Page images
PDF
EPUB

and freedom. Animated by the spirit of christianity, thou wilt ever be more active, more indefatigable in goodness, wilt never be weary in striving upwards and contending for the prize that awaits the conqueror. Animated by the spirit of christianity, thou wilt already in this mortality think and act like an immortal; and wilt perform a thousand acts of goodness, and enjoy a thousand comforts, which he can neither perform nor enjoy who is unmindful of his immortality, or cannot rejoice therein, O how exalted and divine is the spirit of christianity! that spirit of wisdom and power, of love and felicity! May its animating influence quicken, warm and penetrate us all! Rouse us to the noblest sentiments of ourselves! Inspire us with a godlike energy, with the most active zeal in goodness, penetrate and warm us with love towards God and man! How great, how illustrious will then our dignity be, and how much greater and more illustrious will it become, from one period of our lives to another, and from eternity to eternity!

The Value of Human Life.

O GOD! The creator and father of our life,

how can we be sufficiently grateful to thee, for having called us, who were formerly not, into being and into life! How sufficiently thank thee for having made us capable of a life with consciousness, of a rational, wise, and virtuous life, leading to ever higher perfection and happiness! And with how many bounties, with how many satisfactions, pleasures, and joys, has not thy loving kindness strewn our path! What evident traces of thy fatherly providence and love meet we not every where on it! Yes, O God! To whom thou givest life thou givest also capacities and means to pleasure and delight. Whom thon raisest to the life of a rational creature, to him thou openest, in the knowledge of truth, in practice of virtue, in communion with thee, in the hope of immortality, sources of pleasure and delight, that never fail, from which he may draw eternal joy and felicity. Happy we, that we are, that we live, that we live as men, as christians, as rational creatures and called to immortality, and may be so glad of our life in thee and in the enjoyment of thy bounties! O let us rightly understand and feel the value of our life, and teach us to use and enjoy it conformably to thy gracious, thy beneficent designs. Keep us from embittering it by folly and vice, by violent baleful passions, and misapplying a gift which thou hast bestowed to be a blessing to our own perdition. Let wisdom and virtue and piety be our guides and conductors on the road of life,

and let us all, under their direction, attain to that perfection and happiness to which thou hast appointed us in this and in the future world. Bless to that end the meditations that are now to employ our thoughts. Let them diffuse a clear light upon the nature and destination of our present life, and let that light correct our judgments on it, and regulate the whole of our future conduct. Our Father, &c.

PSALM cxix. 175.

Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee.

THE desire to live is natural to all men. Nei. ther grief, nor pain, nor misfortunes, can totally suppress it; and the generality of mankind would rather begin again their course on earth, however gloomy, however troublesome, however perilous it may have been, and expose themselves again to all its difficulties and dangers, than have them ended by the loss of life. Seldom is the burden of misery so heavy, and the sentiment of it so oppressive; seldom do passion and error blind a man so far as to make him prefer death to life, and nonentity to existence. Very rarely do we find him so pious and so holy as to say from his heart, with the apostle, "I have a desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ, which is far better." Let us admire and adore the wise goodness of our Creator, for having given us so innate an attachment to life, so interwoven and con nected it with our nature, and thereby furnished us with such a powerful, such an irresistible incentive

to preserve it! But let us dignify this desire to live, by investigating the ground of it, that we may be able to justify it at the bar of substantial reason. To love and to wish for life, without knowing why or wherefore, is blind animal instinct; but to love it on true and solid principles, and to wish for it in the best designs, will be no discredit to the philosopher and the christian. Thus the psalmist is desirous of it in our text. "Let my soul live," says he to God, "Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee." Would we do so likewise, my pious hearers, would we so wish for life that we might truly rejoice in it, and praise God for it, then we must understand the real value of human life. We must neither esteem it as better or as worse, neither as more important nor more insignificant, neither as more happy nor more unhappy than it actually is. In one case our attachment to it would be too strong, in the other not strong enough, In both cases we should more or less mistake its destination, and seldom make so good a use of it as we might,

Well then, let us turn our reflections today on the value of human life, that we may discover why, and to what purpose, we should wish to live. For examining this matter properly, we must do two things. First shew, what is implied if we would have human life of value, and indeed of great value to us; and then what gives it this value, or what makes it desirable and estimable to us,

If we would have our life to be of real value to us, and rightly appreciate that value, we must study it, we must seriously reflect upon it, we must consider it on every side and in its whole circuit; we must regard it, not under any false appearance which present, transitory, pleasant or unpleasant sensations, any fortunate or unfortunate accidents may throw upon jt. We must therefore bring into the account its

joys as well as its sorrows, its satisfactions as well as its hardships, the days of delight and pleasure, as well as the hours of pain and grief, the good we enjoy or may enjoy, as well as the evil that befals us. We must consider it, not as the whole of our existence, not as the capacity and measure of our whole felicity; but only as the beginning, as the lowermost step of our rational being, as the preparation to a greater and higher felicity; and in so doing not suffer ourselves to be guided by prevailing prejudices, but by just experiences, observations and principles. Whoever, deceived by certain images, represents this earth to himself as a joyless desert, as a vale of tears and sorrow, as the abode of darkness and misery; whoever, in opposition to universal experience, imagines that its evils preponderate over its satisfactions; whoever, from misanthropy or ill humor, at one time thinks that all mankind are fools, and at another knaves; forgetful of their origin and their vocation, degrades them into brutes, or considers man only as a comedian that has a part to perform, without any farther consequence or view; and when this part is played, falls back to his primitive nothing; he who confines all his prospects and hopes to the present momentary state; to him indeed this life can have no great value, to him it must be a contemptible object, the preservation of it of no importance, and the loss of it not to be lamented. But is this a true representation of human life? Has then this earth, which God has adorned with such numberless beauties and pleasures, has it the appearance of a desert? Is weeping and wailing so frequent or so loud upon it, that the voice of joy and gladness is no where to be heard? Does not man pass far more hours in health than in sickness; does he not experience far more bright than gloomy days? In the whole amount, does not the sum of his agreeable

« PreviousContinue »