A

LAMP TO THE PATH:

OR,

THE WORD OF GOD

IN

THE HEART, THE HOME, THE WORKSHOP AND THE MARKET-PLACE.

BY W. K. TWEEDIE, D.D.

WITH A PREFACE

BY H. L. HASTINGS.

BOSTON:

COPYRIGHT 1884.

H. L. HASTINGS,
SCRIPTURAL TRACT REPOSITORY,
47 Cornhill.

Transcriber’s Notes:

This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. The author's spelling has been maintained unless indicated with a Transcriber's Note due to:

Obvious spelling errors

Words with multiple spelling variations standardized with the most common form.

Punctuation and hyphenation has been standardized.

Footnotes are identified in the text with a superscript number and have been accumulated in a single section at the end of the text.

Transcriber Notes are identified in the text with a superscript number preceded by a ‘T’ and grouped at the end of the book following the Footnotes.

Works by W. K. Tweedie, D.D.

Of the Free Tolbooth Church, Edinburgh[T-1]. 3 vols. Uniform in size and style of binding.

GLAD TIDINGS; or the Gospel of Peace. A series of meditations for Christian Disciples. With a preface by H. L. Hastings.

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A LAMP TO THE PATH: or the Word of God in the Heart, the Home, the Workshop and the Market-place. With an introduction by H. L. Hastings.

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SEED-TIME AND HARVEST: or Sow Well and Reap Well. A Book for the Young. With a preface by H. L. Hastings.

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⁂ Address all orders to H. L. HASTINGS, 47 Cornhill, Boston.

CONTENTS.

[Preface] [CHAPTER I.]

RELIGION IN THE HEART.

The Heathen — The Jew — Jonathan Edwards — John Albert Bengel — Thomas Halyburton — Pascal.

RELIGION IN OUR HOMES.

The Father of the Faithful — Parents and Children — Eli — A Mother’s Power — Alfred the Great — Master and Servant.

RELIGION IN THE WORKSHOP.

The Christian Workman — A Workshop — Its Occupants — The Sabbath — Counsels — Infidelity — Its Root — Secularism — Harlan Page — John Pounds.

RELIGION IN THE MARKET-PLACE.

The Merchant Princes — Mammon — Counsels — The Perils of Business — True Enterprise — Its Limits — The Prevalence of the False — Financial Crises — Joseph Hardcastle.

RELIGION IN THE MARKET-PLACE—CONTINUED.

Mercantile Mania — The Tulip Marts of Holland — The Mississippi Scheme of France — The South Sea Bubble.

RELIGION IN THE PROFESSIONS.

I. The Physician: — Boerhaave[T-2] — Harvey — Hey — Jenner — Dr. John Cheyne. II. The Lawyer: — Lord Bacon — Sir Matthew Hale — Sir William Temple. III. Ministers of Religion: — Dr. Dodd — Other Illustrations.

RELIGION IN OUR SOCIAL INTERCOURSE.

The Scriptural Rule — Marriage — The Heroes of Truth — Luther — Calvin — Knox — Chalmers.

RELIGION THE CROWN AND GLORY OF MAN’S LIFE.

Its Director — Its Ornament — The Prelude to Life Eternal — Voltaire — Sir Walter Scott — Conclusion.

PREFACE.

An intelligent and skillful physician, vigorous, athletic, and courageous, used to pursue his professional duties by day or night without anxiety or apprehension. Often he was desired to use a lantern in his nightly journeyings, but he laughed at the idea of danger, and went his way. One night, walking in some slippery path, he fell; an injury resulted, followed by long months of weariness and pain, and finally ending in his death. It was a sad fall, and all for want of a lamp. Bitterly did he regret his self-confidence when it was too late to remedy the mischief which it had occasioned.

There are multitudes to-day who are wandering in darkness and walking in unknown ways. They are full of strength, and hope, and courage; they do not think that they are in danger; though caution is commendable in others. This world is full of darkness; clouds and shadows curtain it on every hand; the glooms of the present, the uncertainties of the future, and the shadowy mysteries of the great Beyond, teach us with emphasis that we have need of light, and light which men can never give us. We may draw wisdom from the experience of the past, but what we need is a knowledge of the future. This knowledge is not attainable through any human intelligence; it must come from Him who dwelleth in light, who is himself the light and life of men, and who sends out his light and his truth to lead and guide the sons of Adam. Of old it was written, “The commandment is a lamp, and the law is a light.” The work of the servants of God has been to turn the Gentiles “from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.” It is “the light of the glorious gospel of Christ” which illuminates the darkness of this world; and those who embrace that gospel become the “children of the light,” and are “not of the night nor of darkness.” Christ was “the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;” and “this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Being thus illuminated, and made “light in the Lord,” we are to “walk as children of the light;” and walking in the light as Christ is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.

Whatever course we may take in this life, whatever occupation we may follow, whatever profession we may choose, this divine light is needful to us all. We need God’s word, as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, to show us how to walk. We need it in the daily affairs of life; we need it in the field, in the workshop, and in the marts of business. We need the heavenly light to guide us in childhood, in youth, in manhood, in old age. We need it whether in poverty or in riches, in prosperity or adversity. We need it to show us what we ought to do to-day, and to guide us in our hopes and expectations of the morrow.

Of old it was written, “the entrance of thy word giveth light.” If we follow its guidance we shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Infidelity may threaten to break our lantern and to extinguish our light, but this is not what we want. It is not enough to extinguish the light we have; we need something better. Let the skeptic then tell us what is our duty here; let him unfold to us our destiny hereafter. Let him unravel the mysteries of human existence. Let him give us present peace and an assurance of future blessing, and we will give attention to his words. But we wish no one to extinguish the light we have, and leave us in the darkness of a midnight without sun or star, to be bewildered by the phantom lights of a false philosophy, and beguiled into the quagmires of doubt and unbelief.

As we trace the history of ages past, we find that the destiny of individuals and of nations has been foreknown and foretold. We find that men of God have looked out upon the great empires and cities of antiquity and foreseen their overthrow and announced their doom. Following in the track of history, we find these predictions have been fulfilled and are fulfilling to-day. Babylon is in heaps; Tyre is a place where fishermen spread their nets; Egypt is the basest of kingdoms; Nineveh is empty, void and waste; Jerusalem is trodden under-foot of the Gentiles; Capernaum is cast down to the depths of oblivion; Israel have been led away captive into all nations, and are scattered through every land; and abundant evidences before our eyes show beyond the possibility of doubt or question, that an Omniscient One has read the future, and that His Spirit has inspired the holy men of old who spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost, and revealed to mankind in advance the great events of human history.

We each need such a revelation as that; one which will tell us our present duties and our future prospects; one which will show us what is the will of God in this life, and what we may expect at His hand hereafter.

And such a revelation is given us, to inspire our hearts with hope, and to guide our feet in paths of safety. We have, in the written word of God, promises to cheer us, counsels to direct us, reproofs to admonish us; and a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto we do well that we take heed, as “unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day-dawn, and the day-star arise.”

It is this Lamp to the Path which a friendly hand extends to the wanderers and toilers in a benighted and sinful world; in the hope that many may turn their feet into God’s testimonies, and their faces towards that city where the Lamb is the light, and where gloom and darkness are unknown; and prove in their own glad experience the truth of the word of Him who said, “He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

H. L. H.

Boston, July, 1884.

A LAMP TO THE PATH.

CHAPTER I.

RELIGION IN THE HEART.

As years roll over us, and as our delusive expectations from earth and time slowly melt away, the complaint is very often heard that the world is growing worse. The truth is, that we are only then beginning to see the world in its true light. The visionary hopes which we once entertained have vanished, and the mirage is discovered to be neither a lake nor a stream. Perhaps we have had to eat the fruit of bitter disappointment or of blighted hope; and because our baseless anticipations have not been realized, we hasten to the conclusion that the world is fast sinking into hopeless corruption; that is, because the accounts which the Scriptures give have been found to be true, we are ready to suppose that the world is every year more and more distempered. Hence the peevishness of some—hence activities cramped—hence querulous complaints—hence, in a few cases, the very spirit of Ishmael, whose hand was against every man, while every man’s hand was against him.

SORROW AND ITS ORIGIN.

Against this, however, as against every form of error, we are carefully warned in the Word of God. “Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.”SORROW
AND ITS
ORIGIN. The truth is, they were not better—it is we that look at them from a different point, or try them by a different standard; in other words, we change. Our dreams have ended in the nothing whence they rose. We looked for only smiles and sunshine, and have had to grapple with very stern realities. We persisted in regarding this world as something very different from what the Word of God describes—a place where man’s only sure portion is grief; but have at length discovered that the Word of God is true. Hence our sorrow and disappointment; hence the morbid complaints, and the cheerless repinings of age not seldom succeed to the visions, the dreams, and the delusions of youth.

EXPLANATIONS.

But far from “saying that the former times were better than these,” we feel that never was there an age in which so much was done as in ours, to help forward the great cause of truth and the reclaiming of the world to God. EXPLANATIONS. We know that vice has been unmasked in most appalling forms; but that is because philanthropy has grappled with crime in its own dens, and dragged it into daylight, till thousands are revolted and appalled. We know that superstition is still trampling men in myriads into the dust, while the Word of God, and all that would elevate man from his deep degradation, is hated and put down wherever superstition has the power; but that is only because the systems which are antagonistic to the truth have been roused to more resolute efforts by the earnestness of the friends of man. And we know that oppression in many lands, is still goading multitudes to madness, immuring them in dungeons, or hurrying them to death; but that is only because the oppressor instinctively feels that the tide is rising which must eventually sweep him from his place.

PROOFS OF PROGRESS.

The struggles now made, then, to perpetuate the reign of bondage, and doom men to mental and spiritual vassalage for some centuries more, are symptomatic of a waning, not a waxing cause; and the philanthropist may accordingly rejoice. PROOFS OF
PROGRESS. Progression is the law of the universe; and all the powers of darkness cannot always, or long supersede it. If the bad be growing worse, the good are growing better, more strong, and more aggressive. They now realize their mission more than they did half a century ago. They are also more closely banded to promote it; so that, instead of joining in the cry that the former times were better than these, we are prompted to regard our day as signalized above most by its schemes of earnest philanthropy, its plans of mighty scope, and its luminous designs for gathering in the nations to the sway of the Prince of Peace. Now abideth faith, hope, and love, beyond most of the ages which are past: faith, which takes hold of Omnipotence, and therefore cannot be baffled; hope, which turns the future triumphs of the good and the true into present joy; and love, which exults in the prospect of man’s ultimate emancipation, according to the mind of God.

Meanwhile, all the crime beneath which our blighted earth is groaning, does not retard by a day the final completion of the eternal plan. Truth is spreading. Providence, hand in hand with grace, is slowly sapping the hoary systems which have long enthralled our race. Those who support the truth of God are more and more clearly ranged upon one side, and standing heart to heart in defence of the holy and the pure. Those who support error by oppression are more and more clearly ranged upon the other; and we need not feel more assured that the sun will rise in the firmament to-morrow, or that rivers will continue to hasten to the ocean, than that truth is slowly triumphing, and error gradually erecting its own funeral pile. Symptoms of these results appear equally manifest in the Church and in the world.

DOUBTS.

But in every department, men must labour for these ends. As God has given to every one his measure of power, he is to put it forth—or of light, he is to let it shine. The Christian indeed is pre-eminently a patriot. “Not one of us lives to himself;” and, in contemplating this subject, it has sometimes occurred to us to inquire whether the ministers of religion be sufficiently explicit, minute, and detailed in their lessons on the Sabbath. DOUBTS. Over thousands of congregations each recurring week, there are diffused from the pulpit, doctrines the most ennobling, allied, in many cases, to lessons the most cogent and pure. Line upon line is employed, if, by any means, some may be saved, and the truth of God carried, by the Spirit’s power, through the heart and the conscience to the hand and the life.

Withal, however, is there not reason to believe that there is still room for more precise and definite instructions than are sometimes conveyed? It is obviously one thing for a soul passively to acquiesce in a doctrine, and another thing to apply the truth to practice; to give it the control of the life, that man may be like-minded with God, and “pure as He is pure.”—There have been men in all ages who held a faultless creed, yet led a godless life; who would tithe their mint, their anise, and cummin, and yet forget the weightier matters of the law. There have been not a few who took rank in the Christian Church, who could not be trusted in the market-place. Some who had fallen into the hands of the public prosecutor, have, with all the indignation of injured innocence, resented it as an offence, when those who watch for the spiritual good of men ventured to prevent them from polluting the holy place. In one point of view, the world thus seems to be more careful or more high-toned than the Church; and that irresistibly suggests the question, Can a remedy be found for this sore evil? Without interfering for a day with the preaching of those doctrines which come from God as a light to guide us to Him, can aught be added to our present appliances, to rescue self-deluded men from their self-delusions, and at least render their number fewer in the different branches of the Holy Catholic Church?

THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

The times appear to be specially favourable for promoting such an object. THE SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES. It is a characteristic of our age, for which we have high reason to be thankful to God, that the spiritual welfare of man is largely regarded. It is now clearly seen that the true interests of one class are the true interests of all. It is no longer antagonism, it is co-operation; to a large extent, it is brotherhood and harmony; it is liberal things devised on the one hand, and rejoiced in upon the other, at least in the land in which it is our blessedness to live. Grave men in the Church, and powerful men in the State, are busy here; nay, royalty itself, does not disown the employment. The prince co-operates with the peer, and both together hold out the hand, not of lordly patronage—that is cold and repulsive—but of brotherly-kindness and love.

ENCOURAGEMENTS.

ENCOURAGEMENTS. We thus see at least the dawning of a state of things which has no doubt been too long retarded, to our shame; but which may be blessed by God, not to introduce an Utopia, or a golden age; not to roll away the need of labour, or the lot of suffering—these are component parts of man’s existence upon earth; but to soothe the sorrows, to dry the tears, and elevate the pursuits of those who might otherwise be woeworn and unfriended for life. In a word,

“The purple pride that scowls at wretchedness,”

is now scowled at in its turn, wherever the Word of God is free, and under its hallowing power, the brotherhood of man are becoming more manifestly brothers.

To help on these results, then, we would now try to bring sound doctrine into actual contact with men’s souls, that it may produce sound practice. “The form of sound words” is to be prized above every earthly thing, but unless these words lead to right actions, they leave us still in the condition of Chorazin and Bethsaida of old. We would therefore try to take the truth of God in our hand; we would go under its escort, to the places of daily business or daily toil, there to apply the simple but often searching maxims which came from heaven to guide men through life on earth to glory.—We need expect no permanent amelioration for man except through the power and the prevalence of truth, and every attempt to elevate his nature to its true dignity by any other means, is either the effort of an empiric or the deception of an impostor. The simple theory of human progression, the only and exclusive means of purifying man, is to make him like-minded with God again.

THE LABOURS OF SISYPHUS.

THE
LABOURS OF
SISYPHUS. Now, as the mind of God can be learned only from his Word, everything but that will prove as unavailing as the labours of Sisyphus—

“Up the high hill he heaves the huge round stone;”

but it recoils in spite of all his toil, and so will every effort to elevate fallen man apart from the truth of God. We decline no fair ally. Nay, we would invoke the aid of all that is salutary either for mind or body. But unless the truth sit at the helm, and preside over all; unless the mind of God become the mind of man, man is still a degraded being; he is ignorant alike of his chief end and his chief good. In short, permanently to benefit man either for time or eternity without the knowledge of God, is a task as hopeless as that of Adam when he tried to hide among the trees of the garden.—Along the mountain-sides of some districts in this land we see traces of the culture of former generations at much higher levels than cultivation now reaches; but, deserted now as unproductive, these patches are re-claimed by the heath or the furze: they furnish no food at least for the use of man; and are not these significant emblems of the attempts to cultivate man without the knowledge of his God? The sepulchre may be white-washed, or sin covered over and concealed; but all is impurity, all is moral deformity still, in the eye of Him who judges righteous judgment.

THE SOVEREIGN PANACEA.

THE
SOVEREIGN
PANACEA. We therefore take the Word of God as the grand rule, the sovereign panacea in our hand. We try to apply the system of mingled holiness, and mercy, and truth, and love, which is there disclosed, to guide the lives of mortals; and in prosecuting this design, the following is our plan. We try to show—

I. Christianity in the Heart; for, unless it is found there, we need not expect to find it anywhere besides.

II. Christianity in the Home. It must next appear there. Parents and children, masters and servants, or the employers and the employed, must all feel the genial or the curbing power of truth in their several places and relations.

III. Christianity in the Workshop—from which its influence has too long been banished.

IV. Christianity in the Market-place, the place of bargains and of busy trade.

V. Christianity in the Professions: 1. The physician; 2. The lawyer; 3. The divine.

VI. Christianity in our ordinary social intercourse; and,

Finally, Christianity, as the crown and glory of man’s existence upon earth.

THE WILLING WORKMAN.

Now, it is too manifest to require any discussion, that unless Christianity be planted in the heart, it cannot control the life. A religion merely for the hand has never done much for man. A creed which teaches us only to cleanse the outside of the cup, has never succeeded in elevating us far, or making us kindred either with the pure or the lofty. A mere collection of doctrines, though each be scriptural and sound, has never availed to restore man to happiness and God. Merely to do as our fathers did, or hold, however tenaciously, a mere ancestral faith, is not the process by which the evil that is in man can be corrected. The soldier who is dragged to the battle-field is not likely to become a hero. The man who is carried to a foreign land in chains, seldom becomes one of its benefactors. He who needs compulsion and the rod ere he will acquire even the rudiments of learning, is not likely soon to become a ripe scholar. THE
WILLING
WORKMAN. In every department, it is the willing mind, the earnest spirit, the hearty, zealous labourer, who achieves great results. The heart must be thrown into the pursuit, even though it were only some menial employment; and if that be not the case, then, however he may be engaged, man will either be disgusted and repelled, or doomed to drag a heavy chain amid his toil.

THE HEART UNMASKED.

And this is pre-eminently the case in religion. It is with Him who looks on the heart that we have there to do—as is the heart, so is our religion. A new heart is accordingly the first and the grand desideratum. All the heart is to be given to God, and till that be conceded, we have not done obeisance to the first and great commandment. The law of God is to be written on the heart, or in truth we never obey it. We may as well suppose that the ten commandments could guide the Hebrews, while these precepts were merely written on the tables of stone, far up amid the clouds of Sinai, as that the truth of God can profit, or illumine the soul, while it only floats in the understanding or the memory, without sinking into the heart. Nay, the thunders of Sinai, amid which the commandments were given, had scarcely died away, when the people who had heard them ceased to fear and quake—they set up a golden calf, and worshipped it as their God; and that forms one of the most instructive facts of history. THE HEART
UNMASKED. It seems incredible to the man who does not know the guile which lurks in the heart, but it sheds a full though a lurid light upon the soul, in the eyes of him who has been guided by the truth through the intricate mazes of iniquity which exist within us.

TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.

Or, far more than this. Ten thousand times ten thousand may possess the gospel as well as the law. Not merely the authority, the power, or the terrors of the Lord may be brought to bear upon their minds—His love, his pity, and compassion, may also be revealed, and entreaties the most touching, or invitations the most free, may be mingled with promises the most cheering, and all may be employed to induce us to profit by them, while the heart may continue proof against them all. TRUTH AND
FALSEHOOD. The truth of God may be no truth to us; His love in the Saviour may exercise no constraining power—and what is the reason? How are we to explain the fact that the mind of God has no control over the minds of myriads of men, so that countless favours are received without awakening one grateful response? The reason is, truth was never stamped upon the heart. It is not understood that with the heart man believes unto righteousness. The first and great commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy strength and mind,” is not felt, and not obeyed; and men, in consequence, often drink up iniquity with the very Word of God open before them, soliciting their hearts and their affections for their Lord. They have his Word, but it is perverted to light them on the way to a more certain ruin.

This is all abundantly plain. If we have ever given so much as one solemn hour to God, to eternity, and the soul, it must be manifest that until the affections be set on things above, all else is vain. The heart is the citadel of the whole man, and until that be on the Lord’s side, the enemy will find a stronghold there, from which no power on earth can dislodge him. Is a man living in a state of estrangement from God? Does the Heart-searcher know that that man is perpetrating sin and regardless of his soul? The explanation of all that is, that the heart has never been given to God. Christianity is not there. Truth is not there—its place is occupied by lies. The love of the Saviour is not there. The Word of God is a dead and a despised letter. The foundation of the spiritual fabric has never been laid. The first impulse heavenward has not been given. The Spirit of God is not honoured in the heart as the temple where he delights to dwell. Religion at the best is a cold and formal thing. It only decorates the exterior, like trappings on a hearse. God is not in such a man’s thoughts—Christ is not in his soul the hope of glory. The gulf between God and him is still a yawning void, and the eternal life which is placed within his reach is practically despised.

The illustrations of religion in the heart crowd upon us on every side. Let us contemplate a few, and place them in the way of contrast.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

ILLUSTRATIONS. There is a man whose heart the Lord has touched with great love to souls. He learns that myriads are perishing in distant lands. That oppresses him with the weight of a personal woe; he takes his life in his hand and hastens away to tell the perishing of a Saviour. Now, in his work of faith, and labour of love, that man is dealing, let us suppose, with two of the youth of a dark-souled land. He is pressing on the conscience the claims of God, on the understanding his truth, and on the heart his love; but against all these appliances one of the two is stout-hearted, and steeled. There is no room in his soul either for the Spirit of God or his truth. Some idol has erected his temple there, and that idol, however hideous, is worshipped with the devotedness which is due only to God over all. Hence the heart is shut and fortified against the truth; hence the God of truth is rejected and disowned. The whole man is pre-occupied. The affections are engrossed by a worthless or revolting thing; and as there was no room in the dwellings of men for the Saviour when he came to earth, there is no room in the soul of that man for truth, though it brings salvation and the fulness of joy in its train. The secret of the whole is, that the heart is not impressed; it is never touched, and it therefore repels the approaches of Him who is love, as the granite rock repels the spray of the ocean.

CONSCIENCE ASCENDANT.

CONSCIENCE
ASCENDANT. But the case is different in regard to the other of the two: conscience in him feels the power of the truth; it cannot deny the charges which are brought against it; nay, it repeats and enforces them every one, and then begins the struggle for the control of the heart. Though the conscience be convinced, the heart may not be surrendered, and in consequence of that, a pain, an absolute distraction is sometimes produced—it has been described as the plucking out of a right eye.

THE CHANGE.

Now, when does that struggle cease? When is that soul really surrendered to the supremacy of God? It is when the truth finds its way to the heart, and is planted there by the Spirit who revealed it. As long as it remained only in the conscience, it stimulated, it roused, it agitated, it produced only commotion or woe; or, in the understanding, it instructed or delighted; THE
CHANGE. but when the truth of God passed through the conscience into the heathen heart, the whole man was speedily captured. There was now the willing mind, there was now the pliant disposition. Idols were now abandoned. The Son of God was rejoiced in, and he who before had carried the badge of his idol on his very brow, as if to glory in his shame, now felt all the degradation of bowing down to an idol at all. The strongest earthly affection—that of a mother to a cherished son—might obstruct the path which led from idols to God, and other woes might come on the believer; but his heart had owned the majesty of truth, whatever it might entail. Truth, the truth of God, had taught him that there is something stronger, deeper, and more constraining than even the love of a mother to a son—namely, the love of the Saviour to the saved, and their love to Him in return—and thus, that soul, amid sorrows which are agonizing to flesh and blood, chooses the better portion. Like one who is truly wise, that man, lately so dark and idolatrous, now prefers the love of God to the love of a creature—and that is Christianity in the heart. That is religion taking the helm of life. That is truth occupying the citadel of the soul. That is God enthroned. That is conscience obeyed. That is reason re-occupying the sphere from which it was banished at the fall. That is the promise fulfilled, “A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.”

Or contemplate another example of Christianity in the heart, as the root and fountain of all that is lovely and of good report in the life.

INQUIRY.

Another man has gone with no less love to souls than the former, to win some of the far-fallen Jews to the Saviour. In that work he encounters insult upon insult, and everything but Christian faith, and Christian hope and love, would there faint and fail. INQUIRY. He also is surrounded by crowds of inquirers or objectors—let us select two for their contrast. One of them is full of hereditary hatred to the truth as it is in Jesus; and that very name which is to the Christian a strong tower, is to that dark-souled man a provocative to wrath and spiteful passion—And why? Because that heart is pre-occupied. That man has never once seen the presented truth, so thick is the veil which blinds him; he has never once felt its power, so hard is the incrustation which envelopes his heart. The love and pity, as well as the holiness and truth of God, are shut out from his soul, for the repugnance and the recoil of the heart drive them utterly away. He thus furnishes another example of the fact, that there does not exist in all the world, a more intense antagonism than that of man’s polluted heart to the pure truth of God.

But the other of the two inquires—he is willing at least to ascertain what a Christian is. He listens, and the great truth which is the basis of all personal religion—conviction of sin in the sight of God—begins to be felt. Whether Christianity be true or not, that man discovers, from his own Hebrew Bible, that he is a sinner. He perceives that Judaism, even in all its glory could not take away sin, and much less now when it is worn out, or not the shadow or the echo of its former self. In that state of soul, that man comes nearer to Jesus of Nazareth than he had ever done before. He reads; he marks; he inwardly digests; he begins to pray. The Redeemer’s history now becomes full of meaning. “He was despised, and we esteemed him not”—“He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities”—“The Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all”—“They shall look on him whom they have pierced”—These, or texts like these, now begin to be seen in the light which the Spirit of God sheds on them, or felt in the power which that Spirit imparts to truth, and they flash upon the earnest man’s mind with a meaning which he never saw before.

THE JEW, A CHRISTIAN.

THE JEW,
A
CHRISTIAN. That man now begins, then, to feel that the truth is just what he as a sinner needs; and in the train of that, it begins to take possession of the heart. It gives a new tone or a new colour to his life. By securing the command of the heart, it converts a Jew into a new creature in Christ. He begins to glory in what was once a stumbling-block, the Cross; or to be ashamed of what was once his glory, his self-righteousness; and as the aspect of the earth when the sun is shining in the radiance of day is different from its aspect when midnight reigns, that man’s soul is different now from what it lately was. Christianity is in the heart; and as the blood is propelled from the heart to the extremities, spreading life and activity as it flows, truth, the truth which the Spirit teaches now circulates through the whole inner man, reducing everything there to the obedience that is in Christ. The waste places are cultivated. The spiritual fabric is founded, and the great Master-builder will in due time perfect the whole.

THE HOME HEATHEN.

THE HOME
HEATHEN. Or, without referring either to Heathen or to Jew, we might select some two in our own favoured land for a contrast. We might picture an assembly of men met in the house of God to worship the King Eternal, Immortal, and Invisible, and single out two of the worshippers to illustrate religion in the heart; and let us thus single out two. They worship side by side. They hear the same voice—they listen to the same gospel, the same appeals to the conscience, the same lessons for the understanding, the same glad tidings for the heart. They are pointed to the same Saviour, and are equally told of his power and his willingness to save. Redemption now, and not to-morrow—redemption perfect and complete, without waiting for any supplement from man—redemption for “the ungodly,”[1] and not for those who have already repented; in a word, salvation freely, salvation immediately, and salvation completely, is offered or pressed on the notice of each of the two, according to the Word of the Eternal.

THE WAYWARD HEART.

THE
WAYWARD
HEART. But amid this affluence of mercy, this plenitude of love, one of them continues indifferent, hardened, and without God. Every new appeal is resisted, and so thickens the incrustation which has gathered round the heart. All within is dead and cold. Religion brings no joy. It seems a system to fetter, and not to emancipate; and as that man cannot both sin and be a Christian, his heart continues shut against the influence which would separate him from his sins. The secret of all this is, that that heart is still the victim or the dupe of lies. There is no Christianity admitted into it. The truth of God is kept far away from the centre of man’s being. Lest that truth should enter the heart, it is kept carefully guarded; it is crowded with worldly cares, or plunged into worldly follies, but left dreary and desolate as to all that is divine; the waters of Marah are never sweetened there; the soul is perishing with redemption in its offer; it is self-doomed to woe and to bitterness, while the Spirit of God through his Word is beckoning it to glory and to honour.

The other of the two worshippers, however, has found out that “one thing is needful.” He has listened to conscience. He has taken counsel with right reason. He has surrendered the heart to God, and that is the decisive moment when man’s name is written in the book of life. It is then that the kingdom of God begins to be within us, then that we learn both how wayward is the heart, and how mighty is the grace of God to subdue it. Light now radiates where all was dark before; joy is now felt where all was cheerless; and the new-born sensation of spiritual freedom brings a presage of the glorious liberty of the children of God.

CONTRASTS AND COLLISIONS.

And what renders it more needful to urge on this ascendancy of truth in the heart is, the opposition which it is sure to encounter in the world. While we sail down the world’s stream, we may glide pleasantly along, and need neither the canvass nor the oar; but the moment we attempt to stem it, the struggle and the conflict begin: we must either earnestly contend, or be carried down to ruin. CONTRASTS
AND
COLLISIONS. What is it that produces thunder? It is the meeting of contraries, or fire and water. What is it that produces the earthquake? It is a similar cause—the meeting of contraries, or substances which cannot quietly co-exist. What is it that occasions war, and massacre, and devastation? It is still a similar cause. It is passion in collision with passion. It is the tyrant seeking to oppress the free. It is ambition grasping at more and more, and trampling upon all who oppose its pleasure—and the same law obtains in religion. Why are God’s people often of all men the most miserable? Whence come persecutions? They come because holiness in the godly and sin in the world have come into collision. The will of God is opposing or protesting against the passions of men, and on that account there is war on the one hand, produced by inflamed passion on the other.

A church, a flock, for farther example, has long been afflicted with an unconverted ministry, and all is peaceful there, for all is spiritual death. But there comes a change. A converted ministry is raised up, and now begins the collision between spiritual life and spiritual death. Ere the truth get access to the heart, it must fight every inch of the way.

Or there is a family where, up to a certain period, all is unmitigated worldliness; not one soul is there alive to God.—But in His sovereign time one member is converted, and then perhaps begin the collision and the strife. The world resents the intrusion or the rebuke implied in spiritual decision; and if that heart will love God’s pure truth, it must zealously contend.

THE VICTORY.

Or there is an individual soul. It has long slumbered, as the world does, without God and without hope. No compunction has roused it, and no alarm been felt. But something at last occurs to disturb that false peace. Truth enters the conscience. It operates there like a visit from the living to the catacombs of Egypt, when the night-birds are disturbed in crowds, and threaten, by their multitudinous flutterings, to blind or to destroy the intruder. Thus, if truth will take possession of a heart for God, it must encounter and vanquish a thousand enemies. THE
VICTORY. In that conflict man needs the whole armour of God, for he has to fight the good fight of faith. His enemies may be those of his own household, or even his own heart; and nothing but the free Spirit of the living God can make man sure of victory in that contest.

THE NEW HEART.

Perhaps it is superfluous to occupy so much time in illustrating what is, in truth, so plain. Yet, as many overlook this plainness, it should be urged in line upon line, that if we would begin aright, we must begin at the heart, out of which flow the issues of life. THE NEW
HEART. One of the most earnest prayers in the Bible is, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,”[2] and one of its most emphatic or comprehensive promises is, “A new heart will I give you.”[3] And would men learn that simple lesson, did they in their several places and relations as superiors, inferiors, or equals, seek to begin at the beginning, and have the heart right with God through the new-creating power of His Spirit, O how sweetly would the whole framework of society soon be adjusted! how surely would “all the building, fitly framed together, grow into an holy temple in the Lord!” The Church would be more pure. The world would not be so often cheered in its ungodly ways, by the example of men professing the truth, but holding it in unrighteousness, because they are destitute of Christianity in the heart, where it should ever reign as the unchallenged and unrivalled queen.—There are some ruins of ancient cities now buried deep under water. When the waves above them are calm, these ruins can still be seen, though centuries have rolled away since they were first submerged. Yet who would regard these waste places as the abodes of living men? Who would speak of them as the haunts of the happy? Nay, life has vanished from them; all that ever lived there have been for centuries destroyed. And, in the same way, the heart that is sunk in worldliness or saturated with what is earthly and sensual, is cut off from all communion with the living God; it is dead to holiness and Him.

THE RELIGION OF THE HEART.

THE
RELIGION
OF THE
HEART. We cannot glance at the lives of godly men without noticing the prominence which belongs to this subject of religion in the heart. Their first aspiration is for the friendship of God, and their next, their perpetual longing is to have the heart right with Him; “to keep the heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” We open the life of one man of God at random. He says, “An inward sweet sense of divine things at times came into my heart, and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them.” “The sense I had of divine things would often of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet burning in my heart, an ardour of soul that I know not how to express.” “I was almost constantly in ejaculatory prayer wherever I was. Prayer seemed as the breath by which the inward burning of my heart had vent.” “My former delights never reached the heart, and did not arise from any sight of the divine excellence of the things of God.” “My heart panted after this, to lie low before God as in the dust, that I might be nothing, and God might be all; that I might become as a little child.” “Oftentimes in reading the Holy Scriptures, every word seemed to touch my heart; I felt a harmony between something in my heart and those sweet and powerful words.”[4]

WITNESSES.

Another says, “O God, impress more deeply on my heart thine exceeding great and precious promises, that I may perfect holiness in thy fear.” “Though God’s pure Word is presented to worldly men in ever such a variety of ways; though the provision be ever so daintily served up, none of them relish it at heart. As well might the preacher have the restless and ungovernable waves of the sea before him, and think to control them with the rod of Moses, or the words of Christ, ‘Peace, be still.’” WITNESSES. “In his earliest years he had many pure, tender feelings, and stirrings of his heart concerning God, and the texts inscribed on the church walls of his native town, from the Epistle to the Romans, concerning death, sin, righteousness, and the crucifixion, produced in him, as a mere child, emotions of great joy and peace, and left upon him very profitable and lasting impressions.” “How may I know that I am become an heir of heaven? How may I know that God is in me of a truth? When I have the earnest of the inheritance, that is, when I am habitually led by the Spirit of God, so as to walk in love, with my heart crying to him, Abba, Father! and listening to every whisper of his Holy Spirit.”[5]

WITNESSES.

WITNESSES. Another says, “My heart was utterly averse from spirituality. Sometimes, through the force of convictions, I was indeed brought for some time to aim at getting my mind fixed upon heavenly things, and kept on the thoughts of them; but my heart being still carnal, I weaned of this bent and of this forcible religion; it was intolerable to think of being always spiritual.” “I abominated the more gross breaches of all the commands, and disliked open sins. But, meanwhile, my heart was set upon the less discernible violations of the same holy law.” “Under a searching ministry, the Lord began to give me some discoveries of the more secret and spiritual evils of my heart. He carried me ‘into the secret chamber of imagery,’ to let me see what my heart did in the dark.” “Though sin might prevail, my heart was not with it as before; I found another sort of opposition made to it.” “I have looked on death as stripped of all things pleasant to nature. I have considered the spade and the grave, and everything that is in it terrible to nature; and under the view of all these, I found that in the way of God they gave satisfaction—not only a rational satisfaction, but a heart-engaging power attending it, that makes me rejoice.”[6]

One of the profoundest thinkers that ever lived has said, “There are only two kinds of persons who can properly be styled reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart, because they know Him; and those who seek Him with all their heart, because they know him not.”[7]

WITNESSES.

WITNESSES. —But it is needless to prolong such illustrations. Human nature, revelation, and daily experience, agree in testifying to the necessity of planting the truth in the heart of man, if it is to control his life. For that purpose the Spirit of God is sent to take the truth from the sacred page, where He himself has placed it, and stamp it on the soul. And O, what man consents to sacrifice, by keeping truth in the outer court as the Gentiles were kept in the outer court of the Jewish Temple! What holy joy! What hopes and consolations! What communion with God he forfeits! Or, how blind the world to its own best interests, when the truth is kept cold and shivering, apart from the soul and the heart! How would the woes of a groaning world be soothed—how would our biting and devouring of each other cease—how would swords be beat into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, were truth enthroned in the heart, and suffered to control the life! A single sentence of that truth, honestly believed and obeyed, would soon revolutionize a world; and should not every Christian therefore be busy, earnest, and solemn, in spreading the truth; in seeking to have it planted deep in his own soul first, and then in the souls of all?

THE NEED OF ZEAL.

Moreover, the world is very solemn now, it is earnest and devoted; it is perfectly convinced, however baseless the conviction, that time is all in all. For example, mark that atheist. They who do not know the dark depths of man’s heart will not believe that a soul so monstrous can exist; but as if to prove the truth of the Word of God, a bold blasphemer has stood forth to deny God’s existence, and challenged Him to prove that the impious one was wrong, by striking him dead upon the spot. Or mark that knot of infidels. They are assembled to devise the means of spreading their poison, and import additional supplies from other lands, because the home growth is not sufficient. Or mark that group of papists. They are daily plotting the suppression of God’s truth, the enslaving of man’s soul, and deepening the darkness which already envelopes him. All, all are earnest, zealous, sanguine in the pursuit of evil—and shall they who hold the truth be alone lethargic, listless, apathetic? THE NEED
OF ZEAL. The infidel has been heard to declare, that if he believed what Christians profess to believe, he would be far more zealous than they. In truth, that infidel sees that the man whom the world stigmatizes as a religious enthusiast is the only consistent Christian. If I believe that every sin tends to eternal perdition, can I be consistent in my belief, if I do not repress sin by every proper means within my power? If I believe that none but Christ can save so much as one single soul, can I be consistent in my belief, if I am not ready to spend and be spent in winning souls to Christ? On that maxim the Christian indeed will act; and when that spirit is ascendant, we shall see far more done than has yet been attempted to soothe men’s sorrows, to dry men’s tears, and ease their aching hearts.

CHAPTER II.

RELIGION IN OUR HOMES.

It is a fatal and a paralysing mistake to suppose that the religion of Jesus is to be kept for certain days, or occasions, or places, and laid aside or neglected at other times. It is not meant to give solemnity merely to a few hours of the Sabbath, or a few deeds of the hand; and while we can be satisfied with that view of religion, we have not begun to feel its power, to partake of its joy, or enter into its spirit. It would not be more unreasonable to suppose that the body needs the vital air to breathe only on certain occasions, or that the eye needs the light of heaven to see only at peculiar seasons, than that man can dispense at times with the truth of God as his guide, and monitor, and friend. If there be a moment at which man is not prone to go astray, then for that moment he may dispense with truth. If there be a single breath during which man is not dependent upon God, for that breath he may lay aside God’s pure and holy word.

But it is the dictate of reason, the moment it is illumined from on high, that the truth should take the control of the conscience, the understanding, and the heart, in all we find to do. It is to preside over thought, word, and deed. It is to direct us not merely in actions which are strictly and properly religious, like praise, and prayer, and public worship. It is to give a religious character to all that we attempt; and one great reason why religion is often despised is, that not a few of those who profess to hold the truth forget its righteous claims in their dealings with their fellow-men.

There is a parent sitting by the couch where his first-born is stretched—a corpse. As he gazes on the pale features, more beautiful, he thinks, than ever now, because death has turned them into marble, what consolation can the truth yield to him, if it has been his habit to confine its influence to a corner, a fragment of life, instead of regarding it as the sunshine or the vital air of the soul?

There is a sister weeping by the grave of one who has just become a prey to corruption. Her heart is lonely, and stricken, and sore—she feels it would be a relief could it break. And what blessing can the truth, the very truth as it is in Jesus, yield to that wounded spirit, if it has been its habit to seclude and sequester religion, to keep it apart from the business of life, like some portion of our dress, meant only for solemn seasons or for holidays?

OUR HOMES.

There is another. The hand of death is on him. He cannot be blind to its approach. He must take home the warning, OUR
HOMES. “Set thy house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.” And of what avail to that man is the very truth which came from heaven, if it has been kept at a distance from the heart, like something which we dislike or dread? Can a name, an echo, a phantom, a shadow, really avail that dying man’s soul?

THE PROVINCE OF TRUTH.

Or there is another still. The Spirit of God has fastened conviction upon his conscience, and he feels now what it is to be a sinner. “What must I do to be saved?”—“O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?” now embody the fears of his awakened spirit; and to soothe that spirit, or hush these fears, what avails the solemn ceremonial or the decent form, while that is all? Can a form atone for guilt? Can a pageant cleanse the conscience? THE
PROVINCE
OF TRUTH. Can some occasional observance of a religious rite operate like a charm, and either silence the demands or uphold the purity of the law of God? Nay, “miserable comforters are they all.” It is truth in the heart guiding to Him who is the truth itself, which alone can yield the troubled conscience peace.

And, to name no more: There is a youth removed from the watchful guardianship of his father’s home. The crowded city has become his busy abode, and its endless temptations must now be encountered. He must hear the grossness of the licentious, and endure the scoff of the godless. He must brave the assaults of those who have grown hardened in guilt. He must resist those who have trampled upon conscience, and forgotten that there is either a death before them, or a God to meet. And what will give that tempted youth the victory? An occasional glance at the Word of God? An occasional petition to his throne? An occasional visit to his house? To ask these questions is to answer them: That man consents to be deceived and undone who is willing to be only occasionally devout, occasionally seeking God, occasionally a Christian.

A SOUNDING BRASS.

We have tried, then, in the spirit of these remarks, to show that if the truth of God is to regulate the life of man, it must be planted in his heart. Afraid lest the services of the sanctuary and the lessons of the Sabbath be not sufficiently practical and precise, we are following men into the different spheres in which they move, there to apply the truth at once as a touchstone and a guide—a test to man’s soul, and a light to man’s path. A
SOUNDING
BRASS. A creed which only decorates the exterior cannot be that of the people of God. If it produce no beauty in the soul, no benefit in the life, it is a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

And our next topic is—Religion in our Homes. If it be planted in the heart by the Spirit of holiness, it will soon spread outward and cover the life with its beauty. Like the widening circles on a pool whose smoothness a pebble has disturbed, the wave of truth flowing from the heart, first touches those among whom we constantly move; and in no sphere can the genuine power of godliness on the one hand, or spurious pretences on the other, be more easily or promptly discovered. A man is in God’s eye just what he is in the bosom of his family.

THE FATHER OF THE FAITHFUL.

Perhaps we can best and most simply introduce this topic by referring to an example. To find it, we go straightway to the fountain-head, and fix attention on “the father of the faithful.” THE
FATHER
OF THE
FAITHFUL. Among the things which signalized that remarkable man, was his strict regard to the fear of God in his home. “I know him,” it is said by the Searcher of hearts; “I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment.”—Abraham was selected to introduce a new epoch in the mighty movements of Providence, a new stage in that grand procession which is carrying the generations of men forward to their eternal lot; and one reason assigned for that selection is, that he would cultivate home-religion, or cause the fear of the Lord to circulate through his tents. Now every word that is employed to describe this epoch-making man deserves to be studied—it appears a very picture of the patriarch or the priest of home. He who blesses the habitations of the righteous, says, “I know him.” It is the Omniscient that speaks, and there can be neither hypocrisy on the one hand, nor deception on the other. “I know him that he will command.” There will be no betraying of the truth on his part, no yielding to any guide but one. There is a law, and Abraham will keep it. He is answerable to the Lawgiver, and he will act on that conviction.

PERFECT LAW, AND LIBERTY.

And “I know him that he will command his children.” Not blind affection; not that kind of indulgence which is the veriest cruelty; not that disorder which renders the young the masters of the old: Abraham will command his children. He and they are the subjects of a common Lord. His functions are purely executive. PERFECT LAW,
AND LIBERTY. The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; and parents and children alike are to be ruled by Him. This should equally prevent parental oppression on the one hand, and filial disobedience on the other, and when the laws which we obey are enacted by our Father who is in heaven, when they flow from Him whose heart is love, what but blessings can be the lot at once of him who administers and of those who obey them? By the combined influence of authority and affection, Abraham was thus to rule his home. Like David, he was to walk within his house with a perfect heart, and that is the method by which parents

“May sun them in the light of happy faces.”

If the Holy One has given us rules for the guidance of all, these rules form the standard from which there can be no sinless swerving, and the first principles of holiness have yet to be learned where God’s will is not thus paramount.

THE ONE WILL SUPREME.

And, moreover, his household as well as his children, were to be controlled by the patriarch. He is not one of those who forget that their dependants[T-3] or domestics have souls, and therefore take no interest in them as immortal beings. He did not act as if there were one God for the master and another for the servant; one rule for the superior, another for the inferior; one way for the lordly, and another for the lowly. THE
ONE WILL
SUPREME. Nay, the father of the faithful, combining faith and works in their proper places, “will command his household;” will take the control of it, and see that everything there is done decently and in order. There will be no tampering with a servant’s conscience, and as little conniving at his transgressions. The ten commandments were not yet given; but the spirit of them was a part of Abraham’s believing nature, and he sought to have duty done wherever he had influence, alike by superiors, inferiors, and equals. In a word, like Cornelius after him, he feared the Lord, with all his house.

And farther: the rule, the standard at once for master and servant, is given, “They shall keep the way of the Lord.” Every other path is that of the destroyer; it tends to death, for “the curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked.” The question which we should ask in regard to our home religion is not, What is done by others? What do men think? What will the world tolerate? What will be most conducive to present ease or peace? but, What has God said? When that has been ascertained, every departure from it is just a wandering into the way of sorrow. Neither parent nor child, nor any member of a household, need expect to prosper in any path except the way of the Lord; and to anticipate prosperity or peace in any other, just shows that reason is still eclipsed, that conscience is still seared or dormant, that the mind of God is not our mind, that we are still doing as Adam did when he sought happiness in wandering from his Maker.

THE EASTERN PRINCE.

Such, then, are the principles which lie at the foundation of all family rule; these would make our homes a Bethel, and our hearts a shrine. Wherever such fear of God reigns in the soul, accompanied with the love of Christ, there will be peace and holy joy; but every other principle will leave our hearts and homes unblest. Tacitus tells us that “many find it a harder task to govern a family than to rule a province;” and it may be so where God’s law is not known or not regarded. But that law itself is abundantly clear, and the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. Every family that calls on the name of the Lord should spread out his Word before them, and ask, What has God said? for that is the rule from which neither waywardness on the part of children, nor engrossment on the part of parents, can warrant our departure.—THE
EASTERN
PRINCE.It is computed that the household of Abraham could not contain less than a thousand souls. Living as he did in the rank of an Eastern prince, his retinue was such as we can scarcely understand; and yet, concerning him and his household, Omniscience says: “Commanded by Abraham, they will keep the way of the Lord.” Like Joshua while placed at the head of a migrating nation, and burdened with the care of millions, his resolution was, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Religion was to be planted in the heart of society, that is, in the sacred circle of home; and thence, like the banyan tree, was to spread, and spread, till it had covered or encircled the whole.

EDUCATIONAL INFIDELITY.

EDUCATIONAL
INFIDELITY. And here, as we pass along, it may serve as a warning to some, if we glance at that infidelity which characterizes the schemes of some pretended friends of education and the young. They would divorce religion from education. They would let children grow up without any training in the fear of God. They would develope mind. They would impart secular knowledge; but the knowledge of salvation, of sin, and of redemption from its woe, its bondage, and defilement, they would not name. Passion may grow rampant; the world may be ascendant in the heart, the mind, and all the powers of man, yet youth is to be left unchecked by any heavenly warning, untaught by any heavenly lesson! Now, waiving every other objection to this scheme, we say that it is unequivocally and utterly infidel; it should on that account be branded with the reprobation of all who love the rising race, on the one hand, who know their perils on the other, and who, moreover, feel assured that nothing but the truth of God can either make man savingly wise or keep him so. If God’s favour be a dream, and man’s soul only organized matter, destined to pass away as other matter does, it is needless to be very zealous for one scheme of training in preference to another. But if man be immortal, and if his immortality can be blessed, only by having his mind in harmony with God’s, then the training of the young in the good way of the Lord is a matter of solemn obligation. Man has no choice here. To neglect that way in training, is to arrogate a wisdom superior to God’s, and the man who does that is perhaps blindly and unconsciously, but not the less certainly, evading God’s truth and perpetuating the misery of man’s soul.

But we are too general. Ere we can plant and foster religion in our homes, we must descend into more minute details.

THE SACRED CIRCLE.

THE
SACRED
CIRCLE. Parents here demand the first place, and as the basis of all that can be addressed to them, we observe that the supreme, we might say the single maxim which should guide them in all they do, in regard to the religion of home, is suggested by the question, “What is the way of the Lord?” Parents who do not walk in that way themselves, who find no pleasure there, and feel under no constraint either to seek to enter upon it, or advance after they have entered, will feel no obligation to lead their children or their household there. That is the secret of our godless families, our prayerless homes, our nurseries of folly and of woe. The fountain which should send forth sweet water is poisoned. The tree which should bear grapes produces only wild berries, and society is at once crowded and corrupted by the ungodly children of ungodly parents.

THE ONLY RULE.

But wherever a parent has felt the value of a soul, and loves it—wherever he has found out the good way of the Lord, and tried to walk in it—his guiding inquiry at every step will be, How does the God of all our families instruct us to act? What is his mind at any given point? THE
ONLY
RULE. That once ascertained, it becomes our only rule; and where it is not our only rule, religion in that home is not supreme—all besides is sin. “The nurture and admonition of the Lord”—“The fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom”—“The way in which they ought to go”—These, and similar portions of God’s revealed mind, point at once to the sovereign rule. True, difficulties innumerable meet us in that way. The iniquity that is bound up in the heart of the young—the love of folly, and the hatred of wisdom—devotedness to baubles—indifference to things eternal and divine, with all the array of evil influences which assail or ensnare the young in a world where God is unknown, dishonoured, or forgotten, may augment the godly parent’s difficulties. But difficulties are not the rule of duty. They are only a call to prayer, to dependence on the heavenly Teacher, and, in his strength, to steadfast opposition to all that is wrong, and affectionate encouragement of all that is right and true. The Word of God is thus our only rule; to consult another is to listen to the evil heart of unbelief.

THE PRAYERLESS HOME.

It has no doubt come to pass in our day, that that standard is set aside by many parents who dislike the holiness of the Bible, and would prefer some freer scope to sin than it will tolerate. They overlook the holy requirements of God, and there are many homes where He is never worshipped. THE
PRAYERLESS
HOME. There are children who never heard their parents pray. There are domestics whose souls never drew forth one anxious thought from their employers. The religion of home is, in short, a discarded thing, and souls are trained in ungodliness by those who should watch over them as over their most precious possession. Now, it is needless to add that Christianity is exiled from such homes; the truth, the Spirit, the love of God, are not presiding there. There may be individual Christians under these roofs, who sigh and cry for the reigning ungodliness; or who, in some retired place, have set up an altar where God in Christ is worshipped, as has been done in a miserable cellar, in a home where no other place of prayer was allowed. Such homes, however, are not Christian homes. The practice of Abraham is there reversed: “The way of the Lord” is not observed; and when men wander from it, what can the end be but labour and sorrow?

THE WAY OF THE LORD.

But to a parent who really loves his children, and who would do as the great patriarch did, it would be an important boon, could a brief directory be suggested for Christianizing our homes, or rendering them places where prayer is wont to be made. How shall we subdue the spirit of the world, which is ever seeking to insinuate its deadening influence? How shall we be prepared to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, in our homes? These are questions which enter deeply into the well-being of society; and yet no brief answer can be given applicable to every case. Every parent, impressed with a solemn sense of his own responsibility to God, must here seek daily grace for daily guidance, and make each difficulty, as it rises, a new errand to the throne. Thus only will the religion of the Redeemer preside in our homes, and fit us for “the house of the Lord for ever.” THE WAY
OF THE
LORD. Perhaps the only universal rule that could be given is this: In regard to any action, any pleasure, any practice in our homes, let the question be asked, with the Bible open before us, “Is this the way of the Lord? Is it thus that I can train my children in the way in which they ought to go?” The answer to that, honestly sought and honestly found in prayer to God for light and guidance, would detect many an unholy practice, or repress many an unholy plan. It would make the religion of our homes the religion of Jesus, of purity and peace—the guide who came from heaven to lead us to its glory and its God. It would infuse a right spirit into our catechisings and all our details, and end in raising up godly households in the land.

INORDINATE AFFECTION.

INORDINATE
AFFECTION. Blind parental affection ranks among the greatest obstructions to the religion of home. It prompts indulgences which should be at once put away, and prevents correction where correction is an ordinance of God. It seems to turn the hearts of parents to their children according to the promise, but it is, in truth, like the tender mercies of the wicked, only cruelty in disguise.

And to correct this, let us glance at an incident in the life of Him whom no one will suspect of the want of affection the most profound, for “He loved us, and gave himself for us.”—The hour of the power of darkness was drawing on. His enemies were gradually narrowing the circle around him, and preparing to spring on him at last, as the victim of their hatred unto death. He had intimated to those around him what was about to happen; and Peter, ever resolute, impulsive, and loving, could ill brook the tidings. “Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee,” were the apostle’s ardent and affectionate words; and how did the Saviour regard them? Did he welcome them as a solace to his troubles? Nay, his instant rejoinder was, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” In other words, all-affectionate as the apostle’s remonstrance seems to our minds, it was opposed to the mind and will of God, and whatever bore that character, was offensive to the Redeemer’s holy soul—offensive as Satan himself. Without regarding Peter’s love, then—without treating that as love at all which opposed the appointments of Jehovah, Jesus addressed the apostle just as he had once before addressed the tempter himself. “Get thee hence, Satan,” were his words when asked to fall down and worship Satan; “Get thee behind me, Satan,” was his equally emphatic language to his own apostle, when he pointed to a path which was different from “the way of the Lord.”

And that is written for our instruction. Human affection is only an angel of darkness in the garb of an angel of light, when it would counsel us to walk in any path but God’s. Parents may indulge their natural affection at the expense of His holy law. They may concede what He has forbidden, or withhold what He appoints, but that was never yet done without danger of the second death; and parents not a few have helped to bring their own gray hairs in sorrow to the grave, by such concessions to their offspring. The father or the mother who represses the young soul, and lays burdens upon it which the Word of God does not warrant, ranks among the worst of tyrants or oppressors. The father or the mother who yields where God’s Word opposes, or cheers the young in ways which our Father who is in heaven has forbidden, is cruel to their soul.

ELI.

But we are not left merely to infer the results of a blindfold affection on the part of parents; these results have been made the subject of an affecting revelation; and to show how much depends upon the right discharge of parental duty, we have line upon line and precept upon precept. ELI. The case of Eli, for example, a man who was at once a priest and a ruler in Israel, is recorded for our warning. His sons did wickedly, and he restrained them not. From indolence of nature, or that phase of affection which leads to connivance at sin or pampering the inborn evil of the heart, Eli did not repress iniquity; he suffered it to grow, even in the house of God, without any effectual restraint; and what was the result? It ranks among the most terrific of all that is contained in the Word of God. “Behold I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of the hearer shall tingle”—“When I begin I will also make an end, for I have told Eli that I will judge his house for ever, for the iniquity which he knoweth, because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.” Here is both the sin and the result. The sin—parental neglect, from blindfold affection, or whatsoever cause. The result—an amount of iniquity which was not to be forgiven for ever. Parent and child were to suffer, and neither sacrifice nor offering was found for that transgression “for ever.” Eli was a believer, though compassed about with infirmities; but there is only one other case in all the Word of God where we learn so plainly the eternal portion of any individual soul, as we are told the doom of the godless sons of Eli.

WOE.

In contrast, then, with the conduct of Abraham, that of Eli brings to parents a lesson as distinct as if it were spoken in thunder, or written in light on the face of the heavens. “The way of the Lord” was the path chosen by the one. He walked there, and led his children with him; and like the palm-tree in its fertility, that man was blessed and made a blessing. WOE. But evil without effectual restraint was what Eli tolerated. “The way of the Lord” was forsaken partially by himself, and wholly by his sons; and woe, beyond what tongue can tell, was therefore Eli’s lot while he sojourned here below.

THE MODEL.

Again, in the very constitution of our being the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth has inserted a provision for securing parental ascendency and aiding parental duty. Without dwelling at present or at large on the power of parental affection, responded to by filial love, let us call to mind the fact that the Saviour made a little child his model disciple: THE
MODEL. “He called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst” of his attendants, and made that child the text of one of his marvellous discourses. Now, consider how it is with the minds of children, that parents may be encouraged amid what is often irksome, namely, making our homes so many nurseries for heaven.

A little child, then, was the Saviour’s model disciple; and what are the characteristics of childhood? It is ready to associate with any who are friendly to it. Regardless of external distinctions, it will condescend to men even of the lowest estate.—And is it not thus that they who are born of God should at all times act? Instead of overbearing arrogance, or selfish endeavours to outstrip or supplant, does not the truth as it is in Jesus teach us to do as a little child instinctively does, to condescend to men of low estate? Are we not taught to esteem others better than ourselves, to love as brethren, to be pitiful and courteous?

SIMPLE FAITH.

SIMPLE
FAITH. Farther, we commonly find a little child transparently guileless. Infancy is proverbially artless; it is reserved for advancing years to develope deceit, or mature the power to be false.—And is it not ever so with those who are taught[T-4] of God? They should be pre-eminently men in whom there is no guile, whose word is truth, and whose ways are uprightness. Who has not seen the flushed cheek, the quivering lip, and the downcast eye of youth, when first beginning to deceive? A similar confusion would be produced in the conscience of him who is born from above, were he to yield himself up to the guidance of lies. The little child is here again a model.

Or farther: Mark how devoid of care the infantine are. They repose without forethought or fear upon those whom they love—literally and absolutely, they take no thought for to-morrow. Borne up by the arms of affection, and neither doing nor dreading evil, they are kept in perfect tranquillity: every want is attended to, nay, every want is anticipated. A wisdom beyond what the young can fancy, and a love beyond what they can fathom, are engaged on their behalf, and resting upon these, the helpless and the feeble are safe amid a thousand dangers.

Now, is not that a model to be copied by all who know God’s name, and put their trust in Him? Are we not told that only the Gentiles are anxious and fretful? Is it not announced as a general maxim, to which there can be no exceptive case, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof?” And is not one of the most exquisite proofs of a particular providence that ever gladdened the heart of man, furnished by the Saviour with the flowers of the field and the birds of the air for his text, just meant to produce a child-like confidence in our heavenly Father?[8]

And once again: Are not children proverbial for their dependence on a parent’s word? Do they not place the most unquestioning confidence in the information of those whom they love? Unless the parent be detected as a deceiver, or unless the child be perverted by the vicious example of those who should train it in the truth, not a doubt is felt regarding the word of those with whom infancy associates. And is not that a perfect model of the trust we should repose in the word of our Father who is in heaven? Are we not both reproved and instructed by such little children, as to implicitly confiding in the promises of the unchanging One?[9]

Now, these things may well encourage parents in the training of the young. There is already a groundwork prepared. They have materials upon which to operate; and though all is vain without the teaching of the Spirit of God, yet with that and the use of means, the hope may be cherished that a race will be trained to serve the Lord when their fathers are no more.

ALFRED THE GREAT.

A ROYAL CHRISTIAN.

Nor is history devoid of examples tending to enforce the duty of godly training. Of all the names which embellish the history of our island, that of Alfred the Great stands among the foremost. ALFRED THE
GREAT. Equally remarkable for his genius, his wisdom, his godliness, and his trials, we might find in his single case enough to encourage parental painstaking or rebuke parental neglect. Hear how this monarch speaks: A ROYAL
CHRISTIAN. “To thee, O God, I call and speak. Hear, O hear me, Lord! for thou art my God and my Lord, my Father and my Creator, my ruler and my hope, my wealth and my honour, my house, my country, my salvation, and my life! Hear, hear me, O Lord! Few of thy servants comprehend thee. But thee alone I love indeed, above all other things: Thee I seek: Thee I will follow: Thee I am ready to serve. Under thy power I desire to abide, for thou alone art the Sovereign of all. I pray thee to command me as thou wilt.”

A MOTHER’S POWER.

Now, by what process was this youth enabled to make such acquirements in godliness as that prayer betokens? A
MOTHER’S
POWER. It was by a device of his mother, who allured him into paths where he learned that truth which he has so beautifully embodied. Her wise and loving heart struck upon a plan which proved the turning-point in Alfred’s history. It gave or it confirmed that bent of his mind which made him what he was—which led to the enacting of some of the laws which still signalize England among the nations, as well as prompted this memorable address to his son and successor Edward, on Alfred’s dying bed: “We must now part,” the sinking monarch said; “I go to another world, and thou shalt be left alone in all my wealth. I pray thee (for thou art my dear child) strive to be a father and a lord to thy people. Be thou the children’s father and the widow’s friend. Comfort thou the poor, and shelter the weak; and with all thy might, right what is wrong. And, son, govern thyself by law. Then shall the Lord love thee, and God, above all things, shall be thy reward. Call thou upon him to advise thee in all thy need, and so shall he help thee the better to compass what thou wouldest.” Now that, we repeat, and similar examples may well stimulate parental diligence and animate parental hope. In a barbarous age, amid rude and martial men, with superstition seeking to efface all that was divine, and ignorance combining its power to help superstition to accomplish that object, Alfred rose above every obstacle, and stamped impressions upon his country which all time cannot efface.—What can Christian principle in the hands of a godly mother not achieve? What forms may not be impressed upon the molten lead?

A DIFFICULTY:

A
DIFFICULTY: On this subject, however, there is a difficulty which sometimes meets us, at which it may be instructive to glance. On the one hand, we read, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,” but on the other, it is too well known that even children who have been trained by godly parents often go astray. They make haste to abandon the narrow path as soon as they dare, and plunge into sin as if they were determined to show how boldly they can trample upon all that is sacred or constraining. How many a parent’s heart is at this moment aching, or how many have gone down in sorrow to the grave, lamenting the iniquity of those whom they had tried to train, or for whom they had watched and prayed! Ten thousand mothers have had Monica’s trials, without living to share her joy, and the homes which should have been like temples of religion, have become the abodes of woe.

Now, how is this apparent contradiction to be explained? The Scriptures say, “Train up a child in the way that he should go,” and add the assurance, “When he is old, he will not depart from it;” but, in opposition to that, we see some of the children of godly parents plunging into sin; and how do we explain the seeming contradiction?

—ITS EXPLANATION.

—ITS
EXPLANATION. We explain it just by stating the truth. The child who has gone astray never was in the right way: he refused so much as to enter it. His training was a burden and an offence. Fear might compel him to comply with a form for a season. The parent took pains; he corrected the child, perhaps through tears; he warned; he prayed; but the heart was never won to God. The iniquity which was bound up in the heart of that child resisted every appliance. Sin was still loved. It was turned like a sweet morsel under the tongue. Holiness continued to be disliked. The constraints of a Christian home were like fetters to that child; and, when his pent-up iniquity broke out at last, it was only the open display of what had always been latently ruling. In a word, he had not been trained, nay, he had resisted every attempt to train him, in the way in which he ought to go. He might be the inmate of a Christian home; but he never had a Christian heart; the truth of God was repelled; the Spirit of God was quenched; and the explanation is:—“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”

On the other hand, however, does some child receive the truth into the heart? Does sin become an offence? Is the Word of God loved? Is the salvation of God sought? Then that child is trained in the way in which he ought to go. There may yet come an eclipse of faith. Temptation may for a season prevail, and the world may appear to have regained the mastery. But if the nurture and admonition of the Lord has been welcomed into the heart, as the Spirit imparts his blessing, the effect produced will never fade utterly away. Out of the mouth of such a one God will perfect praise; and while some companion beside him is growing up in wickedness, or casting the Word of God behind his back—searing the conscience, hardening the heart, and ruining the soul—the other is growing up to the stature of a perfect man in Christ. Like a tree planted by the rivers of water, he bears his fruit in his season, and all he does shall prosper.

THE WORLD—ITS ANTIDOTE.

But further, the subject of parental training suggests a question which occasions not a little perplexity to some Christian minds. We refer to the line which separates the unquestionably worldly from the decidedly Christian, in the training of the young. There are practices on which every Christian parent must frown, and from which he must recoil, if he would not promote the ruin, by fostering the worldly-mindedness, of his children; but there are intermediate practices, regarding which he may find it more difficult to decide, and upon this point we quote the authority of one whose weighty words all who would not conspire with the world against their own children, should very gravely ponder. Dr. Chalmers says: THE WORLD—
ITS ANTIDOTE. “In the face of every hazard to the worldly interests of his offspring, will a Christian parent bring them up in the strict nurture and admonition of the Lord; and he will loudly protest against iniquity, in all its degrees and in all its modifications; and while the power of discipline remains with him, will it ever be exerted on the side of pure, faultless, undeviating obedience; and he will tolerate no exception whatever; and he will brave all that looks formidable in singularity, and all that looks menacing in separation from the custom and countenance of the world; and feeling that his main concern is to secure for himself and for his family a place in the city which hath foundations, will he spurn all the maxims and all the plausibilities of a contagious neighbourhood away from him.”[10]

FAMILY WORSHIP.

But it is more than time that we should proceed to refer to the duties of Children. Had it been our object to submit detailed directions for a Christian home, we must have spoken at length of the cardinal duty of family worship, without which, it should never be disguised for a moment, our homes cannot be Christian. FAMILY
WORSHIP. The household in which God is not worshipped is like a ship at sea without a pilot or a helm, while the tempest is rising and threatening to rage. However majestic the vessel or costly the cargo, she is at the mercy of the first rock—it may be, the very first wave. “Him that honoureth God, God will honour; but he that despiseth God shall be lightly esteemed;” and the neglect of this honour is, beyond all controversy, one cause of the degeneracy which is now so apparent in many spheres.

Or we must have told that parents, and very specially that mothers, should deal with their children from time to time, as only Christian mothers can do, regarding the state of the soul, according to the measure of the young capacity. To stimulate them to that duty, we might quote or enforce the words of a man much honoured of God: “Ah, could you see your children standing at the bar of Christ, unconverted, through an affectionate mother’s neglect of their souls, how would the scene rend your hearts with anguish!”[11]

SABBATH SCHOOLS—THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

Or we must have dwelt on the fact that no parent is at liberty to devolve the Christian training of his child upon another. It is the primary law of God over all, that the parent should see to the child’s religious training; and the home in which that is neglected, is one where a large portion of the law of God is ignored. Sabbath-schools have been blessed beyond what can be told, to remedy existing evils—to roll back, or at least repress, the rising tide of iniquity; and multitudes will rejoice for ever over such institutions. SABBATH
SCHOOLS—
THEIR USE
AND ABUSE. In the state of degradation into which multitudes have sunk, they have long been our only hope—but they belong to a diseased state of society. They are for those who would otherwise be neglected or outcast, and can never supersede the obligation imposed upon all parents, without exception, to bring up their children in the nurture of the Lord.

Or, in providing for the Christianizing of men’s homes, we might have spoken on the subject of correction, and told that, in spite of modern theories to the contrary, that is an ordinance of God—though never to be employed till all else has failed, and to be administered, when administered at all, through tears, as giving more pain to the parent who corrects, than to the child who is corrected.

CHILDREN—THEIR ONLY RULE.

Or, in adverting to the ascendency of Christian principle in our homes, we might mention the need of care on the part of parents, lest they commit their children to paths, in regard to this world’s business, where a very miracle of grace is needed to save them from destruction. CHILDREN—
THEIR ONLY
RULE. Who can doubt, that in selecting the school where their offspring shall be trained, or the master whom they shall serve, or the profession which they shall follow, many a parent has sacrificed his child to the god of this world? This is a sore evil; and in an age like ours, when even the souls of men are made a matter of merchandise, a Christian parent will beware lest he expose inexperienced youth amid scenes where everlasting destruction may await the soul.

But these we only name, and now offer one suggestion to the young themselves: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord;” or, “Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord.”—These are the Scriptural injunctions, from which there can be no swerving without committing sin. Did parents issue some command contrary to the Word of God, then a Christian child must decline obeying it, for that child is bound by a higher allegiance to God; but in all common cases, the parent is in God’s place to the child. The parent’s will is law—a law which cannot be broken without guilt. That law, indeed, is to be administered with the sceptre of love, and not with a rod of iron; and while children are to obey their parents, “parents are not to provoke their children to wrath.” But still, the unvarying rule is—the parent’s will is supreme; and wherever filial affection reigns, that law will be sacredly observed, because it is founded on the authority of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is guarded on the one hand by the promise of blessings to the obedient, and on the other by such words as these: “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.” Insubordination here is the root of wrath and woe.

MASTER AND SERVANT.

Next to the relation of husband and wife, and parent and child, stands that of master and servant; and here also our homes should be presided over by Christian principle. MASTER
AND
SERVANT. On the one hand, there is obedience due even to the forward; and on the other, there is care and kindness—kindness to the souls of our domestics, as well as in other respects. In our mercenary and utilitarian age, when human beings are often regarded by hard-minded men, only as so much living machinery, and when the chief question concerning them is too often the same as that which is employed concerning the beasts that perish—How can their flesh and blood be turned to most profitable account?—this relation is often formed or conducted upon principles the reverse of Christian. The employed are too ready to prey upon the employer, while he treats them with lordly indifference or with heartless disregard. They are thus often arrayed against each other, like natural enemies, instead of being united, as mutually dependent.

But a better day has dawned, in which the bonds which unite master and servant are better understood. If servants are to act like those who serve the Lord Christ, and to do their duty heartily as unto the Lord, masters are to beware lest their dependants be hindered in that service by selfish exaction or inconsiderate unkindness. This relation is not a merely mercenary one—it is degraded when viewed only in that light. It has moral elements mixed up with it now, as in the days of old, when Abraham commanded his household, as well as his children, to “keep the way of the Lord.” The soul as well as the body, eternity as well as time, are to be kept in view in this as in every relation; and never was that principle outraged without eventual injury to all. It is much to oppress the hireling, or rob him of his wages; but it is more to defraud the soul of its due. It is much to occasion pain by haughtiness or harshness; but it is more to coerce or to sully the conscience; and the Bible is not the lamp of that home where souls are thus defrauded.

“NOT AT HOME”—A LIE.

And who can ever compute the guilt of those who tamper with a servant’s truthfulness, and train her to falsehood, to screen them from intruders? “NOT AT HOME”
—A LIE. That form of sin is perhaps now well-nigh banished to the highest ranks, and to those who mimic their example; but we can picture no more certain process for defacing all that is pure and lovely in a soul, than the practice to which we advert. And when such a habit as the utterance of a falsehood, for any purpose, is imposed upon a servant, that servant should resolutely reject it. There may come the storm of the cruel seducer’s anger; but better that than the tempest of the Judge’s wrath. There may come homelessness or poverty; but better that than a polluted conscience and a shipwrecked faith. Stanch Christian principle never yet inflicted a lasting injury upon any one, and he need not be afraid for what man can do, who has learned humbly, but firmly, to say, “It is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment.... He that judgeth me is the Lord.”[12]

CHRISTIAN HOMES.

Nor let us fail to remark, that it was for the guidance of servants that these memorable words were inspired: “Exhort servants to be obedient to their masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again; not purloining, but showing all good fidelity;” and mark the lofty motive, “that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.” That is surely truest dignity, and again we say, How would domestic life be sweetened; how would many of our sins be compelled to hide their head ashamed; how would the lowly be exalted; how would the general aspect of society be changed—were our homes Christian homes in this respect! CHRISTIAN
HOMES. Were masters in their spheres, and servants in theirs, alike setting the Lord before them, alike serving him, alike “walking in the way of the Lord”—that one maxim steadfastly obeyed, would revolutionize many a home for good. No petty invasion then of another’s rights on the one hand; no haughty neglect upon the other;—all would be well-ordered, for all would be according to the mind of God.[13]

THE TYPE OF HEAVEN.

And with this all before us, let fathers, mothers, and children—let masters and servants, or the employer and the employed, decide—Are they realizing their responsibility? Are they seeking the eternal good of those with whom they are connected? Are they enduring no wicked thing before their eyes, according to the Word of the Eternal? We know that a parent, for example, cannot impart grace to his child; nay, some of those whom parents most fondly cherish, may turn at last and rend them. But may not the hope be cherished that the blessing of God upon the use of means will turn the hearts of the children to the parents; or better still, to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? May not parents hope, that in answer to their prayers and their pains, God will guide the young to Him whom these parents fear, to the Saviour whom they love, and the heavenly abode of which a Christian home on earth is the vestibule or type? THE
TYPE OF
HEAVEN. Let parents pray for that result; let them labour for it; let them hope for it; and the Spirit of God may thus honour them to win the young to Christ. But how terrific the portion of the parent who shall meet his child in the presence of God, when that child has perished through the parent’s sin! How blessed, how double the heaven, which is the home at once of parent and of child!

THE HAPPY HOME.

THE
HAPPY
HOME. Would men then be happy? Let the love of Christ reign in their homes. Let them yield to that heavenly power which alone can quell tumultuous passion, or charm away the unhallowed effects of sin from scenes which should ever be sacred to holiness and peace. That love should well up in the Christian soul like a stream in the desert, refreshing all, and turning sterility into greenness. Now, is that the case? Has the truth been lodged in the heart? Is the mind of God, the law of the Lord, our guide? Then the cheerfulness of heavenly peace will glance through our abodes. They may be only a straw-built shed, or they may be the halls of the princely; but wherever the love of Jesus reigns, there is peace with God, joy in God, and preparation to be for ever with Him.

CHAPTER III.

RELIGION IN THE WORKSHOP.

There is no error in religion more common or more deadly, than to put the means for the end. So rarely does man regard aright the great object of the soul’s pursuit, that he is ready to repose supinely upon something done, without ever solemnly inquiring whether he has reached the right result by doing it, or only been deceived by a semblance and a form.—We read the Word of God, and think that it can accomplish what only He of whom it tells can achieve. We hold certain doctrines, and because we hold them firmly, we hasten to the conclusion that we actually possess the blessings which these doctrines reveal or imply. Or finally, the intellect of some is filled with truth in its loftiest forms; but there it lies, exercising no influence upon the life. It quiets the conscience, but it does not sanctify the soul; and the anomaly of a spiritual creed side by side with a carnal life is thus frequently found among men—the worst of all heresies, the most deadly of all deceptions, a repetition of Chorazin and Bethsaida.

THE CHIEF END OF REVELATION.

THE CHIEF
END OF
REVELATION. Now, it can never be made too plain that revelation, with all that is glorious in it, is only a means to an end. Even the death of Christ, solitary as it stands in its moral grandeur, among the events of the universe, was only a means—the end was God’s glory in man’s holiness. To bring a clean thing out of an unclean; to transmute enmity against God into love to him, or wounds and bruises and noisome sores into the beauty of holiness—behold the grand result aimed at alike in the life and the death of the Son of God. By dying he did accomplish other results, and the influence of that death is felt to the utmost verge of creation, as we know it is felt among the angels on high. But still it is the grand result we should ever aim at, and that is, deliverance from sin in its condemnation, its pollution, and its power: “This is the will of God, even our holiness.”

THE CHRISTIAN WORKMAN.

THE
CHRISTIAN
WORKMAN. Now, this simple truth may serve as a guide or an ally in every sphere of life, but specially so in that sphere which we are now to contemplate, or the Bible in the Workshop. And an incident recorded in the Christian Scriptures will at once shed light upon the subject. On more than one occasion the apostle Paul had to work with his hands to earn his daily bread.[14] Though the care of all the churches was upon him; though the enmity of the prejudiced, and the persecution of those who had the power, tried to bear him down, he was yet amid it all, a man of handicraft and hard labour—he could sit down with Aquila in his workshop, and there engage in manual labour for his livelihood, with all the zeal of his noble and indomitable nature. He at least was not one of those who think that idleness and indolence can dignify man’s position. He was not one of those who would deem themselves degraded by being useful. He knew that man is born under a decree to work. He therefore wrought; and just as this man of God, when it was his duty, put forth all the powers of his intellect and soul in reasoning before Festus, or Felix, or King Agrippa, did he put forth the powers of his body in making tents in the workshop of his friend at Corinth. Enough for Paul, if he was where the Lord wished him to be, or engaged in what the Lord gave him to do; and without one feeling either of degradation or of discontent, he bore the toils of the body as well as exerted the activities of the mind; he both taught and practised the lesson, “If any man will not work, neither shall he eat.” He felt that every man must be a worker, either with mind, or body, or both. The last was his alternative; and we know that in some cases the night was added to the day, ere he could complete his allotted task. Sinew, and muscle, and bone, in Paul’s case, were dedicated to the service of God, as well as a mental power which could not be gainsaid, except by the bigot’s ever ready argument—the dungeon, the chain, or death.

A WORKSHOP—

With this high model in view, then, let us now enter a workshop, and accost some of those who are there. A
WORKSHOP— Our object is to show how the Bible should preside among them, to protect the character from pollution—the soul from peril. Remembering that Christian worth does not depend on lofty birth or brilliant powers, but on a heart right with God, and his long-lost image restored to the soul, consider how that image may become more and more vivid, if it be indeed stamped on us by the Spirit.

ITS OCCUPANTS.

ITS
OCCUPANTS. And, first, not a few of those with whom we associate in the workshop, are snares to the soul of the very direst kind. We find that infidelity which is often the result of utter ignorance, there rampant and rife. We often see vice rioting in the life, and shutting the heart against the truth. A soul in which religion is felt and loved, will hear what it deems sacred blasphemed, and in self-defence, it may be constrained to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. Some of those who are thus tried can tell of the mental anguish to which they are exposed—of the snares which are laid for them on the right hand and on the left—the heroism which is needed to contend, perhaps single-handed, against a crowd of gainsayers, who know of no pleasure but the pleasures of sin, or care for no truth but such as relates to gross and material things. As the body is oppressed and dies amid mephitic vapours, the soul grows sick and like to die amid scenes like these. It has to maintain a constant struggle for existence, as the natives of some portions of India maintain a constant warfare with the inhabitants of the jungle—the boa, the lion, or the tiger. Men long neglected by those who should have consulted for their better interests; men long viewed as only so much animal machinery, to be used as long as it can drudge, and then heartlessly cast aside; men long treated as if they had neither souls to save, nor an eternity to provide for, have too often sunk so far that they threaten to take revenge upon society, by trampling out every vestige of truth that can be found in the places of their exhaustion and toil.

Now, amid perils like these, surely the man who cares for his soul has just the more need to cleave close to the only power which can give him the victory—and that power is Christ. Every ungodly gainsayer should be to that man an object of pity, like that of the Redeemer to our fallen world. Every blasphemer, every infidel, every man who has given himself up to the slavery of passion, and dethroned at once his reason and his God, should be an object of tender compassion to the soul of the Christian beside him. While sporting with their own ruin, such men should be like another, and another, and another call to all who know the truth, to show by their life at least, what a Christian, or what Christianity is—how true it is that

“We can make our lives sublime,

And departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;”

and the following counsels may help some earnest spirit in that arduous work.

THE SABBATH-DAY.

THE
SABBATH-DAY. I.[T-5] The most godly occupant of a workshop will be the least surprised to hear us say, Next to the Bible, prize the Sabbath-day, and let no man rob you of its sacred rest. You will thus find it a tower of strength to the soul.

While we look around us, we everywhere see the blessed results of the Sabbath rest when properly employed, the woeful consequences of its sacred hours encroached on, whether by the drudgery of toil or the debasement of licentiousness. See that home where domestic comfort dwells, where well-ordered decorum reigns, and where the parent and the child have alike their part assigned to them from day to day. Be sure that the Sabbath is there observed; the very peace which prevails around you in that abode, is a portion of the Sabbath itself spread over the week.[15]

But see that other home where squalid wretchedness, perhaps unholy riot, reigns. See children neglected, see character lost, see poverty bringing woe in its train—a woe which is gradually rising like an ingulfing[T-6] tide upon the inmates, till at last they are steeped to the lip in misery. See a wife worse than widowed amid the brutalities of that home; or, more degrading still, see her uniting with her guilty partner in godless revelry, till, like the meeting of fires, the two together waste and consume every vestige of what is pure, and lovely, and of good report. Now, while you gaze upon that scene, be sure that the sacred hours of the Sabbath are disallowed[T-7] there; they are squandered in licentiousness, and perverted into the means of ruin. In brief, the Sabbath is there trodden under foot. The ungodliness of the week grows deeper and darker on the Lord’s own day, because the abuse of the best things turns them into the worst; and accumulated crime, like a swollen river, sweeps the inmates at last, some to prison, some to an hospital, some to exile, some to death.

GALILEO’S FIRMNESS.

And these, and a thousand similar cases, warn us in the workshop to prize the day of rest. It frees the sons and daughters of toil for a little from the burdens of earth. It braces their mind for the struggle with sin throughout the week. It enables them to clothe themselves with the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left. It affords an opportunity for anchoring the soul to the Rock of Ages. If employed as it ought to be, that day, which is not ours, but the Lord’s, who claims a seventh portion of our time as peculiarly his own, will arm the mind for meekly but resolutely putting away at once the wiles and the assaults of the godless. “I know in whom I have believed,” may be the reply of the godly artizan to all the gainsayers; and he may thus proceed upon his way as a believer, as unmoved either by the scorn or the assault of the infidel or the licentious, GALILEO’S
FIRMNESS. as Galileo was unshaken amid all the persecutions of popery, when he told the world the true theory of the skies. In a word, with the Bible open before us, and the mind of God for our standard there, he is at once the strongest and the happiest Christian who has best learned to practise what John taught by his example, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.”

THE CHURCH OF THE OUTCAST.

Now, we put that counsel first, because unless it be religiously acted on, all else will be vain. At the same time, we are now in circumstances for putting this matter to a practical proof upon a large scale. THE
CHURCH
OF THE
OUTCAST. In various cities of the empire, there are churches formed well-nigh exclusively of those who, a few years ago, had no man who cared for their souls, and who had not learned to care for themselves. They were therefore, familiar with sin. It was their sport, or rather their daily work, to do mischief. Some of them were at once corrupt and corrupting. But out of these very souls there have been formed the goodly spectacle of earnest worshippers, counted by hundreds, and characterized by all the aspects of devoutness.

And, what is it that has achieved these results? How does it happen that instead of the thorn the fir-tree has come up; instead of the brier, the myrtle? and how does the desert blossom as the rose? Who will hesitate to reply, that had it not been for the Sabbath, with all that is blessed and all that is hallowing in its exercises, such effects could never have been produced? From day to day, nay, from hour to hour, pains and prayer were needed. From hour to hour, the men of faith who put their hands to that work, had to depend on the blessing which comes from God only. But these blessings came in rich abundance on the Lord’s own day; and now it can be said of this man and that man, formerly an outcast from the decencies of life, that he is born of the Spirit, clothed and in his right mind, by the Spirit’s blessing on his truth proclaimed. In the light of eternity, such men are ennobled.

TRUE NOBILITY.

Now, what raised them from their degradation, is yet more able to keep us from falling; and sure we are, that were there but one man in a workshop who knew how to prize and profit by the Lord’s day, he could, single-handed, keep his ground at once against taunts, against malice, and against all persecution. TRUE
NOBILITY. On that day our God leads us, if we will let him, into his pavilion; He teaches us where to hide from “the strife of tongues,” and it is thus that true nobility is imparted even to him

“Who ploughs with pain his native lea,

And reaps the labour of his hands.”

II. Where it is our daily business to earn our bread by the sweat of our brows in the workshop, it should be one of our first and most resolute endeavours, to make sure that the truth which Jesus brought from heaven to earth is deeply planted in our hearts and souls.—There are tender plants which thrive and bloom, or bear luxuriant fruit, if sheltered well, but which wither and die if exposed to the biting blast for a night; and there is a parallel to that in religion. In kindly or in genial exposures it may thrive, and put forth its blossoms or bear fruit; but in many a workshop it is exposed to the rudest blasts that blow.

INFIDELITY—

INFIDELITY— One would try to crush it; he hates it because it will not let him sin. Like that profligate man who wished Keith’s Evidences from Prophecy destroyed, “because they were so convincing;” many cry, Away with the Word of God, for the same reason that the Jews cried, Away, away with the Son of God—because it rebukes their iniquity.

ITS ROOT.

And another wishes the Word of God put down, because he remembers its effects upon his soul in earlier years, when a godly parent tried to impress it on the conscience and the heart. He has now cast these instructions behind his back. He has learned to sin with a high hand; and as the sight or the sounds of the truth re-awaken his old concern, he is eager to drive it from his presence. The very sight is a sting to his conscience. A single clause may be like a death-knell, and that man hates it with a perfect hatred. ITS
ROOT. That is the root of much of the infidelity which is now so rife—not the want of proof, but the evil heart of unbelief; not mere ignorance, but the preference of sin to holiness.

Or a third among our fellow-workmen may be one who has known some signal hypocrite. That pretender sought, perhaps, to promote some sinister object by a religious profession. Perhaps he prayed; perhaps he was a reprover of other men’s sins; perhaps he was an eager advocate for sound doctrine, and would endure no departure from it—yet, after all, he may be unmasked as a mere pretender. It may be discovered at length that he was all the while living in sin, concealed, but long continued, such as to indicate that his religion was a pretence, and his strictness that of a Pharisee. Now, having discovered the hollowness of that man’s pretensions, some gladly rush to the conclusion that all religion is a pretence; they greedily grasp at the conviction, because it favours their own licentiousness, that “there is none righteous, no, not one.” Religion in every form is therefore regarded as an offence, or discarded as an imposture.

Or, in the workshop beside us, we may find some other man who affects to be scientific. He knows a little of Geology, and is able to overthrow Moses and the Bible. He is acquainted with the secrets of Chronology, and thinks that there are far older histories—older by many thousands of years—than the records of Scripture pretend to be. Or that man has heard a little of Ethnography, and because he is ignorant, he thinks it can be proved that all the dwellers on the earth did not spring from Adam and Eve. Or perhaps his learning takes the direction of tracing the Vestiges of Creation, and he concludes that man can create—generally, that creatures can make each other, and that God is therefore unnecessary. These, and similar pretensions of science, falsely so called, may have taken hold of some minds around us, and amid the multitude of such assailants, who are bold, as streams are brawling, in proportion to their shallowness, it may not be always easy to be steadfast and unmoveable.

But to render us unmoveable—to arm us against such assailants—nothing will suffice, till Christ dwell in our hearts by faith; till his truth be our property; till the Saviour be a Saviour, and pardon a pardon, to us. A religion which has merely been handed down to us by our fathers, will not stand the rude shock of such assaults as have been named. We need to be rooted and grounded in the truth. We require a better and a deeper teaching than man’s. It must be a fixed conviction in our soul, that religion does not consist in observing mere forms or seasons, however devoutly. Christ must dwell in the heart, just as the blood must be in the body, and circulate there as a vitalizing power.

THE PANOPLY.

On this subject we cannot be too urgent. THE
PANOPLY. While there is absolutely no panoply but truth, our convictions need to be reinforced by the feeling, that it is not toil that degrades man; it is not hard labour that ranks him among the lower orders; it is sin. Adam, in innocence, had to work, and that did not degrade him. But he sinned, and that laid him in the miry clay. Paul the apostle had to work, and felt no dishonour in it. The only dishonour which he knew, was rebellion against God; and if we would resist the temptations which assail us from without or from within, we need to make sure that we are on the Lord’s side; that his truth is in our hearts; that it keeps watch in our souls, ready to sound an alarm, and summon us to action against every enemy. Without that, surrounded as we are in the workshop with clouds of enemies, we shall be like the willow wand before the blast, and driven of the wind and tossed; but with the grace of God in the soul, we may be strong in the Lord and the power of his might; we may beat back our assailants—some have won them to their cause. No power but truth, we repeat, will ever make us steadfast. Some invest our “cottage homes” with the attractions of poetry, and tell that

“Fearless there the lowly sleep,

As the bird beneath their eaves.”

But it is not poetic embellishments—it is nothing factitious in man’s lot—it is the simple truth of God uniting to Christ, that elevates or ennobles the soul.

BAPTISMAL SUPERSTITION.

There are some dark-souled tribes in Africa, whose whole religion consists in charms and incantations. By means which we need not tarry to describe, they try to ward off what they reckon evil, or to obtain what they reckon good. Now, strange as it may appear, that folly is native to the mind of man. The very same tendency which makes a degraded savage trust to a charm, makes some who are not savages trust to rites, and ceremonies, and forms. One man concludes that he and his children are born again, or made the children of God, BAPTISMAL
SUPERSTITION. by the mere fact that they were baptized—that is, by a ceremony. Another thinks that his soul is right, because he worships among Christians. A third concludes that all is well, because the sacrament of the Supper has been administered to him; that rite is to many a soul what the extreme unction of popery is—a charm, an incantation, and nothing more. Now, while that is the only form of religion in man’s soul, he will prove the ready victim of the snares and entanglements of the workshop. If the truth of God be not rooted in the heart, no man can stand. We repeat it, and repeat it—there is only one power that can either make us steadfast or keep us so—the grace of God in truth; and the man who confides in aught else for conquest, is already tottering to his fall.

OUR ALLIES.

OUR
ALLIES. Observe, however, we disown no right ally in this holy warfare. All knowledge that deserves the name—science as far as it can be acquired—should be acquired by every occupant of the workshop, and some memorable examples of success in its culture could be named. These, and all that can either strengthen or expand the mind, should be cultivated to the uttermost of our power; but with all these, the mind may become an easy prey to baseless delusions, unless the wisdom which comes from above be our guide. While we hold our convictions firmly, we must hold them as God’s truth, and in God’s strength, or they will soon be wrung from our grasp. To be self-reliant is in some respects a duty which we owe to ourselves; but yet to trust to our own resources, our own wisdom or strength, is the high way to shame and confusion at the last. We are prepared to resist and to triumph only when we have on the whole armour of God. If we try to realize a Saviour’s love, we have a sure defence; but whatever would withdraw us from that holy influence, whether it be the deceitful heart within, or an ensnaring world without, is just like the smoke from the abyss—it is loaded with darkness and death to the soul.

HUMAN DEVICES.

HUMAN
DEVICES. There is a canoe floating lazily on the waters of the St. Lawrence. All is bright on either side; and forests which nothing but the wild beast or the tempest has disturbed for centuries, wave in the plenitude of summer richness. In that canoe there is a boatman asleep, and the gentle gliding of his little craft is fitted rather to rock than to rouse him. Gradually, however, the river flows more rapidly. The boat, with its sleeping cargo, feels the suction, and now rushes with increasing velocity along. Its agitation at length rouses the sleeper, but it is too late. His skiff feels the resistless power of the current; and, amid wild gesticulations, he plunges into an abyss where his very fragments are destroyed. And similar results are seen in the moral world, when men permit themselves to be drawn within the suction of that current which is sweeping so many down to ruin for ever.

SECULARISM.

Were it needful further to enforce this subject, we might refer to the ever-varying forms of delusion which heady and selfish men often obtrude on the notice of their fellow-workmen. Even in the course of a single generation we may count scheme after scheme—Utopian reforms—charters—new distributions of property or power—all designed to enlist men’s sympathies in favour of some dream-like project, only to plunge its abettors into a deeper abyss than before. SECULARISM. The most recent of these assumes the name of Secularism. It has for its object the abolition of Christianity, and all that relates to the soul. One of its leading maxims is, “The precedence of the duties of this life over those pertaining to another world;” and, by the advocacy of such opinions, the system and its supporters adapt themselves to all that is low and grovelling in the fallen soul. They beguile the unwary, and make an easy conquest of those who have no religion but that of their country or their fathers. Or another dogma of the system is, that “the atonement of Christ is unsatisfactory as a scheme, and immoral as an example;” and by such tenets men would tear up the foundation on which the hopes of mortality repose: they proudly but blindly sport with their own ruin, and glory in lowering themselves to the level of the beasts which perish.

THE HEAVENLY ANTIDOTE.

Now, against such satanic schemes, there is no safeguard but one—the truth as it is in Jesus, planted in the heart by his Spirit, and tended there by his grace. Our religion, or what we call religion, will perish like flax before the flame, when such deceivers assail, unless we have felt the truth in its power, and know, in spite of all opposition, that it can guide, can purify, can bless the soul. What more congenial to man than to be told that he need not care much about his soul? What can throw open the door for indulgence so widely as to be assured that we need not prepare for hereafter—that earth is all? What can more perfectly pamper the selfishness of man than to be told that “spiritual dependence may lead to material destruction?” Hence the danger of such bold blasphemies. They find an ally, and often a ready welcome, in the heart of man; THE
HEAVENLY
ANTIDOTE. and hence also the necessity of getting hold and keeping hold of the heavenly antidote to all such delusions. That antidote is the truth—the truth of God felt in the heart, and guiding the life; and with that in our possession, we repeat in our possession, we may humbly take up the great Reformer’s eulogy, and say, “I will not fear the face of man.” God and man, this world and the next, are alike provided for in the Word; and when we learn to welcome all God’s revelation, we shall be guided into every good and holy way.

THE COWARDICE OF SIN.

III. A third counsel for our guidance in the workshop is, briefly—Be consistent. Never forget that the man who tries to be a Christian to-day, and complies with the enticements of sinners to-morrow, is one who is easily despised. The ungodly are lynx-eyed to mark his inconsistency, and prompt enough to pour contempt upon him. A single rash act, a single rash word, may inflict a wound upon the soul, or a blemish upon the character, from which it will not easily recover; nay, like a moral palsy, it may strike us with weakness and timidity for life. If we would be Christians at all, we must be Christians always. Then by the grace of God we are safe, and it would be pleasant to tell of some who have thus resisted the tide of iniquity which broke against them in the workshop, or silenced the abundance of abuse.—THE
COWARDICE
OF SIN.The sinner is, by a necessary law, a coward. He fears God, though he will not own it; he fears conscience, and tries to trample it out as a dangerous spark; he fears perdition, though he seems to be stout against it; and, moreover, he fears a humble, living, consistent Christian, though he pretends only to despise him. The sinner, we repeat, is a coward, by a necessary law. Terror is part of the wages of sin; and though sinners in crowds be courageous, alone they are timid and discomposed. They shrink from the glance of a good man’s eye; in their secret heart they fear him with a fear which in some cases passes into love.

A MORAL PESTILENCE.

Now, the knowledge of that should make the believer bold and firm. By consistency he will subdue—he may be the means of winning some from the error of their ways. He will generally find some Aquila with whom to associate as he works. His God will raise up some like-minded companion with whom he can take sweet counsel; and if that believer will seek to keep alive in his memory, in the workshop and everywhere, the conviction, that there is only one really formidable thing in all God’s world, that is sin, he will be made more than a conqueror. Swayed by that deep conviction, the occupant of the workshop may often be vexed, as Lot was in Sodom; but, appealing to the Wonderful, the Counsellor, strength will be supplied according to his day, while conscience is kept unsullied and at peace. The squalid victim of sin will be a beacon. A MORAL
PESTILENCE. The bold blasphemer will be an object of utmost pity. The Secularist, and all who give earth precedence to heaven, or man to God, or sin to holiness, will be shunned as a moral pestilence; and the felt necessity of being much at the fountain, amid all these sources of contamination, may turn the workshop into a Bethel. We could tell of more than one instance in which that has been the case.

ANALOGIES.

IV. As it is not our object to enter into details, but mainly to submit such general suggestions as Christian wisdom may enable men to apply as occasion requires, we need scarcely say—At once, and resolutely, put away all the sinful compliances which may be common in the business which you pursue. There are usages, there are expressions, there are pretexts in many departments which pure principle would at once put down, and let the workman of integrity disown such things. The commonness of a sin only makes it worse; and instead of pleading that as a reason for compliance, it is, in truth, a reason for our instant recoil. And never take up the words which are common on the lips of some, that they may cover their iniquity, although the veil be thin: “An honest man cannot live now—that is, we must employ finesse, or fraud, in order to obtain a livelihood, or clear our way through the world.” Such a statement is a slander against the truth; it is dishonouring to the God of truth, and the very reverse of it is true. ANALOGIES. But write it deep upon the conscience, that “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and strife,” and be assured that godliness has the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come. Be poor, but be not unprincipled. Sit down to very humble fare, rather than harbour an angry conscience. When sinners entice you, do not consent, whatever be the bribe. Holding fast your integrity, in the strength of your God, he will redeem his promise, “Bread shall be provided, and water made sure,” and “Better is the little that a good man hath, than the riches of many wicked.”

Would you struggle for your life were you suddenly to fall into a stream or the sea? You would: then will you calmly sink to rise no more for ever, as regards the soul? Would you repel the attack of a robber were he to invade the midnight silence of your home? You would: then with equal earnestness, but in almighty strength, repel the invader—the man that would be the assassin of your soul. Would you refuse to let the oppressor plant his foot on the happy island of your home? You would hasten, I believe, to sweep him from our borders. Then, with equal heroism, defend the freedom which the Son of God bestows—freedom from the bondage of sin, from its pollution and its curse.

TOKENS FOR GOOD.

Nor should it be forgotten for the encouragement of the sons of toil, that there is in our day a gradual approximation of the classes of society. TOKENS
FOR
GOOD. The spreading of education, and the attempts of one class to benefit another, are bringing men more closely together, to link them, as we have seen, in more brotherly concord. There may still be the scowl of defiance from the lawless, and plots on the part of the disaffected, while on the other hand, there are still some remains of a class fast verging to extinction, who would doom the people to hopeless ignorance and toil. But these are nearly obsolete notions, and men are more cordially walking together now, like those who are agreed. In the brief space of a quarter of a century, the hopes of philanthropists once deemed Utopian, have been turned into realities; and while the doctrine of Christ is thus adorned, men’s sorrows are soothed, their souls are blessed.

Many other counsels might be added to those now advanced. We might say—In the workshop avoid all high debate. It never leads to edification; it often occasions the loss both of our temper and our cause. “Be always ready to give to every one that asks it, a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” Be as ready to protest against all that is hostile to the soul and the happiness of man. But contention about religion is often its death; and we would rather say, Hold in your mouth as with a bridle when the wicked are before you. Let the life argue for the Saviour and his cause, far more than the lip. In that way, men will be compelled to take knowledge of you that you have been with Jesus. The life of a Christian is always the most conclusive argument and the most solemn appeal. “Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands,” and let the contentious bite and devour, without retaliation from you.

We might farther say—Be diligent. Above all, be diligent for Christ. It is thus that his people learn to put on armour of proof against all temptation. They redeem the time. They try to do all in the name of Christ, and he becomes like walls and bulwarks round about them. If you will learn to be a “miser of moments,” you may grow rich for eternity.

THE TEMPTER A REPTILE.

THE TEMPTER
A REPTILE. Or we might say—When temptations come, remember that ere the first tempter succeeded, he had to become a reptile; and he that would tempt you is by that act a degraded being. He is to be shunned as an offence; as debased himself, and therefore anxious to debase. Such men may sell their souls for woe, but surely “in vain is the snare set in the sight of any bird—” will you follow the example of a self-destroyer?

Or we might add—Be not deceived by any of the pretexts which cunning men adopt to beguile and ensnare. On the one hand, they flatter the working classes, as if all were idle except the inmates of the workshop; but you know that it is not so. What Paul said to the Colossians concerning his own doings, is true of many still: “I toil, agonizing,” he said, “with the energy of Christ.” On the other hand, men speak of the lower orders as if you who toil were they. But the really low are the men who live in idleness and sin. It is not toil, it is guilt that lowers or degrades us; and that conviction should be rooted in all our minds.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

But enough. Let the men of handicraft and hard labour cling close to the Bible, for it alone can ennoble and purify. Before its light, let all grow pale; before its wisdom, let all appear foolish.—ILLUSTRATIONS. As we approach the mighty Alps, other objects begin to seem small or diminutive; and after our eyes have been familiarized with those majestic masses, what formerly appeared grand seems now reduced to littleness.—Let it be so in the moral world. Before the majestic truth of God, let every human being do obeisance, like the sheaves of his brothers to the sheaf of Joseph; and when we are like-minded with our God, we shall be strong in his strength, and happy with his peace. We cannot be always in his house—our daily toils forbid it; but we should be always in his Spirit; and that is light, that is strength, that is a passport for man to glory.

Upon a subject so full of interest as the moral condition and prospects of those who spend their days in workshops, we should not perhaps be contented with merely announcing general rules, however sound or scriptural they may be. It is commonly supposed that the humble men who are so employed are cut off from the nobler outlets for philanthropy, or from those higher walks in which some move and do great deeds before the world’s view. But no mistake can be more unfounded. The mighty Maker of heaven and earth has debarred no man from doing good, if man himself be inclined; and some of the noblest benefactors of our land or race, have been found among the very classes too commonly supposed to be doomed only to toil. We waive all reference to those who, by their inventions, even while engaged in manual labour, have extended the resources of our empire, and added to the riches of our globe. We pass by those who have risen from among the sons of handicraft to take rank among our lawgivers, our nobles, and other signalized men. We point to only two examples not less illustrious as benefactors than they were humble in their sphere.

HARLAN PAGE.

HARLAN
PAGE. Harlan Page was born at Coventry, in Connecticut, in the year 1791, and was taught by his father the trade of a house-joiner. He received a good common education. For twenty years and more he lived without much concern regarding his soul, but in the year 1813, “the one thing needful” really became an object of earnest pursuit. Such was his anxiety and distress on account of sin, that he had frequently to retire from his work to pray. On journeys he often felt constrained to withdraw to some thicket for a similar purpose; and on one occasion, after he had begun to teach a school, his sense of his lost condition as a sinner became so intense, that he felt that he could not again leave the throne of grace till the controversy with his Maker was closed. There, in the darkness of midnight, and under the guidance, none can doubt, of the Holy Spirit, he consecrated himself to the Redeemer, not merely in the confidence of pardon and acceptance, but with the determination to live and labour to promote His glory in the salvation of the perishing. “When I first obtained hope,” he said on his dying bed, “I felt that I must labour for souls. I prayed, year after year, that God would make me the means of saving some.”

“BEHOLD HE PRAYETH.”

“BEHOLD HE
PRAYETH.” And his prayer was signally answered. Never did Page lose an opportunity of holding up the lamp to souls. By letters, by conversation, by tracts, by prayers, by appeals and warnings, as well as by a holy and an earnest example, did he try to reclaim the wandering or edify the believer. In factories, in schools, and elsewhere, did this mechanic labour, and only the mighty power of grace can explain how one so humble could achieve so much: his life is a speaking comment on the words, “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.” “Our faith in eternal realities is weak,” he cried, “and our sense of duty faint, while we neglect the salvation of our fellow-beings. Let us awake to duty, and while we have a tongue or pen, devote them to the service of the Most High, not in our own strength, but with strong faith and confidence in him.”