must therefore be shapen by reasons drawn from many, and often from remote quarters. Yet in effecting this complex combination of parts, infinite wisdom prevents any clashing of the lesser with the larger movements; and we may feel assured that, on the grounds either of mere equity or of beneficence, the dispensations of Providence are as compactly perfect towards each individual of mankind as if he were the sole inhabitant of an only world. If Heaven, in its condescension, were to implead at the bar of human reason, and set forth the motives of its dealings towards this man or that, these motives might, no doubt, be alleged and justified in every particular, without making any reference to the intermingled interests of other men: and it might be shown that, although certain events were in fact followed by consequences much more important to others than to the individual immediately affected, yet they did in the fullest sense belong to the personal discipline of the individual, and must have taken place irrespectively of those foreign consequences.

This perfect fitting and finishing of the machinery of Providence to individual interests, must be premised; yet it is not less true that, in almost every event of life, the remote consequences vastly outweigh the proximate, in actual amount of importance. Every man prospers, or is overthrown, lives, or dies, not for himself; but that he may sustain those around him, or that he may give them place; and who shall attempt to measure the circle within which are comprised these extensive dependences? On principles even of mathematical calculation, each individual of the human family may be demonstrated to hold in his hand the centre lines of an interminable web-work, on which are sustained the fortunes of multitudes of his successors. These implicated consequences, if summed together, make up therefore a weight of human weal or woe that is reflected back with an incalculable momentum upon the lot of each. Every one is then bound to remember that the personal sufferings or peculiar vicissitudes or toils through which he is called to pass, are to be estimated and explained only in an immeasurably small proportion if his single welfare is regarded; while their full price and value are not to be computed unless the drops of the morning dew could be numbered.

Immediate proof of that system of interminable connection which binds together the whole human family may be obtained by every one who will examine the several ingredients of his physical, intellectual, and social condition; for he will not find one of these circumstances of his lot that is not, in its substance or quality, directly an effect or consequence of the conduct, or character, or constitution of his progenitors, and of all with whom he has had to do; if _they_ had been other than they were, _he_ must also have been other than he is. And then our predecessors must, in like manner, trace the qualities of their being to theirs; thus the linking ascends to the common parents of all; and thus must it descend, still spreading as it goes, from the present to the last generation of the children of Adam.

Nor is this direct and obvious kind of influence the only one of which some plain indications are to be discerned; and without at all following the uncertain track of adventurous speculation, it may fairly be surmised that the same law of interminable connection, a law of moral gravitation, stretches far beyond the limits of the human family, and actually holds in union the great community of intelligent beings. Instances of connection immensely remote, and yet very real, might be adduced in abundance: the influence of history upon the character and conduct of successive generations is of this kind. Whatever imparts force or intensity to human motives, and by this means actually determines the course of life, may assuredly claim for itself the title and respect due to an efficient cause, and must be deemed to exert an impulsive power over the mind. Now the records of history, how long soever may have been the line of transmission which has brought them to our times, fraught as they are with instances applicable to all the occasions of real life, do thus, in a very perceptible degree, affect the sentiments and mould the characters of mankind; nor will any one speak slightingly of this species of causation who has compared the intellectual condition of nations rich in history with that of a people wholly destitute of the memorials of past ages. The story of the courage, or constancy, or wisdom of the men of a distant time becomes, in a greater or a less degree, a subsidiary cause of the conduct of the men of each succeeding generation. Thus the few individuals in every age to whom it has happened to live, and act, and speak under the focus of the speculum of history, did actually live, and labor, and suffer for the benefit of mankind in all future times; just as truly as a father toils for the advantage of his family. And if the whole amount of the influence which has in fact flowed from the example of the wise, the brave, and the good, could have been placed in prophetic vision before them, while in the midst of their arduous course, would not these worthies contentedly and gladly have purchased so immense a wealth of moral power at the price of their personal sufferings?

Here, then, as a plain matter of fact, is an instance of boundless causation, connecting certain individuals with myriads of their species, from age to age, and forever. It is an instance, we say, and not more: for the voice of history is but a preluding flourish to that voluminous revelation which shall be made, in the great day of consummation, of all that has been acted and suffered upon earth's surface. In that day, when the books of _universal history_ are opened and read, it shall doubtless be found that no particle has been lost of aught that might serve to authenticate the maxims of eternal wisdom, or to vindicate the righteous government of God. And all shall be written anew, as "with a pen of iron on the rock forever," and shall stand forth as an imperishable lesson of warning or incitement to after-comers on the theatre of existence.

Whatever degree of solidity may be attributed to considerations of this kind, they are at least sufficiently supported by analogies to give them a decided advantage over those petulant cavils wherewith we are prone to arraign the particular dispensations of Providence towards ourselves. Are such dispensations, when seen in small portions, mysterious and perplexing? How can they be otherwise if, in their completed measurements, they are to spread over the creation, and in their issues, to endure forever?

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The common phrase—"a mysterious dispensation of Providence," when used as most often it is, contains the very substance of enthusiasm; and yet, it must be confessed, of a venial enthusiasm; for the occasions which draw it forth are of a kind that may be admitted to palliate a hasty impropriety of language. To call any event that does not break in upon the known and established order of natural causes—mysterious, is virtually to assume a previous knowledge of the intentions of the Supreme Ruler; for it is to say that his proceedings have baffled our calculations; and in fact it is only when we have formed anticipations of what ought to have been the course of events that we are tempted by sudden reverses to employ so improperly this indefinite expression. All the dispensations of Divine Providence, taken together, may, with perfect propriety, be termed mysterious; since all alike are governed by reasons that are hidden and inscrutable: but it is the height of presumption so to designate some of them in distinction from others. For example; a man eminently gifted by nature for important and peculiar services, and trained to perform them by a long and arduous discipline, and now just entering upon the course of successful beneficence, and perhaps actually holding in his hand the welfare of a family or a province, or an empire, is suddenly smitten to the earth by disease or accident. Sad ruin of a rare machinery of intellectual and moral power! But while the thoughtless may deplore for an hour the irreparable loss they have sustained, the thoughtful few muse rather than weep; and in order to conceal from themselves the irreverence of their own repinings, exclaim—'How mysterious are the ways of heaven!' Yes; but in the present instance, what is mysterious? Not that human life should at all periods be liable to disease, or the human frame be always vulnerable; for these are conditions inseparable from the present constitution of our nature; and it is clear that nothing less than a perpetual miracle could exempt any one class of mankind from the common contingencies of physical life. The supposition of any such constant and manifest interposition, rendering a certain description of persons intactible by harm; would be impious as well as absurd. Nothing could suggest to a sane mind an idea of this sort, if it did not gain admittance in the train of those eager forecastings of the ways of God in which persons much addicted to religious meditation are prone to indulge, and which, though they may afford pleasure for a moment, are usually purchased at the cost of relapses into gloomy, or worse than gloomy discontents.

There is a striking incongruity in the fact that the propensity to apply the equivocal term, mysterious, to sudden and afflictive events, like the one just specified, is indulged almost exclusively by the very persons whose professed principles furnish them with a sufficient explanation of such dispensations. If the present state were thought to comprise the beginning and the end of the human system, and if, at the same time, this system be attributed to the Supreme Intelligence, then indeed the prodigious waste and destruction which is continually taking place, not only of the germs of life, but of the rarest and of the most excellent specimens of divine art, is a solecism that must baffle every attempt at explanation. Let then the deist, who knows of nothing beyond death, talk of the mysteries of Providence; but let not the Christian, who is taught to think little of the present, and much of the future, use language of this sort.

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A popular misunderstanding of the language of Scripture relative to the future state, has, perhaps, had great influence in enhancing the gloom and perplexity with which Christians are wont to think and speak of sudden and afflictive visitations of Providence.

Heaven—the ultimate and perfected condition of human nature, is thought of amidst the toils of life, as an elysium of quiescent bliss, exempt, if not from action, at least from the necessity of action. Meanwhile every one feels that the ruling tendency and the uniform intention of all the arrangements of the present state, and of almost all its casualties, is to generate and to cherish habits of strenuous exertion. Inertness, not less than vice, stamps upon its victim the seal of perdition. The whole order of nature, and all the institutions of society, and the ordinary course of events, and the explicit will of God, as declared in his word, concur in opposing that propensity to rest which belongs to the human mind, and combine to necessitate submission to the hard, yet salutary conditions under which alone the most extreme evils may be held in abeyance, and any degree of happiness enjoyed. A task and duty is to be fulfilled, in discharging which the want of energy is punished even more immediately and more severely than the want of virtuous motives.

Here, then, is visible a great and serious incongruity between matter of fact, and the common anticipations of the future state: it deserves inquiry, therefore, whether these anticipations are really founded on the evidence of Scripture; or whether they are not rather the mere suggestions of a sickly spiritual luxuriousness. This is not the place for pursuing such an inquiry; but it may be observed, in passing, that those glimpses of the supernal world which we catch from the Scriptures have in them, certainly, quite as much of the character of history as of poetry, and impart the idea—not that there is less of business in heaven than on earth, but more. Unquestionably, the felicity of those beings of a higher order, to whose agency frequent allusions are made by the inspired writers, is not incompatible with the assiduities of a strenuous ministry, to be discharged, according to the best ability of each, in actual and arduous contention with formidable, and perhaps sometimes successful opposition. A poetic notion of angelic agency, having in it nothing substantial, nothing necessary, nothing difficult, and which consists only in an unreal show of action and movement, and in which the result would be precisely the same apart from the accompaniment of a swarm of butterfly youths, must be spurned by reason, as it is unwarranted by Scripture. Scripture does not affirm or imply that the plenitude of divine power is at all in more immediate exercise in the higher world than in this: on the contrary, the revelation so distinctly made of a countless array of intelligent and vigorous agents, designated usually by an epithet of martial signification, precludes such an idea. Why a commission of subalterns? why an attendance of celestials upon the flight of the bolt of omnipotence? That bolt, when actually flung, needs no coadjutor!

But if there be a real and necessary, not merely a shadowy agency in heaven as well as on earth; and if human nature is destined to act its part in such an economy, then its constitution, and the severe training it undergoes, are at once explained; and then, also, the removal of individuals in the very prime of their fitness for useful labor ceases to be impenetrably mysterious. This excellent mechanism of matter and mind, which, beyond any other of his works, declares the wisdom of the Creator, and which, under his guidance, is now passing the season of its first preparation, shall stand up anew from the dust of dissolution, and then, with freshened powers, and with a store of hard-earned practical wisdom for its guidance, shall essay new labors—we say not perplexities and perils—in the service of God, who by such instruments chooses to accomplish his designs of beneficence. That so prodigious a waste of the highest qualities should take place as is implied in the notions which many Christians entertain of the future state, is indeed hard to imagine. The mind of man, formed as it is to be more tenacious of its active habits than even of its moral dispositions, is, in the present state, trained (often at an immense cost of suffering) to the exercise of skill, of forethought, of courage, of patience; and ought it not to be inferred, unless positive evidence contradicts the supposition, that this system of education bears some relation of fitness to the state for which it is an initiation? Shall not the very same qualities which here are so sedulously fashioned and finished, be actually needed and used in that future world of perfection? Surely the idea is inadmissible that an instrument wrought up, at so much expense, to a polished fitness for service, is destined to be suspended forever on the palace walls of heaven, as a glittering bauble, no more to make proof of its temper!

A pious, but needless jealousy, lest the honor due to him "who worketh all in all" should be in any degree compromised, has perhaps had influence in concealing from the eyes of Christians the importance attributed in the Scriptures to subordinate agency; and thus, by a natural consequence, has impoverished and enfeebled our ideas of the heavenly state. But assuredly it is only while encompassed by the dimness and errors of the present life that there can be any danger of attributing to the creature the glory due to the Creator. When once with open eye that "excellent glory" has been contemplated, then shall it be understood that the divine wisdom is incomparably more honored by the skilful and faithful performances, and by the cheerful toils of agents who have been fashioned and fitted for service, than it could be by the bare exertions of irresistible power: and then, when the absolute dependence of creatures is thoroughly felt, may the beautiful orders of the heavenly hierarchy—rising, and still rising towards perfection—be seen and admired without hazard of forgetting him who alone is absolutely perfect, and who is the only fountain and first cause of whatever is excellent.

The Scriptures do indeed most explicitly declare, not only that virtue will be inamissible in heaven, but that its happiness will be unalloyed by fear, or pain, or want. But the mental associations formed in the present state make it so difficult to disjoin the idea of suffering and of sorrow from that of labor, and of arduous and difficult achievement, that we are prone to exclude action, as well as pain, from our idea of the future blessedness. Yet assuredly these notions may be separated; and if it be possible to imagine a perfect freedom from selfish solicitudes, a perfect acquiescence in the will, and a perfect confidence in the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, then also may we conceive of toils without sadness, of perplexities without perturbations, and of difficult or perilous service, without despondency or fear. The true felicity of beings furnished with moral sensibilities, must consist in the full play of the emotions of love, fixed on the centre of good; and this kind of happiness is unquestionably compatible with any external condition not positively painful: perhaps even another step might be taken; but our argument does not need it. Yet it should be remembered, that, in many signal and well-attested instances the fervor of the religious affections has almost or entirely obliterated the consciousness of physical suffering, and has proved its power to vanquish every inferior emotion, and to fill the heart with heaven, even amid the utmost intensities of pain. Much more, then, may these affections, when freed from every shackle, when invigorated by an assured possession of endless life, and when heightened by the immediate vision of the supreme excellence, yield a fulness of joy, consistently with many vicissitudes of external position.

Considerations such as these, if at all borne out by evidence of Scripture, may properly have place in connection with the topic of this section; for it is evident that the harassing perplexities which arise from the present dispensations of Providence might be greatly relieved by habitually entertaining anticipations of the future state somewhat less imbecile and luxurious than those commonly admitted by Christians.

SECTION VII.

ENTHUSIASM OF BENEFICENCE.

To say that the principle of disinterested benevolence had never been known among men before the publication of Christianity would be an exaggeration;—an exaggeration very similar to that of affirming that the doctrine of immortality was new to mankind when taught by our Lord. In truth, the one had, in every age, been imperfectly practised, and the other dimly supposed; yet neither the one principle nor the other existed in sufficient strength to be the source of any very substantial benefit to mankind. But Christ, while he emphatically "brought life and immortality to light," and so claimed to be the Author of hope for man, did also with such effect lay the hand of his healing power upon the human heart, long palsied by sensualities and selfishness, that it has ever since shed forth a fountain of active kindness, largely available for the relief of want and misery.

As a matter of history, unquestionable and conspicuous, Christianity has, in every age, fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and redeemed the captive, and visited the sick. It has put to shame the atrocities of the ancient popular amusements, and has annihilated sanguinary rites, and has brought slavery into disesteem and disuse, and has abolished excruciating punishments: it has even softened the ferocity of war; and, in a word, is seen constantly at work, edging away oppressions, and moving on towards the perfect triumph which avowedly it meditates—that of removing from the earth every woe which the inconsideration, or the selfishness, or the malignancy of man inflicts upon his fellows.