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 CC-i- CC Cc C C
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO j

 
 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR 
 
 OR 
 
 COMFORTABLE WORDS FOR BURDENED 
 HEARTS 
 
 BY 
 
 GILBERT HAVEN 
 
 NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON 
 CINCINNATI: CRANSTON & CURTS
 
 Copyright, 1893, by 
 
 HUNT & EATON, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 Electrotyped, printed, and bound by 
 
 HUNT & EATON, 
 ISO Fifth Avsnuo. New York.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 SOME months before my father left us to 
 be " forever with the Lord " he prepared 
 for the press the following papers, which he 
 purposed publishing under the title given to 
 this volume. He believed, without a shadow 
 of doubt, in the comfortable revelations of the 
 Holy Scriptures, and he has here set forth the 
 message of our Lord to burdened hearts. 
 
 I have recently revised the manuscript and 
 added some notes that may be of interest to 
 the reader. 
 
 I hope that these utterances of faith and 
 trust may bring to many hearts the Easter joy 
 that comforted him from whose heart they 
 came. WILLIAM INGRAHAM HAVEN. 
 
 Boston, Mass., Easter, 1893.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I- PAGB 
 
 Two GREEK BOOKS ox THE LIFE BEYOND 11 
 
 II. 
 GOD HIDING AND REVEALING HIMSELF 41 
 
 III. 
 THE WORLD VANISHING 73 
 
 IV. 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES 105 
 
 V. 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN His ARMS 135 
 
 VI. 
 ENDURANCE HAPPINESS 179 
 
 VII. 
 THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE BLESSED DEAD 199 
 
 VIII. 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER 217 
 
 IX. 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED 235 
 
 NOTES 263
 
 " The first man is of the earth, earthy : the second man is 
 the Lord from heaven." I Cor. xv, 47. 
 
 "Ye stars are but the shining dust 
 
 Of my divine abode, 
 The pavements of those heavenly courts 
 
 Where I shall reign with God. 
 
 " The Father of eternal light 
 Shall then his beams display, 
 
 Nor shall one moment's darkness mix 
 With that unvaried day."
 
 I. 
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON THE LIFE 
 BEYOND. 
 
 \ T 7HILE hastening on the sad errand of a 
 * * funeral to my native home and parental 
 roof, I beguiled the tedium of travel and the 
 sorrowfulness of heart with readings by the way. 
 I had two books with me, in which I daily bur- 
 ied the slowly flying hours the " Odyssey" of 
 Homer and the New Testament. I had come, 
 in the reading of the former in course, to the 
 visit of Ulysses to the realm of departed spir- 
 its, and my mind naturally wandered in the 
 other among those passages that talk of the 
 world unseen. You can hardly imagine the 
 contrast. Both works written in the same lan- 
 guage, both composed by men of the highest 
 capacity, both treating on the same subject, 
 and both solemnly considering this theme ; but 
 how different each from the other! How 
 vast the space that separates these two crea- 
 tions ! 
 
 I am not going to ask you to look on the one
 
 12 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 book as different in origin from the other. Let 
 them both be considered as sacred I cannot 
 say as divine, for they are too far apart from 
 each other for both to be divine. Let them 
 both be considered as honest efforts of their 
 authors. Then see how immense the contrast. 
 The story of Homer, it should be said, has 
 been long esteemed divine. At the very time 
 Christ came it had such a reputation. So it 
 may be contrasted as the best specimen of the 
 false divine without revelation and without 
 Christ, with the correlative specimen of the 
 true divine by revelation and in Christ. 
 
 No one will deny the superior rank of 
 Homer. General consent makes him the chief 
 of pagan poets. By pagan I do not mean a 
 word of reproach, but of necessity. They are 
 the poets who never had direct light from 
 Christian revelation. He ranks every Hindoo 
 poet in clearness, positiveness, imagination, 
 rhythm, and that highest of faculties, the per- 
 fect bringing forth of things unknown and un- 
 seen. He ranks every Persian and Arabian 
 writer, every Egyptian and Phoenician poet, by 
 immeasurable breadths. He has no successor 
 in lucidity, a shining clearness, force, and
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE BEYOND. 18 
 
 sweetness of vision, among all the writers of 
 Greek and Roman fame. He is sovereign in 
 these realms everywhere, and to this day. 
 
 He is, therefore, no weak and ignorant illus- 
 tration of the condition of man without reve- 
 lation. He is the best possible illustration of 
 this condition in the human race. By univer- 
 sal suffrage he is put at the head of the writers 
 on whom the legacy of Christianity and the 
 word of God never directly came. 
 
 We may, therefore, turn away from all lower 
 guesses at the secret of the grave, incoherent 
 mumblings which fill volumes of heathen lore, 
 in all tongues and ages, and which have been 
 laboriously gathered up in the large volume 
 entitled History of the Doctrine of a Future 
 Life, which volume contains neither the doc- 
 trine nor history of that truth and life. We 
 need not seek through all these realms of shade 
 for gross and feeble guesses at the truth. 
 Homer is their best representative ; elected by 
 unanimous suffrage, he stands forth their chief. 
 He is sufficient for this place. 
 
 Nor should we bring to this theme our own 
 information, gathered from centuries of Chris- 
 tian education, whfdi has created an atmos-
 
 14 CHRIST US CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 phere and made us something other than 
 nature-people looking at this problem of the 
 grave with nature-eyes. We must get out of 
 ourselves, go back from the light of Christian- 
 ity, and the immeasurable forms and powers in 
 which it has manifested itself, and enter the 
 realm where Christianity is not, nor ever was 
 the realm of pure human nature, or as near 
 that realm as it is possible to get ; for perfect 
 nature without a ray from the Gospel sun it is 
 impossible to find. Christ is the light, and has 
 always been the light, that lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world, and no age or race 
 is completely without his illuminations. Yet 
 these rays are not direct ; they give no sight of 
 the sun. They are not traceable directly to 
 the word of God. They are not to be ac- 
 counted as scripturally revealed. They are 
 classed under the head of nature. 
 
 If, therefore, you would see how you would 
 be, how all have been, in the darkness of unrev- 
 elation, read this story of the visit of Ulysses 
 to the realm of the dead ; then turn to the 
 pages of that other Greek book, and see how 
 wonderful the contrast midnight at its utter- 
 most darkness, and midday in its perfection of
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE BEYOND. 15 
 
 glory. You will also notice how clear are the 
 limitations of that light, what you can see, and 
 what you cannot see, and rejoice in Him who 
 has brought life and immortality to light 
 through the Gospel. " The first man is of the 
 earth, earthy : the second man is the Lord from 
 heaven." 
 
 This is the story of Homer : Ulysses, having 
 been confined a prisoner by the arts of Circe 
 for many long months, begged to be allowed 
 to go home. She granted him permission, but 
 told him he must first visit the abode of the 
 dead and inquire of a dead soothsayer as to 
 his future. If, however, Homer wrote, as 
 some think and as even Gladstone, his last 
 and best commentator, thinks not far from 
 the time of Saul, it shows how general at that 
 age was the idea of learning the future from 
 departed spirits ; the errands of Ulysses and 
 SaultoTiresias and Samuel being almost iden- 
 tical. 
 
 Under her direction he sails from her island 
 straight to the land of shades, Cimmeria, 
 whence comes our familiar Cimmerian dark- 
 ness, crying himself, as with his companions 
 he is borne unwillingly to this " land of
 
 16 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 deepest shade, unpierced by human thought." 
 Thus Bryant translates his description of that 
 country : 
 
 " There lies the land, and there the people dwell 
 
 Of the Cimmerians, in eternal cloud 
 
 And darkness. Never does the glorious sun 
 
 Look on them with his rays, when he goes up 
 
 Into the starry sky, nor when again 
 
 He sinks from heaven to earth. Unwholesome night 
 
 O'erhangs the wretched race." 
 
 Into this thick darkness he comes, lands, 
 digs a trench, pours into it the blood of a black 
 sheep, and the ghosts come thronging round, 
 eager to taste the blood, which was requisite 
 before they could acquire the gift of speech. 
 He sees naught here but shades. No human 
 being lands on that strand. But how bitter 
 the wails of these trooping ghosts : 
 
 " Thronging around me came the 
 
 Souls of the dead from Erebus young wives 
 
 And maids unwedded, men worn out with years 
 
 And toil, and virgins of a tender age 
 
 In their new grief, and many a warrior slain 
 
 In battle, mangled by the spear and clad 
 
 In bloody armor, who about the trench 
 
 Flitted on every side, now here, now there, 
 
 With gibbering cries, and I grew pale with fear." 
 
 Bear in mind the universal unhappiness of 
 these spirits. Not one is in heaven. It is
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS O.V LIFE BEYOND. 17 
 
 Cimmeria, a shade, and they its shadows. 
 The first he spoke with was one of his com- 
 panions, who a day or two before, drunk, had 
 fallen off a roof, where he was slumbering, 
 missed the stairway and broke his neck. " The 
 phantom sobbed " its reply, and weeping and 
 wailing told how he was slain. 
 
 Then came his mother. She drank the 
 blood which enabled her to speak, and told in 
 piteous tones her piteous state. She asks: 
 
 " How didst thou come, my child, a living man, 
 Into this place of darkness ? Difficult 
 It is for those who breathe the breath of life 
 To visit these abodes, through which are rolled 
 Great rivers, fearful floods." 
 
 How sad the confession! His own mother, 
 high-born and gentle-hearted, in the place of 
 darkness ! Think you had Ulysses had a 
 better faith he would not have applied it to 
 his own mother? Would he have had her 
 shivering in the mists of darkness at the door 
 of the pit could he have placed her on more 
 shining seats ? She tells the story of her death 
 as any one on earth might describe a lingering 
 sickness up to its fatal end. He sought to 
 press her in his arms, but " the form passed
 
 18 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 through them like a shadow or a dream." He 
 begged a more solid embrace. She sadly tells 
 the story of the dead. 
 
 " "Tis the lot of all our race 
 
 When they are dead. No more the sinews bend 
 The bones and flesh, when once from the white bones 
 The life departs. Then like a dream the soul 
 Flies off, and flits about from place to place." 
 
 That is the utmost of his knowledge of the 
 dead. The soul flits hither and thither like a 
 dream, and always in and with darkness. His 
 talks with other dames of high degree reveal 
 no further light on that state. Each discourses 
 on her earthly state. Each is still of the earth, 
 earthy. No Lord from heaven breaks in on 
 the scene and dissipates the gloom of the 
 grave. 
 
 The men, he said, were in as lamentable a 
 plight as the women. Agamemnon, when he 
 had drank the blood, 
 
 "Wailed aloud, and, bursting into tears, 
 Stretched out his hand to touch me ; but no power 
 Was there of grasp or pressure, such as once 
 Dwelt in those active limbs. I could not help 
 But weep at sight of him, for from my heart 
 I pitied him." 
 
 Such is the aspect of the chief of the men 
 whom Ulysses had known King of the Greeks,
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE BEYOND. 19 
 
 head of their armies. In conversing together 
 they confined themselves to the past. There 
 was no present and no future. " Thus in sad 
 talk we stood, and freely flowed our tears." 
 
 Achilles, the greatest of the Greeks, the pet 
 hero of Homer, draws near. He alone, save 
 Tiresias, was in superior abodes. He ruled 
 among the dead, yet he declared of his con- 
 dition : 
 
 " Noble Ulysses, speak not thus of death, 
 
 As if thou couldst console me. I would be 
 
 A laborer on earth, and serve for hire 
 
 Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, 
 
 Rather than reign o'er all who have gone down 
 
 To death." 
 
 How powerful his confession ! How it tells 
 against those who declare there is no light in 
 revelation, no difference between Christian and 
 antichristian states ! To be alive, the slave of 
 the meanest man, is better than to rule over 
 all the mighty dead. 
 
 This is the gift of the greatest of the Gre- 
 cians to his people; his best, his only glimpse 
 into the world beyond. This is the brightest 
 flower of Greek philosophy, art, literature, arms, 
 religion. The rest of the story is no better. 
 He sees famous criminals : Sisyphus rolling
 
 20 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 the ever-rolling stone, Tantalus tantalized with 
 his thirst and its impossible relief, Tityus de- 
 voured by vultures that never cease to eat his 
 ever-growing vitals. He cries out with fear : 
 
 " And now there flocked 
 Already round me, with a mighty noise, 
 The innumerable nations of the dead." 
 
 Affrighted, he escapes to his ship of the earth. 
 
 This is one Greek book on the future state. 
 It is the best that nation afforded to its peo- 
 ple. It is better than any other nation, 
 without the Bible, afforded its people. It 
 never improved to the days of Christ. Plato 
 adds no light to Homer. Socrates leaves 
 off his discussion with a guess; he has no real 
 knowledge. Virgil has Elysian fields, but the 
 most of his spirits fail to enter them, and his 
 crowd of ghosts are almost identical with Ho- 
 mer's, a thousand years apart in time, but not 
 a moment in knowledge. 
 
 The Greek people were fed on this food. 
 This story was first told by Ulysses at a royal 
 banquet. I think how sadly those hearers 
 must have listened : those ladies of the court, 
 hearing these sorrows of the great dames of 
 Greece ; those heroic men, the mournful state of
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON~ LIFE BEYOND. 21 
 
 their historic heroes, and feeling that this fate 
 of their fathers and mothers was' to be their 
 own. What was there to stimulate faith in 
 these stories truths to them of the most 
 sacred sort ? Tell me, ye who fancy light can 
 come from other sources than the word of 
 God ye who believe in Emerson and Tyn- 
 dall and other lesser lights who rule your night, 
 and make it darker is there any light at all 
 in your philosophy superior to that which 
 shone over the Achaians' halls, where Ulysses 
 recited this mournful tale ? Has humanity 
 any glimpse of those fields Elysian which was 
 not granted to this blind seer and singer? 
 Leave out to-day the light of the Gospel, and 
 men gather now drearily in seances, and get 
 chilling grasps of dead friends' hands, and hear 
 sad wailings of their present state. There is 
 not a step ahead in the seance of to-day from 
 the Ulyssean visit three thousand years ago. 
 Not long since I heard one tell how a spirit 
 visited him through a medium, who bewailed 
 her miserable fate, beaten and buffeted and spit 
 upon by her companions, a modern blackness 
 of darkness as mournful as that in which these 
 spirits wandered. That was their best. Those
 
 22 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 who are reported better off are still material, 
 earthy, as fond of life and crying for it as 
 strongly as did Achilles. " The first man is of 
 the earth, earthy." He can never rise above 
 that condition. He is dragged down by his 
 ignorance and his sin. He fears death itself. 
 He fears its revelations. " The fears of the 
 tomb," Campbell rightly calls it ; or, as Job 
 more powerfully says, " The land of darkness 
 and the shadow of death ; a land of darkness, as 
 darkness," or darkness that is darkness ; 
 " and of the shadow of death," the shade 
 of the death-shade, ghost of ghost, terror of 
 terror, hades of hades, "without any order," 
 the chaos of nature, " and where the light is as 
 darkness." How terrible the picture ! The 
 very light itself makes only a deeper night. 
 Yet this is not as terrible as the truth. To 
 this day, with a line of a hundred ancestors 
 standing between us and those who listened to 
 Ulysses and Job, there is no more beauty in 
 the grave itself, in death or the dead body, 
 than there was then. The body is still an ob- 
 ject of fear and repulsion. We hasten to bury 
 it out of our sight. It becomes fetidness and 
 dust. You adorn it with flowers, make your
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE- BE YOND. 23 
 
 cemeteries beautiful parks, the most beautiful 
 of parks, and still your graveyard is not a 
 delightsome thing. It is chaos come again, 
 the worst chaos because superinduced upon 
 the best cosmos. No order like that of comely 
 man and woman ; no disorder like their de- 
 struction. What shall change this view that 
 nature gives so dreary, so desolate, so fear- 
 ful, so horrible? 
 
 What? Listen! There is another Greek 
 book, the work of several penmen, some native 
 to the tongue, most foreign, written about 
 two thirds of the time back between us and 
 Homer, nearer to his age by a thousand years 
 than to ours. It does not profess to have his 
 graces of rhythm or his varied and vivid fancy. 
 It has never been translated by poets, nor is it 
 a favorite with mere philosophers without 
 faith. Yet for clearness of view, simplicity of 
 statement, reach of faith, grandeur of imagina- 
 tion, and solidity of confidence, all that all the 
 world has elsewhere said or sung is naught, 
 and worse, to its infinitude of strength. 
 
 The Lord from heaven is the second man. 
 He has come; he has brought life and immor- 
 tality to light. He has shed the sunlight of
 
 24 CHRISTUS COX SO LA TOR. 
 
 the throne in the barrows of the dead. He 
 has walked in Cimmeria, and made it bright as 
 the beams of the morning. He has revealed 
 to us the happy fields, and shown us who 
 walk together there. He has even taken the 
 dusty earth from its coffin and urn, and made 
 it animate with eternal life and glory. How 
 wondrous the change ! See how early it be- 
 gins in this second Greek book. Hardly is his 
 advent announced that this fact is not an- 
 nounced with it. Before the sun appears in 
 form his radiance shines. " Far off his com- 
 ing shone." In exultant song Zacharias de- 
 clares, " The dayspring from on high hath 
 visited us, to give light to them that sit in 
 darkness and in the shadow of death." This 
 was before He was born the Divine Ulysses 
 who was not only to visit the dead, but to 
 destroy death itself. 
 
 The acclaim of the angels announcing, 
 " Peace on earth " to good-willing men, was 
 in the same key. Peace and good-will must 
 cover death, or there is no peace. 
 
 Then come the words and works of the Mas- 
 ter, lifting dead bodies from their couches 
 into all the fullness of their lost health, call-
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE BE VOND. 25 
 
 ing them back from loathsome corruption 
 into serene and solid beauty. Then come 
 his words, fit accompaniment for such works: 
 " I am the resurrection, and the life : . . . 
 whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
 never die." " Destroy this temple, and in 
 three days I will raise it up. . . . But he 
 spake of the temple of his body." " I lay 
 down my life of myself.- I have power to lay it 
 down, and I have power to take it again. This 
 commandment have I received of my Father." 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is 
 coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear 
 the voice of the Son of God : and they that 
 hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in 
 himself, so hath he given to the Son to have 
 life in himself. . . . Marvel not at this : for 
 the hour is coming, in the which all that are 
 in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall 
 come forth ; they that have done good, unto 
 the resurrection of life ; and they that have 
 done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." 
 What august, what awful power is here ! Ten- 
 derer are other words : " Let not your heart 
 be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also 
 in me. In my Father's house are many man-
 
 26 CHRIST US COXSOLATOR. 
 
 sions : if it were not so, I would have told you. 
 I go to prepare a place for you. ... I will 
 come again, and receive you unto myself; that 
 where I am, there ye may be also." How in- 
 finitely different this from Achilles striding off 
 over the meadows, leaving his mournful infe- 
 riors shivering in the darkness ! 
 
 Christ, our Leader, does not thus stride gloom- 
 ily and haughtily away. He talks to his com- 
 panions, who are tearful and affrighted, in the 
 most cheering manner. Before he goes to 
 Gethsemane, to the agonies and bloody death, 
 which he saw and would not flee, for four 
 chapters, which must have been for an hour, 
 he enlarges on cheering and helpful themes. 
 He tells them for the first time distinctly 
 about the third Person in the Trinity, and un- 
 folds his twofold character and work Sancti- 
 fier and Comforter ; especially the latter, as 
 they were to be in especial need of the latter. 
 Being divine, and after these bold and cheer- 
 ful words, to prove they were no mere boast, 
 he condescends to die. Weakest of the weak 
 he mounts the cross. He lays down his life as 
 powerless as a babe. Death hath complete 
 dominion over him. He wrestles not. He
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE BEYOND. 27 
 
 puts forth no effort to save himself. He does 
 not even toss and writhe in natural resistance 
 to his fate. Never was a babe's death quicker 
 or easier. " Pilate marveled if he were already 
 dead." He goes, not like Ulysses, and Or- 
 pheus, and Hercules, alive to hades; but, like 
 every other man, he goes dead. Those myths 
 never affect the world's heart, because they do 
 not suffer the world's experience. Christ suf- 
 fers unto death, suffers the severest agonies, 
 which everybody dreads, and dies the quietest 
 and easiest in these very agonies. He touches 
 every experience in that hour of agony and 
 utter weakness. How different this from Her- 
 cules marching in hades ! The one strongest 
 of the strong, and in the very towering of his 
 strength ; the other weakest of the weak, and 
 in the very weakest of his weakness, he sinks 
 into the power of death. No shade so thin 
 wanders about the pit of Ulysses. They have 
 a show of strength, he none. 
 
 The victory is complete. Never more so ; 
 the dead body hangs a perfect corpse. It is 
 taken down limp and clammy dead. It is 
 stretched as such ; bathed, washed, wrapped, 
 and borne off as such. You know their help-
 
 28 CHRIST US CONSOLATOK. 
 
 lessness by many a sad experience. He is 
 shut up in the tomb. Locked is the door, a 
 great stone rolled before it, sealed, and 
 watched by a band of soldiers. Can Death 
 ask for a better compliance with his condi- 
 tions ? It is done as he has commanded, perfect- 
 ly done, satisfactorily done ; governor and king 
 and chief priest are content. The devil can 
 conceive of nothing further. His victory is 
 complete. He has killed and entombed the 
 Son of God. Hercules, the Mighty, lies slain 
 among his foes. Ulysses, the Wise, is out- 
 witted by his enemies. They accept their 
 victory and are satisfied. When lo ! he is not 
 here! He is arisen ! He is gone! Death is 
 outwitted, overmastered. Out of this all-eater 
 of man cometh forth meat for the reanimation 
 of all men. Out of the grave he marches 
 serene and calm and mighty. Death hath no 
 more dominion over him, nor over his. He has 
 done it. Not fable, not poetry, not marvelous 
 rhythm, but fact most marvelous fact! Every- 
 body rushes to him. He is lifted up triumph- 
 ant over death. He draws all men unto him. 
 Then comes the application of this victory. 
 His words, his works, his own divine deed,
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS OX LIFE BEYOND. 29 
 
 begin to tell on the world about. He ascends 
 to heaven, a thing easily to be done after 
 ascending from the tomb, and the story flies 
 through the world. " Jesus and the resurrec- 
 tion " his disciples^ preach, and everybody 
 hears. Some reject, some despise, some hate ; 
 all hear. Persecutions arise, but they hear the 
 more, "Jesus and the resurrection." Death 
 comes violently, but they hear the more yet. 
 For before the assembled authorities and popu- 
 lace of Jerusalem on the very spot possibly 
 where Jesus sank powerless in the grasp of 
 death the first of his newly converted preach- 
 ers and disciples, proBably a convert of the 
 Pentecostal days, his first witness, declares with 
 his dying lips that his dying eyes behold 
 " Jesus sitting at the right hand of God," and 
 he asks him to receive his spirit. How differ- 
 ent this from Homeric darkness, from Socra- 
 tean guess ! No wailing ghost here, no wan- 
 dering shade here, seeking to taste a drop of 
 blood that it may tell its woes to mortal ears. 
 " Receive my spirit ; " and having so said, he 
 fell asleep. Asleep his body, received his 
 spirit into Jesus'sarms. He who a few weeks 
 before had said to a dying neighbor, " This day
 
 30 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 shalt thou be with me in paradise," saw the 
 servant who looked up, 
 
 " And from a happy place 
 God's glory smote him on the face." 
 
 Not only God's glory, but the very counte- 
 nance of God, the face of Jesus Christ, smiled 
 upon his disciple, who fell asleep as a tired 
 babe falls asleep in its mother's arms, while 
 she smiles her benedictions into its weary 
 eyes. 
 
 Thenceforward fled the mighty word over the 
 realms where Homer sung, over the realms 
 where Ulysses sailed, around the great sea, 
 and over the voluptuous East, and into the 
 icy North the word flew, " Jesus and the 
 resurrection." The future of man is secure. 
 He shall come forth. He shall renew himself 
 in glory everlasting. 
 
 Then came the letters of argument and con- 
 solation : letters describing the intermediate 
 conditions, so far as description is permitted 
 and allowable; letters limiting the wildness of 
 the human fancy and human hope within due 
 bounds ; letters suggesting the time and man- 
 ner of this advent, yet equally careful to ab- 
 stain from too great detail. How wonderful
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE BEYOND. 31 
 
 are some of their passages ! Read them by 
 the side of Homer's lines, and how his graceful 
 rhythms wither and decay ! " We know that, 
 if our earthly house of this tabernacle were 
 dissolved, we have a building of God, a house 
 not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
 "We know!" No Greek before them ever 
 knew nay, ever dared to guess this sublime 
 fact. " For me to die is gain." Socrates and 
 Cicero never dared say that, nor Homer, nor 
 Achilles. "Gain?" "Gain?" " To die, gain ?" 
 Whence know you this? Only because the 
 Lord from heaven hath come from heaven, and 
 hath transformed the earthly into the heavenly. 
 That fifteenth of First Corinthians, written 
 to the most sensual and voluptuous city of 
 Greece, how it shoots its light across the ages 
 of the grave and shines bright over its farther 
 gate ! How it lifts up that graceless city 
 through its saints into the heights of grace ! 
 How it riddles all mere psychical ascension 
 and every attempt to abolish the bodily resur- 
 rection ! How it sets forth with undying 
 strength the steady assurance that our dead 
 bodies shall live again ! What a shout it sends 
 through the hollow depths of hades ! " O
 
 82 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is 
 thy victory ? The sting of death is sin ; and 
 the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be 
 to God, which giveth us the victory through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ." What a change from 
 the tearful, wailing shades of Homer's heaven 
 to this burst of rapture ! 
 
 That is the new Greek against the old ; 
 Christian against heathen ; God against Satan. 
 These passages grow denser and more delight- 
 ful as we draw toward the close. The letters 
 have more in them than the gospels, Corin- 
 thians than Romans, John than Paul ; and all 
 consummate themselves in the grandest book 
 in the world, the Revelation. What care we 
 that we cannot understand its trumpets and 
 vials and horsemen and horns? We cannot 
 understand the convolutions of symphony, but 
 we can the gentle melody that purls through 
 the roaring, surging, upheaving mass of song. 
 So through this book runs every stream of 
 melody the beatitude of the spirits of the 
 holy dead. It opens with the promises of this 
 bliss : " These shall follow the Lamb whither- 
 soever he goeth." " They shall sit on my 
 throne." They shall be led to " living foun-
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE BEYOND. 33 
 
 tains of waters : and God shall wipe away all 
 tears from their eyes." The old grand Greek 
 saw only tears in the eyes of the dead ; his 
 mother, his leader, his servant, his greatest 
 soldier, Hercules himself all wail and weep. 
 But the new grander Greek sees God wiping 
 away all tears. Think how changed that 
 book had Ulysses seen Jupiter wiping away 
 his mother's tears. And so on and on through 
 this book of disclosure appear harpers harping 
 on their harps ; crowds on a sea of glass min- 
 gled with fire, yet never breaking nor burning ; 
 rivers of water of life ; trees laden with pre- 
 cious fruits, which drop their richness every 
 month, until the glorious golden city breaks 
 on our view, descending from God out of 
 heaven, with its gigantic gates, each of a single 
 pearl, its wall of specified precious stones, its 
 light the Lamb, its temple the Lord God, its 
 people the saints of the Most High. 
 
 Here we must pause. How infinite the dis- 
 tance from Ulysses crying as he is drawn into 
 dark Cimmeria and fleeing from its multitude 
 of ghosts, " the innumerable nations of the 
 dead," and John talking with the angel who 
 measures the city,and beholding its inhabitants,
 
 34 CHRIST US CONSOLA TOR. 
 
 and listening to their songs! That is the 
 change wrought in the race of man by the 
 Gospel. That is the immortality Christ has 
 brought to light. That is the Lord from heaven 
 already dwelling among men and giving them 
 a joy of peace and assurance such as never 
 could otherwise be known. 
 
 Three things, among many, we pause to no- 
 tice : 
 
 First, that the consummation of this tri- 
 umph is at the resurrection. Homer never 
 dreamed that those spirits would be reunited to 
 their bodies. The most he hoped for was a 
 happy home sometime for some spirits. But 
 the Gospel laughs at impossibilities and leaps 
 chasms that Nature never dare look into. It 
 puts the crowning glories at and after the raised, 
 revived, and glorified body is reunited to its 
 spirit. That is its objective point. Thither it 
 tends. There it gazes. That is its goal and 
 beginning of glory. Christ put his death and 
 resurrection within forty-eight hours of each 
 other. He puts ours ages apart. What of it? 
 The science that can connect the two ends of a 
 laboratory table with the magnetic spark can 
 gird the world with its flame. Christ can raise
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE BE YOND. 35 
 
 himself in one day and portions of two. He 
 can raise us if millions of years intervene. 
 Thus and then he will show forth his glory. 
 He reserves the highest splendors for that 
 crowning hour. 
 
 But, second, the time between is spent deli- 
 ciously ; whether asleep he does well, whether 
 awake he does well ; all is well. The interme- 
 diate state is not dwelt upon as the post-resur- 
 rection state, but it is sufficiently delineated to 
 show that it is a state of peace. Happy on 
 Jesus's breast to lie and in his smile to bask! 
 No Christian can find a gloomy thought in the 
 reference to the blessed dead. " Blessed are 
 the dead which die in the Lord ;" not shall be 
 " are." " They rest from their labors, and their 
 works do follow them." The gloom of Job, 
 which his faith defied, but could not abolish, is 
 all gone in the New Testament. Stephen goes 
 home rejoicing ; Paul exults in the day of de- 
 liverance ; Peter looks for and hastens after the 
 coming of the Lord ; John sees own sonship 
 changing into his likeness when he shall appear. 
 All are serene, happy, jubilant. The inter- 
 mediate world to a Christian is a world of life 
 and love. It is delightful, it is desirable. Let
 
 36 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 your heart rest in peace, in the confidence 
 that " Blessed are the dead which die in the 
 Lord." 
 
 Third, this hope is limited ; Ulysses makes 
 no limit in virtue and vice. His characters 
 boast, in hades, of the vilest amours. Achilles, 
 who rules below, is there, as above, a polluted 
 chief; while his own mother wails in outer 
 darkness. But 'tis not so in the Christian's 
 future world. The discriminations are sharp. 
 Some shall arise to shame and everlasting 
 contempt. What a shame of soul is that ! 
 How terrible may this awakening be ! A fallen 
 minister, driven by remorse, withdrew to com- 
 mit suicide, when the thought of that doom 
 rolled over his soul. " Shame and everlasting 
 contempt," he kept repeating to himself; 
 " Shame and everlasting contempt." He shrank 
 back from a further and an eternal plunge into 
 that abyss, and was saved, though not from 
 present shame and contempt. Take heed, O 
 great man, lest you awake to that terrible 
 doom ! You may ride in your lordly carriage 
 through lordly ways ; you may be the proud 
 and petted head of grand society ; but if your 
 life is false and corrupt, you shall surely awake
 
 TWO GREEK BOOKS ON LIFE BEYOND. 37 
 
 that resurrection morning to shame and ever- 
 lasting contempt. God help you to avoid that 
 terrible doom ! Some shall have a resurrec- 
 tion to damnation. Who? They that have 
 done evil. 
 
 " Blessed are they that . . . have right to 
 the tree of life, and . . . enter in through the 
 gates into the city. For without are dogs, and 
 sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, 
 and idolaters, and whosoever maketh and lov- 
 eth a lie." How sharp the lines ! 
 
 The Christian's heaven is no mixed, promis- 
 cuous muddle, like a world's town, and some- 
 times like a world's church. It is separate, 
 seclusive. Forever so : " He that is filthy, 
 shall be filthy still ; he that is holy, shall be 
 holy still." See to it that you accept the 
 book of God, the only revealer of the life be- 
 yond. Accept it with its own limitations. 
 Accept it in honest fear of falling. Accept it 
 in humble hope of standing. Accept it in joy- 
 ful assurance of possessing heaven. Accept it 
 for your consolation, for your perfection in right- 
 eousness. What things we have seen enter 
 these realms. Yet all -who have entered in 
 Christ are in him to-day, and shall grow in bliss
 
 38 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 till the ripening hour of the resurrection, when 
 the Lord from heaven shall again appear, 
 take the earthy with the heavenly, and take 
 both earth and spirit in its new and heavenly 
 unit unto the glory which he had with the 
 Father before the world was, the glory ever- 
 lasting. Wherefore comfort one another with 
 these words : 
 
 " Weep for your dead no more ; 
 
 Friends, be of joyful cheer ; 
 Our star moves on before, 
 
 Our narrow path shines clear. 
 
 " Now is His truth revealed, 
 
 His majesty and might ; 
 The grave has been unsealed ; 
 
 Christ is our life and light ! 
 
 "His victory has destroyed 
 The shaft that once could slay ; 
 
 Sing praise ! the tomb is void 
 Where the Redeemer lay."
 
 " Clouds and darkness are round about him." Psalm 
 xcvii, 2. 
 
 " God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." i John 
 
 " O Father of eternal life, and all 
 
 Created glories under thee ! 
 Resume thy Spirit from this world of thrall 
 
 Into true liberty. 
 
 " Either disperse these mists which blot and fill 
 
 My perspective still as they pass, 
 Or else remove me hence unto that hill 
 
 Where I shall need no glass."
 
 II. 
 
 GOD HIDING AND REVEALING HIMSELF. 
 
 \ T 7E are embosomed in mystery. Inwhat- 
 * * ever direction we turn our gaze it is lost 
 in clouds and darkness. However eagerly we 
 pursue a path which we think is flooded with 
 light we soon find our way lost in the thick 
 darkness. Within and around every brilliant 
 truth lie immeasurable clouds. The faint in- 
 crease of knowledge only makes the gloom in 
 which it is involved the denser. 
 
 In our childhood the feebleness of the light 
 is scarcely sufficient to dissipate the fogs that 
 surround the intellect. If heaven lies about 
 us in our infancy, it is only in the intuitions 
 of infancy. The clouds that gather around 
 the growing boy belong to his condition. 
 He is the white paper of the philosopher, 
 the unwritten tablet, ignorant of the world 
 into which he has so unceremoniously en- 
 tered. But after all his strivings after knowledge 
 and attainments, then the babe of barbarians, 
 if the first philosopher of the first schools, must
 
 42 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 still confess the infinitude of the darkness that 
 lies about him. The clear-seeing is not neces- 
 sarily the far-seeing. In truth, no class are so 
 skeptical as those who profess the largest 
 scientific attainments, no class so readily 
 acknowledge their ignorance as those the 
 most scientifically learned. We affirm the 
 more readily the more we know that igno- 
 rance veils the cause of all the phenomena that 
 address our attention. We confess that we are 
 utterly unable to rend the robe in which Nature 
 conceals herself. The more passionate our 
 endeavor to get at the heart of the mystery, 
 the more swiftly and surely does she elude our 
 grasp and present to baffled efforts the same 
 impenetrable guise. 
 
 Under such conditions of being, with ac- 
 knowledged inabilfty to pierce to their depths 
 the shallow recesses of our own nature or of 
 the created world about us, it is natural that 
 the infinite God should surround himself to 
 our comprehension with clouds and darkness. 
 The weakness we feel in our attempts to ex- 
 amine into our own nature leads us irresistibly 
 to the conclusion that every avenue of approach 
 to God is shrouded in yet deeper darkness and
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE V BALING HIMSELF. 43 
 
 mystery. We find, therefore, that in whatever 
 way we seek to contemplate him he hides 
 himself steadily from our view. 
 
 I. If we consider his nature, we must ac- 
 knowledge that we can obtain but faint 
 glimpses of him. 
 
 The Essence or Spirit which we call God, 
 and which we acknowledge to contain infinite 
 attributes, in its activity or mode of existence 
 is deeply mysterious. How his personality 
 can agree with his ubiquity, how he can be 
 everywhere at the same time, superintend 
 all concerns, sustain all existences, execute all 
 purposes at each and every moment, is far be- 
 yond our power to comprehend. Our con- 
 sciousness can be exercised only on a single 
 object at a time. Though the mind may be 
 entertaining a thousand guests, it can direct 
 its attention to them only singly. But such a 
 contraction is not imposed on God. He is 
 not obliged to neglect all other interests for 
 the purpose of rightly attending to one. He can 
 exert his power in creating new and directing 
 old worlds, in thrusting out vegetation in its 
 innumerable forms upon the earth, and send- 
 ing forth innumerable worlds into space. How
 
 44 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOK. 
 
 this can be is too wonderful for us. It is high ; 
 we cannot attain unto it. 
 
 No less mysterious are his omniscience and 
 omnipotence. He is not present as a mere 
 atom or breeze, or mindless thing; he is 
 present everywhere, knowing everything and 
 controlling everything. This is also far beyond 
 our thoughts. It cannot be reduced to our 
 measurements. We can prove the necessity 
 of such a nature, we can see that only by 
 possessing it can he be God ; that through it 
 alone can he keep in regular action the works 
 of his own hands ; through it alone can he 
 give the created soul confidence in the immu- 
 tability of his purposes and thus afford it 
 consolation and strength. This irradiates all 
 the darkness around us with light divine; this 
 destroys our fears that we are victims of mere 
 chance, which may shoot us whither it blindly 
 pleases, like gusts of a whirlwind, which them- 
 selves do not know whence they come or 
 whither they go. Binding the universe har- 
 moniously together, giving it a power and wis- 
 dom and love which are infinite and ceaseless, 
 imparting to every atom of space and every 
 moment of eternity a directing, vivifying spirit,
 
 GOD HIDING AND REVEALING HIMSELF. 45 
 
 this nature of God presents the whole crea- 
 tion as animated by one soul, created for one 
 end, governed by one law, and reposing in the 
 arms of one Power. Yet in itself this Power 
 is hidden from our gaze. This source of all 
 light is the center of deepest darkness. As 
 has been sublimely remarked : " How the di- 
 vine Being himself exists in an essential and 
 eternal nature of his own, without beginning 
 as well as without end ; how he can be present 
 at the same moment in every point of illimitable 
 space without excluding any one of his crea- 
 tures from the room it occupies ; how, unseen, 
 unfelt by all, he can maintain a pervading and 
 intimate acquaintance and contact with all 
 parts and portions of the universe ; how he 
 can at once be all eye, all ear, all presence, all 
 energy, yet interfere with none of the percep- 
 tions and actions of his creatures this is what 
 equally baffles the mightiest and the meanest 
 intellect ; this is the great mystery of the uni- 
 verse, which is at once the most certain and the 
 most incomprehensible of all things a truth at 
 once enveloped in a flood of light and an abyss 
 of darkness ! Inexplicable itself, it explains 
 all beside. It casts a clearness on every ques-
 
 46 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 tion, accounts for every phenomenon, solves 
 every problem, illuminates every depth, and 
 renders the whole mystery of existence as per- 
 fectly simple as it is otherwise perfectly unin- 
 telligible, while itself alone remains in impene- 
 trable obscurity. After displacing every other 
 difficulty it remains the greatest of all, in solita- 
 ry, insurmountable, unapproachable grandeur." 
 II. But his works are a mystery. Not only 
 is his own nature past finding out, his works 
 partake of that same mystery. We find our- 
 selves placed in the midst of material creation 
 existing under unnumbered if not innumerable 
 forms, instinct with different degrees of life, or, 
 if destitute of all vitality, still marvelously 
 diverse in that unvitalized condition, every 
 stone as every star differing from every other 
 stone as well as star in glory ; subject to varied 
 laws, now completely controlling them, now 
 allowing them some voluntary action under 
 general supervision. We see that these parti- 
 cles combine according to fixed laws, to which 
 they are in their lowest workings blindly sub- 
 ject ; that, as they gradually arise from this 
 condition, they become more and more imbued 
 with vitalizing, conscious elements, until at
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE VEALING HIMSELF. 47 
 
 last in man is revealed a new power which 
 ranks him infinitely above his fellows a power 
 to combine and to separate, to break old 
 bonds and to form new alliances ; a power to 
 reason, to imagine, to construct out of spirit- 
 ual elements a spiritual building. Yet around 
 all these material and spiritual works is cast a 
 thick veil. What is man ? man must yet say 
 to himself. What is this tiniest work, this first 
 step in creation, this molecule or atom of sci- 
 ence ? He pauses in vain for a reply. If the 
 atom answers not, much less will its motion, its 
 crystallization, its vitalization, its animalization 
 answer. All nature is dumb. The sphinx de- 
 vours, but does not enlighten, her rrfan-child. 
 In a score or two of years a mere hand's 
 breadth he is again of her dust out of which 
 she formed him, returned to his primordial es- 
 tate, to the original atom, to his native dust. 
 But Nature, even -then, speaks not. 'Tis mys- 
 tery all. How vain is science ! We may mod- 
 ify the familiar lines: 
 
 " How vain is science here below, 
 How false, and yet how fair ! " 
 
 How seductive, how treacherous ! How allur- 
 ing, how disappointing ! It is not science ; it
 
 48 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 is a dream of science. That means knowledge ; 
 this is ignorance. God's omniscience is man's 
 omnescience. His all-knowing is our all-not- 
 knowing. Knowledge in part is real igno- 
 rance. See how this cloud thickens about us. 
 The mode by which creation has been called 
 into being and by which it is sustained in be- 
 ing is beyond our comprehension. We have 
 senses by which we discern its existence ; we 
 have learned through some who advanced be- 
 yond ourselves in their investigations certain 
 facts concerning it and certain laws governing 
 it; but with all this knowledge we .are in a 
 state of blindness and darkness. We catch 
 but faint glimpses of the range of creation 
 and pierce but slightly into its depths. It is 
 still to us clouds and darkness. 
 
 Ho.w deep, too, is the mystery connected 
 with our own nature! Our soul what is it? 
 How united with the body ? How do we think 
 the thoughts ever passing through the brain? 
 How feel the feelings ever throbbing in the 
 heart? How do we propel upon the air in 
 speech or from the eye in glances their inward 
 and spiritual movements ? How does this 
 articulated air and soulful glance awaken
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE VEA LING HIMSELF. 49 
 
 thought and emotion in other souls through 
 like organs of flesh ? Nay, how acts the soul 
 upon itself, in communings, repentings, resolv- 
 ings, inner and solitary weepings and rejoic- 
 ings, all this strangest and deepest of life, with 
 which no stranger can intermeddle, which goes 
 on beneath a sleeping, or, if awake, a calm and 
 unrevealing exterior, like a cool sentinel guard- 
 ing at a gate within whose palace every sort 
 of a scene is going forward, festival and funeral, 
 fightings and banquetings? This is marvel of 
 marvels so far as concerns the works of God. 
 We sink down appalled before our own hidden 
 selves. We flee from the being which we are. 
 Thus the world without and that within make 
 us tremble as in the thick darkness. Around 
 us roll the waves of created life, deeper, wider, 
 more fearful than the ocean. Our little bark 
 swims on surrounding waters, soon to be en- 
 gulfed in their relentless abysses. As it skims 
 the dread surface by the aid of the slight glim- 
 merings of knowledge, it sees neither the un- 
 fathomed depths nor the far-distant shores. 
 
 We may see God, in his attributes, in these 
 regular motions of his universe. We may re- 
 vere his power and wisdom and knowledge,
 
 50 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 but, with all the discernment we can acquire, 
 we are still compelled to confess that clouds 
 and darkness are round about him. Retired 
 within the secrets of his own nature, sur- 
 rounded by the mysteries of mysteries which 
 close up every avenue of approach, he issues 
 his edicts, calls into being creatures fashioned 
 with infinite skill, and leaves them to wander 
 forward, forever gaining vast stores of infor- 
 mation, and yet, with every accumulation, com- 
 pelled the more despairingly to cry out, " Clouds 
 and darkness are round about him," confess- 
 ing, in prostration of pride and conceit, that 
 their increasing faculties only increase the con- 
 sciousness of their own weakness, that increas- 
 ing light only causes a profounder gloom to 
 gather around the very source of all intelli- 
 gence. The most undevout astronomer, the 
 most daring skeptic of science, the most defi- 
 ant student of the world of matter apprehen- 
 sible to our capacities, has to cry out in mor- 
 tification of spirit, " We are of yesterday, and 
 know nothing." Lo ! these are but parts of 
 his ways ; but the thunder of his power who 
 can understand ? 
 
 III. He is mysterious in his providences.
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE VEALING HIMSELF. 51 
 
 By providence is meant that apparent inter- 
 ference with the ordinary laws of nature, not 
 the extraordinary interposition of his power, 
 working evidently against ordinary laws for the 
 confirmation or refutation of a doctrine or 
 supposed duty. Such workings contrary to 
 natural law were witnessed in the miracles 
 scattered through the word of God from the 
 days of Moses to those of Paul, consummating 
 themselves in the deeds of Christ. Such mira- 
 cles are attestations of his power over his own 
 works, and his determination to make these 
 lower forces servants of his highest purposes, 
 teachers by their dumb obedience of the Gos- 
 pel of salvation. They, of course, are far be- 
 yond all human investigation. They are the hid- 
 denmost exercises of the will of God. They can 
 probably in no world or future be apprehended 
 by any creature. The angels may forever 
 vainly endeavor to look into that lowest of the 
 mysteries connected with the work of redeem- 
 ing souls the reversal or suspension of the 
 laws of matter. Miracles are not subject, and 
 never will be, to the tests of the laboratory or 
 the dialectics of the disputer. They must be 
 rejected with sneering contempt that only
 
 52 CHRISTUS CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 proves the folly of the rejecter, or accepted in 
 all their fullness of demand with a like fullness 
 of faith. 
 
 But these exhibitions of God, " with clouds 
 and darkness," are not among those regular 
 disclosures of himself that wrap us round with 
 a veil of perplexity. If we consider him in 
 the larger providences that affect the weal of 
 nations, we see but parts of his ways. Why 
 one people rise and another fall, how Greece 
 shot out so suddenly into the front rank of the 
 world and disappeared as suddenly, its whole 
 reign not covering half a millennium from Achil- 
 les to Alexander, is a mystery no student of that 
 mighty people can possibly solve. Gladstone 
 confesses his ignorance. Others less compe- 
 tent can wisely confess theirs. Why America 
 lay concealed for thousands of years, only a 
 few days' run from a continent teeming with 
 intensest life, separated by soft waves and cur- 
 rents that a sailboat can traverse, is another 
 inexplicable mystery. We can see God raising 
 up nations out of barbarism, allowing them 
 to sweep over the earth in a torrent of desolat- 
 ing war, giving them vast wealth and power, 
 and then allowing seeds of decay to flourish in
 
 COD HIDING AND REVEALING HIMSELF. 53 
 
 their system, sap the foundations of their gor- 
 geous power, and leave them a desolation and 
 mockery, while to another people possessing 
 superior or different traits is given the reins of 
 power, like them to rise to a similar, perhaps 
 superior glory, like them to fall to an equal, 
 perhaps lower degradation. 
 
 In all these changes has been seen most 
 clearly the hand of God, the operation of fixed 
 laws directed by his wisdom. Yet even here, 
 where nothing "is miraculous, everything is 
 mysterious. Clouds and darkness hang thick 
 around him. We know not why he allows 
 such misery to accompany this rise and fall of 
 nations ; why these growths and decays of em- 
 pires should be so bloody. The forest, the 
 field, do not thus flourish and fade. Why 
 does the war-horse trample so many innocent 
 beings beneath his bloody hoof? Why is the 
 more hellish passion of his rider allowed such 
 indulgence ? Why do the terrible scenes in 
 Bulgarian villages accompany the fall of one 
 empire and the rise of its rival babes roasted 
 alive, men impaled on stakes about their com- 
 pounds, women no word can describe their 
 condition, subject at once to the vilest pas-
 
 54 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 sion and the fiercest rage of the soldiery ? 
 Why must every upward step of humanity be 
 upon the fairest flowers of innocence and love- 
 liness? Why must we cry out in utter horror 
 inexplicable, 
 
 '' Thou madest life in man and brute, 
 Thou madest death, and lo ! thy foot 
 Is on the skull which thou hast made?" 
 
 None the less perplexed are we at the delay 
 of the coming of Christ, the first as well as 
 the second. Why the true light was withheld 
 for so many ages ; why the government of the 
 world was committed to nations steeped in 
 idolatry, ignorance, barbarity ; why for so many 
 centuries generation after generation passed 
 through lives of grossest darkness, mental and 
 moral, down to hopeless graves, with scarce a 
 glimmer of celestial light to dispel or even to 
 relieve the shadows on their pathway ; nay, 
 why death itself hath passed upon all men 
 babes, and youth, and maids, and mothers, 
 and large-hearted sires all this, to one who 
 hath not Scripture for his guide, is a shadow 
 of shadows, clouds and darkness that can be 
 felt. 
 
 As the eye wanders over the earth we see it
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE VEALING HIMSELF. 55 
 
 still in its human relations much as it was ma- 
 terially ere the Spirit brooded over it, without 
 form and void. Starvation and violence, igno- 
 rance and impiety thickly cover the race; why 
 should such a fair planet be the home of such ex- 
 cessive misery? Why should the soul of man, 
 so capable of producing the abundant and 
 glorious fruits of righteousness and holiness, 
 bear only thorns and briers fit but for cursing, 
 and ending only in corruption and death? 
 Why should cities the very flower of human- 
 ity, the civilizing centers of its congrega- 
 tions, be now, as when Cicero described the 
 greatest of them all in wealth, luxury, gen- 
 ius, and glory, " the common sewer of the 
 nations?" 
 
 We can only answer, It is past finding out. 
 With our feeble reason we may attempt to 
 assign motives for such universal facts, but our 
 attempts return upon our own heads. We gaze 
 upon these elevations and depressions in 
 society, this prevailing misery and this rare 
 happiness, this sweeping rain of calamity, now 
 in fever, now in business, laying waste a 
 city with sickness and an industrious clime 
 with enforced idleness, bringing bankruptcy
 
 56 CHRIST US CON SOL A TOR. 
 
 to thousands of employers and starvation to 
 tens of thousands of their workmen, sending 
 the mourners in multitudes about our streets. 
 As we gaze hopelessly, what can we say ? We 
 put our hands upon our mouths and our 
 mouths in the dust. We are like poor Othello, 
 " perplexed in the extreme." " He doeth his 
 pleasure, and giveth no account of any of his 
 matters." 
 
 But closer yet comes this mystery of provi- 
 dence. It sits shrouded at every hearthstone. 
 It turns that hearthstone to a gravestone. 
 " Death enters, and there is no defense." He 
 takes the stalwart head from a sick companion 
 and large and young family. Suddenly, with 
 a stroke, the tree falls, and the vine clinging 
 to it and its tender clusters lie scattered over 
 the earth. He snatches the mother from her 
 babes, and they cry in vain for her clasp and 
 kiss. He tears the wife from the arms of her 
 husband, and the lone man sends those arms 
 roaming around her pillow, crying out in hope- 
 less weakness, 
 
 M O that 't were possible, 
 
 After long years of pain, 
 To feel the arms of my true love 
 
 Round me once again !"
 
 GOD HIDING A ND RE VEA L ING HIMSELF. 5 7 
 
 But it is not possible ! The heavens are 
 blank and black, earless and tearless. He 
 snatches the babe from the cradle and leaves 
 its- father and mother stupefied by the blow, 
 but gives no ointment to heal or even mollify 
 the dreadful wound. He bears away the 
 maiden in the dew of her youth, perfect in 
 love and loveliness, despite tears and prayers of 
 parent or lover, and lays her in the charnel 
 house, a Juliet of grace to be a banquet for 
 worms. He strikes down the youth in the very 
 hour of his assured triumph, with every charm 
 to allure, every talent to sway, every quality 
 of heart and intellect to command, with desire 
 and ability to further the cause of God and 
 man. This moment he was towering in manly 
 splendor and lo ! he is not ; we look diligently, 
 but cannot find him. So falls Marcellus in every 
 age and people. We see the virtuous and dili- 
 gent leveled at a stroke, while the vile and cruel 
 flourish till the hair blanches and age exhausts 
 the power, but not the desire, for wickedness. 
 
 Such facts, seen in every period of human 
 history, a surprise to every thoughtful mind, 
 only thicken the gloom that enshrouds the 
 movements of God. We expend our energies
 
 58 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 in vain endeavors to solve this problem. We 
 struggle to catch the least glimpse of the mo- 
 tives that have made him thus display his 
 power. We charge the calamity to accident, 
 or disease, or lack of sanitary conditions, to 
 wind or wave ; but we feel that behind all these 
 pivotal circumstances is God, who doeth his 
 will. We exclaim in a cry of compulsory, not 
 intelligent and calm, submission: 
 
 " In two days it steads thee not to fly from thy grave 
 The appointed and the unappointed day. 
 
 In the first neither balm nor physician can save, 
 Nor thee, on the second, the universe slay." 
 
 And then we fly from this cry of fate and say 
 it is not the universe or lesser creatures that 
 kill or make alive, but God the Lord, to whom 
 the universe is no more than its primal atom. 
 " He can create, and he destroy," he only. But 
 why he destroys what he has pronounced and 
 we discern to be very good is utterly beyond 
 the wisest ken. " He made darkness his secret 
 place ; his pavilion round about him were dark 
 waters and thick clouds of the skies." 
 
 Such are some of the clouds that engirt the 
 divine nature of government. They inclose 
 him on every side. Whether we seek to be-
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE VEALING HIMSELF. 59 
 
 hold him in the works of nature or of grace ; 
 in his natural attributes or revealed Trinity in 
 Unity ; in his creative, sustaining, or destroy- 
 ing power; in his spiritual or material kingdom 
 and government; in his general or special provi- 
 dences under every conceivable mode of re- 
 search or inquiry, to every observer, he pre- 
 sents to us the same unfathomable, impenetra- 
 ble mystery. 
 
 But the word of God presents an opposite 
 view. Over against this thick darkness, this 
 darkness which can be felt, which is felt, 
 deeply, ineradicably, unspeakably felt, there 
 ariseth a light, a light that not only dissipates 
 but engulfs the gloom. The very psalm that 
 contains this dreary truth cheeringly declares 
 that light is sown for the righteous, and glad- 
 ness, the result of light, for the upright in 
 heart. John, the revealer in so many ways of 
 divine truth, not alone in apocalyptic splendors 
 and terms, but in the life, nature, and fellow- 
 ship of Christ, cries out by the Holy Ghost, 
 " God is light, and in him is no darkness at 
 all." 
 
 Can this be true ? Can the same God be in 
 darkness and be lisrht ? Can clouds and dark-
 
 60 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 ness be round about him and yet his nature be 
 perfect and perpetual light ? It is true, though 
 only the Bible, of all books, and Christianity, of 
 all faiths, has ever detected the truth. To all 
 other creeds he is darkness Greek, Egyptian, 
 Buddhistic, Brahman, Mohammedan. He is 
 darkness. Jove smiles not when he strikes ex- 
 cept as hatred smiles when indulged. Zeus 
 wounds not to heal. Mohammedanism cries, 
 "God is great," and inscribes this innumerable 
 times over every hall and mosque in marble 
 letters, but never writes, " God is good." Quin- 
 tilian exclaims over the dead body of his son, 
 " Curse the gods ! " and exclaims wisely after 
 the best human knowledge. In nature, in 
 providence, he is to be feared, not loved. 
 Adam followed the universal sinful instinct 
 when he heard the voice of God and hid him- 
 self, for he was affrighted. Well he might be! 
 That fear has taken hold of all his children. It 
 is the first disease they received from their first 
 father. God is an object of dread and dislike 
 of dislike because of dread. How can he then 
 be light and love and joy and peace? How 
 can the child of Adam cry out, " My heart 
 longeth for the courts of the Lord ; " " Whom
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE V BALING HIMSELF. 61 
 
 have I in heaven but Thee ?" How can he 
 say, " I am sick of love for my God ? " 
 
 " O would He more of heaven bestow, 
 
 And let the vessels break, 
 And let my ransomed spirit go 
 
 To grasp the God I seek." 
 
 How ? By and through the word and grace 
 of God. In the Scriptures it is written, in the 
 ransomed heart it is felt, by the renewed eye 
 it is seen in and by these only. The same 
 Being guided the Israelites by a pillar of cloud 
 and a pillar of fire. He gathers clouds around 
 him, and yet reveals himself through them. 
 He is light to the eye of faith, though that 
 of speculation and mere curiosity is blinded 
 by the depths of darkness enshrouding him. 
 He drives away the clouds that impede our 
 spiritual vision while still veiled in providence 
 in an awful mystery. This is not an assumed 
 but a necessary concealment. It arises from 
 his infinitude and our sinfulness. If we were 
 sinless, still he would be mysterious. Even the 
 angels vainly desire to look into the dark mys- 
 tery of redemption. Infinity is dark to fini- 
 tude. What delegated power, if it were ever 
 so mighty, could vie with that which was
 
 62 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 almighty ? What degree of created wisdom 
 could explore the depths of the uncreated ? 
 What acquisitions of study could collect a 
 store equal or comparable to the accumula- 
 tions of infinite knowledge ? From necessity, 
 therefore, does he hide himself from his crea- 
 tures, whether in heaven or on the earth. If 
 he could entirely reveal himself, then were 
 they not creatures, or he not God. 
 
 But though thus clothed to all eternity in 
 infinite darkness; though concealed, as must 
 be, all his purposes for the future and all the 
 reasons for his present acts, unless he espe- 
 cially choose to declare them, still he may 
 be all light. The soul upon which his grace 
 has acted, which has been upraised from 
 nature's darkness into his marvelous light, 
 sees his steps, his face, even in the paths of 
 pain in which he may be compelled to walk. 
 Though incapable of fathoming the mysteries 
 which always surround him, still he is capable 
 of perceiving in the workings of creation and 
 even of providence, as illumined by grace, the 
 power, the skill, and the benevolence of God. 
 He can see in his works the proofs of his divin- 
 ity ; in his being the harmonious necessities
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE V BALING HIMSELF. 63 
 
 of infinite creatorship, the eternally invisible 
 Father, the manifesting Son, his express image 
 and glory, the Holy Ghost, illuminator, re- 
 prover, sanctifier, comforter. He can see in 
 the spiritual world the same divine goodness 
 and wisdom, the same exquisite adaptation of 
 the external to the internal, of matter to mind, 
 of mind to matter. And so wherever he fixes 
 his gaze he finds God is light, and in him is no 
 darkness at all. 
 
 Even the bereavements which come like the 
 blight of eternal death over the circle of 
 friends and kindred, which fall like a pall on 
 society, though veiled in thickest dark, to the 
 humble and believing bring into clearer light 
 our dependence on God and the sufficiency 
 there is in him to accomplish all his matters, 
 through any instrument he may raise, and even 
 if every instrument so raised up is seemingly 
 violently wrested from his hand. It is not so 
 wrested. He created it, he removes it ; he 
 abides. That babe, expected to be the support 
 of its parents, crumbles back to the nothing- 
 ness out of which it so lately came ; but God 
 crumbles not. That youth and maid, fair to 
 see, disappear as soon as seen, and leave the
 
 64 CM JUSTUS CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 bewildered circle desolate and doubtful. But 
 He who is eternally strong and fair, the chief- 
 est in lordly vigor among ten thousand, and 
 the one and the only one altogether lovely, 
 he fails not and fades not. He is the glory 
 and the beauty, pure and perfect, forever and 
 forever. That mother torn from her babes, 
 that father from the mother and the little 
 ones, who can solve the riddle ? No Samson 
 strong enough to wrestle with that problem ; 
 no Solomon wise enough to guess that secret. 
 But do we not see light in His light who is 
 Light ? Does he not thereby teach the family 
 smitten of God and afflicted that he is ten- 
 derer than mother, stronger than father, potent 
 in love, and will not suffer even these afflic- 
 tions to be above what they are able to bear ; 
 nay, will bear them all himself, and come the 
 nearer to them the farther he removes lover 
 and friend from them ? Only such darkness 
 can bring forth such light. Only then can the 
 Comforter come when the Christ is gone. 
 Only can the Pentecostal glory break upon the 
 crucifixion gloom. Only can the shinings of 
 salvation appear after the rains of penitential 
 sorrow.
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE V BALING HIMSELF. 65 
 
 But though to the Christian there may be a 
 great light shed upon the character and con- 
 cerns of God ; though his believing soul may 
 trust where it cannot examine and rest where 
 it cannot see, and see, even, where all other 
 eyes fail, still throughout eternity there will be 
 a gradual unfolding of the truths which must 
 now be received by faith. There will be a con- 
 stant source of activity and delight in remov- 
 ing barrier after barrier in its onward course, 
 in dispersing shadow upon shadow that had 
 hung around the divine nature and working. 
 Lessing's preference will then be more than 
 fulfilled : " If I had truth offered me in one 
 hand and search for it in the other, I would 
 accept the latter." We shall have both the 
 truth and the search for it. Not like the 
 blinded seekers who refuse to accept the first 
 principles of real science, the fear of God and 
 faith in Christ, and who are, therefore, as was 
 poor Lessing himself too often, ever seeking 
 and never able to come to the knowledge of the 
 truth, but, like the angels, searching, and grow- 
 ing in the search into the knowledge of the 
 deep things of God, increasing in light and 
 still allured by increasing mystery, God ever
 
 66 CHRISTUS CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 more near and ever the more hiding himself, 
 all light and still all darkness. 
 
 But then as now, here as there, we may see 
 light in his light. If he by necessity of being 
 hides himself from us as Creator, he reveals him- 
 self as Saviour. He floods the soul with such 
 heavenly light that all natural darkness flees 
 away. All errors in doctrine and practice ap- 
 pear in their true deformity and then disappear 
 from the soul they have possessed, like the 
 demons that revealed their demonism and then 
 fled to their own, the outer darkness. In the 
 center of that redeeming, new creating glory he 
 will abide forever. 
 
 Has this light ever arisen upon you ? Has 
 God been seen by you in the supreme glory and 
 beauty of the cross? Has the darkness which 
 shrouded the earth and thickened around him 
 as he hung upon that tree of agony and dis- 
 grace ever been scattered in your souls by the 
 light which burst from hissepulcher and which 
 sat in fiery tongues on the heads of his disci- 
 ples ? Or do you yet abide in the spiritual 
 darkness, enjoying no light from his presence, 
 seeing not how nature and providence in this 
 light appear to flow in their proper relations,
 
 GOD HIDING AND RE VEALING HIMSELF. 67 
 
 or assured that what you fail to know now ye 
 shall know hereafter ? 
 
 If this gloom still surrounds your soul, if in 
 addition to that which must constantly conceal 
 our Maker is added that which arises from an 
 unrepentant and unfilial heart, a depravity 
 of inheritance and cultivation, of strength and 
 desire, remember that this unnatural though 
 unfortunately most natural darkness must be 
 perpetual unless speedily removed by faith in 
 the blood of Christ. Never through all the 
 boundless waste of ages will arrive the moment 
 when the cloud will depart, but, growing deeper 
 and deeper, it will enshroud the soul in its ter- 
 rible, its everlasting blackness and darkness. 
 What God is not, that soul will be ; what God is, 
 that soul will never be. Clouds arid darkness are 
 round about him, but he is light. The willful, 
 choiceful sinner will be clouds and darkness, 
 never, never, never the light. He shall go 
 away into the outer darkness go never to re- 
 turn ; go darker than its uttermost dark ; go 
 never to see or feel again an illuminating ray. 
 The blindest eye detects the difference between 
 day and night, but there is no difference there, 
 for there is no day there, only night and night
 
 68 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 forever night in the soul, night without, night 
 in the passions that rush constantly hellward, 
 in the reason that studies how to prove the 
 worse the better, in every faculty still left, 
 still conscious, still active. The flashes of 
 the fires which tried that darkness only make 
 it the more dark. Byron's dream is only a 
 faint conception of that state where sun and 
 moon are orbs of blackness and every flame 
 intensifies the gloom. 
 
 Hasten to escape the possibility of such a 
 state, hasten to secure the glories of the oppo- 
 site condition ! There shall be no night there. 
 They need no candle, nor the light of the 
 sun, for the Lamb is the light thereof. Every 
 ray flows from the Sun of Righteousness, the 
 sun obscured in sacrifice, shining in arising and 
 ascending glory. Let desire for that estate 
 fill your soul with shrinkings from the horrors 
 of that darkness, with longings for the glories 
 of that light. From the bright cloud that 
 overshadowed the Saviour fell a voice pro- 
 claiming him to be God's beloved Son. From 
 the bright cloud of the same divine presence 
 and glory let the same voice assure you of the 
 same truth a son, an heir, a joint-heir with
 
 GOD HIDING AND REVEALING HIMSELF. 69 
 
 Jesus Christ, to the glory which he had with 
 the Father before the world was. Then will 
 the clouds which now are around about him 
 brighten with the inner glory with which he 
 will irradiate them. As the upheaved masses 
 which conceal the everliving sun are set on fire 
 by the very beams they would conceal, and 
 tint the heavens with every hue in the mag- 
 nificent radiance coming from the light within, 
 so shall every thundercloud of wrath, every 
 heavy cloud of sorrow, the wide void and 
 waste of the still unknown, be filled with the 
 shinings of God within. Unlike the natural 
 sun whose atmosphere of light covers an earth 
 of opacity as lusterless as our own, the inner- 
 most is light, the outer only obscure. But the 
 soul at one with Christ is in the center of the 
 innermost, and the atmospheres of providence, 
 grace, and nature, yea, even of being itself, shall 
 shine in the glory of God, author at once of 
 nature, providence, and grace ; yea, of his own 
 being also. 
 
 This light has been discerned by poet and 
 philosopher when illumined by Christian faith. 
 Dante's visions of the Celestial Hill were the 
 very essence, the fifth or quintessence, essence
 
 70 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 of essence of essence of essence of essence of 
 Light, a realm of soul purity and power as only 
 an eye and tongue of highest Christian train- 
 ing could have seen and sang. Paul saw it by 
 faith and by sight when caught up in that 
 seventh heaven, an essence of twice the power 
 of his follower Dante, not seen but experienced, 
 a glory that was unspeakable, that no mortal 
 man might approach unless first dipped in im- 
 mortality, a glory that he perpetually longed 
 to again and forever enjoy. John gazed upon 
 it, dwelt in it, was filled with it, and fills with 
 it every verse of his Scriptures, whether of 
 biography, letter, or vision. Every Christian 
 shall enter it. Multitudes upon multitudes 
 have entered it the realm of light and love, of 
 light because of love and love in light and into 
 it shall all the multitudes of the believers and 
 faithful enter, there to abide and to grow, see- 
 ing ever, even there, clouds and darkness round 
 about the divine center, seeing still more 
 clearly in his ceaseless outgoings that " God is 
 light, and in him is no darkness at all." 
 
 May we be comforted and strengthened in 
 every hour of gloom by this clear shining of the 
 Face Divine !
 
 " For the fashion of this world passeth away." I Cor. 
 vii, 31. 
 
 " This life, which seems so fair, 
 
 Is like a bubble blown up in the air 
 
 By sporting children's breath, 
 
 Who chase it everywhere, 
 
 And strive who can most motion it bequeath. 
 
 And though it sometimes seem of its own weight 
 
 Like to an eye of gold to be fixed there, 
 
 And calm to hover in that empty height, 
 
 That only is because it is so light ; 
 
 But in that pomp it doth not long appear, 
 
 But when 'tis most admired, in a thought, 
 
 Because it erst was naught, it turns to naught."
 
 III. 
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 
 
 "\T 7"E are naturally led to believe that the 
 * objects which meet our gaze, the cus- 
 toms and laws of society under which we have 
 been educated, are necessarily permanent. 
 We see no change or decay in star or earth, 
 in man or nature. They present to the eye 
 of age the same features that they did to him 
 in youth. They may be slightly modified in 
 minor points, but they are substantially unal- 
 tered. The same scenes in nature appear, 
 slightly varied, perhaps, by movements of 
 population. The same code of laws rule, 
 changed a little in minor restrictions or liber- 
 ality. The same habits control the daily life 
 of the people, scarcely affected by increasing 
 knowledge and wealth. 
 
 A sudden outbreak, a civil volcano, some- 
 times bursts through the level surface of so- 
 ciety, overturning all its institutions and intro- 
 ducing a new chaos, out of which may arise a 
 new and more perfect cosmos. Such eruptions
 
 74 CHRISTUS CONSOLA TOR. 
 
 may disturb the quiet belief in the unchange- 
 ableness of this world. We may exclaim against 
 the declaration of the text, " See the English, 
 the American, the French Revolution ; see Na- 
 poleon and our civil war. Do not these disturb, 
 if not destroy, the declaration that all things 
 continue as they were from the beginning?" 
 
 Look a little closer, and they will be seen to 
 have scarcely affected the steady currents of 
 the world. The surface is tossed, the depths 
 remain unmoved. The volcano does not dis- 
 turb the center of the earth with its fires or 
 fury. Only the crust is broken. So these 
 social storms and earthquakes, that sweep over, 
 heave, and even break up the surface of so- 
 ciety, leave untouched the principles and prac- 
 tices on which it is founded. The Parisians 
 have a saying that no revolution disturbs the 
 omnibus drivers. So no revolution disturbs 
 the immense current of feeling and action on 
 Avhich flows the stream of humanity. That 
 stream is steadier than the Homeric ocean 
 that rolled around the earth, steadier than the 
 courses of the stars, steadier than life itself. 
 From observing it alone we cannot say the 
 fashion of this world passeth away.
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 75 
 
 Our experience gives us no proof of this 
 change ; and, though history might teach the 
 truth, yet we fail to be conscious of it because 
 it is not a matter of personal experience. 
 "All men think all men mortal but them- 
 selves," and that because it is impossible to 
 conceive of death as a personal and conscious 
 experience. Not only of the child, but of the 
 decrepit centenarian, who has seen thousands 
 die, must we say, " What can he know of 
 death ? " He feels his life in every limb, feebly, 
 perhaps, paralytically almost, but it is life ; and 
 death and life have nothing in common. They 
 are incapable of being compared, contrasted, 
 or submitted in any shape or degree to a com- 
 mon examination. Even when forced by ob- 
 servation of history to concede that other na- 
 tions and ages have been compelled to submit 
 to death, we quickly frame some excuse for 
 our own state and time which shall except 
 them from the general doom. We find in us 
 some germ of immortality that shall perpetu- 
 ate our nationality. Without doubt we con- 
 fess the inhabitants of Nineveh, Troy, Tyre, 
 Thebes, or other mighty cities that arose, 
 flourished, and fell, indulged in the same views
 
 76 CUR 1ST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 while contemplating the glory and seeming 
 durability of their monuments. They might 
 each have said, as did Macaulay of St. Paul's, 
 that the far-off barbarian, blooming in his 
 civilization, shall sketch their ruins ; but they 
 would no more have believed that this would 
 happen than he believed it of his favorite Lon- 
 don. The courtiers that fluttered around the 
 throne of Babylon could not have been made 
 to believe the declaration of Isaiah, even if 
 they had heard it from his own lips and be- 
 lieved it to have been the word of God, that 
 the time should come when not only the 
 pompous palaces that graced the city, not only 
 the stately gardens, the greatest height yet 
 to which art and wealth have ever vied with 
 nature, not only the language which they used 
 to express their flatteries and adoration of the 
 throne, not only the laws that governed court 
 and state, should disappear, but even the most 
 common dwellings, the rudest, and, therefore, 
 strongest habits, should be swept away by the 
 same desolating wave, and scarce a vestige be 
 left by which even the site of their strength 
 and splendor could be discerned. 
 
 The Greek who hung enraptured on the lips
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 77 
 
 of Pericles, or leaped in enthusiasm at the 
 summons of Demosthenes, or walked in proud 
 procession from Athens to the gorgeous temple 
 of Delphos, or mingled as spectator or actor 
 in the Olympian games, or gazed uplifted on 
 the splendors of the Parthenon, fresh and spark- 
 ing in its marble, ivory, and gold how he would 
 have resented as a gross insult to his race the 
 assertion that the time would come when no 
 multitude nor orator would inflame the bema, 
 no procession would move from city to shrine, 
 no shrine or city would exist. Nay, when the 
 city of Delphos should itself be a matter of 
 dispute, and its deity should have been for 
 ages uncrowned and contemned ; when even 
 the city itself, its cloud-capped towers and 
 gorgeous palaces and solemn temples, should 
 have disappeared as a dream when one awaketh, 
 and only a few stained pillars and rock-hewn 
 steps should survive to mark its tomb. The 
 Roman who trod in just pride the forum and 
 the Via Sacra, who sat in the Coliseum and 
 gazed on the splendors of Caesar's palaces, who 
 wandered amid groves and well-nigh forests of 
 statuary in the Circus Maximus, and every, 
 where did not so much dream as realize uni-
 
 78 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 versal dominion had he been told in the cul- 
 mination of that sovereignty that that do- 
 minion to which he declared the gods had set 
 no bounds, either of time or space, should 
 utterly and forever disappear ; that even his own 
 city should be whelmed helplessly beneath suc- 
 cessive waves of barbarism ; that the forest of 
 statues should be leveled and only here and 
 there a trunk, a torso, escape to tell the marvel 
 of its glory; that the wondrous palace of all the 
 Caesars should be a rubbish heap, deep into 
 which the explorer must delve if he would find 
 any trace of its existence ; that the very Col- 
 iseum should be rent in twain from the top to 
 the bottom, and stand a broken ruin, with 
 weeds for seats, and jackals for emperors and 
 senate and assembly how would his soul have 
 sprung to arms at such an imputation ! How 
 confidently would he have appealed to its long 
 and lengthening history, to its mighty arms, 
 its controlling laws, its wide-spreading lan- 
 guage, its men whose very names sounded solid 
 and enduring, and affirmed that such prophecy 
 was fable ! For a thousand years it had ruled 
 the world ; whence was to come its downfall ? 
 In such reflections the self-satisfied citizen
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 79 
 
 of these mighty nations would naturally, could 
 reasonably, indulge. Yet they have passed 
 away. So may our expectations be a delusion, 
 our land again be a desolation. The fashion 
 of this world passeth away. 
 
 The fashion of this world passeth away in 
 respect to its opinions and usages. The views 
 which are current at present are vastly differ- 
 ent from those which have prevailed in other 
 ages. We may see but slight differences if we 
 compare it with the preceding age, though 
 even here marked differences can be discerned. 
 But if we look over longer spaces of time, the 
 distinctions are more clearly defined. 
 
 Note the changes in European thought and 
 life since these words were first written. The 
 doctrine of universal individual freedom, body, 
 soul, or spirit, was utterly unknown we might 
 say utterly inconceivable in that age, and for 
 centuries, almost millenniums, later. It may 
 have existed in the savage state, though 
 then only to those who had might out of 
 which to make their own right ; universal equal 
 right was a thing unknown. The individual 
 was merged in the state, and the state in the 
 sovereign, and the sovereign was God. The
 
 SO CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 lower orders, the masses and multitudes, were 
 only the broad base for this human pyramid. 
 The apex was man and also God. 
 
 Where was there room for personal con- 
 scious liberty in such a system ? It could not 
 have been allowed for an instant any more than 
 the solid pyramid of Ghizeh, the greatest mar- 
 vel on the earth, could allow the tiniest stone 
 in its mighty mass to be endowed with inalien- 
 able rights as to its own volitions. The inde- 
 structible pile would instantly crumble and dis- 
 appear. So man was lost in state, and serf or 
 citizen was a volitionless unit of a compact if 
 not crystallized mass. 
 
 Then closed around this pyramidal human- 
 ity the thick darkness of barbarism. The for- 
 mer fashion of personal liberty to at least a. 
 favored few, and experienced by the New Tes- 
 tament believer, gave way to universal belief 
 that the only way to be man, to please God, 
 or win immortality, was to yield minds and 
 souls into the power of priests, wills and bodies 
 into that of kings. How deep, how dreadful, 
 that darkness ! It makes one shudder as he 
 looks back upon it to this day. 
 
 But this fashion has passed away. The
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 81 
 
 faculties which are the property of each soul, 
 which cannot be severed from it by any 
 consent even of itself, or by any tyranny of 
 others, which may sleep but cannot be para- 
 lyzed, which leap up in every child and must 
 be suppressed in every generation, asserted 
 themselves at last, violently, fiercely, murder- 
 ously. They were suppressed with greater 
 violence and murder; but oppression cannot 
 always reign. These faculties asserted their 
 right to be and to become. In the Reforma- 
 tion, both before and after Luther, this asser- 
 tion took form and power. These faculties 
 were at first puny with lack of exercise, but 
 strong with inward vitality. The heart but 
 dimly perceived the rights God had given it, 
 and more dimly the way in which it should 
 walk to make those rights victorious. 
 
 The doctrine of individual freedom, in its 
 resurrection, saw around it hostile opinions 
 throned in wealth, power, dignity, antiquity, 
 culture, and religion. How could it dare to 
 thrust its own impulses against such leagued 
 and lofty foes? How could it fail of falling 
 into doubt sometimes concerning the rightful- 
 ness of its own suggestions? How could it
 
 82 CHRISTUS CONSOLA 7 OR. 
 
 fail of trembling in engaging, unaided by any 
 visible powers, in so fearful a contest ? 
 
 It took ages for this sentiment to gain any 
 foothold in society, and still longer periods for 
 it to become sovereign. Yet the fashion has 
 prevailed. The former sentiment has passed 
 away, and with it legions of the false views 
 concerning government and religion which 
 supported it and were supported by it. The 
 truth so long crushed to earth gradually arose 
 in every heart, until the superincumbent load 
 of tyranny in Church and State was tossed 
 from it, and it stood forth in its own fair and 
 winning proportions. 
 
 Yet even this fashion must, in a degree, pass 
 away. The tendency to rush from one ex- 
 treme to the other, from slavish reverence to 
 lawless infidelity, renders a counterchange 
 partly necessary. The fashion now prevailing 
 of disuniting all thoughts of God from life and 
 law, of casting religion entirely out of the 
 pale of civil action, of expelling Christ not only 
 formally, but actually, from the Constitution, or 
 rejecting the word of God as either inspired 
 or authoritative, or even to be casually read 
 5n a state school all this supersecularization,
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 88 
 
 this elevation of man above his Creator, and 
 abolishing of God from humanity, must itself 
 pass away. It is a dream as vicious as its 
 counterpart. In the one a single Caesar is 
 God, in the other all men as one are God. No 
 Caesar, whether one or many, can be God. 
 We must bow to God, not man ; to Christ, 
 not Caesar. We must acknowledge that to him, 
 and in him, and for him, and by him are all 
 of us and ours, now and eternally. Then and 
 thus will we conform to the fashion that 
 abideth forever. 
 
 The experience of every one proves this 
 mutability. The feelings that affected us in 
 childhood, the objects that fascinated, the 
 hopes we cherished, the pursuits we followed, 
 have all disappeared or become so changed as 
 to lose all their power. The fashion of child- 
 hood passeth away. No longer does mere 
 bodily exercise delight us, nor now do we 
 exult in winning some childish game. We do 
 not cry for vexation when deprived of some 
 desired object. We have put away childish 
 things. 
 
 The more lofty ambition that seizes on the 
 youthful heart, the love of excitement and
 
 84 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 novelty which hurries him to the scenes of dan- 
 ger and pursuits that feed these passions, that 
 make him a soldier, a sailor, a traveler ; the 
 enthusiasm with which he plunges into busi- 
 ness or politics all these traits, manly and 
 noble though they be, must pass away. They 
 are of a fleeting fashion. The intoxication 
 with which the world of pleasure bewilders 
 him will desert him. He passes into man- 
 hood with his fiery nature settling down into 
 granitic habits, good or evil, his lava flow 
 cooling into shape and strength. Here a new 
 fashion controls him. He casts aside the 
 vanity which delighted in tricky display, the 
 hungering and thirsting after novel scenes and 
 circumstances, the passions that crave strong 
 and poisoned fiction to feed their flame, and, 
 unless resisted, the stronger and more poison- 
 ous fact to increase the burnings and consume 
 both body and soul. These all disappear, and 
 soberer views and hopes address us soberer 
 but not weaker. Now comes the fashion of 
 regularity; now duty is easy and even agree- 
 able ; now the familiar is the more fascinating ; 
 now wife and child, husband and home, grow 
 intensely deep and tender. We prefer the
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 85 
 
 quiet joys of domestic life to the rude pleasures 
 of the outer world. Books are our companions, 
 systematic thought delightful. Each day, as its 
 forerunner, a slight advance in the same path 
 is all that is sought. Life is less brilliant, but 
 more true. We have plucked the heart of the 
 mystery, we think, that so dazzled and drew us 
 in our childhood and youth. Have we? Shall 
 not this fashion pass away ? If of this world 
 it will it must. 
 
 Nay, alas ! even as we look and love and 
 tread, as we hope, an eternal round of pleasur- 
 able peace, a change passeth over it and it is 
 gone. Those parents so clung to now, because 
 so much more appreciated ; those children lying 
 in the lap of motherhood, graceful or strong 
 with youthful charms ; that companion lovely 
 beyond compare, glorious in his strength 
 alas ! alas ! " they pass downward to the place 
 of common sleep." This fashion of home and 
 heart life vanisheth away. 
 
 Even this center of our life, this summit, as 
 we fancy, of our being, changes. Ripening 
 age has a fashion of its own. The sturdy race 
 for wealth or honors yields to placid accept- 
 ance of fate. The grasshopper becomes a
 
 86 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 burden ; desire fails ; an intense love of rest 
 takes the place of an intense love of excite- 
 ment ; a constant contemplation of the great 
 change steadily approaching replaces a com- 
 plete indifference to it ; even a loathing of 
 novelty governs where a loathing of rest long 
 ruled. The nature is reversed. A complete 
 transformation is effected. We hate naturally 
 the things we once loved, and love what we 
 once hated. We turn our vision backward, 
 which once only looked forward. We dwell in 
 memory, not hope. The natural man, the 
 fashion of this world, sees no hope beyond 
 this life. He is shut up to the body and to 
 time, and as the body now ceases to impel 
 him to new ventures he subsides into indiffer- 
 ence, a calm not of activity, as in manhood's 
 prime, but of repose, until at last his earthly 
 house crumbles and he sinks into the grave. 
 
 How strikingly does it appear in respect to 
 ourselves no less than mankind that the fashion 
 of this world passeth away ! 
 
 Why do these changes attend all earthly 
 things ? Why is it that the life of nature and 
 the life of man are possessed with the same 
 mortal tendency ? Why must the flush of
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 87 
 
 health fade from the cheek, the flash of 
 thought and feeling from the eye, the form 
 graceful or noble bend and totter ? Why must 
 the deep affections of the heart be stopped in 
 their impetuous flow by the barriers of death? 
 Why must the bodies which we so passion- 
 ately love become so abhorrent that we hasten 
 to bury them out of our sight ? Why must 
 the institutions our fathers revered, and under 
 which they passed prosperous days, crumble 
 to naught and become a scoff to the irrever- 
 ent, a worshiped relic to the antiquary ? Why 
 must the fashion of this world pass away ? 
 These questions are constantly proposed to 
 the thoughtful mind. They merit solemn 
 consideration. 
 
 One reason why such doom overhangs all 
 earthly things is their imperfection. In our 
 bodies are sowed the seeds of death. With 
 the first breath we inhale corruption, we exhale 
 death. The first rush of blood through infan- 
 tile arteries, the first throbbings of the great 
 fountains of life, are not perfect. The doctor 
 will describe scientifically these original defects. 
 Nay, disease has gotten into the whole system 
 from both its parents, from all its parents, for
 
 88 CHRISTUS CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 a hundred generations, from its first parents. 
 The creature which God pronounced very good, 
 as perfect as his wisdom could make him, by 
 his own act marred the structure he dwelt in, 
 thrust obstacles among the exquisite mechan- 
 ism which is constantly diminishing the vigor, 
 wearing away the wheels, and will bring the 
 marvelous machine to a standstill to destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 Sometimes the machine works on for years 
 without getting out of repair, and at last stops 
 only by a gradual wearing away of its parts. 
 Sometimes it is broken almost as soon as it 
 begins to act, some part refusing to act and 
 causing thus a stoppage of the whole. In 
 others, and in most, it operates more or less 
 easily for a few years, often getting out of re- 
 pair, almost ceasing to move, again moving 
 slowly and with great difficulty, a tearing 
 cough shaking it, a piercing pneumonia rend- 
 ing it, an agonizing headache maddening it, a 
 paralysis, an apoplexy, a fever, a thousand and 
 ten thousand disasters happening to it, till the 
 very inhabitant thereof, who sympathizes and 
 suffers with its every weakness, sighs for relief 
 from the painful and prolonged troubles. If
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 89 
 
 we had never known sin, that original perfec- 
 tion would only have grown more perfect, its 
 loveliness not diminishing, its strength ever 
 increasing. Sin brought corruption, weakened 
 infancy, maddened youth, withered age. Sin 
 causes growth in weakness, decay unto weak- 
 ness. It is sin and sin only that bringeth forth 
 death. 
 
 But if by the fall this fatal tendency was 
 implanted in our bodies, much more deeply and 
 fatally was it brought into our souls. Not 
 only the exquisite structure of the body was 
 bruised and murdered by the fall, the far more 
 exquisite machine of the soul was ruined. We 
 are apt to dwell more frequently on the change- 
 ableness of the outer world of earth and man ; 
 but if our heart had not been blinded in its 
 perception of spiritual things, we should have 
 a clearer and sadder proof of our mutability 
 by witnessing the corruption that has seized 
 upon the soul. As our puny bodies drew in 
 death with their first vital mother, so our souls 
 in their first impulse felt the same doom. De- 
 praved desires sprang into being long before 
 consciousness gave warning of their presence, 
 and so completely did they blend themselves
 
 90 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 with the soul's actions that they seemed to it- 
 self natural and even necessary. 
 
 We are all aware that the first risings of 
 anger or pride or selfishness of which we are 
 conscious do not strike us as novel, or make us 
 flee from their horrible presence ; we seem fa- 
 miliar with them. They are a part of ourselves. 
 We cherish and fondle and nourish them, and 
 seek above all things their gratification. Not 
 till the teachings of parents or of the Spirit of 
 God arouse us will we resist them, and even 
 in resistance we confess their power. How- 
 ever much goodness shines forth in the uncon- 
 scious life of childhood, through the indwell- 
 ings of the divine Spirit, the baser nature is also 
 there, and " the trail of the serpent is over it 
 all." 
 
 If we could see the beauty of a perfect soul 
 we should be amazed at the deformity of our 
 own condition. If we could have this spiritual 
 mechanism in all its marvelous symmetry and 
 harmony unveiled, see every faculty delight- 
 edly operating in its own sphere, and contrib- 
 uting its portion of vigor and pleasure to every 
 other part, if self-reliance joined with humility, 
 benevolence with justice, hospitality with re-
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 91 
 
 tirement, temperance with generosity, venera- 
 tion with independence, divine awe with di- 
 vine love, mental activity with devotion, every 
 faculty full and perfect, yet no clashing, no de- 
 cay, would we not thrill with rapture at the 
 sight ? Would the mere personal charms, the 
 harmonious proportions of the body, be notice- 
 able, except as lovely media for the lovely 
 soul ? Compare this beautiful vision which God 
 designed and created and placed on this earth 
 for a season with that which does not meet 
 the eye self-reliance changed to self-conceit ; 
 humility to haughtiness or to servility that 
 creeps at the feet of insolent pride ; temper- 
 ance changed to a bloated appetite which guz- 
 zles without taste ; constraint to lawlessness 
 that laughs at every order of law ; vanity that 
 absorbs the whole attention of the soul and 
 transforms it into a frivolous thing blown about 
 by every breeze of fashion ; the deep rever- 
 ence for God becoming a ribald infidelity or 
 an ice-bound fatality ; the powers of the mind 
 cultivated independent of the heart, making a 
 giant in thought and an idiot in faith, tempt- 
 ing the self-inflated student with the very de- 
 lusion that took captive our first parents, so
 
 92 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 that he thinks he is what they hoped to be, 
 gods ; or, on the other hand, cultivates the re- 
 ligious faculties to the neglect of the rational, 
 making a creature possessing zeal without 
 knowledge, who scoffs at conscience and claims 
 for its impious ravings the force of revelation. 
 Such, also, is the present state of the human 
 soul ; and because it is such, every expres- 
 sion of itself in the laws or customs of man- 
 kind is imperfect and their fashion must pass 
 away. 
 
 Just in proportion to the amount of truth 
 in every outcome of the soul is its durability. 
 If it is thoroughly false and superficial, it is still- 
 born ; if largely so, it dies in infancy. Perhaps 
 no more striking illustration of this law can be 
 given than in the changing fashion of dress. 
 That mere covering which is not itself either 
 body or soul, by its control over both body 
 and soul has come to be called by this very 
 name. The most fluctuating of all the prop- 
 erties of man, its name (as its nature) is 
 fashion. It has no sound basis ; it withers 
 ere it blossoms ; the angelic apparel must 
 partake of the angelic nature and abide like the 
 transfigured robe in complete symmetry with
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 93 
 
 the transfigured body and soul. But the vic- 
 tims of this human passion are ever on the 
 whirl. They die daily with the gratified fancy. 
 So senselessly can the immortal soul degrade 
 itself, into such narrow compass can it be con- 
 tracted, the divine man a model for a tailor, 
 the perfect woman only a perfect fashion 
 plate. 
 
 But there are other modes of prostituting 
 our natures hardly less superficial and far more 
 debasing. The appetite, which makes a boor 
 a glutton, a man of breeding an epicure, is 
 perpetually changing and never satisfying. 
 The Roman epicures who took medicine to 
 throw up the costly dinners they had just 
 eaten, that they might be permitted to taste 
 new viands, were as gross in their habits as 
 they were refined in their dishes. The passion 
 for pleasure at any cost and but for a moment 
 is a changing emotion, which grows by what 
 it feeds upon and craves new food with every 
 gratification. 
 
 These changeful fashions spring from shallow 
 sources, call into exercise no high faculties, 
 no deep principles, and therefore, like the seed 
 cast on stony places, wither quickly away.
 
 94 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 Every object below God will be found too 
 low in its nature to satisfy forever the human 
 soul. Nay, if that object be sinful, you will 
 loathe it as strongly as you have once craved 
 it, loathe not to rid yourself of its presence, 
 but clinging the closer to it the more you de- 
 test it. Thus clings the drunkard to the cups 
 he hates, thus the drug-eater to the opium he 
 has made his master, thus the lustful to the 
 desires that have consumed him. The fashion 
 fleeth but the passion abideth, ever seeking 
 change, never finding rest, ever driven on the 
 same stream of fire, into the lake of fire, hating 
 the sin that so easily besets, yet captured by it 
 at its will. 
 
 But the final reason why the fashion of this 
 world passeth away is that God may in this 
 way the more clearly exhibit the durable na- 
 ture of eternal things. 
 
 If we turn our thoughts from the fading ob- 
 jects of sense and feeling that encompass our 
 earthly estate to the world beyond and above 
 the grave, the contrast between these two 
 realms is overwhelming. Here everything is 
 in constant alternation. " The mountain crum- 
 bling cometh to naught, and the rock is re-
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 95 
 
 moved out of Its place ; " the sturdy forests fall 
 before fire, ax, or age, and lay their lifeless 
 forms among the leaves, their offspring, which 
 they have for so many years buried at their 
 feet ; the sea licks up the shore and the shore 
 invades the sea. The ocean, most restless of 
 visible things, typifies the conditions under 
 which earth and earthly things exist. 
 
 The great worlds that float in space slowly 
 but surely approach their last day. The more 
 science knows the more death it knows. Forces 
 dissolve, resolve, and then die the same. 
 " Eternal alternation" is the law of the phys- 
 ical universe, but the world beyond is per- 
 manent. Death hath no more dominion. His 
 control stops with the shores of time. In the 
 eternal things there dwells no taint of impurity, 
 there lurks no imperfection. They have the 
 truth of God as a basis and are as immutable 
 as they are perfect. The delights that engage 
 their affections, the occupations that engross 
 their attention, satisfy without satiating, foster 
 while they feed. There we labor not for, nor 
 feast upon, the meat that perisheth, but that 
 which endureth unto everlasting life. 
 
 Thus are presented the strongest induce-
 
 96 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 merits to secure enduring pleasures. If your 
 heart's deepest tides set toward some soul here, 
 would it not be desirable that such embodied 
 love might be permanent ? If the person who 
 has thus awakened and enlarged your whole 
 being could abide unchanged in the beloved 
 features, fading not through sickness or age, 
 would not earthly love, now so deep, so tender, 
 so rapturous, put on a state of infinite exalta- 
 tion ? Such a love and Lover finds the heart in 
 Christ such a home in his heaven. No afflic- 
 tion shadows the brightness of that home. No 
 toil or sickness or years mar the beauty, dim 
 the eye, wither the strength of that Beloved. 
 And all the surroundings of the Prince and 
 his paradise are alike perfect and perpetual. 
 He abides forever ; so do his. The society, 
 the scenery, the customs, the communions, the 
 government, the laws they change not ; they 
 need no change ; they are not capable of im- 
 provement. Why throw them aside ? Who 
 wishes to cast aside his wedding bliss? Who 
 desires it not to abide forever? Who wishes 
 gray hairs, wrinkled cheeks, panting chests, 
 trembling limbs, palpitating hearts, the mo- 
 nitions of decay? Who does not wish with
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 97 
 
 Ariel to cry, " I can fly or I can run" without 
 exhaustion or decay? That wish fulfilled is 
 heaven. The society is perpetual, the studies, 
 the scenes. Not varying to decay, but only 
 to improve, for Christ is unchanging, and 
 his residence and companions are like unto 
 him. His principles, which are his nature, 
 abide. They are perfect, they endure forever ; 
 they project themselves upon the surround- 
 ing realm, and it, too, becomes like its Lord, 
 eternal. 
 
 Even here we can possess a fashion that en- 
 dureth. Our spiritual nature may take on the 
 nature of God. Charity or love divine never 
 faileth. If the heart is filled with this love, if 
 it thrills with joy at the future glory and abides 
 in peace amid present temptations, you may 
 rest assured that you have received the grace 
 that endureth forever. The Lord Christ hath 
 told us that if we eat his flesh and drink his 
 blood we shall never die. If our hearts are 
 possessed by his Spirit the corrupting and cor- 
 ruptible passions which they had followed will 
 vanish away and the grace will enter which 
 endureth forever. Amid the universal decay 
 
 and dissolution going on about us and within 
 
 7
 
 98 CHRISTUS CONSOLA TOR. 
 
 us there stands forth this undying principle, 
 this life of God in the soul of man. As the 
 Hebrew youth in the fiery furnace, unscathed 
 amid the fierce destruction going on around 
 them, so stands this experience divine, the 
 temple of truth and holiness, coming down 
 from God out of heaven amid the wreck of 
 matter and spirit, ceaselessly prevailing. To 
 that temple you can alone fly for shelter. In 
 it you can alone abide in unchanging peace. 
 From it you can gaze with calmness upon the 
 desolation reigning around you. You can see 
 empires totter and fall, dynasties disappear, 
 laws die, institutions, political or social or re- 
 ligious, grow decrepit and enter their grave, or 
 shattered in an instant by infuriated mobs, 
 friend and lover put far from you and your ac- 
 quaintance disappear in the darkness ; nay, you 
 yourself draw near and nearer the dominions of 
 death. Yet no abiding sorrow need weigh you 
 down, for you can feel assured that though the 
 heavens pass away, silently or with a great 
 noise, though the earth be removed out of its 
 place, though death sweep the universal circle 
 of your souls with its dread besom, still " from 
 everlasting to everlasting Thou art God," and
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 99 
 
 from death to life comes forth buried loves and 
 lovers. We can turn from the changing 
 fashions of earth to the everlasting fashions of 
 heaven. We can see reproduced there in 
 fairer colors every worthy object which we 
 loved here. We can see those qualities which 
 were the strongest attractions in our friends out- 
 living the power which had slain the body and 
 clothed in undecaying forms of unspeakable 
 loveliness and life. 
 
 We are all rapidly approaching that world. 
 The seeds of death planted in each of us 
 before our birth grow with our growth and 
 strengthen with our strength. They may find 
 so rich a soil that they in a few years overtop 
 the tree of life and bring us to the garner of 
 the grave. If the vital forces resist these anti- 
 vital forces strenuously, the conflict may be a 
 losing one for a score or two of years, and then 
 comes the turn of battle ; the forces of death 
 steadily win their way, they lay low leader and 
 regiment of natural vitality ; after leader and 
 regiment the eye fails, the limbs cease to fly 
 at the order of the will, the heart throbs con- 
 vulsively and weakly, the appetite narrows it- 
 self to regular and infrequent channels, the
 
 100 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 nerves tremble at one's trifling pressure. The 
 death army abandons no field it has once won. 
 It may allow partial repossession, but under its 
 sovereignty, until, wearied with its delay, it 
 takes complete possession your countenance 
 is changed and you pass away. 
 
 It is related of Xerxes that, while preparing 
 to cross from Asia to Greece, he ordered a re- 
 view to be made on the shores of Abydos. A 
 magnificent throne was erected upon a lofty 
 peak. Seated on this pinnacle of gold he 
 gazed upon the unnumbered millions below 
 him on ship and shore. No sight could have 
 been more dazzling or more august. The hill- 
 sides were white with tents, the sea with ships. 
 Gay banners floating in the sun, glittering 
 with gold and silver, weakened the eye by 
 their brightness and beauty. Multitudes upon 
 multitudes of men filled up the vast shores, 
 while on the dark sea lay the pompous galleys, 
 decked with every ornament unbounded wealth 
 and intense love of display could suggest or 
 procure. In the midst of such pride and cir- 
 cumstance of glorious war, when nature seemed 
 to have been completely ravaged to contrib- 
 ute to his glory, when multitudinous nobles
 
 THE WORLD VANISHING. 101 
 
 rejoiced to kiss the hem of his garment and 
 worshiped him as god, Xerxes wept. Amazed 
 at such an act, expressive of feelings so con- 
 trary to those in which they were indulging, 
 they reverently inquired the cause of the tears. 
 "Alas!" said he, "of all this vast multitude 
 not one will be left upon the earth a hundred 
 years hence." That was said more than two 
 thousand years ago. How many generations 
 have followed that over which he wept and 
 uttered this sad truth ! We occupy their places 
 for a few days and then we lie beside them. 
 
 In the midst of such constant decay and 
 death have your feet fixed on the Rock that 
 crumbles not the Rock of ages past and to 
 come on the Rock Christ Jesus. Then can 
 you rejoice that, though death may seize upon 
 your body as his rightful prey, after that he 
 hath no more that he can do. The soul is 
 safe. It shall pass into the unchanging yet 
 ever-changing society of heaven. There the 
 laws are perfect, friendship and love enduring, 
 the faces of dear ones never grow pale and 
 cold and resolve to dreadful dust, the funeral 
 bell and train cast no gloom over happy homes. 
 The cemetery, awful with all its greenness, bor-
 
 102 CHRIST US CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 ders not the river of the water of life. There 
 is no Greenwood or Mount Auburn necessary 
 for the New Jerusalem. The present old, sin- 
 ful one is surrounded with graves how em- 
 blematic of man ! the new with life. The 
 death of Christ has accomplished this. The 
 resurrection secured it. Let us on this glad 
 day put our whole trust in that mighty Re- 
 deemer.
 
 ,
 
 " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the 
 world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father 
 is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the 
 flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of 
 the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth 
 away, and the lust thereof : but he that doeth the will of God 
 abideth forever." I John ii, 15-17. 
 
 " We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works 
 Die too : the deep foundations that we lay, 
 Time plows them up, and not a trace remains. 
 We build with what we deem eternal rock ; 
 A distant age asks where the fabric stood ; 
 And in the dust, sifted and searched in vain, 
 The undiscoverable secret sleeps." 
 
 " Ere mountains reared their forms sublime, 
 Or heaven and earth in order stood, 
 
 Before the birth of ancient time, 
 From everlasting thou art God. 
 
 " To us, O Lord, the wisdom give 
 Each passing moment so to spend, 
 
 That we at length with thee may live 
 Where life and bliss shall never end."
 
 IV. 
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 
 
 THE disciple, in the days of John, was 
 peculiarly situated. He not only had to 
 deny himself every home delight, leaving par- 
 ents and friends for the sake of the Gospel, 
 but he was compelled to abandon the whole 
 life of society, as it all set in an idolatrous di- 
 rection. The world, to his eyes, was sin and 
 only sin, and that continually. Upon the tow- 
 ering hills of his land rose the beautiful temples 
 of idolatry. Lining the streets of every city 
 were the tripods crowned with images that all 
 were compelled to worship. In the stores 
 and market places everywhere were idols and 
 idol offerings for sale. Over the fireplace of 
 the house, as on your mantels, or in niches 
 about the dwelling, sat the home deities. 
 Every festival was in honor of some god. In 
 front of the audience sat the priests of the 
 gods. Around the theater of Bacchus in 
 Athens to-day, where were enacted the great 
 dramas of Sophocles and ^Eschylus, the marble
 
 106 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 chairs in the front row have inscribed upon 
 them the names of the priests of the various 
 divinities, Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo, and oth- 
 ers through the list. The name of the theater 
 itself, of its plays, of its chief dignitaries, of 
 the city itself, were all commemorative of some 
 deity, so called, so believed, so worshiped. 
 The centers of political action were controlled 
 by the same religiousness. The temples of Ju- 
 piter and Venus confront the forum at Pom- 
 peii, and the spot where Cicero spoke was sur- 
 rounded with the temples and statues of the 
 gods of Rome. If compelled to enter the 
 army, as all were, he was required to acknowl- 
 edge his national master as god. He must 
 recognize the emperor not only as ruling by 
 right divine, but as divine himself. He must 
 choose between patriotism and idolatry. He 
 must be guilty of treason to man or to God. 
 Thus his life was seemingly inextricably in- 
 volved in the surrounding superstition. He 
 was not merely entangled in irreligion, he was 
 involved in false religion. Its currents swept 
 everywhere. Its waves covered the face of so- 
 ciety. Fifteen fathoms higher than the high- 
 est mountains, social, civil, or literary, rolled
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 107 
 
 the great deluge. There was no possibility of 
 escape. 
 
 What shall he do? How can he live amid 
 such all-penetrating, all-controlling influences ? 
 He is born anew, yet born into a world with 
 which he can have no sympathy, in which he 
 cannot breathe one spiritual breath, whose 
 touch is dangerous, whose communion is 
 deadly. How shall he keep himself unspot- 
 ted ? If he pass the tripods in the street, he 
 must make obeisance. If he purchase wares 
 under the patronage of Mercury, is he not rec- 
 ognizing him as a god ? If he buy the flesh 
 offered to idols for it is cheaper and better 
 than the rest, and he is poor will he not 
 thereby become an idolater? If he visit his 
 heathen friend's kinsfolk and partake of their 
 hospitalities, is he not indorsing the superstition 
 that presides at their feast? Thus is he in 
 jeopardy every hour. Which way shall he turn ? 
 On every side is peril ; snares and pitfalls 
 abound. 
 
 Nay, more. His steps are watched by malig- 
 nant eyes. He is disloyal if he will not bow, 
 impious if he neglect the temples and shrines, 
 a traitor to the state not less than to Olympus.
 
 ; 08 CHRIS TUS CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 " Is not Socrates' cell yet with us, where we 
 made him drink the fatal hemlock, simply be- 
 cause he abstained from the worship of some of 
 the gods ? And shall you escape who say they are 
 all no gods ? If our greatest was done to death 
 by official power for lack of faith, how much 
 more you." 
 
 Thus he is shut in bylaw, custom, prejudice, 
 power. The lions roar for him in the arena, 
 the fagots snap for him around the stake. On 
 every side is death. In the midst of all these 
 allurements and dangers what shall he do ? 
 How shall he escape both the flatteries and the 
 frowns, the snares and the shafts, of the devil ? 
 How ? By simply allowing the new life to grow 
 to its full stature, by conferring not with flesh 
 and blood, but by putting on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, by letting the love of God be perfected 
 in him ; this will guide him with discretion ; 
 this will make him courageous where courage 
 is demanded, prudent where prudence ; this 
 will lead him through the fascinations that glit- 
 ter around him ; this will strengthen him to 
 meet cheerfully the dangers that await him ; 
 this will enable him to love not this present 
 world, but to feel the raptures of the higher, the
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 109 
 
 highest love of and for the Father ; this will 
 make him walk serenely, his eyes uplifted 
 to the heavenly hills, his soul marching on 
 those eternal summits. 
 
 With us- circumstances are altered. It is not 
 false religion that allures us so much as irre- 
 ligion. Not that false religions have ceased. 
 Far from it. Not that they are altogether un- 
 popular and unattractive. It is sad to confess 
 that though Christ has been preached for six 
 thousand years, and visibly, historically, and 
 authoritatively preached for the last sixty 
 generations, there are even in Christian coun- 
 tries those who set up another religion than 
 his, who still deny, betray, and crucify him. 
 But these are not all-powerful and everywhere 
 powerful as were those. They are attempts 
 to oppose an otherwise universal faith, not an 
 otherwise universal idolatry attempting to sub- 
 vert and absorb a little knot of Christians. 
 "Great Pan is dead!" The great peril of to- 
 day is not in false religion, but in irreligion. 
 This yet lives if Pan the mighty is gone. The 
 idols are tumbled from their shrines, but idola- 
 try still abounds. The theaters do not assign 
 by brass tablets and marble cuttings their
 
 110 CHRIS T US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 chief chairs to the clergy, but they still flaunt 
 their attractions. Sin does not assert its god- 
 head, but it does its power. The devil, if he 
 has dropped the robe of deity, still wears that of 
 pleasure. The saved soul is still compelled to 
 walk am id temptations gay, bewildering, fatal. 
 How shall we dwell among them ? That is 
 the question for to-day. How shall we live 
 among these sinful allurements, not only unse- 
 duced but unmoved, unconscious that they exist 
 about us? Are you really wishing to know? 
 Would you not regret if that carnal passion in 
 its sinful expression were eradicated from your 
 heart? Ask yourself before God. Has not 
 that passion got such hold upon you that you 
 prefer to have God yield to it rather than it to 
 God ; that you desire to have religion modi- 
 fied so as to admit of that pleasure, rather 
 than the desire for the pleasure abolished 
 from the heart ? Be honest with your Sav- 
 iour. Search diligently. The central thought 
 around which the text revolves is this : The 
 love of God should be the law of our being. 
 We should breathe every breath of our soul in 
 and by this atmosphere. Every affection must 
 revolve around this center, must draw life and
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. Ill 
 
 motion from him alone. The thing from which 
 the Holy Ghost seeks to dissuade us is a sep- 
 arate love, one that interferes with or ranks 
 itself above that supreme devotion. Come, 
 then, a little closer about this delightful duty. 
 You will find it demands nothing that is not 
 agreeable to our highest nature, nothing that 
 we shall not instinctively, irrepressibly crave 
 if we allow that nature its legitimate direction 
 and fullest indulgence. 
 
 The love of and for God includes all virtuous 
 lower loves. He is the Author of every good 
 and perfect gift. If we love the Author, we 
 shall and must the gifts. If we love the gifts 
 rightly, we shall the more love the Author. 
 The joys of sense all flow from him. Who 
 made your palate susceptible of exquisite de- 
 light when the viands, solidified odors, touch 
 it ? Who lined the organs of smell with 
 nerves so delicate as to detect the subtlest 
 fragrance floating in the air and cause them 
 to send the thrills of their delights throughout 
 the soul ? If viands are solidified odors, odors 
 are aerial viands, and feed the finer tissues of 
 our being with their finer food. Who gave 
 these insensate compounds of the kitchen and
 
 112 CHRIS TUS CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 the laboratory such ineffable grace ? Who filled 
 the world with harmonies, hiding them in the 
 skins and entrails and hairs of beasts, in brass 
 and wood and iron, and in our own throats? 
 Who made the ear, a far from beautiful organ 
 externally, capable of detecting melodies in the 
 movements of the throat, the rubbing of string 
 upon string, the blowing of wind through hol- 
 low pipes and reeds ? Who gave the eye its 
 apprehension of the infinite fascinations of 
 nature and of art, and who gave nature and 
 art those fascinations in which the eye revels? 
 The joys of sense, are they not from God ? 
 And is he not greater than his gifts ? Will he 
 not be jealous, and justly so, if we put them in 
 our regard above him ? If you love the thea- 
 ter, which is alluring only because it has cer- 
 tain attractions which it has stolen from God 
 and appropriated to his enemy, if you love it 
 with eyes and ears whose virtues he has be- 
 stowed, will he not say, " You have robbed me 
 of mine own. You have taken my gifts and 
 appropriated them to self and sin ? " So also 
 of the superior blessings of life and love. Life 
 is the gift of God. Why are you here, a sen- 
 tient, a thinking, a volitional being ? Why did
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 113 
 
 you ever live ? How happens it that out of 
 the dust you were taken and into that body 
 of yours that soul of yours was breathed ? 
 Whence did you get your life ? Did you 
 ever think on this thought ? We often dwell 
 upon the thought that we may soon be dead, 
 but rarely on the equally, nay, more mysterious 
 one, that we ever lived. Death, dust, noth- 
 ingness, is our natural estate, not life, thought, 
 love. Wonderful, awful gift of God ! You 
 are not I. Your living does not necessitate 
 my living. Your parents' living did not neces- 
 sitate yours. Every one of us is, in the highest 
 sense, as was Melchizedek in a priestly sense, 
 without father or mother. The reply of the 
 Catechism and of every parent to the question 
 of the child as to who made him is a scientific 
 truth. God, is their rightful answer. Not 
 forces of nature, not combinations of forces, 
 not man, but God, is the direct, the sole Au- 
 thor of every being. Each is an Adam, an 
 original creation. That birth out of nothing 
 was marvelous. So is ours alike marvelous. 
 To live, to be, to know, to love, 'tis mystery 
 all, and we adore. What it is no eye hath 
 yet seen or can see. No chemist can track this
 
 114 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 secret to its hiding-place, no metaphysician find 
 this center alike of all physics and metaphysics 
 life. And yet many accept this sublime gift 
 of God and never acknowledge him as the 
 giver. You exercise all your faculties daily, 
 full of life, and never turn grateful hearts to 
 Him through whom, and through whom alone, 
 you live and move and have your being. Nay, 
 worse, we seize this marvelous gift of God and 
 appropriate it to the very things he most ab- 
 hors. We take our lives and devote them to 
 our own selfish ends. We rush by the aid 
 alone of our God-given energies into forbidden 
 deeds and places and pleasures. We eat with 
 organs made by him and kept alive by him the 
 very fruit he forbids us to taste. God is de- 
 spised, while the strength he imparts is stolen 
 from him and perverted to all ungodliness. 
 Ought he not to feel the insult and the crime ? 
 But chiefly we pervert his greatest gift love. 
 The taste, the smell, the hearing, the seeing, 
 the touch, that sense which surpasses all the 
 rest in its diffusion and delicacy, which is the 
 crown and glory of all other bodily gifts these 
 are much. Life is an astonishing gift. Yet all 
 these perish and die before love. The first
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ASIDES. 115 
 
 are mere titillations of the soul ; that is, the 
 mere existence of the soul. Love is the soul's 
 self. It is the soul living, and living its in- 
 tensest life. More than thought, more than 
 resolve, more than all things, is love. Who 
 gave you this " effluence of bright essence in- 
 create ? " Who made you thrill with ecstasy 
 at its lowest agitations ? Who made you re- 
 joice when a pleasant odor, taste, sight, or 
 sound struck the nerve of sensation ? Who 
 made your eyes kindle with passion when they 
 spoke love to eyes that spake again ? Who 
 stirred your soul, O mother, O father, with 
 those unutterable agitations of bliss when that 
 newborn babe was placed in your arms ? 
 Who kindled those unquenchable fires in the 
 depths of your being fires which warm and 
 brighten the whole chamber of your inner- 
 most life and make that which was before, 
 perhaps, a dungeon dripping with tears sud- 
 denly a palace brilliant with unspeakable 
 glory? Who filled your heart, O son, with 
 that yearning for your mother's arms and 
 smile and kiss, and made you feel in the shel- 
 ter of home the raptures of ineffable peace ? 
 Who makes your glad heart dance for joy, O
 
 116 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 daughter, when you feel the strong paternal 
 arms once more about you, and that protect- 
 ing benediction falling smilingly upon you ? 
 Who gave us love in all its breadth and length 
 and height and depth love for nature and 
 for man, for friend and country, for parent and 
 companion and child, for pleasure and knowl- 
 edge, " love, the divinest of the train and 
 sovereign of the rest?" Who? God, God 
 only. Had he not imparted this trait to your 
 nature, you would have been as emotionless as 
 a stone. Like the dust out of which you were 
 taken, your heart would remain but dust. He 
 gave it this divine electricity. 
 
 But another question rises " like an exhala- 
 tion " to cover with its dark folds all this glad- 
 ness and glory. How do we use this last, best 
 gift of God, this very God and his highest ex- 
 pression ? For " God is love." My God, what 
 a reply is forced from the reluctant soul at 
 that question ! How ? This love that is given 
 us that we may give it all back to him, we in- 
 stantly seize, this his own nature, and wrest to 
 ourselves and our sin. We change it to lust. 
 The dydnrj becomes emdvfila ; love, sweet, sim- 
 ple like the lily of July, sheltered from fervent
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. Ill 
 
 rays, resting on the cool bosom of the lake, 
 perfect in color and fragrance lo ! it is changed 
 to a hot and heating thing, an over-passion, a 
 super-raging ; for the root of the word is raging, 
 rushing ; its second derivative is the fleshly 
 soul, the animal being hot and urgent and un- 
 reasoning ; its third is both of these intensi- 
 fied. And that is what love becomes when per- 
 verted from God and made a creature of self 
 and sin. It is no longer love, but lust. 
 
 All unlawful love is lust. Thus the apostle 
 recognizes it. The lust of the eye, he calls it, 
 not the love that is lawful ; the lust of the 
 flesh, not its love that is symmetrical and di- 
 vine. The hot, surging waves of distempered, 
 unrestrained passion foaming out shame that 
 is what the soul turns into when it turns its 
 back on its Creator and first Lover. Nay, 
 more ; one perversity brews another. Love 
 changed to lust corrupts the proper sense of 
 life itself. It becomes a pride of life, the 
 haughty confidence in this life as ours and 
 completely within our control. " It is mine. 
 I will employ it as I will. I am not God's 
 steward ; I am my own master. I despise the 
 Giver of life as I do the love that gave it. I
 
 ; is CHRIS run CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 owe nothing to nobody not even to my par- 
 ents. I am my own creator." This haughty 
 spirit goeth before destruction, this ungodly 
 pride before a fall. 
 
 These are not of the Father, but of the world. 
 They are perversions of that affection and re- 
 spect which eye and heart should pay to the 
 Lord of life and love. They are proclamations 
 of independence. They declare that the soul 
 which they are and which they have become has 
 renounced its allegiance to its Creator, has set 
 up its own throne in its own nature, has gone 
 over to God's enemy and its,, and will have 
 nothing more to do with God, will have none 
 of his ways or intimacy. It is in revolt, and 
 seeks to be what it never can be independent. 
 
 How shall the soul recover its lost estate ? 
 How shall it restore these revolting affections 
 to their obedience ? By first fixing them upon 
 God. The rebellious must first show repent- 
 ance, and feel it even, by accepting the Head 
 from whom they revolted. Had our Revolu- 
 tionary fathers returned to their allegiance, it 
 would not have been the Parliament that they 
 would have accepted as their head, but the 
 king, for from him they especially revolted.
 
 MAN FAILS, COD ABIDES. 119 
 
 It was the king whom they fought in the Decla- 
 ration, the king they fought in the field ; it 
 must be the king whom they shall first accept 
 if they return at all. So our later rebels, who 
 cast off their allegiance to the flag, must ac- 
 cept that allegiance ere they are truly, in- 
 wardly, completely loyal. They must revere 
 it, honor it, serve it. That is the symbol 
 of national authority : that is the symbol by 
 which is tested their entire, hearty restoration. 
 Even so must we all, rebels against God, 
 resume our loyalty by fixing our hearts' de- 
 sires upon God himself. We must cry out, 
 " Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and 
 done this evil in thy sight." We must feel 
 that to him our restored relations cordially 
 cling. God is love. He has given us love. We 
 have corrupted it into lust. He asks its resto- 
 ration. . We grant it. To whom must we go 
 but to him ? Our first pulsation, were we not 
 fallen, would be to him. " I delight to do thy 
 will, O my God ! " With Christ would we say, 
 It is more than my meat and my drink to do 
 the will of Him that sendeth me. Meat and 
 drink only sustain the union of body and soul, 
 while soul and body are rapt into this heavenly
 
 120 CHRIST US CON SOLA TO A\ 
 
 service. Thus felt our first parents until a 
 lower passion thrust God from his throne in 
 their souls and drove them into rebellion 
 against God. To restore lost relations there 
 must be a restoration of lost affections, and 
 the highest affection is for God the Lord. 
 
 The processes in which this rebellion is here 
 depicted must be restored. The eye craves 
 many things the heart or flesh is indifferent 
 to, the flesh or heart many the eye cares not 
 for. Each must like its own, but in the Lord 
 and to the Lord. The eye is fascinated with 
 pictures, facial angles and expressions, mere 
 combinations of sun and shadows, mere varia- 
 tions of light; for that is all that makes up 
 scenery or eye effects. These have no neces- 
 sary connection with the heart. One may visit 
 the theater merely from a love for its shows, 
 with no real motions of the heart in their pres- 
 ence. Children and youth usually put the two 
 together, but men and women rarely do. They 
 can see and even share in the dance without 
 emotion. Not so the young. They unite in- 
 stantly the heat engendered by seeing with that 
 of the flesh or whole animal being. The two 
 lusts breed lust lustily. The soul is corrupted
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 121 
 
 almost as soon as it sees. The bones of the 
 poor youth thus cast to the lions of tempta- 
 tion are broken ere they come to the bot- 
 tom of the den. But the passion centering in 
 the eye grows weaker with use and age. One 
 gets tired of the most entrancing paintings, 
 and can wander through great galleries as 
 carelessly as through a workshop. So he can 
 become indifferent to scenery, to spectacles of 
 every sort, so even he can become passionless 
 before sinful scenes. But if he is not a Chris- 
 tian the lust of the flesh increases with years, 
 increases rapidly, fiercely, and exhausts the 
 entire strength of his being, but exhausts not 
 its own desires. See it in the appetite for to- 
 bacco or strong drinks. There is nothing 
 beautiful in a pack of black leaves, an oiled 
 and begrimed pipe, or a tumbler of yellowish 
 fluid. Yet how many men will eat and drink 
 these homely substances ! Pressing the black 
 mud down their throats as Pacific Islanders do 
 their rolls of rice dough, draining draught after 
 draught of delirious whisky as if it were the 
 water of life, eating it, drinking it in, the eye 
 sees naught and hence can feed no lust of its 
 own. A president of a turnverein, who had
 
 122 CffKISTUS CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 been converted and become a Methodist min- 
 ister, said that when president he was officially 
 required to drink a gallon of beer at a draught. 
 If he stopped to breathe he lost his chair. 
 He had often done it. He had drunk a 
 " schooner " as each stroke of twelve was 
 struck at midnight twelve glasses in twelve 
 strokes. When asked what the sensation was, 
 " Nothing," he replied, " but simply to get it 
 down. The throat was only a tunnel. There 
 was no pleasure. It was merely business." 
 
 Such is often the lust of the flesh power- 
 ful, irresistible, but not enjoyable. The lust 
 for money is of this sort. Multitudes crave 
 it for itself, not for what it produces, not 
 for its looks. A greasy, ragged bank bill of a 
 high denomination is far lovelier to their eye 
 than a new one of lower value. The passion 
 grows by what it feeds on, until the one ab- 
 sorbing passion is to accumulate. Such is the 
 lust of the debauchee, of the gambler, of the 
 man of the world. This is the passion of every 
 one who seeks pleasure in vile books, talk, and 
 society, in all the low, hidden, dark, but most 
 powerful currents of society. 
 
 Mixed with these is the spirit of arrogance
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 123 
 
 that finds expression in the Pharisee's prayer, 
 " I thank Thee that I am not as other men 
 are ; " that subtle sense of self-confidence and 
 self-satisfaction that ranks itself above its 
 neighbors and haughtily assumes the suprem- 
 acy. It is not the exclusive property of the 
 rich or of ancient families, so called, though 
 here it flowers into its most gorgeous forms 
 and colors. It is found in every sinner's heart ; 
 in yours, if you say, " I do not believe God will 
 condemn me. Me ? How can he ? What have 
 I done ? Do I not lead a decent life ? Do I lie, 
 or steal, or murder ? Am I such a villain as that 
 thief or forger ? Am I to be put by the side of 
 that sinful creature ? Do you dare to place 
 me on a level with a Negro or a Chinaman ? " 
 There is your pride of life. There is your seat 
 of death. How many a man as proud, as good 
 outwardly, perhaps inwardly, as you, has, in 
 the late calamities, been proved as low as the 
 lowest, and been compelled to take his seat 
 by their side in the criminal docket, put on the 
 same prison garments, sleep in the same stone 
 cell ? You say, " I sin not ; " therefore your sin 
 remaineth. 
 
 All these passions thus indulged come be-
 
 124 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 tween the soul and God. " If any man love 
 the world, the love of the Father is not in him." 
 You cannot have two perfect and perfectly 
 equal loves at the same time. Nay, you can- 
 not have two perfect and perfectly equal loves 
 at two different times. You may have many 
 a perfect love, but none perfectly equal. They 
 are rank above rank. The first love, that of 
 the child for its parents, may be perfect, but it 
 is of lower rank than that of wife and husband, 
 lower than that of parents for the child. Each 
 love may be perfect after its kind, but the 
 kinds are set in order as the ranks of heaven 
 " thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, 
 powers." One star differeth from another star 
 in glory, so doth one love from another. 
 
 But if the love of this kind is perfect, that 
 love can never in its essence be improved 
 upon. If the soul has gone out in its fullness 
 toward another soul, that outgoing can never 
 be duplicated. It can never so go out toward 
 any other object. It has exhausted itself in 
 that direction, not to its ceasing to live in that 
 love, for cease to live therein it cannot. If it 
 abides in its normal state and the coordinate 
 soul is perfectly fitted by corresponding de-
 
 MAN FAILS, COD ABIDES. 125 
 
 velopments to the growing estate of its fellow- 
 spirit, it will never cease to feel that here it has 
 reached its created being's height. The only 
 problem unsolved is, is this the love of its 
 best and for its best? If not, then decay and 
 death inevitably come. The ages leave each 
 counterpart outgrown by the other. Such 
 may be the fate of all created loves. Born, 
 they may die ; beginning, they may end ; of and 
 for and in the creature, they may be limited by 
 creatural, that is, finite, that is, perishable, con- 
 ditions. If they live forever, it is only because 
 they live in God, through his power and love 
 who keepeth them. 
 
 Only one true, one perfect love can possess 
 the soul. No passion for a human being, how- 
 ever deep and tender and immeasurable, can 
 draw out the whole nature. The mother's love 
 feels its first shock when she learns that she is 
 third at last in the list of loves, wife and child 
 being preferred before her, and crowding her 
 from her long, unquestioned prominence. So 
 all loves may find their end. If they remain, 
 they are found in God. Only one love may 
 thus exist eternal ; it is well ; because duality 
 is the law of our being, and duality abides
 
 126 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 forever. The only love that answers every crav- 
 ing of the soul is the love of God ; that quick- 
 ens it in all its nature ; that moves it in its 
 lowest depths. The moon only draws the sur- 
 face of the sea to itself; God draws the entire 
 being. 
 
 Other loves have relative ranks and rivals. 
 This allows none. It is God or nothing. If 
 any man love the world separate from, superior 
 to, God, the love of the Father is not in him. 
 Jealous beyond the conception of Othello's 
 rage is our Creator ; his anger burns against all 
 such idolatry to the lowest hell. 
 
 This does not prevent all true loves flour- 
 ishing to their uttermost. It requires their full 
 activity. They are in God, and to God, while 
 he is in and above them all, God blessed for- 
 ever. The parent's passion glows the more 
 purely if in and to the Lord ; the lover's sighs 
 are breathed the more fervently and holily if 
 in the Lord ; the holy flame of wedlock is most 
 perfect when the Lord is in the center of its 
 sacred 'sweetness. Love for knowledge how 
 delicious when the devout heart pursues the 
 divine investigations, for knowledge is all di- 
 vine, a part of the all-knowledge of God.
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 127 
 
 Even fame or recognition of real merit may be 
 an honorable passion if it raises the clear spirit 
 to its Creator ; and heroism for principle, that 
 highest love that can possess the soul of man, 
 that makes him, weeping, set down his babes 
 and unloose the embraces of his wife, that 
 he may die for the truth is not that found 
 in its uttermost of perfection when that heroic 
 ardor of love burns for the Lord Jesus? John 
 Brown was a saint of high degree he died for 
 man ; John Huss of higher he died for the 
 Lord Jesus, who was more than man. These 
 loves are all blessed when in the Lord, and 
 then only. 
 
 Consider, finally, the endurance of this love. 
 "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; 
 but he that doeth the 'will of God abideth 
 forever." How sad, how sure that truth the 
 world passeth away and the lust thereof! 
 Where now is the world of the days of John, 
 and where its lust ? I have sat near the spot 
 where he probably wrote those words, amid 
 the very landscape on which he then gazed. 
 That city of Ephesus, the richest in all the 
 East, its temple so imposing, its theater so 
 magnificent, its baths so luxurious, its bazars
 
 128 CIIXISTUS CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 so rich and thronged, its lust of pride so enor- 
 mous where is it now ? A few broken 
 marble columns stand on a rude hill, shattered 
 pillars lie in confusion around. The great 
 arches of the Roman viaduct yet stretch across 
 the plain like a straggling, routed cohort of a 
 once grand legion. The hills that rise abruptly 
 between the plain and the shore, once crowded 
 with villas, temples, and statues, now stand 
 bare, stripped of every vestige of their glory. 
 The great temple of Diana has not had left 
 one stone upon another that is not cast down. 
 Cattle graze in quietness along the once 
 crowded thoroughfare, and the Turkish peasant 
 turns up with his rude plow the arena where 
 Paul fought with wild beasts,and multitudes of 
 Christians, all known of men, went gloriously 
 up to God and heaven. The world passeth 
 away. But more than the change in the face of 
 the world is that in the souls of those then 
 proud and lustful there. Where are they now? 
 The last has passed away long since and ut- 
 terly. The hills and valley and sea and sky 
 remain ; John could still know Ephesus by its 
 natural features ; but where are its men ? 
 Where are those that thronged the theater and
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 129 
 
 cried for a day, almost, to stop the mouth of 
 Paul, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians?" 
 Where are the Ephesians or their great god- 
 dess ? Where the silversmiths with Deme- 
 trius at their head ? Where the fashionable 
 loungers in the baths ? Where those that dis- 
 dained God and desired the world ? Answer, 
 O poor, fluttering, wavering heart, that wishes 
 to love both God and the world ! Their lust 
 went before their world. They left it, not it 
 them. So must we. Not before you die will 
 your cities become what Ephesus is ; you will 
 leave them probably as full of sin, of worldly 
 fascination, as they are to-day; but lust passes 
 away, passes to where there is no place for 
 its indulgence, where it rages unsatisfied, like 
 the troubled sea, without rest, yet evermore 
 casting up mire and dirt. The rich man longs 
 for water ; the appetite remains, but not the 
 water ; he probably still prefers the wine, but 
 no wine is given him. 
 
 Cool your hot lusts, quench them rather, in 
 the love of God that abideth forever. He that 
 doeth his will, he that loveth God and show- 
 eth his love by his works, he shall live and love 
 
 forever. Death hath no dominion over him. 
 9
 
 130 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 It is but the entrance gate to higher life, to 
 more ardent, more perfect, more rewarded 
 love. If the Lord can give us here such proof 
 of his love, such objects of permitted love as 
 the scenes and odors and sounds of earth, 
 as the thoughts that kindle our souls, the as- 
 pirations that uplift them, the emotions that 
 thrill them, and, above all, the loves that satisfy 
 and well-nigh satiate them, so that we cry even 
 now under their delirious delight, " Stay me 
 with flagons, comfort me with apples : for I 
 am sick of love," how much more will he rav- 
 ish the soul loving him with the abundance of 
 eternal love ! Our earthly loves will not die, 
 but increase there more and more. We shall 
 love there, not only human friends, with an 
 unfathomable ardor such as we never knew 
 here, but angels, archangels, cherubim, sera- 
 phim, all the ranks and races of heaven. We 
 shall love those who go there far beyond what 
 we ever felt upon earth, and those who have 
 always dwelt there with an ardor for which 
 earthly affection has no name. 
 
 " O sweet and blessed country, 
 
 The home of God's elect ! 
 O sweet and blessed country 
 
 That eager hearts expect ! "
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 131 
 
 Still, then, as now, then, more than now, 
 above all these blissful passions, in them all, 
 through them all, shall we love our God and 
 Saviour, the Beloved of all holy creatures, the 
 Beloved to eternity. 
 
 O my brother, can you hesitate which to 
 love? Whoever hesitates never truly loves. 
 Debate not ; cast yourself at his feet, into his 
 arms. He will kindle this holy flame in your 
 soul ; he will deliver you from counter and 
 hostile passions. You can pass among them 
 as a mother with her child in her arms passes 
 among crowds of other children without feel- 
 ing a divided affection. You can say, 
 
 " Henceforth shall no profane delight 
 Pollute this consecrated soul." 
 
 You will leap to meet his kind embrace ; you 
 will run in the way of his commandments; 
 you will be ravished with his love. Let the 
 world see that you love him ; glory in it. The 
 beginnings of all human true love are in a sort 
 of shame. We shrink from confessing the pas- 
 sion kindling within ; we are ashamed to let it 
 be known. The lover at the first hides his 
 love, the wedded and the parent theirs. So 
 is it in this highest love. But as in these
 
 132 CHRISTUS CONSOLA TOR. 
 
 earthly affections they cannot be repressed, 
 and delight at last in exhibiting themselves to 
 all the world, and, if they can, write themselves 
 into verse and thrust themselves into the eye 
 of strangers and of futurity, so this highest 
 passion may begin in a sense of shame*. It 
 shrinks from confessing Christ ; it is ashamed 
 of Jesus. It visits him at night ; it fears the 
 scorn of the world. But when once aflame it 
 glories in revealing itself. It proclaims itself 
 everywhere and to everybody. It makes its 
 recipient go among neighbors and kinsfolk, 
 arise in crowded assemblies, ascend the pulpit, 
 fly to foreign and pestilential lands, stand 
 serenely before hostile magistrates, enter the 
 dens of lions, 
 
 "Clasp the cross with a light laugh, 
 
 Or wrap the burning robe round, praising God." 
 
 Such love will only glow the brighter when 
 these tests of its vigor fail to weaken, and aid 
 in strengthening it. It will burn like a star in 
 the eternal heavens and respond forever to the 
 infinite love of its divine Lover, the Lord our 
 God. 
 
 Love, then, the Lord your God with all your 
 might and mind and strength, and he will love
 
 MAN FAILS, GOD ABIDES. 133 
 
 you with all his might and mind and strength. 
 He will come and take up his abode in you. 
 He will bear you in his arms amid the losses 
 and sorrows of this transient time, beam upon 
 you with serene and tender regard, accompany 
 you -through the last portal of earth and the 
 first of heaven, and be your Companion, your 
 Lover, through the realm of the ages of eternity.
 
 "And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon 
 them, and blessed them." Mark x, 16. 
 
 " Not of adamant and gold 
 Built God heaven, stark and cold ; 
 No, but a nest of beading reeds, 
 Flowering grass, and scented weeds ; 
 Or like a traveler's fleeing tent, 
 Or bow above the tempest bent ; 
 Built of tears and sacred flames, 
 And virtue reaching to its aims ; 
 Built of furtherance and pursuing ; 
 Not of spent deeds, but of doing. 
 Silent rushes the swift Lord 
 Through ruined systems still restored, 
 Broad sowing, bleak and void to bless, 
 Plants with worlds the wilderness, 
 Waters with tears of ancient sorrow 
 Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. 
 House, not tenant, goes to ground 
 Raised to God. In Godhead found."
 
 V. 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 
 
 A PICTURE hangs on the walls of the 
 ** National Gallery of England combining, 
 it is said, more of genius, science, art, and re- 
 ligion than have been witnessed in any painting 
 for more than four centuries. Yet scarcely 
 one of the crowd of gazers fixes seeing and 
 feeling eyes upon it. The commonplace 
 productions of commonplace talent fill the 
 measure of their sight and soul, and the 
 heights and depths of truth, beauty, and power 
 which this one painting alone embodies are 
 unpierced, unperceived by them. So the mar- 
 velous work which only the genius, science, 
 art, and love of God could produce, a little child, 
 placed in the gallery of human products, 
 attracts slight attention, is passed by with a 
 glance, while a crystal palace, a monster ship, 
 a great city, or an eclipse draws crowds of 
 overwhelmed spectators, and the most com- 
 mon objects and incidents of the paltriest life 
 are subjects of constant notice and remark.
 
 136 CHKISTUS COA'SOLA TOR. 
 
 As this little one, fashioned of the dust of 
 the earth and the Spirit of God, is thus 
 neglected while placed before our eyes, so 
 when the great Artist destroys its marvels with 
 one dash of his pencil, takes it down from the 
 wall, and hides it in that cellar of humanity, 
 the grave, its absence occasions as little remark 
 as its presence had done. Why it is gone, 
 whither it has gone, are questions curiosity 
 rarely suggests. A few who happened in its 
 neighborhood when the catastrophe occurred 
 noticed the act of removal, though not the gap 
 made by it, and may have felt one throb of 
 sympathy for the disappointed owner, none for 
 the lost and ruined work. 
 
 The death of a man is noticed, because an 
 impress has been made by him on the sur- 
 rounding community. Every one has had 
 his own nature modified more or less by his 
 influence ; every one, therefore, feels that a 
 part of himself, of his substance and his daily 
 life, has disappeared, and a momentary sense 
 of loss shadows and shakes his soul. Wher- 
 ever this impress has not been made, death 
 makes none. Your neighbor may die and 
 your soul darken and droop beneath the loss,
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 137 
 
 but a little farther the blow has expended its 
 force. No sense of the loss and no thought of 
 the dead is found there. Death in the coun- 
 try, like sound and light and air, moves over a 
 much larger surface than in the city before its 
 momentum expires. So, too, the death of the 
 aged reaches farther than the death of chil- 
 dren. 
 
 In the chamber separated from you by the 
 breadth of two bricks a man or woman, head 
 of a large family, may be dying and you be as 
 unaffected as though it were a flower or a fly. 
 I sat with friends in St. Louis dining and 
 chatting through an afternoon. At nightfall 
 word came that the husband of the household 
 adjoining, in a room only one thickness of 
 brick from us, had been dying all that time 
 we were chatting so pleasantly, and was then 
 lying dead. Why is this insensibility ? Be- 
 cause the density of the population contracts 
 the range of our sympathies, and that family 
 whom that thin wall separated from us was 
 farther from us than if five miles away in a 
 thinly settled village or fifty miles on the 
 frontiers of civilization. 
 
 Hundreds of souls go down on our coast in
 
 1SS CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 a single ship and night, and possibly, though 
 you read the incident in a brief line of the 
 newspaper, the fact has so slightly affected the 
 memory that you could not after a little recall 
 it. A steamer starts from Europe and is never 
 heard from. Its freight of hundreds of human 
 beings has been whelmed in terror and agony 
 and death, but no sympathetic terror or agony 
 has startled our soul even for a moment. 
 Thousands and thousands of Russians and 
 Turks went to that awful, silent judgment seat 
 from the roar and dust and groans of the bat- 
 tlefield, but your soul was sensible of no 
 change in its pulsations as you glanced at the 
 narratives of those deathbeds. 
 
 Thus it always is. Unless we find ourselves 
 united by some tie of nature, or office, or expe- 
 rience with the dead, death is apt to be an im- 
 pressionless event to us. Had Dickens been 
 aboard that steamer, each of us would have 
 been full of zeal and knowledge concerning 
 the catastrophe, because he had made himself 
 a part of our being by the children of his soul, 
 his by birth, ours by adoption. Had General 
 Grant fallen on one of those European fields of 
 death, we should have all felt the fall because
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 139 
 
 he had become a part of our feelings and 
 thoughts, an element and portion of our spir- 
 its' growth. 
 
 So the lack of these connective influences in 
 infants makes us insensible as to their death. 
 The child playing at our door may have more 
 than once revived our weary hearts with its 
 uncareful merriment, more than once feasted 
 our craving for the beautiful, the unearthly, by 
 its unconscious loveliness, its heaven-revealing 
 gladness and goodness. That child, dead, is 
 the filling with desert dust one of the fountains 
 which was refreshing our wilderness wander- 
 ings, is the dropping of a black and pierceless 
 veil over an opening through which heaven 
 shone in upon us and we looked up into 
 heaven. We feel the pang ; our very being 
 has been invaded. Death has smitten us in 
 the vitals. An infant gives no such shock. He 
 has not fed our lasting lives daily with his fresh 
 heavenly manna. He has no conscious vital 
 connection with us. His death sheds no mor- 
 tal shudderings through our soul. 
 
 All this is wrong. It is a perversion of our 
 nature. God never made it so contracted. The 
 Pacific Islander eats but one kind of food cooked
 
 140 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 in but one way. So the coolie of India lives 
 on rice alone, the serf of Ireland on the po- 
 tato, the peasant of Italy on maccaroni ; but 
 the more cultivated we become the wider is 
 the range both of articles for food and modes 
 of preparing them for our use. The appetite 
 grows in sensitiveness, looks on all nature as 
 appointed for its physical sustenance, appre- 
 hends the declaration made by its Creator to 
 Adam and Noah, " Behold, I have given you 
 every herb bearing seed, which is upon the 
 face of all the earth, and every tree, in the 
 which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to 
 you it shall be for meat. . . . Every moving 
 thing that liveth shall be meat for you ; even as 
 the green herb have I given you all things." 
 
 So the soul wrought upon by the wisdom 
 and the grace of God becomes alive to all the 
 joys and sorrows, the sentiments and thoughts, 
 of every other soul, dwells with the infant on 
 the shoulders of his Indian mother or in the 
 cradle of royal luxury, with the child playing 
 under Africa's palms or in his own garden, the 
 youth dreamy and hopeful in Arabia or Amer- 
 ica, the man or woman, white, black, or red, 
 that lives in sadness or joy, in comfort or
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 141 
 
 misery, over the whole earth. Yea, more ; our 
 natures, rightly working, feed on the blisses 
 of the holy departed of all ages, mingle sadly 
 yet salutarily with the unholy departed of 
 every age, rise into higher, dive into lower 
 ranks of creation, and rest at last, rest in the 
 perpetual but peaceful motion of our whole 
 being, in the center and source of all activity, 
 of all creation God. 
 
 In the shadow of a great affliction, at the 
 table where for hour after hour lay the body 
 but just abandoned by an infant immortal, 
 I write, partly as a memorial of him, part- 
 ly to bring to a focus in my own soul the 
 rays of heaven scattered through the valley of 
 the shadow of death wherein I have been 
 walking ; partly to console those over whom 
 have passed like waves of sorrow, whose founts 
 of love, opened by sympathy in this bereave- 
 ment, pour forth over their own hearts the 
 lifeblood of affection as fresh and agonizing 
 as in the hours when thdir hearts were first 
 pierced through with this sorrow; partly to 
 awaken, if possible, in each of us a sense, quick 
 and weighty, of the truths which God pub- 
 lishes afresh to us with every such event, and
 
 142 CHRISTUS CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 which are as valuable, and can be used as 
 profitably, if announced through infant suffer- 
 ings, death, and glory, as though written before 
 us in the death of the aged, the honored, the 
 mighty. A little child shall lead them. May 
 it lead us, submissive and reverent, into the 
 gallery of God's truths, into the deep and 
 holy feelings those truths would fain induce 
 and develop ! 
 
 The wiser one becomes in any branch of 
 knowledge, the more does he neglect the large 
 and observe the small ; the more does he 
 see in the small the larger. Men, untrained, 
 possess no such discrimination ; they are af- 
 fected by the huge, but they pass coldly by 
 the minute. A mountain, not a pebble, a for- 
 est, not a grass-blade, the ocean, not a globule 
 of water, attracts them. Not so the studious, 
 growing mind. Whatever department it works 
 in mechanics, art, science, philosophy every- 
 where the real thinker is seen in his neglect for 
 the mass and his attention to the atom. One 
 analyzes, analyzes, till he finds a universal law, 
 working perfectly and gloriously in the falling 
 apple ; another crystallizes the microscopic dia- 
 mond particle; another combines elements to
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 143 
 
 the composition of one drop of water ; another 
 employs vast assimilative powers and processes 
 to endeavor to construct a living mustard seed. 
 As the enlightened curiosity has worked in the 
 mind of the scholar, so parental instincts oper- 
 ate in respect to the infant. As every truth con- 
 cerning any creature lies condensed in every 
 particle of that truth, so lies the whole of 
 man in the babe ; and nature, or Father, the 
 God of nature, places in parental hearts the very 
 impulse and intelligence that in a far inferior 
 degree, and of a far lower character, lead the 
 scholar to the perception of the laws of crea- 
 tive working. 
 
 Far lower in character and degree, I say ; for 
 what was ever brought before man in the 
 realms of matter comparable to a human body? 
 And how infinitely this falls below the human 
 soul ! Agassiz devoted his great mind and 
 great knowledge to the study of the traits and 
 distinctions of fishes, Linnaeus of plants, Au- 
 dubon of birds, Cuvier and Owen of beasts, 
 Hitchcock of rocks, Newton of light ; the high- 
 est students only dwell upon the laws of mind. 
 But to the parent is given the study of the 
 finest and most wonderful of material products,
 
 li '4 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 beside which birds and beasts and rocks and 
 trees are gross and mean ; and to this, what 
 is more, the study of the development of a 
 spirit, the image of God. They can at once 
 see its present perfection and its future growth 
 and glory. As it lies in their arms do they not 
 see the perfect features of the man, as beauti- 
 ful in their perfection as if expanded into their 
 full and ultimate growth ? Is not every limb, 
 muscle, tendon, bone, as exquisitely wrought 
 and fitted ? Does not every feature of the 
 face speak the same workman as if in gigantic 
 proportions? Does not the head, emblem of 
 the perfection of the whole body, round off and 
 crown the whole with its complete mechanism 
 and its lofty suggestions? And if you look 
 within those eyes, gleams there not forth the 
 same fire of thought and feeling that maturer 
 years and experiences kindle? Plays not as 
 perfect a smile around those cheeks, flows not 
 as perfect laughter from those lips ? Love and 
 thought lie lustrous in the depths of those 
 eyes. The soul, the immortal, the divine 
 soul, you see at the bottom of those clear 
 founts, as pearls and diamonds through pellu- 
 cid waves.
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 145 
 
 " Fair the soul's recess and shrine, 
 
 Magic built, to last a season ; 
 Masterpiece of love divine, 
 
 Fairer than expansive." 
 
 Can a parent be aught else than the wisest 
 of students if he bends with loving scrutiny 
 over this work of God ? Can he be acting 
 otherwise than in accordance with the divine 
 Being in thus dwelling in studious admiration 
 over that upon which God ponders, which God 
 watches, admires, pronounces very good ? 
 
 Parental love not only feasts on the treasure 
 for what it is, but for what it is to be. If the 
 development theory were a true one ; if stone 
 grew into tree, tree to reptile, reptile to fish, 
 fish to bird, bird to beast, beast to man ; if the 
 naturalist has found clear proof of some of 
 these transmigrations, how greatly would their 
 zeal be increased to detect the phenomena and 
 laws of that expansion ! But they see no such 
 realities to their dreams. Impassable walls 
 engirt every order, and each member of his 
 order fully reveals the whole. The youngest 
 is as the oldest. No such limit is imposed on 
 man. The infant humanity can fill the whole 
 heaven of parental hopes with dreams and 
 
 visions of the future not schemes of ambition, 
 10
 
 146 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 but promptings of the judgment colored with 
 the hues of a wise though loving fancy. He 
 sees that soul tasting of knowledge, little and 
 weak, as that which feeds its body ; growing in 
 strength, demanding larger and stronger sup- 
 plies ; sipping wisdom like the bee from the 
 flower, the tree, the sky every object in na- 
 ture and in art ; getting glimmerings of con- 
 versation, of communion with spirits by other 
 processes than the eye and hand afford ; ab- 
 sorbing into its mind the alphabetical ele- 
 ments, combining them, using them for the 
 body of its ideas and feelings ; bringing forth 
 from the treasure-house of the soul these new 
 creations of spirit ; feeding these creative fac- 
 ulties by observation, by conversation, by read- 
 ing ; learning that itself and surrounding souls 
 are not the only beings of like nature on the 
 earth, that for myriads and myriads of hours 
 there have been breathing this air not only 
 those like itself, but related to itself, held 
 all in the arms of one father and mother ; 
 learning the yet more startling truth that al- 
 most all that multitude of relatives has left 
 the earth and gone no one knows whither, are 
 engaged no one knows how ; feeling in its tiny
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 147 
 
 spirit promptings to sin ; learning how gener- 
 ally and awfully those promptings have pre- 
 vailed, how its Creator, the God of the uni- 
 verse, has come into such a little body as its 
 that he might give it, and all, the chance of 
 escaping from these sins, how he has put a 
 Book into the world abounding in marvelous 
 truths and clear commands that are intended 
 to aid it in growing in holiness and wisdom ; 
 looking out from this spot of time on the 
 vastness of eternity ; looking up from this 
 state of mixed light and darkness into the 
 heavens of holy light, down into the seat of 
 awful darkness these and multitudes of similar 
 truths are to be imparted to that soul. Is there 
 not a space of amplest breadth for the growth 
 and flourishing of every hope and desire? 
 God creates that soul, it is true. God gives it 
 its powers and capacities. God gives the in- 
 crease of those powers. Yet he has marvel- 
 ously arranged it so that they seem to be 
 given to the parental hand to bring into being. 
 They lie asleep, dead, till his or another's touch 
 calls them to life. 
 
 The babe of heathenism is of closest kindred 
 with the child of Christendom ; that poor, ig-
 
 745 CHRISTUS CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 norant Bushman or Eskimo infant has the 
 capacities of him whose brain calls Words- 
 worth its father. The one lies shut up in cells 
 of darkness, the other is led forth into light. 
 God makes the parent, in effect, a creator of 
 the soul of the child, and he can exultingly 
 assume the charge and hopefully undertake it. 
 Parental comforts find their present and espe- 
 cially their prospective homes in their children. 
 They enjoy the reciprocity which has already 
 begun, the tiny recognition repaying every 
 sacrifice and toil. They see the day when, ere 
 long, larger responses will be made. They 
 dwell on the hour when equality of thought 
 and feeling shall make the babe a perfect com- 
 panion and associate ; when their growing 
 weakness shall be. more than replaced by its 
 fiery energies ; and farther yet, when, as age 
 shall enfeeble all their powers and death be 
 busy finishing up the work he has never neg- 
 lected all their lives, the strong arms of the 
 infant, as loving as when they clasped their 
 neck in its early helplessness, as strong as 
 theirs when then bearing him, shall support 
 the dying head, shall compose the dead body, 
 shall lay it in tender sorrow and cheerful hope
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 149 
 
 to sleep away the fatigues and infirmities of 
 life and to rise in vigor and beauty undying at 
 the coming of Christ. This love, this hope, 
 this anticipated duty, this comfort all these, 
 in their vast and varied workings, are found in 
 full action in the parental heart, while infantile 
 helplessness, ignorance, and innocence slumbers 
 or smiles upon it. Hence the word of God has 
 but few words repeated as often as the word 
 children, and makes but few references either 
 in the way of doctrine or entreaty more fre- 
 quently or powerfully than those pertaining to 
 the parental relation. Hence, too, his favorite 
 disclosure of himself as our Father and Christ 
 as his only-begotten and well-beloved Son. 
 With insight into this truth the heavenly hosts 
 shouted over the Infant cradle and wise men 
 knelt in adoration and poured forth gifts. 
 Hence every great uninspired seer has honored 
 the infant man as highly as the adult man. 
 Says the great Shakespeare : 
 
 " And in such indexes, although small pricks 
 
 To their subsequent volumes, there is seen 
 
 The baby figure of the giant mass 
 
 Of things to come at large." 
 
 Hence exclaims the poet, at once the most 
 human in his sensibilities, the most divine in
 
 150 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 his musings, of all those whose thoughts 
 move in harmonious numbers, looking on an 
 infant child : 
 
 " Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie 
 
 Thy soul's immensity ! 
 Thou best philosopher who yet dost keep 
 Thy heritage ! Thou eye among the blind, 
 That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep 
 Haunted forever by the eternal mind ! 
 
 Mighty prophet ! seer blest ! 
 On whom those truths do rest 
 Which we are toiling all our lives to find : 
 In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ; 
 Thou over whom thy immortality 
 Broods like the day a master o'er a slave 
 A presence which is not to be put by ; 
 Thou little child, yet glorious in the light 
 Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height." 
 
 And one, the greatest of living thinkers, ex- 
 claims, as his mind pierces the mists of the 
 heart, made by his blinding tears like the sun 
 shining through the shower: 
 
 " The south winds bring their precious gifts, 
 
 Life, sunshine, and desire ; 
 
 And on every mount and meadow 
 
 Breathes aromatic fire. 
 
 But over the dead he has no power, 
 
 The lost, the lost he cannot restore ; 
 
 And looking over the hiils I mourn 
 
 The darling who shall not return. 
 
 I see my empty house, 
 
 I see my trees repair their boughs ;
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 151 
 
 But he, the wondrous child. 
 
 Whose silver warble wild 
 
 Outvalued every passing sound 
 
 Within the air's cerulean round, 
 
 The hyacinthine boy, for whom 
 
 Iron well might break and April bloom, 
 
 The gracious boy who did adorn 
 
 The world whereinto he was born, 
 
 And by his countenance repay 
 
 The favor of the loving day, 
 
 Has disappeared from the Day's eye. 
 
 Far and wide she cannot find him ; 
 
 My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him. 
 
 Returned this day, the south wind searches. 
 
 And finds young pines and budding birches, 
 
 But finds not the budding man." 
 
 Again he cries out : 
 
 " Not mine ; I never called thee mine, 
 
 But nature's heir ; if I repine 
 
 It is because a general hope 
 
 Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope. 
 
 For flattering planets seemed to say 
 
 This child should ills of ages stay ; 
 
 By wondrous tongue and guided pen 
 
 Bring the flown muses back to men." 
 
 And with strict unity with parental grief and 
 prophecy he bursts forth: 
 
 "O child of Paradise, 
 
 Boy who made dear his father's home, 
 
 In whose deep eyes 
 
 Was read the welfare of the time to come ! 
 
 I am too much bereft ; 
 
 The world dishonored thou hast left.
 
 152 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 O truth's and nature's costly lie ! 
 O trusted broken prophecy ! 
 O richest fortune sourly crossed ! 
 Born for the future, to the future lost" 
 
 Another hopefully exclaims: 
 
 " O child ! O new-bom denizen 
 
 Of life's great city ! On thy head 
 
 The glory of the morn is shed 
 
 Like a celestial benison. 
 
 Here at the portal thou dost stand, 
 
 And with thy little hand 
 
 Thou openest the mysterious gate 
 
 Into the future's undiscovered land. 
 
 Like the new moon, thy life appears 
 
 A little strip of silver light, 
 
 And widening outward into night 
 
 The shadowy disk of future years ; 
 
 And yet upon its outer rim 
 
 A luminous circle, faint and dim, 
 
 And scarcely visible to us here, 
 
 Rounds and completes the perfect year : 
 
 A prophecy and intimation, 
 
 A pale and feeble admiration, 
 
 Of the great world of light that lies 
 
 Behind all human destinies." 
 
 And yet another bursts forth : 
 
 "O thou ! bright thing fresh from the hand of God ! 
 
 The motion of thy dancing limbs is swayed 
 
 By the unceasing music of thy being ; 
 
 Nearer I seem to God when looking on thee. 
 
 'Tis ages since he made his youngest star ; 
 
 His hand was on thee as 'twere yesterday, 
 
 Thou later Revelation ! Silver streams divine 
 
 Breaking with laughter from the lake 
 
 Whence all things flow, O bright and singing child ! "
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 153 
 
 From these movings of the heart and the 
 judgment in the great representatives of hu- 
 manity, from the words of our blessed Lord, 
 from the natural and God-implanted workings 
 of parental hearts, come rebukes to the care- 
 less and stolid and contemptuous manner in 
 which we are apt to treat the youngest of im- 
 mortal souls angels of God in the beginning 
 of their creation. 
 
 The microscope is as marvelous as the 
 telescope, the worlds unveiled by it as full 
 of life, of wisdom, of goodness, of power, as 
 those swinging before the larger eye of its 
 brother. Though you were permitted to stand 
 before the angel Gabriel, though you mingled 
 in free and yet teachable intercourse with Paul, 
 the knowledge gained from their sublimated 
 and exalted natures is no higher, no purer, 
 no richer, no sweeter, than that gleaned from 
 faithful and reverent devotion to their young- 
 est brethren the babe Gabriel or Paul that 
 folds its shining wings, covers them with the 
 dust of earth, and by the slow and feeble steps 
 of mortality grows to its archangelic expansion. 
 
 But if a child is an immortal soul at the dawn 
 of its being, and if God has put such treasures
 
 154 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 in earthen vessels and placed them among 
 earthen vessels, we may properly ask, Is 
 there any reason discernible for the frequency 
 with which these vessels are broken? If he 
 honors parental feelings by declaring himself 
 the Parent of parents, and rewards their indul- 
 gence with the streams of joy that, quenchless 
 and fathomless, flood their hearts, well may we 
 ask, Why break those exquisite though clayey 
 bodies ? Why does his parental foot trample on 
 every parental sensibility? Why place black 
 gates of death between those tides of human 
 feeling and their desired, their necessary, reser- 
 voir? Why shall He who sets the solitary in 
 families make the family a solitude? Many a 
 bleeding heart, since Adam and Eve bowed in 
 speechless woe over their stricken Abel, has 
 cried out as if reproaching heaven and earth : 
 
 " Was there no star that could be sent, 
 No watcher in the firmament, 
 No angel from the countless host 
 That loiters round the crystal coast. 
 Could stoop to heal that darling child, 
 Nature's sweet marvel, undefiled, 
 And keep the blossom on the earth 
 Which all her harvests were not worth ? " 
 
 Let us try to see if there are possible tokens 
 of the goodness and wisdom of God, both to
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS, 155 
 
 parents and children, in such an early separa- 
 tion. 
 
 It is a blessing to the child physically. 
 The load of the flesh is a wearisome burden. 
 It is a coffin that the soul ever carries with it. 
 Like the shirt of Nessus, burning the body it 
 covered, it burns and wastes the spirit. It is a 
 vehicle of disease and suffering and helpless- 
 ness. The body craves rest and stupefies the 
 spirit in its nightly stagnations. The body ab- 
 sorbs heat, and the spirit thrills with fire ; cold, 
 and it shivers as if pent in ice. It breathes 
 poisons, and the spirit reels with faintness. It 
 drinks or eats, and the soul staggers or lies 
 stupid by its surfeitings. The body is, at the 
 highest, of the earth, earthy; its highest aims 
 are, " What shall I eat ? what shall I drink ? 
 wherewithal shall I be clothed ? " It works on 
 the farm, in the shop, the store. It makes the 
 soul its slave and teaches her to coin her wit 
 into bread and clothing for itself, makes her 
 invent processes for more largely supplying its 
 wants, and exhaust herself in devising means 
 for gathering dust, and looks out on the field, 
 through the factory, the shelves of the store- 
 house, as the widest allowable range for her
 
 156 CHRISTUS CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 faculties. Multitudes on, multitudes thus feel 
 the weight of these chains of flesh. Thus are 
 our young aspirations crushed, and we work 
 under the lash of base appetites of hunger and 
 gain till we are as incapable of seeing any su- 
 per-earthly, spiritual, immortal essence within 
 us as is the vilest slave driver in his vilest slave. 
 From this dread degradation the heaven- 
 called child is released. That son shall not go 
 into the far country of bodily passions and 
 lusts and feed swine. He will not feel the ra- 
 gings of disease more intense than the body it- 
 self can feel. He will not parch with thirst, 
 rage with hunger, burn with heat, freeze with 
 cold, throb with pain in head or heart or any 
 other part of the body ; he will not be enslaved 
 to his own servant, the gross duties of this life, 
 and, what is worse, as almost all his kindred 
 do who are left on earth for a little season, fall 
 in love with its bondage, crave gold and land 
 and goods and houses and stuff to tickle the 
 palate and fantastic vanities to cover the body, 
 and thus be filled with the lust of money, of 
 dress, of food, of every bodily appetite. That 
 spirit, thanks be to God, has escaped all this, 
 and when its body is given him again he will
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 157 
 
 find no tendencies within, nor customs around 
 him, to produce so loathsome yet so sadly uni- 
 versal a defilement. 
 
 Again, God's goodness and wisdom are seen 
 in the mental privileges secured by death. He 
 wishes to give the mind a fitting development 
 by making it rightly apprehend appropriate 
 truths. Where can such opportunities be given 
 it as in heaven ? Our science is yet childish in 
 its attainments, is mixed with error, abounds 
 in absurdities, has no perceived bond of union 
 connecting all branches in fitting proportions 
 and harmony. There is a scrap of knowledge 
 here and there, a rag or two of the robe of 
 truth which no skill of ours can form into its 
 lustrous garment or even neatly or naturally join 
 together. The mind must in its best estate and 
 advantages grow amid great ignorance, intro- 
 duce into its composition great errors, and be 
 but dwarfish and deformed. We fall down 
 before some minds as though possessed of 
 miraculous attainments and power ; it is we 
 who are pygmies, not they giants. The best 
 condition for the growth of these powers is 
 seldom obtained. Poverty or contracted no- 
 tions on our part make us curb the aspirations
 
 755 CHRISTUS CONSOLA TOR. 
 
 and compress the brain in the iron helmet of 
 our ignorance and avarice. 
 
 These necessary or voluntary restraints the 
 little child that is carried to heaven never suf- 
 fers. No poverty crushes out the life of its in- 
 tellect. No lowness of parental sentiment nor 
 wrongfulness of parental judgment debases or 
 distorts it. No narrowness of scholarly preju- 
 dice nor bewilderment of contending factions 
 on these fields of thought contracts or mad- 
 dens its reason. That spirit sees, through 
 glasses adapted to its vision, truths fitted to 
 its wants. It settles the vexed questions of the 
 schools ; it stands in no doubt as to the conflicts 
 of scholars on light, on life, on creation, on the 
 essential qualities of the mind, on the higher, 
 and hence darker, problems of theology. It 
 looks out on nature (for nature is everywhere) 
 with an eye that never betrays it into error. 
 Its teachers and guides know what they teach, 
 know in what measures and modes to impart 
 their truths, how to feed it with knowledge 
 and understanding. What a glorious school 
 in which to study, with holy mothers and nurses 
 to lead its yet immature soul to the reception of 
 childish truth, with the great and wise of all
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 159 
 
 ages Abraham and Moses and Solomon and 
 Paul, Newton and Locke and Chalmers and 
 Foster, mightiest minds in the human annals 
 to slake its thirst at streams that have no 
 taint of error, with angels and archangels 
 weaving their little less than infinite thoughts 
 into its mind, with Christ, the head of that 
 school, taking the little ones into his arms and 
 answering the questions with which he con- 
 founded the doctors ! What is your knee, sad 
 mother, what your school, your academy, your 
 university, as a gymnasium for that spirit's 
 growth beside the knee of that angel, that 
 school, that university, which is, indeed, a uni- 
 verse of which great spirits once in the flesh 
 are the teachers and Christ is the Principal ? 
 
 And then the history it studies ; not that 
 of earth alone, though that it has far more 
 perfectly than earthly records give it to us, for 
 we know nothing of antediluvian ages and but 
 little of much that followed. It learns all 
 of this from the lips of that grand mother of 
 it and all, or from other equally affectionate 
 and understanding souls ; and besides, the his- 
 tory of man on the earth, the history of man 
 in the heavens the history of the whole crea-
 
 160 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 tion of God. So walks that infant mind 
 through infinite wonders; no more wonderful, 
 probably, than those cast around our pathway, 
 but more appreciated, correctly apprehended, 
 resulting in much more rapid and glorious 
 growth of these powers. If occasional phe- 
 nomena are witnessed on earth, where the less 
 gross and heavy body admits of early and 
 startling developments of mind; if a Pascal or 
 Macaulay or Euler thus flash forth in child- 
 hood a brightness which but few ever disclose 
 at the summit of earthly effort, what may it 
 not be where no such entanglements or weights 
 impede the spirit ? It must grow if it is con- 
 scious, unless God has determined to keep it 
 in eternal infancy. We have no belief that " a 
 babe in paradise is a babe forever." That sub- 
 jects a third of the human race to practical 
 idiocy, for a child who is always a child is next 
 door to a fool. It must grow if like its par- 
 ents and like its God. If proof of its capacity 
 were demanded, Christ gives it when he says, 
 " Their angels do always behold the face of 
 my Father which is in heaven." If the angels 
 of the little ones have that high honor, shall 
 we say that those that leave the earth are shut
 
 TAKIiVG CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 161 
 
 up in insensibility ? And if they are intelligent 
 they must grow, for spirit, unless hindered 
 from without, will expand ; and if it grows, all 
 these favoring circumstances that we have 
 dwelt upon attend it to make its increase one 
 of strength, of beauty, and of glory unspeakable. 
 Its heart, too, finds there a far more happy 
 field for its unfolding than can be had here. 
 Affection breeds affection, but parental love, 
 however powerful, may be mixed with occa- 
 sional petulance and anger and neglect, now 
 swelling into excess and sweeping away all 
 proper protections for the safety of its child 
 in its deluge of passion. It must, too, be min- 
 gled with error in judgment as to the best 
 mode, the right degree, of gratifying the de- 
 sires of the child. It is painfully limited in 
 means fora worthy and anxiously desired grat- 
 ification ; and when the babe looks out of the 
 inclosure of parental arms it sees a cold and 
 selfish world, or one, at the most, but slightly, 
 and that selfishly, moved with love toward 
 it. All this tends to breed anger and sullen- 
 ness, prejudice and selfishness, in it, and it 
 becomes like unto us. 
 
 But around it in heaven how different a 
 11
 
 162 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 society ! Its guardians love it with an affec- 
 tion, if not the same perhaps as strong as its 
 parents', and wiser. This affection never relaxes 
 its hold upon its heart, never falls into decay, 
 never swells into distorted passion, never is 
 mingled with fretfulness or anger, never is 
 led astray in judgment, sees what the child 
 really needs, and possesses by the goodness of 
 God abundant means for its supply. While 
 around the babe and its nurse, perhaps its 
 mother, its grandparents, some near earthly 
 relative, and its angel guardian, moves a soci- 
 ety, sensible of its value, tender and childlike 
 in all their feelings ; that loves and honors and 
 reveres it as the youngest of the works of 
 God; and if last, why not best? Thus they 
 cast upon it influences elevating and glad- 
 dening, which fill its soul with speechless 
 love and joy. That heart, that very heart 
 that you felt was yours and that you believed 
 no other could .sympathize with nor satisfy, 
 finds more perfect and genial sympathies and 
 more complete satisfaction than it could have 
 found pillowed on your heart ; and in the 
 waves of full and glorious feeling it bathes, 
 with an energy ever growing more intense, a
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 163 
 
 sensibility more and more subtle and deep, a 
 passion pure and perfect and divine. 
 
 Finally, it is well with the child religiously. 
 This needs no enlargement. Freedom from 
 impulses to sin, from conscious guilt, , from 
 the sense of the wrath of God, from the- fear 
 of death, the judgment, hell, no sight of wick- 
 edness filling its young eyes with amazement 
 soon, alas! filling them with delight no 
 sound of sin passing through and through its 
 soul as if shot in through the ear by him who 
 hurls the fiery darts of death would not this 
 release alone be proof enough of its superior 
 condition? But to this added the surround- 
 ings of its soul there, impulses to holiness, in- 
 centives to holiness, acts of holiness, all making 
 sanctity supremely delightful; spirits of the 
 redeemed, sights suggestive only of the awful 
 consequences, not the false delights, of sin ; ex- 
 periences of the saved ; above all, the presence 
 of the Saviour, the seeing of his pierced hands 
 and brow, the smile upon his face these fill 
 the soul with peace and purity. No serpent 
 is allowed to enter that paradise, but angels 
 and the Lamb are the inhabitants thereof. 
 
 It remembers, too, its brief experience of
 
 164 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 the effect of sin. The two or three moments 
 it spent on earth, it remembers, had much of 
 pain in them. It was sometimes dark there ; 
 fires of agony ran through its soul, and when 
 it left it it knows how dreadful were its suf- 
 ferings. These, it learns, are the consequences 
 of sin, and their memory grows in vividness by 
 the very brightness of surrounding scenes ; it 
 therefore, in view of this momentary history, 
 chooses freely Christ and holiness. Like Christ 
 it has never known sin, but it has known its 
 effects. Like him it suffered, yet without sin. 
 Like him it knows its workings in the body 
 and soul as a source of pain, but not of re- 
 morse, and though it did not come forth from 
 the struggle in its own strength triumphant as 
 did Christ, it came forth victor through Christ, 
 and with him possesses a free but full hatred 
 of that whose fruit in him was pain and death. 
 Thus the child infant, as if on probation, can 
 voluntarily choose holiness and abide of its 
 own choice in heaven. 
 
 * 
 
 Are not these sufficient reasons for rejoicing 
 at the early introduction of human souls into 
 the beauties and joys and purities and safety 
 of heaven ? Should you mourn their depar-
 
 TAKING CHILDREN 7,V HIS ARMS. 165 
 
 ture when you know they are adopted in the 
 family of God, the royal family of the universe ? 
 There they play in the paradise of God, they 
 run before the Lamb ; while he leadeth his 
 children to the living fountains of waters, they 
 shout and sing and laugh in heavenly inno- 
 cence and joy around his sacred steps. How 
 weak is our faith when it staggers at these 
 truths, perhaps rejects them as fables not even 
 cunningly devised ! 
 
 But the goodness and wisdom of God work 
 in us as well as in them in such events. It is 
 designed to teach us the vanity of earth, and 
 thus wean us from it. An adult has gleaned 
 something from earth, and we might say, 
 " Let me live his life, and I shall feel ready to 
 die." But an infant has achieved nothing. If 
 a spirit, a human spirit, one just like yours, 
 can give up earth entirely, cast it all one side 
 and yet live and grow in every faculty of its 
 being, what folly for us to cling to it, to bury 
 our souls in it, to say to this acre or two of 
 ground, this piece of merchandise, this hand- 
 ful of glittering dirt, this fanciful dress, this 
 giddy pleasure, this paltry hour, " Be thou 
 my god," and then to fall before it and satu-
 
 7 66 CHRIS TUS CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 rate every fiber of our spirits with its vile cor- 
 ruption! A little child shall lead them. 
 
 That infant who leaves your acres and 
 goods and wardrobe and ornamented rooms 
 and gewgaws as easily and as gladly as it 
 leaves disease and death behind it, let it 
 wean you from the earth. Let it show what 
 it must have, what you must have, for real 
 life, real happiness : the knowledge, happiness, 
 holiness that is in Christ, all attainable feebly 
 and partially on earth, all enduring in death 
 and eternity. 
 
 Let it show you the elements needful for 
 your entrance into, your enjoyment of, heav- 
 en. Not discontent at poverty, nor pride of 
 birth both are sinful ; the beggar's babe plays 
 with the queen's there. Not greed of gold; 
 gold buys no passports to that world of 
 light. Not love of this world ; that passion 
 breeds no love for the world to come. But 
 humility, godliness, with contentment; love 
 of Christ, glowing and growing, working in- 
 wardly and outwardly, and bringing the whole 
 nature into sweet and perfect subjection and 
 communion with him. Thus, thus alone can 
 you hope to meet your children. Thus may
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 167 
 
 God ordain through that babe strength to your 
 affections, your thoughts, your wills, without 
 your reading regretful censure in their eyes. 
 Thus may you dwell with them all your earthly 
 days amid the peace and purity, the glory and 
 love of heaven. 
 
 One or two reflections, and we close. 
 
 If you have seen the face of your babe 
 frozen in death, you know by painful memo- 
 ries the pangs that sight creates. Others may 
 talk lightly and carelessly ; may say a child so 
 young can have wrought itself but slightly into 
 your heart and can be taken out of it without 
 disturbing its natural and pleasant motions. 
 All this is seen far more clearly and truly 
 through the sad eyes of experience. " They 
 laugh at scars who never felt the wound." 
 If but the smallest segment be cut off from the 
 heart we shrink and wither, and cry out in our 
 agony as intensely as though the knife clove its 
 center. It does cleave the center. The ampu- 
 tation of a finger causes as much pain as that 
 of an arm ; the removal of an eye more than 
 the sundering of a limb ; and you know yet more 
 that these distinctions in loss, though present- 
 able to the reason, are not present to the soul
 
 168 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 in its hour of bereavement. You felt, when 
 that eye was plucked, a darkness gather over 
 the face of nature. That star gave forth its 
 serene and blessed light amid the stars of elder 
 birth and greater magnitude that blended dis- 
 tinctly their rays with the central sun of con- 
 jugality, and when that star was blotted out 
 a dimness came over the heaven of home, and 
 all things shared in the gloom its loss created, 
 and you say from the heart : 
 
 " The rainbow comes and goes, 
 
 And lovely is the rose ; 
 
 The moon doth with delight 
 
 Look round her when the heavens are bare. 
 
 Waters on a starry night 
 
 Are beautiful and fair ; 
 
 The sunshine is a glorious birth, 
 
 But yet I know, where'er I go, 
 
 That there hath passed away a glory from the earth." 
 
 This memory may have become dusty with 
 years. It may have been covered, like that in- 
 fant form, with the dust of earth, but per- 
 chance a new stroke falling on a neighboring 
 head may have awakened the soul to sensibil- 
 ity, if it needed any awakening. A new-made 
 grave may open to you your own again. You 
 may go again to the little mound to weep
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 169 
 
 there. Preserve the memory of that hour of 
 God's visitation. Preserve it as an incentive 
 to holiness, as a preventive to worldliness. If 
 that child had been left with you and had in 
 its growth put forth only the traits which its 
 heavenly education has developed ; if you had 
 seen it by your table clothed with the grace of 
 God, full of meekness, of humility, of love, 
 of wise suggestions and inquiries, shuddering 
 at the sight of the least sin, infected by no 
 craving of covetousness, strivings of ambition, 
 by no hungering for godless pleasure, yet full 
 of activity, of sportfulness, of sensibility to the 
 woes and sins of others, seeing its duties, and 
 feeling in its childish spirit an energy that 
 made it calmly and joyously discharge those 
 duties, rebuking your indifference with a " Wist 
 ye not that I must be about my Father's 
 business?" if as Christ grew at the knees 
 of Mary and Joseph that child had grown at 
 yours you would have felt the divine influ- 
 ence. Its purity, innocence, cheerfulness, un- 
 worldliness, intelligence of heaven all these 
 angelic traits would have kept your heart green 
 amid the deserts of life, your eye unswerved, 
 your soul heavenward. That babe has such a
 
 170 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 character. Through the grace of Christ its 
 education has been at his feet, its nature has 
 put on his beauties, and ere long you will meet 
 that form, not clad in infant robes, but in the 
 garments of a matured spirit, yet bearing in 
 its every feature the impress of the world in 
 which it has been trained. Your child it is, 
 one of your family, feeling the filial bond more 
 powerfully than any yet on earth can, more 
 than you do the parental tie. Take that child 
 into your family. Yet it will sit with you, walk 
 with you, talk, work, mingle perfectly with 
 you, and never stain its garments. Turn it not 
 from your door; shut not your heart in intense 
 worldliness and unbelief against its entrance ; 
 call it yours, and let it, as Christ led his father 
 and mother, lead you to the temple, to the 
 cross, to heaven. Keep the grave green ; keep 
 the cemetery in the soul where that infant 
 sleeps ever carefully guarded from neglect. 
 Let not the weeds of worldly desire, the thorns 
 of care, the rubbish which gathers upon neg- 
 lected duty, be found upon that sepulchral 
 spot in your heart. Live with that child, asso- 
 ciate with it, and you will find your life grow- 
 ing in purity and knowledge, your company
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 171 
 
 angelic and divine ; then you can feel the 
 truth of the poet's declaration, a truth written 
 on the reason, the imagination, the heart ; a 
 truth which never would be- doubted or gain- 
 sayable were we not so gross, sensual, earthly, 
 in all our habits and feelings : 
 
 " Sli is not dead the child of our affection 
 
 But gone unto that school , 
 Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 
 
 And Christ himself doth rule. 
 
 "In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, 
 
 By guardian angels led, 
 Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, 
 
 She lives whom we call dead. 
 
 " Day after day we think what she is doing 
 
 In those bright realms of air ; 
 Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, 
 
 Behold her grown more fair. 
 
 " Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken 
 
 The bond which nature gives, 
 Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, 
 
 May reach her where she lives. 
 
 " Not as a child shall we again behold her ; 
 
 For when, with raptures wild. 
 In our embraces we again enfold her, 
 
 She will not be a child ; 
 
 " But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, 
 
 Clothed with celestial grace, 
 And beautiful with all the soul's expansion. 
 
 Shall we behold her face."
 
 172 CHRISTUS CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 By thus constantly wiping the damps of 
 death from these memories, by thus keeping 
 at your hearthstone the spirits that are with 
 Christ, you will find 
 
 " That when the stream 
 That overflowed the soul has passed away, 
 A consciousness remains that it has left 
 Deposited upon the silent shore 
 Of memory images and precious thoughts 
 That shall not die and cannot be destroyed." 
 
 And you whose parental arms have not borne 
 a dead child to its coffin and its grave, have 
 precious lessons of love and wisdom given you 
 by your Parent, the Father of all the living on 
 earth, and in eternity. That son, that daughter, 
 in the dawnings of their immortality, may be 
 taken from you. God has left them with you, 
 but he has left with them fearful responsibil- 
 ities. If he takes them now they are saved. If 
 left, will not your conduct cause their everlast- 
 ing destruction ? No plate of the artist equals 
 that soul in its sensitiveness to impressions. It 
 sees your anger, your covetousness, your neg- 
 lect of prayer, your abandonment of social 
 Christian duties, your coldness and formality 
 in religion, your warmth and zeal in business 
 or pleasure ; it sees, it feels, it follows them all.
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 173 
 
 Said a gentleman to me once, a man of 
 wealth and the world : " I never felt the wick- 
 edness of swearing very forcibly but once. I 
 was riding over my grounds with my little boy, 
 two years old, just opening his lips in broken 
 language ; and stopping among some of my 
 workmen I gave vent to my feelings in a 
 profusion of oaths. On coming to another 
 body of laborers the little boy burst out with 
 all of the oaths he had just heard me use. I 
 felt an awful shudder at the sound." Perhaps 
 you swear before your children. What a mode 
 to teach them the existence of God, of Jesus 
 Christ, of damnation, of hell ! Perhaps you are 
 free from this sin ; but is not your example 
 making them covetous, forgetful of Christ, full 
 of the world, the flesh, and the devil? If God 
 should take them away now and they were 
 saved, would they not bear forever the scars 
 which your sins had inflicted, scars which, but 
 for God's mercy in removing them, would have 
 caused mortal, immortal wounds, and death ? 
 Remember, in putting you in that relation he 
 has made your first duty not to provide for 
 their bodies, but for their souls ; not to feed them 
 alone with earthly knowledge, but heavenly;
 
 174 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 and if you let business, or household duties, or 
 pleasures, or ambition, or any other public or 
 private end, distract you from this, the curse of 
 Eli will be upon you, the agony of David will 
 rend your heart asunder. You may be a great 
 minister like Eli ; you may be an able writer 
 and statesman and warrior like David ; you 
 may be a keen and successful business man or 
 farmer like Jacob; but if you minister not at 
 your own altar; if you use not your great tal- 
 ents in your own household ; if you keep clos- 
 est watch on your goods and customers and let 
 your family run wild, then shall you cry out 
 here and in heaven, " My gray hairs are 
 brought down with sorrow to the grave ! " 
 " O my son Absalom ! my son, my son Absalom ! 
 would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my 
 son, my son! " God in his mercy keep you from 
 such cries ! God give you grace to so live be- 
 fore your family, to so guide and nurture them, 
 not by words stiff and formal and rare alone, 
 but by frequent and loving talks on Christ and 
 holiness and heaven, by self-denial, freedom 
 from passion, invective, and slander, by benev- 
 olence, by zeal for Christ, by faithfulness at the 
 altar of home, in the class, the prayer room,
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 175 
 
 the church, at the sacramental table, that you 
 may say when brought to the bar of God, in 
 humility and gladness, " Here am I and the 
 children which thou hast given me." 
 
 Finally, that infant's grave addresses the 
 young. From its tiny mound, its pulpit, that 
 late translated spirit speaks to your heart in 
 most audible language : " He that hath ears to 
 hear, let him hear." " Take heed that ye de- 
 spise not one of these little ones; for I say unto 
 you, That in heaven their angels do always be- 
 hold the face of my Father which is in heaven." 
 The infant comes from God. He is your 
 youngest brother ; he is the last messenger 
 you have had from heaven. Let him keep 
 your childhood holy, fill your youthful hours 
 with infant innocence ; and as then Christ was 
 with you without your knowledge, now let 
 him be received in your heart and mind, 
 giving you the love and wisdom of heaven. 
 Submit to the guidance of that tiny hand. 
 Said we not, to be men of science we must 
 study nature in her infant form? To know 
 humanity every great philosopher goes to in- 
 fanthood ; and going thither you will find man 
 in his truest as well as loveliest earthly expres-
 
 176 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 sion. You will find a glad and gay instructor, 
 one who will lead you to solemn mysteries and 
 holiest duties with a heart full of love, of joy, 
 of religion. 
 
 " Dearest, to thee I did not send 
 Tutors, but a joyful eye, 
 Innocence that matched the sky, 
 Lovely locks, a form of wonder, 
 Laughter rich as woodland thunder, 
 That thou might'st entertain apart 
 The richest flowering of all art ; 
 And as the great all-loving day 
 Through smallest chambers takes its way, 
 That thou might'st break thy daily bread 
 With Prophet, Saviour, and Head ; 
 That thou might'st cherish for thine own 
 The riches of sweet Mary's Son. 
 Boy, rabbi ! heaven's paragon, 
 Revere thy Maker, fetch thine eye 
 Up to his style and manners of the sky." 
 
 Let the least of the children of God be your 
 teacher, your exemplar. If not from his liv- 
 ing, from his dead lips God has ordained 
 strength to your soul. He hath suffered in the 
 flesh and without sin. You are yet in the 
 flesh, perhaps deep in sin. Ere many days, 
 and the feet that carried him out shall be at 
 your door ; a heavier burden of flesh it will be. 
 May the angels that carry your spirit to the 
 judgment find no heavier burden than they
 
 TAKING CHILDREN IN HIS ARMS. 177 
 
 did when but yesterday they bore from your 
 midst an infant soul to Christ ! Live the life 
 you now live by faith in the Son of God. His 
 grace will enable you to keep as pure here as 
 if you. had gone up to him in your infancy. In 
 these lower regions, like those working beneath 
 the surface of the sea, we may breathe only 
 the air that is above us, that is fitted for us, 
 and drink none of the waters of death around. 
 We may thus gather treasures here for life 
 eternal, and when called up from the darkness 
 and sin of this world may have an abundant 
 entrance ministered unto us in the home of 
 
 the holy. 
 12
 
 " Behold, we count them happy which endure." James 
 v, II. 
 
 "One indeed I knew 
 In many a subtle question versed, 
 , Who touched a jarring lyre at first 
 
 But ever strove to make it true: 
 
 " Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds, 
 
 At last he beat his music out. 
 
 There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds. 
 
 " He fought his doubts and gathered strength, 
 He would not make his judgment blind ; 
 He faced the specters of the mind 
 
 And laid them : thus he came at length 
 
 " To find a stronger faith his own ; 
 And Power was with him in the night, 
 Which makes the darkness and the light, 
 
 And dwells not in the light alone."
 
 VI. 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS. 
 
 HOW manifold is the idea of happiness ! 
 One locates it in repose, another in 
 action; one in peace, another in war; one 
 in the indulgence of appetite, another in 
 the gratification of the higher senses, another 
 in the satisfaction of the affections, another in 
 the exercise of the mind upon its appropriate 
 objects, and yet another in the worship of God. 
 Among them all the characteristic of hap- 
 piness that James here speaks of would not 
 find place. Endurance happiness? Impos- 
 sible! The end may be happy, but not the 
 act. Yet both are true. They are happy 
 while they endure as well as because they en- 
 dure ; happy in the act as well as in the re- 
 sult of enduring ; and this because endurance 
 itself is happiness. For all the idea of hap- 
 piness is one and the same. From the child to 
 the Solomon, from the debauchee to the saint, 
 there is one common ground of agreement as 
 to what they seek. Diverse and contrary as
 
 180 CHR! STL'S CO A' SO LA TOR. 
 
 are the ways they pursue, false and fatal as 
 many of them are, the thing they wish is one 
 and the same. It is the sense of pleasure, the 
 feeling of satisfaction, the subtle something 
 which makes its possessor cry out, " If there 
 be an elysium on earth it is this, it is this." 
 
 Now this joyful consciousness the child seeks 
 and finds in his sports, the scholar in his studies, 
 the soldier in the terrific excitements of battle, 
 the saint in his prayers. Yea, more, the mar- 
 tyr finds it in the stake and gallows. Not that 
 they themselves are pleasurable, but duty is, 
 which duty they develop by compelling the 
 soul to meet them in its steadfast march. 
 
 On the other hand, even false pleasures have 
 in them a certain portion of happiness. No 
 man would drink fashionable and fatal bever- 
 ages did they not ravish the taste and exhila- 
 rate the feelings. No man would be a de- 
 bauchee, a theater-goer, a dancer, a gambler, 
 a thief, or even a murderer, were there not a 
 certain amount of pleasure in these forbidden 
 things ; in fact, that is the name they go by. 
 Says Byron : 
 
 " O pleasure, you are indeed a pleasant thing, 
 Although one must be damned for you, no doubt."
 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS. 181 
 
 "Not only pleasure's sin, but sin's a pleasure." 
 They are sinful pleasures; that is, delights that 
 have a momentary existence contrary to their 
 true nature and relations ; that are enjoyed in 
 spite of the will of their Creator and contrary to 
 that will ; that are unnatural expressions of na- 
 ture, and certain, if indulged, to lead the soul to 
 ruin. Yet they have one of the essential quali- 
 ties of happiness delight. The murderer who 
 stealthily approaches his victim, who plants 
 his revolver at his unsuspecting head, who 
 sends the deadly missile through that seat 
 of life, has a certain hellish delight in this 
 moment of hellish crime ; he thinks he is 
 happy. But these false and wicked counter- 
 feits of happiness employ not our thoughts 
 this hour. Let them howl in their outer abyss- 
 es like beasts of prey in savage glee over their 
 bleeding victims. We shall not admit them to 
 the glorious company of divine delights where- 
 on the apostle dwells. Nor shall the innocent 
 happiness of the child, the noble happiness of 
 the philanthropist, the lofty ecstasy of the 
 scholar, the unspeakable bliss of home de- 
 lights, absorb our thoughts ; but that happi- 
 ness only which is found in believing, and
 
 182 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 that joy which is in the Holy Ghost. It 
 is those thus happy in the beginning who 
 are permanently happy solely through en- 
 durance. 
 
 This is so for two reasons : 
 
 First, endurance itself confers happiness. It 
 is something for a soul to be sure that it can 
 face a frowning world. 
 
 The winter before our war broke out was a 
 time of great cowardice. Never was the heart 
 of the people so like water; never did our 
 knees so smite together. We were dissolved, 
 destroyed, annihilated. What has wrought 
 the change ? Endurance. Smitten to the dust 
 by more than one terrible blow, we were com- 
 pacted, hardened, by the act. We went forth 
 to our work with a more resolute soul and 
 with a steadier endeavor to never give up the 
 struggle till the last armed foe expired, until 
 our endurance was rewarded with success. 
 
 Yet those blessings are not our sole rewards. 
 The feeling that we have experienced through 
 this process of pain has been one of growth 
 and strength. In our weakest moments the 
 resolution never to yield to the power of our 
 enemies went through our sinking hearts like
 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS. 183 
 
 a charge of electricity. It put iron into our 
 blood and steel into our souls. It made our 
 natures granitic. The loose sand of a wild and 
 whirling will became indurated in the vehe- 
 ment heat. In this putting forth of strength, 
 what delight, solid, deep, substantial, has been 
 wrought within us ! We have felt that we 
 were changing from youth to manhood, from 
 unconscious to conscious life ; and in that feel- 
 ing has been our reward for our pain and suffer- 
 ing, our weakness and anguish. Out of weak- 
 ness we were made strong. 
 
 The same law holds in human experience 
 generally other than religious. The supe- 
 riority of the man over the youth is not in his 
 range of superficial observation or of resources 
 of pleasure, but in the solidity of his experience. 
 Endurance of sorrow has hardened the mar- 
 row of his soul. Endurance changes the weak, 
 flabby youngling into the self-poised, solid 
 man. It takes the volatile girl, tickled with 
 the latest fashion, smile, or novel, and trans- 
 forms her into the quiet, calm, resolute woman, 
 faithfully pursuing her appointed way, what- 
 ever of storm or darkness cover it. Without 
 such experience true growth is impossible.
 
 184 CHRIST US CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 Marble is mere limestone until crystallized by 
 fire ; diamonds charcoal till subjected to heat. 
 So the grand, crystallized, luminous soul is he 
 that has walked in the fiery furnace, joyful 
 amid the flames. 
 
 This is preeminently true in religion. A 
 Christian who merely takes the grace of sal- 
 vation as a gift from God, and never has it 
 wrought into his soul by his conscious use of it 
 in the tests of trial, is only a babe in Christ. 
 Thus the apostle treats him. Not a child in 
 years, but experience. However aged, however 
 wise, however versed in worldly affairs, he is 
 yet a babe in Christ unless he has carried his 
 faith through the heights and depths of con- 
 scious being, through temptation, affliction, 
 anguish, disease, and death. In this endurance 
 he finds a divine delight. " Is it possible," 
 exclaims that once besotted inebriate, the very 
 sight of a glass setting him on fire, " is it pos- 
 sible that I can look upon the wine when it is 
 red, when it moveth itself aright in the cup, 
 and be its victor?" The very thought is full 
 of happiness. " Is it possible," says that once 
 wretched blasphemer, " that I, who could not 
 utter the simplest sentence without covering it
 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS. 185 
 
 with profanity as with a garment, whose mildest 
 passion was vented in oaths, is it possible that 
 I can speak with pureness of language and be 
 angry even without sin ? " And thus thinking 
 he rejoices in God with exceeding great joy. 
 "Is it possible," says a third, "that I, who 
 once hated the ordinances of the Church, to 
 whom the thought of prayer was intolerable, 
 the class and social worship disgusting, who 
 longed nightly for the theater, the ballroom, 
 the gaming table is it possible that I can leap 
 to meet the sacred embraces of my God in 
 secret and social worship, that I can stead- 
 fastly reject the baits of pleasing ill ? " How 
 does his soul crystallize into solidity and beauty 
 and delight as he counts these victories o'er! 
 
 But yet more does endurance confer delight. 
 When sorrow bows the spirit down, when dis- 
 tress and anguish get fast hold of him, when 
 lover and friend are put far from him, and his 
 acquaintance into darkness ; when riches take 
 to themselves wings and flee away; when 
 parent, companion, or child is snatched from 
 his tenacious grasp ; when the earth again be- 
 comes without form and void, and darkness 
 and chaos are on the abyss of the soul, then,
 
 186 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 if the soul can wait patiently on its God, if it 
 exults in the God of its salvation, if it says, 
 "Not my will but thine be done," how wonder- 
 fully do the blessed ecstasies of ineffable peace 
 possess it wholly ! How one feels then that en- 
 durance is itself happiness ! How the knitting 
 of feeling to feeling, of thought to thought, 
 according to the divine intent, and through the 
 instinctive law of the divine working, makes 
 him feel that his nature, which was before 
 amorphic, a conglomerate mass of something, 
 nothing, now vile, now penitent, now sinking, 
 now soaring, now earthly, sensual, and devilish 
 that this misshapen, unshapen soul is be- 
 coming symmetrical ! You hold it fast to the 
 anvil, and God is heating and smiting it into 
 forms of beauty. The low is upraised, the 
 earthly is sublimated, the sensual is spiritual- 
 ized, and the whole nature begins to rearrange 
 itself around the divine center, and its every 
 face to reflect his likeness and image, as every 
 face of a gem does the sun that shines upon 
 it, and out of whose light and heat it became 
 a gem. The thoughts, the feelings, the re- 
 solves, the whole being, thrill with the life, 
 express the likeness, of the Redeemer.
 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS, 187 
 
 Thus the act of endurance breeds instant 
 blessedness. This sense of standing up for 
 Jesus against a flattering and a furious world, 
 against bereavement and desolation the ex- 
 treme experience which culminates in that 
 boldest word of Job, " Though he slay me, yet 
 will I trust in him" itself involves the highest 
 strain of happiness. It is the joy of duty do- 
 ing, the joy of courage contending, the joy of 
 Christ, that made him move calmly and confi- 
 dently through the awful trials of his faith. 
 This joy endurance gives. 
 
 Think you that our heroic brothers who 
 stood in the forefront of battle, quietly facing 
 the fierce assaults of their foes, were without 
 a sublime joy in that awful hour? Do you 
 believe they ever felt a kindred happiness 
 in the hour of dissipation, of mere pleasure, 
 however pleasurable, of common thought and 
 feeling nay, of the rarest moment of ecstatic 
 emotion that other earthly experience can im- 
 part? So the soul that fronts a legion of 
 devils, that assails them in the name of his 
 God, enduring their fiery darts, their ferocious 
 howlings, their wily flatteries, their malignant 
 assaults, walking like the pilgrim through the
 
 188 CHRIS TUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 awful valley of death with its legion of devils 
 leaping upon him, fearing no evil, wrestling 
 bravely with the hideous Apollyon, unsubdued 
 and unterrified, even when for a moment he is 
 under his feet such a soul in that same hour 
 experiences the richest ecstasy of bliss. Then 
 we feel the truthfulness of the poet's profound 
 conception : . 
 
 " Poor vaunt of life, indeed, 
 
 Were man but formed to feed 
 On joy, to solely seek and find and feast. 
 
 Such feasting ended, then 
 
 As sure an end of men. 
 
 Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed 
 beast ? ' 
 
 " Then welcome each rebuff 
 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough ; 
 Each sting that bids, nor sit, nor stand, but go ! 
 
 Be our joys three parts pain ! 
 
 Strive and hold cheap the strain ! 
 Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe ! " 
 
 Second, we count them happy that endure, 
 because thus alone they win, and what they 
 win repays the endurance. No affliction for 
 the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. 
 The fight, though indurating, is not the end 
 sought ; that is the peace beyond. Our great 
 generals do not believe their highest bliss is
 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS. 189 
 
 the rapture of the strife, but the calm of vic- 
 tory. So the apostle was not looking at Job 
 in his patience as the emblem of happiness, 
 but in the rewards of that patience. The 
 end of the Lord was set before them as a stim- 
 ulant to their persistence ; but the glory of 
 the Lord was the object that end had in view. 
 Thither, then, turn your eyes. We count 
 them happy that endure, because thus they 
 reach the goal ; they win the prize, they enter 
 into that for which they contended manfully. 
 They are partakers of the rewards of heaven. 
 
 What that reward is, who can tell ? Here 
 we pause. That book of vision is sealed. 
 None can open the book or unloose the seals 
 thereof. No man, however clear his spiritual 
 vision, however strong his faith, can rend this 
 veil asunder. And yet we are told to count 
 those happy that endure, for great is their re- 
 ward in heaven. That is all ; but that is 
 enough. It includes all. It includes rest for 
 the weary body, rest for the wearier soul, eter- 
 nal love, ineffable peace, all outer, all inner de- 
 lights, all lowly, all exalted pleasures ; rap- 
 tures of the mind studiously penetrating the 
 highest heavens of thought ; raptures of the
 
 190 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 heart flowing in ceaseless streams of inexpress- 
 ible love ; raptures for the senses in the beauty 
 of scenery in country and city, in the melo- 
 dies of praise and peace, the heavenly harmo- 
 nies that would create a soul under the ribs of 
 death, of odors that intoxicate with their 
 dainty perfection' of perfume, golden vials full 
 of holy odors of all that can ravish the right 
 though lower movements of our being. And 
 then, far above the objects of sense, of mind, 
 of heart, are those in which they all center 
 the sight, the knowledge, the love of the 
 Lamb of God. They shall see his face; they 
 shall follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth ; 
 they shall praise him day and night ; they shall 
 behold his glory ; they shall partake of that 
 glory. 
 
 Well might the apostle count those happy 
 that endure ! 
 
 If our brothers on the perilous ridge of bat- 
 tle could but have looked forward a few years, 
 or even, it may be, a few generations, and seen 
 the peace, the prosperity, the blessedness of 
 this land, washed of its awful sins, every soul 
 in freedom and brotherhood, in love and unity, 
 we might well count them happy in their endur-
 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS. 191 
 
 ance then. So if the fainting, trembling, almost 
 wavering Christian can only look forward to that 
 grand future when he shall lay his armor by, 
 when the fierce enemy can assail him no more, 
 when the sinful, carnal nature is laid forever 
 asleep, when life in its fullness, calm, and glory 
 shall flood his toilworn soul if he can but 
 once get a glimpse of the joy of his Lord, he 
 may well count himself happy if he endure. 
 
 Many applications of this doctrine and duty 
 press upon our attention. Consider a few : 
 
 First : They only are happy that endure. 
 "Ye did run well for a season, " will be said of 
 many a faint-hearted disciple. Yet what avails 
 it if they do not reach the goal ? Only that 
 side will be happy that endures to the end. 
 How oft we have seen one enter this battle for 
 eternity! He girds oahis armor with buoyant 
 hope. He moves out to meet the adversary 
 with assurance and zeal ; songs and smiles 
 around the revival altar escort him to the 
 field ; but when the battle begins, when Satan 
 presses sore, when it is not hymns of exulta- 
 tion and warm welcomes of Christian friends 
 that are to sustain him, but a hard, heroic, 
 steady will, a strong, quick, resolute soul, an
 
 ; .9 2 CHRIS TUS CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 eye of faith, an arm of God, then will it be 
 seen whether he will win or not. Not in the 
 prayer meeting, but in the street, is this battle 
 waged ; not over your Bible, but with wicked 
 books enticing you to their awful pages; not 
 among your Christian friends, but in the soli- 
 tude and secrecy of your chamber ; not in your 
 hour of prayer, but the hour of business: then 
 Satan masses his legions and hurls them upon 
 you ; then you may secretly kiss His hand, then 
 you may fall before him, then you must endure. 
 Only thus and then can you win eternal life. 
 Not he who pushed his bark half across the 
 unknown waters discovered America, but he 
 who endured unto the end won the real, im- 
 mortal laurel. 
 
 Second : You can endure if you will. It is 
 not possible for both sides to win in most strug- 
 gles ; one or the other must go down. It is 
 not certain whether you, my Christian brother, 
 will win. Failure arises from treason, and 
 treason only. God is on our side ; he orders 
 the battle ; he marshals his forces and sum- 
 mons us to the front. He cannot be defeated ; 
 we cannot be if we adhere to him. He is more 
 than all that can be against us. He will give
 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS. 193 
 
 you strength to endure to the end. You shall 
 be victorious if you trust in him. No storm 
 shall be great enough to wreck your vessel, no 
 foe powerful enough to compel you to flee. 
 Be of good courage, and he will strengthen 
 your heart. You shall overcome and sit down 
 on his throne even as he has overcome and is 
 set down on his Father's throne. 
 
 Third: Thus shall we resemble our Lord and 
 Master. " Consider the end of the Lord." 
 What a sight does that spectacle afford the 
 Son of God condescending to enter the arena 
 and contend with the enemy of man ; com- 
 pelled to listen to his subtle flatteries, to face 
 his intensest fury, to bow his back to the 
 scourgers, to walk amid the fires of hell ! But 
 he endures, even to the end, with all its mys- 
 terious conflicts unmeasurable by any crea- 
 tural instruments. He endures. He wades 
 the ocean, infinite in depth, infinite in storms, 
 an ocean of blood his own blood. Thus only 
 he mounts the other shores, the green banks 
 of divine deliverance. Shall we fail where he 
 triumphed? He triumphed that we might 
 never fail. Not for himself did he fight and 
 
 win. " Not for myself," he says, " did I subdue 
 13
 
 194 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 my enemies under my feet, but for your sake, 
 that you might follow me, fill up that which 
 remaineth behind of my afflictions, and share 
 with me the glory of eternal life." 
 
 Be ye followers of God as dear children ; be 
 soldiers like your Captain ; be faithful unto 
 death, that he may see in you the proofs of 
 his own courage and success, may honor you 
 with his eternal companionship and glory. 
 
 Fourth : If you are not of the class that en- 
 dure, beware ! Say not, " I am excluded from 
 this appeal. I have never enlisted, never served, 
 never fought. No charge of effeminacy or trea- 
 son can lie at my door. No ruin threatens 
 me." Is it so? Is he who tarries at home ex- 
 cused from service ? Is he the more excused 
 if he maligns the cause for which he should 
 contend and scorns its patriotic appeals? 
 How do you treat the skulking coward in the 
 time of war? And shall you escape because 
 you reject Christ and his cause ? Nay ! nay ! 
 They that know their Lord's will and do it 
 not shall be beaten with many stripes. They 
 that mock at God's claims, refuse to obey 
 his summons, busy themselves with their 
 pleasures, employments, and sins, cannot
 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS. 195 
 
 escape his final examination of their conduct. 
 You, too, shall stand before him. To you 
 shall he say, " I was a hungered, and ye gave 
 me no meat. I was sick and in prison, and ye 
 visited me not." " Cast ye the unprofitable 
 servant into outer darkness. There shall be 
 weeping and gnashing of teeth." Ah, my friend, 
 do you wish to hear that word ? You will hear 
 it so surely as you neglect so great salvation. 
 Let God be true and every man a liar. God 
 has said, has sworn it. Believe it, believe it ! 
 Hasten, hasten to enter his service ! Endure 
 hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 
 Persevere unto the end. Face a seducing, a 
 persecuting, world. Be God's now ; be his 
 while life shall last, and you shall be his 
 forever. 
 
 Finally, count it all joy when ye fall into 
 divers temptations. Ye are thus to prove 
 your allegiance. Repine not if the waters go 
 over your head, if the sword pierce your own 
 soul also, if you are permitted to fill up that 
 which remaineth behind of the sufferings of 
 Christ. Rejoice and be exceeding glad. Thus 
 shall you prove your allegiance, your fidelity, 
 your courage.
 
 196 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 The soldiers who stayed with Washington 
 the dreadful winter of Valley Forge who 
 doubted their loyalty? Who will yours if you 
 say and show your word true : " Though all 
 others forsake thee, yet will not I?" Thus 
 serving, the earthly becomes refined ; the agony 
 which may rend your soul brings celestial 
 strength. Under the anvil you rejoice that 
 God is molding you to a vessel unto honor. 
 Between the fuller's beating flails you feel 
 your vile robes are beginning to glow with a 
 lustrous purity. Tied to the potter's wheel, 
 whirling, and feeling as you whirl the sharp 
 knife of God cutting out the gross earth, 
 wince not. Shapes of beauty shall come 
 from that biting steel. You shall be carved 
 into divine symmetry ; you shall be orna- 
 mented with the exquisite figures which his 
 supreme art brings out of the rough clay ; and, 
 more than all, shall you be set apart for the 
 Master's use the cup of his blessings, praise, 
 and joy. 
 
 So sings the poet. Hear his strain : 
 
 " Ay, note that potter's wheel, 
 That metaphor ! and feel 
 Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay.
 
 ENDURANCE, HAPPINESS. 197 
 
 What though the earlier grooves, 
 
 Which ran the laughing loves 
 Around thy base, no longer pause and press ? 
 
 What though about thy rim 
 
 Skulls, things in order grim, 
 Grow out in graver mood, obey the sterner stress ? 
 
 Look not thou down but up 
 
 To uses of a cup : 
 The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, 
 
 The new wine's foaming flow. 
 
 The Master's lips aglow. 
 
 Thou, heaven's consummated cup, what need'st thou 
 with earth's wheel ? "
 
 " I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, 
 Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : 
 Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ; 
 and their works do follow them." Rev. xiv, 13. 
 
 " Her sun is gone down while it was yet day." Jer. xv, 9. 
 
 " O mother dear, Jerusalem, 
 
 When shall I come to thee ? 
 When shall my sorrows have an end ? 
 
 Thy joys when shall I see ? 
 
 " O happy harbor of God's saints ! 
 
 O sweet and pleasant soil ! 
 In thee no sorrow may be found, 
 
 No grief, no care, no toil ! "
 
 VII. 
 
 THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE BLESSED 
 DEAD. 
 
 \T 7ITH these remains before us, once 
 * buried, unburied, and to be reburied, of 
 one whom so many here admired and loved, 
 our thoughts flow in a somewhat different 
 channel from what they are wont to do upon 
 such sad occasions. We think how the spirit 
 which once animated this form has been now 
 for more than half an earthly year shining and 
 singing in the glory and the bliss of heaven. 
 She has looked long upon the King in his 
 beauty ; she has been led often by the Lamb 
 to the living fountains of waters ; she has grown 
 familiar with the sights and society of that 
 celestial realm. What are her thoughts and 
 feelings at this hour of our still-continued 
 mourning? With what calm eyes of untrou- 
 bled joy she may even contemplate this scene 
 of sorrow. "Why," she may justly exclaim, 
 " why weep for me, who for these seven moons 
 of earth, without the consciousness of a mo-
 
 200 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 merit's having passed, have dwelt amid ineffable 
 glories, blessedness, and calm ? Why gather 
 over my long-vacated form, over this earthly 
 mold, and lament my heavenly transition ? 
 Nay, my friends, look up, believe my glory, 
 and be at peace." 
 
 Again we think of the strange fact in con- 
 nection with these remains. They have once 
 been committed to the grave; under the warm 
 skies of that torrid summer this dust was re- 
 turned to earth. There it has lain for many 
 months slumbering sweetly beneath the roses. 
 Again has it appeared from its grave and been 
 borne across the wild rolling seas, seeking a 
 pleasanter home in its native soil. The white 
 sheet of winter covers the earth with its pall, 
 and the wandering body will gladly sink to its 
 rest beneath its frozen covering. See the sad- 
 freighted vessel working its weary way against 
 the hostile billows. 
 
 " I hear the noise about thy keel ; 
 
 I hear the bell struck in the night, 
 I see the sailor at the wheel, 
 
 I see the cabin windows bright. 
 
 " Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife. 
 And traveled men from foreign lands ; 
 
 And thy dark freight's a vanished life 
 And letters unto trembling hands."
 
 THE BLESSED DEAD. 201 
 
 It moves slowly forward as if it were, as it is, 
 a hearse, and drops its anchor in quiet waters, 
 by the side of the busiest and noisiest haunts 
 of men. 
 
 Thus comes the dead again from its grave. 
 Not as in the days of Christ at his summons to 
 be reclothed with mortality, not as in the hour 
 which is coming at that same summons to be 
 clothed with immortality, but with its grave- 
 clothes still about it, with its corruptible see- 
 ing yet no incorruption, with no light leaping 
 out of its eyes, no color flushing its pallid face, 
 no life making it rise up and walk. The grave 
 is here yet, with all its horrors, with all its 
 darkness. We have brought the charnel house 
 into the house of God. We have moved the 
 tomb into the temple. The funeral train pass- 
 ing from grave to grave halts at this altar, but 
 not to hear authoritative words of life spoken 
 into its dusty ear. No Christ stands over it 
 with this recreative word. It is for the living, 
 not the dead, that it is here. For us, not for 
 itself, doth it pause here on its last journey 
 and allow us one glimpse at the couch where 
 the sleeper lies, ere it enters its final chamber 
 in the silent halls of death.
 
 202 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 Pausing thus in our sorrowful presence, what 
 may we so fittingly dwell upon as the words 
 John heard out of heaven ? With everything 
 that addresses the sight appalling ; with a 
 face of love already changing into the earthy 
 mold, out of which it was compacted in ra- 
 diant beauty and life ; with a seven months' 
 residence in the grave, giving to it a far 
 more deathly character than they wear who 
 are moved from the couch to the coffin, and 
 are thus to our sensibilities more among 
 the living than the dead this body has 
 dwelt among the tombs. It has so long since 
 left this upper air that it has ceased to be 
 esteemed as one of its inhabitants. It has 
 become a companion of the dead more than of 
 the living. 
 
 To rise above the depressing feelings which 
 such thoughts create, to take even these long- 
 dead remains in the arms of faith, to fill these 
 long-sightless eyes with more than their 
 earthly brightness, to make these long-silent 
 lips musical with more than their former mel- 
 ody and love, to fill this long-inanimate form 
 with celestial vitality, we must turn from it to 
 the word of God, we must listen with John to
 
 THE BLESSED DEAD. 203 
 
 the voice from heaven, " Blessed are the dead 
 which die in the Lord." 
 
 How that word broke upon his ear in that 
 rocky isle amid the pains of exile and brutal 
 banishment ! In a den far worse than that 
 which confined Bunyan, while his eyes were 
 also unsealed to hardly less divine revelations, 
 with heathen tortures of every grade of cruelty, 
 from the most brutal to the most subtle and 
 severe, the aged servant of Jesus Christ is 
 comforted by visions more sublime than has 
 ever before unveiled their splendors to mortal 
 eyes. He saw the wonders of heaven and hell ; 
 he looked down the future of earth and beheld 
 as in a mirror the conflicts and conquests of 
 the cross ; he pierced the thick folds of the 
 grave and triumphed over this last enemy, 
 hearing through ears of flesh the sweetest 
 sounds of heaven. He had been in the midst 
 of most contrary visions. Now he looks, and 
 lo ! a Lamb is standing on Mount Zion with one 
 hundred and forty-four thousand around him, 
 their foreheads glowing with the divine name, 
 their harps and voices pouring forth the new 
 song with a volume, a majesty, that no human 
 ear can hear or heart conceive. Again the
 
 204 CHRIST US CON SOL A TOR. 
 
 vision changes, and an angel is flying in the 
 midst of heaven scattering the everlasting 
 Gospel like divine manna over all the earth ; 
 and yet another properly following him, who 
 declares that the diffusion of the Gospel has 
 resulted in the destruction of Babylon, that 
 great city which had made all nations drink of 
 the wine of the wrath of her fornication ; and 
 then his successor appears proclaiming the 
 unending torment of the worshipers of this 
 false beast, the murderers of the holy and the 
 just, who shall be tormented in the presence 
 of the holy angels and in the presence of the 
 Lamb ; and then, as if this dreadful sight 
 made him flee in horror from the vision, he 
 sees no more the ascending smoke of that tor- 
 ment blackening the skies with its gloom, he 
 hears not the unutterable groanings of those 
 who have no rest day nor night. Another 
 voice comes stealing through the smokeless 
 ether a voice most musical, that might "cre- 
 ate a soul under the ribs of death " " fall- 
 ing like a falling star " from out the heavens, 
 and sinks into the becalmed heart of the 
 seer. " I heard a voice from heaven." That 
 voice is full of authority as of sweetness. It
 
 THE BLESSED DEAD. 205 
 
 says to the hearer, " Write ! " Take that stylus 
 and record what I command thee. Not for 
 thyself alone, but for hearts the wide world 
 over and all time through that are widowed 
 for my children whom I have taken from their 
 arms. " Write ! " that every suffering saint 
 may feel courage in enduring his great fight 
 of afflictions. " Write ! " that a light above 
 the brightness of the sun may shine upon 
 every holy grave. " Write ! " that every 
 tempted soul may be thus incited to resist 
 his enemy. " Write ! " that every fascinated 
 sinner, led away of his own lusts and enticed, 
 may fear the hour when these words will not 
 gladden the hearts of his survivors, and may 
 flee to Him who alone can make his dead body 
 as his living soul lustrous in the light of eternal 
 life. " Write ! " " Blessed are the dead which 
 die in the Lord." Even now, saith the Spirit, 
 when persecutions rage the fiercest, when 
 death in its most violent and dreaded form 
 rushes upon us like beasts of prey even now, 
 answers the Spirit, in response to the voice, as if 
 a duet were being sung in heaven : " Blessed 
 are the dead which die in the Lord." 
 
 With such a voice from heaven dropping its
 
 206 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 distillment into our ears and hearts, we may 
 pleasantly, even among the darkness and dis- 
 solving nature, dwell upon the inspiring theme 
 the blessedness of the dead that die in the 
 Lord. Why are they blessed ? 
 
 First, because they rest from their labors. 
 Here is incessant, painful toil. John felt in his 
 aged body the aches and infirmities of his long 
 life ; his hard life when a youth as a fisherman ; 
 his harder life as a footsore wanderer in com- 
 pany with the Son of God ; his later and se- 
 verer labors as a preacher, an itinerant, a suf- 
 ferer at the hands of his foes and even of his 
 brethren. How his worn-out frame looked for- 
 ward to rest ! Ours are less subjected to outward 
 hostility, yet not less subjected to toil and 
 weariness. We, too, feel the need of this bless- 
 edness. Earth is a state of toil, heaven of 
 rest. Earth makes its dwellers keep their life 
 within them through the sweat of their brows; 
 the inhabitants of heaven possess theirs in an 
 unconscious tide flowing down from the heights 
 of life eternal. All over the world man and 
 woman must rise to hard and ceaseless work. 
 Burdens lie heavy on every shoulder, " for man 
 must work and woman must weep." If a few,
 
 THE BLESSED DEAD. 207 
 
 a very, very few, fortunately escape the condi- 
 tion of physical toil, they do not escape that 
 of work. The mind of the merchant is more 
 worried than that of his clerk. The general is 
 more severely taxed than his musket-bearing 
 soldiers. Black care rides behind the officer. 
 The governor is the hardest-worked man in the 
 State, the president in the nation. 
 
 But chiefly is this labor spiritual. We con- 
 tend not against flesh and blood, but against 
 principalities and powers, against the rulers of 
 this world, against spiritual wickedness in high 
 places. How severe, how unceasing, is this 
 labor, ever contending against an unsleeping 
 foe ! With our souls attent at every assault, 
 watching and warring, we must spend our 
 earthly days. 
 
 Last, and not least, are the labors we discharge 
 for God and his Church. These were doubtless 
 chief in the apostle's mind. Our Christian life is 
 one of Christian work. Much of it is performed 
 only with the hardest labor. Against the calls 
 of weary nature we often come to the worship 
 of the sanctuary with a worn-out body ; we 
 drag ourselves to these heavenly duties. Our 
 Christian life in all its phases is work. There-
 
 208 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 fore we look forward to the hours of rest, and 
 cry with one who has now found the boon she 
 sought : 
 
 " For my heart that erst did go 
 
 Most like a tired child at show, 
 
 That sees through tears the juggler's leap, 
 
 Would now its wearied vision close, 
 
 Would childlike in His love repose 
 
 Who ' giveth his beloved sleep.' " 
 
 In contrast with this weariness heaven smiles 
 upon us, a place of rest. " They rest from 
 their labors" is the first element of that celes- 
 tial blessedness. Toil of body, mind, and heart, 
 toil against sin and self and Satan these are 
 changed to spontaneous, unwearied, invigorat- 
 ing exercises of soul and spirit. The lower 
 services in which we may then engage are 
 infinitely easier than the easiest we here per- 
 form. No play on earth is so delightful as the 
 meanest work of heaven. No outrushing of 
 human love upon its object is so unconsciously 
 self-conscious as the lowest exercise of heavenly 
 passion. They rest from their labors. They 
 move out on every line of life like the light 
 that streams fleetly and untired from sun 
 and star. The service of song, of study, of 
 ministration of the saints, of contention with
 
 THE BLESSED DEAD. 209 
 
 the devil and his angels, of simplest thought 
 and swifter love, whatever form and expres- 
 sion that infinite life assumes, it is without 
 weariness, without toil. " Blessed are the dead 
 which die in the Lord, for they rest from their 
 labors." 
 
 Yet again are they blessed because their 
 works do follow them. Every one on earth 
 desires such a competence as will secure him 
 an income after he has ceased from labor. If 
 it were told you that you could obtain by dili- 
 gent labor a fund which would be a constant 
 source of support to you through the unlimited 
 and unknown ages before you, it seems as if 
 every one would hasten to secure such a treas- 
 ure. Yet such an opportunity is offered you. 
 You may so invest the energies of soul and 
 body that they may supply your soul with new 
 life in every hour of that coining eternity. 
 How the work of Abel has followed him ! 
 What myriads have felt the strength of that 
 example and been sustained in multitudinous 
 temptations by his brave resistance of tempta- 
 tion at the cost of his life. So have the works, 
 and so still do the works, of Moses follow him, 
 
 and those of Abraham, and those of the proph- 
 14
 
 210 CHRIST US CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 ets and apostles and martyrs. The faith of 
 Paul, the love of John, the penitence of Peter, 
 areexhaustless springs, and even seas, that not 
 only refresh the generations of earth, but their 
 own souls in heaven. Good deeds can never 
 die. Death hath no dominion over them. 
 He who performs them wins for himself the 
 power of endless life. However obscure, how- 
 ever ignoble he may be, however humble his 
 service, he has opened a fountain whose waters 
 fail not. Like Alcaeus, which from its native 
 isle flowed through the salt sea fresh and 
 sweet, and bubbled up in the higher and 
 wider lands of the continent, so does this 
 deed of yours, this act of faith and grace and 
 love, flow from this little islet of time under 
 the salt sea of death and break forth in bright- 
 ness and refreshment on the boundless high- 
 lands of eternity. 
 
 Other grounds of the blessedness of the 
 righteous dead rise before us. They see His 
 face and his name is in their foreheads. They 
 hunger no more, neither thirst any more, 
 neither doth the sun light on them, nor any 
 heat, but the Lamb which is in the midst of 
 them doth feed them and lead them to living
 
 THE BLESSED DEAD. 211 
 
 fountains of water. They dwell upon the 
 mysteries and marvels of redeeming grace. 
 They fly on errands of mercy 
 
 " From star to luminous star, 
 As far as the universe wheels its flaming spheres." 
 
 They recline beneath the trees on the banks of 
 the living river, holding converse such as no 
 mortal may know ; a depth, a fullness, a sweet- 
 ness of love that poet never fancied nor love 
 felt. Above all is that all-embracing word 
 they see His face, and their joy is full. "All 
 my friends will be there and Jesus will be 
 there," were the dying words of one who has 
 now these five years been with him where he is. 
 
 " They sit around his gracious throne, 
 And dwell where Jesus is." 
 
 O, the blessedness of the dead who die in the 
 Lord! 
 
 Two thoughts conclude our remarks : 
 First, the brevity of her life does not prove 
 that life unfinished. A miniature may be as 
 perfect as the full-sized picture. "That life is 
 long which answers life's great end." The end 
 of life is to fear God and keep his command- 
 ments. A completed life is one rounded with 
 a perfect faith. No true life, in one sense, can
 
 212 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 be complete here or ever. It is a line, not a 
 circle ; a line of infinite extent, along which 
 the expanding soul unwearily travels. But an 
 earthly life, though brief as a summer's day, if 
 it exhibit the graces of Christian faith, has ac- 
 complished its mission. Christ exclaimed, at 
 the age of thirty-three, " It is finished ! " Paul 
 cannot say the same until seventy winters have 
 withered his frame, and even then with a far 
 less sense of completeness than was felt by his 
 Lord and Master after three years of his min- 
 istry. Abel finished his course early, Methu- 
 selah late ; Stephen died young, John in the 
 total decrepitude of exhausted age; John the 
 Baptist was a youthful preacher when suddenly 
 summoned away, Peter went trembling with 
 years to his cross and crown; John Huss as- 
 cended in his chariot of fire while still in his 
 early prime, Polycarp carried the weight of 
 eighty years to his triumphant death. So will 
 it always be. " Her sun goeth down while it 
 is yet day," will yet be said over many a maid- 
 en's coffin. " He dies in the flower of his 
 days," will yet be placed on many a headstone. 
 But, long or short, if you have given your heart 
 to Jesus, if you have served him with a hum-
 
 THE BLESSED DEAD. 213 
 
 ble and steadfast mind, your life will have a 
 finished beauty that all will admire and long 
 to imitate. Your name will be as ointment 
 poured forth. Your friends and foes shall 
 alike arise and call you blessed. 
 
 But, again, remember that only those who 
 die in the Lord have this blessedness pro- 
 nounced upon them. The dreamy ears of 
 John caught no words saying unto him, 
 " Write, Blessed are all the dead, for all die in 
 the Lord." Nay, there was silence as to many 
 a silence how deep, how dreadful ! It is a 
 night of impenetrable darkness. A flash of 
 light falls on a single spot ; it not only makes 
 that spot the brighter, it makes all else the 
 darker ; the gloom is the thicker by contrast 
 with that radiance. So the grave is covered 
 with a pierceless pall. Heavy, thick, solid as a 
 mountain of coal, stands this black wall of 
 death. A light comes glimmering sweetly from 
 the heavens and rests upon some graves ; 
 through the churchyard you see these glitter- 
 ing mounds. But that light only makes the 
 unilluminated graves the more awfully dark 
 and dreadful. No brightness there ! Alas ! 
 alas ! how great is. that darkness ! " Where
 
 214 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 shall the wicked and the ungodly appear?" 
 " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." 
 What is their fate who do not thus die? No 
 light upon their faces, none upon their graves, 
 none upon their futures. We cannot say 
 this doctrine is of human device. Here is 
 a confirming word out of heaven. Nay, here 
 is the originating and establishing word. Man 
 would save all loosely and indiscriminately, 
 as criminals would never punish criminals. 
 God from heaven declares the difference. 
 What a difference! How unutterable! How 
 awful ! 
 
 Let this picture hang in the gallery of your 
 memory with that ever-increasing company of 
 those you have known and loved in the flesh, 
 that have put off the earthly and put on the 
 heavenly. Among them all shines His counte- 
 nance more marred than any man's, who gave 
 them the grace by which they triumphed over 
 death, sin, and hell, and are forever resting and 
 rejoicing in the heaven of heavens. So may 
 we serve and wait that when our hour comes 
 we too may smile upon the fatal messenger, 
 cast ourselves gladly into his once fearful arms, 
 and be borne to the glorious company who
 
 THE BLESSED DEAD. 215 
 
 have washed their robes and made them white 
 in the blood of the Lamb ! 
 
 " Then weep not, if you love her, that her tedious toil is done ; 
 O weep not, if you love her, that her holy rest is won. 
 There should be gladness in your thoughts and smiles upon 
 
 your brow ; 
 For will she not be happy there ? Is she not happy now ? 
 
 " And you will learn to talk of her ; and, after many years, 
 The tears which you shall shed for her will not be bitter tears ; 
 When you shall tell each other, with a fond and thankful pride, 
 In what purity she lived and in what peacefulness she died."
 
 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall 
 into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it 
 bringeth forth much fruit." John xii, 24. 
 
 " The path of duty was the way to glory : 
 He that walks it, only thirsting 
 For the right, andjearns to deaden 
 Love of self, before his journey closes, 
 He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 
 Into glossy purples, which outredden 
 All voluptuous garden roses. 
 
 " The path of duty was the way to glory : 
 
 He that ever following her commands, 
 
 On with toil of heart and knees and hands, 
 
 Through the long gorge to the far light has won 
 
 His path upward, and prevailed, 
 
 Shall find the toppling crags of duty scaled 
 
 Are close upon the shining table-lands 
 
 To which our God himself is moon and sun."
 
 VIII. 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 
 
 T^\EATH itself is rarely serviceable to the 
 *~s living. The testimonies of the dying 
 may avail for our warning or comfort. Their 
 mode of meeting the last enemy, their looks and 
 words as they pass into the shadow, may have 
 influences baleful or blessed upon the survivors ; 
 but this is the service the ever-living soul pays 
 to the anxiously peering soul. It is not from 
 the death itself that any virtue goes out ; that 
 is still a " cold obstruction," imparting no life 
 to the living. It is yet a masked battery that 
 must be assailed and subdued. It is victory 
 over it that gives it all its value, as battlefields 
 are famous not because of themselves, but be- 
 cause of the deeds done there. Nay, more ; it is 
 like famous fortifications subdued, that silently 
 commend their conqueror. So death in the 
 Christian ordinarily is only made to praise its 
 destroyer. But there are some instances in 
 which it can be turned to absolute benefit. 
 The dross becomes gold, the foe becomes
 
 218 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 friendly, the battery is turned against itself, 
 death is the seat of life. " Out of the eater 
 came forth meat, and out of the strong came 
 forth sweetness." 
 
 This occurs in only one instance among 
 the innumerable modes of earthly departure. 
 Only one can be said to fulfill the conditions 
 of the text, the dying grain that brings forth 
 much fruit : it is when death is voluntarily 
 surrendered for the sake of the truth. 
 
 One may die ever so patiently and submis- 
 sively. The mother may unclasp her dying 
 arms from her babe and calmly leave her nurs- 
 ling to the slings and arrows of outrageous for- 
 tune. The husband may submissively resign 
 his companion to the harsh embraces of the 
 world. Every such sort of tender resignation 
 to inevitable fate is touching, is religious, is valu- 
 able in itself. But the stroke that compels 
 such submission is without vitality. As well 
 say that the block, or the gallows, which occa- 
 sions the heroism or saintliness of a Mary A. 
 Rowland, a Jane Grey, an Algernon Sidney, or 
 a John Brown, is itself praiseworthy as to say 
 that such endurance of fate makes the fate it- 
 self honorable.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 219 
 
 Here as elsewhere in all questions of moral- 
 ity, voluntariness is the vital center. Had not 
 Christ said, " I lay down my life for myself," 
 his submission would not have subdued death 
 and led captivity captive. It is because of 
 the freedom, by which, being able to live, he 
 chose to die, that his death was fruitful. 
 
 But this freedom must be exercised for high 
 and holy ends, else it is even more ignoble than 
 compulsion. If one says, " I have power over 
 my life, I hereby take it away," his name is cast 
 out as evil, second only to his that violently 
 snatches away the life of his neighbor. His 
 life is his, not to destroy, but to preserve. He 
 can sacrifice it only at the especial command of 
 God. If this command gives him the privilege 
 of obedience or disobedience, sets before him 
 death and life, and says "Choose ye," at the same 
 time impressing most upon his conscience that 
 the choice of death is agreeable to the divine 
 will, then his acceptance of death not only 
 casts a flush upon that pallid face, not only 
 clothes the ghastly horror with a momentary 
 loveliness not its own, but transforms it into a 
 creature full of life, bestowing of its fullness 
 unto all generations.
 
 220 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 Such a death is the martyr's, when the utter- 
 ance of a single word, one prostration in the 
 house of sin, or, as in the case of Peter and 
 John before the Sanhedrin, the high court 
 of the ancestral faith, silence alone, will secure 
 liberty and life ; and when the soul, rising su- 
 perior to the fears that confront it, and even 
 consenting not merely to the surrendering of an 
 arm or the out-plucking of an eye, but to the 
 entire destruction of the body, willingly and 
 prayerfully lays this great sacrifice upon the 
 altar, surpassing Abraham's courage in that 
 it raises the knife, not over another, but over 
 himself such a soul exalts death into honor 
 and power and makes it bring forth much 
 fruit. 
 
 Into this kind of dying came the self-sacri- 
 fices of our soldiery. Not that the ordinary 
 deaths of soldiers, even when volunteers, have 
 this high and faithful nature. Thousands of 
 Americans hastened to Mexico professedly to 
 avenge our nation for insults or to wreak pay- 
 ment for defaulters, but really to enlarge our 
 then enormous slave empire. The volunteers 
 in such a cause, though unto death, gain no 
 divine laurels. No more do the men of the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 221 
 
 South who so freely cast themselves into the 
 arms of destruction and laugh at its approach. 
 They are volunteers of him who is the father 
 of death. His wages, as his servants, will 
 they receive. In eternal dishonor shall their 
 names shine forth. Men who, for the sake of 
 a lie, perpetuate the most fiendish system 
 that has cursed the earth, overthrow the most 
 beneficent government that ever existed, gain 
 full charter for every unbridled passion, that 
 they may indulge not in momentary rapine 
 and lust, as the French myrmidons in the 
 sacked towns of Mexico, but, with an unceas- 
 ing, universal hideousness of crime, devot- 
 ing one third of their people to the purpose 
 of traffic and the more hellish purposes of 
 passion such soldiers, however brave, can 
 have no honors from man or God if, under the 
 impulses of pride and profligacy, they hurl 
 themselves against the balls and bayonets of 
 righteousness and liberty. Mere voluntariness 
 of self-sacrifice does not insure the divine and 
 abounding vitality which Christ commends in 
 word and act. It must have in it the mar- 
 tyr element. Without this it is nothing, or 
 worse than nothing. With this it is instinct
 
 222 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 with life. Our soldiers are substantially mar- 
 tyrs. They are a sacrifice freely offered for 
 the salvation, not of the law alone, but of 
 right, of justice, of piety, of Christ. They are 
 akin to Abel, who clung to the right at the 
 cost of his life ; to Isaiah, who laid his life 
 upon the altar of principle : to the apostles, 
 who counted not their lives dear unto them- 
 selves ; to millions of faithful ones who have 
 resisted unto blood, and who rejoice that they 
 were counted worthy to fill up that which re- 
 maineth behind of the sufferings of Christ. 
 
 How do these deaths produce life ? Look- 
 ing at them we can easily see how those of our 
 soldiers shall have like fecundity. 
 
 Their deaths were productive of life by 
 the firmness and consistency which they im- 
 parted to the principles they advocated. Prin- 
 ciples are mere emotions unless compacted by 
 action. It is easy to talk virtue ; the difficulty 
 is to act virtuously. This difficulty arises from 
 two sorts of foes, the outward and the inward. 
 The latter is the fort to be attacked. We 
 must conquer ourselves. Virtue must sit sov- 
 ereign in our souls. Then come the inner- 
 works ; we must fortify our virtue against the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN' SOLDIER. 223 
 
 seductions and against the assaults of Satan. 
 It must take flesh, be revealed in life and 
 action. If attacked, it must resist. If offered 
 death or dishonor, it must say calmly, but reso- 
 lutely, " Get thee behind me, Satan!" If Sa- 
 tan will not get behind, but leaps upon and 
 seeks its destruction, it must still say, "Thou 
 canst not prevail over me, O mine enemy." 
 If then its enemy and God's casts it into 
 prison and makes its feet fast in the stocks, if 
 it is hated even to death, in those hours virtue 
 is in a rapid state of crystallization. The in- 
 choate and filmy mass of resolves and desires 
 is become strong, hard, and brilliant as the dia- 
 monds of angels. Virtue becomes a pillar of 
 salt, not a type of vengeance and backsliding, 
 but of savor, of glory, of health, of life to all 
 generations. How the world casts^ reverent 
 eyes on Stephen with his uplifted face smitten 
 alike by the stones of his murderers and the 
 glory of his Redeemer ! Never will it cease 
 to paint and carve the tired but resolute Ma- 
 donna, the youthful Sebastian shot through 
 with many arrows, the flayed Bartholomew, the 
 roasting Lawrence, the beheaded Paul, the 
 crucified Peter, and, above all, Him who trod
 
 224 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 the wine press of the wrath of God alone, 
 whose pierced head and hands and feet and 
 side bear testimony to his sufferings and en- 
 durance. .These bear witness to the strength 
 of grace ; they are characters cut in the crystal 
 of the New Jerusalem. In them death is trans- 
 figured. Its fearful aspects are lost in celestial 
 beauty, its devouring destruction in abounding 
 life. Whoever studies them feels the stirrings 
 and strengthenings of the divine power they 
 shoot forth. Life and the despairing soul of 
 the struggler, or the dead soul of the supine, 
 alike awake and arise under their stimulating 
 presence. 
 
 Thus does death, when voluntarily suffered 
 in behalf of principle, become the very center 
 and author of life ; thus does the repulsion be- 
 come attraction, its weakness strength, its de- 
 formity beauty. Even its sin, of which it was 
 by nature the wages and consummation for 
 sin when it is finished bringeth forth death 
 under the mighty transmutations of grace be- 
 comes holiness itself. So that death is no more 
 death ; it is life eternal. That is the hour and 
 the power of light ; that reveals the glory of 
 virtue; that changes the black and burning
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 225 
 
 coal into the white throbbing diamond. We 
 wear the jewel of such death over our hearts 
 as our chief ornament. We proudly set it on 
 our foreheads, " Death baleful and horrible ! " 
 Look there ! See the glory of that dying. See 
 that concentration of principles. That soul 
 was offered release on conditions of simple 
 obeisance to idols of present popularity and 
 power. It scorned deliverance on those terms. 
 It hasted to meet the threatened punishment, 
 and lo ! the victim becomes the victor. Pain 
 becomes pleasure, death is made alive. 
 
 How mightily doth principle grow and multi- 
 ply in such ground ! The black lava becomes 
 a fruitful soil which nourishes the richest of all 
 the vines of Europe ; whose wine, so rare, is 
 called by the seemingly profane name of 
 Lachrymre Christi, or tears of Christ. Is it 
 not a prophetic rather than a profane name? 
 Does it not teach us that the most deadly 
 soils, the very waves of the lake of fire and 
 brimstone, under the influence of divine shine 
 and shower, can become as the garden of the 
 Lord? that indeed the tears of Christ, pa- 
 tient and steadfast unto death a dreadful soil 
 
 distill exquisite balsam for every fainting 
 15
 
 226 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 soul ? Thus is death fruitful when voluntarily 
 embraced for the sake of truth. 
 
 But such death is life because of the zeal 
 it imparts. It is not only a life revealer, it is 
 a life imparter. We behold, we feel, the ener- 
 gies of such victories. As we walk this gallery 
 of the real Caesars, conquerors of themselves 
 and sin, we feel that they confer upon us their 
 gracious powers. They walk with us; they 
 descend like the angels into the garden to 
 strengthen us in our great agony. How Paul, 
 in prison and approaching death, must have 
 been fortified with the animating calmness and 
 courage of Stephen ! How later worthies have 
 been upheld by the vigor of their earlier lead- 
 ers! The heroes of faith enumerated in the 
 eleventh of Hebrews, who out of weakness were 
 made strong, have moved millions of kindred 
 souls for like fierce encounters. Every French- 
 man was a Napoleon in the day of his power. 
 So was every Englishman a Wellington. So 
 was every American a Washington. The idol 
 of the age reproduces himself a millionfold on 
 the reduplicating mirror of the human heart. 
 Thus doth principle embodied in sacrifice 
 spring up and bring forth fruit a hundredfold.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 227 
 
 Who reads the heroic life of Judson that does 
 not say, " Let me live such a life of the right- 
 eous?" Who gazes upon the cell of Huss, or 
 the green grassplot where he completed his 
 struggle and victory, that does not exclaim, 
 " My soul would be alike faithful unto death ? " 
 The places where the good man meets a vio- 
 lent fate are vastly nearer heaven than the 
 quiet chambers whence he is called to God. 
 These are shrines of power ; they recreate the 
 souls that visit them. The center of an Oxford 
 street where the fires curled around Cranmer's 
 head and Latimer's form; the little cattle- 
 penned market place of Smithfield, with its 
 ever-burning altar, where the sacrifice of Rog- 
 ers, and hundreds of other victims, is ever con- 
 suming and never consumed ; the spot where 
 Paul showed that his counting not his life 
 dear unto himself was not a vain boast, and 
 where Peter was girded by another and carried 
 whither he would not, yet did not refuse to 
 go these, scattered over the earth, are the 
 ever-blooming gardens in what would other- 
 wise be a wilderness of dry bones. They make 
 man's life seem something be something. 
 They feed the wasting soul with strength and
 
 228 CUR 1ST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 joy. We eat of their faith and are made 
 strong. We drink of this divine brook in 
 the way of our pilgrimage and lift up our 
 heads. 
 
 Thus does the incarnation of principles in 
 the last and mightiest trials of life change the 
 whole character of death itself and make it the 
 highest of the revelations of human strength. 
 Out of the dead lion comes forth the reviving 
 honey; out of the awful darkness breaks 
 forth the illustrious morning ; out of the un- 
 utterable weakness leaps unutterable strength ; 
 out of the very offspring and product and 
 even divine punishment for sin rises the per- 
 fection of beauty, holiness, and power. The 
 truth spreads and prevails in the very act and 
 article of its seeming overthrow. 
 
 Thus is it in the principles involved in this 
 struggle and the hero martyr in which they 
 are embodied. Though these principles are 
 not the complete and highest expression of 
 revealed truth, they are its lesser and vital em- 
 bodiment, and if the testifiers of the fullness 
 of the Gospel even unto death minister to the 
 eternal salvation of man, no less do these who 
 bravely lay down their lives for the political
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 229 
 
 and social regeneration of the race. If we 
 look at these principles, we shall see the saintly 
 service of their advocates. 
 
 We have dwelt on the great principles 
 involved in this struggle because we do not 
 class the death of him whom we have gathered 
 together to sympathize over among those who 
 fall by ordinary casualty. It was not by acci- 
 dent or disease that he perished ; not by an 
 unknown and indiscernible visitation of God, 
 but by a clear and conscious sacrifice of him- 
 self, as much so as was that of Stephen or Paul. 
 He enters the list of those who, Christ says, 
 " lay down their lives." Has he a right to the 
 honors of martyrdom ? That depends on two 
 points : First, were the objects for which he 
 died such as God especially approves and for 
 which he calls his servants to offer up their 
 lives? And, secondly, was he himself a con- 
 scious and willing servant of his Lord and Mas- 
 ter in the highest duties and services to which 
 he summons every soul? The first, we have 
 seen, is such that God approves. If there was 
 ever a war justified in heaven since the war 
 that occurred there when rebellious angels 
 sought to break up its union and annihilate its
 
 230 CHRJSTUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 authority, its liberty, its virtue, that war is the 
 one we are waging. 
 
 If any lives were ever justly sacrificed upon 
 the bloody field of battle, then are those 
 we have poured forth in that category. Did 
 Zwingli fall for the defense of Protestant liber- 
 ties, with the approval of Heaven upon his 
 course ; did Ziska and Gustavus Adolphus and 
 the Elector Frederick and a great multitude of 
 adherents give their lives rightfully for the re- 
 demption of Germany from the yoke of papacy ; 
 did Cromwell rightfully kill with fire and sword 
 absolutism in England; did our fathers plant 
 themselves, with God's blessing, upon Lexing- 
 ton Green, at Concord Bridge, and at Bunker 
 Hill? then do the patriot soldiers of this 
 nation serve God in their heroic sacrifice. 
 They seek the perpetuation of liberty, its 
 extension, its consolidation. They die for the 
 dearest and grandest of human rights that can 
 be conferred upon man. They are and shall 
 ever be enrolled upon the holy list of martyrs 
 to principle, to truth, to ,God. But are they 
 saints, worthy martyrs and confessors of a 
 worthy cause? That depends upon whether 
 they personally accepted and served the Lord
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 231 
 
 Jesus. Many have been slain in a good cause 
 that were not good men. Millions followed 
 Moses into the wilderness seemingly accepting 
 God as their Lord in preference to the idols of 
 Egypt ; yet we are told God was angry with 
 them and slew them in the desert because of 
 their unbelief. It will not do to let down our 
 great principles of religion any more than it does 
 our principles of liberty, though these seemingly 
 stand aside for the moment. A wicked, profane, 
 drunken, licentious soldier who dies in battle 
 is not an heir of heaven, though he offer him- 
 self freely for a noble cause. Mercenary or 
 baser motives may prompt his conduct ; and if 
 the motive is noble, the conduct must also be, 
 if he would be crowned lawfully in heaven. 
 
 Our friend had joined the army of Christ 
 before he did that of his country. He had 
 served his Lord before he did his general. 
 
 To us remain certain duties which we must 
 not omit to mention. We must cherish the 
 memory of these patriot souls. They give 
 their lives for us. They seek to save this 
 nation from destruction. They seek to inaugu- 
 rate the era of human brotherhood. By their 
 deaths we live. Let us not forget them. We
 
 232 CH JUST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 should erect monuments to their honor ; we 
 should frequent their resting-places ; we should 
 dwell upon their virtues ; we should tell the 
 story of their valor to our children and children's 
 children ; we must also emulate their patriot- 
 ism. They gave their lives. What give we? 
 They are martyrs. Are we worthy to be their 
 friends and brethren ? Are we selfish, cold, 
 timid, contentious, groveling ? or do we let their 
 spirits raise ours to their own exaltation ? Re- 
 member for what they died. If they did not 
 see all the great truths involved in this struggle, 
 they did the chief. Their souls thrilled with 
 the loftiest enthusiasm. They were caught in 
 the inspiration that moved like a whirlwind 
 divine over the whole land. How they were 
 lifted up and borne forward through pain, and 
 hunger, and peril, and battle, and bloody death ! 
 How that flag that lolls so spiritlessly before 
 your careless eyes stirred their souls with 
 divinest fire ! Let us feel the mighty impulse 
 that possessed their souls. Let us dedicate 
 ourselves to the great ideas for which they laid 
 down their Jives. Let us carry forward this 
 truth the brotherhood of man in Christ. Jt 
 may be that many a bloody hour shall pour its
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 233 
 
 rain on us before that blessed morning shines. 
 It may be that we shall be called to follow them 
 into the conflict and the consummation. Let 
 us not fear to follow where these lead. Let 
 us, too, be willing to die for the salvation of 
 this land, which is the salvation of all lands. 
 
 Our heroes leave the country they die for, 
 the commander they fight under, the comrades 
 they fight with ; but 'tis not so with Christ's 
 soldiers. They go to the country for which 
 they fight even in dying for it. They see and 
 serve their great Commander forever. They 
 meet their old comrades in arms, and rejoice 
 with them to all eternity. In heaven's armory 
 they hang their warworn weapons. Above 
 the throne waves their rent and riddled but 
 triumphant flag. Among its gardens they are 
 instantly and eternally healed. Seek now, 
 flow, that glorious service. Dedicate your- 
 selves to Christ and your country, to truth 
 and to God. Be a witness for it with your 
 tongue and your life, and, if it be the will of 
 God, seal it with your death. Then shall you 
 enjoy the honors in earth and heaven that 
 shall ever be paid to martyrs for the cause of 
 man, the cause of God.
 
 " For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face 
 to face." I Cor. xiii, 12. 
 
 " Calm on the bosom of thy God, 
 Sweet spirit, rest thee now ; 
 
 E'en while with us thy footsteps trod 
 His seal was on thy brow. 
 
 " Dust to thy narrow house beneath, 
 
 Soul to thy rest on high ; 
 They that have seen thy look in death 
 
 No more may fear to die."
 
 IX. 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED. 
 
 \T 7"E have all seen beloved souls pass 
 * ^ through the gates of exceeding suffer- 
 ing and of death into the city, the city which 
 hath foundations of eternal solidity, whose 
 builder and maker is God. As we have beheld 
 them treading that path of agony unattended 
 by any earthly friend, as we have seen the 
 spirit writhing in its house of torture, and 
 finally, after days of struggling, escape from 
 its dungeon, our thoughts cannot help follow- 
 ing in speculation the path along which they 
 moved after emerging from the exhaustive 
 pains of the valley of death. And thus the 
 question arises, one of the most frequently and 
 earnestly asked, " What is the state of a de- 
 parted spirit ? " It has been asked by many 
 here when the waves of bereavement have 
 flooded their hearts. It is asked by all who 
 are aroused from the stupefying power of this 
 present life to a recognition of the life to come. 
 Is this a forbidden question ?
 
 236 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 Does God say to our curious spirits, stand- 
 ing at the gates of death, " Thus far shalt thou 
 come, and no farther? " Has he created such 
 a fence, dropped such a veil, between this world 
 and the next that of it we cannot catch the 
 least glimpse, strain we our eyes ever so tire- 
 somely ? Is even to guess at the fate of the 
 departed, sin ? Every irrepressible, God-given, 
 and God-blessed affection denies this to be his 
 will concerning us. Every onward running 
 thought of our minds confutes it. Every in- 
 stinct of our nature permits, nay, demands, its 
 indulgence. 
 
 The language of inspiration conspires with 
 these aspirations of our nature and is full of 
 references to the state of departed spirits. It 
 presents the condition of good and bad. From 
 Job the eldest to Revelation the youngest 
 of the Scriptures, God the Holy Ghost has 
 brought before immortal man more than hints, 
 even gives direct and unavoidable testimony 
 as to the state of the dead. Christ in his para- 
 bles, his reproaches, his discourses, presents it. 
 We have no controversy, then, with those who 
 make this a subject of examination. We do 
 not believe the paths of speculation are forbid-
 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED. 237 
 
 den if we tread them with reverent feet, with 
 a recognition of the only source of knowledge 
 on this subject, the word of God illuminating 
 the nature of man ; and with a recognition 
 also that the only object for which these dis- 
 closures are made is to lead us to see that the 
 essential evil of man is sin, and his chief work 
 to obtain Christ and holiness. 
 
 Ought we to allow a solitary thought to wing 
 its way into those unknown skies? Should 
 we launch our bark of speculation on those 
 untried and shrouded waters? We have an- 
 swered. If our flight conforms to the known 
 properties of those spiritual heavens, we shall 
 not, like Icarus, find our wings melting from 
 us and ourselves dropping into the sea of 
 earthly wandering and death. If our vessel 
 follows God-given charts and stars and compass, 
 we may make the isles of the blessed, visit in 
 a degree that undiscovered country, gain some 
 knowledge of those coasts that are nearest 
 the earth, of the condition of those inhabitants 
 that have lately landed, through the surf and 
 amid the rocks of death, upon its peaceful 
 shores. "For now," says the apostle, "we 
 see." " We see," indeed, though it be through
 
 238 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 a glass, darkly; or, as this ought to read, we 
 see as in a glass, guessingly in an enigma 
 is the very word used, in a riddle, in a guess. 
 The mirrors that they used were of steel and 
 brass and water, and as the reflection in these 
 is dim and dark, yet perceptible, so is the re- 
 flection which comes to our eyes as we look 
 into the future world ; and as the figure which 
 we see is a reflection of ourselves, so the por- 
 trait we draw of the state of the departed soul 
 is a reflex and image of our own state here, 
 the representation of the essential features of 
 our spiritual nature in its new conditions of 
 being. 
 
 We shall not startle you, then, with novelties 
 or discoveries. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard, neither have entered into the heart 
 of man, the things which God hath prepared 
 for them that love him." " I was caught up 
 into the third heaven, and saw things which 
 it is not lawful nor possible to utter." We 
 know nothing which has not been known 
 from the foundation of the world. We can 
 only sift the few grains from the barns upon 
 barns full of chaff which the silly though 
 half-pardonable dreams of man have raised
 
 THE ENIGMA SOLI' ED. 239 
 
 and garnered. The Hindoo, Indian, Moham- 
 medan, Papal, Mormon, Spiritualist, Univer- 
 salist heavens we pass by, with all the stuff 
 that dreams are made of, which are found 
 in otherwise evangelical writings, and ask the 
 question, What does God in his word and 
 in our Christianized consciousness reveal to 
 us as to the state of our departed Christian 
 friends? We say " Christian," as we wish not 
 to look downward now. We would stand gaz- 
 ing up into heaven. We will follow, so far as 
 he permits, those who die in the Lord. We 
 will -see as in a dark steel mirror, guessingly, 
 the beloved soul who is in the bosom of the 
 Father, who is led by the Lamb by the side 
 of the still waters, in the midst of the green 
 pastures of glory. 
 
 There is much of our present selves that we 
 do not see herein. Our bodies are all blotted 
 out of that looking-glass. Our bodily surround- 
 ings, clothes, food, houses, lands, sceneries, 
 cities, animals, trees, factories, railroads, books, 
 pictures none of these can we see, even ever 
 so dimly. We may guess as we will, there is no 
 foundation for our guesses, no answering of these 
 human things in the glass of heaven. They may
 
 240 CHRIST US CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 be there; they may not. We know nothing; we 
 have no right to believe anything about their 
 being there. We do not see in this glass niany 
 of the inward experiences which we see in any 
 mirror that reflects our inward earthly state. In 
 the glass of heavenly life no face of agony is seen, 
 no sigh or tear dims its surface, no hunger, or 
 thirst, or sleep, or weariness, or sickness, or sor- 
 row, or pain, or death ; none of the grosser ap- 
 petites, none of the unpleasant experiences of 
 the soul here, are stamped on that mirror. 
 "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
 more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor 
 any heat." "And God shall wipe away all tears 
 from their eyes ; and there shall be no more 
 death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall 
 there be any more pain : for the former things 
 are passed away." As you gaze into the upheld 
 glass you see no wan face pinched with poverty 
 and hunger; you see no bowed Rachel weep- 
 ing ceaselessly, refusing to be comforted ; no 
 frame twisting and tossing with the rackings 
 of unspeakable and unendurable pain; no face 
 clad in the ghastly and repulsive features of 
 death ; all these have passed away, blessed be 
 God, have passed away forever !
 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED. 241 
 
 As you look in that glass you see not the re- 
 flection of the tempter. The sneering, scowl- 
 ing, flattering fiend does not stand at your 
 right hand as he does if you look aright into 
 the glass which portrays your present nature. 
 No besetting serpent sin coils around your 
 heart there, stealthily poisoning its sweetest and 
 most secret juices. Pride, vanity, lust of the eye, 
 lust of the heart, unbelief, carnal-mindedness, 
 dislike of duty, are the legion of devils which 
 beset and surround the heart of the best Chris- 
 tian, which are present to his eyes whenever he 
 sees that heart, and which possess partially the 
 hearts of most of the disciples and make them 
 timid, time-serving, and half-hearted Peters and 
 Thomases ; all these vanish from that specu- 
 lum. The soul of heaven has no such features 
 upon or around it. 
 
 What, then, is left ? Much ; all that is valu- 
 able and enduring. Wisdom, love, holiness, 
 everything needful for an eternal journey, an 
 eternal abode of progressive blessedness. We 
 shall not attempt to combine these elementary 
 faculties of our nature in their heavenly forms 
 nor measure their heavenly development. 
 
 Under what forms and degrees love exists in 
 16
 
 242 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 these, how can we realize? Under the light 
 in the currents of eternal vision and influence it 
 must swell beyond all power of human suspicion 
 or fancy. The sweeps of imagination, the swift 
 and vast reaches of reason, the height and 
 length and depth and breadth of love, what 
 mortal tongue can tell, what mortal nature 
 conceive? What then, again we ask, is left 
 for us in this glass ? What did Paul, what may 
 every one, see ? 
 
 First, a consciousness of being alive. If not 
 conscious, they must be either asleep or dead. 
 None believe them dead. None, it seems to 
 me, can rightly believe them asleep. The body, 
 it is true, is said to sleep, and so intimate is 
 their connection, so certain their reunion, that 
 the Bible, as a book eminently human, speaks 
 sometimes of our being asleep : " Our friend 
 Lazarus sleepeth ; " " Those also who sleep in 
 Jesus." But these are explainable in the prac- 
 tical oneness present and to come of the soul 
 and body. There are other passages which 
 cannot be explained except on the ground of 
 the conscious life of the departed. " To depart 
 and be with Christ ; " " There appeared Moses 
 and Elias talking with him ; " "I am the God
 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED. 243 
 
 of Abraham. . . . God is not the God of the dead, 
 but of the living;" " I am thy fellow-servant, 
 and of thy brethren the prophets ; " " This day 
 shalt thou be with me in paradise." In every 
 vision of the Revelator 'where the departed 
 souls are introduced, they are awake and 
 active, walking, flying, singing. We believe, 
 then, the Scriptures teach that the heaven- 
 gone spirit is fully aware of its being alive, as 
 conscious of its life and all its attendant motions 
 as when in the body. Aye, as much more con- 
 scious as the heavenly, disembodied state is 
 superior to its earthly, flesh-walled condition. 
 
 We see in this mirror a continued love 
 for their earthly friends. " Hearts are just ; 
 hearts' loves remain." The last motions of 
 that heart were toward the dear ones that 
 gathered around it to behold through raining 
 eyes its departure. That father, how she 
 yearned toward him ; that mother, how devot- 
 edly she clung to her ; that husband, how his 
 name lingered last on her lips, as he agoniz- 
 ingly struggled through the engulfing waters 
 of death to grasp her; that child, how it sat 
 strong and immovable on the parental heart 
 while other loves foundered and went down !
 
 244 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 And shall we say that as soon as this heart has 
 escaped the body it ceases to love ? Away with 
 such blasphemy against these sacred affections ! 
 
 If God loves us in our earthly state, shall we 
 
 
 
 from the base of that throne whose summits 
 are the fountains of such affection, forget and 
 cease to love our earthly friends? If Christ 
 loves the Church on earth as much as that in 
 heaven, shall we, when we -have presented 
 there the certificate of our membership below, 
 signed by the Master and Head, and been ad- 
 mitted to its fellowship and duties, find our- 
 selves void of all interest in, or love for, those 
 we have left behind ? God forbid ! That soul 
 in heaven is as full of love as when it beat on 
 the heart of reciprocated affection through the 
 thick folds of flesh. How happy would your 
 child have been could it have had you accom- 
 pany her through the gates into the city ! 
 How perfect would have been your partner's 
 bliss in receiving and obeying the summons of 
 the Master could you have had an invitation 
 too, and so gone to the marriage supper above, 
 as you had to many on earth, hand in hand, 
 heart in heart ! This feeling is not interrupted, 
 broken asunder by death.- It is modified, per-
 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED. 245 
 
 haps, but not weakened. The loved ones there 
 love you as fondly as when those frozen lips 
 shot forth so feebly the last fires of their love 
 on your tearful cheek. But you may say, " If 
 they are so loving and interested, will it not 
 affect their happiness not to see us and be with 
 us?" We answer, If they know we are serv- 
 ing and loving God, they will be content, in 
 view of the exceedingly brief space which shall 
 elapse before we shall be with them " where 
 He is, and our joy shall be full." If you would 
 leave your house for a happier one 'with but 
 little regret did you know the rest of the fam- 
 ily would follow in a few days, if you would 
 wait in unalloyed content the return of a loved 
 one who had left the room but for a moment, 
 how much more should the angelic soul, 
 though full of love and desire for your pres- 
 ence, be calm, in view of the exceeding brevity 
 of the time before your arrival, compared with 
 the eternity you will spend together! You 
 can measure the time between leaving the 
 room where your beloved is, and instantly re- 
 turning, as a definite portion of your life, but 
 the interval between your entrance into heaven 
 and that of the last of your earthly friends,
 
 246 CHRIST US CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 though it may be scores of years in length, 
 you cannot measure on the line of the eternity 
 which shall follow that reunion. Hence, the 
 beatified ones, though full of love for you and 
 longing for your society, are not pining because 
 of your absence ; it is so brief, so immeasur- 
 ably minute, beside the eternity with which 
 they are constantly comparing it. 
 
 But, again : you may say, " If this affection 
 does not breed those sickening longings in 
 them which it does in us, though our love for 
 them is almost infinitely less than theirs for 
 us, will it not make them disturbingly anxious 
 for our salvation ? Will not their sensibility 
 of sin, their knowledge of its consequences, 
 their knowledge of our peril, make them un- 
 easy in their heavenly repose ? If the parents 
 of the most wisdom and piety and love are the 
 most anxious for the fate of their child, how 
 shall they not be tossed with the fever of fear 
 in their vision and feelings, in view of our sin- 
 fulness, in view of the entirely Christless life 
 of some of their kindred ? ' I answer, We make 
 nothing by saying that because this is a neces- 
 sary accompaniment of conscious life and love 
 here, therefore there is no love without it
 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED. 247 
 
 there. Does not Christ live? Is he not blessed 
 forever ? And yet is he not full of anxious 
 affection for his earthly children? Need the 
 parent enjoy less religion because his son is un- 
 converted ? The souls in heaven, like those on 
 earth, like Christ's, like God's, may, must, by 
 purity of nature, feel these fears ; yet they know 
 each person has his destiny in his own hands ; 
 they know God is doing all he can do to save 
 them ; they know, for they hear him, that Christ 
 is interceding for. them; they know that the 
 Spirit is going to them, that every power of 
 God is engaged for their salvation, and if they 
 refuse they refuse for themselves ; they alone 
 must bear it. 
 
 So knowing, so feeling, it does not make 
 them miserable to see the sinfulness, to fear the 
 failure, of those left behind. They may sorrow, 
 but still they rejoice ; they may say even in 
 heaven, as Paul did on earth, " I could wish 
 myself accursed from Christ for my brethren, 
 my kinsmen according to the flesh," and yet 
 say, " I rejoice evermore and in everything 
 give thanks." The other view dehumanizes 
 the saved soul. To make him ignorant and 
 careless of us, singing and shouting entirely
 
 248 CHRIST US COA'SOLATOR. 
 
 indifferent to our fate, full of conscious life yet 
 totally paralyzed in all the nerves of earthly re- 
 gard, because these nerves may thrill with anx- 
 iety and fear as well as delight, is making him 
 less than man ; is making our spirits, like the 
 spirits of beasts, go downward rather than up- 
 ward when they leave the body. It is enough 
 for a servant to be as his master ; and if Christ 
 is anxiously active, yet calm in an unspeakable 
 joy, if angels rejoice over a penitent sinner, 
 hence must sorrow over an impenitent one, 
 then these latest born into heaven may be full 
 of active love for us, though that does bring 
 with it anxiety for our salvation and sorrow for 
 those who are impenitent. 
 
 This objection is from the common root of 
 all heresy, namely, that it is impossible for 
 love to endure the presence of sorrow. God 
 cannot endure sorrow, some say, therefore 
 he is going to change it all to joy. God can- 
 not, others say, therefore he is going to put 
 out of existence those whose character can 
 only result in sorrow. Departed friends can- 
 not, hence they do not know anything about 
 us. Our cure for all this is man's free agency. 
 Self-responsible, with all the powers above and
 
 THE ENIGMA SOL VED. 249 
 
 beneath crowding around him, he moves on 
 his own track to heaven or to hell. We love, 
 angels love, God loves him, but his way we 
 cannot control. We will love him, God will 
 love him, though he makes his bed in hell. 
 But this, because he is master of his own fate, 
 and follows his own nature, shall not rend our 
 hearts with incurable sorrow. 
 
 A query arises under this head, natural but 
 not necessary : " Do these loving friends com- 
 mune with us?" We are apt to say they do. 
 
 " Oft the forms of the departed 
 
 Enter at the open door ; 
 The beloved, the true-hearted. 
 
 Come to visit me once more." 
 
 We see them in our room, at the grave, in our 
 dreams, in our hours of temptation, in our 
 hours of sin, in our hours of victory. There- 
 fore we say they are here. This is the keynote 
 of the success of Spiritualism the impression 
 that our friends are round about us, and our 
 desire to have them near us. Do you find 
 this reflected in your mirror? we ask St. Paul. 
 No response is returned, no hint that this is 
 the case ; not one. No such image, it seems 
 to me, is drawn upon the true glass which
 
 250 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 gives us shadowy hints of the departed. There 
 are ministers sent forth to minister unto them 
 who shall be heirs of salvation unto no others. 
 Remember, these lately gone maybe appointed 
 for that work, and they may not be. We have 
 no ground in reason or revelation for asserting 
 this to be a fact ; we have ground for assert- 
 ing they are somewhere and together. " In 
 my Father's house are many mansions. ... I go 
 to prepare a place for you. And if I go and 
 prepare a place for you, I will come again, and 
 receive you unto myself; that where I am, there 
 ye may be also." " Father, I will that they 
 also, whom thou hast given me, be with me 
 where I am." John saw them all together 
 a multitude that no man can number. If in a 
 place, then they are not scattered over the earth ; 
 they are not forever abiding in this gross and 
 lower air, full of colds and heats, storms and 
 darkness, sin and corruptions ; they are where 
 John saw them in the paradise of God. I see 
 no warrant for believing them to be always 
 near us ; I see many things against it. One 
 is that we should fall into the absurdity of our 
 friends who call up the spirit of Webster, 
 or Swedenborg, or some other worthy, in a
 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED. 251 
 
 hundred places at once, places hundreds and 
 even thousands of miles apart. A medium is 
 profaning this sacred hour in Boston, probably, 
 another in New York, another in Chicago, and 
 so on in a score, possibly in a hundred, places, 
 professing to embody the spirit of Washing- 
 ton, Lincoln, Franklin, or some other departed 
 person. We should be like them if we be- 
 lieved our brother, or sister, or child, or moth- 
 er, present with us at the same time that other 
 relatives miles, perhaps milliards of miles, away 
 believed they were with them. I see no ground 
 for this impression. They are interested in our 
 course ; they may be aware of our state ; but 
 this is more likely to be through the information 
 which souls leaving us for them shall carry to 
 them than through their own personal over- 
 sight. As friends are ever ascending from our 
 side to theirs, so, like news brought to us from 
 absent ones, by those going from us to them 
 do they ever learn of our prosperity or adver- 
 sity, health or sickness, faithfulness or sinful- 
 ness, rejoice as they hear of our approach to 
 them, in the training of our hearts in grace, 
 and in the good, though to us painful, provi- 
 dences of God. This is the farthest we can
 
 252 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 legitimately go ; this we can fairly, scripturally, 
 rationally conceive ; all beyond is fable, hav- 
 ing, perhaps, some basis of fact, perhaps not. 
 
 One question may come in here, often asked 
 and answered, yet still asked : " Shall we know 
 our friends when we reach heaven ? " Did Paul 
 see this darkly ? This is one of the urgent cries 
 of our hearts. Out of our darkness, out of our 
 sinfulness, we plead for light here. We cry 
 with the poet, 
 
 "Shall I know them in the sphere which keeps 
 The disembodied spirits of the dead ? " 
 
 Is there any ground for hope ? It seems to me 
 no hope that does not belong to salvation itself 
 is better anchored than this. Did not that 
 peculiar nature that has but lately left you, a 
 soul unlike any other in your family, go in its 
 own unchanged nature to God? Has not its 
 memories, its loves, its thoughts, its whole be- 
 ing, passed thus to him ? 
 
 Then when you meet it, your soul, which 
 grew to it, like a double cherry that is part- 
 ed, and yet though parted is united, shall as 
 easily recognize it as your face would its face. 
 Yea, more easily. For heart sees heart, love
 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED. 253 
 
 melts into love, as much more quickly and 
 surely than face detects face, as spirit is supe- 
 rior to matter. Did not the three disciples 
 recognize Moses and Elias? Does not every 
 redeemed one see and know the Lord Jesus ? 
 Did not Abraham and Lazarus become ac- 
 quainted? And if you can become acquainted 
 with others, how can you help knowing your 
 own kindred, your own heart and soul? No 
 doctrine that is not declared in so many words 
 in the Bible is, in my opinion, better estab- 
 lished than this : we shall know each other in 
 heaven. 
 
 But, again, to return from these obstinate 
 questionings to clearer revelations. The re- 
 deemed souls we see as in a mirror are greatly 
 interested in the cause of Christ. They may 
 be interested in other good things, progress, 
 prosperity, purity, freedom, intelligence ; but 
 of these we know nothing. These may be so 
 small and trivial as not to awaken any especial 
 interest. They are but for a moment ; they 
 are soon abandoned. Slavery, poverty, sick- 
 ness, all will be cast off soon. But relig- 
 ion, the success of the Gospel of Christ, the 
 salvation of sinners, the spiritual prosperity
 
 254 CHRIST US CON SOL A TOR. 
 
 of the Church, these things the angels desire 
 to look into. They rejoice over one sinner 
 that repenteth. They are ministering spirits 
 to the Christian or are intimate with those 
 who are. They know for what Christ died, the 
 value of heaven, the deliverance from perdi- 
 tion, the redemption of a soul. How their 
 experience magnifies this work ! As you, when 
 you became a Christian, felt a wonderful en- 
 largement of heart in these matters, as you love 
 the Church and are unspeakably anxious for the 
 salvation of sinners, so they are as much more 
 devoted to this chiefest work of God as the 
 experience of heaven is more than the expe- 
 rience of earth. Much as they may love their 
 relatives, they will love the Church more. That 
 is the ark on the mighty waters of iniquity, that 
 the pillar of fire in the night of universal sin 
 and death, that the only visible instrument of 
 salvation. For this they pray, to upbuild this 
 they would gladly leave the glories and the 
 rest of heaven. That this is the fact every re- 
 deemed soul can see, not only darkly, but with 
 the clearness of noonday. 
 
 Finally, they see and love Jesus. What- 
 ever doubts overhang the lower relations of the
 
 THE ENIGMA SOL VED. 255 
 
 translated Christian, no cloud settles down on 
 the summits. If they forget father and mother, 
 they do not forget Christ ; if they know not 
 us, they know him ; if they cease to love us, 
 they cease not day or night loving and praising 
 the Lamb. In the conversation of heaven they 
 will ask, " Did Jesus descend from the throne 
 of awful glory where he now sits? Did he 
 lay aside that glory, leave that throne, march 
 through those endless ranks of angels, down, 
 down, down to me? Didst thou, O God, my 
 Saviour, go through all that poverty, that in- 
 famy, that servitude, that friendlessness, that 
 shameful, that awful death ? And all for me 
 me, so weak, so wicked, but now so full of 
 unbelief, of pride, of murmurings ! How dare I 
 look upon thee ? how shall I dare to praise 
 thee?" It hardly seems but that there must 
 be weeping then when these visions and 
 thoughts possess the one new born into that 
 kingdom. Ah, yes, they shall see him as he is ! 
 
 " They shall fall at his feet, 
 And the story repeat, 
 And the Lover of sinners adore." 
 
 They shall gaze and gaze and gaze to all 
 eternity on Him who loved them and died to
 
 256 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 redeem them, to whom be glory and dominion 
 forever and ever. Amen. 
 
 These, then, are the features of that portrait 
 which Paul saw in the mirror of heaven. 
 These are all we can positively affirm under 
 the light of Scripture and reason of the inward 
 
 state of the redeemed conscious existence, 
 
 love for the friends they have left behind, love 
 for -the Church on the earth, love for Christ ; 
 all other exercises of their nature are entirely 
 problematical. Their employments we cannot 
 talk of without having too many ideas which 
 are solely material and hence totally unadapted 
 to their nature. Their rest is no such repose 
 as we think of. The Christians who struggle 
 through the last agonies are at rest in all that 
 conflict in their souls ; and the sinless calm, the 
 deliverance from temptations and doubts and 
 fears, is all the rest we can properly ascribe to 
 them. The ranges of their thought on themes 
 of salvation we know nothing about. We 
 know a few letters in that alphabet, but the 
 language, the oratory, the poetry, the philoso- 
 phy, the music of that theme must all be left 
 to the unrevealed life of heaven. 
 
 Are you among those into whose dwelling
 
 THE ENIGMA SOL VED. 257 
 
 the white-winged messengers have come? 
 Have you seen the eye of the saintly beloved 
 lose its luster of intelligent affection? Have 
 you heard that loving voice, " like a bell with 
 solemn sweet vibrations," grow fainter, fainter, 
 fainter, and then cease? Have you been 
 possessed with queries and doubts as to their 
 essential life and love now? We show you 
 the glass of Scripture, the picture of inspired 
 reason ; they live, they love, they love you 
 they long for your sanctification ; they await 
 in a sacred flood of peaceful bliss your ascen- 
 sion to their seats; they may join their 
 prayers to those you send up for your consola- 
 tion ; they pray for your salvation if you are 
 yet in your sins ; the whole force of their regard 
 runs in this holy way for your redemption, for 
 your purification. 
 
 If you are a Christian, let these be comforts, 
 stimulants, to your soul. Believe God's word; 
 believe the express declaration of Christ ; be- 
 lieve the workings of your sanctified heart, 
 and let your life conform to this belief. Live 
 so that you shall satisfy them if they are per- 
 mitted occasionally to visit you ; live so that 
 
 when any saint ascends from your side to 
 17
 
 258 CHKISTUS CONSOLATOR. 
 
 theirs he may gladden their hearts with 
 tidings of your faithfulness ; live so that 
 when you follow their shining footsteps others 
 may see your robes in the transfiguring glory 
 of that hour, white as the light, so as no fuller 
 on earth could whiten them, and they may 
 reclasp you to their hearts with a recognition 
 of as great progress in you under the limita- 
 tions of earthly feebleness and temptation as 
 in them in the full freedom and force of 
 heaven. 
 
 And if you are not a Christian, be careful 
 how you let dreams of a future life blind you 
 to the true character of that life and the true 
 way of obtaining it. Dreams, it is an old and 
 true saying, go by contraries. Your sleep is 
 full of realizations of wealth, of beauty, of 
 fame. You wake to poverty, deformity, igno- 
 miny. The devil plays this trick on the slum- 
 bering sinner. He has gorgeous dreams of 
 heaven, its luxurious ease, its easy entrance, 
 its voluptuous enjoyment, all the stuff that is 
 found in multitudes of journals and of books 
 of this day, chaff of sleep, with not one grain 
 of true wheat in its swelling heaps. " As a 
 dream when one awaketh ; so, O Lord, when
 
 THE ENIGMA SOLVED. 259 
 
 thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image." 
 Yes, every image you see or hear in this 
 glass of futurity that does not see salvation by 
 faith in Christ and by works of righteousness 
 which his grace alone has enabled you to 
 do every such image is a delusion, a lie. 
 " Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the 
 dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Ask 
 yourself as you see the souls of beloved ones 
 wading through these waters, ask yourself the 
 solemn question of the poet : 
 
 " Into the Silent Land ! 
 
 Ah ! who shall lead me thither? 
 
 Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather, 
 
 And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand. 
 
 Who leads me with a gentle hand 
 
 Thither, O thither, 
 
 Into the Silent Land ? " 
 
 Soon you must go, soon will the tides of 
 life flow less and less along those vehement 
 nerves of yours, those tensioned muscles, that 
 ceaseless soul ; soon you must lie down help- 
 lessly and let the stern foot of Death trample 
 out your life with whatsoever measure of 
 agony he chooses to mete out to you. Soon 
 you must be drawn into that awful machinery, 
 and, like the raw material in the grasp of its
 
 260 CHRIST US CON SO LA TOR. 
 
 iron masters, your ragged and worn-out body 
 will be seized, regardless of all your struggles 
 and shrieks, regardless of all your bribes and 
 tears, regardless of your wealth, your beauty, 
 your wisdom, your duties to your family. It 
 will drag you between the crunching rollers, 
 through its twisted, rending wheels, and you 
 will come out what? Essentially the same 
 as you went in. With every outward feature 
 changed, every inward characteristic will re- 
 main. If your nature had Christian love and 
 Christian grace as its second and eternal char- 
 acter, that is there, transformed in the lus- 
 trous, living perfections of heavenly life. If it 
 is not there, the shapeless mass assumes the 
 horrid features of a fiend. The restrained 
 nature asserts its sovereignty. Christ gathers 
 to himself those that are his ! Satan claims 
 and stamps his own ! He who manages and 
 moves, he who hath the keys of death and 
 hell, who openeth and no man shutteth, who 
 shutteth and no man openeth he assigns 
 these diverse products to their appropriate 
 storehouse. " They shall come forth," he 
 says, " they that have done good unto the 
 resurrection of life, they that have done evil
 
 THE ENIGMA SOL VED. 261 
 
 unto the resurrection of damnation." May we 
 cry mightily and ceaselessly unto God that he 
 may give us that holy, that divine love and 
 life that shall brighten and strengthen as the 
 darkness and helplessness of death increase, 
 that shall make us to burn and throb around 
 his throne. 
 
 Then, then the mirror will be changed. We 
 who can but dimly see parts of ourselves in 
 this glass now, who see these parts as in the 
 blurred plate of the photographer, with no ap- 
 prehension of the new developments that may 
 be made after the picture is taken, with no 
 knowledge of other expressions and powers 
 not there revealed, shall then see face to 
 face, as a clear glass reproduces your exact 
 form. As a magnifying glass presents your 
 enlarged features, so then clearly, intelligently, 
 largely, shall you see yourselves. Now we 
 know in part, then we shall know even as we 
 are known. We shall apprehend all that we 
 are apprehended for of God ; we shall see our 
 nature as in its vastness and minuteness; we 
 shall see ourselves as God sees us. What a 
 promise ! Do you believe it ? Every one that 
 hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as
 
 262 CHRIST US CONSOLATOR. 
 
 God is pure. God grant that we who grope 
 after these elementary truths in the darkness 
 of earthly ignorance, and amid the storms of 
 earthly sorrow, may follow the true and suffi- 
 cient though feeble light he has given us ; may 
 not be blinded by the false lights the flatter- 
 ing and bewildering enemy has kindled all 
 around us; may walk steadfast in the way of 
 penitence and prayer and praise; may awake 
 in his likeness ; may see these stars of night 
 which we have watched and followed, while 
 others have filled their drowsy souls with se- 
 ducing dreams; may see them fading into the 
 dawn of death, into the sunrise of the heavenly 
 morn, into the blaze of everlasting noon !
 
 NOTES. 
 
 I. This sermon appeared in the New York Christian Ad- 
 vocate January 6, 1881. 
 
 II. This sermon was written February ig, 1849. It was 
 first preached at Amenia Seminary, New York, March 4, 
 1849. It was afterward preached at Wilbraham, Mass., 
 February 26, 1854 ; Roxbury, Mass., February 20, 1857 ; and 
 Cambridge, Mass., September 9, 1860. 
 
 III. This sermon was preached at Amenia Seminary in May, 
 1848 ; at Roxbury, October 24, 1858 ; Cambridge, April 29, 
 1860 ; and Maiden, Mass., April 5, 1863. 
 
 IV. This sermon was written at Maiden on Friday and Satur- 
 day, October 14 and 15, 1864. It was preached the follow- 
 ing day, October 16, 1864, at North Russell Street Charge, in 
 Boston, Mass. It was preached at Bennington Street, East 
 Boston, in December, 1864 ; Winthrop Street, Boston, Jan- 
 uary 9, 1865 ; Tremont Street, Boston, March 26, 1865 ; 
 Fitchburg, Mass., May 25, 1865 ; Bromfield Street, Boston, 
 August 10, 1865 ; Clinton Street, Newark, N. J., November 
 12, 1865 ; Maine, August 16, 1868 ; Westfield, Mass., July 
 II, 1869; and the Baptist church, Maiden, June 27, 1869. 
 
 V. This sermon has the following note prefixed: " Sacred 
 to the memory of Georgie (Georgie was his firstborn), who 
 died Monday eve, June 12, 1854, at 7:40 o'clock, and was 
 buried Wednesday eve, June 14, at 5 o'clock." " This 
 sermon was commenced Thursday afternoon and finished 
 Saturday afternoon." It was preached at Westfield, Novem- 
 ber 17, 1856. The lines that precede the sermon were affixed 
 to the manuscript as a " dedication."
 
 264 CHRIS TUS CON SOLA TOR. 
 
 VI. This sermon was written at Maiden, Saturday, October 
 I, 1864, and preached at North Russell Street, October 2. It 
 was also preached at Roxbury, September II, 1870. 
 
 VII. This sermon was "written on the occasion of the re- 
 burial of a young lady who was one of the first that went forth 
 to teach the freedmen soon after the capture of Port Royal, 
 ancj whose remains were borne back to Boston after lying 
 some months in the grave." 
 
 IX. This sermon was written in Roxbury on the occasion of 
 his sister Anna's death, which occurred Saturday, May 23, 
 1857, at 3:30 P. M. The sermon was "commenced May 30, at 
 10 A. M." "I wrote till 4 P. M., and finished it Sabbath 
 morning," his notes tell us. It was the " first sermon read 
 
 after Mary's , April 22." So the notes read. Mary 
 
 was his wife. He was rarely able to speak of her death.
 
 25831
 
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