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 LIFE THOUGHTS.
 
 Printed by Ballantyne ^ Company^ Edinburgh.
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS 
 
 Rev. W. MORLEY PUNSHON, M.A. 
 
 TWELFTH THOUSAND. 
 
 W. P. NIMMO, EDINBURGH & GLASGOW. 
 SIMPKIN & MARSHALL, LONDON.
 
 Ardent admiration for Mr Punshon has 
 induced me to compile this volume, which 
 consists of extracts from the " Note-books" 
 of three of his hearers. The facility of illus- 
 tration manifested is marvellous. Every 
 page is covered with sentences full of hfe, 
 rich, strong, deep, beautiful. 
 
 May the Divine blessing attend an 
 earnest and humble effort to promote the 
 comfort and happiness of the people of 
 God! 
 
 Isabella.
 
 ' Oh ? who would not a champion bo, 
 In tliis the lordlier chivalry? 
 Uprouse ye now, brave brother band, 
 "With honest heart and working hand. 
 We arc but few, toil-tried, but true. 
 Anil licails beat hi^^li to dare and do ; 
 Oil I there be lliose that ache to sec 
 The day-dawn of our victory I 
 Eyes full of heart-break with us plead. 
 And watchers weep, and martyrs b!ccd ; 
 Work, brntlicrs, work I work, hand and brs 
 We'll win the Roldcn age again. 
 And love's millennial morn sliall rise, 
 In hajipy hearts and blessed eyes ; 
 We will, we will brave champions be, 
 la this Uic lordlier chivalry.''
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 « strength and Peace:' 
 
 See the labourer, whom the morninj:^ calls 
 from slumber, hastening to the cheerful fields, 
 where the dew has freshly glittered and the 
 lark has newly sung. What needs he for the 
 work which waits his ready hand ? Surely 
 strength to do it — the flexile muscle, the 
 strong, obedient sinew. See him again at 
 the eventide, when the sun is liberal to th" 
 western clouds, and throws them largess of 
 glory. See how, to greet his homeward steps, 
 little feet are pattering from under the jas- 
 mined thatch, and at the garden gate there 
 is great mystery and clapping of hands ; while 
 from the inner room there flashes out upon 
 the twilight a loving, wifely smile. What is 
 his fitting blessing just then 1 — what the en-
 
 8 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 dowment which seems properly to belong to 
 that season ? Surely peace. Nothing to 
 corrode, distract, alarm ; a tranquil spirit, 
 around which slumber draws, as the cool, 
 quiet shadows draw around the outside 
 world. 
 
 " He is not dead, but skepeth^'' 
 
 An awful change passes upon one we love. 
 He looks pale and motionless. We see not 
 the glances of his eye, we hear not the music 
 of his voice ; and, as he lies stretched and 
 breathless upon the couch of his slumbers, it 
 is very difficult to believe that he is not dead. 
 But "he is not dead, but sleepeth." IMourner, 
 canst thou credit it ? Orphan, " believest thou 
 this ?" Bereaved one, is there no chord in 
 thy stricken heart which trembles responsive 
 to the tone ? " He is not dead, but sleepeth." 
 His life is with him yet, as warm, as young, 
 as energetic as in days gone by, only it is 
 hiddeii. What an encouraging thought ! Let 
 it still your throbbing hearts. Let it hush 
 the tempest within you to a calm. We mourn 
 you not, ye departed ones, who have died in 
 the faith, for ye have entered into life.
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 9 
 
 " // doth not yet appear what we shall beV 
 
 What surprising discoveries will flash upon 
 MS when we enter the other world ! Oh, 
 brethren, when the change takes place upon 
 us — when we are launched into the bound- 
 less — when we take large surveys of the ways 
 and works of God — when His unveiled glory 
 shall blaze upon our raptured vision — how 
 shall we be lost in wonder ! How shall we 
 be ready even to doubt our own identity, and 
 express our astonishment in strains some- 
 what similar to these : — " Is this I, so lately 
 grovelling and earthly ? Oh, how changed ! 
 Is this the soul that was so racked with 
 anxiety, and dimmed with prejudice, and 
 stained with sin — the soul which was gulfed 
 beneath such waves of woe — the soul whose 
 every passion was its tempter, which was 
 harassed by an all-absorbing fear of never 
 reaching heaven. Now, how ennobling ! Not 
 a thought of evil molests it, not an enemy 
 causes it to fear. It has reached the haven. 
 It has crossed the Jordan ; and those waters,, 
 which on the brink looked so angry and 
 boisterous, now * ripple peacefully on the 
 eternal shore.' " 
 
 A 2
 
 10 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 The Apostle Peter. 
 
 In the frank outspokenness of Peter we 
 have very frequently occasion to rejoice. 
 There is a fulness of rich and interesting 
 truth in many of his statements upon which 
 we cannot fail profitably to dwell. They are 
 miniature gospels — gems of finest lustre, and, 
 like the diamond, made to cut as well as 
 shine. 
 
 The Greatness of Tj-ijles. 
 
 How solemn is the life that now is ! There 
 is greatness even in its trifles ; for they are 
 agencies, all of them, for good or evil. The 
 cairn is heaped high by each one flinging a 
 pebble ; and the living well is worn by the 
 diligent flow of the brook ; and the shoal that 
 has wrecked a navy is only the work of a 
 colony of woiTns. And in the moral world 
 surely there can be no trifles at all. Nourish 
 the unrecorded thought of ill, and it shall ripen 
 into the full deed by and by. Hug the sin 
 to the bosom, and cry, "Is it not a httle 
 one ?" and the one demon will go out only to 
 bring a brotherhood of seven home. The most
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. ii 
 
 blood-stained man of crime once prattled at 
 a mother's knee. Trifles ! They have fixed 
 a destiny, and have sealed a doom many a 
 time. 
 
 "Our snjjiciency is of GodP 
 
 Yes, brethren, it is a blessed verity — one of 
 the most encouraging, and one of the most 
 comprehensive truths in the Bible. The all- 
 sufficiency of God may be styled the essence 
 of all Christian experience ; it is the moral 
 which the Scriptures continually inculcate ; 
 it stands in the heraldry of heaven as the 
 motto on the. believer's arms. The all-suffi- 
 ciency of God gives strength to patience, 
 solidity to hope, constancy to endurance, 
 nerve and vitality to effort. The weakest 
 believer, with this sacred treasure, is enabled 
 to go steadily forward. 
 
 The Ministerial Call. 
 
 It is God, not man, that makes — not finds — 
 able ministers of the New Testament. The 
 tones of His voice are heard saying, " Son,
 
 12 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 go work to-day in my vineyard." And it is a 
 remarkable fact, and one which we should 
 never forget, that this voice is never heard in 
 a heart where there is no faith ; consequently, 
 the prime qualification for the Christian min- 
 istry is a heart which has been melted by 
 Christ's love. Without this all else is un- 
 avaihng ; the attainment of the most profound 
 and extensive knowledge, the grasp of the 
 loftiest and most searching intellect, the pos- 
 sessor of the most commanding eloquence, 
 the treasures of the most imperial fancy, — all 
 are useless, worse than useless, without the 
 converting grace of God, just as the trap- 
 pings which decorate the traitor only make 
 his treason the fouler, and they stand forth 
 as the weapons of more terrible danger, and 
 as the portent of more terrific and appalling 
 ruin. 
 
 "//> npJioldeth all things by the ivord of His 
 powerr 
 
 It is by this ever-breathing word constantly 
 in exercise that the sun shines, that the moon 
 walks in brightness, that the stars pursue 
 their courses in the sky. The clouds are
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 13 
 
 marshalled by His divine decree, and when 
 He uttereth His voice there is a multitude of 
 waters in the heavens. Reason looks at this 
 systematic and continuous regularity,, and 
 admires it, and refers it to the operation of 
 second causes. Piety looks through the com- 
 plications of the mechanism to the Hand 
 that formed it. The universe is to her but 
 as one vast transparency, through which she 
 can gaze on God. Her pathway and com- 
 munion are on the high places of creation. 
 There, far above all secondary and subordi- 
 nate agencies, she discovers the hidings of 
 His power. The symmetry of nature is to 
 her more beautiful because God has pro- 
 duced it. The deep harmonies of the systems 
 come more tunefully upon her ear, because 
 the hand of the Lord has awakened them. 
 
 " What though no real voice nor sound, 
 Amid the radiant orbs be found ? 
 In faith's quick ear they all rejoice. 
 And utter forth a noble voice ; 
 For ever singing as they shine, 
 He who sustains us is divine."
 
 •14 UFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 Human Eloqtience. 
 
 A mighty thing I know — a persuasive and 
 powerful thing I know, and, under certain 
 circumstances, it can accomphsh great re- 
 sults. It can charm a Herod, it can make a 
 Felix tremble, and it can almost persuade an 
 Agrippa to become a Christian ; but it can 
 do no more. I know that immense multi- 
 tudes have been swayed sometimes by the 
 power of a single tongue. The passions can 
 be excited either to madness or sympathy, 
 either to deeds of lawless aggression or deeds 
 of high enterprise, but there is only a tran- 
 sient mastery obtained. We read of a harp 
 in the classic fables of old, which, when the 
 wind swept it, was said to discourse eloquent 
 strains, but then, unhappily, the breeze and 
 the music died away together. So it is with 
 the triumph of the orator : the moment the 
 voice of the speaker ceases the spell is broken, 
 the dream is dissipated, reflection begins to 
 remonstrate against excitement, and the 
 ••whole affair is forgotten.
 
 RIFE THOUGHTS. 15 
 
 " The perfect law of libej'ty? 
 
 Here is a summary, compendious and 
 beautiful, of the characteristics of God's pure 
 Word. It is a law^ not an opinion amenable 
 to the caprice of the individual, to be obeyed 
 or ignored at the bidding of an arbitrary will. 
 It is a law, an authoritative obhgation, issued 
 by One who has a right to speak. It is a 
 perfect law. Given originally in fragments, 
 waxing constantly from the obscurer to the 
 clearer revelation, it is presented now as the 
 complete canon of Jehovah's will. Like it& 
 Author, it is full-orbed. It shines not with 
 the gleam of the crescent, fast waning, but 
 with the perpetual glow of perfect noon. It 
 is a perfect law, then ; it can be followed by 
 no supplement. Perfect ! then it can be 
 superseded by no invention. Perfect ! then it 
 can be set in clearer light by no blaspheming 
 spiritualism. It is a perfect law of liberty. 
 Some persons cannot understand the collo- 
 cation of those words at all ; they cannot 
 conceive of liberty as existing in the same 
 realm as law. Their idea of freedom is the 
 licence of ungoverned appetite, or the deli- 
 rium into which- anarchy drags itself in its
 
 i6 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 reaction from oppression ; something like the 
 state of ancient Israel in the interval between 
 the Judges and the anointed Kings, when 
 every man did that which was right in his 
 own eyes. But such licence is mere hidden 
 thraldom. Was it not so at the time of the 
 French reign of terror ? It has been well 
 observed, that the wisest liberty is a self- 
 imposed restraint. The lark enjoys as great 
 a sense of freedom when it nestles in the 
 tufted field as when it trills its song in the 
 sky. Agrippa, the base slave in purple, sat 
 upon the judgment-seat, but Paul, the pri- 
 soner in fetters, was the Lord's freeman not- 
 withstanding. There is a perfect consistency 
 in the terms of the apostle James. 
 
 The Accelerating Pj'ogress of Evil. 
 
 A denier of the original taint of sin once 
 stood before two pictures which hung side by 
 side upon a wall. The first was the portrait 
 of a boy with open brow, and curls that look 
 golden in the sunshine, and cheeks whose 
 damask beauty shame the ripened fruit, 
 wearing that happy smile which can be worn
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 17 
 
 but once in life — a smile whose rippling 
 waves are poisoned by no weeds of suspicion, 
 and break upon no strand of doubt, looking 
 gaily up from the flowered earth into the 
 azure heaven, without the slightest misgiving. 
 From the canvas of the second picture there 
 glared out a wolfish eye — the home of all 
 subtlety and malice : and in the gloom of the 
 dim-lighted cell you might perceive the mat- 
 ted hair, and garments stained with blood, — 
 chains clank, or seem to clank, upon his 
 fettered limbs. All tell of the desperate char- 
 acter of the man. On these two pictures, 
 hanging side by side, the denier of original 
 sin fixed his gaze, until the exclamation burst 
 out at length in a tone of half-concealed 
 triumph, " What ! do you mean to say that 
 these two beings were originally and radi- 
 cally the same ? Do you mean to tell me 
 that any amount of evil teaching could ever 
 develop that guileless child into that de- 
 based and godless man ?" The artist volun- 
 teered the information that the portraits were 
 taken from the life of the self-same individual 
 at different stages of his history. You know 
 the moral of the tale. There is an accelerat- 
 ing progress in an ungodly course, increasing
 
 1 8 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 with the momentum of an avalanche when 
 the first stages of its course have run. The 
 descent into perdition is easy when the striv- 
 ings of the passions are seconded by the 
 dictates of the will. Sinner, I charge thee, 
 beware lest thy sin become habit. What ! 
 do you say you have already resolved at 
 some future time to repent, to reform ? You 
 are blind to your danger. In yon grim hulks 
 there are multitudes of men to-day who have 
 hearts like yours within them, although they 
 have cased them from the truth as in a coat 
 of triple steel. If you could get them to lay 
 bare the sad secret of their history, you would 
 be frightened to find it so much like your 
 own. Good resolutions, early home teachings, 
 deathless memories of a mother's prayers ; 
 but a strong temptation, weak restraints, god- 
 less associates, a first fall, from which, alas ! 
 the young man never, never rose, and then 
 a casting off the mask of shame. Oh, take the 
 truth to your hearts to-night, you who are 
 unconverted. No man became a criminal, a 
 hypocrite, a villain all at once ; but from a 
 state of innocence he has slidden down, until 
 to-night we see him on the lowest rung of the
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 19 
 
 ladder, and to-morrow a dishonoured suicide. 
 Beware of the deccitfulness of sin ! 
 
 Death. 
 
 Death to the Christian is but the time of 
 greatest triumph, because the time of nearest 
 home. Just as autumnal tints are richest in 
 the woodland, and the decaying forest trees 
 wear gayest colours, — as if, like so many 
 Csesars, they had gathered their imperial 
 robes about them, so seemlily to die, — so 
 the Christian has found often the strength 
 most vigorous, and the peace the stillest and 
 divinest, when the shadow gathered on the 
 countenance sympathetic with the other 
 shadow which had waited in the room. Be 
 comforted, my brother, whom the thought of 
 death hath often oppressed with a strange, 
 heavy disquiet — be comforted. God will 
 be glorified in thy death, if thou but aim to 
 glorify Him in thy life. If the eventide come 
 on with lengthening shadows, or without a 
 twilight, as in eastern skies, there shall be 
 light at eventide ; if the conflict be with torn
 
 20 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 plume and broken sword, like the wounded 
 chieftain, 
 
 " With dying hand, above the head 
 You '11 shake the fragment of the blade, 
 And shout your victory." 
 
 God i?i History. 
 
 It is not enough, if we would study history 
 aright, that we follow in the track of battles, 
 that we listen to the wail of the vanquished 
 and to the shout of the conquerors ; it is not 
 enough that we excite ourselves into a sort 
 of hero worship of the world's foster gods, the 
 stalwart and noble peerage of mankind ; it is 
 not enough that we trace upon the page of 
 history the subtle and intricate developments 
 of human character ; to study history aright 
 we must find God in it, we must always re- 
 cognise the ever-present and the ever-acting 
 Divinity, working all things according to the 
 counsel of His own will.
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS, 2i 
 
 Unity. 
 
 By unity we do not mean uniformity. 
 There is none ; there can be none in the 
 free universe of God. You have it not in 
 nature. You may go out into the waving 
 woodland, when death is on the trees, and 
 you may prune their riotous growth, and 
 mould, and shape, and cut them into some- 
 thing like a decent, a decorous uniformity ; 
 but the returning spring, when it comes, will 
 laugh at your aimless labour. Wherever there 
 is life there will be found variety of engaging 
 forms which attract and fascinate the eye. 
 We do not mean uniformity, therefore, — the 
 harmony of voices, or the adjustment of ac- 
 tions, — the drowsy repetition of one belief, or 
 the harmonious intonation of one liturgy ; 
 but we mean " the unity of the Spirit in the 
 bond of peace." 
 
 ^'' Many are the sorrows of the righfeoiisV 
 
 One reads that passage so far and stops, 
 and turns away, and says. Oh, what a melan- 
 choly system ! how clothed in sackcloth !
 
 22 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 how its h}Tnns are all wailing and doleful 
 psalms ! how cypress is there instead of the 
 laurel or the bay ! how everything is gloomy ! 
 You cannot expect us to forego the pleasures 
 and enjoyments of the world for such a dole- 
 ful subject as that — " Many are the sorrows 
 of the righteous" — their own book says so. 
 ^^ But the Lord delivereth tlie?n out of them 
 a'llP That is the other part, and the world 
 leaves that out, cuts the passage, mutilates it 
 in order to suit its own purpose, and in order 
 to furnish it with excuses for neglecting the 
 gospel claims. 
 
 The Widow of Nain. 
 
 There is a ^'oung man carried out, the only 
 son of his mother, and she a widow. Death 
 had been an early visitant at her dwelling ; 
 but the first shock had had some element of 
 mercy in it, for the son was living still, and 
 in him the husband was reproduced, and 
 while the fair promise of his glorious youth 
 was there, the oil was not all dried up in the 
 poor widow's cruse. But the son has died 
 now. The last refuge and shelter of the dcso-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 23 
 
 late heart is torn away, as with the pomp 
 and waiHng of the funeral they bore the dead 
 upon his bier. And now in the gate of the 
 city, where the crowd are gathered, and the 
 noise and discord is greatest, there comes 
 suddenly a silence, and the sounds of woe 
 are hushed. What does it mean ? The Son 
 of God is passing by, and He came and 
 touched the bier. The widow, who followed 
 in the train, wept, not noisily ; but they who 
 looked upon her saw that her sorrow was of 
 that crushing kind that was far too deep for 
 tears. And the Lord pitied her, and said, 
 " Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And 
 he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. 
 And he delivered him to his mother." Oh 
 that calm and solemn brow, lighted up with 
 a joyous benignity, chased away the shadows 
 of the grave. Well might the discord be 
 changed into music such as no orchestra 
 could compass. 
 
 The Adaptation of Scriptzcre. 
 
 How marvellous is the adaptation of Scrip- 
 ture for the race for whom it was revealed !
 
 24 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 In its pages every conceivable condition of 
 human experience is reflected as in a mirror. 
 In its words every struggle of the heart can 
 find appropriate and forceful expression. It 
 is absolutely inexhaustible in its resources 
 for the conveyance of the deepest feelings of 
 the soul. It puts music into the speech of 
 the tuneless one, and rounds the periods of 
 the unlettered into an eloquence which no 
 orator can rival. It has martial odes to brace 
 the warrior's courage, and gainful proverbs 
 to teach the merchant wisdom. All mental 
 moods can represent themselves in its ampli- 
 tude of words. It can translate the doubt of 
 the perplexed, it can articulate the cry of the 
 contrite, ancj it fills the tongue of the joyous 
 with carols of thankful gladness. Happy we, 
 my friends, who, in all the varieties of our 
 religious life, have this copious manual 
 divinely provided to our hand. 
 
 Christ the Theme of Scripture. 
 
 God anointed holy men of old, and made 
 them prescient of the future, and appointed 
 certain types, and ceremonies, and ordinances
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 25 
 
 to be observed in the ritual of the chosen 
 people, the children of Israel. Why was all 
 this ? Were prophets ushered into the pre- 
 sence-chamber, and did the flood of light 
 burst upon their previously-clouded vision ? 
 It was that they might foretell the glories of 
 Christ. Were there types and ceremonies in 
 the grand Levitical econom.y ? Those types, 
 every one of them, foreshadowed Christ. To 
 Him grve all the prophets witness. # He was 
 the Shiloh that blessed the expiring Jacob. 
 He was the burden of the songs of the royal 
 bard of Israel. He was "The Wonderful, The 
 Counsellor," of whom Isaiah speaks. He 
 was " The Lord our Righteousness," spoken 
 of by the plaintive Jeremiah. He was the 
 "Ancient of Days" whom Daniel describes. 
 He was the "Desire of all nations" whom 
 Haggai said should come. He was the 
 " Branch out of the stem of Jesse," of whom 
 Zechariah prophesied. He was the " Sun of 
 Righteousness" whom Malachi, last of the 
 bright-robed and radiant train, saw arise upon 
 the earth with healing in His wings. Each of 
 these looked at Him from his own stand- 
 point, and presented Him in his own aspect; 
 but they all gazed upon Christ, just as the
 
 26 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 moon looks down upon a multitude of flowers, 
 and the flowers look gratefully up to the one 
 serene and steadfast moon. Oh, the Bible, 
 apart from its Divine origin, is worthy of the 
 highest commendation and praise ; but that 
 which crowns it with its most surpassing 
 excellency, that which invests it with its 
 noblest grandeur, is the special and distinct 
 revelation which its pages give of Christ. It 
 contains doctrines the most sound and health- 
 ful ; precepts the most pure and practical ; 
 threatenings the most authoritative and 
 awful ; promises the most sweet and consol- 
 ing. But the doctrines are more wholesome 
 because Christ has endorsed them ; and the 
 precepts are more practical because Christ 
 has uttered them ; and the threatenings are 
 more terrible because Christ has announced 
 them ; and the promises are more tender 
 because Christ has spoken them. The atone- 
 ment comes and casts a lustre of hallowed 
 radiance upon the whole ; and the book of 
 God, beautiful in itself, is tenfold more beau- 
 tiful and lovely by the flood of glory which 
 streams upon it from the cross.
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 27 
 
 Scenes in the Life of Joshua, 
 
 There are many scenes in the Hfe of Joshua 
 which present him as standing out in a sort 
 of heroic rehef from history's ordinary page. 
 There seems to have been a nobihty of 
 character about him which distinguished him 
 from the roll of common men. Our first 
 glimpse of him attests his nobleness, when 
 we see him, and another like-minded, the 
 sole inspircrs of the people's courage, brave 
 and true amidst a quaking multitude of re- 
 creant-hearted spies. His attitude was im- 
 posing when the veteran Moses named him 
 as his successor, presented him to the camp, 
 and exhorted him to be strong, and of good 
 courage. We see him skilful in strategy and 
 valorous in war on the plains of Amalek, and 
 before the walls of Jericho. He blends the 
 inspired with the brave when Jordan rolled 
 back at his uplifted signal, and when his 
 word, clothed on the occasion with permitted 
 power, lit up the lone moonlight in the valley 
 of Ajalon, and stayed on Gibeon the aston- 
 ished sun.
 
 28 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 The Power of Memoiy. 
 
 It is a wonderful faculty this faculty of 
 memory. Its acts seem to be of the nature 
 of miracles wrought continually for the con- 
 viction of unbelief. We cannot expound its 
 philosophy, nor tell its dwelling-place, nor 
 name the subtle chords which evoke it from 
 its slumbers. A snatch of music in the street, 
 the sight of a modest flower or of an old tree, 
 a bow dropped casually by a passer-by, a face 
 that flits by us in the hurrying crowd, have 
 summoned the gone years to our side, and 
 filled us in a moment with memories of divin- 
 est comfort or of deepest sorrow. The power 
 of memory is lasting and influential. A kind- 
 ness has been done in secret, but that seed 
 dropped into the soil of memory has borne 
 fruitage in the gratitude of years. A harsh 
 word or an inflicted injury, flung upon the 
 memory, has rankled there into lawlessness 
 and sin. No man can be solitary who has 
 memory. The poorest of us, if he have me- 
 mory, is richer than he knows ; for by it we 
 can reproduce ourselves, be young even when 
 our limbs are failing, and have all the past 
 belonging to us even when the hair is silvery
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 29 
 
 and the eyes are dim. How can he be a 
 sceptic or a materiahst for whom memory 
 every moment raises the dead, and refuses to 
 surrender the departed years to the destroyer 
 — communes with the loved ones though the 
 shroud enfolds them — and converses with 
 cherished voices which for long years have 
 never spoken with tongues ? I had almost 
 said, How can he sin who has memory ? 
 For though the murderer may stab his vic- 
 tim in secret and may carefully remove from 
 the polluted earth the foul traces of his crime, 
 memory is a witness that he can neither gag 
 nor stifle, and he bears about with him in his 
 own terrible consciousness the blasted im- 
 mortality of his being. Oh, it is a rare and 
 a divine endowment ! Memories of sanctity 
 or sin pervade all the firmament of being. It 
 is but the flitting moment in which to hope 
 or to enjoy, but in the calendar of memory 
 that moment is all time. 
 
 The Human Heart 
 
 The human heart is a microcosm, a little 
 world, containing in itself all the strifes, and
 
 30 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 all the hopes, and all the fears, and all the 
 ventures of the larger world outside. The 
 human heart ! — Who can unravel its mystery, 
 or decipher its hidden law ? The smile may 
 play upon the lip, while beneath there is the 
 broken, burning heart ; and, on the other 
 hand, the countenance may have a shadow 
 of anxiety, while the sunlight dances gaily on 
 the soul. The human heart ! — human know- 
 ledge can give us very little acquaintance 
 with it ; such knowledge is too wonderful for 
 man — it is high, and he cannot attain unto 
 it. But there is one who knows it, and knows 
 all its tortuous policy, and all its sinister mo- 
 tives, and He is anxious that we should loiow 
 it too. 
 
 Sclf-kjwwlcdge. 
 
 Of illl sciences, none is so difficult of at- 
 tainment as the science of self-knowledge. 
 Whether it be from the deceitfulness of the 
 object of study, or whether it be from the 
 morbid reluctance, almost amounting to fear, 
 with which men shrink from acquaintance 
 with themselves, there are few that have the 
 bravery to pray, " Lord, malce me to know
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 31 
 
 myself." Indeed, it were a hideous picture 
 if it were suddenly unveiled in the presence 
 of us all. When the Lord would shew Eze- 
 kiel the abominations of Jerusalem, He led 
 him through successive chambers of imagery, 
 upon the walls of which were portrayed their 
 loathsome and unworthy doings. Ah ! if our 
 enormities were to be thus tapestried in our 
 sight, who of us could bear the disclosure ? 
 
 Co}iscie?ice. 
 
 Every man has a conscience — a natural 
 sense of the difference between good and 
 evil, — a principle which does not concern 
 itself so much with the true and false in 
 human ethics, or with the gainful and dam- 
 aging in human fortunes, as with the right 
 and wrong in human conduct. Call it what 
 you will, analyse it as you may, — a faculty, 
 an emotion, a law, — it is the most important 
 principle in our nature, because by it we are 
 brought into sensible connexion with the 
 moral government of God. It has been 
 defined sometimes as a tribunal within a 
 man for his own daily and impartial trial.
 
 32 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 It is the bar at which the sinner pleads ; it 
 prefers the accusation of transgression ; it 
 records the crime ; it bears witness to guilt 
 ^or innocence ; and, as a judge, acquits or 
 condemns. Thus taking cognisance of moral 
 actions, it is the faculty which relates us to 
 the other world ; and by it God, retribution, 
 eternity, are made abiding realities to the 
 soul. 
 
 Dr Newton. 
 
 The last time I heard good Dr Newton, he 
 told us, standing on the platform of Exeter 
 Hall, his bright eye even then beginning to 
 grow dim, and his voice tremulous, " I am 
 on the bright side of seventy." Can you say 
 that ? Never mind the precise age — the 
 bright side of anything that you may happen 
 to be ? Worldlings cannot say it. It is the 
 dark side for them — the shady side of sixty 
 or seventy. 
 
 "jy^/j-one tiling I dor 
 
 Not many things. There is no fretting 
 away of the soul upon a multitude of dis-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 33 
 
 cordant objects, to the loss of concentration, 
 and the consequent loss of power. " This 
 one thing I do." Here is the attitude of a 
 soul that is determined after a worthy pur- 
 pose — the attitude of quiet strength, which 
 will suffer nothing to deter it from the ac- 
 complishment of its deliberately-planned de- 
 sign. " This one thing I do." And thus 
 alone can excellence be obtained in any pur- 
 suit which may invite the attention of men. 
 If the man be but faintly impressed with de- 
 sire, or if he hesitate between rival claims, or 
 if he pursue the object which is chosen only 
 in spasms of activity, the result will inevitably 
 be disappointment and shame. " A double- 
 minded man," it is true all the world over, is 
 " unstable in all his ways," like a wave upon 
 the streamlet, tossed hither and thither with 
 every eddy of its tide. The recognition of a 
 determinate purpose in life, and a sturdy ad- 
 hesion to it through all disadvantages, are 
 indispensable conditions of success. The 
 outside world understands this matter well. 
 Hence, in the great life-race, the vacillating 
 are outrun by the steady, although the for- 
 mer may be fleet of foot, as Asahel upon the 
 mountains of Israel. 
 
 B 2
 
 34 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 Mount Moriah. 
 
 I want you to visit the Mount of Moriah 
 with me this morning, but in order to do it 
 with profit we must carry the child's heart 
 with us yet, as sensitive to impression, as 
 eager in interest, while we endeavour to elicit 
 the principles which are illustrated, with all 
 the vigour of a manly understanding. The 
 thought rushes upon me as I speak, how 
 fresh this incident seems to us.* It is one 
 of the oldest incidents in the world's history, 
 and yet there is a perpetual youth about it, 
 and it is perfect in instruction still. There 
 are some things that time cannot kill. It 
 has a marvellous power of ruin. Courts and 
 cabinets tremble at its breath ; dynasties are 
 compelled before it like the foam upon the 
 crest of the waves ; it frets decay upon the 
 temple pile and upon the oriels delicate trac- 
 ing ; it makes mounds of monarchs and of 
 the palaces where once rioted kings and 
 beauty revelled, a roofless ruin, where owls 
 hoot from decaying towers and where the 
 panther makes his lair. But there are some 
 things over which time has no possible 
 
 * The offering up of Isaac.
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 35 
 
 power. It cannot touch fate, for example : 
 that Hves, grows, ripens in its despite ; tra- 
 dition over-leaps the many tombs in which 
 time inters the years ; memory mocks him to 
 destroy her ; the humanness of the heart is 
 an everlasting thing, hence it is the old patri- 
 archal tales, tales of ancient hope, and fear, 
 and joy, and wrong, and sorrow, find their 
 swift way to the hearts of the men of all the 
 world's ages, because they touch feelings 
 which are eternal, and strike chords that are 
 never out of tune. 
 
 There are few hills, which are haunted by 
 so many sacred memories, as this Mount of 
 Moriah. Not only was it the scene of Abra- 
 ham's sacrifice, but in later times, when the 
 wickedness of the people increased, and when 
 the Lord's wrath was kindled against Israel, 
 the Lord smelled a smell of the burnt-offer- 
 ing which rose up from this mountain, and 
 was entreated for the people, for it was here 
 that the thrashing-floor of Araunah the Jebu- 
 site stood. 
 
 Life the Gift of God. 
 There are prerogatives in the power of the 
 crown which are never delegated to inferior
 
 2,6 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 authority. Prophets and apostles, by Divine 
 inspiration, have been permitted to resus- 
 citate the dead, and to rekindle the fire from 
 which the last spark has departed ; but, as if 
 to shew that there was one achievement of 
 power that was not allowed for the creature 
 to compass, the original impulse of being, 
 the first breathing of the breath of life into 
 the insensate clay, has been the work of God. 
 Man, to be sure, has done his utmost to 
 create. The sculptor has chiselled upon the 
 shapeless marble the features of the human 
 face, and the proportion has been apparent, 
 and the attitude has been graceful, and a re- 
 joicing world has been loud in its admiration 
 of the artist's skill ; but though the eye re- 
 posed in beauty, no sparkle flashed from it ; 
 though the cheek was well rounded and 
 symmetrical, it had no mantling blush ; 
 though the lips were true to nature, they 
 could not speak to thrill the soul. The 
 painter also has spread his canvas, and, 
 with the light pencil's witchery, has drawn 
 for us the images of friends. And when those 
 friends have died, they who beheld the life- 
 like appearance of the portraits have called 
 so vividly to remembrance the forms of the
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 37 
 
 loved, that they have apostrophised them 
 plaintively — ■ 
 
 " Oh, that those lips had language I" 
 
 Nay, in the very spirit of Promethean am- 
 bition, man has practised something on the 
 lifeless corpse, and has imitated the fitful 
 workings of apparent existence— the distorted 
 writhings of galvanic life ; but the spirit that 
 has fled would not listen to his invitations to 
 return, and the blood would not resume its 
 pulse at his bidding. Life, the unattainable 
 object of his far-reaching ambition, has re- 
 turned to heights beyond him ; and whether 
 he chisel, or paint, or galvanise, the result of 
 all experience only proclaims more forcibly 
 the impressive truth — that life is the gift of 
 God. 
 
 Natural Life the Gift of God. 
 
 We go about carelessly, and eat and drink, 
 and pursue our business and pleasure, with- 
 out ever thinking of the power that quickened 
 us, and by whom we are so fearfully and 
 wonderfully made. We find ourselves in 
 being, and we take it as a matter of course
 
 38 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 that our pulses should beat ar.d our affec- 
 tions glow, forgetting that it is in God '* we 
 live, and move, and have our being." These 
 frames of ours would be inert and lifeless, 
 like the dry bones in Ezekiel's vision, with- 
 out the breath of Heaven. 
 
 Iiiiellcctiial Life the Gift of God. 
 
 Our minds are active, and exercise them- 
 selves in the various subjects of knowledge ; 
 reflection is busy, and we lay down premises 
 and draw conclusions without ever thinking 
 of the power that has gifted us with our 
 scientific capacity, and enabled us to invent, 
 to expand, to illustrate, to combine : but it is 
 in God alone that we have our being. If we 
 are roused sometimes to inquire into the 
 causes of the mighty operations of mind, we 
 are apt to ascribe them to the effects of in- 
 struction and intercourse. This is so far 
 true, as without association and teaching 
 man would have neither motive nor disposi- 
 tion to aspire. But there is a fallacy at the 
 very beginning. It is just as though we were 
 to ascribe the developed petals and the diver-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 39 
 
 sified hues of the flower to the skill of the 
 gardener, because he prepared the ground, 
 and sowed the seed, and watched the growth 
 of the plant with fostering and assiduous 
 care. But what gardener could ever bring a 
 flower from a stone ? The sun might shine 
 on it from on high, and the dew might fall 
 gently, and man might labour till his bones 
 ached with fatigue, it would be a stone still. 
 There must be the principle of life, or all his 
 eftbrts to evolve are in vain : and who gives 
 to the germ its vitality ? Who, but God ? 
 And in like manner, if there had not been a 
 divine infusion into me of an apprehension 
 that was capable of improvement, all the ad- 
 vantages of experience and all the opportu- 
 nities of academic training would have been 
 
 Spiritual Life the Gift of God. 
 
 The degeneracy of mankind has been the 
 subject of universal admission. What is the 
 fact to-day? Why, that the world is hung 
 round with the solemnities of spiritual mourn- 
 ing, — dead, dead in trespasses and in sins. 
 Can corpses animate corpses ? that is the
 
 40 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 question. The curdled death is in the veins 
 of all, and motionless and still, — a very con- 
 gregation of the dead we must remain, until 
 Jesus shall say, " I am come that ye may 
 have life." 
 
 Rest. 
 
 The Saviour's most gracious invitation, 
 addressed to a world of the heavy-laden, 
 contains within it a promise of rest. O ye 
 who have toiled so long, and who have reaped 
 nothing from your profitless labour, take the 
 yoke upon you, and you shall find rest unto 
 your souls. Rest of all kinds. Rest for the 
 vexed mind — for the bewilderments of its 
 unbelief shall be disentangled, and it shall 
 rejoice in settled principles which no doubts 
 disturb. Rest for the awakening conscience 
 — for its remorseful memory shall be still, and 
 its accusing voice silent, and the brand of its 
 condemnation removed, and there shall come 
 a great calm as when the lone lake sleeps be- 
 neath the hush of summer. Rest for the 
 wayward heart — for it shall be weaned from 
 its idols, and all its wanderings shall be for- 
 given, and it shall cleave to Jesus, and flutter
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS, 41 
 
 into His bosom like the nestling bird, serene 
 in the possession of an object upon which it 
 can pour its wealth of love. Rest in acts 
 of labour — for labour is in itself a blessing. 
 Rest in the endurance of trial — for there shall 
 be breathed a spirit of chastened resignation 
 that will charm the anguish out of pain. Rest 
 in the mortal struggle — for the enemy shall be 
 beaten from the field, and there shall be sun- 
 set splendours in the western sky, and the 
 departing soul shall glow in that strange light 
 of eventide. And then rest at last, — the per- 
 fect rest, — " the rest that remaineth." Tears 
 shed over the corpse, wailing at the solemn 
 funeral, nights of weeping for the living ; but 
 for the dead angelic welcome and divine re- 
 cognitions, a coronation and a home, and 
 voices from heaven assuring the listening 
 earth that they are blessed. " Even so, saith 
 the Spirit, for they rest from their labours, 
 and their works do follow them." 
 
 The Poiver of Association. 
 
 Such is the power of association in the 
 human mind, that we cling with fond tena-
 
 41 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 city to the belongings of those we love, and 
 cannot part from them without a pang. A 
 faded flower coming suddenly into sight can 
 thrill the soul of a strong man, and break up 
 his fountain of tears, just because in the long 
 past some dear hand touched and nursed it : 
 the hand is dust, perhaps, but the flower is a 
 hallowed thing for ever. The books we read, 
 the games we played, the garden in whose 
 shrubberied walks we gambolled, the pic- 
 tures which, to our conscious hearts, seemed 
 to follow us with their eyes, and frown upon 
 us because of some meditated wrong, the old 
 arm-chair in which the mother sat, the river 
 by whose banks we strayed, wondering where 
 it went to, — all these, and a thousand other 
 things that we look at still with a silent heart, 
 and through the magnifying glass of memory, 
 oh, how much greater hold they have upon 
 us than mightier things that have happened 
 since ! Mankind universally confess this 
 power, and yield themselves irresistibly to 
 its spell. Many a hard-lived man of busi- 
 ness carries from the exchange to the home, 
 and from the home to the exchange again, 
 those honoured memories and attachments 
 that would startle the busy world if it could
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 43 
 
 only get a glimpse into the heart. There is a 
 chair in his household always vacant to other 
 people, but never vacant to him ; there are 
 steps upon the stair that only he can hear ; 
 and there are dear and blessed voices like 
 those of angels, not palpable to human sense, 
 but always ready and always present to greet 
 and welcome him. 
 
 The Gospel Truuipet. 
 
 Now, brethren, are you going to listen to 
 the voice of the trumpet, or to shut your ears 
 to-day, refusing to hearken to the voice of 
 the charmer, charm he never so wisely? 
 There is no distinction in the sound. It is a 
 blast of freedom to every man. But some- 
 times when the trumpet sounds, you know 
 it sounds to soldiers whose pulse it makes 
 beat quicker, as they prepare to gird them- 
 selves for the battle, and it sounds to cowards 
 and traitors. In which rank are you ? — sol- 
 diers of the cross, who fight the battle, or 
 cowards who flee, or traitors who plot ? Don't 
 put that question away, for the gospel trum- 
 pet is sounding in the hearing of every one of
 
 44 LIFE THOUGHTS 
 
 you, and you will have to answer by and by 
 for the way in which you have received it. 
 
 It is not merely a professional thing. The 
 trumpeter does not flourish his trumpet for 
 nothing. He flourishes it that men may pre- 
 pare for the battle. There is a purpose in it. 
 There is a meaning in its blast ; — 
 
 * Oh for a trumpet voice 
 On all the world to call I' 
 
 The Com7no7i Salvation. 
 
 The gospel river of life does not branch 
 out into divers streams. There is not a broad 
 sweep of water for the rich, the intellectual, 
 and the cultivated, and a little scant runnel 
 where the poor may now and then come and 
 get healed by the side of its precarious wave. 
 There is no costly sanatorium beneath whose 
 shade patrician leprosy may get by itself to be 
 fashionably sprinkled and healed. Naaman, 
 with all his retinue watching, must come and 
 dip and plunge like common men in Jordan. 
 There is no sort of salvation except the one 
 ransom and deliverance, that is purchased 
 for rich and poor together by the sacrifice of
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 45 
 
 the Lord Jesus Christ ; and the poor beggar, 
 his garment ragged from the havoc of a hun- 
 dred storms, and his flesh bleeding from the 
 ulcers of a hundred wounds, may dip eagerly 
 into the same Bethesda, and emerge un- 
 scarred and comely as a child. Oh, there is a 
 keen, loving, winsome insight, so to speak, in 
 the religion of Jesus, which constrains it to 
 furnish the amplest and most bountiful pro- 
 vision. 
 
 Spiritual Worship. 
 
 Do not think for a moment that by fre- 
 quenting places that have an odour of pecu- 
 liar sanctity, you can alone acceptably wor- 
 ship God. Have you a contrite heart.? Then 
 that can consecrate the meanest place on 
 earth. It does not matter where the congre- 
 gation may gather, only let them be a con- 
 gregation of faithful men, yearning for truth, 
 ready to make any sacrifice to obtain it, and 
 that God who is everywhere present will re- 
 veal Himself in blessings wherever they may 
 choose to assemble. They may crowd in the 
 solemn minster, and while the organ peals 
 out its alternate wail or psalm, to them it may
 
 46 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 be a spiritual service, and their hearts may 
 glow in purer light than streams through 
 painted windows. They may draw around 
 the hearth of the farmer's homestead, and 
 while the frost-king reigns outside, their 
 spirits may burn with a warmth that may 
 defy the keenness of the sternest winter. For 
 them there may be a spiritual harvest more 
 plentiful than the garnered store in the barn 
 that has been lent for worship. On the gal- 
 lant vessel's deck, with no witnesses of the 
 service but the sky and the sea, there may be 
 the sound of many waters as the Lord of 
 hosts comes down. And in the Alpine soli- 
 tudes, where the spirit, alone with God, mid 
 murmuring stream.s, and bowing pines, and 
 summits of eternal snow, uplifts its adoration, 
 there may whisper a voice stiller and sweeter 
 and more comforting than that of nature, 
 saying, " Peace, peace be unto you." Oh, it 
 is a beautiful thought, that in this, the last of 
 the dispensations, the contrite heart can hal- 
 low its own temple ! Wherever the emigrant 
 wanders, wherever the exile pines, — in the 
 dreariest Sahara, rarely tracked save by the 
 Bedouin on his camel — on the banks of the 
 rivers yet unknown to song — in the dense
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 47 
 
 woodlands, where no axe has yet struck 
 against the trees — in the dark ruin, in the 
 foul cell, in the narrow street, on the swift 
 rail — there, where business tramps and rattles 
 — there, where sickness gasps and pines — 
 anywhere in this wide, wide world, if there is 
 a soul that wants to worship, there can be a 
 hallowed altar and a present God. 
 
 The Love of Jesus. 
 
 How rich its manifestations, and how un- 
 feigned ; how all other love of which it is 
 possible for you to conceive shrinks in the 
 comparison ! There have been developments 
 in the histories of years of self-sacrificing 
 aftection, which has clung to the loved object 
 amid hazard and suffering, and which has 
 been ready even to offer up life in its behalf. 
 Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, 
 David and Jonathan, what lovely episodes 
 their histories give us amid the history of sel- 
 fishness and sin ! Men have canonised them, 
 partly because such instances are rare, and 
 partly because they are like a dim hope of 
 redemption looming from the ruins of the
 
 48 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 Fall. " Greater love hath no man than this" 
 — this is the highest point which man can 
 compass — " that a man lay down his life for 
 his friend; but God commendeth his love to- 
 wards us, in that while we were yet sinners 
 Christ died for us." A brother has some- 
 times made notable efforts to retrieve a 
 brother's fortunes, but there is a Friend that 
 sticketh closer than a brother. A father has 
 bared his breast to shield his offspring from 
 danger, and a mother would gladly die for 
 the offspring of her womb ; but a father's 
 affection may fail in its- strength, and, yet 
 more rarely, a mother's in its tenderness. 
 
 " I saw an aged woman, bow'd 
 'Mid weariness and care ; 
 Time wrote in sorrow on her brow. 
 And 'mid her frosted hair. 
 "What was it that like sunbeam clear 
 O'er her wan features ran, 
 As, pressing towards her deafen'd ear, 
 I named her absent son? 
 "What was it? Ask a mother's breast. 
 Through which a fountain flows 
 Perennial, fathomless, and blest. 
 By winter never froze. 
 
 " What was it ? Ask the King of kings. 
 Who hath decreed above 
 What change should mark all earthly things 
 Except a mother's love?"
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 49 
 
 " Can a woman forget her sucking child, that 
 she should not have compassion on the son 
 of her womb ? She may forget, yet will I not 
 forget thee." O Jesus of Nazareth, who can 
 declare Thee ? " Herein is love, not that we 
 loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his 
 Son to be a propitiation for our sins." Think 
 of that love — love which desertion could not 
 abate — love which death could not destroy — 
 love which, for creatures hateful and hating 
 one another, stooped to incarnation, suffer- 
 ing, and death ; and then, with brimming eye 
 and heart full of wonder, say, "Why such 
 love to me?''' 
 
 The Cottage at Bethany. 
 
 That cottage has no architectural preten- 
 sions. It peeps humbly through the em- 
 bowering olives, beneath whose shade it 
 stands. But never yet was human dwelling 
 so highly honoured, for though many houses 
 had entertained and welcomed Jesus, it was 
 to Bethany that His footsteps oftenest turned ; 
 and there, where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus 
 made up the united household, was the Sa- 
 viour's human home. The evangehst has 
 C
 
 50 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 not drawn for us the curtains of the Saviour's 
 private Ufe. We have not revealed to us the 
 wealthy secrets of that friendship which com- 
 muned with " the family that Jesus loved." 
 We can only imagine, therefore, the happi- 
 ness of those favoured ones who were privi- 
 leged with His familiar teaching. Thrice 
 blessed must have been that family : blessed 
 in the strong love which welded diverse tem- 
 peraments together in one bond of union 
 which no discord could sever — blessed in 
 their common anticipation of like gospel 
 hope and privilege ! No prancing cavalcade 
 of honour was there attendant upon prince 
 or chieftain ; but who may say how often in 
 the thickly-peopled air were hosts of angels 
 watching and tracking with loving vigilance 
 the steps of their incarnate God ? But upon 
 this brief dream of bhss there comes a rude 
 awaking. The light glimmers pale through 
 the dreary night from the window, and then 
 sounds the voice of wailing from the dwell- 
 ing where often rose the minstrelsy of blended 
 voices in joyous song. Lazarus is sick, dying, 
 dead. The light of their home is quenched 
 beneath this unlooked-for sorrow. The me- 
 mory of. the. happy past l:)ecomes almost in-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 51 
 
 supportable. The sisters, weeping, clasp each 
 other convulsively, and can scarcely realise 
 that their brother has departed. They go to 
 the grave to weep there. The sky of their 
 life is hidden and clouded by this one sad 
 sorrow, and — strange aggravation of this 
 mysterious bitterness ! — He, their Master and 
 their Friend, is absent. They sent Him word 
 on the earliest intimation of illness, but He 
 has made no sign. No swift footsteps have 
 hurried to the house of mourning ; not a 
 word of loving greeting has comforted them. 
 They have heard nothing from the compas- 
 sionate Teacher who has been ever faithful 
 until now. Had He come there, faith so often 
 vvhispered, Lazarus had not died. Oh, deem 
 it not indifference to the claims of friendship 
 that Jesus, when He heard the tidings 01 
 illness, " abode two days still in the same 
 place where He was." It was neither indif- 
 ference to His friends nor fear for His own 
 safety that kept the Master away. 
 
 The Recogjtition of Friends m Heaven. 
 It is a conscious and social world into
 
 52 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 which we are rapidly passing. Heaven is 
 not a solitude : it is a peopled city — a city 
 in which there are no strangers, no homeless, 
 no poor, where one does not pass another in 
 the street without greeting, where no one is 
 envious of another's superior minstrelsy, or 
 of another's more brilliant crown. When God 
 said in the ancient Eden, " It is not good for 
 man to be alone," there was a deeper significa- 
 tion in the words than could be exhausted or 
 explained by the family tie. It was the decla- 
 ration of an essential want which the Creator, 
 in His highest wisdom, has impressed upon 
 the noblest of His works. That is not life — 
 you don't call that life — where the hermit, in 
 some moorland glade, drags out a solitary 
 existence, or where the captive, in some cell 
 of bondage, frets and pines unseen ? The life 
 of solitude about which men boast them- 
 selves, is not a life of solitude at all. That 
 man does not understand solitude. Life, all 
 kinds of life, tend to companionship, and 
 rejoice in it, from the fecund larvae and the 
 buzzing insect cloud, up to the kingly lion 
 and the kinglier man. It is a social state 
 into which we are to be introduced, as well as 
 a state of consciousness. Not only, there-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 53 
 
 fore, does the Saviour pray for His disciples, 
 " Father, I will that those whom thou hast 
 given me be with me where I am, that they 
 may behold my glory ;" but those who are in 
 that heavenly recompence are said to have 
 come " to the general assembly and church 
 of the first-born written in heaven." Ay, and 
 better than that, and dearer to some of us, 
 " to the spirits of just men made perfect." 
 This is an ancient representation of a social 
 state, in which all affections are pure, in 
 which there is conscious recognition of the 
 friends from whom we have been some time 
 parted, but with whom we are to abide in 
 perpetual reunion ; and of a home without a 
 discord, a home without an illness, a home 
 without a grave. And this question of the 
 recognition of departed friends in heaven, 
 and special and intimate reunion with them, 
 Scripture and reason enable us to infer with 
 almost absolute certainty. It is implied in 
 the fact that the resurrection is a resurrection 
 of individuals, that it is tJiis mortal that shall 
 put on immortality. It is implied in the fact 
 that heaven is a vast and happy society : and 
 it is imphed in the fact that there is no un- 
 clothing of the nature that we possess, only
 
 54 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 the clothing upon it of the gai-mcuts of a 
 brighter and more glorious immortality. 
 Take comfort, then, those of you in whose 
 history the dearest charities of Hfe have been 
 severed by the rude hand of death — those 
 whom you have thought about as lost are not 
 lost, except to present sight. Perhaps even 
 now they are angel-watchers, screened by a 
 kindly Providence from everything about you 
 that would give them pain ; but if you and 
 they are alike in Jesus, and remain faithful 
 unto the end, doubt not that you shall know 
 them again. It were strange, don't you think ? 
 if, amid the multitudes of the heavenly hosts 
 — the multitudes of earth's ransomed ones 
 that we are to see in heaven, we should see 
 all but those we most fondly and fervently 
 long to see ! Strange if, in some of our walks 
 along the golden streets, we never happen to 
 light upon them ! Strange if we did not" hear 
 some heaven-song learned on earth trilled by 
 some clear-ringing voice that we have often 
 heard before ! Oh depend upon it, in a 
 realm of perfect happiness this element of 
 happiness will not be absent — to know and 
 love again those we have known and loved 
 below. And although in heaven there may
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 55 
 
 be a commonwealth, and although in heaven 
 they neither marry nor are given in marriage, 
 yet dearer than all others there will be the 
 wife to the husband, and the husband to the 
 v/ife, and the friend to the friend who have 
 toiled and suffered on earth together. Oh, 
 what heart is not thrilled by the glorious 
 prospect ! Ah, but nearer still and dearer, as 
 every true and loyal believer thinks — heaven 
 is the home of Jesus, 
 
 Viildhood. 
 
 Childhood is one of the things that are 
 behind ; childhood, to which the thoughts of 
 all men go out, even of those who have no 
 better hope ; childhood, that season of fresh 
 hope and of divinest sunshine, with its rush, 
 and rapture, and ever-new sensation ; child- 
 hood, with its ignorant blissfulness, to which 
 all sights are beautiful, and to which all evil 
 is good ! Oh, there is many a worldling 
 sickened at the world's craft and hollowness, 
 sickened far more at the craft and hollowness 
 of his own heart, who would give the world 
 if he could but bring back again the coursing
 
 56 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 blood that pulsed through his veins in the 
 comparative innocence of his childish years. 
 One of our poets sings in simple beauty — 
 
 "I remember, I remember, the house where I was bom, 
 The little window where the sun came peeping in with 
 
 morn ; 
 He never came a wink too soon, nor brought too long 
 
 a day, 
 But now I often wish the night had ta'en my breath 
 
 away. 
 
 ** I remember, I remember, where T was used to swing. 
 And thought the air would rush as fresh to swallows on 
 
 the wing ; 
 My spirit flew in feathers then, that is so heavy now, 
 And summer pools could hardly cool the fever on my 
 brow. 
 
 *' I remember, I remember, the fir-trees dark and high, 
 1 used to think their slender tops went close against 
 
 the sky ; 
 It was a childish ignorance, but now 'tis little joy 
 \o know I 'm further oflF from heaven than when I was 
 
 a boy." 
 
 The Poor Man's Homes 
 Man is bom to trouble ever}-\vhere — in 
 Arab hordes and in Siberian wilds, as well 
 as in royal courts and teemJng cities. The 
 fog and the cloud are like the sun— they 
 are no respecter of persons. Everywhere
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. S7 
 
 disappointment tracks the footsteps ; every- 
 where sickness steals into the dwelling ; 
 everywhere death waiteth at the door ; but 
 all these common ills of life fall with heavier 
 penalties upon the poor. They have to bear 
 the penalties in their condition as well as in 
 their experience. They cannot purchase the 
 skill of many healers, the comforts which 
 soothe the sickness, the delicacies which re- 
 store to health ; and when the wasting sick- 
 ness seizes them, they have no time to re- 
 cover thoroughly. The claims of the family 
 are there ; there is the present want that 
 must be met and that must be supplied ; 
 and the recovery is retarded many a time by 
 the quickened apprehension with which the 
 invalid sees the wolf of hunger glaring in 
 upon the loved ones through the pane of the 
 uncurtained window. And then the main- 
 tenance of the poor man — the bare mainten- 
 ance — depends often upon contingencies 
 which he can neither foresee nor control. 
 His prospects in life — ^his prospect for daily 
 supply, for present exigency, as well as for 
 circumstances which may in future embarrass 
 and annoy him — all these are derived from 
 
 his labour, but that labour — how contingent 
 C 2
 
 58 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 it is ! — contingent upon the state of trade, 
 contingent upon the measures of Govern- 
 ment, contingent upon the yield of harvest, 
 contingent upon the price of money, contin- 
 gent — as in the case before us — upon the 
 thoughts, and purposes, and quarrels of 
 people whom he never saw, and who live 
 across a wilderness of waters upon whose 
 breast he never cared to sail. \Vell, if labour 
 fails, bread fails ; if labour fails, homes fail. 
 The more provident and thrifty may strug- 
 gle against the coming calamity for a while, 
 and live upon the results of their thrift and 
 their care ; but you can trace, as you may 
 this day — you can trace, if that famine is 
 protracted, the inevitable progress down- 
 ward. One by one the comforts are obliged 
 to be parted with. The little savings for 
 vAv\<--\ *Jb,e industry of the past has toiled, 
 and upon which the hopes of the future 
 rested, are frittered away because the need 
 was pressing, and like an inexorable creditor, 
 it would not wait The cottage comforts 
 vanish one by one, and there is sickness of 
 heart as they go. They have been there so 
 long that they have grown up by the famili-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 59 
 
 arities of years into dear and cvierished 
 friends. The garments seem to be scantier, 
 and become more thread-bare day by day ; 
 a depression gathers upon the countenance 
 — a sad heart-sickness which it is terrible to 
 see. They sit broken-spirited and despond- 
 ing, for their heart is melted within them, be- 
 cause of trouble. One by one the articles of 
 furniture disappear until there is that ex- 
 tremity of desolation which realises the pic- 
 ture that we have read of — 
 
 "That shatter'd roof, that naked floor, 
 A table, and a broken chair, 
 And a wall so blank 
 The shadow they thank 
 For sometimes falling there." 
 
 " Ye are not yotcr ownP 
 
 How strangely sounds this sentence in the 
 ears of human pride ; with what unfeigned 
 wonder does it fill the natural man ! How 
 absolutely does it oppose itself to all the 
 habitudes of reflection which he has been 
 wont to indulge, and to all the trains of rea- 
 soning which he has been wont to pursue.
 
 6o LIFE THOUGH! S. 
 
 Perhaps princely revenues have been com- 
 mitted to his charge, or the honour which 
 Cometh from men has been poured upon his 
 head, or he has been surrounded by every- 
 thing that could minister to his convenience 
 or his comfort ; and his mind has become so 
 accustomed to the enjoyment of those things, 
 that it claims as a right what was granted 
 to it only as a favour. There is within us, 
 brethren, — and such of you as have made 
 human nature your study must have per- 
 ceived it, — a strange tendency to the acquisi- 
 tion of property. We like to possess ; and 
 anything which robs us of our sense of pos- 
 session, robs us of our sense of peace. See- 
 ing, then, that this is the habit of our minds, 
 there is something startling and ungrateful 
 in the announcement with which the text is 
 introduced. We have been imagining our- 
 selves rich, increased in goods, having need 
 of nothing ; it tells us that we are wretched, 
 miserable, poor, blind, naked. We have been 
 gloating upon our fancied proprietorship ; it 
 awakens us to the consciousness that we are 
 only stewards, that our wealth is not our own, 
 that all our enjoyments are lent us fr.om on 
 high, that every comfort which surrounds us
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 6i 
 
 is a benefaction of bounty. Nay, passing by 
 all these as mere subordinates in its esteem, 
 it lays hold upon ourselves, it grasps our 
 very being, and in tones that are imperious 
 and not to be misunderstood, says, " Ye 
 are not your own." And this may perhaps 
 account for the comparatively trifling success 
 with which religion has been favoured. It 
 allows no compromise, it claims supreme 
 and undivided homage. The great object of 
 its endeavour is that for which God was 
 manifested in the flesh, to destroy the works 
 of the devil. And in this complete revolu- 
 tion of the nature it allows no human merit ; 
 wealth, power, righteousness, all else that are 
 brought forward to supplement the cross, are 
 treated with contempt in its reckoning. Alike 
 to learned and ignorant, to affluent and poor, 
 to mighty and dependent, it announces one 
 remedy — the blood of Jesus Christ, which 
 clean seth from all sin. The natural heart, 
 which pants to have a share in the merits of 
 its own salvation, cannot bear this subtrac- 
 tion from its own importance; and as God 
 will not lower the standard of His will, will 
 not hamper the free grace of tlie atonement 
 with the frail and tangled network of human
 
 62 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 merit, will not dilute the blood of the Saviour, 
 the sinner remains unsaved ; the guilt of re- 
 jecting the gospel is added to the catalogue of 
 former crimes, and religion is either degraded 
 into a manual of commonplace morality, or 
 unblushingly forsaken altogether. And as in 
 all the congregations we have the honour to 
 address, there are two classes of character, 
 we fear that such are some of you, that your 
 hearts are well-nigh steeled against the con- 
 victions of the Spirit, that your wills have set 
 themselves perversely to desire their own ful- 
 filment, and that your whole being is under 
 the influence of the god of this world. It is, 
 then, manifestly, important for you, and it is 
 equally important for all of us, that we be 
 reminded of our duty, that we listen to the 
 voice of the Spirit coming thus solemnly, and 
 that we understand the responsibilities and 
 the privileges wrapped up in the announce- 
 ment, "Ye are not your own ; ye are bought 
 with a price." 
 
 Trust in God. 
 We are languid because we do not trust,
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 63 
 
 we are murmuring because we do not trust, 
 we are paralysed because we do not trust. 
 Faith is cheerfulness, a happy disguiser as 
 well as a continual feast ; there is a gladsome 
 ingenuity about it to find comfort in unex- 
 pected places, and to draw a prevailing argu- 
 ment out of the very heart of a stone. There 
 is a prostration and desponding in the heart 
 of a sinner when he finds himself conscious 
 of his sinfulness before God, and if ever man 
 had fallen from a height of privilege to a 
 depth of rebellion, that man was David, sin- 
 ning against light and against knowledge, 
 and yet from the depth where his passionate 
 outcry goes up to God, in the very guilt of 
 his transgression, he finds an additional rea- 
 son for its forgiveness, and he cries, "O Lord, 
 I beseech thee pardon thou mine iniquity, for 
 it is great," as if he had felt that in the very 
 greatness of the sin there was a higher glory 
 for the Saviour who could forgive the sin. 
 There is the poor individual, the Syro-Phceni- 
 cian woman who comes to Christ. She comes 
 to Christ in the midst of difficulty and sorrow ; 
 her heart is mute from music because there 
 is danger and there is sickness at home. She 
 is hardly able to prefer her petition, her eyes
 
 64 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 seek the ground, she is overwhehned with 
 the consciousness of the peril in which she 
 stands. 
 
 The ChrisiiaiUs Lifc-Ptnpose. 
 
 Your steady purpose in the daily puttings 
 forth of your Christian life should be to 
 glorify God. Every question of Christian 
 casuistry must be settled by His will ; every 
 act must be consecrated by His blessing ; 
 all matters of earthly concernment must be 
 judged of in the light which streams from 
 His throne. This is, in fact, the essential 
 difference between the man that is born, and 
 the man that is born again — the one is in- 
 fluenced by motives of external pressure, but 
 which this world bounds; the other subor- 
 dinates all minor matters to the one grand 
 life-purpose of glorifying God. And thus it 
 must be with you when the greater obligation 
 comes into collision with the less, as it will 
 sometimes, when passion, and interest, and 
 friendship, and even earthly mandate, all 
 point one way, and duty, distinctly perceived, 
 lifts her solitary finger in another, the decid-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 6^ 
 
 ed heart, choosing the right and spurning the 
 wrong, must adopt as its rule of action the 
 acknowledgment of the divine supremacy, 
 " We ought to obey God rather than man." 
 When temptation presents itself in some 
 form of endearment or in some mantle of 
 beauty, and when the flesh is weak before 
 the well-circumstanced sin, the victorious 
 spirit, realising the invisible, should say, 
 " How can I do this great wickedness and 
 sin against God ? " When common things, 
 or familiar and ordinary matters of life, call 
 for a rule or regulation, and for a standard 
 of arbitration and opinion, you will be at no 
 loss to find it in the apostle's words — "Whe- 
 ther, therefore, we eat or drink, or whatever 
 we do, we do all to the glory of God." That 
 is the primary purpose of the Christian's life. 
 
 The Use of Meajis. 
 
 It is part of the design of God, touching 
 the promulgation of His gospel, that it should 
 be extended by human agency. In its first 
 ages it was supported by the attestation of 
 miracles ; but in perpetuity it has been con-
 
 66 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 fidcd (never, of course, to the exclusion of 
 Divine influence) to the use of means. God 
 has so formed our nature that we are uni- 
 formly, and almost involuntarily, receiving 
 impressions from each other. Life is nothing 
 but one vast series of dependencies. So 
 subtle and so persuasive is this law of asso- 
 ciation, that it is influential, even'Avhen we 
 are hardly conscious of its existence. The 
 chance word from the lips of a friend, falling 
 upon some nascent desire like a spark upon 
 tinder ; the vision of some grave or wise one, 
 held up to the glance of fancy so often, that 
 it has become the ideal model of the heart's 
 aspiring ; the music of some old word greet- 
 ing the ear with a strange melody, have fixed 
 the tone of a spirit and have fashioned the 
 direction of a life. The world is just one 
 unbroken chain of these actions and reac- 
 tions. We are bound by them ; Ave are com- 
 passed by them ; and we can no more escape 
 from them than we can fling ourselves beyond 
 the influence of the law of gravitation, or re- 
 fuse to be trammelled by the all-embracing 
 air. The design of God in using these mu- 
 tual dependencies for the spreading of the 
 gospel, is manifest from many scriptural
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 67 
 
 facts. The call of Cornelius, which might 
 have been less troublesomely and more 
 rapidly accomplished by the angel wh(f 
 appeared to him in vision, was reserved till 
 Peter had taken the weary journey from 
 Joppa to Cesarea ; in the conversion of the 
 blessed St Paul, the human agency was 
 ■signally evident in the person of Ananias, 
 the certain disciple from Damascus. And 
 this is God's method of proceeding still. 
 For this He instituted His own grand ordi- 
 nance of preaching, that the eternal truth 
 might be communicated to mankind in tones 
 of kindred speech, endearing feeling and emo- 
 tion, flitting over the countenance the while, 
 and the soul's deep sympathy welHng up 
 through the utterances of the tongue. And, 
 in your own experience, the friend's kind 
 word or kinder life, how eloquent the ser- 
 mon ! How your prostrate spirit melted from 
 its savage winter as a tender piety shone 
 upon it! How, like some rock against which 
 the waves of the frantic ocean have dashed 
 for ages in vain, but which was shivered in 
 a moment by the lightning, your hearts long 
 wayward, in after years of hardening, were 
 cleft asunder in a moment by the memory
 
 68 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 of some nursery hymn, or of some gentle 
 mother's prayer ! 
 
 Infill dice. 
 
 The stone, flung from my careless hand 
 into the lake, splashed down into the depths 
 of the flowing water, and that was all. No, it 
 was not all. Look at those concentric rings, 
 rolling their tiny ripples among the sedgy 
 reeds, dipping the overhanging boughs of 
 yonder willow, and producing an influence, 
 slight but conscious, to the very shores of 
 the lake itself. That hasty word, that word 
 of pride or scorn flung from my lips in casual 
 company, produces a momentary depression, 
 and that is all. No, it is not. It deepened 
 that man's disgust at godliness, and it sharp- 
 ened the edge of that man s sarcasm, and it 
 shamed that half-converted one out of his 
 penitent misgivings, and it produced an in- 
 fluence, slight but eternal, on the destiny of 
 an immortal life. Oh, it is a terrible power 
 that I have — this power of influence — and it 
 clings to me. I cannot shake it off. It is 
 born with me \ it has grown with my growth,
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 69 
 
 and strengthened with my strength. It 
 speaks, it walks, it nioves ; it is powerful in 
 every look of my eye, m every word of my 
 lips, in every act of my life. I cannot live to 
 myself. I must either be a light to illumine, 
 or a tempest to destroy. I must either be 
 an Abel, who, by his immortal righteousness, 
 being dead yet speaketh, or an Achan, the 
 saddest continuance of Avhose otherwise for- 
 gotten name is the fact that man perishes 
 not alone in his iniquity. O brethren, this 
 necessary element of power belongs to you 
 all. Thy sphere may be contracted, thine 
 influence may be small, but a sphere and 
 influence you have. 
 
 Let your Light Shine. 
 
 Let your light shine before men. It does 
 not seem to refer to the active advice, so 
 much as to the quiet exhibition of the Chris- 
 tian life. Let your light shine before men, 
 not tipon men, as a perpetual rebuke, like a 
 policeman's lantern, turned suddenly upon a 
 detected and affrightened criminal, but before 
 men — something that they may pass time
 
 70 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 after time and not discover it, and, at last, 
 wondering at the radiance that ahvays shines 
 upon a particular spot, look up and see the 
 light. Let your light shine before men, a 
 steady, consistent, brilliant example, some- 
 thing that does not obtrude, but is always 
 manifest, something that has no pride about 
 it, but always shines with a certain influence 
 of goodness, which the world will by and by 
 very gratefully acknowledge. This is your 
 duty, your solemn, earliest duty, to let your 
 light shine before men, that, wondering at 
 its luminous and radiant flame, they may 
 see your good works, and, gazing up from 
 the light-bearers in loving and reverent ap- 
 preciation to their great original, glorify 
 vour Father that is in heaven.. 
 
 The Universal LaTU of Adaptation. 
 
 In the world around us there is a vast 
 series of adaptations of the creature to the 
 dwelling-place, and of the dwelling-place to 
 the creature, which cannot fail to strike the 
 most thoughtless observer. The eye, with
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 71 
 
 its delicate lenses, the ear, with its wondrous 
 conductors, the body, with its highly-elabor- 
 ated mechanism — fitted, as they respectively 
 are, for sound, and light, and life — are all 
 instances of this rare, of this wonderful har- 
 mony. You will find that there is the same 
 adaptation between the creature and the 
 dwelling-place in connexion with the world 
 in which it is our privilege to live. Some 
 theologians have acted as though they 
 thought there was some subtle connexion 
 between materialism and sin ; and the bur- 
 den of their teaching has been austerity and 
 sadness. They have ignored all Scripture, 
 except those passages which tell of self- 
 denial, and they have interpreted them to 
 mean rather the sequestration from sources 
 of enjoyment, than the transformation of the 
 dispositions and the habits of the inner man. 
 According to them it is our duty to wear, 
 perpetually, a cloud upon our brow ; and 
 they have harped upon the worthlessness of 
 the world, and the blessedness of death, with 
 an earnestness which might almost justify 
 suicide amongst their frenzied followers. 
 They have endeavoured to teach that the 
 best state of preparation for the world to
 
 ^2 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 come is to be hopeless, and desolate, and 
 darkened in this. Now the adaptations I 
 have referred to furnish the best possible 
 antidote to this unhealthy and sour theology. 
 The world is evidently made for us, and we 
 are, as evidently, adapted for a joyous exist- 
 ence in the world. Our organs of sense find 
 pleasure in its objects and sounds, and to 
 depreciate it, or to bewail it as a misfortune 
 that we were ever introduced within its 
 bounds — what is it but to impugn our 
 IMaker's wisdom in the disposal of the gifts 
 of His bounty, and to reverse, in our mea- 
 sure, the appointing ordinances of God? No, 
 this world is not a dungeon-keep, in which 
 the curbed spirit, like a fawn made captive, 
 pines and chafes for freedom. God has 
 made it a very Alhambra of beauty and bless- 
 edness, apart from the defilements of sin ; 
 and even where sin is, it is in the man, and 
 not in the world. There is no levity in the 
 waving woodland ; there is no frivolity in 
 the laughing stream ; the rearing mountain 
 towers in adoration, not in rebellion ; the 
 songsters of grove and tree warble no treason 
 in their melodies. All nature is loyal to her 
 God ; and now in tuneful numbers, and now
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 73 
 
 in eloquent silence, bears witness to her 
 Creator's praise. 
 
 Universal Brotherhood. 
 " God has made of one blood all nations of 
 men for to dwell upon the face of the whole 
 earth." This is the announcement of a grand 
 fact which has never yet been successfully 
 disproved — the essential underlying identity 
 of the human race, however chequered by 
 the varieties of clime and of language — one 
 deep, constant, ineradicable identity which 
 links man to man all over the world. It is 
 just this principle of universal relationship 
 which thus binds man to man everywhere, 
 which turns the world into a neighbourhood, 
 and which founds upon universal affinity, a 
 universal claim. The old Roman, with the 
 far-sighted perception of this great fact, could 
 say, " I am a man : nothing therefore that is 
 human can be foreign to me." And Chris- 
 tianity takes that sentiment and exalts it into 
 a surpassing obligation, and stamps upon it 
 the royal seal of Heaven. This, then, is the 
 truth upon which I intend to found the claim 
 this morning — the truth recognised in the 
 
 D
 
 74 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 Scripture — that every man is my own flesh, 
 and because he is my own flesh, he has a 
 claim upon me which I cannot and dare not 
 gainsay. Of course this general law must be 
 modified by minor and smaller varieties, or it 
 will be practically useless. The sympathy 
 that goes out after the world gets lost in the 
 magnitude of the area over which it has to 
 travel ; and the very vastness and vagueness 
 of the object will of itself tend to fritter away 
 the intenseness of the feeling. That is a very 
 suspicious attachment which clings to nobody 
 in particular, which rejoices no heart with its 
 affection, which brightens no hearthstone by 
 its light. Its words may be loud and swelling, 
 and, like the bleak wind of March, they may 
 sweep noisily about men's dwellings, and drift 
 the dust about in clouds ; but men only expe- 
 rience discomfort when it blows ; they do not 
 trust it ; " it passes by them as the idle wind, 
 which they respect not." Hence private affec- 
 tions are recognised and hallowed and com- 
 mended as the sources from which all public 
 virtues are to spring. There is nothing in 
 them inconsistent with the love of the entire 
 race ; they prepare for it, and they lead to it , 
 and they scoop out the channels through
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 75 
 
 which its tributaries are to flow. Who shall 
 sympathise so well with oppressed people as 
 the man who rejoices in his own roof-tree 
 sacred, and in his own altar-home ? Who 
 shall be eloquent for the rights of other men, 
 but he who is manly in the assertion of his 
 own ? Who shall succour breaking hearts, 
 and brighten desolate houses, but he who 
 gazes with loving fondness on his children as 
 they climb upon his knees, and who realises 
 from day to day all the unutterable tender- 
 nesses of home ? 
 
 Now, these two obligations — the claim of 
 private affection and the claim of universal 
 sympathy — are not incompatible ; but they 
 fulfil mutually the highest uses of each other. 
 God has taught in the Scriptures the lesson of 
 universal brotherhood, and men may not gain- 
 say the teaching. Shivering in the ice-bound, 
 or scorching in the tropical regions — in the 
 lap of luxury, or in the wild hardihood of the 
 primeval forest — belting the globe in a tired 
 search for rest, or quieting his life amid the 
 leafy shade of ancestral woods, gathering all 
 the decencies around him like a garment — or 
 battling in the fierce raid of crime upon a 
 "world which has disowned him, there is an
 
 -^^ LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 inner humanness everywhere which binds 
 that man to me by a primitive and by an in- 
 dissoluble bond. He is my brother, and I 
 cannot dissever the relationship ; he is my 
 brother, and I dare not release myself from 
 the obligation to do him good. I cannot 
 love all men equally ; my own instincts, and 
 society's requirements, and God's command, 
 all unite in reprobation of that. My wealth 
 of affection must go out after home, and 
 friends, and children, and kindred, and coun- 
 try ; but my pity must not lock itself in them 
 —my regard must not confine itself within 
 those narrow limits merely — my pity must go 
 out further. Wherever there is human need 
 and human peril, my regard must fasten upon 
 the man, although he may have flung from 
 him the crown of his manhood in anger. I 
 dare not despise him, because in his filth and 
 in his sin, as he lies before me prostrate and 
 dishonoured, there is that spark of heavenly 
 flame which God the Father kindled, over 
 which God the Spirit yearns with intensest 
 yearning, and which God the Eternal Son 
 spilt His own heart's blood to redeem. There 
 is no man now that can ask the infidel ques- 
 tion of Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. yj 
 
 God has made man his brother's keeper — we 
 are bound to love our neighbours as our- 
 selves ; and if, in the contractedness of some 
 narrow Hebrew spirit, we ask the question, 
 " Who is my neighbour ? " there comes the 
 full pressure of utterance to enforce and to 
 authenticate the answer, " Man is thy neigh- 
 bour — every one whom penury has rasped or 
 sorrow startled — every one whom plague hath 
 smitten or the curse hath banned — every one 
 from whose home the dearlings have van- 
 ished, or around whose heart the pall has 
 been drawn." 
 
 " Thy neighbour ? 'Tis that toiling slave, 
 Fetter'd in thought and limb, 
 Whose hopes are all beyond the grave ; 
 Go thou and ransom him. 
 '* Thy neighbour ? 'Tis that weary man 
 Whose years are at the brim, 
 Eent down by sickness, care, and pain ; 
 Go thou and comfort him. 
 " Thy neighbour ? 'Tis the fainting poor. 
 Whose eyes with want are dim, 
 Whom hunger drives from door to door ; 
 Go thou and cherish him." 
 
 The Iiiflueiice oj the Spirit. 
 It was Christ's promise — the only promise 
 that kept up the hearts that were ready to
 
 78 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 faint under the prospect of the spiritual be- 
 reavement that they were so soon to sustain 
 — " I, if I go away, will send the Comforter." 
 " I will pray the Father, and he will send you 
 another Comforter, and he shall abide with 
 you for ever." And thus earth has been the 
 theatre of the Spirit's labours ever since. 
 He strives with every man that He may 
 bring men to the truth. He is the great 
 agent in the conversion of souls, and a 
 measure of the Spirit is given to every man 
 to profit withal. He darts the light of truth 
 into the sinner's mind, and shews him his 
 own unworthiness, and then He leads him 
 to look higher, that he may see the cross 
 as well. He strives with men that He may 
 bring men to the truth. There is not an in- 
 dividual here — I am bold to say it — who has 
 not at some time or other felt His striving. 
 He meets you in the closet, does He not ? — 
 that is, if you ever go there. He meets you 
 in the closet, and there in the secrecy of 
 your spirit He uplifts your soul to heaven. 
 He meets you in the sanctuary— does He 
 not ? — when the litanies of the people rise, 
 and glad Te Deums are chanted ; and there 
 in the nearness of the worship He reveals to
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 79 
 
 you the Father. He meets you in sohtude — 
 does He not ? — when the excitements of the 
 world are hushed, when the storm is com- 
 pletely still, when there is no sound to dis- 
 tract the quietude of the soul as it opens itself 
 before God. He meets you in company — 
 does He not ? — and often amid the charms 
 of society, and the festivities of gathered 
 friends, thoughts of another world will in- 
 trude themselves. Clear, piercing whispers, 
 that you know not how to still, will make 
 themselves heard. My brethren, does He 
 not meet you here ? Does He not meet you 
 now ? Yes, in every sennon you hear, in 
 every chapter you read, in every expression 
 you feel, there is the influence of the Spirit — • 
 there is a living, vital, everlasting proof that 
 God is not unmindful of man. 
 
 The Dispensations of Providence. 
 
 The great end of man's existence in the 
 present hfe is to prepare for a better. He 
 is so thoroughly earthly, so wedded to the 
 scenes of time, that vigorous means are 
 necessary in order to wean him from earth
 
 So LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 and attach him to the skies. It would save 
 us from misery sometimes if we could only 
 regard our afflictions as having this dis- 
 ciplining and corrective end. God is mind- 
 ful of you when you think He has withdrawn 
 His face, and turned aside His glance. Every 
 affliction that causes you to feel as if the 
 rapture of life had gone, and as if the funeral 
 bell were tolling for all your past joys — every 
 bereavement that desolates your dwelling and 
 lacerates your heart — every pain that afflicts 
 you, and every languor that enfeebles you, 
 and every sickness that nauseates you — all 
 are visitations in some sort of the Spirit. 
 Oh how often has He spoken to you ! 
 Have you been one moment of your lives 
 unvisited ? 
 
 What is Man ? 
 
 In magnitude he is but a speck ; the ever- 
 lasting hills are bigger. He is a dwarf when 
 he stands beside some object in nature. In 
 duration — as to his conscious existence in 
 this life — seventy, sixty, forty, twenty years 
 — what is your life } "It is even as a vapour, 
 which appeareth for a little time and then
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 8i 
 
 vanlsheth away." What is man ? An atom 
 compared with the house in which he lives. 
 Even that is an atom compared with the 
 city of which it fonns a part. That city is 
 an atom compared with the country of which 
 it is the metropohs ; that country an atom 
 compared with the continent to w^hich it 
 belongs ; that continent an atom compared 
 with the great globe ; that globe an atom 
 compared with the universe. "What is 
 man, that thou art mindful of him 1 and the 
 son of m^an, that thou visitest him ? " 
 
 Look at him intellectually. Here some 
 light perhaps breaks in upon the subject. 
 He has an understanding that is capable of 
 comprehending truth. He has a will — " a 
 stern, tough sinew," as one of the old divines 
 says, "the most rebellient and toughest 
 sinew in the whole creation of God." He 
 has a will endowed with the mighty power 
 of volition, by which he can accept or reject 
 the offered mercy of the gospel. He has a 
 memory that can live on the past — an ima- 
 gination that can take in the future. He 
 has qualities which may fit him, if he be 
 rightly disposed, for extensive usefulness and 
 for God-communion. But there is nothing 
 
 D 2
 
 82 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 in that. There is no intellectual quality in 
 man that the devil has not ; yet God has 
 forgotten him — cast him out of heaven and 
 out of His memory, exiled for ever in ever- 
 lasting destruction from the presence of the 
 Lord, and from the glory of His power. 
 And man is immortal too, you may say. 
 Flung into existence, he cannot get out of it 
 again. He must live, and live for ever. So 
 the fallen angels were too ! Why has God 
 been mindful of man 1 
 
 Ah, mystery beyond human comprehen- 
 sion I 
 
 " Grace by far transcends 
 Or men or angels' thought." 
 
 The real cause of God's mindfulness of man 
 was that man repelled from him all that 
 was comely and of good report in the uni- 
 verse. " Because ye were sinners, Christ 
 died for you." We must go up and lose 
 ourGelves in the love of God — the mystery 
 that passes all comprehension. 
 
 " Pity divine, in Jesu's face, 
 We see, adore, and love."
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 83 
 
 Simple Mea7is. 
 
 God does not in any instance supersede 
 means, but He does in every instance vitalise 
 them. Faith craves something tangible to 
 rest upon, by which it can be sustained, and 
 the faith of the man before us connects with the 
 account of his deliverance the instrumentality 
 of Christ. " He put clay upon my eyes" — He 
 did it — " He put clay upon my eyes, and now 
 do I see." It is worthy of notice how simple 
 and common were the m.eans of healing. 
 There was no period of display, no gather- 
 ing of appliances from afar, no mustering 
 of celestial energies. What a grand oppor- 
 tunity to magnify the omnipotence of Christ, 
 at which the world might hear and tremble ! 
 He could have mustered celestial energies — 
 a legion of angels would have been proud to 
 sweep down on swift wings to be fellow- 
 helpers in the work of mercy. Simple things, 
 familiar things, things close at hand, clay and 
 the spittle, these are the chosen instruments 
 for giving sight to the blind. Oh, there is 
 nothing that shews at once the omnipotence 
 and humanity of Jesus in tender and mighty 
 combination more than the selection of
 
 84 LIFE THOUGHTS, 
 
 means like these. And the ordinary human 
 things which the Divine Saviour consecrated 
 became at once a mighty power. And so it 
 is in connexion with spiritual things, and the 
 spiritual blindness that has come over us all. 
 Let God be in them, and the tiniest things 
 become powerful. Let God be in them, and 
 that directs their course : — 
 
 "A pebble on the streamlet's track 
 
 Has turn'd the course of many a river ; 
 The dew-drop on the baby plant 
 Has warp'd the giant oak for ever." 
 
 In the case of Ruth, her hap was to light 
 upon the part of the field belonging to Boaz. 
 Could there be anything more insignificant 
 than that ? Yet from that chance there 
 sprung the royal Psalmist, and great David's 
 greater Son. Apostles, fishermen, and tent- 
 makers of Galilee, what had they to do .? men 
 of vulgar associations and mean in descent, 
 what had they to do to impregnate nations 
 with a new life and overturn old systems ? 
 Yet God was in the track of these men ; and 
 as they spoke, uneducated as they were, the 
 learned bowed themselves down, and held 
 their breath to listen ; and the w^orld began 
 to heave with a novel and blessed inspira-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 85 
 
 tion. Oh, yes ; and if the Saviour comes to 
 you, simple, and common, and ordinary may 
 be the means that He employs, but there is 
 life in the heart of them to your soul — life 
 eternal for each one of you that will receive 
 it. You remember your own enlightenment 
 — how simple were the means. A word that 
 caught your eye upon a friendly placard in 
 the street ; a word whispered by a kind and 
 greeting friend ; some loved one faded by 
 your side, and a spring of eternal life gushed 
 up to you from the damp soil of the sepulchre ; 
 or a man of like passions with yourself stood 
 and told, in simple language, of the grace 
 that had redeemed him, and there was a fire 
 of religion kindled in your spirit that was 
 never there before. And this is the way that 
 God will work with those of you who are yet 
 unsaved. The temple is open for you ; the 
 Sabbath summons you to prayer ; the Word, 
 the living Word, is preached to you ; the 
 Spirit yet accompanies it with His powerful 
 and promised grace ; and these are the pre- 
 scribed and simple means of everlasting sal- 
 vation for you. Don't imagine that you are 
 of so much consequence that there shall be 
 an ostentatious healing 01 the leper. No
 
 86 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 prophet is commissioned to go forth to you, 
 and, in all the pomp of gratified pride, strike 
 his hand over the place and recover the 
 leper. This is not God's way of curing either 
 kings or clowns. Salvation is offered freely, 
 and if you come to Him to-night you may 
 have it. But you must have it in God's way. 
 Your pride must be humbled ; your perverse- 
 ness must be subdued. Are you coming 
 with the cry of legality upon your lips ? — 
 " Good Master, what shall I do that I may 
 inherit eternal life?" Do? Why, submit 
 yourself to God. The human effort in the 
 case of the blind man — what was it ? To go 
 to the pool. The human effort in the case of 
 the raising of Lazarus — what was it ? To 
 roll away the stone. The human effort in 
 the case of the man with the withered hand 
 — what was it ? To stretch it out that its 
 power and strength might return. And this 
 human effort for you, if you want salvation, 
 is — ■ 
 
 "Just take the blessing from above, 
 And wonder at God's boundless love." 
 
 Simple and common and ordinary are the 
 means of salvation to you. 
 
 1
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS, 87 
 
 " One tiling I know ^ that, whereas I was blinds 
 now I seeP 
 
 The giving of sight to the blind was so 
 noised abroad that the Sanhedrim had be- 
 come uneasy already about the new faith. 
 The Pharisees, whose credit for sanctity was 
 most endangered, were unfriendly watchers 
 of Christ's every movement, and this new 
 and popular work of healing could not be 
 passed over in silence. The man was sum- 
 moned before successive courts of inquiry in 
 the hope that some discrepant statement 
 might be elicited which they might seize hold 
 of, and thus neutralise the effect which the 
 miracle was having upon the public mind ; 
 but throughout he persisted in his artless 
 and eloquent tale, and became, successively 
 rising into higher and yet higher heroism, 
 the narrator of the fact ; the consistent wit- 
 ness ; the fearless confessor ; the avowed 
 disciple ; and, at last, in some sort, a martyr 
 for the truth as it is in Jesus. Brethren, 
 when a change takes place in the heart of a 
 sinner he becomes of necessity — yes, of ne- 
 cessity, for there is a fire burning in his 
 bones that will consume him if he does not
 
 83 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 get utterance — an honest witness, a witness 
 for God. And there is a substantial agree- 
 ment between the witness of the bhnd man 
 and the witness of the new man, upon which 
 it may profit us to dwell. As I observed of 
 this testimony before, it is an experimental 
 testimony. Religion is a real change. In 
 the case of the man before us, the reality of 
 the change was a simple question of con- 
 sciousness. It was not a thing about which 
 the man could possibly make any sort of 
 mistake. "One thing I know" — I do not 
 think — he does not say that — " One thing I 
 know" — there is no doubt nor hesitation, it 
 is a firm settled conviction. " One thing I 
 know ; " this was his answer wherever they 
 tried to bewilder him and lead him from the 
 main subject to extraneous matters — "One 
 thing I know;" I have no dim conjecture 
 nor uncertain wavering belief— a change has 
 taken place. I know it — this azure sky, this 
 beautiful landscape, these are things I see, 
 and I never saw them before. Do not de- 
 spise me, I am infirm and dependent no 
 longer. Yes, God has changed me ; my life 
 has begun, and there is a rapture in my soul 
 which I never felt there before. I cannot but
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 89 
 
 speak. " One thing I know, that whereas I 
 was bhnd, now I see." Yes, brethren, rehgion 
 is a conscious thing, an experimental thing, 
 a change consciously realised. It is not a 
 beautiful theory, it is a deep experience. It 
 is not the lodgment of truth in the under- 
 standing, or an intellectual assent to the 
 doctrines of a cherished creed : it is also in 
 the affection, by which we are enabled to obey 
 the new commandment ; the heart is trans- 
 formed from its former enmity into loyal, 
 ardent submission to Christ's constraining 
 love. Now if that change takes place upon 
 a man, it is mighty — believe me, it is mighty 
 — too mighty to have passed silently ; the 
 man must know it. The Lord may not have 
 come in the whirlwind or the fire ; but the 
 man must have heard Him whisper in the 
 still small voice. There may have been no 
 convulsions prostrating the frame, there may 
 have been no external agitations about the 
 man ; but there must be a consciousness, 
 deep and unmistakable, that old things have 
 passed away, and all things become new. It 
 is quite possible the man may not have ex- 
 perienced the throes and tossings of the birth- 
 night ; but he must know that he is born —
 
 90 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 he must know that he hves. He may not be 
 able to tell with precision the time of his 
 conversion ; in moments of depression he 
 may easily trouble himself into the belief that 
 he is not converted at all. He may be 
 harassed with multiform temptations ; he 
 may be wrung with the remains of the carnal 
 mind ; he may often fall short of the ideal of 
 character which he has set before him as a 
 model, to which he will aspire ; he may feel 
 so helpless and so languid, that the only sign 
 of life about him is that he is conscious of his 
 deadness : but that he is not what he once 
 was he canot fail to know. His desires may 
 be faint, but they will be uniformly towards 
 heaven. He may fail sometimes in his 
 struggles with the giant evil that has so long 
 possessed him ; but he does struggle — and he 
 knows he does struggle — and he would fain 
 cast it out of him if he could. Another 
 thing, he does not cease because he fails. It 
 may be failing oft, but ceasing never. Like 
 the fabled wrestler, who gathered new strength 
 from every fall to earth, because earth was 
 his mother — so the Christian gathers new 
 strength from each successive fall, for it only 
 stimulates him to a perpetual endeavour after
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 91 
 
 holiness and God. Upwards, though the 
 path is shppery and the snow is Winding ; 
 upwards, though the crevasses are deep and 
 avalanche hurries hoarsely by ; though un- 
 accustomed to such high elevation, though 
 his labour is heavy and he gasps for breath, 
 still upwards will he climb, stick in hand, 
 and his friend close at his side always ready 
 to help him when he reels and stumbles ; 
 upv/ard, till his life's work is over, his trouble 
 done, his Master speaks him home to rest — 
 eternal rest in the long glad Sabbath of the 
 sky. Oh, can you bear this testimony ? Is 
 there anything analogous to it in your cir- 
 cumstances or condition to-night. The Sp irit 
 of God will bear witness ; your own heart, in 
 its loathing of sin and in its longing for 
 holiness, will bear witness ; for both the 
 witnesses join — the Spirit of God and our 
 spirit. Oh, can you bear this testimony 
 unmistakably, experim.entally of this bless 
 change ? 
 
 God's Witnesses. 
 
 Conversion must leave a trace somehow. 
 I know there is a difference of temperament ;
 
 92 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 I know some people are very reserved in 
 communication, and some people are very 
 reluctant to tell of the Lord's dealings with 
 their soul ; but depend upon it if they are con- 
 verted, there is a trace of it. The countenance 
 has a gladder sparlde somehow, the conver- 
 sation has a holier tendency somehow, life has 
 a certain manifestation of goodness some- 
 how, the man's life is every moment bearing 
 witness for God. Yes, he is God's witness, 
 that converted man. Come, thou worldling, 
 and judge him. Are not his affections 
 kinder ? Is his walk consistent ? Has he 
 not a more chivalrous hongur than he used 
 to have ? Does he equivocate and shuffle 
 in the little lies of trade as he once did? 
 Has not he a more incorruptible integrity 
 than in days of yore .'' Don't you think his 
 conscience more tender than before 1 Ye 
 gay revellers, ye have roystered with him 
 full often, why shuns he now your company 
 and your gay revels ? Why trips he not at 
 your heels now in the race for fashion, or in 
 the strife for gold 1 Nay, be candid in your 
 iudgment. Don't scoff at him ; he is not 
 perfect — he does not profess to be perfect. 
 There are propensities to evil in him yet,
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 93 
 
 sometimes, unextinguished ; he is harassed 
 occasionally by powerful temptations, by be- 
 setting sins ; he is not all that he should be, 
 he is not all that he will be — but, hark you, 
 he is better than you, and you know it. He 
 is better than you. There is a difference in 
 his temperament — he is not what he was 
 when you and he were congenial spirits, and 
 in glad companionship used to go to and 
 fro together. He is not what he was before 
 the change — oh, anything but that. 
 
 Oh, when have not those faithful witnesses 
 spoken ? Not only amongst the fellowship 
 of saints, not only under the excitement of 
 the sanctuary, but in the world, in the com- 
 panionship of gathered friends, in the un- 
 obtrusive living out their religion, they are 
 not silenced ; and amid darker scenes, 
 whilst trial bows the spirit down, it does not 
 silence the testimony. Reproach falls upon 
 the man, but the witness does not cease. 
 Affliction shrivels the strength, but the 
 spirit-life waxes into comelier and heavcn- 
 lier beauty. Lo, Death the spoiler pauses 
 abashed in his fell work, until the trium- 
 phant shout of victory has been cast up 
 from the lips of the dying. Yes, the testi-
 
 94 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 mony is consistent, and is sincere. All cir- 
 cumstances have witnessed it, and in all 
 scenes alike, of human gladness and of 
 human sorrow, the witness of God's faithful 
 people has gone upwards to the skies. 
 
 An Appeal to the Blind. 
 
 How is it with you to-night, brethren ? 
 Do you say, "We see," and therefore your 
 sin remaineth ? Are you anointing your 
 eyes with other eye-salve than that spiritual, 
 which alone can make you see '^. Born blind 
 as you are, are you resorting to the treatment 
 of empiricism ? Born blind as you are, are 
 you going to earthly healers, to physicians 
 of no possible value 1 What is your state 
 to-night ? Oh, it is sad to think that after 
 the gleams of light and beauty that you 
 have had in connexion with this moral 
 change to-night, that some of you may . 
 continue just as before, sighing over the 
 ruins of departed privilege, of departed 
 sight, and departed opportunity, just as the 
 wind sighs mournfully through the corridors 
 and aisles of some roofless and deserted 
 
 I
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 95 
 
 temple ; and you may go on, stricken spirits, 
 knowing nothing, caring nothing, enjoying 
 nothing of God or His service, moaning help- 
 lessly in your travail, nothing but "bhnd, 
 blind, blind." 
 
 Oh, is it so with you ? I came to proclaim 
 the giving of sight to the bhnd. The Saviour 
 passes by ! He passes by to-night ! It was 
 on His way from the temple that He met 
 the man that was born blind. What a glori- 
 ous thing if He were to meet you on your 
 way from the temple, and just as He goes 
 from the temple, where a crowd of wor- 
 shippers have been gathered, He meets with 
 a man that has been born blind and heals 
 him ! Now, if you are conscious of your 
 state and of your peril, lift up your plaint to 
 Him. " Command me to be brought to 
 thee, and say, ' Sinner, receive thy sight' " 
 Surely you will pray, and your prayer will be 
 heard. It shall be so. May God grant it 
 for the Redeemer's sake. Amen. 
 
 The First Moment after Death. 
 What must be the feelings of the ran-
 
 96 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 somed soul just the first moment after death 
 — the first moment when it is about to pene- 
 trate into those mysterious secrets which no 
 one who has ever known them has come back 
 to unravel ? The first moment after death — 
 the spirit freed from the trammel of this taber- 
 nacle of clay, clogged no longer by the bond 
 that has held it down to earth — oh, in what 
 rapture must it catch the first burst of hea- 
 ven's melody ! oh, in what rapture must the 
 first glimpse of the beatific vision dawn upon 
 its eye, now purified from the film and from 
 the shadow ! and then an eternity, an eternity 
 without an interval and without an end, for 
 they shall be " for ever with the Lord." Be- 
 liever, wherever thou art, in whatever corner 
 thou hast ensconced thyself, though thou art 
 ragged and homely, though thou hast few 
 friends, though nothing but the green turf 
 shall cover thy clay, though there shall not 
 be a friend to follow or to mourn thee, and 
 though, when thou standest at the right-hand 
 company, there may not be one of thy fellows 
 there that shall be able to recollect thy name, 
 this is thy portion if thou art in Christ ; the 
 word of the Lord has spoken it, and " that 
 word endureth for ever."
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 97 
 
 I ask you to pursue the analogy in a con- 
 verse way, and to think for a moment what 
 must be the feehngs of the impenitent and 
 unransomed soul the first moment after death. 
 The first moment after death ! no confusion 
 of intellectual belief then — all made terribly 
 clear by the startling revealer that has sepa- 
 rated the soul from the body — dread reflec- 
 tions on a misspent life — the awful accusa- 
 tions of an aroused conscience — terrible anti- 
 cipations of a coming judgment — the angry 
 glances of the Judge's eye — the unknown tor- 
 ments of an unfathomable hell. Oh, drop the 
 curtain, we cannot bear it. Whither would 
 it lead us if we pursued the analogy further ? 
 whither, but into deeper, darker, profounder 
 regions of unknown and of unimagined hor- 
 ror ? Sinner, sinner ! oh for a tone of tender- 
 ness and power that should reach thy heart 
 to-night ; this is thy portion, however thou 
 mayest have joined hand in hand, and made 
 potent alliances, and rejoiced thyself in the 
 things of this world ; this is thy portion — the 
 word of the Lord hath spoken it, and " that 
 word endureth for ever !"
 
 98 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 The Efficacy of the Gospel. 
 
 When it first appeared in the world, it ap- 
 peared as a universal remedy, and a universal 
 remedy it proved itself. Sinners were con- 
 verted, believers were edified and confirmed. 
 Wherever it went it spread its divine and 
 blessed influence, and its reputation became 
 established as a message from God. It is 
 as searching in its nature as ever, however 
 potent may be the principle of evil ; how- 
 ever, like the fabled chameleon, it can shape 
 itself to circumstances, it cannot twist itself 
 into any shape in which Christ cannot find 
 it, and follow it, and overthrow it. The 
 gospel is the only system for man — for man 
 always, for man everywhere ; man in the 
 infancy of the world, man in its maturer 
 years, man in the depths of barbarism, man 
 in the heights of refinement — for man a profli- 
 gate sinner, for man a regenerated saint, 
 for man on earth — ay, and for man even in 
 heaven, for into it thousands of the spirits of 
 the just made perfect still desire to look. 
 And it has lost none of its power, moreover, 
 by the lapse of time. The sun, after it has 
 shone for a thousand years with unabated
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 99 
 
 vigour, is the sun still ; is it not brilliant 
 and beautiful as the first day of its shining ? 
 A river, after it has flowed in fertilising 
 streams for ages, is a river still, and still 
 freshens the earth upon its banks, and 
 makes it " to bring forth and bud, pro- 
 ducing seed to the soAver and bread to the 
 eater." And so it is with the gospel ; it is 
 never the laggard of the age, its doctrines 
 never become antiquated, its facts never 
 shrivel up ; it presents itself to the world 
 young as it ever was, in all its strength and 
 tone and energy ; it saves numbers still, it 
 converts believers now, it shines with sweetest 
 lustre and comfort in the chamber of afflic- 
 tion, and its praises are gasped painfully 
 from many a bed of death. 
 
 Many of you have felt it ; and many of 
 you have tried the gospel — you have trusted 
 your whole salvation here ; you have brought 
 your souls when they were racked by an 
 agony of doubt and suspense, and there has 
 come a hush upon the soul, as if an angel 
 had stood by, and, with sweet voice, has 
 whispered, "Peace, peace, be still." I appeal 
 to you, then, has it failed ? Have you ever 
 had occasion to reproach yourself because
 
 lOO LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 you were in Christ ? If this gospel of Christ 
 has deceived you ; if it has mocked you with 
 fugitive promises instead of substantial bene- 
 fits ; if it has denied you relief from the 
 terrors of your troubled conscience when 
 you asked it in the name of Christ ; if it has 
 refused to confer blessings upon you when 
 you asked for those blessings aright, — I, as its 
 advocate, desiring nothing in this world so 
 much as its universal spread, tell you to cast 
 it off, discard it for ever as a foolish and 
 accursed thing. But oh, if it has been the 
 delight of your being ; if it has been your 
 refuge, and strength, and very present help 
 in trouble ; if it has strewed your earth with 
 comfort ; if it has allied your heaven with 
 glory, — hold it fast ; do not be swindled of 
 this comfort and of this blessing now ; clasp 
 it as your choicest treasure ; it is the word 
 of the- Lord, and "that word endure th for 
 ever." 
 
 The Mount of Pi-ophecy. 
 
 ** God at sundry times and in divers 
 manners spake unto our fathers by the
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS, loi 
 
 prophets." There were many things that 
 were predicted in reference to the future of 
 nations and to the future of men. Many of 
 those promises have already received their 
 accomphshment ; but the argument from 
 prophecy is by no means exhausted, and 
 multipHed and accumulative evidences are 
 rising up from the exhumed bones of the 
 desert, and from the deciphered rocks of 
 the wilderness, day by day. The burden 
 of Tyre was foretold, and the ships of 
 Tarshish have had to howl because their 
 strength was laid waste. The burden of 
 Babylon was foretold, and that ancient city 
 now sits in the unnoticed and forgotten 
 desert ; and owls, and satyrs, and dragons 
 are the only tenants of the chambers where 
 her princes dwelt. The burden of Jerusalem 
 was made matter of prediction, and that 
 queen of cities, like Rachel weeping for her 
 children, sits depressed and melancholy, bur- 
 dened with lamentation at the remembrance 
 of her former glory. But there are multi- 
 tudes of the promises which have not yet 
 received their accomplishment, and which 
 lead us to expect glorious triumphs for the 
 future of the gospel of Christ. I know there
 
 102 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 is a great deal in the prophetical canon that 
 we cannot understand, and it never will be 
 understood, in spite of all professed inter- 
 preters, until the hght of eternity shall flash 
 upon the doings of time. But there is very 
 much that is clear, glorious, cloudless. A 
 deep mine is the mine of prophecy, out of 
 which the humble believer can extract all 
 the glory of the kingdom. A deep well is 
 the well of prophecy, from which the humble 
 believer can get draughts of the crystal and 
 refreshing water of life. I want to know 
 something about the future of the world. I 
 am pained at heart as I think of it ; I am 
 sickened with the contentions that are around 
 me. Is it always to be thus? Are good and 
 evil always to struggle .'' Is there to be no 
 manifestation of a royal mind and of a tri- 
 umphant power ? Is there to be no supreme 
 Arbitrator who shall bring all things to 
 pass according to the counsel of His own 
 will. 1 go up the mount of prophecy, and 
 I read this, the inscription graven as it were 
 in letters on the sky, " They shall not hurt 
 nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith 
 the Lord : all flesh shall see the salvation of 
 our God. He must reign until he hath put
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 103 
 
 all enemies under his feet. The world shall 
 be his possession, and the uttermost parts of 
 it his footstool." I go up the mount of pro- 
 phecy, and the mists roll gradually from the 
 face of the sky, and the fair and smiling 
 landscape lies before me ; I see the earth 
 reposing in its beauty, marred with no sin, 
 smitten with no scourge, discoloured with 
 no track of blood ; glad hymns of praise flow 
 on every breeze, soft notes of prayer are 
 heard from every lip, and from all the re- 
 joicing homesteads there floats one flag of 
 peaceful and hallowed gladness, and on it is 
 inscribed " Emmanuel," and it is the old 
 banner of the cross. Now, I want to know 
 something about myself, my own individual 
 part in the great jubilee of the world's his- 
 tory. I go up to the mount of prophecy 
 again, and there, gleaming brightly in the 
 distance, I see the walls of the New Jeru- 
 salem, the saints' abode, the temple of the 
 indwelling God, and my heart throbs within 
 me as I think of the city whose walls are 
 of jasper, and her gates of pearl, and her 
 pavement of burnished gold, not because 
 of the jasper, and the pearl, and the gold, 
 but because there dwelleth Jesus, and that
 
 104 LIFE IHOUGHTS, 
 
 is my distant inheritance, my everlasting 
 home — ■ 
 
 " The promised land from Pisgah s top 
 I now exult to see ; 
 My hope is full — oh, glorious hope 1— 
 Of immortality." 
 
 The Man Christ yesus. 
 
 The Saviour's assumption of humanity was 
 complete. The whole nature was taken on. 
 He had a human body with all its infirmities ; 
 he had a human soul with its completeness 
 of faculty and its capability of endurance, 
 W'ith its every capacity, with its every affec- 
 tion. There were three reasons which seemed 
 to render this entire assumption of human 
 nature necessary. It was necessary, first, be- 
 cause the man had sinned, and upon the man, 
 therefore, must come the brand of Jehovah's 
 displeasure. It was necessary, secondly, that 
 the world might have the best and utmost 
 manifestation of God, and that humanity, too 
 gross and bewildered to comprehend ideas 
 that were purely spiritual, might see in the 
 Incarnate Son the highest embodied possi- 
 bility of being. It was necessary, thirdly, that
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 105 
 
 the felt need of the people in all ages of the 
 world's history might be supplied — the need 
 of perfect pureness allied to perfect sympathy 
 — of the strength which was omnipotent to 
 deliver married to the tenderness that was 
 brave and deep to feel. The complete huma- 
 nity of Jesus has been attested by abundant 
 authentications. In every legitimate sense of 
 the word He was a man with man. He did 
 not take our sinful nature upon Him — that is 
 only an inseparable accident of humanity ; 
 it came in after the creation, and it should go 
 out before the end. Therefore, in every legi- 
 timate sense of the word, He was man with 
 man. He was born helpless as other chil- 
 dren are. His early years were spent in the 
 house of His reputed father, working at His 
 handicraft for bread. He grew in wisdom 
 and in stature as other children grow ; not at 
 once, but by the slow ripening of years de- 
 veloped into the maturity of man. When He 
 entered on His public ministry, and went 
 among His fellows. He sustained as they did 
 the relationships of mutual dependence and 
 help. He was no self-elected reformer. He 
 was no turbulent inflamer of unholy passions. 
 
 Faulty as was the government under which 
 E 2
 
 in6 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 He lived, He was a loyal subject, paid the 
 tribute monej'' without murmuring, and sub- 
 mitted Himself to every ordinance of man. 
 He was no dark ascetic ; He was a brother of 
 the multitudes, mingling in all the grief and 
 cheerfulness of life. If men invited Him to 
 their houses, He went and sat down with 
 them at their boards. If they asked Him to 
 their marriage festivals, He graced them with 
 His presence, and turned the water into wine ; 
 and mingled His tears with theirs when the 
 light of their homes was quenched, and when 
 some loved one was suddenly withdrawn. 
 His care for them who trusted Him ceased 
 not with His own danger, for, having loved 
 His own. He loved them to the end. His 
 filial affection was conspicuous throughout 
 every part of His life, and shone radiant as a 
 star through the darkness of His agony. He 
 vv^as the man Christ Jesus. How is it that 
 you identify Him with our nature.^ What are 
 the peculiar characteristics by which you 
 understand that such a one is partaker of 
 Humanity? Does human nature hunger.? 
 He hungered in the plain where the delusive 
 fig-tree grew. Does human nature thirst.? 
 He felt the pang sharply upon the cross. Is
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 107 
 
 human nature wearied under the pressure of 
 travelling and of toil ? He sat thus upon the 
 well. Does human nature weep unbidden 
 tears? Pity wrung them from Him as He 
 gazed upon the fated and lost Jerusalem ; 
 and sorrow wrung them from Him at the 
 grave where Lazarus lay. Does human na- 
 ture shrink and fear in the prospect of im- 
 pending trial, cowering beneath the appre- 
 hended peril, and pray that dread pangs may 
 be spared it ? In the days of His flesh, when 
 He poured out His supplications with strong 
 crying and tears, " He was heard, in that He 
 feared." He was the man Christ. Come, ye 
 seekers after the subhme, behold this man 
 ■ — marred enough by sorrow, but not at all by 
 sin ; decorated with every grace, yet dis- 
 figured by no blemish of mortality ; raying 
 out warmth and life into the hearts and 
 homes of men ; with not an act that you can 
 trace up to selfishness, and not a word that 
 you can brand as insincere ; with His whole 
 life a kindness, and His death an expiation- 
 behold the Divine Man ! Talk of the dignity 
 of human nature — it is there, and you can 
 find it nowhere in the universe beside. " The 
 boast of heraldry, the pomp of power," the
 
 io8 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 skill to make canvas speak or marble breathe, 
 or to play upon men's hearts as upon a harp 
 of many tunes, the mad ambition that would 
 climb to fame by slopes where the trampled 
 lie, and where the red rain drops from many 
 a heart's blood — what are their claims to 
 His ? Hush, ye candidates for greatness, and 
 let Him speak alone. Erase meaner names 
 from thy tablets, thou applauding world, and 
 chronicle this name instead. Shrine it in 
 your living hearts, those of you who trust in 
 His atonement, and who come by His media- 
 tion unto God ; grave it there, deeper than 
 all other names — the man Christ Jesus. 
 
 Gethsemane a7id Calvajy. 
 
 Man's eternal Saviour ; God's incarnate 
 Son. Follow Him in the shadow of His 
 passion. Close upon the agony of Geth- 
 semane came His arrest by the treachery of 
 one whom He had honoured. Patiently He 
 bears the ribaldry and insult in the dishon- 
 oured judgment-hall of Pilate. Wearily He 
 treads the pathway to Calvary, bearing His 
 own cross. Now the cross is reared. The
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 109 
 
 multitude are gathered about the hill of 
 shame. The nails are fastened into the 
 quivering flesh ; and in agony and torture 
 ebbs His pure life away. The last min- 
 istering angel leaves Him ; for He must 
 tread the wine-press alone. Darkness gathers 
 suddenly round ; and — oh, mystery of mys- 
 tery ! — the Father hides His face from 
 the Beloved. Darkness deepens in the sky 
 and in the mind — how long, the affrighted 
 gazers know not. A cry bursts through the 
 gloom, sharp, shrill, piercing. All is 
 silent — it is finished ! The night, that had 
 climbed up strangely to the throne of noon, 
 as suddenly dispersed. The multitude, that 
 eager and wondering had gathered round the 
 hill of shame, separated to their several 
 homes, talking about the tragedy they had 
 witnessed. The moon rose on high as calmly 
 as if the sun had not set on a scene of blood. 
 But, oh ! what a change those few hours had 
 wrought in the fortunes of the world. Christ 
 had died, the just for the unjust, that He 
 might bring us to God. Go, tell it to that 
 despairing sinner — that man, I mean, who 
 has the cord about his neck, and the pistol 
 at his throat, who is just about to escape
 
 no LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 from the terrible harrowings of an alarmed 
 conscience, by the dreadful alternative of 
 self-murder. Go to him ; be quick ; tell him 
 he need not die, for Christ has died, has died to 
 bear his sins away. Proclaim salvation from 
 the Lord for wretched, dying men. Sound it 
 out from the summit of that hill-side of Cal- 
 vary, and let the sister hills echo it, until round 
 the earth has spread the rapturous hosanna — 
 Salvation ! Go with it to the wretched, and 
 miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked : 
 it is just the thing they need— Salvation ! 
 Ring it out through every avenue of this vast 
 metropolis of a world, till it rouse the slum- 
 bering dust, and awake the coffined dead — 
 Salvation ! Take it to your own hearts — be 
 sure of that ; and, in the' fulness of your own 
 experience, let us hear your song: — "There 
 is, therefore, now no condemnation to them 
 that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after 
 the flesh, but after the Spirit." 
 
 Meet for Heaven, 
 To create enjoyment for man in the world, 
 there must be agreement between the 
 inward tastes and the outward objects. If
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. in 
 
 you want to make a man happy here, you set 
 about it in a business-hke way, and you give 
 him everything that his heart requires or his 
 fancy conceives. You let competence attend 
 his circumstances ; you let friends gather in 
 his halls ; you let his board be well spread ; 
 you give him a retinue of servants to attend 
 him ; you do not let him withhold his hand 
 from every joy with which the world festoons 
 the track of its travellers. You have done 
 your best for that man ; you have given him 
 " richly all things to enjoy." Let the same 
 tastes, let the same outward circumstances 
 surround him, and the man will be happy 
 in heaven. Ah ! but the circumstances of 
 heaven are fixed already, and they are 
 changeless ; happiness there depends on 
 certain conditions of mind which the man 
 has not. It is not enough, in order to make 
 a heaven for the sinner, that you should 
 prepare a place for him ; you must go further 
 than that, you must prepare him for the 
 place. It is not enough that he should hold 
 the title-deeds ; you must work in him, some- 
 how, a personal meetness. It is not enough 
 that a forensic change should pass upon his 
 character ; a transforming change must pass
 
 112 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 upon his life. Even if he should pass into 
 heaven — if it were possible for him, by any 
 chance, to elude the vigilance of the seraph- 
 guard, and to enter heaven as he is — with his 
 earthliness unrestrained, and with all his 
 impurity reigning — heaven would be un- 
 paradised to him ; its music would gravi- 
 tate downwards into a sad and melancholy 
 misef^ere ; its labour to him would be a 
 toilsome drudgery, and its atmosphere of 
 holiness would be unsupportable to his dis- 
 eased and leprous soul. 
 
 The Fifty-first Psalm. 
 
 The psalm before us has, by common 
 consent, been called a penitential psalm. 
 Where could penitence find readier utterance 
 for its sorrow? Am I addressing any one 
 to-day, who has been roused to a conscious- 
 ness of his life's dark mystery of sin, upon 
 whom there rests a shadow, and a fear, and 
 a sense of unsettled controversy, and afeeling 
 of the possession of a nature warped sadly 
 from its grand original ! Is there a trouble 
 in any spirit before me, because of an immor-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 113 
 
 tality which it feels to be both prisoned and 
 polluted, because of a holy ideal from which 
 it feels divorced, because of a God whom it 
 knows it ought to rejoice in, but from whom 
 it seems to be hopelessly alien ? Do all the 
 longings, and all the listenings of the spirit 
 for years pant and struggle for expression to- 
 day ? My brother, in this psalm there is the 
 anatomy of a heart that has feared and has 
 bled like thine. All the process of thine own 
 perplexity is recorded here, all thy apprehen- 
 sions are recorded here. There is the heart, 
 like thine, agonised, imploring, satisfied 
 There is the wail, the hush, the thank-song ; 
 there is the descent into the depths, the joyous 
 mounting up on the crest of the wave ; the 
 frantic flight from the old city of destruction, 
 the clear heaven sight from the summit of the 
 delectable hills. It is impossible for you to 
 fail to trace, and to be comforted by the 
 analogy. The same grace which pardoned 
 the transgressions of the royal sinner, and 
 filled him with satisfaction and rest — the same 
 grace is this morning available for you. 
 
 The occasion of the psalm is supposed to be 
 the mourning of David, under the searching 
 rebuke of Nathan the prophet, for his sin in
 
 114 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 the matter of Uriah the Hittite ; and in the 
 structure of the psalm it is divided into two 
 parts, the first twelve verses being the record 
 of his vows, of the doxology which his re- 
 covered heart would sing, and of the acts of 
 personal and official consecration in which he 
 would perpetuate his praise. 
 
 There are two facts in the psalm, to which 
 I want to call your attention. The first is the 
 fact of sin. This is the basis at once of the 
 confession and of the entreaty. There must 
 have been in the Psalmist's spirit, not merely 
 a general sense of wrong doing, and a dread 
 recollection of estrangement, but a burden 
 of personal condemnation and the presen- 
 tation of particular sin. Such a plaintive 
 melody as this was never struck from angel 
 harps. Spirits that kept their first estate 
 never sang such deprecating minstrelsy — from 
 the beginning to the end, it is the record of 
 the sinner's misery, and the supplication of 
 the sinner's breath. There was prayer, doubt- 
 less, in Eden, in its two grand elements of 
 adoration and thanksgiving ; but there was 
 never prayer like this : it is depravity which 
 has infused this new property into our wants, 
 and which has invented a numberless range
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 115 
 
 of its own. There is alienation now, which 
 must be transformed into confidence ; there 
 is sin now, which pants to be forgiven ; there 
 is remorse of conscience now, that must be 
 chased away ; there are dread anticipations 
 ,of future torment now, which must be ex- 
 changed for a serene prospect of blessedness ; 
 there is a dark and blighted curse, that must 
 be cancelled ere the sinner can be happy. 
 ^ All these are the wants of the sinner, and 
 they are yours — you know they are— and 
 they are mine. There is not one of you, I am 
 bold to affirm it, who is conscious, naturally, 
 of any other experience than this. No thought- 
 ful mind can ponder upon its own condition, 
 can meditate upon its own belongings, and 
 upon its surroundings, without the conviction 
 that dislocation has come upon the symmetry 
 of a nature once perfect, and that broods of 
 evil passions and vices, like a flock of birds 
 unholy, nestle in the corners of the heart. 
 This is the basal fact then, upon which every 
 religiousness of man reposes — the existence 
 Df sin ; of sin, as an acknowledged fact — of 
 sin as an acknowledged evil, which has not 
 Dnly tainted the nature, but which has poured 
 :orruption upon every part of every man ;
 
 ii6 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 found everywhere, alike in the crowded city 
 streets, and among the scantier tribes of the 
 Savannah ; ahke where refinement and civi- 
 lisation gild and soften crime, and where in 
 the swarthy-bearded Druse it reigns tameless 
 as the pennon that flutters upon the lance of 
 his djeereed ; alike in sordid man, and lost 
 woman, in genereus youth and smiling babe 
 — in all circumstances, in all countries, in all 
 parallels of latitude, in all diversities of lan- 
 guage, there is no escape, and there is no ex- 
 ception from this disastrous uniformity of 
 evil. The fountain has been corrupted, and 
 the streams of necessity must flow polluted 
 and impure. Every mouth must be stopped, 
 for all the world is guilty before God. 
 
 The House of Mourning. 
 
 Tread softly as you enter that house. A 
 large family surround the bed-side of the 
 dying parent. That man is a Christian ; 
 and, knowing in whom he has believed, he 
 is not afraid to die. But he has a large 
 family, and the thought that he will leave 
 them without a protector, the thought of the
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. T17 
 
 forcible disruption of social ties, pressed 
 upon his spirit somewhat ; and when you 
 look at him, there is a shade of sadness 
 upon his countenance. But you gaze awhile, 
 and you see that shade is chased away by 
 a smile. What has wrought the change? 
 What ! why, a ministering angel whispered 
 him, "Leave thy fatherless children, I will 
 preserve them alive." He hails the pro- 
 miser ; faith cries out, "'Tis He! 'tis He! 
 my God is present here." He enjoys rapt 
 and high communion with celestial visitants, 
 and thus the chamber of death becomes the 
 gate of heaven. 
 
 You pass by the house the next morning, 
 and the half-closed shutter and the drawn 
 blinds tell you that he was, and is not. You 
 enter ; the widow is sitting in sorrow. The 
 first deep pang is scarcely over ; the tones of 
 her husband's voice, of that voice with which 
 she has been so long familiar, rush with all the 
 freshness of yesterday upon her soul. She is 
 worn with weeping. But she, too, is a Chris- 
 tian, and she flies to the Christian refuge, 
 and her eye traces these comfortable words, 
 "Thy Maker is thy husband, the Lord of 
 hosts is His name." It is a dark hour, it
 
 Ii8 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 has been a dark day, and the darkness has 
 gathered and deepened, as the twilight came 
 on, but now at eventime there shall be light, 
 because her sufficiency is of God. You pass 
 by the house again when about a week has 
 elapsed. The last sad rites have been per- 
 formed ; the funeral bell, with its suppressed 
 and heavy ominous sound, like the dividing 
 asunder of soul and body, has tolled, and the 
 very clay of her husband has been rent from 
 her embrace. He has died in somewhat 
 straitened circumstances ; he was the whole 
 dependence of the family, and with aching 
 head and throbbing heart she sits down to 
 seek about her for their subsistence. Her 
 heart begins to fail her, but before she gives 
 way to despair, she consults a friend ; he is a 
 wise man, that friend, one upon whose heart 
 the influences of the blessed Spirit have ope- 
 rated long, and he gives her his testimony 
 founded upon mature observation, and a 
 long life experience. " I have been young, 
 and now am old ; yet have I not seen the 
 righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging for 
 bread." Dashing away the tears that have 
 blinded her, she struggles on, and feels in the 
 darkest hour her sufficiency is still of God.
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 119 
 
 Good WorJzs. 
 
 You cannot possibly, brethren, mistake 
 
 the testimony which has sounded unfaihng 
 
 from this pulpit, that the salvation of man 
 
 , in every case is of the unmerited grace of 
 
 , God, and that it is not by works of right- 
 
 Dousness which we have done, but of His 
 
 3wn mercy, and of His own mercy alone, 
 
 hat He saves. But while we insist right 
 
 iianfully upon the absence of any meritori- 
 
 )usness in what are commonly called " good 
 
 vorks," we shall not allow ourselves by fear 
 
 )f misrepresentation or of calumny to be 
 
 leterred from insisting upon the absolute 
 
 lecessity of good works as fruits meet for re- 
 
 )entance, as evidences of a living faith. 
 
 Comes there a man to me with boastful 
 rords, strong in sonorous comforts and in 
 he platitudes of an exclusive theology ? 
 -lakes he a loud profession to me of his 
 ersonal election, of his safety, whatever 
 
 ■ etide, of the superiority of the heritage to 
 I 'hich his faith entitles him ? I ask about 
 
 ■ is life. Is he lovesome, and pure, and 
 hilanthropic, and unworldly ? Is he a 
 ainstaking Christian, — like the violet, as
 
 120 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 fragrant in the mossy hedge-row as on the 
 table of the belted earl ? Does he love the 
 truth with a right-hearted love ? Does he 
 gird himself for the Master's sake to wash 
 the feet of His disciples, and perform with 
 alacrity the duty of every day, as well as 
 mix with the elders in the gate and at the 
 synagogue ? These are questions which it 
 behoves him to answer to every man that 
 asketh him, not in the lip, but in the life. 
 He may talk largely about his possession of 
 faith ; I cannot disprove his assertions. I 
 have no discernment of spirit, I cannot 
 pierce into the secrets of his inner and 
 spiritual history ; but the field of outward 
 manifestation is a field that is common to 
 both of us. There, and there only, can I 
 judge him. I have a right to expect, that 
 if he has any faith, it will exhibit itself in 
 comely and congenial illustration ; and I 
 have a right to pronounce, so far as mortals 
 may awfully pronounce upon each other, 
 that if the fruit is lacking, there is some- 
 thing wrong about the root of the tree, and 
 that if he says he loves Jesus, but does not 
 according to the things which Jesus says, he 
 is a liar, and his faith is vain. Brethren,
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 121 
 
 guard always against setting God at vari- 
 ance with Himself. The gospel is the com- 
 plement, but it is never the antagonist of the 
 law ; and a faith which would make void 
 the law, or despise its ancient and eternal 
 morals, is a faith which must always be 
 powerless and vain. 
 
 Constajit Obedience, 
 
 Our obedience must be constant. We 
 must not exalt ourselves now and then into 
 a hallowed frame, and then subside into in- 
 difference — our life a perpetual alternation 
 between the chiU and the fever ; nor must 
 we run eagerly in the way of God's com- 
 mandments for a while, and then stop and 
 pant like a breathless racer. We must 
 obey, not in some moods of mind, not at 
 some periods of our history, but through 
 all change and through the long round of 
 rolling years. Our life must be a holocaust, 
 offered with all its activities and with all its 
 powers upon the altar of the Lord. Brethren, 
 here is your duty and mine. This is prac- 
 tical Christianity, the pervasion of the whole 
 F
 
 122 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 of the being with holiness : not to hve upon 
 a Sabbath-day in the cloud-land of a senti- 
 mental heaven, but all the days of the week 
 to bring the glory of a real heaven down ; 
 not to run away from the fellowship and 
 bustle of the world, as if our cowardly faith 
 could not stand a battle, but to go in and 
 out among them, and be angels in their 
 houses, and let them feel the quiet influence 
 of those who have been exalted into a higher 
 privilege and have breathed a purer air. 
 We are to ennoble the ordinary things of 
 life ; we are to make trade a beautiful thing, 
 and business a beautiful thing, and commerce 
 a beautiful thing, because it is touched, and 
 hued, and toned, and fringed with the love 
 of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
 Brethren, shew me where these Christians 
 live. Oh ! they are here, and there, and 
 yonder, nestling in the heart of almost every 
 denomination, talking little about them- 
 selves, not always prominent in the exe- 
 cutive, not always followed by the world's 
 applauding thunder, and not partial to 
 storms withal ; but often in the sick-cham- 
 ber, earnest in the prayer-meeting, and 
 present wherever there is a good deed to
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 123 
 
 be done, and with a ready hand always to 
 help it on ; doing God's work in God's way, 
 and content to wait until He smile upon 
 them, and to be anxious only for His ap- 
 proval in the day when He shall number up 
 His jewels. 
 
 Are we of the number, brethren ? Let us 
 ask ourselves. Our presence here identifies 
 us in some sort with Christ's people. Have 
 we bound His laws to our neck ? Have Ave 
 written them upon the tablet of our hearts ? 
 Oh ! are there not some of whom, if the 
 Saviour were to pay a visit to-day. His lan- 
 guage would not be that of unqualified ap- 
 proval ? Would He not startle some of us 
 by the warning sound — " I have somewhat 
 against thee, because thou hast left thy first 
 love ? " Would not some of us be compelled 
 to listen to the rebuke, sharper than stab of 
 knife, or roar of thunder — "Ye call me 
 Lord, Lord, but ye do not the things which 
 I say?" "If ye know these things, happy 
 are ye if ye do them."
 
 124 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 Happiness, 
 
 r The very mention of the word happiness 
 appeals at once to all hearts, touches our 
 instinctive and not unworthy selfishness, and 
 is always inspiring. The cry comes up from 
 the multitude as eager and as frantic as 
 ever, " Who will shew us any good ? " The 
 old expedients are resorted to with weari- 
 someness ; men yet chain themselves at the 
 car of power, or whirl about in the pleasure- 
 dance of death, or climb ice-bound hills where 
 honour holds her court, or burrow in every 
 corner where there is the slightest glitter of 
 the sparkling gold. One after another of 
 the revellers disappears, each with his own 
 cry of "Vanity!" but the chase goes on. 
 Men do not get wiser because of the ex- 
 perience of their ancestors, and the world 
 writes a book of Ecclesiastes in each age of 
 its dissatisfied and restless history. And 
 the search for happiness is not a phantom 
 dream after all. There is a reality to be 
 enjoyed even in this world of sorrow. God 
 has not mocked His creatures with a desire 
 which can never be fulfilled, and which 
 therefore, can only consume. That can
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 125 
 
 never happen to any one of the creatures 
 He has made. Just as in man's physical 
 nature all is benevolent ; there is no duct in 
 the body that you can look at, and say, 
 " This is intended to bring pain ; " there ia 
 not one canal throughout the whole of the 
 mechanism that is an inevitable channel of 
 death ; — so in the realms of mind and in the 
 realms of morals, there is no desire which 
 God originally implanted which has been 
 implanted in vain. Find me a natural in- 
 stinct, and there is its appropriate outlet 
 somewhere. Now God has placed happi- 
 ness in our accordance with Himself and 
 with His laws. While our hearts are rebel- 
 ling against Him, consciously burdened with 
 their conviction of guiltiness, we cannot be 
 happy ; however we may lull ourselves into 
 momentary forgetfulness in the social gather- 
 ings of the world, there will be unrest and 
 misgiving within, like so many thorns that 
 in our bosom lodge, to goad and sting us. 
 While we are wilful in our rejection of re- 
 conciliation, and bold in the energy and 
 fearlessness of sin, we cannot be happy, for 
 we are at variance with the moral fitness of 
 our nature, and moreover are excluded from
 
 126 LIFE THOUGHTS, 
 
 satisfaction by the declared anathema of 
 God : " There is no peace, saith my God, 
 to the wicked." But what should hinder 
 our happiness when our hearts are changed, 
 and when our sin is forgiven ? If the know- 
 ledge and the practice are together in our 
 united hearts, we may be happy, pronounced 
 so by the Redeemer himself. There is the 
 happiness of the change itself; the sub- 
 sidence within us of our former unholy 
 passions ; the outflow of our transformed 
 affections towards heaven ; order introduced 
 upon the past chaos by the Creator, God ; 
 the consciousness, borne into the soul by 
 the Divine Spirit itself, that the enemy is 
 gone, and that henceforth we are at one 
 with the highest purpose of our Father in 
 heaven. There is the happiness of a peace 
 which no disaster ruffles, and a hope which 
 is bright with the hues of a recompence of 
 which we only unworthily conceive ; the hap- 
 piness of divine parentage in the season of 
 earth's dreariest orphanhood, and of divine 
 protection in the season of earth's most 
 pressing danger ; the happiness of a throne 
 of grace never emptied of its occupant, of 
 a prepared mansion, of a waiting crown.
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 127 
 
 There is the happiness which worldlings 
 long for, concentrated in one long Christian 
 rapture ; there is pleasure that is unspeak- 
 able, and which no remorseful memory 
 embitters. There is honour, to which the 
 world's titles are as trash, and her costliest 
 crowns but the baubles of an hour. There 
 are riches which justify the covetousness of 
 a life-long desire, because they wax not old, 
 and abide among the spirit's treasures for 
 ever. There is happiness, finally, which 
 dies not with waning years, which outlives 
 departing time ; happiness which is the ever- 
 young inheritance of the immortal spirit — 
 the inheritance of a spirit of whom God is 
 the portion, and of which eternity is the 
 term. , 
 
 God our Defence, 
 
 Thou, this morning, in the sanctuaiy^ 
 timid and discouraged believer, shrinking 
 back at the sight of the perils of climbing 
 the Hill Difficulty ; or afraid, as thou hearest 
 the roar of the lions in front of the Palace 
 Beautiful ; lift up thy head ; be not dis- 
 couraged ; thy sufficiency is of God. What
 
 128 LIFE THOUGHTS, 
 
 frightens thee — aftliction ? God is thy health. 
 Persecution ? God is thy crown. Perplexity ? 
 God is thy counsel. Death ? God is thine 
 everlasting life. Only trust in God, and all 
 shall be well ; life shall glide thee into death, 
 and death shall glide thee into heaven. 
 " Who," asks the exulting apostle, in the 8th 
 of Romans, " who shall separate us from the 
 love of Christ ? shall tribulation, or distress, 
 or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword ? 
 Nay," as if these things were hardly to be 
 named at all, "nay, in all these things we 
 are more than conquerors." Oh ! the royalty 
 of the language ! It is not a drawn battle ; 
 night does not come on to separate the com- 
 batants ; we have not to send a herald, after 
 the manner of ancient warfare, to ask per- 
 mission to bury our dead ; we do not come 
 away from the field with the armour hacked 
 and scarred, and the dishonoured banner 
 trailing after us in the dust, making it 
 doubtful whether we have won the victory 
 or not. "We are more than conquerors 
 through Him that loved us. For I am per- 
 suaded that neither death," he put that first 
 because it is that generally that frightens be- 
 lievers most, therefore he hastens to dissipate
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 129 
 
 their uttermost fear at the beginning — " I 
 am persuaded that neither death nor hfe," 
 with its ambuscades, and temptations, and 
 hazards, and pitfalls, really if men knew it a 
 great deal more perilous than death — " Nor 
 angels," if any of them could forget himself 
 so far as to come upon an errand of mischief, 
 and preach "another gospel," and try to 
 seduce the very elect themselves ; " Nor 
 principalities nor powers," although the great 
 father of lies may plant his most formidable 
 host, and marshal his choicest batteries 
 against us ; " Nor things present," though 
 those things present may include "famine, 
 and nakedness, and perils, and sword ;" 
 " Nor things to come," though in those 
 things to come may be Avrapt up gigantic 
 blasphemies and an originality of diabolism, 
 never dreamed of yet ; " No creature," no- 
 thing but sin, and that is not a creature, 
 something that God never made, a foul ex- 
 cresence and abortion upon tne universe of 
 God — " No creature shall be able to separate 
 us from the love of God which is in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord." 
 
 Oh ! the blessedness of being in this love 
 of God, the blessing of an approving con- 
 F 2
 
 130 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 science, the blessing of increasing knowledge, 
 the blessedness of completest victory, the 
 blessedness of gospel peace, the blessedness 
 of perfect love, I do not know what the 
 " sea of glass " means, about which we read 
 in the Revelation. I do not pretend to an 
 intimate acquaintance with those mysterious 
 disclosures ; but I know nothing which can 
 better image the deep, serene, reposing rap- 
 ture of the spirit that has finished its course 
 with joy. It is a "sea of glass" it has no 
 billows, not a breath ever by any possibility 
 ruffles it, and on this sea of glass, as on a 
 wide and waveless ocean, the believer stands 
 for ever, chanting eternally the song of Moses 
 and the Lamb. Oh ! lift up your heads and 
 sing— 
 
 " Let doubt, then, and danger 
 My progress oppose ; 
 They only make heaven 
 More sweet at the close ; 
 "Afflictions may damp me 
 They cannot destroy, 
 For one glimpse of His love 
 Turns them all into joy." 
 
 The Words of Eteriial Life. 
 All ancient philosophy and religion are
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 131 
 
 empty of information about eternal life. As 
 we ask the question, we are shocked and 
 startled by the far-resounding echo of our own 
 voice. The sages are all mute ; the Pythian 
 priestess foams and wallows, but no voice 
 issues from the oracle : and if we are to know 
 nothing of the future except what we can 
 learn here, it will be unknown for ever — a 
 Sphinx without an CEdipus, an undecipher- 
 able Rosetta stone, a pyramid with a great 
 secret in its heart that will baffle the detec- 
 tion of the world. And so, too, cheerless and 
 unsatisfactory are all modern attempts to 
 solve the problem of our destiny apart from 
 Him who is "the Way, the Truth, and the 
 Life." 
 
 To whom shall we go ? Poor humanity, 
 distracted by many perplexities, bleeding 
 from many wounds, weeping over many griefs, 
 must go somewhere : she cannot eat out her 
 own heart with grief and consume her own 
 life with sighing. Whither shall we go 1 
 W^here shall the great mystery of our ex- 
 istence be unveiled to us .'* Is Nature to be 
 the temple of our worship, with its skies now 
 bright and now cloudy, arching over us in 
 alternate loveliness and terror 1
 
 132 LIFE THOUGHTS, 
 
 One IVay of Salvation. 
 
 Oh! — if it be needful to repeat it — there is 
 only one way of salvation for the king and 
 the beggar, for purple and for poverty, for the 
 clown who plods in one idea content, and the 
 scholar who upbraids the light and weighs 
 the sun. Without the atonement of Christ, 
 and without the infinite resources of that 
 atonement, earth's holiest ones were leprous 
 always, and all earth's populations would 
 pass into the recompence of doom. The 
 faint, whose life of patient self-denial is 
 crowned by a triumphant end ; the meek 
 sufferer who endures his Father's will so 
 bravely that his thorns become his diadem, 
 and he is throned amongst earth's kingliest 
 kings ; the confessor who does not falter in 
 his testimony because great ones frown to 
 hear it, and whose voice swells like a clarion 
 from the very platform upon which he is 
 pilloried in shame ; the apostle who girdles 
 the world as with a zone of labour, and as 
 with a fragrant atmosphere of prayer ; the 
 martyr who greets the stake with a holy 
 laughter, and, upon the wings of a faith 
 which fire knows not how to singe, soars like
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 133 
 
 the phoenix from his own ashes ; — all these 
 — the proudest, and highest, and most ec- 
 static types of man, reverenced while they are 
 living, almost worshipped when they are 
 dead — have no more particle of personal 
 merit which could be influential to purchase 
 their salvation, than the foulest old olas- 
 phemer, or than the Barabbas of sedition 
 and of murder. 
 
 The Mount of Olives. 
 
 Another mountain here invites our climb- 
 ing — one on whose slopes we have often 
 lingered, but never before to witness a scene 
 like this. There are some of the consecrated 
 heights which are connected in our memories 
 with only one scene or incident, which has 
 had interest about it sufficient to immortalise 
 it. Thus, the death of Moses has made 
 Pisgah always sacred, and the successes of 
 Elijah have crowned with a verdurous dia- 
 dem the brow of Carmel. But there are 
 many passages in the history of our Lord 
 Jesus which consecrate this hill, in itself 
 of no great relative magnitude — only little
 
 134 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 among the thousands of Judah — into a holy 
 spot for loving eyes and pilgrim feet, and 
 which has made the followers of the Lord in 
 all ages of the world's history dwell with fond 
 and pensive memory upon this mount — this 
 solemn, strange, sabbatic Mount of Olives. 
 So many of the events of the Redeemer's 
 incarnate life took place on its slopes or 
 round its base, that it might almost be called 
 the Mountain of the Lord Jesus. It was His 
 closet, for in its clefts He prayed ; it was His 
 pulpit, for on its gently-sloping ridge He de- 
 livered the Sermon on the ]\Iount ; it was 
 the place of His intercourse with His dis- 
 ciples. " And when they had sung a hymn, 
 they went out into the mount of Olives." 
 Bethany, at its base, was often their common 
 home, where His presence brought its sun- 
 shine, and where, in a brief exemption from 
 His own description of His ordinary lot. He 
 found where occasionally to lay His head. 
 Tradition yet shews the spot where the eye 
 of His body beheld the city, and where the 
 eye of His mind, keen in its preternatural 
 insight, gazed upon its future, and saw its 
 stricken people, its burning palaces, and its 
 judicially-bhnded sons, wept over the desola-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS 135 
 
 tion which impended, and would fain, if it 
 had but known, have averted from it its 
 coming doom. Underneath it, swept by its 
 darkness into greater shadow, Hes the garden 
 where His soul underwent one of its deepest 
 baptisms of sorrow ; and there, from its crest, 
 He rose, cleaving the upper air in conquer- 
 ing triumph, and in the fulfilment of His 
 completed design. How connected it is with 
 memorials of the Saviour ! We don't wonder, 
 therefore, that of all associations this moun- 
 tain wakes the tenderest, and of all places of 
 scriptural interest this mountain should be 
 most visited by those who love the Lord ; 
 for He prayed, and preached, and taught, 
 and loved, and wept, and agonised, and 
 triumphed, all in connexion with this Mount 
 of Olives. 
 
 The Resurrect io7i. 
 
 Do you wonder, brethren, that, like Paul 
 at Athens, we should preach to ycu "Jesus 
 and the resurrection .?" Is there not some- 
 thing in the tidings that thrills the heart of a 
 believer, just as an emigrant's heart is stirred 
 in some far settlement by a sweet song of
 
 136 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 home ? Does not time appear a more solemn 
 stewardship, and duty receive a richer stimu- 
 lus, and the life that now is appear but a 
 light thing in comparison with the life which 
 that resurrection inspires ? Dwell in this 
 comforting thought, thou tempted and sor- 
 rowing believer, for it speaks encouragement 
 and assurance to thee. Art thou a mourner r 
 The sable which thou wearest is only the 
 emblem of that darkness which has fallen 
 upon Christ for thee. Is he gone — thy 
 tender-hearted friend ? Doth thy gentle 
 wife no longer minister ? Are thy children, 
 entranced as by the basilisk eye, fallen into 
 that trance that has no waking and makes no 
 parade of pain ? Oh, let Jesus stand by thee, 
 and as thou listenest to His inspiring word 
 the frantic shall subside within thee into the 
 hush of quiet sorrow ; thy tears, if they gather 
 still, shall gather silently, and thy frame shall 
 feel the pulses of a glad hope as when nature 
 stirs in the first blush of spring. If they and 
 thou are alike in Jesus, thou hast not looked 
 the last upon thy friends. Thou shalt see 
 them again ; not wan and shrunken, as when 
 the latest smile played upon the face, and 
 there was scarce strength left to ripple it from
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 137 
 
 lip to eye, but in immortal bloom that knows 
 no hectic of fever, and in fadeless youth that 
 chills beneath no frost of age. And thou 
 brave wrestler against evil, often foiled, but 
 who dost not cease in thine endeavour, take 
 thou the comfort too, for Jesus is the resur- 
 rection for thee. Thy yielding faith, thy 
 slavish fear, thy maddened freaks of passion, 
 were but the compromises of thy perverse and 
 unworthy unbelief. All that make up the 
 foulness and corruption of thy moral death 
 shall trouble thee no longer. Thine Easter 
 shall be complete, and shall be glorious. 
 Let thy faith fasten upon the Redeemer's 
 perfect work ; let there be a glad response in 
 'ihy heart when He says to thee, " Believest 
 thou this ?" and there is nothing to hinder 
 thine absolute and entire emergence out of 
 the death of sin. The struggle may be long 
 within thee. The passions that have held 
 tyranny over thee for years may not be con- 
 tent easily to die. Lingering thoughts of evil, 
 carnal thoughts, not utterly subdued, may 
 harass thee, like the guerilla forces of an 
 enemy — Diabolonians, lurking yet in the 
 holes and corners of the " Town of Man- 
 soul ; " but keep thy trust in Christ, and thou
 
 138 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 shalt be loosed from ever}' cerement and from 
 every grave-cloth of the sepulchre ; not even 
 the mould of its dampness, nor its fetid and 
 unwholesome odour, shall remain. There 
 shall not be a vestige of death about thee, 
 and thou shalt rise up in the faultlessness of 
 thy new character— the Lamb's unspotted 
 bride. This is your privilege, brethren, and 
 it is mine. Let us realise the double conso- 
 lation — comfort for the mourners who are 
 crushed beneath some pressing sorrow, com- 
 fort for the mourners who wrestle with some 
 giant sin ; and in our distress and in our 
 feebleness let us hear the voice again, as once, 
 by the charnel cave of Lazarus, it ran electric, 
 like a line of light, to make the blood flow 
 freely in the veins of the living, and then 
 leaped into the sepulchre to relax even the 
 very grasp of death itself — " I am the resur- 
 rertion and the life." 
 
 Conscious Life in Heaven. 
 
 It is manifest that if the life of heaven is to 
 be a life of enjoyment for us, it must be a 
 conscious life. There must be no moment
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS, 139 
 
 of interruption in this life, although it may be 
 somewhat changed in its conditions. In all 
 ages men have bewildered themselves by- 
 speculations as to the mode of their future 
 existence, and in their labyrinthine thoughts 
 we find they have wandered into nearly every 
 imaginable error. Some have taken refuge 
 in the dark caves of materialism ; others have 
 held to the old Pythagorean belief of the trans- 
 mutation of souls. Their inability to conceive 
 of the spirit existing and acting apart from 
 its vehicle, the body, seems to have been at 
 the root of it all ; and modern theorisers, per- 
 plexed by the same mystery, have tried to get 
 out of it by teaching us that the soul shall 
 sleep until the body shall rise. But I am not 
 disposed to yield grim Death one atom of 
 advantage over the diviner part of man. If 
 for ages he can paralyse my soul, then the 
 Saviour has gained only a partial triumph. 
 It is as impossible to reconcile this view with 
 the teachings of Scripture, as it is to refrain 
 from being humbled by it. We feel it as an 
 insult upon our nature, just as a patriot 
 writhes under some brand of national dis- 
 honour. When Paul passed through that
 
 UO LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 interrupted life that made him hesitate. " I 
 am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to 
 depart and to be with Christ, which is far 
 better." "Far better!" What, that that 
 mighty mind should cease its thinking, and 
 that that loving heart should be for ages 
 still, and that that resistless energy should be 
 cribbed, powerless, and unconscious, through 
 a cycle of years ! Far better ! — nay, verily, 
 if this were the alternative, better a protracted 
 existence upon earth — that were far better 
 than to go down into the dust dishonoured 
 and inactive for ages. Ah ! but Paul knew 
 better than that. He knew full well that the 
 moment he was released from mortality, he 
 should be with Christ, which is far better ; 
 that to close his eyes upon the fair presences 
 of this world would be only to open them 
 upon the presences that are higher and that 
 are diviner, and with this consciousness 
 heaven came into his soul. Yes, brethren, 
 that solemn other v/orld is a world of con- 
 scious life. There is not a moment's interval 
 of slumber for the soul. We die, but we do 
 not cease to be ; we only change the condi- 
 tions of our being. For the soul, in the first 
 instant of its immortahty, there is an antici-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 141 
 
 pation of the last assize. The pure have the 
 foretaste of their own eternal happiness, the 
 ungodly have premonitions of their own 
 eternal doom. The paradise into which the 
 righteous are ushered, and where they, sur- 
 prised to find themselves, associate with the 
 dying thief and with the dying thief s Re- 
 deemer, is like the heaven which it adjoins, 
 undeluged by one wave of trouble. The 
 dungeon where the impenitent abide their 
 trial is like the hell which it approximates, 
 unvisited by one ray of hope. For all prac- 
 tical purposes there comes the judgment to 
 every man in the first moment of his de- 
 parture from the body, when the countenance 
 is scarce calmed from the throes of the dying 
 convulsion, and when the cold mortal sweat 
 has only just been wiped from off the marble 
 brow. Oh, it is a thought at once animating 
 and awful ! There is no human soul which 
 from the days of Adam until now has ever 
 dwelt in clay that is not alive to-day / It is 
 a conscious world into which we are rapidly 
 passing. ,
 
 142 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 Precio2is Pi'omises. 
 
 It is not my Bible this, it is not your Bible 
 this ; it is our Bible, it is common property, 
 it belongs to the universal Church. We have 
 no sympathy, of course, with those who would 
 monopolise this sacred treasure, keep this 
 light of the gospel burning, and that with a 
 precious dimness, only in the study of the 
 priest, or fettered, as it used to be, like a 
 curiosity, to the altars of the churches. 
 Thank God, these days of darkness are gone 
 by for ever; and yet there is a Church some- 
 where, professedly Christian, which denies to 
 its members the light and comfort of the 
 Bible in their own tongue, thus most abso- 
 lutely " exalting itself against all that is called 
 God." Oh most foul corruption! Deprive 
 us of the Bible ! As well forbid us to gaze 
 upon the jewelled sky, or to be fanned by the 
 wind and searching air. Deprive us of the 
 Bible ! Call it a sin for us to look at the sun, 
 and to bask in the blaze of his enlivening 
 beams ! The very same Hand that launched 
 yon orb upon the ocean of hfe, and bade him 
 shine upon the evil and the good, has sent 
 this orb into the world, and has sent it on
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 143 
 
 purpose that it may be a light to all our feet, 
 and a lantern to all our paths. We devoutly 
 thank the gooii Spirit of the Lord that He 
 put it into the hearts of our forefathers to 
 protest against so flagrant and monstrous an 
 impiety. We cannot afford to be thus robbed 
 of our birthright, to be thus cheated of our 
 inheritance, to be thus basely swindled out 
 of the possession of the Book of God. It is 
 the legacy of the apostle's labour, the bulwark 
 of the confessor's faith, the purchase of the 
 martyr's blood. Thank God ! we have the 
 Bible in possession ; let us prove that we 
 love it by drawing from it all the encourage- 
 ment which its heaven-inspired pages are cal- 
 culated to afford, and by cleaving to it with an 
 intensity of attachment and affection which 
 all the efforts of scoffers and traitors will 
 never be able to disturb. 
 
 We say, then, we have a right to expect 
 this sufficiency, because it is promised in the 
 Bible. We gather it from the declarations of 
 Scripture. Listen to them, you that are in 
 Christ — listen to them ; they are yours : — 
 " Thus saith the Lord, who created thee, O 
 Jacob, and formed thee, O Israel; fear not 
 for I have redeemed thee ; I have called thee
 
 144 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 by thy name." Oh what a beautiful thoughi; 
 that is ! How many behevers were there 
 that in the early ages of the world, in the 
 patriarchal and Levitical times, went up by 
 faith in a Saviour to come ! How many 
 thousands upon thousands have listened to 
 apostohc teaching, and rejoiced in the glad- 
 ness and the beauty of the new covenant ! 
 How many thousands upon thousands in all 
 succeeding ages have there been who have 
 participated in the same hope, and enjoyed 
 the same immunity from sin ! How many 
 thousands upon thousands are there now 
 upon the earth working out their salvation 
 with fear and trembling ! How many thou- 
 sands upon thousands shall come into the 
 Church in that day of its millennial fulness, 
 when the gates of it shall not be shut day or 
 night, because the porter shall have no chance 
 of shutting them, the people shall crowd in 
 so fast ! Now think of all this mass of re- 
 generate minds, believers past, believers pre- 
 sent, believers future, and then come and 
 hear God saying, " I have called thee by thy 
 name," to every one out of that mass. " I 
 have called thee by thy name. Thou art 
 not lost in the crowd. I did not know thee
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 145 
 
 simply as a believer in Jesus. 1 know all 
 about thee, and could at any moment call 
 thee by thy name. Tell the world the story 
 of the fears from which thou hast been deli- 
 vered, and what struggles thou hast made 
 against evil, and of all the hope and joy that 
 have made thy path jubilant and glad. I 
 have called thee by thy name. Thou art 
 mine. When thou passest through the 
 waters I will be with thee ; through the 
 rivers " — deeper than the waters — " they shall 
 not overflow thee ; when thou walkest through 
 the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither 
 shall the flame kindle upon thee." "The 
 Lord God is a sun and a shield," light and 
 defence : we do not want much more in our 
 passage. " He will give grace and glory;" 
 and if any of you are so perversely clever, so 
 mischievously ingenious in multiplying argu- 
 ments in favour of your own despair, that 
 you can think of some blessing that is not 
 wrapped up either in grace or glory, "No 
 good thing will He withhold from them that 
 walk uprightly." "Fear not, I am with 
 thee ; be not dismayed, for I am thy God. 
 Cast all thy care upon Me, for I care for 
 
 thee." 
 
 G
 
 146 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 Are you still dissatisfied ? God conde- 
 scends to expostulate with you. 
 
 Moiitit Sion. 
 
 Oil, it is a happy thing to have come to 
 Mount Sion ! Only think of the companion- 
 ship. I cannot enlarge upon it. The apostle 
 takes you very rapidly through it in the 
 verses in connexion with the text. The most 
 exalted associations in the universe become 
 yours if you are faithful in the improvement 
 of your privileges. When you come to Mount 
 Sion, there will be an innumerable company 
 of angels. Heaven and earth are reconciled 
 and united in the new covenant, and an in- 
 numerable company of angels smile down 
 upon the church of the first-born, upon the 
 earliest regenerated, upon the predestined 
 heirs of that heaven in which they abode 
 from the beginning. The chariots of God on 
 Sinai were twenty thousand, even thousands 
 of angels, but they terrified the people then, 
 and the poor multitude quailed down on the 
 plain, stricken with the consciousness of sin. 
 The angels live yet, and are bright in the
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 147 
 
 glory of their first estate, but they minister to 
 the people now ; they bear in their hands 
 some helpless child of grace lest in the world's 
 rugged and wayward pilgrimage he should 
 dash his foot against a stone. And they look 
 on, for there is no envy in the angels now. 
 There was once, when one of them fell be- 
 cause of it, but they look on now, sympathetic 
 and unenvying, while poor ransomed mortals 
 are lifted up into a glory that is higher and 
 brighter than theirs. And then, besides this, 
 you come into union with all that believe, all 
 that are professors of the same precious faith, 
 and whose names are written in heaven — 
 your hallowed confederacy. You can claim 
 help from sufferers everywhere ; it is a com- 
 monwealth. Your wants and sorrows are the 
 wants and sorrows of alL The sympathy of 
 the Hebrew was a very contracted sort of 
 thing — bounded by kindred and clanship, 
 and so on. Hence the priest and the Levite 
 could not come down from the proprieties on 
 the other side of the way and assist the poor 
 plundered stranger. But the sympathy to 
 which you are entitled is a sympathy catholic 
 as the heart of Christ, and universal as the 
 brotherhood of man. "Ye are come to God,
 
 148 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 the Judge of all." He was the special law- 
 giver to the Hebrews, and yet they dared not 
 come to Him ; but the energy and force of 
 this passage in reference to the Christian is, 
 that through Christ he may come straight up 
 to the Jttdge^ — not to the Father, but to the 
 Judge, — and claim, by virtue of his substitute, 
 acquittal, and smile, and recompence, and 
 reward. And then, "Ye are come to the 
 spirits of the just made perfect." For them 
 the tears are shed — for them the crown is 
 won. But you are linked to them yet — by 
 covenant, and by struggle, and by faith you 
 mingle with them. Across the dark waters 
 which separate you there are mutual interests 
 and a hearty oneness of feeling. They look 
 down — a cloud of witnesses — in loving andL 
 helpful encouragement of your strife, for they • 
 know what it is. They have struggled them- 
 selves, and have themselves overcome ; and 
 you, at the heat of the battle, gaze wistfully 
 upwards towards them where they are in 
 their brightness and in their beauty, and — 
 
 " E'en now by faith you join your hands 
 With those who went before, 
 And greet the blood-besprinkled bands 
 Upon the eternal shore." 
 
 
 i
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS, 149 
 
 And then, crown of all other privileges — 
 we could not leave that out — the reason why- 
 all other privileges are inherited : " Ye are 
 come to Jesus the Mediator, and to the elo- 
 quent blood of sprinkling that speaketh better 
 things than that of Abel." The Hebrew's day 
 of atonement only came once a year — Jesus 
 is ever nigh. In all your lapses and short- 
 comings — your sudden yieldings to tempta- 
 tion — your unworthy acts of compromise to 
 evil, there is heaven and the Divine Advo- 
 cate ; here on earth is the open fountain ; your 
 means of propitiation are ever at hand. The 
 voice that pleads for you does not know how 
 to be silent. The tired sun may pause some- 
 times, perhaps, in his march — the light may 
 drop upon weary wings — there may come a 
 shadow upon the bright hues of the ocean, 
 and a tremor of age upon the everlasting 
 hills ; but through all times, and through all 
 change, the atonement retains its efficacy, 
 and the speaking blood yet pleads with its 
 glad tidings before the throne. " Ye are not 
 come to Sinai, but to Sion.
 
 ISO LIFE THOUGHTS, 
 
 Time was when it was fashionable to de- 
 preciate knowledge : time was when it was 
 fashionable, in certain circles, to dwell on the 
 pious but untaught cottager, who knew of no 
 book but his Bible, who deemed the world to 
 be wrapt up within the few miles or acres of 
 his own parish ; who thought the moon, as 
 she walked in brightness, to be no bigger 
 than his father's shield ; and the stars that 
 glitter in the sky only as the light points in 
 the kingdom of heaven, as the nails in the 
 floor of the city that hath foundations : but 
 all this is mere sentimentalism now. Such a 
 man may become the pearl of great price ; he 
 may be gifted for the performance of duty, 
 and gladdened with enjoyments of privilege, 
 and sustained by immortal hope ; but harkye, 
 one thing he lacketh — he should add to faith, 
 knowledge. It is enlightened piety that is 
 progressive, to which, bating not a jot of the 
 vitality of its faith, preserving all the original 
 warmth of freedom, there is added an all- 
 comprehensive survey of the mighty evi- 
 dences of truth, a view of the innumerable 
 domains which cluster in the economy of
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 151 
 
 God, Then it is that the Christian, contem- 
 plating dehghtfully the manifestations of re- 
 demptive energy, traverses step by step God's 
 extensive and excellent government — 
 
 ** Soaring on Contemplation's wing to trace 
 The continuity and amplitude of unnumber'd worlds ; 
 Sees all things moving in one glorious circle, 
 Whose centre and circumference is God ;" 
 
 and hears alike from nature and from revela- 
 tion, and from earth and air, and sea and sky, 
 the blending voice of solemn music : " For of 
 him, and through him, and to him are all 
 things : to whom be glory both now and for 
 ever." 
 
 The Faithful Mimste7'. 
 
 "Commending ourselves to every man's 
 conscience in the sight of God," " In the 
 sight of God." Ah ! that is the thought that 
 hallows it. All our endeavours for the en- 
 lightenment of our fellows are under the felt 
 inspection of Almighty God. His eye marks 
 the effort, — His voice, " I know thy works," 
 is constantly inspoken to the soul. It is 
 necessary that we should feel this, in order to 
 fit us for our duty. If we do not feel this, we
 
 152 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 shall have no courage. Depend upon it, th? 
 heroism which the pulpit needs — which it 
 never needed in this world's history half so 
 much as it needs to-day — the heroism which 
 the pulpit needs, which the ministry must 
 have, will not be wrought in the soul, unless 
 this thought is there. There is so much to 
 enslave a man : the consciousness of his own 
 unworthiness, — the weakness of his best and 
 holiest moments, — the love of approbation^ 
 which forms a natural instinct, swells often 
 into a sore temptation, — the reluctance to give 
 offence, lest the ministry should be blamed, — 
 the haunting anxiety as to what men think of 
 him and say of him ; — oh ! how often have 
 these things checked the stern reproof and 
 the faithful warning, and made the preacher 
 the slave, instead of the monarch of his con- 
 gregation ; and, instead of the stern, strong, 
 fearless utterances of the prophet, you may 
 stammer forth his lispings with the hesitancy 
 of a blushing child ! Depend upon it, this is 
 no light matter. It requires no common 
 boldness to stand single-handed before the 
 pride of birth, and the pride of rank, and the 
 pride of office, and the pride of intellect, and 
 the pride of money, and to rebuke their trans-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 153 
 
 gressions, and to strip off their false confi- 
 dence, and tear away their refuges of hes ; 
 but if a man has only burned into his heart, 
 that he is speaking in the sight of God — 
 ah ! he will do it. Yes ; God-fear will banish 
 man-fear. He will feel that, for the time, the 
 pulpit is his empire, and the temple is his 
 throne ; and, Hke another Baptist, he will 
 thunder out his denunciations against rich 
 and poor together, with his honest eyes 
 straight flashing into theirs : " Except ye re- 
 pent, ye shall all likewise perish." 
 
 " In the sight of God." Give him that 
 thought, and he will be tender as well as 
 brave. He will look upon his congregation 
 as immortal ; he will see in each one before 
 him (oh, the thought is overwhelming !) an 
 offspring of the Divine, an heir of the ever- 
 lasting ; and in this aspect of it he will 
 tremble before the majesty of man. He will 
 be awe-struck, as he thinks of trying to in- 
 fluence them for eternity. There will be no 
 harshness in his tones, there will be no seve- 
 rity in his countenance. If the violated law 
 must speak out its thunders, it will be through 
 brimming eyes and faltering tongues. He 
 will remember his own recent deliverance ; 
 
 G 2
 
 154 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 like Joseph, he will scatter blessings round 
 him with large and liberal hand ; but there 
 will be no ostentation, there will be no vanity, 
 for he will remember that he is but the 
 almoner of another's bounty, and that his 
 own soul has only just been brought out 
 of prison. He will be like one shipwrecked 
 mariner who has got upon the rock, and is 
 stretching out a helping hand to another who 
 yet struggles in the waters ; he that is on the 
 rock knows that he has only a slippery foot- 
 ing, and that the yawning ocean is beneath 
 him. Oh ! let us realise that we are in the 
 sight of God, and we shall have larger sym- 
 pathies for man. We shall have more of the 
 spirit of Him who "came eating and drink- 
 ing," and who was " the friend of publicans 
 and sinners." There will be no fierce rebukes, 
 no proud exclusivism, no pharisaical arro- 
 gance then. The sleeper will not be harshly 
 chided ; the remonstrance of affection will 
 yearn over him, and the tear will gather in his 
 eye as the invitation is given, or the regret is 
 breathed : " Ye will not come unto me that ye 
 might have life." " Com^e, all ye that are 
 weary and heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest."
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS, 155 
 
 **^ In the sight of God." That will help us 
 to persevere. We shall be constant, as well 
 as brave and tender, if we realise continually 
 that we are in the sight of God. Though diffi- 
 culties multiply, this will prevent us from 
 becoming weary and faint in our minds. We 
 shall remember Him who endured the con- 
 tradiction of sinners against Himself ; and 
 through perverseness and obduracy, whether 
 men will hear, or whether men will forbear, 
 we shall labour on for the cause of Christ, 
 and for the good of souls. Wc shall not be 
 satisfied v/ith good report, with extensive 
 popularity, with decorous congi-egations, 
 with attention, settled and serious, upon 
 every countenance. We shall want souls. 
 We shall press right away through, to the 
 great end of restoring the supremacy of con- 
 science, and brmging a disordered world back 
 again to its allegiance to God. This is our 
 life-work, and we are doing it day by day — 
 unfaithfully, imperfectly — but we are doing 
 it. Moral truth upon the mind of man is 
 something like a flat stone in a churchyai'd 
 through which there is a thoroughfare. Hun- 
 dreds of pattering feet go over it day by day ; 
 famiharity with it has weakened the impres-
 
 156 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 sion, and time has effaced the letters. The 
 foot of each passer-by adds something to the 
 work of decay ; but God has sent us with a 
 friendly chisel to bring it out again into 
 sharp, clearest, distinctest outline before the 
 spirits of men. That is our life-work, and 
 we are labouring on amid the driving sleet 
 and pelting rain, — jostled now and then by 
 the rude and heedless passenger, — fitfully 
 looked at by those who flit away to the farm 
 and the merchandise, — regarded with a sort 
 of contemptuous admiration by those who 
 admire our industry, while they pity our en- 
 thusiasm. Patient, earnest workers, we must 
 labour on, and we intend to do so. God 
 helping us, the ministry of reconciliation is 
 to be proclaimed here. Sabbath after Sab- 
 bath, universally, unto those who will come, 
 without money and without price ; and 
 verily, we shall have our reward. I cannot 
 labour in vain. What, think you, would 
 sustain me under the pressure of multiplied 
 excitement, and multiplied sorrow, and mul- 
 tiplied labour, but the thought that I cannot 
 labour in vain ? The words I have spoken 
 to-night are flung forward, and they have 
 lodged in the conscience, and I cannot recall
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 157 
 
 them : simple, well-known Bible truths, they 
 have gone into your consciences, and I cannot 
 recall them. But they shall come up some 
 day. You and I may never meet again, 
 until we stand at the judgment-seat of God ; 
 then they shall come up — then^ and, verily, 
 I shall have my reward. I shall have it, when 
 some fair-haired child stops to spell out the 
 syllables upon that flat stone, and goes away 
 with a new purpose in his heart ; I shall 
 have it, when some weather-beaten man, 
 bronzed with the hues of climate and the 
 shades of years, takes the solemn warning, 
 numbers his days, and applies his heart unto 
 wisdom ; I shall have it, in the welcome given 
 to my ascending spirit by some whom I first 
 taught, it may be unworthily, to swell the 
 hosanna of praise, or to wrestle in all the 
 litanies of prayer ; I shall have it, in that 
 smile that wraps up all heaven in itself, and 
 in those tones of kindness which flood the 
 soul with ineffable and everlasting music : 
 " Well done, good and faithful servant ; 
 enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." I leave 
 with you and with the Spirit the word of His 
 grace, praying that He who alone can accom- 
 plish it, may give it life and power.
 
 158 LIFE THOUGHTS, 
 
 God Mindful of Man. 
 
 How is God mindful of man? I need 
 scarcely put the question, for every phase 
 of man's life, every aspect in which it is 
 possible to lock on him, give the answer. 
 He is mindful of man in every moment of 
 his existence — mindful of infancy on its 
 mother's breast or in its nurse's arms. Who 
 else can understand an infant's language, 
 and interpret an infant's look? He is mind- 
 ful of boyhood in the season of passionate 
 and wayward youth, when it sports with 
 existence and tosses it about as if it were 
 one of the playthings of its pleasure. He is 
 mindful of manhood in the toils of active 
 life — of age when all other mindfulness ter- 
 minates, and when the tics to earth have 
 been loosened one by one. He is mindful 
 of them all. And so constantly is this 
 mindfulness manifested — so intense and all- 
 pervading is this essence, that we might 
 almost adopt the language though not the 
 spirit of the Pantheistic philosophers, who 
 tell us that whatever is is God. 
 
 And then Pie is mindful of us inasmuch 
 as He has provided all things needful for
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 159 
 
 our existence. You cannot look around you 
 on the creation of God without discovering 
 that everything that is is for you. For man 
 has the creation been furnished, and the 
 eartli formed and fitted that he may dwell 
 on it. For man the sun rises in the east, 
 and pursues its course along the heavens, 
 and shoots out his beams of fire. For man 
 the moon and stars perform their nightly 
 revolutions round the midnight throne. For 
 man refreshing zephyrs breathe, and purify 
 ing winds blow, and gentle dews rise from 
 beneath, and fertilising rain-drops descend 
 from above. For man the earth is enam- 
 elled with flowers and stored with plenty. 
 For man springs gush from the rocks and 
 the throb of the ocean waves is perpetually 
 sounding. All orders of creation bestir 
 themselves when he speaks, and are alive 
 in their endeavours for his benefit. Nature 
 brings the keys of her magnificent treasure- 
 house, and lays them, a vassal, at the feet of 
 man. 
 
 He is mindful of us again because He has 
 provided everything not only for our exist- 
 ence but for our happiness. Every portion 
 of the human body, fitting harmoniously
 
 i6o LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 together — every duct — every muscle — every 
 nerve — all are of exquisite workmanship, 
 and all shew the benevolence of God. For 
 the happiness of His creatures He has 
 gifted us with the innocent pleasures of 
 sense; He has annexed enjoyment to every 
 action of the life ; so that when body and 
 mind are alike in health we can neither eat, 
 drink, walk, talk, or sleep, without sensations 
 of pleasure. He has gifted us with powers 
 of imagination — made us susceptible of the 
 rich poetry with which He has filled crea- 
 tion. He has given us the capacity for high 
 thoughts and feelings. He has endowed us 
 to expand, to analyse, to illustrate, to com- 
 pare, to combine. He has gifted us with 
 the principle of friendship ; He has im- 
 planted in us the social nature. He has 
 gifted us with the pleasures of hope, drawing 
 comfort from every clement of sorrow, and 
 soothing each Marah of the heart's bitter- 
 ness. He has gifted us with the pleasures 
 of memory, embalming the recollection of 
 the past in an amber that never fades away, 
 and that is proof against the corrupting 
 influences of time, thrilling again the spirit 
 with the pleasures that once thrilled the
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. i6i 
 
 heart in youth. He has gifted us, above all, 
 with the pleasures of holiness, the blessed 
 feeling of conscious pardon, the calm satis- 
 faction of assured faith, the enriching com- 
 fort of the Holy Spirit — heaven around us, 
 heaven above us, heaven beyond us, heaven 
 within us, and the bright and cheering pros- 
 pect of the enjoyment of that heaven for 
 ever. Infidels tell us that God has flung 
 this world from His hand, and has then left 
 it to shift for itself, and deprived it entirely 
 of His paternal care. God points to man 
 endowed thus richly, and tells them that they 
 lie. Infidels have insinuated that if there be 
 a God, He dwells in some far-off laboratory 
 of power, but that this world of His creation 
 is now orphaned of His grace. God points 
 to all the creation rejoicing in its fitness and 
 in its harmony, and bids them listen to its 
 song. 
 
 " The solemn mountain lifts its heaJ, th' Almighty to pro- 
 claim, 
 
 The brooklet from its crystal bed doth leap to greet His 
 name ; 
 
 High swells the deep and fitful sea, upon its billowy 
 track. 
 
 And red Vesuvius opes its mouth, to hurl the falsehood 
 back.
 
 162 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 No God ! With indignation high, yon fervent sun is 
 
 stirr'd, 
 And the pale moon turns paler still, at such an impious 
 
 word ; 
 And from their thrones in heaven the stars look down 
 
 with angry eye, 
 That thus a worm of dust should mock eternal majesty." 
 
 " Tell me ^ art ihoii a Roman .?" 
 
 "Tell me, art thou a Roman?" It is a 
 suspected criminal who is thus asked by one 
 who is charged for the time with the arbitra- 
 tion of his destiny. While the cheek of the 
 inquirer is clouded as with the shadow of an 
 apprehended trouble, his eye lights up with 
 a glance of pride and envy. " Tell me, art 
 thou a Roman ? " Didst thou step easily 
 into the heritage which it was too costly for 
 me to obtain ? It was my life-long ambition 
 to acquire the citizenship, and at length the 
 kindly drachmas countervailed the prejudice 
 of alien birth ; but thou, of mean estate and 
 in evil fortunes — rthou, who seemest to have 
 gathered about thyself the popular hate — 
 thou, whom I have just sifted by scourging — 
 art thou a fellow-heir of this world's foremost 
 privilege? Then answered Paul, in all the
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 163 
 
 dignity of patriotism — in the majesty without 
 the insolence of patriotic pride, " But I was 
 free born." That must have been no hght 
 consideration which could induce him lightly 
 to regard such a privilege, or to prefer to it 
 any other inheritance ; and yet the faith 
 which had changed the current of his life 
 had sublimed his hopes as well, and in the 
 text he speaks of himself as a seeker after a 
 better country ; and his vaunt is not that he 
 is a Roman citizen, but that his conversation 
 (or citizenship, for that is the real meaning 
 of the word) — his conversation or citizen- 
 ship is in heaven. There he has laid up 
 his treasure, and thither, as to their source 
 of inspiration, his hopes and wishes fly. 
 
 We are Clu-istians. 
 
 We are Christians ; it doth not beseem us, 
 therefore, to act as worldlings do. The world 
 is their theatre — their treasure-house ; they 
 look and live no higher : but we, of nobler 
 birth and higher expectations, listeners to a 
 holy calling, waiters for the fruition of a 
 cherished hope — let us free ourselves as we
 
 i64 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 ought to do from the trammels of a sensual 
 bondage, mindful of our own rank and of our 
 destiny : let us beseem ourselves comely, 
 " for our conversation is in heaven." Breth- 
 ren, the need for a warning like this, an 
 exhortation like this, based upon the memory 
 of such privilege, has not certainly ceased. 
 The world, in which many of you mingle in 
 six days' passionate toil, the ordinary cares 
 of labour made a very drudgery by the fierce 
 competitions of the time, has yet, unhappily. 
 a power on the seventh, when another lord- 
 ship should take the possession of your soul : 
 and there are none of you, perhaps, that are 
 so free from its influences of distraction or 
 depression, that you are above the chance of 
 taint, and above the need of warning. It 
 cannot be amiss, therefore, for us to-day to 
 remind you of your heavenly citizenship, that 
 you may be grateful as you think upon its 
 source, that you may be stimulated to dis- 
 charge its duties, and that you may be com- 
 forted amid life's perils and sorrows by the 
 thought of the immunities which it confers — 
 " For our conversation is in heaven."
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 165 
 
 Ezekiets Vision. 
 
 I have somewhere seen a picture, which, 
 in brief words, and from dim memories only, 
 I will endeavour to describe. The scene is 
 in the far East ; the hour, when the earth is 
 just lighted up with that rare, oriental sun- 
 light which we Westerns long to see ; the 
 time, the sultry August, when the fierce sun 
 has it all his own way, and the country has a 
 sickly cast upon it, as if it fainted with the in- 
 tenseness of the glare. The plain is scorched 
 and arid, and the river running between its 
 sedgy banks seems to have hardly strength 
 enough to propel its own sluggish stream 
 from the mountains beyond. Beneath a 
 group of ancestral palms stands a knot of 
 Egyptian peasants, swarthy and muscular, 
 talking wildly to each other, and with eyes 
 strained wistfully in the direction of the 
 south, in which quarter there seems to hang 
 an indescribable haze, the forecasting shadow 
 of some atmospheric or other change. Why 
 look they there so eagerly? Why do they 
 gaze so intently just where the river faintly 
 glitters on the horizon's dusky verge ? Oh, 
 because they know, from the experience of
 
 i66 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 years, that the time has come for the inunda- 
 tion of the Nile. They do not know the pro- 
 cesses, perhaps, by which the waters are ga- 
 thered ; how in the far Abyssinia the sources 
 of wealth are distilled ; but, as certainly as if 
 their knowledge was profound and scientific, 
 do they calculate upon the coming of the 
 flood. And they know, too, that when the 
 flood does come, that scorched plain shall 
 wave with ripening grain, that there shall be 
 com in Egypt, and that those blackened 
 pastures shall then be gay wuth such fertile 
 plenty, that all the land shall eat, and shall 
 be satisfied ; for " everything shall live whither 
 the river cometh." And so marvellous shall 
 be the transformation, that the Turkish de- 
 scription of the soil of Eg\'pt shall be almost 
 realised — that for three months the earth is 
 white like pearl, for three months black like 
 musk, for three months green like emerald, 
 and for three months yellow like gold. This 
 picture has struck me as being a very vivid 
 and forcible representation of Ezekiel's vision, 
 embodied in the experience of Eastern life. 
 Nothing, surely, can better represent the 
 moral barrenness of the world — a wilderness 
 of sin— than that plain, on which the consum-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 167 
 
 ing heat has blighted and withered the green 
 earth, and induced the dread of famine ; no- 
 thing can better set forth the grace and the 
 heahng of the gospel than the flow of that 
 life-giving river ; nothing can better image to 
 us the attitude befitting all earnest Christian 
 men than the wistful gaze of those peasants 
 to the place whence the deliverance shall 
 come, that they may catch the first mur- 
 mur of the quickened waters, and feel and 
 spread the joy. Of course, there is a spiritual 
 application of the vision before us : it seems 
 to have been given for the gladdening of the 
 stern Ezekiel, as well as ourselves ; for the in- 
 spiration of the hopes of the olden time, as 
 well as for the rejoicing of these latter days in 
 its fulfilment. The spiritual application, I 
 need not remind you, applies to the gospel of 
 Christ, made effectual by the Holy Ghost for 
 the healing and for the salvation of men. 
 You will not fail to remember that the gospel 
 is often presented to us in the Bible under 
 the same figure. Under the similitude of 
 living water, its blessings were promised to 
 the Samaritan woman. The great and divine 
 Teacher, who lifted up His voice on the last 
 great day of the feast, announced that the
 
 l68 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 heart of each believer should be as a fountain 
 of living water ; and in identity with the seer 
 of the olden time, and with the evangelist of 
 the new, John tells us of the river of life, 
 " clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne 
 of God, and of the Lamb." We cannot err, 
 therefore, on this occasion, when we present 
 the holy waters as emblematic of the scheme 
 of perfected atonement, made efficacious by 
 the power of the Spirit of God, and adapted 
 to the salvation of the world. 
 
 " / Stand between the Living and the 
 Deadr 
 
 Literally it is true, in connexion with this 
 subject, I stand between the living and the 
 dead. How difficult it would be, how im- 
 possible it would be to classify the indivi- 
 duals that are now before me as to educa- 
 tional status, as to their intelligence, as to 
 their tempers, as to their moral culture, as to 
 any one subject upon which it is possible to 
 classify individuals ; but to the broad eye of 
 God, looking down upon us now, there are 
 just two classes — the living and the dead!
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 169 
 
 To which of these two classes do you beiong ? 
 Those are Hving who have come to Christ 
 and are resting upon Him ; those are dead 
 who are yet in a state of nature, or who have 
 fled for refuge to any refuge of Hes. I stand 
 between the living and the dead. Some of 
 you are living perhaps. Are you .^ You 
 hardly know, you say. Your only evidence 
 of life is that you are conscious of your dead- 
 ness. Well, there is life there. That is more 
 than a dead man has. The consciousness of 
 deadness is itself a sign of life — equivocal, 
 unworthy, unsatisfactory, but still there is 
 life. Perhaps yours is the life of an invahd, 
 spent only in complaining — perhaps yours is 
 but the life of a babe, that can do nothing 
 but cry ; still there is life, and where there is 
 life there is hope — where there is Hfe there is 
 susceptibility and growth. Go to the Source 
 of life, and get that life and that strength. 
 Get richer draughts of life coming from the 
 fountain, so that the supplies may daily lead 
 you unto life eternal. Then shall the life be 
 imparted to you yet more and more even 
 unto the end — even unto the end. Some of 
 you are dead — dead in trespasses and sins ; 
 you are going on, heedless and light-hearted
 
 I70 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 children of the world, but you have nothing 
 beyond ; this world is your all. A sudden 
 stroke separates you from this world, and 
 your hopes go no further. No man knows 
 what awaits you beyond death. You are 
 dead in reference to the spirit-world — dead 
 in trespasses and sins. Oh, I do rejoice that 
 I can come to you to-night with the publica- 
 tion of life. I can stand upon the sepulchre 
 and roll the stone away, and in the name of 
 my Master exclaim, '" He that belie veth in 
 Jesus, even though he were dead, yet shall he 
 live. Whosoever liveth and believeth in Jesus 
 shall never die." Strange it is, and yet not 
 more strange than true, the best gifts in the 
 universe, the costliest gifts in the universe, 
 are the freest gifts in the universe, and that 
 which the wealth of Australia could not buy 
 is offered without money and without price. 
 Brethren, it is for you ; I offer it to you to- 
 night. In the name of my jMaster, I offer 
 you life to-night. Neighbours may scoff at 
 you ; infidels, who don't believe in the exist- 
 ence of a hfe to come, may deride you ; 
 domestic ties may try to hold you down ; but 
 as Christian, in the " Pilgrim's Progress," 
 convinced that it is your duty, flee from the
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. I7i 
 
 city of destruction with your finger in your 
 ear, crying. " Life, life, eternal life ! " and rush 
 forward unto the wicket-gate, and into the 
 Interpreter's house, and near the cross on 
 Calvary the Lord will bless you in your 
 pilgrimage, and bring you safely and speedily 
 home. Look ye, if ye list. Don't say you 
 have not had life offered, to your acceptance. 
 I call God to witness against you very sol- 
 emnly that to-day I have set before you life 
 and death. Don't kill yourselves . you will 
 do so if you refuse life. God will not kill you. 
 He has never decreed the perdition of any 
 creature He has made. Mmistcrs would not 
 kill you — they would fain have you live — they 
 give warning upon warning that you may 
 live. Oh, a terrible scene rises up before 
 me. I fancy myself somewhere ; it may be 
 in the country, perhaps, in this beautiful 
 island of ours. See, we will put the scene as 
 I have sometimes seen it. At the corner of 
 four green lanes, where everything in the 
 external aspect seems to smile ; yet there is 
 something here which makes the peasant 
 whistle to himself as he goes by at night, or 
 pass it with bated breath, and which causes 
 the children not to choose the spot to play
 
 172 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 in, for it seems haunted with a nameless 
 horror. If I ask what it is, they tell me in a 
 whisper, " This is the grave of a suicide." An 
 unhappy sod ; the dust thrown up nameless 
 and unknown at the corner of four cross- 
 roads is the grave of one who put himself 
 out of life, and beyond the pale of Christian 
 burial — the grave of a suicide. O brethren, 
 it is a fearful scene ! But I must pursue the 
 analogy. If any of you, after repeated ad- 
 monitions and warnings, should perish, you 
 have stamped the suicide upon your own 
 soul, and wherever your nameless grave shall 
 be, angels, who delight to minister to those 
 that shall be heirs of salvation, looking at the 
 place where your ashes repose, will have to 
 say, " It is the grave of a suicide, of one who is 
 self-murdered, of one who is spiritually dead, 
 who has struck the dagger of perdition into 
 his own soul." Oh, don't do that, I beseech 
 you ! Don't do that I Live, live ! In that 
 one word is "the gospel," because Christ 
 has promised life, and the Spirit is waiting 
 to impart it. Live ! May God write that 
 word on your hearts, for the Redeemers 
 sake!
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 173 
 
 Christ a Sympathising F7'iend. 
 
 How grateful kindness is when it comes 
 bubbling in all the freshness of sincerity 
 from the unsullied fountain of a friend's 
 heart ! There is not a sorrow that it cannot 
 alleviate, nor a joy that it cannot intensify ; 
 and here we have a Friend that sticketh 
 closer than a brother, one who is touched 
 with a feeling of our infirmities, because He 
 has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. 
 That is a poor fellow-feehng, you know, 
 which is the result of education rather than 
 experience. You cannot teach a man any- 
 where to sympathise in the distresses of a 
 fellow-man. If he would know the heat of 
 the furnace, you must put him through the 
 flame. And so Christ has been. His visage 
 was marred more than any man's ; He hun- 
 gered and thirsted, wept, bled, was a man of 
 sorrows, and acquainted with grief. There 
 is not a pang sharp of agony that lacerates 
 you that did not lacerate Him before you, 
 and He was in all points tempted like as 
 you are, and yet without sin. He is able to 
 sympathise, therefore ; and many a time, as, 
 you know, it is in earthly companionship,
 
 174 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 the society and the soothing of a fiiend 
 dehvers the eyes from tears ; the tears flow 
 gently down, and do not scald as they rail, 
 when a friend's sympathising voice is heard: 
 so when Jesus comes to the believer's rescue, 
 his sorrow is but an element of strength and 
 comfort, soothed down into a pensive feeling 
 by the presence of Him who has redeemed 
 and will deliver him. 
 
 Affilciions from God. 
 
 Trials come not by chance, but are the 
 wise and merciful interpositions of an al- 
 mighty hand. The Christian is assured of 
 this ; he learns this in the school of Christ, 
 even in the rudimentary part of his educa- 
 tion. Knowing that in some way or other 
 his own benefit is involved, he endeavours 
 to find out the hidden lesson which is meant 
 for him. Whether to repress the giant growth 
 of selfishness, whether to impress him with a 
 tenderness for the wants and wees of others, 
 whether to win his spirit from the world and 
 attach him more closely to the skies, whether 
 to exemplify the honourable and noble grace
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 175 
 
 of resignation — in some way or other he is 
 sure his benefit is involved ; and while poor, 
 unthinking people come, and in ribald wit 
 are scoffing at him, and saying, " Persecute 
 and attack him, for the Lord hath forsaken 
 him, the wrath of God is heavy upon him," 
 he bends meekly. " Whom the Lord loveth 
 he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom 
 he receiveth ; for if we be without chastise- 
 ment, of which all are partakers, then are we 
 bastards and not sons." 
 
 The Stroll^ and the Timid Christian. 
 
 To be sustained under the curse we must. 
 have the same strength as that by which 
 we were originally brought into the enjoy- 
 ment of the blessing. We cannot keep 
 ourselves for one moment ; we cannot of 
 ourselves enter upon life ; we cannot sustain 
 ourselves amid the world's ruggedness and 
 temptation and difficulty v/ithout the con- 
 stant protection of a Divine hand. " Thou 
 hast preserved my feet from falling." It is 
 just this ever-present guidance of God that 
 makes the difference between a strong and
 
 1/6 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 a timid Christian. The timid Christian 
 sends out — to use an illustration that is very 
 familiar — sends out spies into the land of 
 Canaan, hears largely of its fertility and 
 beauty, very ardently desires it as an in- 
 heritance for ever ; but then the tall sons of 
 Anak are there, and the cities are walled 
 and very great, and the people are a feeble 
 folk, and the enemy a great multitude ; and 
 under the pressure of these giant-like diffi- 
 culties the man is content to remain in the 
 wilderness, cropping the scanty herbage by 
 the side of the tangled path, when he might 
 be luxuriating among the grapes of Eshcol 
 and among the vintage of Zion. While the 
 strong man, the man whose faith is strong, 
 who relies on God's promises, he sends out 
 his spies into the land of Canaan too, and 
 they bring back the same report, and say, " It 
 is true ; the tall sons of Anak are there, and 
 they are very tall " — he does not underrate 
 the stature of these sons of the giants one 
 cubit — " the tall sons of Anak are there, and 
 the cities are walled and very great, and it 
 would be a very formidable thing to take." 
 They tell him of the difficulties ; nothing is 
 gained by concealing the truth or by repre-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 177 
 
 senting that it is all sunshine and calm, rest 
 and peace, in the way to the kingdom of 
 heaven — nothing is gained by that. The 
 spies are true men, and they tell the story 
 just as it is. Then the man looks into 
 himself and looks upward to his God, and 
 sees the finger which originally called him 
 in the way, beckoning to him from the cloud, 
 and he says to himself, " If the Lord delight 
 in me, He will surely bring me up hence ;" 
 and then he turns round and acts with 
 courage, goes into the midst of his grovel- 
 ling companions and says, " Let us go up 
 and possess the good land, for we are well 
 able to overcome it." " One routs a thou- 
 sand, and two put ten thousand to flight;" 
 and, more than conquerors, they enter into 
 the possession of the rest. 
 
 Soul Rest. 
 
 " Return unto thy rest, O my soul." 
 Where can the soul rest except in Him 
 who is the Redeemer, Consoler, and Pre- 
 server ? If He has delivered your soul from 
 death, and your eyes from tears, and your 
 H 2
 
 178 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 feet from falling, there can be no rest but in 
 Him. The rest of the soul, you know, was 
 the problem of the old world. They formed 
 ideas upon it which were but as a vapour 
 that; appeareth for a little time and then 
 fadeth away. Pleasure, with her ever- 
 changing flashes and hues, was represented 
 as the rest of the soul ; but they lied — they 
 lied — who said it. The soul could not rest 
 in any of these, which are like the restless 
 and ever-heaving ocean, which can never be 
 stilled except by Him that appointed its 
 habitation, and fixed the bounds which it 
 can never pass. God is the only rest of the 
 soul. This return to it implies that you 
 have wandered. Is it so? Has there been 
 an idol in your affection^ — a compromise in 
 your practice — something that has been un- 
 worthy and impure ? You have wandered ; 
 then return into your rest, or there is no 
 happiness for you. You see that dove speed- 
 ing over the waste wilderness of waters, find- 
 ing no rest for the sole of its foot. How it 
 curves round and round that one lone rock 
 of shelter that floats, a solitary spot upon the 
 world drowned in the tempest of Divine dis- 
 pleasure, until at last the lattice is opened,
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 179 
 
 the patriarch's hand is extended, and the dove 
 flutters feebly in ! Thou art that dove, if thou 
 art away from Jesus. Oh, who does not say 
 to-day, — 
 
 "Take my poor fluttering soul to rest, 
 And lodge it safely in Thy breast?" 
 
 Do you see that pining captive yonder, dis- 
 consolate, weeping his tears into the mirror 
 of the river there, in which are reflected the 
 shadow of the terraces and towers of Babylon ? 
 that poor harp, unstrung and mute, hanging 
 upon the willows ? His heart is sad because 
 his soul is so feeble and sore broken that it 
 cannot sing the Lord's song in a strange land. 
 Thou art that Israehte, if thou art away from 
 Christ. Oh, let the captive exile hasten to be 
 loosed to-night, and come back to his inherit- 
 ance and to his home. " Return unto thy 
 rest" — this is God's invitation to the Israelite, 
 God's invitation to those who have partially 
 forsaken Him. " Return unto thy rest," — let 
 each one of you say it to yourselves, let each 
 one of you put it in practice, and by the grace 
 of God may each one of you realise to-night 
 the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of 
 peace]
 
 i8o LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 hnmoi^tality. 
 
 There is nothing now anywhere upon 
 which the eye can gaze, or upon which the 
 mind can dwell, that does not remind us of 
 death. Everywhere there are the tokens 
 and memorials of death. The snow upon 
 the head of age, the brightness of the eye of 
 infancy, the tints which light up with such 
 rare and radiant beauty the cheek of youth, 
 all tell us of death. The mountains, the 
 valleys, the streams, the singing-birds, every- 
 thing in nature tells us of death. I who 
 speak to you am a living memorial of death. 
 You who hear me are living memorials of 
 death. The burden of nature's groaning 
 seems to be one unvarying dirge, telling us 
 that all flesh is as grass, and that the goodli- 
 ness thereof is as a flower of the field. Oh, 
 then, it is difficult to get away from the grasp 
 of these ideas, surrounded as we are by the 
 atmosphere of death. Dying creatures our- 
 selves, we can hardly imagine that time and 
 death will be no more ; but it shall come. 
 Immortality ! How few of us can spell the 
 word in all its deep significance ! Immor- 
 tality! Once get within those golden
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. i8i 
 
 streets, and you have looked your last on 
 age, and weariness, and change, and lassi- 
 tude, and pain, and death. Once get 
 within those golden streets, and every eye 
 will flash and sparkle with the new vigour of 
 immortal youth ; and it is whispered upon 
 every breath, and it is chanted in every 
 song, and it is heard in every aspiration of 
 the imperishably redeemed, " For ever, for 
 ever, for ever with the Lord ! " "I am come 
 that they might have life, and that they 
 might have it more abundantly." 
 
 Jesus the Only Saviour. 
 
 " Neither is there salvation in any other." 
 To have allowed a plurality of saviours would 
 have been to have indicated a faltering con- 
 fidence, or an unsatisfied claim. If the 
 covenant has been literally fulfilled ; if the 
 law has been abundantly vindicated ; if 
 mercy and truth shone in blended majesty 
 from the crest of Calvary, all other offering 
 were at once exuberant and insulting. "It 
 is finished ! " That was the triumphant 
 death-cry to which Heaven gave joyful re-
 
 1 82 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 sponse, and -which neither men nor devils 
 could gainsay or resist ; and therefore the 
 exclusiveness springs from the sufficiency. 
 There needs no other Saviour, so there is no 
 other Saviour. None but Christ is needed, 
 and so none but Christ is given. We can 
 imagine the serene satisfaction with which 
 the twelve would assent to this doctrine 
 which Peter propounded in their name. 
 Perhaps they would remember times in their 
 former lives when this great question came 
 upon them, lashing the sluggish current of 
 their ordinary existence into storm ; when 
 inner chords were struck heavily, and thrilled 
 with most sensitive vibration ; when thoughts 
 of most subtle associations were suggested 
 which led to the contemplation of eternity, 
 and they shuddered as they felt themselves 
 its unconscious heirs — how from each inves- 
 tigation they either groped in painfullest un- 
 certainty, or rushed only too eagerly away. 
 But they have found Jesus now, and their 
 souls have got new streni;,th from the com- 
 panionship ; and they do not blanch from 
 the recollection of their former doubt and 
 trouble. They are like soldiers who have 
 survived the campaign, and who fight the
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 183 
 
 battles o'er again around the hearthstone, 
 where it is impossible for the enemy's weapons 
 to wound, or for the enemy's forces to rout 
 them. They are like an old wayfarer who 
 can tell again of the trials of the storm, and 
 of the terror of the threatening reef and the 
 roaring breakers, while he is enjoying the 
 blaze and the comfort of the warm eyes and 
 the warm fires that are around him ; and 
 their whole souls would rush into their eyes, 
 crying, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? " 
 
 The Search for HaJ)pt7iess, 
 
 God is love, and love is happiness. The 
 Creator, Himself serenely and eternally 
 happy, has intended all His creatures to be 
 happy too. He stamped that intention on 
 the very face of nature. The smile of the 
 dancing sunbeam, the bashful beauty of the 
 flower, all speak of happiness. Every breeze 
 that fans our shore, and every wave that 
 kisses it, are full of a speaking joy, and 
 nothing but God is found in the original 
 arrangements of the universe. It is nothing 
 but sin, nothing but sin, that has brought
 
 1 84 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 such a tlight over tliis beautiful world. 
 }3ut then, unhappily, men are so blinded, 
 that their common judgment of the resi- 
 dence of happiness is almost uniformly erro- 
 neous ; and that which is not, and which 
 cannot be, the growth of earth, is sought in 
 worldly objects, objects which perish in the 
 using. It may be that I have got satisfac- 
 tion-seekers here to-night. I would appeal 
 to your own consciousness and candour, if I 
 have. Vanity is inscribed upon every earthly 
 stream, and emptiness upon every earthly 
 object of attachment. How was it in your 
 own cases ? You have sought happiness 
 long enough. Some of you have sought it 
 in all varieties of pleasure, and in all varieties 
 of profit. Perhaps you sought it in wealth, 
 and the farm or the money, the stock or the 
 merchandise, was the metropolis of your affec- 
 tions ; and the world prospered with you, and 
 your wealth increased— yes, and your care 
 increased, and your desire increased, and 
 your covetousness increased too ; and your 
 dispositions seemed to narrow, perhaps, as 
 your wealth increased, and you set your 
 mind upon your gathered store, and in your 
 reflective moods it engrossed you thoroughly,
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 185 
 
 and your hand involuntarily clutched it as if 
 it were grasping its gold ; and when you 
 came out of this reverie, your head was hot, 
 your lips were parched, and the summer 
 breezes could hardly cool the fever on your 
 brow ; — and what then ? Why, the reaction, 
 the reaction ! The sound of the falhng leaf 
 chasing you ; the nameless anxiety with 
 which each change in the stocks, the markets, 
 the funds, or the weather, is watched ; the 
 continual fear of poverty, which seems as if 
 it were appointed by God, like an avenging 
 sprite, to dog and haunt and harass those 
 that will be rich ; and, above all, that sad, 
 provoking, intrusive thought that you have 
 tried so often to stifle, but which murder 
 cannot kill — the thought that though failure 
 or pain may not come and rob the lord of his 
 property, death will come to rob the property 
 of its lord. And you call this happiness ! 
 Or perhaps you sought it in pleasure; yes, 
 you sought it in pleasure ! you went into the 
 gaming-house — perhaps it was the inner 
 chamber, truly, and, for ought I know, pro- 
 phetically, designated hell ; and quaffing 
 meanwhile the intoxicating cup, with fearful 
 excitement you watched with kindling eye
 
 1 86 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 and frenzied soul the casting of the die ; and, 
 as the event happened, you were either trans- 
 ported with triumph, or gnashed your teeth 
 in rage. And you call this happiness ! Or 
 perhaps you mingled with the world, where- 
 ever it proclaimed its carnival. You have 
 been found in beauty's circle, and, as you 
 have swept down the lighted ball-room, and 
 whirled in the giddy dance, and the music 
 rose with voluptuous swell, you have thought 
 — " Here, surely, is the dwelling of the gay 
 spirit ; I have found it at last. ' But you 
 have looked under the surface, and found it 
 was tinsel, and not gold, you saw. The 
 smiling there was as light upon the grave, 
 and cold hearts were beneath it. You marked 
 the strife of fashion's gay votaries, and their 
 flushed cheek, and curled lip of success, and 
 the bitter, bitter, bitter mortification of failure, 
 and at the close of your day of dissipation, 
 you went home with a wounded heart and 
 fevered brow to a sleepless pillow. And you 
 call this happiness ! And that is all. Let it 
 go forth. It is time it did. Let the poor 
 swindled ones know on what they have 
 trusted. That is all that the world can give 
 in fulfilment of its promise of satisfaction and
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 187 
 
 of peace ; and, with your broken vows, and 
 blighted hopes, and withered hearts, and 
 desolate houses, " and cheeks all pale, that 
 but a while ago blushed in praise of their 
 own loveliness," you may well exclaim, in 
 the words of the Preacher, " Vanity of vanity, 
 all is vanity ! " 
 
 Godliness Pi-ofitable. 
 
 Godliness, the nobler life, the life that is 
 hidden with Christ in God, hath the pro- 
 mise of that which now is, as well as that 
 which is to come. It has been fashionable 
 for its enemies, and for those, — a very great 
 number, and some of them here perhaps, 
 — who have been seeking for excuses to 
 justify them in neglecting its claims; — it 
 'has been fashionable for them to represent 
 it as a gloomy system, withering all the 
 flowers in the path of the traveller, bringing 
 a hue of desolation and mourning upon the 
 rejoicing universe of God. Christianity a 
 .gloomy system ! The world and devils may 
 say so; but a thousand eyes that sparkle 
 ■with a hope that maketh not ashamed, and a
 
 1 88 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 thousand hearts that beat happily with the 
 full pulse of spiritual life, can tell thee thou 
 liest. Christianity a gloomy system ! Why, 
 it is the Christian only that can thoroughly 
 enjoy the world. Tci him, to his grateful 
 vision, earth is garlanded with fairer beauty, 
 heaven sparkles with serener smiles ; to him 
 the landscape is the more lovely, because it 
 reminds him of the paradise of his hope in 
 prospect, which his father once lost, but 
 which his Saviour has brought back again, 
 as a family inheritance for ever ; to him the 
 ocean rolls the more grandly, because it 
 figures out the duration of his promised life ; 
 to him the birds in their forest minstrelsy 
 warble the more sweetly, because their wood- 
 land music takes him upwards to the harpers 
 harping with their harps in heaven ; to him 
 the mountains tower the more sublimely, 
 because their heaven-pointing summits are 
 the emblems of his own majestic hopes. 
 
 " His are the mountains and thevallej's— 
 His the resplendent groves — his to enjoy, 
 With a propriety which none can feel 
 But who, with filial confidence inspired. 
 Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye, 
 And smiling bay, My Father made them all."
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 189 
 
 Eternal Life. 
 
 That there is another world, outlying from 
 the field of sense, with which each of us has 
 a subtle and personal connexion, is a truth 
 to which instinct inclines, which reason 
 yearns to demonstrate, and upon which 
 Scripture has fastened the certainty of a 
 positive revelation. The idea of a future 
 world in the abstract is probably present to 
 every man. It may be fairly questioned 
 whether, on this matter, there ever was an 
 infidel. Some have professed to disbelieve, 
 I knoAv ; and in those years of unbridled 
 carnival which preceded the first French 
 Revolution, they wrote upon the walls of 
 Christian temples, " Death is an eternal 
 sleep ; " but that was the mad ache of 
 passion, and those that were the wildest 
 in the delirium were the most superstitious 
 in solitude, and turned pale when omens 
 were sinister, and when the avenging con- 
 science woke up upon the blaspheming 
 death-bed. There have been others who 
 have affected scepticism, but in all cases the 
 rebel heart has been the prompter to the 
 inquisitive intellect, and the wish the father
 
 I90 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 to the thought. I hold it impossible for any 
 to entertain the idea of a future world with- 
 out being haunted, to say the least of it, by 
 the tremendous possibilities of its truth. A 
 man may exclude it ; he may lose sight of 
 it amid the entanglements of sophistry ; he 
 may rush to escape from it into some garish 
 hall of pleasure, or into some desperate 
 enterprise where passion murders thought ; 
 but let the thought once have a lodgment 
 within — let it present itself broadly and in 
 all its relations before his mind, and the 
 man cannot refuse its acknowledgment ; all 
 his instincts will rise up in its favour, and 
 will protest against the scepticism which 
 would belie them. Aspirations after immor- 
 tality, stifled often but not dead, will become 
 mutinous if they be not allowed expression ; 
 and there will be a clashing of faculties in 
 munnuring dissent within him, like the 
 clashing of swords in a council chamber 
 when the decision has been given for war. 
 Brethren, you hww that there is a future 
 world ; it does not require any argument to 
 prove it. No train of reasoning would im- 
 press it more conclusively upon your mind 
 There is a force in that consciousness of
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 191 
 
 yours which startles you with the remem- 
 brance, oftentimes when you would rather 
 forget it, that you must live for ever. You 
 know that life is not a brief beacon-fire 
 which in a moment is kindled, sparkles, and 
 is quenched ; but a sun ruling the day of 
 man's present, suffering a short occultation 
 in the grave, and then rising for eternal 
 shining in the sky of immortality. You 
 know all this ; there is a keen and a restless 
 instinct within you which apprises you of it 
 continually. The monarch of Macedon had 
 his messenger at hand to remind him in the 
 midst of his festivity, " Philip, remember 
 thou art mortal ! " That keen and restless 
 instinct which you may not wholly silence 
 performs this office for you, and reminds you 
 — does it not .'' — amid the tumult of the life 
 that now is, of that life which is beyond, — so 
 solemn, so still, so changeless, so inscrutable, 
 — which is the inheritance, the belonging 
 of you all There, in the cradle, is your be- 
 ginning, but there, in the grave, is not your 
 end. Your life will be hidden in mortality ; 
 but when they search for it, the sepulchre 
 will deny its possession, and the grave will 
 say, " It is not in me," and destruction and
 
 192 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 death will say, " We have heard the fame 
 thereof with our ears." You must live for 
 ever ! 
 
 And then it is equally true, and it is 
 equally impressed, perhaps, upon the uni- 
 versal consciousness, that this future world 
 is a state of conscious, as well as of immortal, 
 existence. The thought of responsibility is 
 co-extensive with the thought of immor- 
 tality; and that conscious future existence 
 has a retributive connexion with the doings 
 of the present life. Immortal existence — 
 conscious immortal existence — responsible 
 mortal existence— is the heritage of you all. 
 Imagination has darted down into the 
 fathomless obscure, and, basing her visions 
 upon some traditionary remembrances of an 
 original revelation, has peopled the world to 
 come with angelic or misshapen forms, and 
 with all the accessories of beauty or of terror. 
 You cannot get rid of this belief, travel where 
 you will. Go and examine the records of 
 ancient paganisms ; go and trace out the 
 aboriginal idolatries of the Western world ; 
 go look into the voluptuous imposture of 
 Mohammed, and you find underlying them 
 all the same idea of probation and of recom-
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 193 
 
 pence. Each of them, of course, looks upon 
 the matter from its own stand-point, and 
 conceives of it as adapted to its own votaries ; 
 but the idea of conscious responsible exist- 
 ence is, beyond all question, present with 
 them all. Heaven — a vast hunting-field to 
 the untutored Indian, a Walhalla of heroes 
 to the classical martial pagan, a sensual 
 court of houris to the voluptuous Mussul- 
 man — is in all systems regarded as some- 
 thing awarded for fidelity here, a renewal of 
 the pursuits and intercourses of earth, and a 
 perpetuity of interest in the affairs of this 
 mortal coil. 
 
 Probatioji. 
 
 The idea of probation and of recompence, 
 present in all the systems of error, is deep- 
 ened in the gospel into an overwhelming 
 and solemn fact. We are here, the Scrip- 
 tures assure us, in the midst of a world of 
 uncounted thousands, active, earnest, fluc- 
 tuating, called to be citizens with our fellows, 
 called to be industrious for the benefit of our 
 families, called to be beneficent after our
 
 194 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 measure, called to take our part in the great 
 sweep and roar of human life, called to 
 battle with temptation, called to subdue sin, 
 called to brace ourselves, called to succour 
 others, called to evolve out of ourselves the 
 image of the heavenly ; and yet we are to be 
 judged at last by laws that are not human, 
 but Divine ; we are to be scrutinised by a 
 Being who sees all the events, and influences, 
 and circumstances that have helped to con- 
 firm us in the right, or that have helped to 
 v.-arp us to the wrong ; and we are to be 
 tried by the records of a book which lets 
 nothing escape its register, but w^iich sets 
 down in impartial chronicle, not more the 
 crises of our being, than the unnoticed 
 matters which make up the history of every 
 day. Oh, to think of it, brethren ! You 
 and I, since last Sabbath — and it is not long 
 since then — have done something, it may be 
 a great deal, towards shaping our character 
 for eternity. Thoughts casually entertained, 
 words idly spoken, deeds done in the routine 
 of daily life, all have been parts in that pre- 
 paratory process by whose results we shall 
 abide. Calm and unchequered to the most 
 of us, perhaps, have these two or three davs
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 195 
 
 been ; but we have not done with them — we 
 shall see their results again. Unconscious 
 limners, they have been taking our like- 
 nesses for the future ; scribes at work un- 
 wittingly, they have written down a register 
 about us in the book of God's remembrance. 
 How solemn, in this aspect of it, is the life 
 that now is ! 
 
 Temple Worship. 
 
 They deprive themselves of a very large in- 
 heritance of blessing, and are deeply criminal, 
 " who forsake the assembling of themselves 
 together, as the manner of some is," in the 
 place where the grand ordinance of preaching 
 is established, where the sacraments are duly 
 administered, and where united and solemn 
 prayer is wont to be made. The ordinances 
 of religion, indeed, may, and, doubtless, very 
 often are, observed only in external decorous- 
 ness. The song may be a formal praise ; the 
 prayer may be a lip-service only ; the whole 
 may be a Sabbath compromise with consci- 
 ence for a week's indulgence in sin : but to 
 the true-hearted and to the contrite worship- 
 per, it is from the temple that the healing
 
 t96 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 waters flow. The heart, ignorant of God 
 and of its own duty, and conscious that the 
 reconcihation for which it pants must be 
 achieved only through the merits of another, 
 hears of that other in the temple, and is glad. 
 The contrite one, loathing himself and his 
 former practices of iniquity, bows cheerfully 
 in the temple, as he says, " The foohsh shall 
 not stand in Thy sight : Thou hatest all 
 
 workers of iniquity But as for me, I 
 
 will come into Thy house in the multitude 
 of Thy mercy : and in Thy fear will I wor- 
 ship toward Thy holy temple." Here, as in 
 a spiritual laver, the soul of the polluted re- 
 ceives the cleansing of the water and of the 
 Word. Here the poor children of sorrow 
 smile through their tears, as they are satis- 
 fied with the goodness of His house ; and the 
 lame halts no longer as he emerges from this 
 Bethesda of the paralysed, whose waters have 
 been stirred from on high. It is from be- 
 tween the cherubim that God especially 
 shines ; it is among the golden candlesticks 
 that He still walks to bless His people ; and 
 here, as in a gorgeous and well-furnished hall 
 of banquet, believers eat of the fatness of His 
 house, and drink of the river of His pleasure ;
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 197 
 
 and in the temple are at once the highest 
 teaching and the most satisfying comfort, 
 the closest fellowship with God and the most 
 effectual preparation for heaven. 
 
 Li^ht 
 
 God is the great original of light. There 
 was a time when it was not, when this world 
 was a nameless and unfinished chaos. God 
 said, Let there be Hght : and there was light. 
 All the forms and modifications of light may 
 be traced up to this act of the great Creator, 
 who made two great lights — the greater light 
 to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule 
 the night. From the fount of the sun all the 
 streams of light are flowing. Light is pre- 
 sented to us in ever-var>'ing conditions, but 
 it is always the same ; there is a oneness in 
 its essence after all. It is the same light that 
 glistens on the wings of the fire-fly, and blazes 
 on the ruddy hearth-stone, and sparkles on 
 the jewels of the diadem, and flashes in beauty 
 in the morning. Science tells us that those 
 prolific beds of coal in the bowels of the earth 
 were once forests on its surface, forests of
 
 198 LIFE THOUGHTS, 
 
 luxurious vegetation ; that they incorporated 
 the sun's rays, and then in merciful convul- 
 sions were embedded in the centre of the 
 lower earth by an all-provident foresight for 
 the wants of an inhabited world. Science 
 tells us, too, that time was when the shape- 
 less crystal was yet new to its covering of 
 earth. Subjected to the wheel of the lapidary, 
 it sparkles out to view as a gem of the purest 
 w^ater. It is but the release of imprisoned 
 rays, which shone from the same great source, 
 long centuries ago ; so that both in the cot- 
 tage fire-light and in the monarch's gem we 
 have just the resurrection of some olden sum- 
 mer, the great return of some sepulchred sun- 
 light from which man has rolled away the 
 stone. 
 
 Now, whether this scientific theory be true 
 or not, certain it is that in our spiritual con- 
 dition we are in darkness, all of us gross and 
 utter, until the true light shineth on us from 
 on high. We have no native light above us ; 
 we cannot gather any from any of the sources 
 by v/hich we are surrounded. " Ever}' good 
 and perfect gift cometh down from above, 
 from the Father of lights, with whom there is 
 no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 199 
 
 The RJione and the At'i.'e. 
 
 There is an illustration of the gospel, as 
 far as earthly things can illustrate heavenly, 
 that some of you may have seen, in Na- 
 ture's beauteous kingdom. I stood some 
 years ago near the fair city of Geneva, 
 where two great rivers meet, but do not 
 mingle. Here the Rhone, the arrowy Rhone, 
 rapid and beautiful, pours out its waters of 
 that heavenly blue which it is almost w^orth 
 a pilgrimage to see, and there the Arve, 
 frantic and muddy, partly from the glaciers 
 from which it is so largely fed, and partly 
 from the clayey soil that it upheaves in its 
 impetuous path, meet and run on side by 
 side for miles, with no barriers save their own 
 innate repulsions, each encroaching now and 
 then into the province of the other, but beaten 
 back instantly into its own domain. Like 
 mighty rival forces of good and evil do they 
 seem, and for long — just as it is in the world 
 around us — for long the issue is doubtful ; 
 but if you look far down the stream, you find 
 the frantic Arve is mastered, and the Rhone 
 has coloured the whole surface of the stream 
 with its owm emblematic and beautiful blue.
 
 200 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 I thought, as I gazed upon it, that it was a 
 remarkable illustration of the conflict between 
 truth and error ; and in meditating upon this 
 subject, in thinking of the flow of the healing 
 waters, and reading that they should flow 
 into the sea and heal it, the whole thing rose 
 up before me, fresh and vivid as a thing that 
 happened yesterday ; and as my own view 
 of the passage has been cleared, and my 
 own faith strengthened by the recollection, I 
 would fain, by this simple picture, impart 
 the same blessedness to you. Oh ! with a 
 glad heart and free do I believe and preach 
 that there is no ailment, no leprosy, no death, 
 that is beyond the power of the healing of the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ. Is it yours ? Have 
 you been healed ? Are you rejoicing in its 
 love, and life, and blessing, and wealth now ? 
 Oh ! take to yourselves the responsibility as 
 well as the gladness of the thought of the 
 light that is in you — the light of your oppor- 
 tunity and of your privilege. " If therefore 
 the light that is in thee be darkness, how 
 great is that darkness I "
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 201 
 
 Trials. 
 
 Why do the fierce flames gather and hiss 
 about the bars of gold ? Why, but to purge 
 all the dross of it away. Why does the 
 sharp knife pierce into the living heart and 
 shear off the glossy leaves of the fruit-bearing 
 tree ? Why, but to prune it into greater 
 plenty and into ampler fruit. My brother, 
 do trials surround thee to-day? Are there 
 difficulties in thy onward path ? Art thou 
 looking forward and around and beholding 
 hardly a gleam ; a twilight gleam through 
 the darkness ? Be comforted ; it is God's 
 purpose for thee of higher usefulness^ of 
 richer grace. Do not rashly part company 
 with these stranger trials, perhaps you may 
 entertain angels unawares. God has never 
 yet employed any one of His servants in ex- 
 tensive usefulness without a previous train- 
 ing. Moses, in the wilderness of Midian ; 
 David, in the hold of Engedi ; Joseph, in 
 the desert pit and in the Egyptian prison ; 
 Daniel, in the den of lions ; John, in the 
 exile of Patmos ; Paul before Nero, and with 
 Satan's messenger busy with his buffetings 
 within, — look at the whole form of them,— 
 I 2
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 dren at school, and S( 
 grim teacher of that reluctant education 
 which was to fit them for divine work in the 
 world. And then remember, oh, do not for- 
 get this part of the comfort, that in the 
 moment of the fiercest trial, it is trial^ it is 
 trial^ not destruction. The wrestler does 
 not faint beneath the discipline ; the soldier 
 is not deserted in the field ; the refiner 
 always sits by the furnace ; the pruner never 
 kills the tree. It is not anger, but love, 
 which chastens ; love which directs the 
 process and which brings about the result 
 of blessing ; love which clears the day for 
 the strength or distributes the strength for 
 the day ; love which adjusts the burden to 
 the back, or which strengthens the back for 
 the burden ; love which tempers the wind, 
 love which watches the fire ; love which 
 makes a way of escape out of every tempta- 
 tion ; love which opens doors of hope in 
 Achor's valley ; love which digs wells in the 
 midst of the desolate Baca ; love which 
 sweetens every Mara fountain in the heart's 
 wilderness ; love which bruises Satan under 
 the feet of God's people ; love which revives 
 the spirit of the contrite ones ; love v/hich
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 203 
 
 offers to the weary a rest and a palm-branch 
 and a crown. It is love that does it all. Oh, 
 do not any of you murmur, then, because 
 you are in a bright succession of sufferings, 
 because you tread the thorny road the con- 
 fessors trod, because you are in the midst of 
 tribulation, and through that tribulation you 
 are endeavouring to enter the kingdom. It 
 IS God's high ordinance for usefulness, it is 
 G od's blessed baptism unto honour. 
 
 Then, secondly, we come to notice this 
 faith triumphing. It is tried, and it is 
 tried in the fire, but it triumphs in the midst 
 of the trial. It was a terrible trial, we have 
 seen, but the faith overcame. There was a 
 fierce struggle for obedience, doubtless it was 
 a very costly sacrifice that was required, but 
 it was freely offered, offered in heart and 
 in purpose upon the altar of the Lord. The 
 crisis came suddenly, but then the Christian 
 is not afraid of a crisis. 
 
 " Ye shall reap if ye faint iiotP 
 
 The harvest is certain, and it is nearing. 
 Every pulse approximates it ; every day
 
 204 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 hastens its approach ; every Sabbath when 
 you meet for worship you get nearer to the 
 sound of the joy-bells which, as for a bridal, 
 are ushering in the eternal Sabbath of the 
 sky. Surely you will not be weary now — 
 now when your salvation is so much nearer 
 than when you first believed. Does the pil- 
 grim halt when he is in sight of the shrine ? 
 Though the racer may be panting and breath- 
 less, surely he will press on when the goal 
 of his wishes is before him. Courage, my 
 flagging brothers ! A few more tossings of 
 the proud waters, and they shall roll their 
 last troubled wave ! A few more struggles 
 and temptations, and they shall cease to 
 worry thee for ever ! A few more battles, 
 briefly and patiently sustained, and the last 
 enemy shall be destroyed ! A few more 
 months and years of weariness and of toil, 
 and there shall be the opening gates of 
 heaven, and the vision of the King in His 
 beauty ! Oh ! weary not, then, in the dis- 
 charge of your duty and your voluntary 
 cross-bearing ; and in the glory which your 
 faith can glimpse even now you may see the 
 recompence that awaits you. " He that en- 
 dureth to the end, the same shall be saved."
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 205 
 
 Think, then, of the happiness of reaping 
 this promise of the inspired Word ! How 
 it includes every possibiHty of satisfaction 
 which your highest ambition can desire ! If 
 earthly harvests are seasons of rejoicing — 
 and, when the last sheaf is gathered and the 
 last load housed, the husbandman rejoices 
 in thankfulness and revels in festivities, and 
 counts all the toil of the entire year as a for- 
 gotten trouble, because of that one blissful 
 hour — what must the heavenly harvest be ? 
 Salvation realised ; all the tormenting solici- 
 tudes of life over ; sin banished ; not a stain 
 of the accursed thing left ; the spirit dowered 
 with a richer portion than the first father lost ; 
 no limit to the capabihty ; no end to the en- 
 joyment ; mind going out always after God ; 
 and at His right hand pleasures that are for 
 evermore. 
 
 Praise. 
 
 Praise is the only part of duty in which we 
 at present engage which is lasting. We 
 pray, but there shall be a time when prayer 
 shall offer its last Litany ; we believe, but 
 there shall be a time when faith shall be lost
 
 2o6 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 in sight ; we hope, and hope maketh not 
 ashamed, but there shall be a time when 
 hope lies down and dies, lost in the splen- 
 dour of the fruition that God shall reveal : 
 but praise goes singing into heaven, and is 
 ready without a teacher to strike the harp 
 that is waiting for it, to transmit along the 
 echoes of eternity the song of the Lamb. In 
 the party-coloured world in which we live, 
 there are days of various sorts and experi- 
 ences, making up the aggregate of the Chris- 
 tian's life. There are waiting days, in which, 
 because Providence fences us round, and it 
 seems as it we cannot march, we cannot 
 move, as though we must just wait to see 
 what the Lord is about to do in us and for 
 us ; and there are watching days, when it be- 
 hoves us never to slumber, bat to be always 
 ready for the attacks of our spiritual enemy : 
 and there are warring days, when, with nod- 
 ding plume, and with ample armour, we 
 must go forth to do battle for the truth ; and 
 there are weeping days, when it seems as if 
 the fountains of the great deep within us 
 were broken up, and as though, through 
 much tribulation, wo had to pass to heaven 
 in tears. But these shall all pass away by
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 207 
 
 and by— waiting days all be passed, warring 
 days all be passed, watching days all be 
 passed; but 
 
 " Our days of praise shall ne'er be pass'd. 
 While life, and thought, and being last. 
 And immortality endures." 
 
 Preparation for Heaven. 
 
 It is perfectly possible for you to dwell with 
 enkindled imagination upon the happiness of 
 heaven ; Fancy may lend her brightest col- 
 ours in warm and vivid picturings of its 
 realities and joys, while you are not ad- 
 vanced in the very humblest degree of pre- 
 paration for the real, true heaven ot the Bible. 
 Perhaps you have just passed through some 
 sad bereavement, you have stood by some 
 freshly-opened grave, and at the time of your 
 softening, and when sorrow was busy at your 
 heart-strings, you have felt a sort of consola- 
 tion as you dwelt upon the thought of heaven 
 — heaven, where parted hands should clasp 
 again — heaven, where friends should neither 
 weep nor change in the unintermittent recog- 
 nitions of Paradise ; or, perhaps, it was in the
 
 2o8 LIFE THOUGHTS. 
 
 time of your reverie, and, as you thought pain- 
 fully upon human frailty, you reposed upon 
 the thought of a material heaven — a heaven 
 that should have all earth's beauty, but un- 
 chequered by earth's vicissitudes, and un- 
 stained by earth's defilements. Some such 
 picture perhaps flashed before you as that 
 which the daring painter has embodied in his 
 picture of the Plains of Heaven — waters which 
 storm never ruffles, skies which clouds never 
 shadow, trees of perpetual greenness, flowers 
 of unfading bloom, air laden with sweet 
 strains of song from the ever young inhabi- 
 tants — each a crowned harper unto God, 
 abiding in tranquil security for ever ; and 
 as the voluptuous vision has dazzled you, 
 you have sighed and said, " Oh that I had 
 wings like a dove ! for then would I flee away 
 and be at rest." Or perhaps that was not 
 your case ; perhaps what attracted you most 
 was the surpassing benevolence of heaven, 
 the warm, congenial cordiality which obtains 
 there — no looks sinister, no purposes un- 
 friendly ; and as you thought of that atmos- 
 phere of love, you longed to be away from 
 earth, the land of crime, and grief, and sel- 
 fishness, and to dwell in those blest abodes
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 209 
 
 for ever. These perhaps have been your 
 pictures, your visions in the time of bereave- 
 ment, or in the time of reverie, or in the time 
 of enkindled benevolence. You have thought 
 about heaven, you have longed — oh ! how 
 longed — to be there ! It is possible, brethren 
 — do you not see it ? — that you may be con- 
 cerned in any or all of these aspects of heaven 
 which may have been the object of your most 
 vehement desires, and yet there may be within 
 you all the while not one particle of prepara- 
 tion for the real heaven of the Bible. You 
 sought either a paradise of friendship or a 
 paradise of poetry ; but there has been no 
 endeavour to mortify the deeds of the body, 
 and to cultivate those affections which are 
 the very essence of the recompence of reward. 
 
 Death Universal. 
 
 " There is one kind of flesh of men, another 
 flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another 
 of birds." "All flesh is grass." No sex is 
 spared, na age exempt. The majestic and 
 courtly road which monarchs pass over, the 
 way that men of letters tread, the path the
 
 2IO LIFE THOUGHTS, 
 
 warrior traverses, the short and simple annals 
 of the poor, all lead to the same place ; all 
 terminate, however varied in their routes, in 
 that one enormous house which is appointed 
 for all living. One short sentence closes the 
 biography of every man, as if in mockery of 
 the unsubstantial pretensions of human pride. 
 " The days of the years of Methuselah were 
 969 years ; and he died." There is the end 
 of it, "And he died." Such is the frailty of 
 this boasted man. " It is appointed unto 
 men" — unto all men — " once to die." 
 
 This universal mortality proves, as a col- 
 lateral and subsidiary argument, the scriptural 
 account of the fall of man. It is dissonant 
 to our ideas of a just and holy God to suppose 
 that He, in whose hands are the issues of hfe 
 and of death, would willingly afflict His 
 creatures, and afflict them without a cause. 
 He cannot be a perfect being who delights 
 in suffering. It is not by chance that the 
 lightning strikes the palace, not by chance 
 that the husband and the father, the earner 
 of the daily bread, is suddenly smitten from 
 the cottage ; there is a purpose in it all, and 
 Faith, meekly adoring as she waits by the 
 sepulchre, says, " What we know not now
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS. 211 
 
 we shall know hereafter." But when we take 
 the scriptural account of the matter, when we 
 remember that man has sinned, sinned under 
 such aggravating circumstances as are de- 
 tailed here, w^e do not wonder at the sweeping 
 sentence of death that has been brought upon 
 the human family. We rather wonder and 
 are astonished at the condescension of God, 
 who has so impressively proved that He loves 
 the sinner, while He hates and would exter- 
 minate the sin. 
 
 THE END.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PACE 
 
 •• Strength and Peace," 7 
 
 "He is not dead, but sleepeth," 8 
 
 " It doth not yet appear what we shall be," q 
 
 The Apostle Peter, lo 
 
 The Greatness of Trifles, lo 
 
 "Our sufficiency is of God," ii 
 
 The Ministerial Call, ii 
 
 " He upholdeth all things by the word of His power," 12 
 
 Human Eloquence, 14 
 
 "The perfect law of liberty," 15 
 
 The Accelerating Progress of Evil," 16 
 
 Death, 19 
 
 God in History 20 
 
 Unity, 21 
 
 " Many are the sorrows of the righteous," 21 
 
 The Widow of Nain, 22 
 
 The Adaptation of Scripture, 23 
 
 Christ the Theme of Scripture, 24 
 
 Scenes in the Life of Joshua, 27 
 
 The Power of Memorj'-, 28 
 
 The Human Heart, 29 
 
 Self-knowledge, 3°
 
 INDEX, 213 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Conscience, 31 
 
 Dr Newton, 32 
 
 "This one thing I do," 32 
 
 Mount Moriah, 34 
 
 Life the Gift of God, 35 
 
 Natural Life the Gift of God, 37 
 
 Intellectual Life the Gift of God, 38 
 
 Spiritual Life the Gift of God, 39 
 
 Rest, 40 
 
 The Power of Association, 41 
 
 The Gospel Trumpet, 43 
 
 The Common Salvation, 44 
 
 Spiritual Worship, 45 
 
 The Love of Jesus, 47 
 
 The Cottage at Bethany, 49 
 
 The Recognition of Friends in Heaven, 51 
 
 Childhood, 55 
 
 The Poor Man's Home, 56 
 
 "Ye are not your own," 59 
 
 Trust in God, 62 
 
 The Christian's Life-Purpose, 64 
 
 The Use of Means, 65 
 
 Influence, 63 
 
 Let your Light Shine, 69 
 
 The Universal Law of Adaptation, 70 
 
 Universal Brotherhood, 73 
 
 The Influence of the Spirit, , 77 
 
 The Dispensations of Providence, 79 
 
 What is Man? go 
 
 Simple Means, 83 
 
 *' One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I 
 
 see," 87
 
 214 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 God's Witnesses, gi 
 
 An Appeal to the B!ind, <^ 
 
 The First Moment after Death, 95 
 
 The Efficacy of the Gospel, 98 
 
 The Mount of Prophecy, 100 
 
 The Man Christ Jesus 104 
 
 Gethsemane and Calvary, 108 
 
 Meet for Heaven, xio 
 
 The Fifty-first Psalm, 112 
 
 The House of Mournin*, . 115 
 
 Good Works 119 
 
 Constant Obedience, 121 
 
 Happiness, 124 
 
 God our Defence, 127 
 
 The Words of Eternal Life, 129 
 
 One Way of Salvation, 132 
 
 The Mount of Olives, 133 
 
 The Resurrection 135 
 
 Co.iscious Life in Heaven, 138 
 
 Precious Promises, 142 
 
 Mount Sion, 146 
 
 Knowledge, 150 
 
 The Faithful Minister, 151 
 
 God Mindful of Man, 158 
 
 "Tell me, art thou a Roman?" 162 
 
 We are Christians, 163 
 
 Ezekiel's Vision, 165 
 
 " I stand between the Living and the Dead," 163 
 
 Christ a Sympathising Friend, 173 
 
 Afflictions from God, 174 
 
 The Strong and the Timid Christian, 175 
 
 Soul Rest, 177
 
 INDEX. 215 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Immortality, 180 
 
 Jesus the only Saviour, 181 
 
 The Search for Happiness, 183 
 
 Godliness Profitable 1S7 
 
 Eternal Life, 1S9 
 
 Probation, 193 
 
 Temple Worship, 195 
 
 Light, 197 
 
 The Rhone and the Arve, 199 
 
 Trials, 201 
 
 "Ye shall reap if ye faint not," 203 
 
 Praise, 205 
 
 Preparation for Heaven, 207 
 
 Death Universal, 209
 
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