Part 44

_Mr. Roscoe._--"This reminds me of an admirable discourse I heard my brother's Curate preach on the words of the apostle John: 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is' (1 John iii. 2). 'You are now living,' he said, when addressing the pious part of his audience, 'in a world of sin and sorrow; and you are living in disguise, and are not known to the persons amongst whom you live, and with whom you are engaged in the commerce of life. They may know your person, your name, your residence, your relative connections, and your distinctive religious denomination, but they have no knowledge, or even conception, of your elevated rank in relation to the wondrous beings of the great unknown world. This should neither astonish nor mortify you; for when Jesus Christ sojourned on earth, even though he was the brightness of his Father's glory--even though stormy winds and raging waves, disease, and death, and infernal spirits acknowledged the absolute supremacy of his dominion over them--yet the men of the world knew him not. They knew him as Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the carpenter; they knew him as a madman, an impostor, and a blasphemer; but they knew him not as the Son of God in the human form, come to seek and to save them that are lost. If, then, they knew him not who presented such luminous signs of his celestial dignity and glory, how can you expect the world over to look on you as the sons of God, living through the period of your minority in disguise, soon to have your relative dignity chronicled in the records of immortality?'"

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"That passage proves that our identity is preserved amidst all the changes we have undergone, or may yet undergo--identically the same persons after our conversion as we were before our conversion, though vastly different; and, in a glorified state, we shall be identically the same persons we are now, but then we shall be made exactly like the Son of God. Our Lord, when administering consolation to Martha of Bethany, said: 'And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?' (John xi. 26). There is nothing in this passage which requires its restriction to the singular occasion of its utterance; it announces an absolute fact, universally applicable to our Lord's disciples. There may be a momentary suspension of life, attended by a sudden yet momentary collapse of the self-conscious faculty, when the great spirit is in the act of removing from her material tabernacle, to enter the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens: but it is only the suspension, it is not the extinction of life; and the self-conscious faculty will soon awake, and bear an undisputed testimony to the personal identity of the soul. Yes, and there is to me a sublime and thrilling interest in the belief, that I shall be myself again when I awake in the Divine likeness, with my own intellect, with my own imagination, with my own heart, and with my own memory laden with its varied accumulations--identically the same person, yet transformed into a pure and spotless being--and that, after the lapse of millions of ages, I shall be identically the same being I am now; the same being I was in the days of childhood and of youth, of early and of later manhood; the same as I was when living amidst the attractions of home and the charms of more extended social intimacies; the same as when I was enduring the privations and sorrows of earth, encountering its conflicts and its trials; and the same as when I stood trembling on the narrow isthmus of time, fearing to slip the cable of life, and launch into eternity."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"But while identity is preserved, we shall exist in some new form, as we shall then be disembodied; shall _see_ ourselves and each other; and be endowed also with some new faculties to fit us for our high destiny, its felicities and employments."

_Mr. Lewellin._--"We shall, undoubtedly, be as fitted to engage in all the exercises of the celestial world, and to intermingle, with graceful ease, in all its varied associations and enjoyments, as we should be if we had sprung up into being there, like the angels of God. But yet I do not think it necessarily follows that we shall have any new mental facilities communicated to us; the faculties which we shall then require may even now be lying dormant in the soul, waiting merely for the act of disembodiment to come forth in full development and activity."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"That's an idea I have long entertained, for experience proves that the spirit of man, even now, when it makes its escape from the control of the senses, as in dreaming, does occasionally give palpable indications of the possession of faculties far more active and vigorous than is ordinarily displayed when under their dominion; doing, in fact, when asleep, what cannot be done when awake. I know an intelligent man, on whose testimony I can place absolute dependence, who has told me more than once, that though unable, when awake, to construct a stanza, yet, after reading Milton, or Thomson, or Pope, he has when asleep composed poetical pieces with great ease and rapidity. And I am quite sure that many of the sermons I have preached when asleep have far surpassed anything I could produce when awake. These facts, and I could increase their number, are to me satisfactory indications that there are latent faculties in embryo, lying dormant in the wondrous spirit of man, which, when fully developed and brought into action (as they will be when the spirit is disembodied), will be found admirably adapted to the exercises of our future economy of existence. Without requiring any new mental creation, we shall feel as much at ease and at home in heaven as though we had never lived elsewhere."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"Does the apostle, by this expression, '_When he shall appear_,' refer to the appearance of Jesus Christ on the morning of the general resurrection, preparatory to the final judgment."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"Some think he does, but I doubt it. When he makes his grand appearance, preparatory to the final judgment, he will be seen coming in the clouds, and all the holy angels with him; and at the blast of the archangel's trumpet, the pious dead will spring up into life, and, together with the pious who may be living at this great crisis, will undergo a change in their physical formation and appearance; the natural body will become a spiritual body, bearing the image of the heavenly, as distinctly as they bore, when living on earth, the image of the earthy. But _this_ wonderful process of coming up into newness of life, issuing in a physical transformation from a natural to a spiritual body, is effected by the action of _power_. 'For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself' (Phil. iii. 20, 21). What a sublimely grand spectacle! every one of the august family of God will be arrayed in a body resembling the glorified body of Jesus Christ! But the assimilation to which the words of John refer, is produced by vision. We shall be _like_ him when we _see_ him; and the assimilation will take place immediately on seeing him, and in consequence of seeing him; and we shall see him the moment we die, for to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord."

_Mrs. Stevens._--"There is something so strange and appalling in death and in dying, and in having to pass, and pass alone, into the great world of spirits, that I am not surprised by the shuddering dread which some feel when anticipating it; and nothing can allay this fearful commotion, but a firm belief in the watchful eye and ever-active presence of our kind and compassionate Saviour. 'I will come again and receive you to myself,' is the sweet promise which reduces agitation to calmness, and inspires confidence and joy in the moment of the final departure from earth."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"We cannot tell on what living being here on earth any of us will cast the last look of recognition and affection; but the first Being we shall see on entering the great unknown world will be Jesus Christ, waiting to receive us to himself as his own, that we may be glorified together. This we believe, and this we know; and therefore we may rejoice with joy unspeakable."

_Miss Roscoe._--"Then it would be more in harmony with the spirit of our faith, to cherish a desire to depart to see our Lord, than to wish to live here always away from him."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"I was very much pleased with the following paragraph of the discourse which I heard the Curate deliver, from the text on which you have just been speaking:--'You are following, my brethren, no cunningly-devised fable, as infidelity asserts, when you enter the mystic inclosure of Divine revelation, and look with the piercing eye of faith on the glory to be revealed in you, because the objects of your belief are not inventions, but realities within the range of your actual knowledge. You know in whom you believe; and you know that he has effected in you the preparatory spiritual change which is to issue in the grand result of your eternal salvation. You know he has convinced you, by his Holy Spirit, of the evil of sin; that he has produced in you the feeling of deep self-humiliation and contrition; that he has drawn you to himself, to believe and trust in him; and that he has at times manifested himself to you as he does not unto the world, giving you peace and joy in believing. These emotions of contrition and self-humiliation, of peace and of joy, you know are genuine emotions; not self-originated, nor yet produced by the action of any mere human agency; and you know that they are the first spiritual operations in the new formation of your soul, which is to terminate in a perfect likeness to Jesus Christ, when you see him as he is.'"

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I have in my congregation a very simple-hearted, godly man, who is in the service of an avowed sceptic; and one day, when he was at work, his master said to him, 'John, you don't know that what you believe about another world is true.'--'And you, master, don't know that it is untrue.'--'I believe, John, that the visions of future glory which now flit so vividly before your imagination, will turn out at last to be deceptions--mere fancy pictures; for when you are dead you will go out of existence.'--'I have heard you say that before, master; and if it should be so, I shall never know it; but there is _one thing_ which I think I know.'--'And what's that, John?'--'Why, master, it is just this. If you were dying--and die you must--you would rather have the bright visions of immortality and eternal life flitting before your imagination, than die as infidels generally do, in dread uncertainty, or in the agony of self-reproach for neglecting the great salvation. I am safe against both these terrible evils, but you stand exposed to them; and it will very soon be decided which is right and which is wrong--you or I. We are both near our journey's end; I am seventy-two, and I believe, master, you are a few years older. We shall soon know what our end is to be. I have no fear, except for you, master.'"

_Mr. Stevens._--"These plain godly people very often, by their homespun arguments and their shrewd remarks, stagger and confound even the most subtile and scornful infidels."

_Mr. Lewellin._--"They often silence them."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I don't think we have many avowed infidels in Broadhurst, though, alas! we have too many who are theoretical believers, but practical unbelievers."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"There are a great many in my brother's parish, and yet they generally attend church once on the Sabbath. They are very free in their remarks on his conversion, which, they say, is passing from one theological absurdity to another; the Curate, in their estimation, is a very amiable and zealous fanatic. At the conclusion of the sermon from which I have given you one extract, he made this striking appeal to them, and he was kind enough to give me a copy of it:--

"'I will now admit, for the sake of the question I have to propose, that what we believe is fictitious; that there is, in fact, no future state of existence for man; no such visions of glory for us to behold when we pass out of life; and no such scenes of bliss for us to enjoy as I have now been endeavouring to portray. But suppose we really believe that there are, I appeal to you whether our faith does not tend to sustain our spirits when suffering under the ills of life; and whether we have not something in prospect, which is an adequate compensation for the anticipated loss of life and all its possessions. Is it nothing to _a noble mind_, rich in the stores of knowledge, and still richer in the anticipations of hope--endowed with faculties too valuable to be annihilated without a pang of regret keener than ever pierced the heart of sorrow--to believe that he is superior in the duration of his being to the beasts of the field and the creeping things of the earth; that he is superior to the trees of the wood, the shrubs of the lawn, and the flowers of the garden; ordained to live after they have outlived their life, and to live on for ever in dignity and in happiness? Take the case of a _poor believer_, who has to sustain the hardships and privations of life, often not knowing how to get the next meal for himself and family, or where to get the means of protecting his scanty household property against the distraints of his landlord. Is it nothing to him to be able to look forward to the coming of a period when he shall be in the possession of an inheritance uncorrupted, undefiled, and that will never fade away? Take the case of one who has had to weather all through life the storms of adversity; to stand exposed to the blasts of calumny, reproach, and wrongful testimony; who has had to suffer, like the apostle of the Gentiles, the peril of the deep, the peril of the wilderness, and the more galling peril of false brethren. Is it nothing for such a man of accumulative trials, to be able to believe that, after a few more storms have agitated the waters of life, and after a few more reproaches have assailed his reputation, he shall enter into the port of eternal safety, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are for ever at rest? Or take the case of one who has been a _living martyr_ to physical afflictions and sufferings; who has scarcely ever breathed the breath of uncontaminated health, though she has wandered from one salubrious place to another, to catch its invigorating inhaling; whose food has been tasteless, and to whom restless nights and days of weariness and pain have been appointed; and whose ethereal spirit has been held in a state of langour and depression by the mysterious action of disease on her nervous sensibilities. Is it nothing to such a sufferer to believe that, after a few more months or years of agonizing and torturous endurance, the dark night of her mourning will pass away in the dawn of the bright and serene morning of immortality, whose sun will rise without a cloud, never to go down or pass under a momentary eclipse?

"'Why, then, I ask the infidel, will you attempt to destroy or disturb the faith of such believers? Why not let each one go daily, in the quietness of his spirit, to draw the waters of healing, of refreshment, and invigoration from this perennial well, which he has found in the wilderness? Why attempt to throw a dark and impenetrable veil over the enchanting scenes which the opening heavens partially disclose, and on which he gazes in joyous hope and in ecstasy of longing? Why not let him remain, under what you call the spell of his delusion, when it entails on you no loss or suffering, but which imparts to him such holy and sublime enjoyments? Suppose it be--what you tell him it is--all a delusion; yet if he die under its power he will never know it; why not, then, let him die in peace? surely his peaceful death can occasion you no bitter regret. Why try to rouse him out of his elysian reverie, simply to let him know that death is coming to deprive him of all his sublime anticipations, and slip him out of existence? What gratification can success in such a species of destructive labour afford you? You are not the daring highway robber, who plunders another to enrich himself; you are the wanton or the malignant incendiary, who devastates that you may revel in the irreparable losses which you inflict on others, with no prospect of personal advantage. But suppose that what you reject as fanciful and fabulous, _should turn out at last to be a reality_, then your doom is certain and truly awful; you will pass into the eternal world alone, a lost spirit, to perish, yet retaining your consciousness for ever. And you cannot know that it is not a reality, unless you can acquire all knowledge, and this you cannot do while you live. You must die to know that there is no hereafter; and if you survive your own death, and live on in some intermediate state, you must visit every nook and corner of the vast universe before you can know that there is no heaven and no hell. Why, then, proudly arrogate to yourself the possession of knowledge which you know that it is impossible for you to acquire? and why, while unable to decide against the reality of what we believe, are you not in terror lest you should be labouring under a criminal self-deception? If there be another world, which you cannot disprove, with what horror will your spirit, when disembodied, enter it, to meet her fearful and merited doom, to dwell for ever amongst the devil and his angels?

"'The efforts which you are now making to induce others to reject the Christian faith as an imposition on human credulity, will receive AT LAST a recompense; and what will that be?--their bitterest curses, which will be an aggravation to your misery, far beyond the capability of human conception. There, in the eternal world, you will be a lost spirit, assailed by other lost spirits, reproaching you as the prime agent in effecting their ruin for ever; and with emotions of deadly hatred, and in terms of malignant accusation, corresponding with the awful intensity of their mental suffering. Regret then, on their account or on your own, will be useless; for could you shed as many tears of sorrow, as there have been dew-drops since the birth of creation; could you heave as many sighs and groans, as there have been pulsations of pain since the first child of sorrow felt the bitterness of grief; and could you offer as many petitions for mercy, as there have been lamentations of woe since Esau endured the anguish of unavailing repentance, it would be of no use. Once lost, by dying in your sins, there is no possibility of recovery or escape. When, then, the final issue is so tremendously awful, the preparatory anxiety and caution to avoid it cannot be too scrupulous or guarded; but to advert to it with a spirit of levity, or to deem it too insignificant and unimportant to demand the most solemn attention, is to give decisive evidence that you have prematurely fitted yourselves for destruction, and are ripe for hell, before the reaper is in readiness to put in the sickle of death to cut you down.'"

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"This, Sir, must have been a most impressive sermon. What effect did it appear to produce?"

_Mr. Roscoe._--"The congregation listened to it with profound attention; and some were subdued; they quailed under it."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"If, Sir, a few years since, you had seen and heard in some night vision, what you have now seen and heard under the broad daylight of positive reality, you would have thought, when awakening out of your sleep, that you had witnessed something of what God could do, but you could not have anticipated its actual occurrence."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"That's very true, Sir; I wish you would go, and see and judge for yourself."

_Miss Roscoe._--"Yes, do, Sir; and, if you will permit me, I will accompany you. It is the Lord's doing, and it is a very choice specimen of the Divine workmanship."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I should like to go, but my age and infirmities forbid it. I must be contented to look at the descriptive sketching of this sublime manifestation of the power and the grace of God; it is the triumph of evangelical truth over the lifeless formalism of Tractarian arrogance and delusion."

"Our prayers," said Miss Roscoe, "are answered; my dear uncle and aunt are right at last."

THE QUAKERESS.

On returning from my protracted visit to Fairmount, and resuming my pastoral labours, I was gratified by the eager welcome I received from the people of my charge. During my absence the pulpit had been regularly supplied by a succession of ministers of various religious denominations--men who had never subscribed to an act of uniformity imposed by human legislation, but yet, in all their public ministrations, they closely adhered to _the unity of the faith_, because they received the Bible as the rule of their religious belief and practice. On looking around my congregation, I missed a venerable elder and several others, who had gone the way of all flesh; also, a few individuals and families, who had removed to other localities. Yet I was pleased to find that there was no perceptible decrease in numbers, and to learn that the harmony of my flock had not been in any way disturbed by strife and contention.