The GOSPEL TRUTH

LECTURES ON THE

MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD.

 By

 NATHANIEL W. TAYLOR, D. D.,

1859

VOLUME I

 

SECTION II:

THE MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD

AS KNOWN

BY THE LIGHT OF NATURE.

 

LECTURE XII:

 

Argument for necessity of revelation continued: Prop. 2 continued -- Revelation necessary to secure the practical influence of the truth. -- Argued from the state of Pagan nations at present. -- From the Influence of Deism. -- Deists greatly indebted to Christianity. -- The influence of their systems is feeble, scanty and uncertain, denies the holiness and justice of God. -- Their views of sin and repentance defective. -- Their morality superficial. -- Men are not made better by them. -- Little zeal for reforming men by then. -- Give no comfort in death. -- Prop. 3. Revelation necessary to make known truth undiscoverable without It. -- Conclusion.

 

 

IN continuing the argument for the necessity of a divine revelation to any useful discovery of truth, I appeal --

 

In the second place, to the state of pagan nations at the present time.

 

This point needs no illustration. The facts on this subject are familiar to all, and, they carry with them their own inferences.

 

In the third place, I appeal to the influence of Deism. It is claimed by that class of philosophers called deists, that the book of nature is the only book to be studied, or that deism as a system derived from human reason under the light of nature, is all that is requisite actually to instruct and guide the world in respect to religion and morals.

 

My first remark on this part of the subject is, that this class of philosophers, have derived the best parts of their system from the very revelation which they reject and affect to despise. Let it then be conceded, that in their system of faith there is much truth concerning God and concerning man. Truth, which human reason rightly employed might and would discover under the mere light of nature. But it is one thing to grant that these doctrines of deism are discoverable, and quite another to affirm, that they have been actually discovered by the light of nature. What then is the fact? It is here to be remarked, that the name of deist was unknown till about the year 1565, when Christianity had been in the world more than fifteen centuries. How then did it happen, that Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, and all the wisest philosophers groped in such darkness during so many ages, and that this purified and perfect system of truth called deism, should be first discovered and taught by men who lived and were educated under the meridian sun of Christianity? Had these men at this period of the world, made such advances in knowledge as to leave the philosophers of Greece and Rome and all other nations out of sight, and to be able effectually to guide themselves and the rest of the world by their own reason? Can they lay claim to superior genius or mental culture; or did the light of nature shine brighter on them than on all who lived before? This cannot be pretended. No; what they knew, and all they knew, more than was known and taught by the sages of antiquity, they learned from God's revelation. Christianity had shamed away the grosser errors and vices of the pagan philosophy, and shed its blazing light so intensely on the mind, as to compel men as it were to see its perfect system of moral and religious truth, and to adopt so much of it as to shield them from contempt. They stole a torch from the temple of God and called it the light of their own reason. The fact cannot be mistaken--the pretension to discovery is ridiculous. As well might a New Zealander residing among the discoveries in the arts and sciences made in Christendom for the last hundred years, pretend to be their sole author. Are not such pretensions to discovery from the light of nature ridiculous, contemptible, beyond all possible respect?

 

But I will waive this point, and ask, what is this system of truth which is to accomplish so much for the moral reformation of the world? No one can tell what it is! To whom shall we apply--where shall we find it? Shall we resort to the deistical writers en masse and listen to their instructions? But the ear is stunned with contradiction, inconsistency, disagreement, controversy, mutual censure and recrimination without end. When it must be optional in the highest sense with, all to adopt one or another or none of these systems, what is to be expected but the same jargon among the disciples, as prevails among the masters; or rather, what but the rejection of every system? Or if everyone is to read and judge for himself what will be the consequence but confusion, compared with which that of Babel were harmony of sweetest music? Who that knows any thing of man, or of the experience of past ages, will not regard as perfectly ridiculous the scheme of bringing this world to receive any system even of truth, which has no higher authority than that of human reason.

 

But further, without insisting on this fatal obstacle, there is yet another. Their system can possess no authority, not even that of reason itself. The most perfect systems of deism consists in these particulars, that there is one God possessing infinite natural and moral perfection; that God is to be worshiped and served in the forms of piety and of virtue; that God will forgive our sins against him on condition of repentance; and that he will reward the good and punish the bad in a future state. Now I readily admit that these propositions are all true, in their proper import, and that they can all be proved to be true, by human reason. But what I now maintain is, that the infidel cannot, by reason, prove any one of them to be true. He cannot, because he denies the premises by which alone these propositions can be thus proved to be true. He denies the justice of God, the equity of his moral administration over this world; and, denying this, he can prove nothing concerning God or man of the nature of religious or moral truth arising out of the character of God, or the relations between God and man. Denying that God is just as a moral governor, he cannot prove that God is benevolent. Denying that perfect benevolence in God involves in its very nature exact and perfect justice, he denies the very nature of benevolence; he denies an essential element of all moral rectitude, and utterly subverts the distinction between right and wrong. The God of Infidelity then is not, and cannot be, a benevolent God, but is and must be a selfish and malignant deity. This spoils alike its entire system of theology and of morals. A God of such a character cannot have the least claim to any worship or service from man either in the form of piety or virtue. With such a view of God, there can be no love, no confidence, no gratitude, no piety, no virtue toward him, for there, is no fit object of these affections. All moral relations between him and his moral creation are subverted. Moral obligation, obedience, disobedience, sin, duty, can have no place. Where is moral obligation? Such a God has no right to command. Where is obedience or disobedience? He has no authority. Where is the standard of duty? The will of God is the will of a selfish or malignant being. Where is the object of one right affection? God is exhibited only as an object of abhorrence and of dread. Where is sin against God? It were sinful to love, and right to hate such a being. Where is repentance? There is no cause for contrition in the past, and no return to duty for the future. Where is forgiveness? There is nothing to be forgiven. Where is the ground of trust or hope? The vain illusion that a selfish being, who is more likely to destroy than to promote the interests of his creatures, may prove indulgent through partiality or favoritism. Where the prospect of immortality? No purpose or plan of God, no designs either of justice or mercy, require a future state for their accomplishment. Where are rewards and punishments? All are a mockery--at best the expressions of unjust lenity or unjust severity. Where is religion; where is virtue; where is the principle of recovery from the gulf of moral ruin; where is relief for the alarmed conscience; where is mercy, peace, hope, heaven; where is a perfect God? All is a blank. Indeed, a system of religion which denies THE GREAT RELATION OF GOD as the righteous moral governor of men, is all error, all delusions It is worse than not true. It is most fearfully false. It is worse than nothing, worse than any thing. The God of such a system can be viewed in the light of truth only under two aspects, as the patron of iniquity, or all omnipotent tyrant. No God at all were better than the God of Infidelity. What man not already the hopeless victim of his wrath, would not wish that God were benevolent, though benevolence involves perfect justice. Under any other idea of him, there is nothing but that which in wanton malice patronizes iniquity with all its woes or tortures, nothing but that which is fitted to overwhelm with terror. Such then are the unavoidable results which reason gives from the premises of the infidel. If we can suppose him inconsistent enough to believe any thing better himself, he cannot prove it to be true, he cannot enforce it on the minds of other men by the authority of reason. He must give up his premises, and admit the great fact of A JUST GOD, or abandon all pretense to reasoning. His premises do not give his conclusions, but others which are opposite and appalling. What then can be hoped for, from a system of reason in which there is no reason? Will the world be reformed by a system of faith professedly founded in reason, and yet so obviously built on falsehood? Vain is the dream. Deism, with all the seeming, comeliness of its most unexceptionable form, has, according to its own principles, no warrant, no authority, from human reason. It is an utterly baseless system.

 

But I have another inquiry to make concerning this system: viz., WHAT IS IT? The deist--at least a few deists--professes to believe that there is a perfect God; that he is to be worshiped and served by piety and virtue; that he will forgive our sins on condition of repentance; and that good men will be rewarded and bad men punished in a future state.

 

This, so far as it goes, sounds well in words, but what does he believe concerning God? He tells us he is good. But what is goodness in God? We have seen that it is that sentimental tenderness, that indulgent lenity that sacrifices the general good to individual happiness; goodness that does not abhor the supreme evil, goodness that refuses to adopt the best means of the best end. Does the infidel then believe in God as he is? Does he conceive of him in the glory of that holiness which recoils from sin with supreme and eternal indignation, in the glory of that justice which will maintain his law, uphold his throne, sustain the interests of holiness, and express his supreme and immutable abhorrence of sin, though it involves the eternal destruction of a rebel universe? Who does not know, that all such exhibitions of God, are, in the view of infidels, repulsive, odious, intolerable falsehood? Who does not know, that they can tolerate no idea of God but that which exhibits him as more concerned for the happiness of his creatures than for their virtue; that view of God, which represents him as entirely dispensing with the eternal nature, relations, and dependencies of things; and therefore as sacrificing the interests and the principles of righteousness to make his creation happy, by which he must inevitably make that creation wretched; that view of God which exhibits him in the glory of his mercy, sacrificing his justice, in the plenitude of his goodness as a tender, indulgent friend and patron of iniquity--a selfish malignant deity? Such is the good, the benevolent, the perfect God of Infidelity! I ask here, are these words merely, and not things? The same hollow emptiness, the same meaningless nothing, or rather the same fearful falsehood characterizes every part of the infidel's creed. What is sin? A venial evil--the merest trifle--nay, rather, so far as it exists, the best means of the best end! What greater practical error than to believe, the worst kind of moral action to be the best kind of moral action?

 

Where is the true exhibition of the nature and tendency of sin against God, as hostility to him and all good and the source of absolute and universal woe; as the subversion of God's law, his government, his throne, his kingdom, as the destruction of all good--yea, of God himself, as the infallible source of misery, unmingled, complete, eternal. Are such the views of the true nature and tendency of sin which Infidelity gives us? Nothing like it. They are, of all things, the views which infidels most abhor. That sin is such an evil, involving such fell destruction, such guilt or ill-desert, and that a perfect God must feel and act toward it accordingly, is, in their estimation, the most incredible of all nonsense. These views of sin are the false, absurd, austere, gloomy, self-torturing views of hair-brained fanatics.

 

With such conceptions of God as the infidel entertains, what must that be which he calls piety? Can love, reverence, confidence, submission, gratitude, joy, be exercised toward the God of Infidelity? How preposterous. Can every thing be taken away from the character of God which awakens dread and disturbance when sinful beings think of heaven's Sovereign; can every moral attribute of the Godhead be amalgamated into one--that of unqualified tenderness; can all that is venerable and awful in God be sunk into that which is so grateful to the rebel; with such a view of God can the heart of his worshiper feel the holy reverence and awful love which are due to a perfect God? True piety, in all the sacredness and solemnity of devout emotion, adoring the tender, sentimental, weak-hearted God of Infidelity! When does the infidel contemplate God in his true character, that awful goodness which connects misery with sin, and welcome the aspect of such a God? When does he look upon that august and inviolable sanctuary, where the fires of his indignation forever burn to guard the approach of the least moral pollution, and adore, and love, and praise, with grateful and exulting joy? We all know that such a God is the object of aversion and ridicule, and even of blasphemy, with infidels. All their piety, all their joy in God, is, and can be, nothing but those selfish, sordid emotions which are founded in the belief that an unprincipled deity will be indulgent to them in their rebellion.

 

And further; what is that which the infidel calls repentance? Not sorrow for sin as it is--not as hostility to God, and the frustration of his designs; not sorrow for sin, as that which in the estimation of God and of truth, deserves his wrath in the endless misery of the sinner. But rather, it is regret for a trivial evil, for that toward which God feels no supreme abhorrence, but which he on the whole prefers to its opposite--sorrow in a word, for that which in their estimation and in that of God, is the best means of the best end, with a determination to forsake it! And as to future rewards, what are these--what is the heaven of Infidelity? Nothing positive, nothing definite, a general undefined state of happiness irrespective of moral character. It may be the heaven of Mohammed, or it may be the blissful elysium of heathen poetry, or a paradise of earthly sweets in some other form. But it is not a world of happiness, because sin is not there, and because holiness is there reigning in all its purity and its joys. The happiness of the infidel's heaven is not that which is peculiar to holy spirits in communion with a holy God. It is any thing but a perfect God in fellowship with creatures bearing his perfect image. And what is future punishment Not a supreme and endless misery inflicted as the expression of the wrath of God against sin; but at most paternal chastisement, disciplinary evil, kind inflictions to reform and to save; evil inflicted according to the exigency, so that they who are not reformed by less shall be reformed by more, so that rebellion itself, much as it may abhor the service of God, shall be compelled by dint of suffering to surrender to God's authority, and thus to serve him at best with a rebel heart. No other motive, nothing but the compulsory influence of natural evil is thought of or presented. Thus it is that Infidelity in its fairest form is plausible in words only. In respect to truth, it means nothing which it seems to mean. It knows nothing of God as he is--nothing of holiness or of sin, of piety, virtue, repentance, or of the nature of those influences by which alone moral beings can be governed and blessed. All it means under its fair show of words is error the most destructive. And in further confirmation on this point, I appeal to any man acquainted with the writings or the character of infidels, and ask, is there a more palpable solecism than a pious infidel--a devout, spiritual, heavenly-minded infidel?

 

If now we appeal to Infidelity's code of morals, what is it? True morality is in the heart. Men talk of good morals. What are they? Benevolence in the heart; love to God and love to man. Holiness, a spiritual principle, which as much surpasses all that infidels call morality as a living man does a dead man. In all the writings then of infidels, I fearlessly affirm, that the inculcation of the great, the true, the only principle of morality cannot be found. It follows of course, that whatever else may be true of their system, it includes not the slightest tendency to reform men in respect to morality. In most if not in all cases, there is an open and avowed contempt for many of the particular virtues which adorn the character of man as a social being, and which are essential to the happiness of an earthly community. At the same time the most heartless, sordid selfishness is inculcated in many forms, and many of the most degrading and destructive vices, with an almost unlimited indulgence of the sensual appetites, are countenanced and even formally vindicated. A few testimonies from the least exceptionable of deistical writers must suffice on this topic. Lord Herbert asserts that lust and anger are no more to be blamed than the thirst occasioned by the dropsy, or the drowsiness produced by lethargy. Mr. Hobbes, that the civil law is the only foundation of right and wrong--that every man has a right to all things, and may lawfully get them if he can. Lord Bolingbroke resolves all morality into self-love, meaning selfishness, and teaches that ambition, the lust of power, sensuality and avarice may be lawfully gratified if they can be safely, that man lives only in the present world, that the chief end of man is to gratify the appetites and inclinations of the flesh, that adultery is no violation of the law of nature, that polygamy is a part of this law, and modesty is inspired by prejudice or vanity. Mr. Hume maintained that self-denial and humility are not virtues, but are useless and mischievous, and that pride, self-valuation, &c., are objects of moral approbation, that adultery must be practiced if men would obtain all the advantages of life, and if practiced secretly and frequently would be no crime at all! But I need not go into further details. Substantially the same things or worse, are to be found in all this class of writers of most distinction.

 

If now we refer to their characters, we shall see that in their practice they gave proof of their faith. Lord Herbert, Hobbes, Lord Shaftsbury, Woolston, Tindal, Chubb, Lord Bolingbroke, Collins, were all guilty of the vilest hypocrisy and lying on the face of their publications; professing in words high respect for Christianity, while they felt toward it the most deadly hate, wearing a mask of friendship that they might stab it to the heart. The morals of Rochester and Wharton were notoriously degraded. Woolston was a blasphemer; Blount was a suicide; Tindal and Morgan were shameless hypocrites. Voltaire was an adulterer, and as famous for falsehood, treachery, envy, profligacy, low sensuality and cruelty, as for his exalted talents. Rousseau, by his own published confession, was a thief, a liar, and a debauchee. Thomas Paine, than whom perhaps no one has done more by his writings to extend Infidelity in this country and in Europe, was infamous for his hostility, to all morals and all religion, for his impiety, blasphemy, licentiousness and adultery, and sunk at last into all the filth and wretchedness of a sot; an object of pity and contempt to his own deluded disciples.

 

In presenting these examples, I do not pretend that every deist has been thus degraded by open vice and immorality. Doubtless there are cases in which pride, respect for character, literary ambition, and other causes have predominated over the grosser appetites; but in many of these an avowed hostility to the true principle of morals, a ridicule of the milder virtues, an extreme indifference and selfishness in respect to the best interests of man, have varied the aspect without lessening the guilt of their principles or their conduct. Nor let it here be said that some of the professed disciples of Christianity have also been depraved and wicked men. We admit it. But this we reply, is notwithstanding Christianity--it is in spite of it, not its effect; while the wickedness and the profligacy of professed infidels are the genuine fruits and effects of their religion itself. The proof from facts is decisive. Such has been the character of the teachers of the one system almost without an exception, while the contrary, character has been that of the teachers of the other, with almost no exception. In respect to the disciples of the two systems, in the one case a hundred to one have been openly wicked and profligate, in the other not one in a hundred has been.

 

Again; infidels themselves do not believe in the salutary, reforming tendency of their own system. What have they done, I do not say to propagate their faith, but to propagate it for practical, reforming purposes? what, to secure any useful practical influence on the human mind? Is it not notorious that the grand, the supreme object, end, and aim of this class of men, has been to pull down and destroy Christianity, and to set up Infidelity in its stead? Is it not a fact that Infidelity, so far as it comprises truth in words, is a mere show, an empty pretense of truth, brought forward only as matter of display in argument; never as having any practical bearing on the conscience; never exhibited as a system embodying obligations, persuasives, motives--the least tendency or power to reclaim from sin and death -- but used as an imposing semblance of truth--a foil to set off and commend the most destructive error. Does the infidel care what men believe, provided only that they do not believe Christianity? Or rather, so far as he teaches any thing positive, does he not inculcate false views of God, of his character, of his relations; and false views of man, his duty, his character, his prospects? Is it not a system to console rather than disturb human wickedness? Where are the truths brought forth for practical purposes which are taught by the light of nature itself? Where, in the writings or addresses of this class of men, is God presented to the human mind as he is--God in his holiness, his justice, or even in his mercy, for practical purposes; where do you find any exhibition of sin as it is, in its true moral deformity, turpitude, and odiousness; repentance in its ingenuous relentings, its godly contrition, brokenness of heart, and abhorrence of all sin; of the graces of humility, meekness, forgiveness, active beneficence, with the self-denial and self-government which they involve; where any exhibition of the rewards of the righteous and the punishments of the wicked pressed on the hopes and the fears of men as incentives to piety and virtue? Where is there any assault on corrupting error save that of Christianity, or any defence of truth, except that Christianity is false. Where is truth (I speak of truth taught by the light of nature), developed by illustration, defended and confirmed by argument, and pressed home on the bosoms and business of men in its practically reforming power; where are the sinful practices of men exposed and condemned; where are the corrupt principles of the human heart, its selfishness, deceitfulness, its lusts and inordinate passions, its worldliness, pride, and rebellion against God laid open; where is the law of God in its broad and spiritual demands unfolded; where is the full-length portrait of man drawn as a sinner against God without excuse, and without hope save in the mercy of a just God--mercy without merit, mercy that can save while justice can destroy; where is the entreaty and the expostulation, the earnest solicitude, the beseeching tenderness, the faithful reproof, that true-hearted kindness that consults not the passions but the welfare of men, not their inclinations but their duties, that offends rather than deceives, that utters painful truth rather than flatters to destruction, that humbles, and rebukes, and wounds, rather than not save; where is the study, and the toil, and the prayers, the compassion, the tears, that become a reformer of fellow-beings ruined for eternity? Where are their Baxters, and Leightons, and Doddridges, their Edwardses, and Davieses? A death-like silence answers. There is not one Christian book that does not contain the essential elements of moral truth, illustrated, applied, enforced; you cannot find one infidel book that does. What signifies then all this pretense of infidels about reforming the world by the light of reason? If there is truth in their system, fitted and sufficient to reform and save their fellow-creatures from the doom of sin, and if they sincerely believe it, why not bring it forth for this high purpose, and go abroad on this errand of salvation with that apostolic zeal, self-denial, and devotedness which become such a cause. Sin still maintains its dark and gloomy dominion, with scarcely an exception, throughout this wicked world, frowning resistance and defiance against God and goodness.

 

Why, as true men and good men, do they not open their powerful battery of truth, and make their artillery thunder on the strongholds of sin and death? Honest men, believing that they have the means of such a triumph, and yet doing nothing! Friends of God and of man, true-hearted philanthropists, do you believe that Infidelity will reform and save a lost world; then apply it to that purpose, show your faith, your works. In the name of truth and reason let us have the experiment. Oh, but Christianity is in the way. Then go where there is no Christianity. Christianity in the way? But Christianity, by their own confession, is the best, even a perfect system of morals. Why not then take TRUTH--TRUTH where they can find it. TRUTH, if the devil be the author of it; and carry, it forth in its enlightening, transforming, and saving power, upon this dark and wicked and dying world? The infidel sincere! An apostle of Infidelity loving the souls of men; truly believing that a lost world is to be reclaimed to God by deism; aiming to accomplish this end by this means! No. Every thing shows that his grand, his only object is, to destroy Christianity. He lives to annihilate its truths and to throw the reins loose on the neck of rebellion against God. He hates Christianity. He hates its author; he lives with the watchword on his lips, "Crush the wretch;" and to any labors, undertaken and pursued from principle, for the glory of God and the salvation of men, he will not make the least pretension. Labors for the conversion and salvation of men! There is not an infidel who would not be ashamed of, and even resent, the imputation.

 

Once more, what have been the actual effects of Infidelity, the practical results on the human mind. I speak of its effects where it has been most successful in respect to its real object of displacing the influence of Christianity and securing the prevalence and legitimate results of its own principles. Here I might appeal to the testimony of that multitude who have been converted from Infidelity to Christianity; what is their conversion in every instance by their own frank confession but a conversion from sin to holiness--what is it in most cases but a conversion from vice, profligacy, hostility to all that is good--what but a resurrection from moral degradation and death? Facts innumerable of this kind betray the camp of the enemy--they show us the interior of this sepulcher. But has Infidelity any such facts to show--facts of men made better by renouncing Christianity for Infidelity? Converts to Infidelity from among devout and enlightened disciples of Christianity, confessing their guilt for having embraced it, confessing vice and crime, profligacy and debauchery as the results of receiving and obeying Christianity! Baxters, Leightons, Doddridges, Brainerds, Edwardses, such men in the integrity of their hearts renouncing the corrupting influence of Christianity for the sanctifying power of Infidelity? All the world knows the absurdity, the self-contradiction, the utter impossibility of such a thing; and know as well that the difference between Christianity and Infidelity is the difference between truth and error--truth that blesses and saves, and error that curses and destroys the souls of men--the difference between life and death.

 

What has been the reforming influence of Infidelity, of human reason rejecting Christianity, or perverting it, or obscuring its light? What was the cause of the decay and of an. almost utter extinction of religion and virtue among men, from the seventh to the sixteenth century? The corruption of Christianity left the human mind to be governed by human reason and depraved morals, superstitions multiplied, heathenism revived under the garb of Christianity, spiritual tyranny was established, moral duties exchanged for vows, pilgrimages, austerities; God, his worship, his service forgotten; selfishness, vice, clime, a long, fearful night of woe. And what brought back the day? Was it Infidelity; was it human reason, unaided by revelation, or was it the book of God, reopened and republished by the reformers?

 

Take any period in this world's history and show when or where, in a solitary instance, Infidelity has ever raised the human mind from the gulf of ignorance and moral degradation; show where Infidelity first planted religion, or preserved it when planted, or revived it when it had declined, or purified it when it had been corrupted. Show the spot made bright and fruitful by its boasted irradiations of light. Where has it prevailed without producing darkness, sterility, and death? Need we speak of the actual experiment made in France not half a century ago? Need we refer to the corruption of all ranks of her people? Have we forgotten the goddess of reason, the temples of reason, the religion of reason, the abolition of the Sabbath, the proclamation of death as an eternal sleep, and God voted out of existence? Have we forgotten that the reign of reason was the reign of terror?

 

I only ask, on this part of our subject, what are the effects of Infidelity in the hour of death? This is the hour of truth and honesty. Now comes a grand catastrophe, and what is that religion worth which condemns, and deserts, and betrays the Soul at last. And what is the testimony then of dying infidels? In whatever manner infidels die, the testimony furnished by their deaths, though circumstantially different, is, on the main fact, substantially the same. How many are their confessions, that Infidelity has been only the cause of profligacy, crime, and ruin? How many criminals have avowed that Infidelity is the cause of the crimes expiated by their ignominious deaths! How many have imprecated curses on the hour in which they first saw an infidel book, or on the murderer of souls, who put it into their hands! But who has heard a dying Christian, lament or curse the day in which he believed. in his Saviour? How then does the infidel die? Does he die in obdurate insensibility? Often. But what a state of mind to meet death with! What is the question now in a moment to be decided? Whether his soul, with its stupendous powers is to be blasted into annihilation, expanded to the fruition of its God, or filled with endless despair and woe. And this soul, callous to its every interest, indifferent to its God, without a prayer for mercy, repelling every thought, suppressing every emotion that becomes a dying immortal--yes, a cherished, hardened insensibility, on the brink of eternity, and so soon to meet the God of eternity--asleep, for aught he knows or cares, on the brink of everlasting damnation!

 

Does the infidel die in the pride and presumption which ventures on the footing of his merits to challenge the justice of his God? Thus died Rousseau claiming the favor of his Maker, and affirming that he returned him his soul pure and immaculate as he had received it! What a lie--what daring of God to his face!

Does the infidel die in the careless levity of cold-hearted skepticism? Mr. Hume is our example. He amuses himself. He reads perhaps Don Quixotte, or the Tales of Gen ii. He laughs at death, joking about Charon and his boat, and the fabled Styx, and playing at his favorite game of whist. And on his death-bed finishes, what?--his Essay on Suicide, vindicating self-murder. Thus dies the applauded hero of Infidelity! Thus David Hume fell into the hands of the living God! What an unnatural contempt of death and of the tribunal of the final Judge! Was it all pretense, or was it the brand of God's reprobation?

 

Or does the infidel die in the anguish of despair? How numerous the examples--how agonizing their cries! How did Paine die? Under the compulsive power of conscience he declared, "That if the devil ever had had an agent on earth, he had been one." When his infidel friends said to him, "You have lived like a man," (lived like a man!) "and we hope you will die like one!" he said to one near him, "You see what miserable comforters I have." To the woman whom he had seduced from her husband, her friends, her religion, he said, "The principles I have taught you will not bear you out." As death approached, he began to betray those terrors which before he laughed at. He would not be left alone night nor day, nor suffer his attendant to be out of his sight, and often for a long time together would exclaim in anguish, "O Lord, help me! O Christ, help me!"

 

Look now at the death of Voltaire. This prince of infidels is overwhelmed with terror! What does he think now of his infidel friends? "It is you," said he, "who have brought me to my present state--begone! I could have done without you all." What now does he think of that Saviour he had pronounced "a wretch?" Alternately he blasphemes God, and supplicates his mercy exclaiming, "O Christ, O Jesus Christ!" till his friends flew from his bedside horror-struck, declaring the sight too terrible to be borne."

 

I have no time, nor is there need for comment. I have only to ask, does philosophy, does human reason in that form of it called Infidelity, supersede the necessity of a revelation from God? What is Infidelity? In its fairest form, it is a theft on revelation, and yet refusing to wear the garb it has stolen, except to cover its own nakedness and shame! It has no support in its real form, not the shadow of warrant from reason, but is a manifest defiance and contempt of all reason. It has no truth, no principles. It obliterates all distinction between right and wrong, and subverts the moral dominion of God. It denies his true character; it proposes to give him neither honor, love nor service; it despises holy affections, spiritual enjoyments, heavenly anticipations, and gives up the whole man to the dominion of the lower appetites, and the sensuality of earth and time. It forgets all connection with eternity and the God of eternity. Of heaven as a home, of eternal happiness in fellowship with God, it has no hope. Of hell as the place of his retributive wrath it has no fears. In a word, Infidelity is a total disruption of the human mind from the only living and true God--a wretched device for the indulgence of the worst propensities of a fallen spirit. Will such a system reform the world, or must we look to one which has upon it the stamp, the seal of truth, of God, of heaven?

 

I need only state the third proposition, viz.:

 

3. That a divine revelation is necessary to the discovery of some important truths which, man could not discover with, out it.

 

The important truths here referred to, are the doctrine of the Trinity, and those doctrines which depend on it, as the doctrine of atonement made by the Son of God, and the renewing influence of the Spirit of God.

 

In conclusion, allow me, my young friends, affectionately to entreat you to avoid Infidelity. I have briefly shown you what it is. Can it be true? Can it be true that man, a creature of God, and formed in his image, is left to live, and act, and die, under a system of faith, so fatal to the high end of his creation, so dishonorable to his Father in heaven, so fall of dark despair to the soul? Let the infidel in his scorn for truth, and in the miserable pride of exalting beyond measure the light of reason, shut his eyes on the glories of Christianity. Let him hold up his feeble, fading taper kindled by the light of the sun of revelation; let him pretend that it is his own, and try to extinguish the very luminary at which he lighted it. But be not deceived. Be not so lost to reason, to conscience, to the known end of your being, so lost to all experience, to truth, to God and all real good, as to listen to this empty declamation about human reason. Follow him not in his infatuated wanderings. What does reason teach? Reason employed on the nature of things, of God, of man, of all moral truth. Reason employed on facts given in all experience. What does reason thus employed teach? That Infidelity as it is, is false--that Christianity, whether a revelation or not, as a moral system is true. Who does not feel his blood chill at that vain pride, that love of error and of sin, that can reject the moral system of Christianity, and treat with scorn and sarcasm and objection, a system so full of hope and peace and joy to his own guilty spirit? Who does not know that if he embraces Infidelity as a practical system, that his soul is lost, ruined, without help even from its God? Who does not know that eternal truth binds such a soul in chains of everlasting darkness, guilt and woe! Who does not know that in so doing he is playing at the desperate game of daring not only Almighty God, but everlasting truth? That he forms a hell in his own bosom, that God cannot bless and save such a self-ruined immortal?

 

Yield then to reason. Obey the truth. Put on this panopoly, even the whole armor of God. Now in the beginning of life, in this season of temptation--in this condition of danger from the frivolity, the thoughtlessness, the vanity of youthful companions, remember God your Creator in the days of your youth. Religion is always an ornament. In youth it is a finish and a crown--it gives a charm to every accomplishment, a luster to every excellence; and "rich are the tints of that beauty, and sweet the fragrance of those blossoms on which in the morning of life the Lord God sheds down the dews of his blessing."

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