■ 
 
 I J I 
 
 wmfis 
 
 V& 
 
 1 1 
 
 mm ■ 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 pi I PRINCETON. N^mJL 
 
 ■BT 751 .A32 1856 
 | Adams, William, 1807-1880 
 The three gardens, Eden, 
 Gethsemane, and Paradise 
 
 The John PH. Krebs Donation 
 

 
 ■ 
 

Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/threegardensedenOOadam 
 
THE THREE GARDENS. 
 
THE 
 
 THREE GARDENS. 
 
 EDEN, GETHSEMANE, AND PARADISE; 
 
 OR 
 
 MAN'S RUIN, REDEMPTION, AND RESTORATION, 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ADAMS, D. D. 
 
 PASTOR OF THE MADISON SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER, 377 & 379 BROADWAY. 
 
 MDCCCLVI. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, 
 
 By CHARLES SCRIBNER. 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the 
 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 OEO. RUSSELL & CO., Printers, 
 61 Beefcman-Rtreet, N. T. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 There are many theologies : only one Christianity. 
 The substance of Christianity is in those few related 
 facts which are arranged around the person of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Revelation may not communicate all which curiosity 
 might desire or philosophy attempt ; but we recognise 
 a wise design alike in its limitations and its disclo- 
 sures. We intend no disrespect to dogmatic theology, 
 when we institute the inquiry, now and then, whether 
 we are not in danger of giving a greater prominence 
 to philosophic speculation concerning the facts of the 
 Christian system than to the facts themselves, many of 
 which are palpable to the infidel as to the believer. 
 
 As to those prodigious feats of intellectual legerde- 
 main by which Pantheism denies the personality of the 
 
G INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 world's Creator and Redeemer, pretending that God 
 and Christ are only syllogistic fabrications of the hu- 
 man soul ; or the speculations of a later school, which, 
 admitting the historical incidents of Christianity, judges 
 them according to sense, making Baptism to mean noth- 
 ing more than the virtue of personal ablution, and the 
 Lord's Supper the wisdom of dietetics ;* by such studi- 
 ous endeavors, on the one hand and the other to escape 
 the obvious import of inspired Scripture, we are re- 
 minded of the elaborate effort of the Arch Tempter, on 
 his first circumnavigation of our earth, as described by 
 Milton, to keep himself in darkness — 
 
 " Cautious of day." 
 
 The present volume undertakes nothing more than 
 to group together, in the simple and unpretending form 
 of pastorly address — not of philosophic analysis — the 
 principal facts which compose the Christian system. 
 From whatever point of the circumference we start 
 in the great circle of truth, each radius brings us to 
 that focal centre — the life and mediation of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 The author will be abundantly compensated, if the 
 following pages should enliven the conviction in any 
 
 # Essence of Christianity, By Ludwig Feucrbach. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 7 
 
 inind that the only source of hope and gladness for the 
 human race is the Redemption of the Son of God — so 
 that the whole of life should be made one " Lord's 
 Day" of gratitude and joy, as George Herbert has 
 beautifully expressed it : — 
 
 " Can there be any day but this, 
 
 Though many suns to shine endeavor? 
 
 We count three hundred; but we miss: 
 There is but one, and that one Evek. 
 
 New York, March 24, 1856. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 I Man's Original Character and Condition 13 
 
 II . . . .Man's First Probation 32 
 
 III . . .Human Nature since the Apostacy 49 
 
 IV . . . Human Nature not Self-Recuperative 6*7 
 
 V . . . .Man's Redemption 89 
 
 VI . . . Reason for Remission 106 
 
 VII. . . Human Nature Resuscitated 121 
 
 VIII. . " Times of Restitution" 139 
 
 IX. . .The Law of Retribution 158 
 
 X. . . .Retribution and Mercy 177 
 
 XI. . .Supernatural Relief for Natural Evils 195 
 
 XII. .The Celestial Paradise 215 
 
 XIII . Man's Ultimate Perfection 232 
 
 XIV. The Perfected Result of Redemption 247 
 
 XV. .How is Ultimate Perfection to be attained? 2CC 
 
 1* 
 
THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
M A N ! 
 
 How vast a world is figured by a word ! 
 
 A little word, a very point of sound, 
 
 Breathed by a breath, and in an instant heard ; 
 
 Yet leaving that may well the soul astound, — 
 
 To sense a shape, to thought without a bound. 
 
 For who shall hope the mystery to scan 
 
 Of that great being symbolized in man ? 
 
 His outward form seems but a speck in space : 
 
 But what far star shall check the eternal race 
 
 Of one small thought that rays from out his mind 1 
 
 For evil, or for good, still, still must travel on 
 
 His every thought, though worlds are left behind, 
 
 Nor backward can the race be ever run. 
 
 Allstox. 
 
I. 
 
 MAN'S ORIGINAL CHARACTER AND CONDITION. 
 
 As the sun rises in a cloudless morning, the eastern 
 hills and waters seem to be in contact with the sky ; 
 and, when it goes down in the west, the earth and the 
 heavens appear once more to be blended together in a 
 yet brighter effulgence. This world has had one " gold- 
 en age ;" and, when the circle of its eventful life is 
 complete, it will certainly enjoy another. 
 
 In one of the galleries of Italy, there hangs a pic- 
 ture of an exiled nobleman. The artist has aimed to 
 portray the most abject condition of a kingly nature. 
 The hair is matted and dishevelled ; the cheek pale 
 and sunken ; the dress worn and tattered ; yet, through 
 all this misery, depression, and contempt, you see, in 
 the contour of the face, the fire of the eye, and the 
 expansion of the forehead, the glory of an ancient and 
 noble lineage. High and glorious is the pedigree of 
 
14 THE GARDEN OP BDEN. 
 
 man, "who was the son of Seth, who was the son of 
 Adam, who was the Son of God." At the beginning, 
 man held joyful communion with his Maker. Fallen 
 from that high estate into guilt and misery, will he ever 
 be restored ? 
 
 The history of man has a past, a present, and a fu- 
 ture. We can not read it unmoved, since our own 
 character and destiny are involved in the life of our 
 race. Let us go back to Eden, and see man in his 
 original innocence and glory, his temptation, his fall, 
 his shame, his expulsion, the hereditary consequences 
 of the first disobedience, and all his fruitless attempts 
 at self-recuperation. Next will we visit the garden of 
 G-ethseinane, where the Son of God fainted in excess 
 of agony, and, inquiring who he was, and what he did, 
 learn by what methods man has been redeemed. Then 
 will we read together of that Paradise of God which is 
 promised to the penitent — its joy, its security, its so- 
 ciety, all its elements of blessedness — that we may be 
 taught how man is to be restored to more than his ori- 
 ginal perfection. 
 
 These are the topics about which there has been 
 the greatest amount of speculation. Concerning them 
 we have had fable and philosophy, fiction and hypothe- 
 sis. It is time that we turn to historic facts, and their 
 interpretation in the sure word of inspired Scripture, 
 
man's origin. 15 
 
 which together form a unity of testimony, as the block 
 of marble is one, though veined and clouded with all 
 varieties of color. 
 
 Concerning the beginning of our race, the only au- 
 thentic record we have is in the Word of God. There 
 is no other accredited book which pretends to carry the 
 history of man to its very origin. Profane history be- 
 gins its authentic dates centuries later than the Mosaic 
 account of man's creation. All beyond is conjecture, 
 mythology, and mystery. Reason, unaided by revela- 
 tion, could only demonstrate this one thing — that man, 
 at some time, must have been created ; for man is a 
 finite being, and an eternal succession of finite beings 
 involves a contradiction. A series of finite beings, each 
 beginning his life in time, must have had a Creator in- 
 finite and eternal. Hoiv, when, where, this succession 
 of human life began, we have no method whatever of 
 ascertaining, save through the revelation which has 
 been given us by that Being from whom human life 
 proceeded. This revelation is explicit, and, if it con- 
 tains not all which curiosity might desire, the facts 
 which it commimicates are precisely those which it is 
 most needful for us to know. 
 
 Not only was there a time when man, as yet, had no 
 existence in this world, but, as we believe, man began 
 existence when he was created in Eden. We have no 
 faith whatever in the pre-existence of man, in some 
 
16 THE GARDEN OF EDEX. 
 
 other state, prior to this world's creation. We are not 
 altogether uninformed of what has been written in favor 
 of such a theory. The notion was broached in anti- 
 quity, and it has been revived in modern times for the 
 avowed purpose of solving certain mysterious problems 
 in the moral government of God, about which specula- 
 tive minds have carried on a conflict for ages. Con- 
 cerning this theory of man's pre-existence, two things 
 may be said. The one is, that, admitting it to be true, 
 it furnishes no solution whatever of the difficulties in 
 question pertaining to sin and responsibility, but only 
 removes those difficulties to a remoter stage of being, 
 leaving them there as much in mystery as they now are. 
 Besides which, the theory is unsupported by one parti- 
 cle of proof. The obvious teaching of Scripture is 
 against it. The New Testament certainly connects the 
 character and condition of the human race with the his- 
 tory of the first pair, and not with any pre-existence of 
 our own, before we began to live in this world. In ex- 
 pressing this judgment concerning the theory of man's 
 pre-existence, we would not object to any form of hy- 
 pothesis which does not overstep the modesty of true 
 science ; but we can not countenance any interpretation 
 of the Sacred "Writings which would bring up an occult 
 and philosophic sense to override and conceal that 
 which is obvious to a simple-minded reader. An insu- 
 perable objection to this theory of man's pre-existence, 
 
MAN NOT PKE-EXISTENT. 17 
 
 as that theory has been revived and advocated of late, 
 is, that it makes the Scriptures of little account. It is 
 affirmed that this theory is the only one which can save 
 the glory of God from disastrous "eclipse." It is the 
 only one which can save a thoughtful mind from blank 
 despair. It promises to be a solution and a help, a 
 resting-place and a joy to man, such as alone can give 
 him confidence in his Maker — the only method by which 
 all this can be accomplished. On this supposition, of 
 how much value to me is the Word of God ? If this 
 does not vindicate sufficiently the glory of God, so that 
 we can have all faith in his wisdom and truth — if it 
 does not meet these essential conditions of my being — 
 how have you depreciated it in my esteem ! Any the- 
 ory, therefore, which claims to be better than the obvious 
 meaning of Scripture — which proposes to honor God, 
 comfort and satisfy man, in some other manner than 
 that revealed in this book — to that degree supplants 
 Scripture, making it worthless, and so is palpably infi- 
 del in its tendencies. We have no memory of pre- 
 existence ; we have no history of it ; no tradition of it ; 
 and no proof whatever of it. The history of man be- 
 gins with his creation on the earth where we now live. 
 The creation of man is represented as the last and 
 highest act of divine skill. Everything before had been 
 preparatory to this. The earth had emerged from the 
 surging waters. The lights of the firmament had been 
 
THE GAKDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 kindled. Vegetation had begun its luxuriant growth. 
 Animal life had been created — cleaving the air with 
 wing, moving through the pliant wave, or walking on 
 the solid earth. Science, by her latest observations, 
 authenticates all these written testimonies as to the se- 
 ries and succession of things created — discovering in 
 the great leaves of Nature's book the self-same order 
 of procession which is described in the pages of the 
 inspired volume. When this goodly creation was fin- 
 ished, man was made in the image of God ; and, in this 
 act, the Omnipotent is represented as evoking his utmost 
 skill, employing his own plastic hand, and imparting 
 his own life-giving breath. 
 
 We receive what is here written of man's creation 
 and first abode as historical verity. "We believe that 
 Eden had a definite topography. The rivers which 
 bounded it are called by names. All has the appear- 
 ance of historical description. It were idle to mention 
 all the fables, traditions, and theories, which have been 
 written in reference to the locality of paradise. There 
 is a moral in the fact that the exact position of the 
 garden of innocence can not be authenticated. Eden 
 exists not now. We have relics of it, but it is no more 
 a reality. It is a faded vision. It was, but is not now 
 to be found. History begins, as the sun rises, in the 
 East. Somewhere in that remote land, probably not far 
 from the chain of the Caucasus, between the waters of 
 
BODY AND SOUL. 19 
 
 the I) lack sea and the Caspian, near the head-springs 
 of the Euphrates and the Tigris, in a region after ward 
 known as Armenia, was the dwelling-place of the first 
 man, in the original perfection of his nature. 
 
 Behold what contrasts met and mingled in the forma- 
 tion of man — the dust of the earth, and the inspiration 
 of the Almighty ! Distinct and dissimilar are these 
 several properties, but they are wonderfully combined 
 in the person of man. 
 
 The body of man was first fashioned, and this out of 
 the dust of the ground. Its form and organization were 
 complete before it was animated with life. And God 
 " breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man 
 became a living- soul." What is life? Where is it 
 seated ? How is it diffused ? It is a mysterious power 
 which warms and vitalizes that body which, without it, 
 would be as cold and motionless as common clay. We 
 know nothing concerning it save by its effects. We fol- 
 low it, and it eludes our inspection. The scalpel of the 
 anatomist opens a way through which inquiry may en- 
 ter ; but, no sooner is the inner citadel reached, than 
 the dweller is found to have escaped. Animal life is 
 itself a prodigy — even when we see it vitalizing a little 
 handful of earth, and sending it up, with music in its 
 warbling throat, to the gates of heaven ; or making 
 another form of it, invested with scales of gold and sil- 
 ver, to spring from the brook, leaping for joy in the 
 
20 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 simple pleasure of existence. But man is something 
 more than vitalized clay. The breath of God imparted 
 to the human form something more than animal life. 
 The inspiration of the Almighty gave him understand- 
 ing. He was made in the likeness of his Maker. He 
 received a rational and intelligent nature. More than 
 instinct, there was given to him a reasonable soul. All 
 that has been written in advocacy of materialism is dis- 
 proved at once by a reference to this simple record of 
 man's creation. The soul is not the product of matter, 
 nor any accident or modification of matter. It is a 
 distinct existence — distinct in its origin, distinct in 
 its nature. Though united, the body and the soul 
 each preserves its own separate quality. The one is 
 dust, the other is spirit. The one was fashioned by 
 God's fingers, the other came from God's own life. 
 This distinction is recognised throughout the whole of 
 Scripture. "What we call death is the dissolution of 
 this fellowship and conjunction between the body and 
 the soul. So saith the Scripture : " Then shall the 
 dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall 
 return unto God who gave it." There lies the lifeless 
 form, complete in structure. Not yet 
 
 " Decay's effacing fingers 
 
 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers" — 
 
 and the human body seems for a brief term, now that 
 the soul has parted from it, even as it was when God 
 
UNITY OF THE RACE. 21 
 
 first fashioned it, before the soul was united unto it. 
 The philosophic speculations of all ages concerning life 
 and soul, materialism and immatcrialism, have not ad- 
 vanced one iota beyond the sublime conciseness of this 
 inspired description of man's creation — this compound 
 of dust and divinity — a body that dies, and a soul that 
 will live for ever. Behold the first man, as he stood 
 before his Maker : — 
 
 "Erect in stature, 
 With front serene and thoughtful, self-knowing, 
 Magnanimous, to correspond with Heaven \" 
 
 What can we imagine of such awful beauty as the 
 human face when it first reflected the smile of God ? 
 Man's brow is now knit with care, soiled with dust, 
 seamed and scarred with disease ; his eye downcast 
 upon the path he treads ; and his heart depressed with 
 the humiliations of guilt. So was not man at the first. 
 
 That our conception of unity might not be disturbed 
 — that our conviction of the oneness of the human race 
 might be clear and strong — the creation of woman is 
 described, not as a separate existence, but as a part of 
 the very life which is the parent-stock of our species. 
 Vulgar infidelity may scoff and cavil at this narration, 
 and call the Mosaic record of woman's creation a myth 
 and nothing more ; but the power which fashioned man 
 out of the dust, and the worlds out of nothing, may 
 readily be believed to have performed what is here 
 written, beyond the reach of a sarcasm. If ever fitness, 
 
22 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 design, proportion, and harmony, wore subserved, it was 
 here. Woman was not made a distinct, divided, inde- 
 pendent, and isolated personality, but she was taken 
 from beneath the arm and nearest the heart of man, to 
 be protected and loved ; so the two thus united had 
 but one life. 
 
 The unity of the human race is not a mere philosoph- 
 ical speculation. Our minds toil after its intuition. 
 We believe that it is taught expressly in the Sacred 
 Scriptures. We hold it to be implied in the very struc- 
 ture of doctrinal Christianity. It was by one man's 
 disobedience that the relations of the whole race were 
 changed, even as it was by one man's obedience that 
 the world was redeemed. There was one Adam and 
 one Christ. In asserting this belief we cast no reproach 
 upon scientific theories. We are not, indeed, ignorant 
 of the auspices under which the unity of the human 
 race has been questioned. It was Voltaire who gave 
 chief currency to the notion, for the very purpose of 
 discrediting the Bible. It was ably met and answered 
 by Haller and Cuvier — greater and better physiolo- 
 gists than he. Let scientific research be aided and 
 forwarded in this direction ; for our faith is strong that 
 the ultimate testimony of physiology will be in accord- 
 ance with the Scriptures, in proof of the unity of the 
 human race. 
 
 Desirous of knowing what changes have since oc- 
 
ORIGINAL PERFECTION. '2Z 
 
 curred in our common nature, we would first be in- 
 formed of its primeval properties. 
 
 The bod// of man was perfect in its organization and 
 functions. The mind was not disordered nor enfeebled, 
 as now, by physical infirmities. The appetites and 
 passions which, since the apostacy, often destroy both 
 body and soul, were then conformed to their proper uses, 
 and subject to tlieir prescribed moderation and regular- 
 ity. Poetry has always delighted, in weaving the tra- 
 ditions concerning the Golden Age, to describe the 
 beauty, and size, and strength of man in that state of 
 innocence. Setting aside all that is purely imagina- 
 tive, we know that man, in Paradise, was a stranger] 
 to disease, deformity, and pain ; that the perfect organ- 
 ism of his body made existence a delight, and brought 
 no shadow or depression upon the soul. 
 
 The mind of man was clear and true. The power 
 of intelligence was a property which made him 
 the image of God. Unlike inert matter, moved by 
 physical forces, unlike irrational animals impelled by 
 blind instinct, man was capable of understanding the 
 will of his Maker. We will not indulge in fanciful 
 conjectures as to the degrees of his knowledge, but, 
 content with what is written of the faculty of knowing, 
 delight ourselves with imagining what man must have 
 been, when that faculty was unperverted by prejudice, 
 unbcclouded by falsehood — so that there was no re- 
 
24 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 fraction to the rays of truth entering the mind, which 
 in pure and honest intelligence answered unto the in- 
 telligence of God. 
 
 Man was endowed with perfect freedom. In the 
 well-ordered words of the Westminster Confession, 
 " God endowed the will of man with that natural 
 liberty and power of acting upon choice, that it is nei- 
 ther forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature de- 
 termined, to do good or evil." Nothing so exalts our 
 idea of the goodness and power of the Almighty as the 
 creation of a being capable of acting, and free to act, 
 upon his own choice and responsibility. Concisely and- 
 admirably has Milton described this property of man, in 
 the words of Raphael to Adam in Paradise : — 
 
 " God made thee perfect, not immutable : 
 And good he made thee : but to persevere 
 He left it in thy power : ordained thy will 
 By nature free, not overruled by fate 
 Inextricable, or strict necessity. 
 Our voluntary service he requires, 
 Not our necessitated. Such with him 
 Finds no acceptance, nor can find : for how 
 Can hearts not free be tried whether they serve 
 Willing or no : who will but what they must 
 By destiny, and can no other choose ? 
 Myself and all the angelic host that stand 
 In sight of God enthroned, our happy state 
 Hold, as you yours, while our obedience holds 
 On other surety none : freely we serve 
 Because we freely love : as in our will 
 To love or not, in this we stand or fall." 
 
ORIGINAL CONDITION. 25 
 
 When we add, that man was originally holy, we do 
 not intend that his holiness was created in the same 
 manner as the faculties of his mind and the organs of 
 his body ; or that it was involuntary, like the natural 
 instincts and appetences ; but simply this, that all his 
 thoughts, affections, and actions, were right : that his 
 obedience was perfect — that there was no conflict be- 
 tween the several parts of his nature — no law in the 
 members warring against the law in the mind, that the 
 voluntary obedience of man was so complete, that he 
 was the very image of his Maker — his holy affections 
 responding unto the holy affections of God. A " golden 
 age" indeed was that when the human conscience 
 spake approvingly, without one impeachment, without 
 one compunction of remorse ; man rejoicing in his own 
 conscious innocence, and God pronouncing this his last 
 and greatest work superlatively good. 
 
 Such were the original elements of man's character. 
 The circumstances of his condition corresponded there- 
 to. The curse is on the earth itself now, in conse- 
 quence of sin. Thorns and thistles does it bring forth. 
 It is hard for us to conceive what that garden was 
 which God had planted as the perfect abode of his per- 
 fect creatures. Every tree that was pleasant to the 
 sight and good for food was there, flowers and fruits in 
 their endless profusion of form and fragrance. That 
 we may not be thought to be drawing upon fancy for 
 
26 THE GAEDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 tho sources of pleasure which abounded in Eden, we 
 will mention such only as are described by the pen of 
 inspiration. 
 
 The first was cheerful occupation. Indolence is the 
 offspring of sin and not the blessing of innocence. "Well 
 was it said by Matthew Henry, " if either a high extrac- 
 tion, or a great estate, or a large dominion, or perfect in- 
 nocence, or a genius for pure contemplation, or a small 
 family, could have given man a writ of ease, Adam had 
 not been set to work." The blessedness of God is not in 
 sleep, but in unwearied and beneficent action ; and man, 
 made in his image, was immediately assigned an occu-. 
 pation. " And the Lord put him into the garden of 
 Eden, to dress it and keep it." Man's first employ- 
 ment was to till that very earth out of which he sprung, 
 and in the bosom of which he is to find his grave. 
 Work and labor are not synonyms. With the latter 
 we associate difficulty — sometimes hard and depressing 
 drudgery. Man's work at first was pleasant only, re- 
 straining and priming the exuberance of nature's spon- 
 taneous growth ; sin has changed that easy occupation 
 for the sweat of the face, and the bending of the back. 
 
 Next to the pleasant exercise of the body and mind 
 was sublunary lordship delegated to man over all the 
 works of God's hand. Not one of the inferior animals 
 was an object of terror or disgust to man or to one an- 
 other, but their instincts were subjected to innocence 
 
ORIGINAL BLESSEDNESS. 27 
 
 and kindness. No venomous reptile was there to bite 
 — no ravenous beast to devour ; the vulture had not 
 yet covered the dove — nor had the lion preyed upon 
 the lamb ; the tiger and the leopard kissed the hand 
 of innocence, and came fawning and gentle to the feet 
 of man, their unf eared and fearless lord. 
 
 To this was added society. It had not been good 
 even for innocence to be solitary. Marriage is a word 
 and an institution which sin has so far associated with 
 low instinct, with ideas of barter, convenience, and ad- 
 vantage, that some effort of the imagination is requisite 
 to conceive of its heaVenly original, its paradisaical 
 prototype, which secured to man the exercise of his 
 most joyful sympathies, society so blessed, confidence 
 so complete, that between the two whom God had 
 placed in Eden there was but one heart. 
 
 Last of all was worship of the Creator, and God's 
 benediction. The worship of God by sinless man! — 
 not with mediatory rites and sacrifices, not by smoking 
 altars and bleeding beasts, not by typical sacraments 
 .and priestly intercessions ; but by direct, immediate, 
 personal, sensible communion. With no shame on his 
 cheek, no fear in his soul, man stood erect before his 
 Maker in all the confidence and joy of perfect inno- 
 cence. Then was it that God abode with man as with 
 his child, smiling upon him morning, noon, and night, 
 and walking with him amid the bowers of Eden. Not 
 
28 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 now did he seem to man as afterward, when he de- 
 scended on Sinai, making darkness his pavilion and 
 flaming fire his chariot. Not now did he reveal him- 
 self as afterward to the vision of inspired prophecy, 
 when he rode upon the wings of the wind, or made the 
 mountains to smoke at his touch, and the pillars of the 
 temple to tremble at the approach of his glorious maj- 
 esty. There were no images of terror to represent the 
 coming of the Almighty — no thundering, no lightning, 
 no earthquake, no voice of trumpet — nor was there one 
 emotion of fear in the soul of man. How was this com- 
 munion accomplished ? Did God reveal himself in a 
 visible form ? 
 
 We will not trespass beyond what is written. But 
 it were strange indeed if God has manifested himself in 
 a human form to man in his apostacy — if he has prom- 
 ised that this manifestation should be repeated, at the 
 last, when every eye shall see him — and man in his ori- 
 ginal blessedness and glory had no sensible communion 
 with his Maker. Second causes did not then interpose 
 their opaque influences to prevent the light of God's 
 countenance from shining full upon the soul. He was 
 seen to be near ; he was felt to be near ; and truly 
 heaven and earth were blended together in the morn- 
 ing of the world's history. God blessed our innocent 
 progenitors, and the first sabbath of the world shone 
 on their consummate felicity. If angelic choirs chanted 
 
MEMORY AND HOPE. 20 
 
 praises on the plains of Bethlehem, when man's Re- 
 deemer was born, wonder not that the morning stars 
 sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy, 
 over the unsullied blessedness of Eden. 
 
 By comprehending what was peculiar in man's char- 
 acter and condition at first, we shall the better under- 
 stand what changes have occurred in our common na- 
 ture — what lineaments of the divine likeness still 
 remain — what have been effaced — where and how re- 
 storative help is to be applied. 
 
 In this we must all be agreed. This is not Eden. 
 "We know not where we shall find it, voyaging and trav- 
 elling around the world in search of it. We are not 
 holy and happy as was man at the first. A great 
 change has come over the race, and we must account 
 for it. Neither are we abandoned to useless and hope- 
 less regrets, sighing only for the paradise that is lost — 
 
 " Yearning for its meadow-SAveet breath, 
 Untainted by care, and crime, and death" — 
 
 for, in our religion, memory and hope are so blended 
 together, that conscious guilt may smile with expecta- 
 tion of another paradise of God, which is far better 
 than the first ; and to that, weary, ashamed, afraid, sor- 
 rowing, dying, does the gospel of Christ direct and help 
 us. May the happy effect of all these our meditations 
 upon man's original, his fall, his redemption, his resto- 
 ration, his first and second probation, be to incite us 
 
30 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 to make sure of that celestial paradise which Christian 
 faith anticipates, with its complete perfection, its eter- 
 nal security, its trees of knowledge, and its trees of 
 life! 
 
II. 
 
 MAN'S FIRST PROBATION. 
 
 As to the interpretation of that portion of Scripture 
 which narrates the original probation and fall of man, 
 different methods have been advocated. It would be dif- 
 ficult to select any other part of the sacred volume about 
 which there has been the same amount of curious specu- 
 lation. The reader will easily perceive how many topics 
 are suggested by the narrative, which would be likely 
 to divert minds of a certain order from the principal 
 subject of the history — such as curious disquisitions 
 about the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, the 
 mode of Satanic approach, the origin of evil, and many 
 other matters of similar import. Many have given an 
 allegorical interpretation to the whole passage, for the 
 purpose of avoiding what has seemed to them a diffi- 
 culty arising from the extreme simplicity of the narra- 
 tive as it now stands. Others interpret it as partly 
 allegorical and partly historical. Others, still, inter- 
 
32 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 pret it as a myth, a didactic fable, a truth invested iu 
 a poetic form — some asserting that the account of 
 man's first trial was represented in a pictorial method, 
 so that the language of Moses is here borrowed from 
 hieroglyphic figures, thus combining together the his- 
 torical and the mythical. This reference to these sev- 
 eral methods of interpreting the passage is~ made for 
 the distinct purpose of saying that the plan now pro- 
 posed will not make it necessary to enter upon the dis- 
 cussion of any one of these incidental matters. Even 
 those who regard the whole narrative of Moses con- 
 cerning man's abode in Eden as mythological, agree 
 in this, that the myth has a moral ; though an allegory 
 is the form in which truth is conveyed, yet truth still is 
 thus conveyed. It is that truth, that one fact, whether 
 it be communicated in hieroglyphical, allegorical, or 
 didactic language, with which we are now to be occu- 
 pied. Bearing this in mind, we shall dispense with all 
 that is simply curious and speculative, and occupy our- 
 selves with the one great fact which is here revealed, 
 whatever mode of interpreting the form of revelation 
 may be adopted. Those who give the most literal in- 
 terpretation to every item of the narrative, and those 
 who incline to the tropical and mythical, all agree that 
 the object of the sacred writer was to describe the first 
 probation of human nature. And this is the topic now 
 before us — a topic altogether practical to ourselves, 
 
TEST OF OBEDIENCE. 23 
 
 since the first and second forms of human probation 
 differ essentially. 
 
 The terms of man's original probation are briefly de- 
 fined. Simple obedience to the will of God describes 
 the first moral trial of human nature. A special act of 
 obedience was presented, and the conditions of proba- 
 tion were simply these : obey, and retain all the pleas- 
 ures and rewards of innocence ; disobey, and there shall 
 follow the pangs of remorse, and the displeasure of God. 
 Obey, and live ; disobey, and die. Such is the defini- 
 tion of man's original probation. He was placed " un- 
 der law" — if we may use a word which to us is associ- 
 ated with severity, and compulsion, and awe, as descrip- 
 tive of that trial of innocence, with which nothing repul- 
 sive was connected. The thing to be observed is, that 
 obedience — obedience alone, nothing but obedience — 
 describes the original probation of man. There is no 
 mixture of mercy, of forgiveness, in the terms of it. 
 Mercy is a gratuity offered to guilt. Nothing of this was 
 proposed to original innocence, for it was not needed 
 while innocence was retained. It matters not at all 
 whether the interdicted act be in itself great or small, 
 vast or trivial — it was a test of obedience; and that 
 was the moral trial to which the nature of man was 
 first subjected. 
 
 Observe the favorable auspices of this original prO- 
 
84 THE GARDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 bation. There was no propensity in man's nature to 
 evil. There "was no derangement in his constitution 
 inclining him to sin. Body and sOul were absolutely 
 perfect in their organization. There was no proclivity, 
 no bias, in the wrong direction. Man was the very 
 likeness of his Maker, with no more disposition or in- 
 clination to evil than in the holy nature of God. 
 
 The terms of the probation were definitely under- 
 stood. This is essential to all fairness and equity when 
 the principle of obedience is to be tested. Acts which 
 proceed from ignorance or accident are not to be con- 
 founded with the intelligent and purposed infraction of 
 positive injunctions. When serpent subtlety suggested 
 the first temptation to the mind of Eve, she quickly re- 
 pelled it, on the ground that the act to which she was 
 solicited was forbidden by the express interdict of the 
 Creator ; thus proving that the first condition of legal 
 probation was complied with, in that the test of obedi- 
 ence was well and perfectly understood. 
 
 The circumstances of the probation were in all other 
 respects eminently auspicious. The liberty allowed 
 was the very largest. There was no pressure of want 
 to necessitate transgression. All the delights of Eden 
 were at the command of its innocent tenants. The 
 amplest range of enjoyment was afforded ; all created 
 things were at their disposal, save that one, which it 
 was their pleasure to avoid, because obedience to their 
 
FAVORABLE AUSPICES. 35 
 
 Maker was a delight. Infidelity may scoff at the triv- 
 ial nature of the act interdicted ; but the obvious reply 
 is, that acts arc not to be measured by their own little- 
 ness or largeness, or the brevity of the time in which 
 they are performed, but by their relations — the smallest 
 serving as a test as well as the largest. 
 
 With the mention of these several circumstances, we 
 can not conceive how human nature could have been 
 tested, as to the principle of obedience, on conditions 
 more hopeful, more auspicious, more equitable, than it 
 actually was in Eden. The imagination has often been 
 indulged, and the wish expressed, that we, each for 
 himself, might have been put on probation, in reference 
 to simple obedience to divine statutes, with no disad- 
 vantage of evil example, or a vitiated nature, or mis- 
 leading influences, or unfavorable conditions, against 
 us. It is well to bear in mind that the first and only 
 probation of human nature, on terms of simple, unmixed 
 obedience to law, was conducted under circumstances 
 which left absolutely nothing more auspicious, more 
 desirable, to be conceived of. 
 
 How long man continued in that state of innocence, 
 proving and enjoying his obedience, we are not in- 
 formed. There is a meaning in the fact that the nar- 
 rative of man's first probation is so brief. All which 
 relates to it is condensed into one short chapter. The 
 Bible is constructed for the advantage of humanity in 
 
36 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 its second probation, and consequently nothing more is 
 revealed concerning the first than barely suffices to ac- 
 quaint us with its nature and issue — thus serving as an 
 introduction to that which ensues, upon which we are 
 now passing our earthly existence. 
 
 Temptation is now presented to the occupants of 
 Eden. Temptation is not sin, but it seems to be im- 
 plied in the very nature of man's probation. Were we 
 to derive all our knowledge concerning the temptation 
 of man in Eden from the third chapter of Genesis, 
 we should suspect no other agency as connected with 
 it than impressions made on the mind of innocence by 
 the serpent, remarkable for beauty, adroitness, and sub- 
 tlety — feeding, perhaps, himself on the very tree which 
 was interdicted to man. But we are not left in this 
 imperfect acquaintance with facts. Later disclosures 
 of inspiration make it certain that another order of be- 
 ings was concerned in instigating man to evil. Here 
 have we the first allusion which, like a hinge or link, 
 connects the history of our race with events which oc- 
 curred before man was made — a connection which sub- 
 sists now, and is to continue, in one form or another, 
 when this world is consumed — so binding for ever, past, 
 present, and future events of Providence, into one vast 
 and endless system, ever revolving and unfolding. 
 Sin existed in the universe before it blighted Eden. 
 Some of the angels kept not their first estate ; and rev- 
 
" PARADISE LOST." 87 
 
 elation positively instructs us that man's apostacy, and 
 man's redemption, and man's final destiny, have direct 
 relations to the history of those who fell from heaven 
 before man was fashioned out of the dust. It is fre- 
 quently said that our notions on this subject are drawn 
 from the " Paradise Lost" of Milton, rather than from 
 the Word of God. But is not that sublime epic, as to 
 the great facts of its construction, founded on the his- 
 torical incidents of the inspired Scriptures ? We claim 
 that it is. We are not jealous, as believers in inspira- 
 tion, of the influence upon our imagination of that book 
 which, in the great outlines of its mechanism, is accordant 
 with revelation. The blindness of Milton seems to have 
 been sent for the world's blessing — inward illumination 
 increasing as sensible vision was darkened: so that, 
 while the great epics of the Greek and Latin languages 
 relate only to the overthrow or founding of states, the 
 epic of the English language, constructed out of the 
 materials furnished by divine revelation, informs and 
 exalts the imagination of all who read our native tongue 
 to a greater familiarity with those august events of the 
 spiritual world which are disclosed by our religion, and 
 inseparably allied to our immortality. 
 
 After all which has been written by metaphysical 
 philosophy about the origin of sin, we take the subject 
 just where it was found by those who first began to 
 think and speculate concerning it. Very much has 
 
38 THE GARDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 been written on the subject, we know, which is vision- 
 ary, which is irrational — explanations which explain 
 nothing — solutions of problems which are not solved 
 at all ; but we are not aware that all the philosophic 
 discussions of the world together ever advanced beyond 
 the condensed and inimitable formula of the apostle 
 James : " God can not be tempted with evil ; neither 
 tempteth he any man : but every man is tempted when 
 he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then 
 when lust hath conceived, it bringcth forth sin ; and 
 sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." Sin 
 originated in no compulsion, no inducement, on the 
 part of God. It is not an accident, or effect of matter. 
 It had its origin in the free-will of man. It was man's 
 free-will which was on trial. Involuntary suggestion, 
 the thought, the imagination of the act interdicted, was 
 not sin ; but the entertainment of that imagination, the 
 cherishing of that desire, the accomplishing of that 
 thought — this is sin. Such is the sequency in this 
 actual history. She looked — she saw that the fruit 
 was pleasant to the eye, and good for food ; desire was 
 enkindled, was cherished : and this, when it conceived, 
 brought forth sin ; and sin, when completed in act, 
 brought forth death. All the metaphysics of centuries, 
 whole libraries of philosophic discussion, concerning the 
 origin and nature of sin, condensed together, add noth- 
 ing to this concise statement of historic events. 
 
TRANSGRESSION. 39 
 
 The fact with which we are chiefly concerned is, that 
 man's first probation terminated disastrously. That 
 tree which, because of the divine interdict, had been 
 avoided — which had been the test of obedience — 
 through the subtleties of diabolic solicitation, was ap- 
 proached, and the fruit thereof was eaten. The tempt- 
 er was believed more than God. The desire of self- 
 control, distrust and independence of the Creator, and 
 palpable infringement of his well-known will, were 
 the ripened form and fruit of sin. The bright and 
 happy auspices of the first probation availed nothing ; 
 and, notwithstanding circumstances most propitious in 
 aid of obedience, sin entered the world, with all ist 
 entailment of wo ! 
 
 Behold the changes which were produced by trans- 
 gression ! 
 
 The first was shame. A new emotion was this to 
 man. He who had rejoiced in the perfect conscious- 
 ness of innocence, before his Maker, was now bereaved 
 of that happy sense, and depressed with mortification. 
 There was no blush in Eden, as there was none in 
 heaven, till sin entered it. That crimson signal of 
 guilt, or offended modesty, betrays the knowledge be- 
 tween good and evil which was first born on earth when 
 transgression invaded Eden. No reproof, no upbraid- 
 ing, no sentence, as yet had been uttered by their Ma- 
 ker ; but the guilty pair had lost, what they never could 
 
40 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 regain, ignorance of evil, consciousness of innocence, 
 and they were ashamed. Shame is the first-born pro- 
 geny of sin. 
 
 The next was fear of God. That fear had been 
 unknown and uniinagined before. The greatest joy 
 of innocence was to have communion with the Crea- 
 tor, conscious of meriting, certain of receiving, his ben- 
 ediction. With what exuberant delight the heart of 
 holy man bounded to meet the Being from whom his 
 own being had proceeded. The voice of God was 
 now heard — "Adam, where art thou?" — but there 
 was no gladness in the heart of man to meet him: 
 and the conscience-smitten culprits, cowering with ter- 
 ror, hid themselves beneath the trees of the garden. 
 Yet not with terror only. Let it not escape us how 
 true to nature, how true to all we have ourselves 
 observed and experienced, is the record here given of 
 the effects produced by primeval transgression. We 
 are naturally repelled from the society of those we 
 have wronged. An innocent child, conscious of hav- 
 ing regarded every parental injunction, will enjoy no 
 society so much as of those very parents in whose 
 sunny approbation it loves to bask. Let the case be 
 -reversed, and a parent's will be disregarded, and that 
 child will feel itself repelled from the presence of those 
 whose . favor it has consciously forfeited. Repulsion 
 from God was the necessary eifect of guilt and shame. 
 
EFFECTS OF TRANSGRESSION. 41 
 
 Man sought to conceal himself from his Maker. An evil 
 conscience invariably begets dislike and fear of God. 
 
 The next effect of disobedience was am dial recrimi- 
 nation between the guilty parties. Before, they were 
 as one with themselves, as they were one with God. 
 But now they are at variance. The harsh word, the 
 cruel taunt, the bitter recrimination, are passed be- 
 tween the offending pair. Here, again, observe how 
 truthful to nature is this narrative. It is hard for 
 the guilty honestly to acknowledge sin. Shame de- 
 ters from manly and ingenuous confession, and begets 
 subterfuges, evasions, excuses, prevarications, without 
 number, and without end. The charge of guilt was 
 thrown from one to the other — by Adam upon Eve, 
 by Eve upon the tempter — and throughout it all there 
 was that mean and pitiable effort which conscious guilt 
 always engenders, to evade the light of truth, and ward 
 off the unequivocal admission of demerit. 
 
 Now comes the sentence of retribution — the curse 
 of the Almighty — pealing in thunders on the ear of 
 affrighted nature. It was not malice which uttered the 
 direful words, for God was at the beginning, is now, and 
 ever shall be Love. Nevertheless, it was God himself 
 who pronounced a curse upon the tempter, a curse 
 upon the woman, a curse upon man, a curse upon the 
 earth, for their sakes. 
 
 Pain, and sorrow, now began : and pain and sorrow 
 
\2 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 were to be continued. Transgression is the head-spring 
 of sorrow. 
 
 Occupation was a part of man's enjoyment in inno- 
 cence. Now easy and pleasant work is exchanged for 
 hard and toilsome labor. Now that man has himself 
 opened a leak in the ship, he is put under the stern ne- 
 cessity of sweat, and strife, to drive out the invading 
 water or be drowned. We shall see, in the proper 
 time and place, how the remedy is made appropriate to 
 the evil: not by removing the necessity of exertion: 
 but by mitigating and modifying the curse to such a 
 degree that a compensatory good is deduced from the 
 necessary evil. Work in innocence was regulated and 
 limited by pleasure ; but labor after defection, is im- 
 posed by necessity, and is hard, exacting, and onerous. 
 
 Next comes the curse of death. "Dust thou art, and 
 unto dust shalt thou return." The most distinct pun- 
 ishment of transgression was that man must die. Out 
 of the ground was he taken, and unto the ground must 
 he return. Man saw death before he tasted it himself. 
 What emotions must have agitated his soul when, for the 
 first time he saw the death of an animal, which, but for 
 his guilt, would have fawned and sported before him ; 
 its touching bleat, its quivering limbs, its convulsive 
 palpitation, its stiffness, its coldness, its death ! So 
 man himself should die. Sin entered the world, and 
 death by sin. That gloomy shape, which shadows the 
 
DEATH. 43 
 
 earth to-day, strode into Eden, and brandished his 
 menacing dart at the guilty. 
 
 Last of all came expulsion from Eden. That tree 
 of life from which they had eaten, and might have 
 eaten always but for transgression, was not to be their 
 food now that they had lost their innocence. They 
 were driven out of the garden — its blessedness was for- 
 feited for ever. Eden was lost : nor could man regain 
 and re-enter it. This is the substance of the whole 
 narrative. The first probation of human nature ended 
 in shame, suffering, recrimination, remorse, and death. 
 The world has had one Eden — and only one. Man 
 has never discovered and reclaimed it since our pro- 
 genitors lost it. Fable has told us of the garden of the 
 Hcsperides, of Elysian fields, but who has ever found 
 an Eden ? We have read of royal magnificence, of 
 sumptuous palaces, of gardens wrought by art, watered 
 by fountains, and replenished by affluence, but we have 
 never read of human abodes in which there existed the 
 innocence, the love, the fearlessness, the joy, of original 
 paradise. We have never read of the royal residence 
 into which death might not intrude ; nor the bosom into 
 which sorrow never could enter. 
 
 Where shall we betake ourselves now to find an 
 Eden ? Should we climb the steep of Ararat, would 
 we find it there ? Should we voyage to those isles of 
 Greece about which the memories of history throw 
 
 ^r 
 
44 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 their soft and radiant light, could we find it there? 
 Does it sleep undiscovered in the bosom of one of those 
 islands in the Pacific seas which are clad with perpet- 
 ual verdure ? Barbarism is there. The fairest portion, 
 of the world — the cradle of the human race — the very 
 plains and valleys where the fathers of our race once 
 lived — are now in the possession of half-civilized and 
 degenerate tribes ; nor is there one sheltered nook in 
 this vast world, explore as we will, which corresponds 
 to that abode, where man walked and worshipped in 
 his innocence. Eden is something past, lost, and gone 
 from the earth. It is an historic tradition — a form of 
 probation which is finished for ever. The consequences 
 of that original trial of human nature still remain ; but 
 the same form of probation, on the same terms, and 
 under the same auspices, has never been repeated, and 
 if we read the Scriptures aright, will never be repeated 
 on the earth. 
 
 What are the consequences of that first disobedi- 
 ence ? Were any entailed upon the posterity of the 
 first pair ? Did all the disastrous effects of transgres- 
 sion terminate on the two who committed the first sin, 
 or did they travel over to involve, in any manner, the 
 human race ? 
 
 Without anticipating the answer to these inquiries, 
 our attention is arrested by one remarkable fact. The 
 history of our world did not terminate abruptly and 
 
THE WORLD REPRIEVED. 45 
 
 immediately after sin had invaded and blighted it. 
 God did not forsake the race that had forsaken him. 
 God was not alienated from man when man was alien- 
 ated from him. The life of humanity was not ended, 
 at once and for ever, by the disastrous issue of its first 
 probation. From all which is told us in revelation, 
 we infer that, when the fallen angels sinned, retribu- 
 tion followed immediately upon transgression. They 
 " who kept not their first estate, left their own habita- 
 tion, and are reserved in everlasting chains under dark- 
 ness unto the judgment of the great day." For them 
 was no reprieve, no redemption, no gospel of forgive- 
 ness. Mark the difference. When man sinned, though 
 retribution of one kind followed, yet man was spared. 
 The curtain did not drop before this stage of being, nor 
 the life of man go out in darkness. Mercy was mingled 
 with the displeasure of justice. 
 
 Speaking after the manner of men, we say that man's 
 first probation was a failure, a disappointment, and a 
 wreck. But the waves of oblivion did not roll over 
 the world, nor was a new creation evoked to supply 
 its place ; but the world continued, the sun shone, the 
 stars kept on in their courses, time waited, and man 
 was placed on a new and different probation. That 
 second probation forms the great body of human histo- 
 ry. The first was a mere prelude to the second. This 
 explains why it is that the narrative of the first is so 
 
46 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 brief and condensed. It is not pertinent or practical 
 to ourselves at all. We are not deciding our destiny 
 on the same probationary terms which were prescribed 
 to man at the beginning. Our immortal blessedness 
 is not pivoted on the contingency of sinless obedience 
 and unsullied innocence. Mercy presides over the sec- 
 ond and main probation of our race ; and our destiny 
 turns on our relations and dispositions to the means of 
 redemption. A glimpse of coming hope and relief 
 breaks through the gloom of the curse itself: "The 
 seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." 
 Promise is mingled with the very utterance of displeas- 
 ure ; nor does the cloud which gathered its blackness, 
 and uttered its thunders over the heads of the guilty, 
 discharge its contents, before the bow of hope is paint- 
 ed on its gloom, to gladden their tearful eyes and de- 
 sponding heart ; nor have they stepped outside the gates 
 of Eden, before the second probation of human nature 
 begins, under the auspices of restorative help. 
 
 Sometimes we wonder why the closing days of the 
 first man's life are not more minutely described. His 
 history was prolonged through well-nigh a thousand 
 years. What was the state of the world — into what 
 forms and degrees of development human nature 
 unfolded itself, before Adam died — we are well in- 
 formed. But the personal character, the emotions, the 
 hopes, the sorrows, the dying scene, of the first man, 
 
IN CHRIST, NOT IN ADAM. 47 
 
 are not recorded. His second son leads the column of 
 the faithful ; and the New Testament expressly men- 
 tions the blood which Abel shed in sacrifice as the reli- 
 gious confidence he expressed in the coming of One who 
 was to redeem and restore the world. 
 
 Not one of the human race — such is the record of the 
 "Word of God — not one of all its countless myriads — 
 neither Adam nor one of that vast family of his — never 
 yet gathered together on earth, and never but once to 
 be gathered together, at the tribunal of the Son of man 
 — not one of the whole will ever enter the kingdom of 
 heaven on the terms of the first probation, because of 
 sinless obedience — because of the deserts of an un- 
 stained and unfallen glory. There is not one who 
 would presume to enter into judgment with God on 
 such conditions. Who would invite the scrutiny of 
 Omniscience, and challenge the verdict of the Almighty 
 on the claim of being holy as our Maker ? Fear would 
 blanch the cheek, beyond all the pallor of death, at the 
 thought of terminating our earthly trial and going into 
 the presence of God with such a pretence ! 
 
 "We need not wait, therefore, till we draw out, in 
 scholastic order, the statement of redemption, before 
 announcing what is the only hope and safety of man. 
 "We live under the auspices of mercy, and our salvation 
 is in the remission of sins. "We are not in Adam, but 
 in Christ. How much better, how much safer, how 
 
48 THE GARDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 much more for our blessedness this is, -will appear in 
 the proper place, when we treat of those wonders of 
 divine love by which the sad issues of the first proba- 
 tion were overruled and superseded by the compensatory 
 provisions of the second. Enough to know, the Scrip- 
 tures record it, the ministry herald it, the skies reflect 
 it, the world has heard it, sabbaths repeat it, time re- 
 echoes it, the Spirit and the Bride proclaim it ; and, 
 ere the mystery of Providence shall close, it shall roll 
 around the earth from pole to pole — "God so loved 
 the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that 
 whosoever believeth on him, should not perish, but have 
 everlasting life." Behold already the terms of our 
 earthly probation ! Let us flee, seasonably and joyfully, 
 for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us in the 
 gospel. 
 
III. 
 
 HUMAN NATURE SINCE THE APOSTACY. 
 
 Whatever may have been thought of the preceding 
 parts of our general subject, the topic upon which we 
 now enter can never be regarded as abstract and imper- 
 tinent. It may have seemed somewhat like a piece of 
 ancient history, when we read of Eden, its innocence, 
 its blessedness, its temptation, its blight, and its loss. 
 It may have appeared very much like the study of a 
 subject not only distant in point of time, but foreign 
 and extraneous from ourselves in point of fact, when 
 we were describing the fortunes of the first human pair. 
 But the topic now before us, and next in order, comes 
 home to every man's own bosom. It crowds itself, un- 
 called and irrepressible, upon our thoughts, on occasions 
 of the profoundest interest ; whenever a child is born 
 into the world, and whenever a child dies out of it — 
 
 when life begins, and life ends ; it is vital to all sys- 
 
 3 
 
50 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 terns of education, to all questions of philanthropy, of 
 reform, of general civilization, to all the prospects of 
 humanity on the earth, and to all our personal hopes 
 for futurity. All are profoundly interested in the ques- 
 tion whether the consequences of the apostacy termi- 
 nated on the two individuals who fell from their loyalty, 
 or whether they involved their immediate and remote 
 progeny. "Were those who were born of our first pa- 
 rents, and those again who were born of them, genera- 
 tion after generation, as innocent and as perfect as was 
 man when first created, or were they in some manner de- 
 teriorated, sharing in the evils consequent upon trans- 
 gression ? Human nature — the general character of 
 the human race — has it been modified unhappily by 
 the acts narrated as occurring at the very beginning ? 
 If so, in what manner, and to what degree ? 
 
 What is the truthful theory concerning human na- 
 ture ? 
 
 No intelligent reader, only moderately informed con- 
 cerning the history of opinions, needs to be reminded 
 that we have fallen upon a topic about which there has 
 been the greatest amount of discussion and controversy. 
 It is about this very point that there has been waged 
 the " conflict of ages." We have no intention of re- 
 writing its history. We do not even purpose to give a 
 resume of the various opinions which have been advo- 
 
DESCENDANTS OF ADAM. 51 
 
 cated by different schools of theology on this subject. 
 Indeed, it shall be my object, for the present, to avoid 
 it. And I would ask the reader, by a special effort, to 
 put out of mind all which he has ever heard or read of 
 Augustine and Pelagius, of federal headship, of impu- 
 tation, and such like scholastic and theological techni- 
 calities. For such terms and distinctions there is a 
 time and a place. We do not slur or slight them 
 altogether because we prefer, in this connection, to re- 
 strict ourselves entirely to other testimonies. 
 
 The first-born of men, what was the character which 
 he developed ? He proved a murderer, and slew his 
 own brother. A fugitive and a vagabond was he upon 
 the earth. A mark was placed upon him, not as a 
 brand of infamy, but as a sign of exemption and clem- 
 ency, that he should not be killed. That impunity, 
 what effect had it upon the multiplied families of 
 men ? It encouraged and augmented crime ; for La- 
 mech, when he had slain a man, counted on impunity him- 
 self, because of the spared life of Cain. Follow the 
 stream of history — how does human nature develop it- 
 self ? You say that sin being in the earth, evil exam- 
 ple and evil influences of all kinds wrought mischief 
 on the character of all who were bom in the world, 
 so that their nature unfolded itself infelicitously. Pre- 
 cisely so — the very fact which arrests attention. We 
 
52 THE GARDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 are not explaining facts, but stating facts. And the 
 fact before us now is, that the character of the human 
 race was constantly degenerating, fast as the race was 
 multiplied. We read of men relatively good ; but their 
 number was small. The great current of human life 
 was black and turbid. Before the death of the first 
 man, wickedness was so rife and rampant, that God, 
 speaking in the language of men, repented that he had 
 made man at all. Sixteen centuries revolved, and a 
 flood swept away the world's population ; but it washed 
 not out the many memories and traditions of abounding 
 iniquity. The one family chosen of God to outride the 
 deluge, and perpetuate the race, were they like man 
 before the apostacy, and did they reinstate a new and 
 higher form of humanity ? "We may not even name the 
 crimes which have stained that household with guilt. 
 We follow their varied fortunes. We see great conti- 
 nents divided among their posterity. But we do not 
 see the innocence, the harmony, the worship, the joy, 
 of unblighted Eden. Wars, woes, unnumbered and un- 
 mitigated, fill the world. 
 
 At length, a new and more perfect revelation of law 
 was given by God — not in the form of tradition, but 
 written on tables of stone — a law by which the holiness 
 of God should be illustrated, and the guilt of man made 
 manifest. Simple in its terms, comprehensive in its 
 nature, the law required supreme love to God, and for 
 
A BLICxHT ON THE KACE. 53 
 
 our fellow-men a love equal to love for ourselves. 
 Henceforth that law becomes the criterion of human 
 conduct and character. What, now, is your judgment 
 concerning the development of human nature ? For- 
 getting, for the time being, all theological theories, is it 
 your opinion that the character of the human race has 
 unfolded itself in a general correspondency with this 
 rule and requirement ? Can the facts of history be com- 
 pressed into such a testimony ? There can be but one 
 verdict upon that inquest. Love has not been the reg- 
 nant power of human life. It is not now. Even in 
 this late period of time, when the Christian faith has 
 introduced its help and promise, the business of the 
 world, the governments of the world, the intercourse 
 of men, the conduct of men, are not in accordance with 
 that comprehensive legislation which requires supreme 
 love to God, and joyful love between man and man. 
 There is a defect in human character. There is a 
 blight of some sort upon the human race. The history 
 of our world is the history of a world cursed and dark- 
 ened by sin. Death passes upon all men, because all 
 have sinned, and Death is in the world. Since the 
 door was opened for his ingress by the hand of Cain, 
 never has he been driven out. He has been ravaging 
 and destroying ever since. He is abroad now ; and 
 the marks of his desolation are all around us. 
 
 Historically, this brief description of the human race 
 
54 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 is related to the disastrous issue of the first probation. 
 It follows it in point of time and fact. That the one is 
 actually connected with the other is distinctly affirmed 
 in the Word of God. The sin which was first commit- 
 ted is, in some manner, related to the sins which follow. 
 It was not merely prior and precedent in the order of 
 occurrence, it was also, after some method, causative in 
 its nature. Is it asked what is the nature of that connec- 
 tion — precisely what was the influence imparted to our 
 natural constitution by the original transgression of our 
 progenitor ? 
 
 In reply to this question, any amount of theory might 
 be furnished. One " school" attempts to explain it after 
 this manner, and another after that. Some have writ- 
 ten about a mysterious imity with Adam before we were 
 born, so that his act was our act before we had an ex- 
 istence ; others that his sin was imputed to us, because 
 he was our natural head and representative, though we 
 were not responsible for his appointment to that federal 
 relation ; and others, that, by a divine judicial constitu- 
 tion, we are held liable to punishment for it, without 
 any act of our own ; and others still, denying the idea 
 of imputation of another's act, yet holding that our na- 
 tures are depraved anterior to choice and action ; oth- 
 ers, believing that all sin is voluntary, ascribe the fact 
 that men sin to an exercise of divine efficiency ; and 
 yet others, that our nature has been so changed — 
 
A BLIGHT ON THE RACE. 55 
 
 though the change is not sinful itself — that it inva- 
 riably leads to sin when moral agency commences. In 
 addition to all which, the reader might be referred to 
 learned treatises on nature, on constitution, on heredi- 
 tary qualities, and such like topics ; but our preference 
 and purpose just now are to dispose of the question in 
 a much shorter method. When asked to explain, to 
 the utmost satisfaction of the intellect, the mode in 
 which human nature — our nature — the nature of our 
 race — has been involved and modified by the first sin, 
 we frankly reply with a confession of ignorance, we do 
 not know. The fact of some connection is made certain 
 by the developments of human history, and the affirma- 
 tions of inspired Scripture. You may not accoimt for 
 the imperfections of human character by the mere force 
 of evil example and infelicitous circumstances. Change 
 these circumstances, and human nature is not itself 
 changed. The children of the best parents in the world 
 are not always as good as those from whom they derive 
 their being. The best examples do not always redupli- 
 cate themselves in those who behold them. The fact 
 of some blight, some proclivity, in our common nature, 
 which inclines the whole race in the wrong direction, 
 can not be questioned by those who form their opinions 
 on the observation of facts and the testimony of Scrip- 
 ture, rather than from abstract theories. 
 
 Is it affirmed that such a connection with a remote 
 
56 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 event in human history can not be justified in equity 
 and honor, we have only to say that this great matter 
 of social relations and liabilities is not at all peculiar 
 to the Scriptures. If the Bible were not in existence, 
 we should see the same fact every day. The acts of 
 an intemperate parent involve the character and desti- 
 ny of his whole family for a lifetime. The analogy is 
 not used to prove that the hereditary thirst, or poverty, 
 or misery, which are so often entailed upon the children 
 of the inebriate, are the exact counterpart and identity 
 of the mysterious entailment which connects our na- 
 tive character and condition with the act which first 
 brought death into the world, but simply in the way of 
 silencing objections, by proving that no more argument 
 can lie against the record of Scripture than against the 
 natural constitution of the world. It is an objection 
 which concerns the Deist as well as the Christian be- 
 liever. We may not explain the nature of the trans- 
 mitted influence which connects our sin with the sin of 
 Adam. It would be of little use to speculate where we 
 can not know. We sin, and we are accountable for 
 our own sins. To deny the fact that we sin, that all 
 men sin, that all the human race are deficient in the 
 judgment of the law which requires supreme love to 
 God and disinterested love for our fellows, is to forswear 
 the testimony of facts, the whole drift of history, and 
 the positive affirmations of the inspired Word. 
 
MAN AS HE NOW IB. 57 
 
 111 what respects, then, has human nature changed 
 from what it once was ? Give us the horoscope of man, 
 as he now is, and we shall comprehend the effects which 
 have been wrought on his nature. Two opinions have 
 prevailed among theological writers concerning human 
 nature since the apostacy. According to one, man is 
 greatly to be admired and revered ; according to the 
 other, he is most abject and depraved. Paradoxical 
 as it may seem, both are true, since man is to be esti- 
 mated on the double scale of being and character. 
 
 Man still possesses a reasonable soul. Transgression 
 did not despoil him of intelligence, and transmute him 
 into an idiot or a brute. The premises on which Bos- 
 suet has built his plausible and poetic theory concern- 
 ing the transmission of physical effects by means of sac- 
 ramental processes, are certainly fallacious. All the 
 elements of accountability have survived the fall. In- 
 direct influences, beyond all doubt, sin has brought on 
 the intellectual constitution of man. The human mind 
 is dormant and beclouded, but its original properties 
 arc not destroyed. The faculty of intelligence exists, 
 though it is veiled in ignorance — as the eye may be 
 closed, though it be not blinded. Lamentable are the 
 effects of sin on the intellect, in creating prejudices, 
 superstitions, and falsehoods ; but the perversion of 
 faculties implies their existence. The disorder of the 
 understanding is not equivalent to its destruction. Rea- 
 
58 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 son, that greater light, shines, though it be through a 
 haze ; and God addresses it in the truths and motives 
 of his Word. Here it is that we agree with those who 
 admire and revere the nature of man. This thinking 
 and reasonable soul proclaims him to be the offspring 
 of God. In the humblest condition, we recognise this 
 spark of divinity. It outweighs gold and gems. All 
 forms of mere matter, in their vastness or beauty, are 
 valueless in contrast with this spiritual intelligence of 
 man. He may be borne down to the very dust and 
 mire, clothed in rags, pinched with want ; but he has 
 a soul capable of cultivation, subject to growth, and 
 destined to immortality. It is of more worth than the 
 whole material world. We dare not think lightly of 
 man's being. We arc awed when we survey its great 
 and growing properties. However mean the clay with 
 which it is associated, some lineaments of the divine 
 likeness still remain. In exile, in shame, in prison, in 
 wo, man may be, but the long chain of his pedigree 
 connects him still with God himself. Inspired Scrip- 
 ture authorizes us to pronounce man as the image of 
 God, even since his apostacy. 
 
 Besides these faculties of understanding and reason, 
 man possesses others which heighten our conceptions of 
 his greatness. He has powers of imagining, of invent- 
 ing, of executing, which invest him with the dignity of 
 a secondary creatorship. He has tastes by which he 
 
MAN AS HE NOW IS. 59 
 
 admires what is beautiful in nature, skilful in art, gen- 
 erous in feeling, and noble in conduct. Affections has 
 he which bind him to kindred, to home, to country. 
 Susceptibilities to gratitude, to honor, has he, and these 
 are often greatly developed by culture. Fairness of 
 judgment would require, in making an analysis of hu- 
 man nature as it now is, that we should bear in mind 
 how much it has already been modified and improved 
 by the direct or indirect effect of the Christian religion, 
 now for so long a time leavening the heart of the race. 
 It were hardly ingenuous, when pronouncing upon the 
 qualities of human nature, to take into account the re- 
 storative effects of Christianity, and use these as an 
 argument to prove that humanity was uninjured and in 
 need of no help and medication. Nevertheless, it would 
 be difficult to over-estimate those varied and immortal 
 faculties which, even in his degeneracy, secure to man 
 a grade, on the scale of being, little lower than the 
 angels. 
 
 It is true, moreover, that man still possesses that 
 freedom of will with which he was originally created. 
 By free agency is meant precisely what the words im- 
 port, without the least reserve or equivocation — capa- 
 city of choice commensurate with requisition. They 
 are not words attached to religious creeds, to amuse 
 the ear, and to keep off odium from a system of fatal- 
 ism. When man was first created, and placed on pro- 
 
60 THE GAEDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 bation, God dealt with liiin as a responsible being. So 
 deals he with us. Brutes are impelled by blind in- 
 stinct : the vis inertia of matter is overcome by physi- 
 cal force ; but man is addressed by methods of persua- 
 sion suited to his nature. Moral government can not 
 outlast the extinction of those qualities which consti- 
 tute accountability. Our personal consciousness testi- 
 fies to this continued existence of responsible freedom. 
 Remorse is the painful admission of having done wrong 
 against the conscious power and obligation to do what 
 is right. The fact that sin is universal, in the history 
 of our race, does not modify the nature of sin, making 
 it less the free act of a responsible subject of law. The 
 fact that men sin inflexibly and desperately does not 
 disprove their moral freedom ; the action of the mind 
 in such cases, being as really voluntary as any act of 
 choice whatever, differing from ordinary volition only 
 in this, that it includes and absorbs a greater energy 
 of mind, and comprehends a greater amount and inten- 
 sity of criminal purpose that any other action whatever. 
 Dimmed and blighted by the consequences of sin, as 
 earthen vessels are corroded by the vapor of the acids 
 which they contain, the original faculties of our na- 
 ture are not destroyed. United to a life which is end- 
 less — brought into play in connection with immortal- 
 ity — they make man a being still, little short of divine, 
 in whose presence we are awed — and the moment we 
 
THE RULE OF JUDGMENT. 61 
 
 suffer ourselves to think lightly or meanly of man's ca- 
 pacities we lose the last hope of his restoration. The 
 highest proof of man's greatness and worth, is in what 
 God has done for his recovery. The Scriptures exalt 
 man's being beyond all which man himself ever con- 
 ceived ; and this always in connection with his moral 
 apostacy. 
 
 Were the expression adopted — "human nature is 
 sinful" — an explanation of the terms would be de- 
 manded which would lead us from historic fact into 
 the region of metaphysical inquiry. The use of in- 
 spired language is preferred : " All have sinned, and 
 come short of the glory of God." 
 
 Scriptural assertion and palpable fact arc here 
 agreed. Man has intelligence, capacity, conscience, 
 and freedom ; but he has not obedience. By what test 
 is obedience to be judged ? The revealed law of God. 
 Another test was prescribed to the first man, even that 
 he should abstain from an interdicted object. The cri- 
 terion of human character now is this epitome of divine 
 legislation : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 
 WITH ALL THY HEART, WITH ALL THY SOUL, WITH ALL 
 THY STRENGTH, WITH ALL THY MIND, AND THY NEIGHBOR 
 
 as thyself." Tried by this rule — and not another — 
 the character of man is defective. Man does not love 
 his Maker with all his heart, nor his neighbor as him- 
 self. Tht 1 collective word denotes the human race, 
 
62 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 without an individual exception. There is none who 
 has fulfilled that law — without a defect or infringement 
 — no not one. In moral depravity there are degrees. 
 There are providential restraints upon its develop- 
 ment ; especially now that the Christian redemption 
 has wrought so much. It is a libel on humanity and 
 the perversion of a truth, to affirm that men are as 
 utterly bad as they might be ; for besides restraints, 
 social and providential, there are laws, many of which 
 man has himself enacted, the shadows of a greater stat- 
 ute, to which he may be conformed in the practice of 
 all which is generous, honest, and humane ; but the tes- 
 timony of history and Scripture is, that by that divine 
 law which demands the supreme love of the soul to 
 God, the character of the human race is defective. 
 Noble specimens there have been of humanity, espe- 
 cially as redeemed and helped by Christianity ; but 
 where and when has there been one, out of all the 
 race, who, in an honest judgment, has obeyed the 
 perfect law of his Maker, without the deflection of a 
 thought or the defect of a moment ? 
 
 Change man's circumstances as you will — give him 
 a Christian parentage — place before him a goodly ex- 
 ample — here is something which may be affirmed of 
 the whole species ; they do not fulfil the law which 
 demands perfect and supreme love to God and man. 
 The first probation of human nature, on principles of 
 
PRESENT CONDITION. 63 
 
 obedience, terminated disastrously ; and tried on the 
 same terms, our common nature has been found defec- 
 tive and depraved ever since. 
 
 The circumstances of man's condition correspond 
 somewhat to his character. All sin is not to be as- 
 cribed to a vitiated bodily constitution ; but the human 
 body is subject to strong and ill-regulated appetences 
 — to pain, disease, and death. Fast as the redemptive 
 help is applied to the world, man's physical condition 
 improves ; but it were nothing but delusion to affirm 
 that his condition now is what it would have been if 
 sin had not shadowed the earth. It was not misan- 
 thropy, but inspired truth, which affirmed that man was 
 born to trouble as sparks fly upward. Innumerable 
 compensations, mitigations, and mercies, remain, but 
 every man who is born into this world comes in con- 
 tact with evils which do not belong to a state of sinless 
 innocence. Sufferings and sorrows, not to speak of 
 wrongs, oppressions, and wars, remind us that we live 
 in a world on which rests the curse of sin, and which 
 is filled with the penalties of transgression. 
 
 All this, instead of lessening, augments our interest 
 in man. It has frequently been alleged that this rep- 
 resentation of human nature tends only to its depres- 
 sion and contempt. Quite the reverse of this is the 
 truth. If nothing else could give importance to man, 
 it would be the fact that he has sinned. We need not 
 
64 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 compute his faculties, nor trace his genealogy, nor 
 measure his capacity to learn man's real greatness : sin 
 forbids his obscurity, and attracts toward him a new 
 and higher regard. Let one commit a crime in the 
 community, which is against that community's peace 
 and security, and forthwith he emerges into conspicu- 
 ity. His very name may have been unknown before ; 
 his life may have been passed in the deepest recesses 
 of obscurity, but now the eyes of a whole country are 
 turned upon him ; magistracy, however exalted, does 
 not deem itself debased by being busy in his apprehen- 
 sion ; the officers of justice are on his track ; the land 
 and the sea are traversed for his discovery ; and it is 
 crime, and nothing but crime, which has concentrated 
 on that unknown and obscure man the notice and pur- 
 poses of an outraged people. It is because the honor 
 of law, the security of society, are involved in such a 
 deed, that crime itself lifts one up out of the very 
 depths of contempt to answer at the bar of offended 
 justice. If man's original nature had not been enough 
 to challenge the regard he craves ; if the skill of 
 God's right hand and the inspiration of the Almighty 
 combining in his being were not sufficient to exalt him 
 high in the affairs of the universe, his apostacy surely 
 would do it. The honor of the divine majesty, the sta- 
 bility of God's throne, the loyalty of other orders of 
 existence, all are related to man as a sinner. Say not 
 
CRIME GIVES IMPORTANCE. 65 
 
 that man is too insignificant a being to warrant all the 
 regard and costliness of redemption, all the high ac- 
 tions which' seem to centre upon him, sin has given him 
 a strange importance ; nor do we deem it derogatory 
 to the honor of the Most High, while other worlds may- 
 be wheeling on in their orbits of joyous innocence, 
 that his chief notice should be directed to this world 
 blighted by sin, even as the shepherd leaveth the ninety 
 and nine which went not astray, and went forth to seek 
 and to save the one which was lost. Aside from the 
 fact that the compassions of God are evoked by the 
 necessities of a race known to be in revolt, revolt 
 itself is an incident which all the perfections of God 
 are pledged to notice ; so that if it be true — and who 
 can say whether it be so ? — that this world which we 
 inhabit is the only one, out of the vast universe, which 
 is disloyal and sinful, we have herein discovered a rea- 
 son why the gaze of angels and the thoughts of God 
 are directed so intently upon it. 
 
 It is hard to discuss topics like that now before us 
 as if they were independent and insulated facts. We 
 know that the apostacy of man is associated with re- 
 storative help. The tree may divest itself of the fibres 
 which make up its own substance, the rock may throw 
 oil' iron) itself the accretions of ages, but the soul, edu- 
 cated under the auspices of the Christian faith, can not 
 divest itself of that knowledge of Christ and salva- 
 
66 THE GAEDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 tion, which has grown and strengthened with its own 
 being. If we could conceive of a world darkened and 
 burdened by sin, as is our own — of such a fact by 
 itself, in its own un cheered and unmitigated gloom — 
 we might well summon up our utmost faculties to 
 weigh and solve the problem, how the goodness of God 
 could be justified in its creation. But now we can not, 
 by any violence, insulate the fact of man's apostacy. 
 The clouds which envelop our world have many rifts, 
 through which the light is shining ; nay, the world 
 itself is all illuminated with this central truth, that 
 with God is plenteous redemption, and human history 
 is not all dark, nor our paths cheerless, nor our pros- 
 pects desperate. 
 
 Our personal wisdom is in the acknowledgment of 
 our personal unworthiness. Plead the power of tempta- 
 tion, the force of example, any form or number of in- 
 ducements, and after all truth holds us fast to this 
 unbribed and eternal testimony of conscience, that we 
 have sinned, and every sin of ours must pass under 
 judicial notice. Let us acknowledge it honestly and 
 penitently, and find the humiliations of regret the door 
 of hope, through which we enter upon the way of 
 return to a second and better paradise. 
 
IV. 
 
 HUMAN NATURE NOT SELF-RECUPEKATIVE. 
 
 Whether we are able to explain the connection or 
 not ; whether we adopt this theory or that relative to the 
 manner in which the whole human family are involved 
 in the consequences of primeval transgression ; whether 
 we resolve it into the effect of evil example, or heredi- 
 tary propensities, physical or moral, or unpropitious cir- 
 cumstances, or a judicial constitution, or federal head- 
 ship — the fact is authenticated by Scripture, observa- 
 tion, and history, that, in some manner, our common 
 nature has deteriorated from its original perfection. 
 
 The question now arises, whether the nature of man 
 possesses any power of self-restoration ? Let us state 
 the problem more at length. 
 
 We began with considering man's original nature and 
 condition. We saw him when he was the perfect im- 
 age of his Maker. His body was perfect in its organi- 
 
68 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 zation and functions. His mind was pure in its intelli- 
 gence, with no mist of prejudice or superstition. His 
 conscience was ignorant as yet of the very existence of 
 evil. He rejoiced in the approbation and blessing of 
 God. He was a stranger to fear, to sorrow, and to 
 death. In a word, he was in a state of unmixed and 
 unsullied blessedness. All this was forfeited by trans- 
 gression. We have seen some of the woes which have 
 been entailed upon our race — some of those baleful 
 consequences which have been rolling down these many 
 centuries, spreading themselves out far and fast as the 
 race itself has extended — consequences which, in some 
 manner, involve ourselves — and now we ask whether 
 there be any power in ourselves to recover ourselves 
 out of this condition ? Can a ruined race restore itself, 
 unaided by any foreign power ? Let us consider how 
 much is implied in these terms. 
 
 Can human nature reinstate itself in sinless inno- 
 cence ? We do not ask that the memory of sin should 
 be extinguished. That which is past can not be re- 
 called ; and that which has been is fixed like rooted 
 oaks and immoveable rocks. But can we ever review 
 the past without the poignancy of remorse and the blush 
 of shame ? Can we ever reach the time and place in 
 which the sin that has been shall shed on us no more of 
 lurid glare, and sin for time to come shall not be at 
 
A NEW PROBLEM. 69 
 
 all ? Show us how it is that man, disabled, distressed 
 as he is by a sense of unworthiness, may recover the 
 consciousness of absolute innocence. It is a part of the 
 problem which awaits our solution, whether man as he 
 is, all men, may be restored to a state in which there 
 shall be no disposition, no proclivity, no tendency what- 
 ever, to sin. 
 
 The problem is, whether the body of man can be 
 delivered from all those consequences which came in 
 with transgression. "We would have it again free from 
 disorder, deformity, and pain, as when it first came 
 from the plastic hand of the Almighty. We would 
 have it with no unhcalthful appetite, no unregulated 
 passion, no law in the members warring against the 
 law in the mind ; but in every regard perfect as it was 
 when God pronounced it superlatively good. 
 
 The problem involves even more than this — that 
 there should be no more discord and disagreement be- 
 tween the several properties of his intellectual and 
 moral constitution. The will does not now obey the 
 decisions of the reason. The affections do not now 
 correspond to the judgment of the conscience. Hence 
 there is strife and distress in the soul. We would have 
 this unnatural discord cease for ever ; so that the un- 
 derstanding, will, and affections, man's living person- 
 ality, should be perfectly harmonized and united. 
 
 Moreover, it is involved in our inquiry that man 
 
70 THE GARDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 should regain a state of unmingled joy ; that the last 
 shadow should be chased away from his elevated brow, 
 and the last fear be expelled from his heart. He is 
 now subject to the visitations of sorrow. His head is 
 bent, and his heart often broken, by trouble. Afflic- 
 tions stalk unbidden into his home, and touch the sin- 
 ews of his strength. Can he put himself beyond the 
 reach and power of these strange visitants ? Recall 
 every element of that unblighted abode, in which no 
 tear was ever shed, no sin was ever committed, but 
 fullness of joy, and pleasures unmixed and uninter- 
 rupted, rolled their sparkling tides through the gar- 
 den of God, and tell us whether it shall ever be re- 
 gained ? 
 
 Nor have we yet reached the limits of this great prob- 
 lem. Death came into the world in the footsteps of 
 Sin. Can this terrific power be driven out from the 
 world, and the gates barred for ever against his second 
 intrusion ? .We wait to know whether man himself can 
 defeat this great enemy ; not only exempting himself 
 from his power, but binding the desolating and destroy- 
 ing king, disarming and abolishing him for ever. Solve 
 the question for aching anxiety — can man restore him- 
 self, so that he shall not see death ? May he, by any 
 self-recuperation, deliver himself from the curse which 
 now bears the race to the grave, so that the young 
 child shall not die, putting away from his lip the cup 
 
THE PROBLEM STATED. 71 
 
 of life untastcd — nor the old man, when the cup has 
 been drained to the bitterness of its dregs ? 
 
 Give back to man his first and pleasant occupation : 
 exchange labor, with its sweat and weariness, for sim- 
 ple work, with its elastic spring and delights. For mu- 
 tual recrimination, envy, and jealousy, give to men 
 confidence, harmony, and love, such as characterized 
 the society of Eden. Drive out from the world every 
 phantom shape of fear — every form of suffering, and 
 shame, and wo ; let not another grave disfigure the sur- 
 face of the rejuvenated earth ; let Death, with all the 
 train of his gloomy attendants, be banished from the 
 world which he has so long shadowed, so that his rav- 
 ages shall be a faded memory of what has once been, 
 and never again an actual reality ; let the last vestige 
 of evil disappear ; the world, as it is, be made again as 
 it was ; guilt, sighs, fears, pains, repulsion from God, 
 and God's displeasure, exchanged for innocence, delight, 
 security, peace, pleasure, fullness of joy, and immortal- 
 ity ! Anything short of this will not suffice. Can it 
 be done ? Can man accomplish it ? How much of this 
 has been, how much may we believe will be, achieved 
 by the self-recuperative energy and elasticity of our 
 afflicted nature ? 
 
 The circumstances in which we come to the solution 
 of the problem now stated are peculiar. "We have the 
 key to it in our possession. We are, and ever have 
 
72 THE GARDEN OF EDEX. 
 
 been, enjoying the positive revelation of divine help. 
 "We commenced our life in a Christian land ; and the 
 very first knowledge we acquired related to the name 
 and services of a Saviour. "We are already apprized 
 of all which has been undertaken and promised by the 
 Redeemer. That very sound, so familiar to our ears, 
 which love hummed in grateful music over our cradle 
 — Jesus, the Saviour — that pleasant word which, like 
 the rays of the morning, has sent its cheerful light and 
 hope into the darkness of this apostate world — the 
 g-ospel — the glorious gospel of the blessed God — have 
 assured us that a process of recovery and restoration is 
 going on already — not yet perfected, but large and am- 
 ple in its promises for the future. To convince our- 
 selves how much we owe to this only hope of relief, we 
 must, by an effort somewhat violent, endeavor to ima- 
 gine the state of the world when, as yet, it was un- 
 cheered by the knowledge of divine interposition. 
 
 Perhaps it is not possible for the human mind, even 
 through a process of the imagination, and that for any 
 season, to divest itself of what it knows already, for an 
 assured certainty. Precious stones will emit, even in 
 darkness, some of the rays of the sun which they have 
 absorbed in daylight. The body can not in a moment 
 put out of its bones and muscles the vigor which it has 
 acquired from the food on which it has long been nur- 
 tured. "We can not throw ourselves into any depres- 
 
DISHONEST REASONING. 73 
 
 sioii so dark, that no ray from the cross of Christ will 
 steal into the gloom. Nevertheless, we must endeavor, 
 for a season, to imagine the state and condition of 
 humanity, in which, with all the entailments and con- 
 sequences of sin full and weighty upon it, all its pro- 
 clivities strong and vigorous, no restorative process has 
 been disclosed, and we are left unassisted to weigh 
 the probabilities of its self-recovery. Great dishonesty 
 is often practised by those who are unwilling to confess 
 their entire indebtedness to the gospel of our Lord. 
 Receiving the knowledge and the hopes of revelation 
 into their minds from the beginning of existence — in- 
 formed, instructed, and illuminated, by the promises of 
 redemption — they are not sufficiently generous to ac- 
 knowledge their obligations, but affirm how much may 
 be gathered from Nature, and how little we need any 
 superior assistance ! The spoils which they collect from 
 revelation are made to decorate their own idolatries. 
 The very facts which belong to the Word of God, and 
 to that only — the very cordials which have wrought 
 reviving to our fainting nature — the very hopes with 
 which the world is made brighter — their lineage is so 
 far disowned, and their true origin so unfairly ignored, 
 that humanity claims for itself all which has been 
 achieved and promised by a superior help. 
 
 It is not unreasonable, therefore, to ask the reader 
 to look at human history and human nature aside from 
 
74 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 the restorative power of the Christian redemption. We 
 dare not ask him to forget, even for an instant, the song 
 of Bethlehem, the garden of Gethseinane, the cross of 
 Calvary, the sepulchre of Joseph, and the mount of 
 Ascension. We dare not ask him to let slip out of his 
 mind the great sayings of Jesus, which have caused so 
 many to hope, and which are the only anchor to man's 
 tossed and imperiled soul. But we must ask it of him 
 that, by a most careful and honest discrimination, he 
 will separate what is human from what is divine — what 
 has been accomplished by humanity itself, unaided and 
 alone, and what has been undertaken and promised by 
 the redemption of God. 
 
 And now, where is the instance, in the long life of 
 our race, in which our ruined nature has recovered it- 
 self ? Point us to one authenticated fact of history which 
 proves that any community of men, or any individual 
 out of all the race, by any spring and rebound of self- 
 recuperation, have regained all which was lost by the 
 apostacy. We have had dreams and philosophies, Uto- 
 pian schemes and poetic illusions ; we have had the con- 
 vulsive efforts of necessity, and the spasms of fear and 
 despair ; but who and where were the men who have 
 actually recovered themselves from the disasters of sin, 
 and secured an absolute exemption from all the evils 
 of transgression ? 
 
 We have noticed with surprise that, concerning a 
 
HISTORIC EXPERIMENT. 70 
 
 large space of time, in the early history of the world, 
 the inspired annals furnish us with so little information. 
 Sixteen centuries — almost as long as from the advent 
 of Christ to this present time — are despatched, in sa- 
 cred history, in the briefest possible mention. What 
 was the meaning of that immense chasm and void in 
 the life of our race ? The world was full of people ; 
 but it was full of sin. May not this be the import of 
 that historic lesson — to furnish, for all time, one un- 
 deniable proof that, left to himself, apostate man had 
 no power or prospect of recovery ? Knowledge of 
 promised relief was limited : all which existed was in 
 the form of tradition, and this growing fainter and 
 fainter, like a dying echo ; providential restraints were 
 few ; so to speak, God seems to have withdrawn him- 
 self from the race that sought to be independent of him, 
 that the world might know, for all time, that ruined 
 mind never restores itself ; that the planet which breaks 
 away from the attraction of the sun, finds no power with- 
 in itself by which it is brought back, but its centrifugal 
 force is multiplied with terrific speed, driving it farther 
 and farther, faster and faster, into the blackness of dark- 
 ness. Left to itself, the race of man increased in wick- 
 edness with such gigantic strides, that the earth and 
 the skies sickened at the spectacle, and the waters of 
 the great deep swept them away. The termination of 
 that first long stage of human history was the deluge. 
 
70 THE GARDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 Blighted humanity did not recover itself. Sin raged 
 on. exasperated and inflamed more and more. Though 
 the experiment was measured by centuries, yet we can 
 understand how this may prove a real economy of time, 
 in the prolonged life of our race, if that which was 
 wrought on so vast a scale will suffice for the world's 
 conviction, so that the experiment need not to be re- 
 peated again. The very best illustration of what hu- 
 man nature would be, permitted to develop itself, with- 
 out a written revelation, without a gospel, and without 
 those corrective and restoring ideas and forces which 
 the Christian religion has introduced, is presented in 
 those sixteen hundred years of God's patience, when 
 wickedness grew so mighty, that the Spirit, in record- 
 ing the history, has described it only in general expres- 
 sions, mercifully concealing from our view the spectacle 
 of accumulated and unrestrained iniquity. 
 
 There has been no other period of time since that, in 
 which the human race was left to its own development, 
 without any application or promise of relief. 
 
 As the drama of Providence unfolds, religious insti- 
 tutions are appointed, and the true religion is gradu- 
 ally revealed. The world is never again to be as it was. 
 That religion, indeed, was communicated to one only 
 from among the many tribes of the earth. Some rays 
 of it were ever shooting into the surrounding darkness. 
 Traditions of the true religion were carried into the 
 
DISPOSAL OP SIN. 77 
 
 " regions beyond." Ideas started on their endless cir- 
 cuits, and new thoughts began their eternal march. 
 These rays of truth were refracted by the dense medium 
 of superstition and ignorance, but their existence is to 
 be traced to a celestial origin ; so that the light they 
 shed is not to be ascribed to man's power of self-recov- 
 ery, but is a part of that restorative system which God 
 has revealed to human helplessness. 
 
 The first great problem which tasked the reason of 
 man was the remission of sin. Sin, as a fact, is to be 
 noticed in some manner. We have seen what impor- 
 tance it gives to meanness, what conspicuity to obscu- 
 rity. The human conscience, touched with the sense of 
 demerit, has always admitted that sin must pass under 
 the judicial attention of Supreme Power, and in some 
 manner be disposed of. How shall it be disposed of? 
 Shall it be forgiven ? How can it be forgiven ? Who 
 shall assure the guilty of this welcome fact ? Has Na- 
 ture whispered it ? What so unrelenting as Nature ! 
 She has smiles, caresses, and delights, for the innocent. 
 But what power is so stern, inflexible, and mighty, as 
 Nature to the guilty ? Man violates her laws, and he 
 meets the shock and recoil of naked power ! There 
 are no deviations nor alleviations to her undiverted 
 penalties. Reason takes up the problem — weighs it — 
 revolves it — and her verdict, as uttered by one of her 
 highest oracles, is, " I see not how God can forgive sin." 
 
78 THE GAEDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 There is no recovery for man, till sin, in some man- 
 ner, be disposed of. The secret of its remission, has 
 man ever discovered it ? No bird of paradise has car- 
 olled it in his ear ; the stars of the firmament have never 
 so arranged themselves as to write it ; the depth saith, 
 " It is not in me," and the height answereth, " It is not 
 with me ;" the winds never proclaimed it, nor does the 
 sea roll it out in its anthem ; and, from all his question- 
 ings, reasonings, and strivings, man has fallen back 
 upon the vain endeavor to propitiate offended power, 
 and to make expiation for his own sin by means of his 
 own sufferings. Self-torture is the creed of paganism. 
 The uneasy sense of demerit man has sought to relieve 
 by self-inflicted suffering. To this point man has been 
 driven, in all times, by the stern power of an unap- 
 peased and unenlightened conscience. Has it accom- 
 plished what it pretends ? 
 
 The real question is, have all the so-called expiations 
 of men availed to quench remorse, reinstate conscious 
 innocence, and secure a sense of God's favor ? Is pa- 
 ganism successful in its project ? Does Joy dwell in 
 the temples of idolatry ? Does Gladness make her 
 abode among the worshippers of Moloch and Jugger- 
 naut ? The mother who casts her wailing infant into 
 the jaws of river-monsters, giving the fruit of the body 
 for the sin of the soul ; the man who swings on hooks 
 which pierce the living flesh ; the pilgrim who wends 
 
DISPOSAL OF SORROW. 79 
 
 his lonely way through long and weary miles — shall 
 we affirm that they have discovered the long-hidden 
 mystery ? Are the acclamations of sober pleasure on 
 their lips, and are they the most joyful and blessed of 
 men ? Have they accomplished their own restoration, 
 expiated their own sins, won the complacent smile of 
 their Maker, and reinstated themselves in peace and 
 innocence ? To affirm it were a falsity. They are the 
 most miserable, pale, emaciated, forlorn, and abject, of 
 the human race. 
 
 The sorrows which are in the world, it were impos- 
 sible that man should not inquire how he must meet 
 and remove them. Wisdom took up the problem, and 
 pondered it long. We have her reasonings, debates, 
 and conclusions. Her best counsel is, that we should 
 bear in silence what we can not avoid. Exemption 
 from suffering she could not promise : the soul must arm 
 itself with indifference, and care not what befalls us. 
 Between having and not having, between holding and 
 losing, between smiles and tears, there is but a small 
 distinction. Meet every event with stoical unconcern. 
 Be impassable, by being insensible. This is philoso- 
 phy. The question is, does the prescription accomplish 
 what is needed ? Was there no suffering in the heart 
 of Zeno — no sorrow in the bosom of his disciples ? 
 Man was not a stoic in his innocence, insensible and 
 impassive. That were not recovery and restoration. 
 
80 THE GARDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 which makes inan, even if it could do as much, to bear 
 suffering with compressed lips and a stout heart. We 
 are asking for exemption from all occasions of suffer- 
 ing — for such a reinstatement in tearless joy as man 
 experienced before he fell. Men do not eradicate 
 the instinct of happiness, so they have snatched at in- 
 temperate joys, and indulged in frantic pleasures of 
 sense, and murky visions of enjoyment have led them 
 on ; but it were needless to affirm that they have never 
 found that fullness and purity of joy which reigned in 
 sinless Eden. 
 
 Concerning the inclination to sin, has man discov- 
 ered the power of its restraint and correction ? It was 
 the free-will of man, as we have seen, which was put on 
 trial in the first probation. It is in man's free-will that 
 the defect is seated which develops itself in sin. It is 
 not that man's perception of right and wrong is de- 
 stroyed, but that his will is disinclined to duty and right. 
 Can this defect in the main-spring be remedied without 
 the intervention of foreign aid ? Increase man's knowl- 
 edge, his will is not rectified. Reason may draw the 
 right deductions, and reach the true conclusions, but 
 the will does not necessarily go with them. The senti- 
 ment which the Christian apostle has recorded, when 
 describing the impotence of human nature to reinstate 
 itself — " That which I would, I do not ; and that which 
 I would not, that I do" — has been avowed almost in 
 
DISPOSAL OP DEATH. SI 
 
 the same language by many of the most distinguished 
 of thinking men, who had not the light of the true re- 
 ligion. They could approve the good, while they were 
 inclined to the evil. The will, deflected from the right, 
 is not rectified by knowledge, by conscience, by law, 
 by authority, by force, by fear. By what method can it 
 be recovered to that which is good, without impairing 
 its nature, and modifying its freedom ? Has this ever 
 been done by its own unassisted resolution ? 
 
 Death came in with sin. Has man ever been able 
 to recover himself from its power ? Has he ever dis- 
 covered the means of arresting decay, resupplying the 
 waste of life, reproducing and perpetuating it? He 
 has disciplined himself to rigid habits, prescribed the 
 utmost simplicity, nurtured and regulated the body with 
 extremest care ; but at length it died. He has dreamed 
 of an elixir, which, if discovered, would renew the en- 
 feebled energies of life, and prolong it for ever. He 
 has dreamed, again, of fountains possessed of such ce- 
 lestial properties, that old age should find itself reju- 
 venated, and the waning life of man be reproduced in 
 perpetual vigor and beauty. But Death actually dissi- 
 pated the dreams — entering the cell of the alchemist, 
 busy with his illusions of prolonging mortal existence 
 by philosophic art. The march of the destroyer was 
 never stayed as yet by such follies and fancies 5 nor 
 could man, following his desolating, burning footprints, 
 
82 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 
 
 devise the method of a future restoration. Ancient po- 
 etry babbled of Elysian fields, of shades, of spirits in a 
 land of spirits ; but did man himself ever dream of the 
 body's restoration, its resurrection to a second life, 
 with power, honor, strength, beauty, and glory, trans- 
 cending that frame which God himself fashioned out of 
 the dust in the beginning? Never, not even in his 
 dreams, has man conceived of this. 
 
 Then have we demonstrated the utter disability of 
 man to recover himself from the direful penalties of 
 transgression. He can not discover how sin can be 
 forgiven ; or noticed and disposed of, without visiting 
 upon himself a deserved retribution. With all his ex- 
 pedients, efforts, and experiments, he has never suc- 
 ceeded in retrieving his losses, and regaining the posi- 
 tion which he held anterior to apostacy. We have had 
 the wisdom of the world, but it has not been a wisdom 
 unto salvation. It was according to the wisdom of God 
 that the power of man's self-restoration should be fully 
 and fairly tested. Time enough was allowed for the 
 experiment ; four thousand years were finished before 
 the Redeemer was born ; the human faculties had ample 
 time to mature and develop ; each new generation had 
 opportunity to borrow results and advantages from 
 those which preceded ; the highest wisdom of man was 
 brought into play ; unaided humanity has struggled up 
 to the very highest summits which learning, wealth, 
 
HUMAN EXPEDIENTS. 
 
 power, could reach — the experiment has been brought 
 out in history — and that unevangelized development, 
 like summer fruit, has perished in its own ripeness ; 
 having no self-preserving quality, and passing rapidly 
 into decay and corruption. 
 
 Now that the redemption of Christ has applied its 
 mighty leverage, and wrought so much, and promised 
 the more, for man's restoration, there are many who, 
 discarding divine help, trust to measures of their own 
 devising ; forswearing that gospel which is the wisdom 
 of God and the power of God, and suggesting rem- 
 edies and expedients of another quality. Now as- 
 cribing all the degeneracy of man to external circum- 
 stances, they propose to reorganize society — as if so- 
 ciety itself were anything more or less than an expo- 
 nent of the individuals who compose it. Now they sug- 
 gest some novel method of physical training — as if the 
 virus of sin were to be purged by simpler diet, a hard- 
 ier life, and a better ablution ; and now it is some po- 
 etic or philosophic fancy of indefinite perfectibility — 
 along the line of which the life of our race is propelled 
 by a predestined and irresistible necessity. Forces of 
 prodigious might are indeed at work, slowly lifting up 
 the deluged earth from its long depression, and revolving 
 its surface into sunlight ; but these are all of a celestial 
 origin. Infidelity, and paganism even, share in the gen- 
 eral benefits of that Christian redemption which they 
 
84 THE GARDEN OP EDEX. 
 
 utterly ignore — moving along with that world to which 
 they belong, and which bears all things onward with 
 itself. 
 
 Subtracting these new helps and attractions which 
 the only true religion has introduced for the world's 
 recovery, can you point us to any one generation in all 
 the past, one tribe or people from among all the varied 
 forms of human life, one individual out of our blighted 
 and ruined race, that has succeeded in regaining the 
 position which was held by man in the world's morn- 
 ing, with innocence, joy, fearlessness, and God's com- 
 munion and benediction ? If the solitary instance can 
 not be authenticated, the conclusion which we reach 
 is the utter impossibility of man's self-restoration. 
 Unhelped of Heaven his impotence at recovery is com- 
 plete. Left to himself, he is borne downward by a 
 swift and mighty current. Resorting to his own reme- 
 dies only, he is nothing better, but rather the worse. 
 
 That which he needs is something more than educa- 
 tion, in the strict sense of the term — something more 
 than can ever be educed out of himself — something 
 more than growth, or development of what he now is. 
 He needs what he has not in himself at all — an im- 
 parted power, a help from without — life unto the dead. 
 
 .Some of the consequences of transgression — man 
 might as well attempt to build a planet as to think of ar- 
 resting them alone. He may put forth his puny arm to 
 
ACTUAL DIFFICULTIES. 85 
 
 stop the mighty forces which bind the universe, but he 
 can not stay those eternal ordinances of Heaven which 
 connect suffering and retribution with sin. He may 
 strive, he may weep, he may resist, but he can not escape 
 from the sheriff-grasp of death. It is hard to mend any- 
 thing which is broken — to restore it to its original and 
 normal integrity. The branch of a tree — if it be bro- 
 ken off, it is hard to attach it again — fibre to fibre, bark 
 to bark — so that the sap shall course again through its 
 living heart, and no unseemly scar disfigure its surface. 
 A harder thing than this is to heal a broken confi- 
 dence, restore a wounded affection, recover an alienated 
 love, regain a lost innocence, reclaim a ruined mind, 
 correct a perverse will, and redeem a fallen nature. 
 A harder tiling still is it, while accomplishing all this 
 through the ministries of mercy, to adjust a disordered 
 government, uphold a violated law, and provide for the 
 sanctities and majesty of the ruling power. But the 
 hardest thing of all, that which man's eye never had 
 seen, nor his ear heard, nor his heart conceived, was 
 to make sin the instrument of its own defeat ; overru- 
 ling and subjecting events after such a manner that 
 apostacy should terminate in a higher elevation, shame 
 in a stronger confidence, weakness in a greater strength, 
 imbecility in a better security, hostility in a larger 
 love, darkness in a brighter light, sorrow in a fuller 
 joy, and death itself in a happier life. That which man 
 
86 THE GAEDEN OP EDEN. 
 
 could not do, which confounds and abases his utmost 
 wisdom, that God has done, is doing, and will do, for 
 all who believe. 
 
 It remains for us to consider the nature of the relief 
 which has actually been provided ; the Being by whom 
 it is brought ; the wisdom of its adaptation ; the power 
 of its remedy ; the results it has already achieved ; and 
 the promises which gild futurity with unclouded splen- 
 dor. Even while we are meditating on man's helpless- 
 ness — gazing at humanity wounded, fainting, and dying 
 — we hear the joyful sound rolling along the upper sky, 
 it falls on the ear of the perishing, it enters the cell of 
 the prisoner, the chains of the captive begin to loosen, 
 Hope stands ready to throw open the door : " Israel, 
 thou hast destroyed thyself: but in me is thy Help." 
 
 
THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMAM. 
 
The Saviour comes ! by ancient bards foretold ! 
 Hear him ye deaf, and all ye blind behold ! 
 He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, 
 And on the sightless eyeball pour the day. 
 'Tis he th' obstructed paths of sound shall clear, 
 And bid new music charm the unfolding ear : 
 The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego, 
 And leap exulting like the bounding roe. 
 No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear, 
 From ev'ry face he wipes off ev'ry tear. 
 
 POPE. 
 
V. 
 
 MAN'S REDEMPTION. 
 
 The city of Jerusalem was the centre and religious 
 metropolis of the world. It was designated as the city 
 of God, and contained the temple and appointments of 
 the only true religion. 
 
 Just to the east of this city, separated from the high 
 walls by a valley, through which ran the brook Kidron, 
 was the mount of Olives. Near the foot of the mount, 
 and on its western slope, was a garden, filled with olive- 
 trees, and affording an inviting retreat from the dust 
 and noise of the city. The remains of this garden are 
 still visible. A low, broken wall marks the bounds of 
 the enclosure, within which are eight large olive-trees, 
 whose age is measured by centuries, beneath the shelter 
 of which many a traveller from the western world, in 
 modern times, has reclined, and read out of the Bible 
 the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and the closing chap- 
 ters of the gospel by John. 
 
90 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 Into this garden let us now enter. It is a beauti- 
 ful land where it is situated, and this now in the 
 blush and bloom of spring: but it is not Eden. It 
 is night ; and the night is cold, for it is not long be- 
 fore the mail-clad and hardy soldiers of Rome kindle 
 a fire for themselves in the open court of the high- 
 priest's palace. The night is dark, for men are soon 
 groping about in it with lanterns. The wind sighs 
 mournfully through the bending trees, and the heavy 
 moisture drops from the leaves as if they were weeping. 
 Everything seems to be infected with a strange sorrow. 
 All is silence and solitude. 
 
 At an unwonted hour, twelve men are seen to go over 
 the brook Kidron, and enter the garden. Four of the 
 number separate themselves from the rest, and proceed 
 still farther under the shadow of the trees. The prin- 
 cipal person in the group arrests our attention by his 
 deep depression. We overhear him saying to his com- 
 panions, " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto 
 death." He appears in the extreme of agony. With- 
 drawing into the deeper solitude of the garden, he 
 kneels on the earth and prays : " my Father, if it be 
 possible, let this cup pass from me." From his knees 
 he falls prostrate on his face, there upon the damp, cold 
 ground. He rises and returns to his three companions, 
 as if he needed some expression of sympathy. His an- 
 guish allowing no rest, he goes a second time, and in 
 
THE SUFFERER. 91 
 
 his prostration prays again : " If it be possible, let this 
 cup pass from me." Again he passes to and fro, in un- 
 controllable sorrow, and a third time we hear that cry 
 of mournful supplication : " my Father, if it be pos- 
 sible, let this cup pass from me." Cold though it was, 
 the sweat oozed from every pore, and fell, like clotted 
 blood, to the ground. Whatever the occasion of this 
 extraordinary suffering, its nature was spiritual ; for 
 there was no violence, no torture, no laceration of the 
 person by cruel hands. It was the solitary wo of the 
 soul within ; yet was it so intense, that an angel from 
 heaven came to minister to the fainting strength of that 
 pale and prostrate form. Presently an armed band 
 make their appearance, lay hands upon him, bind him, 
 and lead him away. Hurried through the mockeries 
 of trial, He, who, a little before, was in an agony of 
 spirit, now, in extremity of torture, hangs upon the 
 cross. Death closes the scene. The sun veils his face, 
 and a great horror of darkness settles upon the earth. 
 In another garden, not far distant, was a sepulchre, 
 where that crucified body was laid. 
 
 Who was that sufferer ? Why did he suffer ? We 
 have not abruptly terminated or changed the topic of 
 the preceding pages. Remote in space as were these 
 two enclosures, Eden and Gethsemane, intimately re- 
 lated are they in human history. 
 
92 THE GARDEN OP GETHSEMANE. 
 
 There have been other sufferers and other sorrows, 
 to which we bear no relation whatever, save through 
 the sympathies of pity. But the sufferings of Gethsem- 
 ane and Calvary have a world-wide relation. They are 
 central facts in the long and wide history of humanity. 
 Whether one is infected by sympathy with that sorrow, 
 or whether he is thoroughly unmoved and skeptical con- 
 cerning it, it stands in actual connection with all the 
 preceding and subsequent events in the life of our race. 
 Throughout Christendom, time is actually reckoned by 
 its relations to the Being whom we have seen in the 
 prostration of Gethsemane. The infidel who yester- 
 day drew a note of hand in New York, Paris, or Frank- 
 fort, appended to it certain figures which denoted that 
 this was the year 1856, as computed from the advent 
 of Jesus Christ. We found our chronology on that 
 central event, and measure time before and after the 
 birth of that Being who was nailed to the cross. 
 
 The first thing to be observed in regard to this ex- 
 traordinary personage, whoever he was — whatever the 
 cause or the consequences of his sufferings — is, that his 
 life was not an isolated event. It is connected with the 
 whole structure of human history — with the life of man 
 from the beginning, and with the life of man unto the 
 end. 
 
 Who was that sufferer? That form we have seen 
 before. It is He who was born at Bethlehem ; himself 
 
PROPHECY. 93 
 
 in the lowliest penury, yet signal-stars and angelic cho- 
 ruses heralding and gracing his advent. It is he who 
 was promised to the fallen pair in Eden, the seed of the 
 woman who was to bruise the serpent's head. It is he 
 who was foretold as about to dwell in the tents of Sheru, 
 enlarging them above the glory of Japhet. It is he 
 concerning whom it was said to Abraham, beneath the 
 numberless stars of the eastern heavens, " In him shall 
 all the families of the earth be blessed." It is he of 
 whom the patriarch Jacob did speak, when, like the dy- 
 ing swan, he broke into one and only strain of prophetic 
 song : " The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, until 
 the Shiloh, the Peacemaker, shall come, whom all the 
 nations should obey." He it is concerning whom Ba- 
 laam, the seer of Edom, with most reluctant testimony, 
 was compelled to predict as the Star and the Ruler who 
 should come forth from Jacob. The same of whom 
 Moses spake as the Prophet whom the Lord God 
 should raise up unto whom the world should hearken. 
 It is he of whom David wrote in the Psalms, calling 
 him Lord, and King, the Son of God, the Christ, the 
 anointed one, and the Priest — now waking the echoes 
 of the mount of Olives, as with jubilant songs he de- 
 scribed the splendors of his imperial reign, and the glo- 
 ries of his triumphant and universal dominion — and 
 now again, with plaintive measure, as with all minute- 
 ness he rehearsed his humiliations and sufferings, his 
 
94 THE GARDEN OP GETHSEMANE. 
 
 betrayal by a false friend, the parting of his garments 
 by lot, the piercing of his hands and feet, the pouring 
 out of his soul like water, the entombment of his body, 
 and its resurrection while yet uncorrupted by decay. 
 It is he of whom Isaiah spake, as with lips touched with 
 fire from heaven, and wrote with a pen dipped in the 
 glories of the skies, as the Deliverer, the Saviour, the 
 Redeemer, the tried and sure corner-stone, Emmanuel, 
 the Prince of Peace, the renovator of the world, the 
 isles waitiug for his law ; a child to be born, yet bear- 
 ing the name of the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the 
 mighty God, the everlasting Father. It is he of 
 whom Ezekiel wrote, by the river Chebar, as the Glory 
 of God, by whom the earth was to be made to shine. 
 It is he of whom Daniel spake, as the Prince, the Mes- 
 siah, who was to be cut off, but not for himself, that he 
 might make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in 
 everlasting righteousness. Amos the herdsman foretold 
 his coming as a Deliverer, and Micah rejoiced in his 
 advent. Zechariah describes his royal Priesthood; 
 Haggai anticipates his footsteps as the glory of the 
 second temple, the Lord our righteousness ; and Mala- 
 chi, prolonging the notes of this whole choir of proph- 
 ecy, bids the world believe that the Messenger of the 
 covenant is nigh at hand, and the Sun of Righteousness 
 is soon to rise upon the benighted earth. 
 
 All the pregnant and germinaut prophecies of Scrip- 
 
NO AFTER-THOUGHT. 95 
 
 ture relate to that Being whose form we have seen in 
 the garden of Sorrow. The long procession of the cen- 
 turies had been pointing to him. His precursors sum- 
 mon the world to make ready for his approach. When 
 he was born, there was heard a company of angels chant- 
 ing in the sky: " Glory to God in the highest, peace 
 on earth, good will to man." When he spake unto 
 men, he claimed to be the very being whom prophecy 
 had promised, and Nature obeyed him as her Lord. 
 He challenged the faith of the world, when he styled 
 himself the way, the truth, and the life, predicting his 
 own lifting up upon the cross as the appointed method 
 of drawing all men unto himself. 
 
 Plainly, the historic events which occurred in and 
 about Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago, were not 
 unanticipated accidents. The life of Christ was a pre- 
 pared and foretold certainty. A cheering fact is this 
 with which to begin — the assured conviction that it was 
 God's intention to redeem and restore our fallen race. 
 The first probation of human nature issuing in disappoint- 
 ment and disaster, a second was prepared under new 
 and peculiar auspices. Man unable to recover himself, 
 God has undertaken that recovery by his own wisdom 
 and power. God and not man is the author of redemp- 
 tion. Nor was this an after-thought — a newly-devised 
 expedient — resorted to as a remedy to an unexpected 
 mischief. It was the eternal purpose of God before 
 
96 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMAXE. 
 
 the foundations of the earth w<fre laid. He has him- 
 self instructed us that the redemption of man, tran- 
 scending his creation, was the object about which all 
 the affairs of time were to revolve. Man's apostacy 
 was not a sudden surprise to Him before whose omnis- 
 cience lay all contingencies and possibilities. There- 
 fore the race of man was not extinguished when sin en- 
 tered. The earth was not swept away, like a lost star, 
 and another spoken into being to fill its place. The 
 life of humanity was not abruptly terminated. The 
 race was spared. Eeprieve was granted, and the pur- 
 poses of redemption begin their wonderful develop- 
 ments. So was it in the wisdom of God that this 
 method of human restoration was not revealed in its 
 completeness on its first announcement. As great 
 growths of great forests are included in the small 
 germ of the parent-seed, so are all the hopes and pros- 
 pects of restoration which now gladden the world the 
 development of that one promise which was made to 
 the first man, after the first sin. When he passed out 
 of Eden he did not pass into despair. A new ele- 
 ment entered into his existence — unknown in inno- 
 cence, unknown in the first consciousness of shame 
 — the promised mercy of his offended Maker. That 
 mercy has been revealed in fuller measure — till now 
 the gospel of our Lord has disclosed it in all its am- 
 plitude. These are tidings of great joy to our fallen 
 
SECOND PROBATION. 97 
 
 race. Wearied, disabled, afflicted, in all forms and 
 stages of its diversified life, the nature of man is des- 
 tined to be restored. God is doing and will do for 
 man what man never could do for himself. Plain 
 enough, the fulcrum and the power of that mighty lev- 
 erage which is to lift up our fallen race must be out- 
 side of the race itself. That power is the love of God. 
 If one has ever allowed himself to think hardly of 
 his Maker ; if ever he was bewildered and troubled by 
 reason of the woes, the sins, and the sufferings of the 
 world, as if he were in doubt whether the goodness of 
 God ever could be vindicated in permitting the earth 
 to be blighted and cursed by sin as it is ; remember 
 that that fact does not describe nor exhaust the world's 
 history — that was not the end of the world's life — and 
 man was not deserted and abandoned in his utmost 
 need. The world is not always to be as it was — or as 
 it is now. The issue of the second probation, through 
 which our race is now passing, will not be a failure. 
 There is a way in which all the evils of transgression 
 may be amply and for ever remedied. Be not faithless 
 but believing while we treat of the mode in which 
 every man may be delivered from all the power and 
 proneness of sin — all the disabilities and entailments 
 of sin — and ultimately from all the consequences of 
 sin. The promises of the gospel relate to a better con- 
 dition than man ever knew in his innocence. High as 
 
 5 
 
98 THE GARDEN OF GETIISEMANE. 
 
 was his original position, deep as was his fall, his re- 
 covery by the grace of the Redeemer will exalt him 
 and confirm him in a state far above that which he en- 
 joyed in sinless Paradise. He shall be freely forgiven 
 — his sins shall not be remembered against him, and 
 again he shall walk with God in joyful fellowship. 
 
 The foremost feature of the second probation on 
 which man was placed is that his well-being is not 
 made to depend on mere obedience to divine law. Sin- 
 less obedience was the nature and description of the 
 first trial of our race. But never again is it made the 
 sole hope and dependence of man. Our probation 
 turns wholly on the treatment which we bestow upon 
 the means of relief, and the promises of mercy. It is 
 our conduct in reference to the method of redemption 
 which is to decide and determine our character and 
 condition. It is mercy — in the strict sense of that 
 term, as distinguished from mere benevolence — dis- 
 pensing gratuity to unworthiness — which presides 
 over the second, chief, and last stage of human pro- 
 bation. Not that the law of God is abrogated or mod- 
 ified in one jot or tittle ; but in this regard we are 
 not under law ; our eternal salvation does not depend 
 upon its perfect obedience ; but we are under grace — 
 inasmuch as a mexhod of forgiveness and restoration 
 is revealed for those who are defective and disobedi- 
 ent. We are not left to our obedience that we may be 
 
NEW CONDITIONS. 99 
 
 > 
 
 justified ; but we are to obey, because we are justified. 
 This is the first general description of that probation- 
 ary state, on which we, in common with our race, are 
 now placed. To this fact attention is directed thus 
 early that we may understand that no revelation of 
 mere law, in whatever form that revelation is made, 
 whether in specific statutes or in a living model, in a 
 written law or a faultless example, will ever meet 
 the necessities of our fallen nature. It was not owing 
 to any deficiency of knowledge in respect to the rule 
 of duty, that the failure of man was to be ascribed, on 
 his first trial, upon principles of obedience ; it is not 
 because the statutes of God's realm have been imper- 
 fectly understood that man has ever since shown him- 
 self incapable of self-restoration ; the mere repetition 
 of law, therefore, in whatever form, is but renewing 
 the probation to which our nature was subjected at the 
 beginning, and proclaiming anew those defects which 
 have already been made sufficiently evident. Some 
 new terms, new conditions, new helps, new motives, 
 new powers, are needed ; and these, as we shall see, 
 belong to that new stage and state through which 
 our blighted nature is passing, under the auspices of 
 the Redeemer. 
 
 Believing that the gospel of Christ accomplishes 
 man's restoration, not arbitrarily, but by means of its 
 moral adaptation to our nature and circumstances, we 
 
100 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 are to study that adaptation, and inquire more into the 
 character of that sufferer, whose every act, in the gar- 
 den and on the cross, appears in some manner to be 
 related to the recovery of our fallen race. 
 
 Who was that sufferer ? We are not left to draw 
 our opinions concerning him from what we behold in 
 this scene of agony alone. This is only one incident 
 in his life, the whole of which is described to our be- 
 lief in the inspired annals. We are to gather all the 
 facts which are revealed concerning him from the be- 
 ginning to the end of the sacred volume, and, combining 
 them together, adding nothing, omitting nothing, we are 
 to learn what qualities met in his person, fitting him to 
 be the Redeemer and Restorer of man. 
 
 Never did another such Being walk upon this earth. 
 He is without a compeer, a precedent, or a paral- 
 lel. We have rehearsed some of the remarkable names 
 and titles which he bears. No other being was ever 
 predicted for so long a time, or with such a stress 
 and import of expectation. He was a man, else he 
 could not suffer at all. He was something more than 
 man, else his sufferings could not avail for man's recov- 
 ery ; and it is his sufferings and death, as we shall see, 
 which in some way are the essential means of human 
 redemption. He was a man, that he might partake of 
 that nature which was to be restored ; he was more than 
 a man, that in him might be found that power of restora- 
 
THE GOD-MAN. 101 
 
 tion which was not in man at all. He had the body of a 
 man, else he could not have passed under death ; he had 
 a divine power allied therewith, else he could not show 
 how that very body should be raised and glorified be- 
 yond all pains and humiliations. A man himself, that 
 he might sympathize with the nature he would relieve — 
 sharing in its utmost depressions and privations : more 
 than a man, that he might lift up that nature to his own 
 level. An eye had he that could weep in pity ; a hand 
 that could wipe tears away. A man, innocent of sin, 
 for, had he shared in guilt, he had been disqualified as 
 a helper : more than a man, else he had no power to 
 absolve from sin. Of our race, and yet above it : with 
 man, and yet superior to man : made lower than the 
 angels, that he by the grace of God should taste death 
 for every man ; yet higher far than all the angels, that 
 he might crown man at last with glory and honor. 
 Made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merci- 
 ful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, 
 making reconciliation for the sins of the people ; yet 
 greater and higher than man ever can be, that he might 
 vindicate the honor of law, and uphold the majesty of 
 supreme dominion. He was human — he was divine. 
 In his own person was the tangential point between 
 the two natures which sin had sundered. Immediately 
 related was he to the parties between whom reconcilia- 
 tion needs to be effected. He shared the nature of 
 
102 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 both. He was the mediator between God and man — 
 man's advocate, priest, intercessor, representative, and 
 God's image and representative too. He was the God- 
 man. 
 
 As at the beginning God and man were associated 
 in perfect fellowship, even as the sky and the earth 
 seem to touch in the morning along the horizon — so, 
 in the person of Jesus Christ, divinity and humanity 
 are actually blended together — the one condescending 
 in its humiliation, the other lifted up in its exaltation ; 
 prefiguring to our faith that time which is to come when 
 our depressed, wounded, and afflicted nature shall rise 
 again even to a celestial promotion. 
 
 Concerning the possibilities and modes of such a 
 union of qualities in the Redeemer, we stop not to phi- 
 losophize. We enter upon no analysis of that conjunc- 
 tion of distinct natures which existed in the one Being 
 who is our Saviour. We have read and heard of many 
 learned terms which pretend to explain it, but prefer 
 the simple facts of inspired revelation — knowing full 
 well that a Being uniting such distinct and dissimilar 
 properties in himself, as he is beyond the sphere of 
 our experience, must be as yet beyond the range of 
 our comprehension. Before this great mystery of god- 
 liness we bow with a veiled face and wondering eye, 
 even as do the angels : " God manifest in the flesh, 
 justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto 
 
INNOCENCE IN AGONY. 103 
 
 the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into 
 glory." 
 
 What and why did he suffer ! God forbid that upon 
 such a theme our folly should intrude with the sugges- 
 tion of reasons above what is written. One thing is 
 patent and palpable throughout the whole of the Scrip- 
 tures. The sufferings of Christ are revealed as in 
 some manner the reason, in view of which the human 
 race is redeemed. The agonies of the Redeemer in 
 Gethsemane and on Calvary are not mere incidents and 
 appendages to something else more important. It is 
 by Christ's suffering for sins that we, in some manner, 
 are delivered from sin. It is by his death that we are 
 made to live. His teachings were of superhuman wis- 
 dom and authority ; his example was of spotless perfec- 
 tion ; but it is his bitter passion, his tasting of death, his 
 cross, which are everywhere set forth — whether in the 
 Old Testament, in the form of the bleeding lamb, or in 
 the New Testament, in the form of didactic statement 
 — as the one reason and method of man's restoration. 
 
 Sin always entails suffering. We can not conceive 
 of it without its involving consequences sad and pain- 
 ful. Those consequences are in some manner to be dis- 
 posed of. Christ himself was without sin. Yet he was 
 a sufferer. That form which lies on the ground in the 
 garden is not broken-hearted Penitence seeking out soli- 
 tude to weep, and mourn, and pray. It is Innocence, 
 
104 THE GARDEN OF GETH.SEMANE. 
 
 yet innocence in agony. A deep mystery this in the 
 righteous government of God. The solution, baffling 
 our wisdom, God has himself revealed it unto us. He 
 who himself knew no sin, was made sin for us. Those 
 sufferings were of a vicarious nature ; and in some way 
 Christ delivers us from suffering, by assuming suffering 
 himself. " He hath borne our griefs and carried our 
 sorrows ; he was wounded for our transgressions, he 
 was bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement of our 
 peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." 
 After some manner the sufferings of Innocence availed 
 for the redemption of guilt. The sin which was com- 
 mitted in the garden of Eden, and which had been 
 rolling its accumulated woes for ages, was, by some 
 process, related to all the suffering which was endured 
 in Gethsemane and upon the cross. We are to inquire 
 what power there was in that vicarious endurance to 
 meet the necessities of man's condition, accomplishing 
 in his behalf what no recuperative power of his own 
 could promise. 
 
 The way to the heavenly paradise, toward which we 
 have turned our faces in hope, is not through the gar- 
 den of Eden, for all traces of it are lost to the world, 
 so that man need not delude himself with travelling 
 afar to renew it ; but it doth lie directly through the 
 garden of Gethsemane. That enclosure, where the 
 Redeemer sorrowed and suffered, we must enter. We 
 
SORROW AND HOPE. 105 
 
 must pass under the gloomy shadow of that great ago- 
 ny. We must stand and see the sufferer in his mortal 
 anguish. We must mingle with the group before his 
 cross. We must look upon the Lamb of God, who 
 taketh away the sin of the world. Our path leads 
 through the very sepulchre where the body of Jesus 
 was laid. With gratitude, faith, hope, penitence, let 
 us approach the scene. Fear not to enter the garden 
 of Sorrow. Shrink not from looking upon the cross. 
 Start not back from the sepulchre. There are no ruf- 
 fian bands to arrest — no tragic crucifixion to torture — 
 no terrors of death to get hold of us ; for, wonder of 
 wonders, we, even we, can think of sin, and death, and 
 the grave, with a strange calmness : for peace comes 
 with penitence, and hope shines through all the tears 
 of conscious unworthiness and helplessness. Our Great 
 Helper, Deliverer, Restorer, says to all who will trust 
 
 in him, " Because I live, ye shall live also." 
 
 5* 
 
VI. 
 
 REASON FOR REMISSION. 
 
 We see sun, moon, and stars, and rejoice in their 
 light, long before we have any conception of scientific 
 astronomy. "We breathe the pure and tonic air before 
 we know how to analyze its composition. Our hearts 
 catch the gladness of the fact that God designs to re- 
 deem the human race, before we are fully acquainted 
 with the nature and relations of that method by which 
 redemption is accomplished. 
 
 Beholding that wonderful person, in agony and death, 
 on whom all the rays of prophecy converge, and to 
 whom Hope was ever pointing as the Restorer of man, 
 the inquiry is prompted how were those sufferings re- 
 lated to human redemption. 
 
 The first great necessity in the recovery of man is to 
 assure him of some method by which he may be ex- 
 empted from all the penalties incurred by transgression. 
 
JUSTICE. 107 
 
 Vain is it to attempt reformations until reason and con- 
 science are certified of the fact that sins already com- 
 mitted may be forgiven ; and that we are placed upon 
 an immunity from retribution where remedial agencies 
 may resuscitate our disabled nature. Sin must, in some 
 manner, be disposed of; and we are confident that the 
 method actually proclaimed is capable of being so stated 
 as to commend itself to every man's conscience in the 
 sight of God. The atonement is not a mystery in such 
 a sense as to be above our comprehension. Once it was 
 hid from ages and generations, but now it is revealed. 
 Sages wondered what was the import of the predictions 
 which they uttered concerning the Christ, to whom, but 
 not to us, the solution was denied. Mysteries, indeed, 
 are connected with all truth, even the simplest — travel 
 in any direction, we reach the ocean sooner or later — 
 but the mode which God has revealed by which to just- 
 ify the guilty is not ambiguous or enigmatical, since it 
 demands the intelligent assent and faith of childhood. 
 
 In one of the royal galleries of Paris there is a stri- 
 king picture, the moral of which is irresistible. The 
 prominent figure is that of Justice — a female form 
 seated on, her throne, a radiant star upon her brow, a 
 sword in one hand, and the other holding her symboli- 
 cal scales, resting on the head of a huge lion, who, with 
 keenest vigilance, keeps watch at the side of his mis- 
 
108 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMAME. 
 
 tress. Over this portion of the picture is an air of 
 severity and firmness, softened by celestial benignity. 
 In the foreground is a group, consisting of a husband- 
 man (the unharnessed plough is at his side), in the soft- 
 est sleep of night. Upon his breast reposes the head 
 of his wife, and in her arms lies their slumbering infant, 
 while one hand of the mother, in unconscious security, 
 rests on the knee of enthroned Justice. A great truth 
 is admirably illustrated by the artist — security, peace, 
 and happiness, beneath the protection of benignant law. 
 So prone are we to associate stern and unlovely quali- 
 ties with law and justice, that we must pause ere we 
 proceed, disabuse our minds of all such falsities, and 
 direct them, in an impartial judgment, to this very 
 point — the benevolence of God as exhibited in his most 
 holy law. 
 
 We begin by rehearsing some of the simplest rudi- 
 ments of religion. 
 
 "We live under the moral government of God. Be- 
 cause he is a Spirit, he is not to be idealized out of his 
 supremacy. Spirit is something more than light, or 
 air, or motion, or perfume, or unthinking energy, some- 
 times called Nature. 
 
 Made in the divine image, we are controlled, not by 
 mechanical laws, neither by caprice, but by statutes 
 addressed to our intelligence and affections. The law 
 
BENEVOLENCE OF LAW. 109 
 
 which God has revealed, requiring us to love him su- 
 premely and our fellow-men as we love ourselves, is 
 the transcript of his own nature, and the rule of devel- 
 opment for our own. Less he could not require, with- 
 out departing from his own benevolence, and doing an 
 injury to his own offspring. This revelation, moreover, 
 assumes the form of law. It is enforced by means of 
 adequate motives. Among these is the penalty attached 
 to disobedience. A law without penalty loses its dis- 
 tinctive character, and assumes that of mere opinion or 
 counsel. The remission of penalties, in all instances, 
 is equivalent to the abrogation of law itself. A statute, 
 however excellent its requisitions, which promises im- 
 punity to all who fail to observe it, loses its character 
 as law, and promulgates its own imbecility and impo- 
 tence. 
 
 If, now, without any compensatory reason, it were 
 announced from the vault of heaven that the law of God 
 was repealed, or that no sin would ever come under 
 judicial notice, clouds and darkness would gather over 
 our heads, and terror would reign, for this would be 
 equivalent to the proclamation that Malevolence had 
 usurped the throne of Love, and sin, uninterdicted and 
 unbridled, would reign and rage through the wreck and 
 ruin of the world! No truth can be more clear or 
 stable than this, that the justice of God, as exhibited 
 in his most holy law, is the kind and conservative 
 
110 THE GABDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 power which looks to the protection and blessedness 
 of the universe. 
 
 If, then, the law of God is holy, just, and good, and 
 the benevolence of God is pledged to maintain it, we 
 are set to the solution of a great problem : How may 
 its penalties be remitted, and the guilty restored to a 
 position such as would have been theirs had they never 
 sinned? 
 
 The question is not how penalty may be remitted in 
 a few instances, now and then, here and there, in view 
 of special reasons ; but how it may be suspended uni- 
 versally, without exception and without reserve. How 
 may the remission of sin and penalty be divulged just as 
 widely as the law itself, and the moral force and au- 
 thority of that law be unimpaired ? 
 
 To expatiate on the mercy of God is but an evasion 
 of the problem, since the inquiry is, how may that mercy 
 be applied ? It is the glory of heaven and the joy of 
 the whole earth that the throne is occupied by Infinite 
 Love. Washington was merciful ; yet he signed the 
 death-warrant of Andre. Indeed, it is well authenti- 
 cated that such was the pity of his noble heart on that 
 occasion, that his tears fell upon the words which he 
 wrote. That judge was merciful who, on the occasion 
 of pronouncing sentence of death on a culprit convicted 
 of wilful murder, was so overpowered by the tender 
 emotions of his heart, that he involuntarily rose, find, 
 
DIVINE BENIGNITY. Ill 
 
 with streaming eyes, commended the miserable man to 
 God in fervent prayer. 
 
 We stand not in doubt concerning the mercy of our 
 Maker ; we ask not for further proofs of its existence ; 
 neither can any increase be made to that which is al- 
 ready beyond measurement. We have sometimes feared 
 that many of the objections which have been urged 
 against the atonement have proceeded from the great 
 misconception that it was designed to propitiate the 
 Almighty, and accomplish some change in his feelings 
 toward the guilty. It is a sufficient reply to all such 
 misapprehensions, that the atonement is the effect and 
 not the cause of divine mercy. " God so loved the 
 world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoso- 
 ever believe th on him should not perish, but have ever- 
 lasting life." The affrighted imagination may conceive 
 of heathen deities as appeased and propitiated by sacri- 
 fices ; but the Love which originated the gospel, ma- 
 king expression of itself in the act of redemption, can in 
 no sense be regarded as the result and product of that 
 achievement. It is not the absence of benignant quali- 
 ties which restrains an honored magistrate from releas- 
 ing every criminal convicted of pillage and bloodshed. 
 Compassionate though he be, he is restrained from ma- 
 king clemency the general law — seeing that the inva- 
 riable exercise of the pardoning power would be synony- 
 mous with lawlessness. The goodness of God is not 
 
112 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 weak sentimentality, nor can it weaken the force of 
 that law which is the reflection of his blessedness and 
 the security of our own ; and to proclaim, simultane- 
 ously with the requirements of his own legislation, 
 free and unlimited impunity for all sins past, present, 
 and future, would be equivalent to the annulling of the 
 law itself. 
 
 It is over this obscure and inexplicable problem that 
 light from heaven has been poured in abundance. The 
 great mystery has been solved. The wonders of crea- 
 tion fade into dimness in comparison with the miracle 
 of redemption. The pallid lips of Despair may sing 
 for joy. The very rocks and trees are invoked to 
 break forth into music because of this grand discovery. 
 God has revealed a way by which he may be just — 
 maintaining the full force and sanctity of his law — and 
 yet justify all men that believe — treating them as 
 though they had not sinned at all : " Being justified 
 freely by his grace through the redemption that is in 
 Christ Jesus ; whom God hath set forth to be a propi- 
 tiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righ- 
 teousness for the remission of sins that are past, through 
 the forbearance of God." 
 
 "Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the 
 import of particular words in this pregnant passage, 
 there can be no discrepancy as to the historic fact that 
 the death of Jesus Christ is the reason in view of 
 
CHRIST MORE THAN LAW. 113 
 
 which mail receives remission of sin, and exemption 
 from merited penalty. 
 
 That reason is something more than the perfection 
 of Christ's character, as a model for human imita- 
 tion, or the excellency of his doctrines as the world's 
 Teacher, for these offices of the Redeemer do not fur- 
 nish any solution of that problem which has been pre- 
 sented by the exigences of man's condition. The life 
 of Christ as a mere example of obedience is only an- 
 other and better revelation of law. It is the law made 
 manifest in a living form, instead of characters graven 
 on stone or inscribed on parchment. It is the law per- 
 sonified, the law exemplified, the law fulfilled. Still it 
 is the law ; and if Christ be nothing more than man's 
 exemplar and teacher, then are we to look to law for 
 our justification — the old probation is repeated and 
 the mystery already propounded remains unsolved. 
 How can any new rule of duty avail for the remission 
 of sins that are past ? On condition that we copy it 
 and conform to it hereafter ? Then you impose a con- 
 dition in view of which we are to be saved ; and that 
 condition is conformity to impersonated law, and you 
 take away from such as are conscious of defection the 
 gratuity of the gospel. If the Sufferer was merely 
 man's teacher and model, then he could avail for man's 
 advantage only as his teachings were obeyed and his 
 example followed. But what if that conformity be 
 
114 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANB. 
 
 wholly wanting? You have not once hinted at the 
 real necessity of guilt, nor alluded as yet to that mo- 
 mentous inquiry which the heart aches to solve, How 
 mercy may be applied to a fallen world without im- 
 pairing the force of that law which is the product and 
 expression of infinite love. Here is a thief upon the 
 cross ; in the very act of dying he begins to pray. 
 Will it give hope and comfort to conscious guilt to 
 hold up to his glazed and rayless eye the model of per- 
 fect goodness ? 
 
 Go into the heart of heathenism and find the thought- 
 ful man who is self-impeached of defect, and drawing 
 nigh to the close of life with manifold misgivings. In- 
 form him of the one man who obeyed the Divine law to 
 its last letter. Borrow the fervor of inspiration in de- 
 scribing the glory of this faultless model ; will it light 
 one smile on the wan cheek of conscious guilt, or kindle 
 hope in his soul, when past sins rise up around him like 
 sheeted spectres ? Man is already confounded and dis- 
 tressed because of his infractions of law, and you carry 
 his ideas of law higher and higher, even up to infinite 
 perfection. Struggling with the sense of sin and de- 
 merit, you only instruct him the more concerning the 
 capacities of his nature, and bid him look at the living 
 impersonation of law. Every glance at that faultless 
 model convicts him, and wakes into agony the con- 
 sciousness of the immense interval which separates him 
 
A SUBSTITUTED REASON. 115 
 
 from perfection. No glad tidings are here : nor can 
 Law, in any form of revelation, inform us how the 
 transgression of law can be forgiven. 
 
 The glorious gospel of the blessed God is far in ad- 
 vance of all revelation of law and duty. Christ, as a 
 propitiation for sin, is distinct from Christ as an exam- 
 ple. Redemption through his blood is more than teach- 
 ing by his words. Remission of sins that are past is 
 different from exemption from sin for time to come. 
 
 Presumption is it to intrude here beyond what God 
 has revealed, but that which he himself has disclosed is 
 to be received with gladness. The death of Jesus 
 Christ, after some manner, presents a reason because 
 of which the penalties of law may be remitted while 
 the great ends and objects of law are secured. It is 
 a grand moral expedient substituted in the place of 
 merited penalty, which, for all motives and impressions,' 
 answers even better than the penalty itself the great pur- 
 pose of law, while mercy has its ample application to 
 the lawless. Talk not of the mysteries of this redemp- 
 tion, for without it we are involved in greater myste- 
 ries still. Pervert not its statement. It is love su- 
 preme and infinite, the author of law, manifesting itself 
 in a human form, and in its own voluntary endurances 
 presenting to the human conscience an adequate rea- 
 son, in view of which a sinful race may be acquitted 
 and justified. Who is he that condemneth ? It is 
 
116 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 Christ that died. Remission of sin is in view of a 
 compensatory reason, and that reason is higher and 
 ampler than any other that can be conceived of. It is 
 the plea which inspiration has put upon the tremulous 
 lips of guilt. Christ has died. Manifold speculations 
 there may be as to the precise nature of those suffer- 
 ings which were endured by our Redeemer, but rational 
 faith avoiding those human appendages which confuse 
 and mislead, is satisfied with this revealed fact, that by 
 the offering up of himself the Lamb of God was the one 
 adequate reason in view of which sins that are past 
 may be remitted, remitted freely and remitted for ever. 
 The gospel does not declare our innocence : but it is 
 God's method of treating men as though they were in- 
 nocent, justifying the guilty when justification by the 
 law was impossible. 
 
 Here is accomplished the first great requisite of 
 man's recovery. He is reinstated in such a position 
 that reformatory agencies may be applied to his resto- 
 ration. The method has been tested by experience and 
 found to execute all which it promises. The reason of 
 pardon satisfies the human conscience, and imparts a 
 profound and rational peace. This is the sign and seal 
 of its celestial origin. If the Highest Power in the 
 universe acquits, in view of compensatory considera- 
 tions of its own, what occasion for fear remains ? If 
 God justifies, there is none to condemn. The resting- 
 
PEACE IN BELIEVING. 117 
 
 place of faith is high and strong — eternal Rock. Sen- 
 sible of his own demerits, man is taught the strain of 
 exultation — "I am persuaded that neither life nor 
 death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
 height nor depth, nor any other creature, is able to 
 separate me from the love of God which is in Christ 
 Jesus my Lord." 
 
 Hope dawns on the gloom of guilt, and the soul 
 justified by faith has peace. Before, a disquieted 
 conscience occasioned constant foreboding and look- 
 ing for of judgment ; but now " peace in believing" 
 ensues oft as the plea is confided in — Christ has 
 died. Like the troubled sea that can not rest, cast- 
 ing up mire and dirt, is the soul when harassed by 
 the sense of unforgiven sin : but when faith intelli- 
 gently apprehends the gospel, the conscience respond- 
 ing to that reason which Christ has interposed, there is 
 a great calm. How perfectly this scriptural imagery 
 corresponds to the experience of thousands. You have 
 stood by the side of the sea when its surges were lashed 
 into foam by the wing of the storm — when the terrific 
 blast drowned your puny voice as deep called unto deep 
 at the noise of God's water-spouts, and the wild birds 
 screamed their melancholy cry, for they could not 
 rest, and weeds and wrecks came drifting to the shore, 
 and the deep, black, and turbid waves were the image 
 of all which was terrible : but the wind went down, 
 
118 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMAXE. 
 
 the surges fell, the storm passed off, and a sudden sun- 
 gleam broke over the changed scene, and at length the 
 sea became as a molten looking-glass, through "whose 
 translucent waters you could see the fish, the pebble, 
 and the plant, and birds of calm, "with their soft and 
 silver plumage sat and swung on the pliant "wave. Not 
 less striking is the transition in the human soul from 
 the stormy agitation which often accompanies conscious 
 demerit to the peace which follows a cordial acceptance 
 of the gospel gratuity. 
 
 The mode in -which the love of God has made ex- 
 pression of itself proves and evidences itself by the 
 effects which it produces. We need not toil and travel 
 far to discover illustrations of the fact that a belief in 
 that method which God has revealed as a substitute 
 for judicial retribution has resulted in deep and perma- 
 nent tranquillity. Men who can not be suspected of cre- 
 dulity, or weakness, or illusion, have tried it with uni- 
 form results. If anything can be established by human 
 testimony, it is the fact that faith in Jesus Christ, in 
 distinction from all personal merit of our own, is ca- 
 pable of imparting a consolation to the quickened con- 
 sciousness of man such as nothing else can inspire. 
 
 One of the greatest of living scholars,* writing to his 
 bosom-friend, thus describes a change which occurred 
 in his long-agitated and tempest-tossed soul : ""The 
 
 * Tholuck. 
 
SIN FORGIVEN. 119 
 
 overbearing spirit in me is humbled, the heart of stone 
 is broken. I can truly say that I am nothing great in 
 my own eyes. I am the most unworthy among the chil- 
 dren of men. I am still very much cast down, but I 
 can not tell you what a mild zephyr breathes upon my 
 cheek in the midst of all my sadness. Sometimes when 
 I sit alone, distressed with the thought of my guilt, a 
 secret voice whispers, ' God is thy friend.' At such 
 hours a peaceful joy, a heavenly delight, unknown till 
 now, fills my soul, and I must weep much and long. 
 In every calm I had before there was a restlessness at 
 the bottom, but now my restlessness bespeaks a calm. 
 My whole inward life is like a summer evening when 
 the sun is just setting. I know not whether I am 
 already regenerated, but this I know, it is something 
 unspeakably blissful to be a true believer in Christ. 
 By means of the insight into my misery and corrup- 
 tion, I seem to have obtained permission to raise at 
 times, for a moment, the curtain of a great sanctuary. 
 After such a glimpse my soul is filled with so joyous a 
 trembling that I would be willing to wait patiently be- 
 fore the curtain for years, after having once seen the 
 glories behind." 
 
 This is not mysticism, neither is it illusion. The 
 Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the world. 
 Human theories, like a mist before the sun, may obstruct 
 and becloud the light of this great fact ; but received 
 
120 THE GARDEN OF GBTSSEMANE. 
 
 as a fact, with humble faith, it inspires gratitude, diffu- 
 ses peace, and imparts strong consolation. Here is a 
 reason out of ourselves — higher, stronger than our- 
 selves — which is as an anchor to the soul. Con- 
 demned by the written law, condemned by his own con- 
 science, man places his hand on the cross of Christ and 
 repeats the great words of his faith : " Being justified 
 freely by his grace through the redemption that is in 
 Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a pro- 
 pitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his 
 righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, 
 through the forbearance of God." The pillars of 
 heaven may tremble, but he who trusts in God's mode 
 of justifying the guilty shall never be afraid. 
 
VII. 
 
 HUMAN NATURE RESUSCITATED. 
 
 Rectified in our relations to law and government, 
 we are open now and accessible to all the kind and 
 potent influences by which our own natures may be 
 renovated and restored. 
 
 Before proceeding to treat of those agencies which 
 are adapted to work the greatest of changes in our will 
 and affections, let us comfort ourselves with some con- 
 ception of the entireness, freeness, and fullness, of that 
 exemption which is secured to us by the mediation of 
 Jesus Christ. We do not mean that the condition of 
 the human race is necessarily better since Christ died ; 
 that all mankind are, by that act of their Redeemer, 
 saved, whether they will it or not — for redemption de- 
 mands our credence and our trust — but we mean that, 
 on those conditions of simple faith and acceptance, the 
 act of Christ completely restores and reinstates in a 
 
 condition of ultimate immunity from all evil. 
 
 6 
 
122 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 There is no danger of extravagance or exaggeration 
 in the statement of our faith on this topic ; for no ex- 
 pression and no conception of the completeness of man's 
 forgiveness can surpass the actual language of God's 
 Word. It would seem to be enough, when we are as- 
 sured that the act of Christ avails in our behalf to such 
 a degree, that, in God's regard, and God's treatment 
 of us, we are as if we never had sinned at all. Our 
 relations to law, to penalty, to condemnation, become 
 as these would be if the law never had been violated, 
 the penalty never incurred, and the condemnation never 
 had been merited. In the forbearance, wisdom, and 
 love of God, the way is disclosed by which the Supreme 
 Ruler of the universe may deal with us as he dealt with 
 man in his original and glorious innocence — smiling on 
 him, blessing him, having communion with him ; when 
 that smile had no cloud, that blessing no reserve, and 
 that communion no obstruction. If this does not satisfy 
 us, we are bidden to receive another assurance, higher 
 and greater still. Our relations to the Ruling Power 
 are so completely rectified by the act of Christ, that, 
 by faith in him, we are treated as if we were in Christ's 
 own stead, in actual possession of Christ's own perfec- 
 tion. The actual transfer of moral qualities, of guilt 
 and of holiness, from one person to another — inter- 
 changing one with another — is beyond our conception 
 or belief. Our guilt never can be transferred to Jesus 
 
TREATED AS RIGHTEOUS. 123 
 
 Christ in such a sense that he is guilty, nor his holiness 
 be transferred to us in such a sense that we are holy 
 as lie. 
 
 But, in the treatment which we receive from the Be- 
 ing who rules the world, we are promised exemptions 
 and blessings such as would have been ours had we 
 always been as holy and harmless as the Son of God. 
 The "righteousness" of Christ is "imputed' 1 ' 1 to us, in 
 this sense — that, in the abundance of his mercy, we are 
 to be treated as if we were righteous as Jesus Christ. 
 Let there be no reserve in our faith in this matter. 
 Let no fear nor shame prevent us from rising to the 
 " height of this great argument." If this were lan- 
 guage written or spoken by man, in the exultations of 
 excited hope, we might be incredulous as to its truth ; 
 but the mouth of the Lord first uttered it, and the pen 
 of the Holy Ghost first recorded it. The righteousness 
 of God ! — the righteousness of our Redeemer ! "We to 
 be regarded and treated as if this righteousness were 
 our personal quality and property! — as if we were 
 holy as God himself — holy as his spotless Son! The 
 magnanimity of God is nothing less than this. When 
 he describes the method of his forgiveness, it is with an 
 affluence of promise such as compares only with his 
 own infinity. Not only does he forgive, but forgives 
 freely. He forgives, and remembers not. He forgives, 
 and blots out iniquity. He forgives even to the utter- 
 
12-4 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 most. He forgives exceeding abundantly, above all 
 we can ask or think. We read not only of redemption, 
 but of plenteous redemption ; not only of mercy, but of 
 tender mercy ; not only of kindness, but of loving'-'kmd- 
 ness ; and these repeated and multiplied beyond plural 
 forms, into the " multitude of his loving-kindnesses." 
 To read of grace sufficient for us — grace from the 
 throne — were enough ; but this is amplified into " abun- 
 dant" grace — " exceeding abundant" — " superabun- 
 dant" — grace "immense" — grace "manifold" — the 
 "riches of his grace" — the "exceeding riches of his 
 grace" — the "riches of the glory of his grace." It 
 would seem that, on that point, where fallen humanity 
 needed " strong consolation," all the fullness of God 
 were poured into the very language which assures us 
 of the entire oblivion to which sins "that are past" 
 shall be consigned, and the entire rectification of the 
 fallen in reference to judicial and retributive notice. 
 
 Nor have we presented the full testimony of revela- 
 tion on this point, till we are reminded that this act 
 of the Redeemer is adequate to the restoration of the 
 whole human race. Such are the views we entertain 
 of the work of Christ, that, while we are constrained 
 to believe that necessarily and arbitrarily it saves no 
 man, in its adaptation it is abundantly equal to the 
 salvation of all men. The language of Scripture in 
 regard to this is very explicit : " He tasted death for 
 
FULLNESS AND FREENESS. 125 
 
 every man." — " The Lainb of God taketh away the sin 
 of the world." The gospel of the Redeemer is to be 
 preached to every creature. It is to be sent forth into all 
 the earth. Nowhere in the New Testament do we receive 
 the impression that the expiation of Jesus Christ was 
 adapted in its nature to the salvation only of a minor- 
 ity. It is the human race upon which the blight of sin 
 has fallen. The redemption we seek must be commen- 
 surate with the ruin we deplore. Those who stand at 
 the left hand of the Judge in the last day are con- 
 demned because they believed not on the Son of God. 
 It is the act of men in regard to the redemption of 
 Jesus Christ which arbitrates their destiny in the clo- 
 sing up of this peculiar and final probation of human 
 nature. No other proof is wanting of the fact that for 
 such the promises of the gospel were ample and ade- 
 quate ; for who would impute to Sovereign Equity the 
 judicial condemnation of any for rejecting a method of 
 relief which for them was never designed, or equal ? We 
 find no limits to the fullness of that redemption which 
 is by Jesus Christ, considered in its adaptation to the 
 moral recovery of the human race. It is coextensive 
 with the law of God, and that is universal. It super- 
 abounds above the evil it would remedy, and that evil 
 includes the entire species. The invitations connected 
 with it are wide as the earth and broad as the sea ; the 
 promises it proclaims boundless as the necessities of 
 
126 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMAXE. 
 
 human kind. " All men" — " whosoever will" — " the 
 world" — "every creature" — "the whole world" — 
 " all the earth" — " every nation" — these are some of 
 the expressions through which inspired truth labors to 
 expend itself in regard to the amplitude of the moral 
 expedient by means of which men may be saved. 
 
 The first requisite for man's recovery thus pro- 
 vided for — even that he may be assured to a certainty 
 that his past sins may be remitted, and he delivered 
 from their penalty and punishment — the next requi- 
 site is, that his disabled and perverted nature should 
 itself be actually recovered and restored. It were not 
 enough to inform us that there was a way in which, so 
 far as law and government are concerned, man may be 
 saved : we wish to know if there be any method or any 
 power by which man himself is saved, changed, and 
 reformed, in his own nature. Here we find the testi- 
 mony of Scripture equally explicit, and the dealings of 
 God distinguished by the same infinite generosity and 
 magnanimity. The cross of Christ is not only the wis- 
 dom of God, inasmuch as it discloses to us how God 
 may be just, and yet justify them that believe ; but it is 
 also the power of God imto salvation, inasmuch as it 
 addresses the most potent motives in aid of regenera- 
 ting man himself — converting his will, and reclaiming 
 his lost affections. 
 
RELATIONS MANWARD. 127 
 
 To convince ourselves how excellently the gospel of 
 our Lord is adapted to meet this second necessity, let 
 us recall some of the effects which followed apostacy 
 from God. These were — shame; fear of God; repul- 
 sion from God ; and an inflexible perversion of will 
 and affection. We seek, then, a curative power by 
 which these maladies of the soul itself may be healed — 
 some panacea by which the moral ailments of our nature 
 may be medicated. In vain is pardon proclaimed to 
 penitence, and remission of sins to faith, if there be no 
 method by which penitence and faith may be awakened, 
 and man himself be lifted out of the depression into 
 which he is fallen, to shine in the restored and bright- 
 ened image of his Maker. 
 
 Let us consider, then, how admirably adapted is the 
 mediation of Jesus Christ to accomplish this indispen- 
 sable service. The cross of Christ has relations both 
 manward and Godward. While we believe that it was 
 designed to adjust and rectify our relations to the Ru- 
 ling Power, so that universal clemency may be exer- 
 cised without detriment, we do not believe that this is 
 the only design and effect of the redemption by the Son 
 of God. We believe it to be God's own power for 
 exciting hope, awakening confidence, enkindling love, 
 and attracting an alienated soul back to faith, loyalty, 
 innocence, and joy. 
 
 Let us consider these in their order. Shame is the 
 
128 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 inseparable shadow of sin. There can be no recovery 
 for man, even though pardon be proclaimed, so long as 
 conscious shame drives him into any attempts to hide 
 himself from his Maker. Confidence destroyed in the 
 soul of man, that confidence toward God must be re- 
 established. What disastrous effects upon the soul 
 itself have been entailed by the shame and distrust 
 which guilt hath engendered ! It is a law of our na- 
 ture that the emotions of the soul give complexion and 
 character to all other beings and objects. Is the spirit 
 within darkened and disturbed, " it makes a turmoil 
 of a quiet world :" — 
 
 " The fiends of his own bosom people air 
 With kindred fiends, that hunt him to despair. 
 Hates he his fellow ? Self he makes the rate 
 Of fellow-man, and cries, ' 'Tis hate for hate !' " 
 
 So in regard to God. The soul filled with distrust 
 and shame, God is represented in images of terror. 
 Fear is the ascendant emotion. How terrible God is 
 made to appear to the ashamed and frightened spirit 
 of man, is apparent in all the religions of heathenism, 
 with their vain and frenzied attempts to propitiate 
 offended power. Even in Christian lands, wherever 
 the soul has not received the full light of the glorious 
 gospel of God, it is tortured with the apprehension 
 that we are objects of God's unmingled hatred. A 
 troubled conscience involves an excited imagination, 
 
CONDESCENSION AND LOVE. 129 
 
 and both together invest the character of our Maker 
 with forms of gloom and terror. The soul remembers 
 God, and is troubled. It cherishes the belief that God 
 hates us in all we are, and in all we do — in our plough- 
 ing and our reaping, in our merchandise and our 
 homes ; and, until this progeny of shame be displaced 
 by hope and confidence, never will the stricken nature 
 of man be recovered. 
 
 To accomplish this, God lays aside the insignia of 
 his majesty, and approaches man in the form of utmost 
 condescension. Not now does he come down as upon 
 Sinai, riding upon the wings of the wind, and sending 
 forth his lightnings from the angry clouds : he reveals 
 himself in a human form, and mingles among those he 
 would restore in ways of sympathy, in words of ten- 
 derness, and in deeds of love. He divests himself 
 of every form and expression of terror by which man 
 would be driven into more of fear and despair, and 
 manifests himself in such a manner, that his creatures 
 may no longer doubt and distrust his love. He has 
 assured them that his love, even for those who have 
 -inned against him, has never wearied and never been 
 exhausted. He has pitied those who never have pitied 
 themselves. Remembering that they were his offspring, 
 made in his image, he has opened his fatherly heart 
 that they might see how deep, how full, how strong, 
 
 has been his love for them. He has caused to be writ- 
 
 6* 
 
180 THE GARDEN OP GETHSEMANE. 
 
 ten in this gospel of his grace the parable of the prodi- 
 gal son, wherein the joyful father — weeping on the 
 neck of his penitent boy, gazing upon his haggard face 
 with ineffable pity, bathing and blessing his sore and 
 broken heart with every expression of love and for- 
 giveness — was designed to represent the feelings of 
 His own infiuite nature toward our guilt and shame. 
 Oh, if every ray of hope which that one passage of the 
 New Testament has kindled in the soul of the depressed 
 and the fearful, could be retained and attached to the 
 page where it is written, it would be illuminated so as 
 no page was ever illuminated in gold by man's art ; it 
 would shine as if there burned upon its surface the 
 splendor of transfiguration ! 
 
 These forms of approach, these voices of kindness, 
 enkindle hope ; and hope, enkindled, leads man, step 
 by step, to the full assurance that God loves him. Like 
 the dawning of the morning does this belief break upon 
 the long and fearful night of guilt and shame. God 
 actually loves us. He loves us sincerely. Without 
 reserve, without equivocation, in the infinite truthfulness 
 of his magnanimous nature, he loves us. Notwithstand- 
 ing our sins, he loves us ; in spite of our provocations 
 and demerits, he loves us still : he loves us, so as no 
 man ever loved ; he loves those who have shown them- 
 selves his enemies — loves them unto self-denial — loves 
 them unto suffering -■- loves them unto death! Now 
 
LOVE MORE POTENT THAN LAW. 131 
 
 hope brightens like the morning star ; the Sun rises 
 with healing in his wings ; confidence takes the place 
 of fear and distrust ; love ejecteth fear ; and hope, 
 confidence, and love, draw the soul back to God and 
 life. 
 
 The power of condescension and kindness in over- 
 coming shame, and exciting hope and confidence, is not 
 all which is essential to the restoration of humanity. 
 Man is to be made loyal and obedient again. That law 
 of his being, and of God's universe, which requires him 
 to love his Maker supremely and all beings most cor- 
 dially, has never been relaxed ; nor, indeed, could it 
 be, without impairing man's own blessedness. Some 
 method there must be, by which humanity, with all its 
 proclivities to evil, with all the stiffness and steadfast- 
 ness of its own will, shall be reclaimed to a hearty and 
 joyful obedience. No new revelation of mere law could 
 do this, since it is in reference to law that our nature 
 has proved itself defective. No exhibitions of terror 
 could awaken love in a soul where love is already want- 
 ing. No stern utterances of authority could do it. No 
 excitements of fear could do it. No revelations of dan- 
 ger could do it. No pressure of necessity and obligation 
 could do it. No explosive volleys of menace and wrath 
 could do it. Had every mountain-top on earth become 
 like Sinai, pealing the voice of the law, amid earth- 
 quakes and darkness, " The soul that sinneth, it shall 
 
132 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 die !" — this could not do it. If the world in which we 
 live had been filled with all forms and expressions of 
 incensed power — the heavens gathering blackness, flash- 
 ing thick flames, and the solid earth trembling with con- 
 vulsive expectation of God's righteous judgment — all 
 this would not do it. The alienated affections of man's 
 soul are never reclaimed by force, nor power, nor obli- 
 gation, nor anger, nor just displeasure — for they will 
 sullenly adhere to their own objects, even though those 
 objects are known to be unworthy and interdicted. 
 
 The method by which God recovers man to obedi- 
 ence is the same by which he overcomes his shame and 
 fear. By the exhibition of his own love to us, he would 
 win our love to him. "What law could not accomplish 
 in its naked majesty and its righteous severity, that has 
 been accomplished by other expressions of God's mar- 
 vellous love. We love him because he first loved us. 
 Gratitude becomes more potent than obligation ; and 
 the generosity of God awakens affections which never 
 could be summoned into life in the heart of the disobe- 
 dient by all the might and menaces of authority. " And 
 I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." 
 
 Strong, indeed, are the attractions of the Saviour's 
 mercy. That cross on which the Son of God was raised 
 to the eye of the world, is the central magnet by which 
 the hearts of the ungrateful are to be drawn back to 
 their Maker. It was the self-offering of love. It was 
 
LOVE KINDLED BY LOVE. 133 
 
 love making the highest, fullest, greatest expression of 
 its own sincerity. Like the hiding of God's power did 
 it seem — as the very darkest of all mysteries — that 
 day when the world's Redeemer hung in mortal agonies 
 on the tree, and the sun hid its face, and the earth 
 shuddered at the expiring groans of her Lord — but 
 there is no hiding of God's love, no veiling of God's 
 intention now, that he who was dead is alive again ; 
 and a light brighter than that of the sun shines from 
 the face of him who rose from the tomb of Joseph. A 
 reinforcement is given to our weak and wasted strength 
 when this potency of God's unveiled and unmingled 
 love is applied to help our obedience. Many a man 
 who has braved the terrors of Omnipotence, and defied 
 the wrath of his Maker, has been subdued by this infi- 
 nite generosity of love. Had he seen only the flaming 
 sword of cherubim brandishing vengeance — had he felt 
 himself pursued by some minister of justice armed with 
 the implements of pain — he would have strengthened 
 himself to contend and to endure ; but when Jesus Christ 
 comes toward him with tenderness of compassion, with 
 smiles of benignity, nay, even with tears of sympathy ; 
 when he brings the gift of life in that hand which bears 
 the print of the nail, and proclaims all which is good 
 and gracious with that voice whose death-sigh convulsed 
 the earth — enmity is slain, the hard heart is dissolved, 
 and the penitent falls at the feet of mercy. Kissing them 
 
134 THE GAEDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 in gratitude, and bathing them with the tears of a sub- 
 dued and loving spirit. 
 
 Nor is even this all which our Redeemer has accom- 
 plished for the restoration of the soul itself. By assu- 
 ming our own nature he has convinced us of its capaci- 
 ties, and furnished us with a model. It is here that the 
 example of the Son of God exerts its intended power. 
 Because we can not admit that the mere living and teach- 
 ing of Jesus Christ were all the help which he imparted 
 to our race, let us not overlook the real help and ad- 
 vantage which his living example was designed to 
 afford. That perfection of his personal life, which by 
 itself could only reprove and condemn us by a painful 
 contrast, becomes a positive joy now that it is associa- 
 ted with the consolations of pardon and the promises of 
 assistance. He entered into the very life of man. He 
 took upon himself the nature not of angels, but of those 
 whom he would redeem. He presented in his own living 
 form an idea of what man was designed to be, and what 
 again he will be, when restored and perfected. The law- 
 giver has furnished in his own human life, the complete 
 fulfilment of his own law. He was a child — he was a 
 son — he was a mechanic — he was a citizen — he was a 
 sufferer — he was a man. At every point, save one, he 
 conjoined himself to our nature in completest sympathy. 
 His immaculate purity entered into no fellowship with 
 sin ; but into every infirmity and depression of our race 
 
A LIVING SAVIOUR. 135 
 
 he descended with an actual and living experience. 
 He was poor, yet he exhibited cheerfulness : he was 
 subject to parents, that he might show us the beauty of 
 filial respect and love ; his hand was addicted to honest 
 work, that he might teach us happy industry ; a man of 
 prayer was he, that he might excite us to habits of devo- 
 tion : he was reviled, and was meek ; wronged, and was 
 patient ; insulted, and answered not ; persecuted, and 
 was forgiving ; put to death, and prayed for his murder- 
 ers. In all points did he become like unto us in condition 
 and circumstances, that we might be helped to become, 
 like him in feeling and conduct. His own feet have 
 trodden the path in which he would have us to go. 
 The possibilities and futurities of our nature are ex- 
 hibited in his own actual life. 
 
 Nor must we think of this sympathy as confined to 
 the few years " when his blessed feet walked the acres 
 of Palestine." There is reason to fear that we accustom 
 ourselves to think of this our Restorer only as he tvas, 
 and not rather as he is. We have seen him lying 
 beneath the trees of Gethsemane ; but that form is not 
 there to-day. Let us not endeavor to conceive of him 
 only as when wrapped in the winding-sheet of linen, in 
 the sepulchre of the garden. Neither let us delude 
 ourselves with the idea that he was a personage of a 
 past and remote history only. He who was dead is 
 alive for evermore. Our Redeemer lives — lives not only 
 
136 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 in the manifested glories of heaven, amid incense and 
 praises and worship, he lives among us still — in us, and 
 with us. He is our living, active, and sympathizing 
 helper to-day. " Lo, I am with you alway, even to the 
 end of the world." " Wherever two or three are met 
 together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." 
 " I go away, but I will come again. For a season I go 
 where your sense of sight can not follow, but I will re- 
 turn — help you, and comfort you — in ways which nei- 
 ther sense nor unbelief can discover." The Comforter 
 shall come and abide in you. Now, indeed, we seem 
 to be mounting to the climax of a Saviour's mercy. 
 His expiation for our sins prepared the way for our 
 forgiveness : his love conquered our shame and at- 
 tracts our obedience : his example presents our model : 
 his sympathy cheers us with encouragement : and his 
 promised Spirit proves the Comforter of the world, 
 by illuminating our darkness, strengthening our weak- 
 ness, persuading our reluctance, inspiring our languor, 
 enkindling our life, and so by all these varied means 
 and methods we are lifted up out of depression into 
 hope, and gladness, and immortality. 
 
 Nor is all this merely a theory of religion. The re- 
 demption of our Lord has actually proved itself equal 
 to all its promises. Christ returned not to the skies 
 unattended by the trophies of his success. That peni- 
 tent malefactor who was crucified at his side went with 
 
A POTENT FACT. 137 
 
 him to the Paradise of God — a proof and a pledge of 
 his power to save. Ever since a long procession of re- 
 deemed men have been entering in through the gates 
 into the city, and more will follow in numbers like unto 
 drops of the morning dew, till at last unbelief is in the 
 minority, the race is restored, and Christ, seeing of the 
 travail of his soul, shall be satisfied. 
 
 It remains yet to be considered what this redemption 
 has already accomplished ; to what degree it has miti- 
 gated the woes of the world ; what changes it has 
 wrought ; what prospects are dawning now upon our 
 race ; and what is that future state wherein the resto- 
 ration of man is complete. 
 
 Having visited Eden and Gethsemane, we must also 
 visit that second Paradise where the redeemed shall 
 walk in glory. But before we treat of that resurrec- 
 tion which is at the last, when death and the grave are 
 abolished for ever, let us remember that there is another 
 kind of resurrection which is needful now — a spiritual 
 resurrection from a spiritual death — for the time now is 
 — when the dead hear the voice of the Son of God, and 
 live ! Now is the time for us to make sure of that ulti- 
 mate rising with Christ to his throne, by rising with 
 him in the regeneration. He who stood at the grave 
 of Bethany, with mingled tears and power, the sympa- 
 thy of a bereaved man and the might of omnipotence, 
 and said, " Lazarus, come forth," approaches us now, 
 
108 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 in sabbath ordinances and privileges — in the records 
 of his love and the voices of his truth — bidding us 
 awake, arise, and live. As the whole body of the sea 
 is swayed by the attractions of the heavenly orb, let 
 us yield to the redemption of Christ and be lifted up 
 by the power of his love who came to help, restore, 
 and save. 
 
VIII. 
 
 "TIMES OF RESTITUTION." 
 
 Let us look at life as it is. Here we are in an act- 
 ual world. Beneath these overarching skies, now one 
 expanse of cloudless blue, now darkened with gloom, 
 and now piled up with vapor of gorgeous white — with 
 sunrising and sunsetting — with stars in their order and 
 brilliancy — spring, summer, autumn, and winter; — a 
 world wherein are births, baptisms, and deaths, young 
 children and old men, cradles and graves — a world 
 wherein are homes and warehouses, selling and buying, 
 farming and commerce, governments and law, peniten- 
 tiaries and gibbets, sickness and health, wrongs and 
 charities, outrages and mercies, pleasures and woes, 
 laughter and groans, riches and poverty, honor and 
 shame, war and peace, good men and bad men, and 
 many which you know not how to call and classify 
 them — the good who are not all good, and the bad 
 
140 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 who are not bad altogether — men of all pursuits — - 
 laborers and scholars, merchants, lawyers, physicians, 
 preachers, and all having enough of varied work to 
 do — an actual world it is, with fields, and skies, and 
 water — with railroads, manufactories, ships, school- 
 houses, and churches — with six days for working, and 
 one day for resting and rejoicing : such is the veritable 
 scene where we awake to consciousness, and where we 
 are now passing our own existence. Here is something 
 at the farthest remove from theory. Here is an actual 
 state of things, with which we are brought into direct 
 contact. 
 
 How, now, does our theory of Christianity corre- 
 spond to such a world as this ? How do the truths of 
 the New-Testament revelation apply to the facts with 
 which we are conversant ? And how are we, in this 
 our personal life, and in this actual world, to avail 
 ourselves of the promised benefits of redemption ? 
 
 How would you describe this world in which we live, 
 and this life through which we are passing ? Surely 
 not as a world of unmingled blessedness. You gaze 
 upon one of those bright orbs in the evening sky, and, 
 without any certain knowledge whether it is inhabited 
 or not, you imagine it to be the abode of an order of 
 beings never yet cursed and corrupted by sin; you 
 listen in the still night, as if you almost hoped to catch 
 
FACTS AND THEORY. 141 
 
 some strain of inusic floating down to assure you that 
 there were worlds of unmixed purity and joy. With- 
 out exercising your fancy at all, you know, for an as- 
 sured certainty, that there is one world in which is 
 no element of evil. Sin is not there. Sorrow is not 
 there. There is no tear in any eye. There is no sick- 
 ness. Neither is there any death. It is the central 
 palace of the Great King — the home of holiness, of 
 love, of joy unspeakable, and glory unclouded. 
 
 Surely this world is not like that. When your eye 
 turned from gazing upon that world above, it fell on a 
 poor cripple, a beggar clad in rags, a pale-faced and 
 weeping child, a lonely, haggard widow ; it fell on a 
 yard full of graves. Your ear, when it wearied with 
 waiting to catch some song from the azure sky, was 
 assailed with oaths and blasphemy, with the groaning 
 of the prisoner, the cry of the oppressed, and the moan 
 of the dying. Surely, surely, this is not heaven. Nei- 
 ther is it such a world as we should imagine it would 
 have been if it had retained the original character it 
 had when it came from the hand of its rejoicing Maker, 
 uninvaded by evil. Dogmas apart, theologies apart, 
 revelation itself apart, surely this world in which we 
 live is not as bright and blessed as it might be. 
 
 Imagine, again, a world in which there is no joy, and 
 no goodness, and no hope. Let it be filled with beings 
 self-abandoned to all wicked courses : addicted to evil 
 
142 THE GARDEN OF GETH3EMANE. 
 
 under no restraint ; furnished "with bodies which can 
 stand the recoil of sinful practices ; in which there is 
 no obstruction to wicked passion, shame foaming out 
 itself, and malignity flaming up its own wrath. There 
 is a world of which the Son of God himself has spoken, 
 as prepared for the devil and his angels. It is a world 
 of outer darkness, of weeping and wailing, of remorse 
 and of despair — a prison with gloomy apparatus of 
 wo — with chains, and waitings for the judgment of the 
 great day — with smoke of torment, the quenchless 
 flame, the deathless worm, and no hope ! 
 
 Neither is this world, where we now are, like unto 
 that. Here is the bright sun, and the flowers of the 
 field, and the gladness of the sky ; here are liberty, 
 and hope, and pleasure ; here are good men and good 
 deeds, household worship, laughing children, sabbath 
 hymns, and temples of God where we meet to pray 
 and to adore ; here are all manner of kindly affec- 
 tions, and pleasant pursuits, and joyful hopes. Surely 
 this world is not like hell : it is not an Aceldama — a 
 field of blood; nor a Golgotha — the place of dead 
 men's bones, and nothing beside. 
 
 How, then, shall we describe this world of our habi- 
 tation, and how interpret the scene of our earthly exist- 
 ence ? Precisely in correspondence with the great facts 
 and truths of the Christian religion. It is another of 
 those unbribed testimonies to the truth of the Christian 
 
AN ASCENDING SCALE. 143 
 
 faith, that its written statements are the exact counter- 
 part of the actual facts which are round about us. 
 This world is not all goodness, neither is it all evil ; it 
 is not a world where goodness is perfected, neither one 
 where evil is unmodified and unrestrained : it is a world 
 which sin has stricken, and which mercy is now reclaim- 
 ing. It is a fallen, blighted world, in the very 
 process op restitution. The doctrine of Christianity 
 alone unlocks this mystery of life, by an adequate ex- 
 planation. The wards of the lock and the structure of 
 the key correspond precisely. Things answer to the- 
 ory ; facts fit unto doctrines. The written word affirms 
 that man has fallen — humanity deteriorated ; that sin 
 and death are in the world, but that God purposes to 
 redeem and to restore ; that there is hope for the fallen, 
 help for the guilty, life for the dead. And, turning 
 from the inspired page to this actual world, we meet 
 the echo of the same truth, the veritable spectacle of 
 the same reality — a fallen world in the course of re- 
 covery ; apostate man on an ascending' grade, under the 
 auspices of hope and mercy. 
 
 If this world be not like to the temple of God and 
 the Lamb, or to our Father's house in heaven with its 
 many mansions, it is a Bethesda, with a great number 
 of blind, and sick, and impotent folk, lying about in its 
 many porches — yet not without hope, for the Son of 
 God is among them, asking them whether they would 
 
144 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 be made whole, and bidding them rise up and walk. 
 Many resemblances, indeed, has this world to an im- 
 mense hospital, wherein, if there be many signs and 
 proofs of accidents, fractures, wounds, and diseases, 
 there are also the most skilful of surgeons, the most 
 potent of remedies, the most tender of nursing, where 
 even the sick and the wretched smile and are glad un- 
 der the shelter of kindness. 
 
 We have opened the Scriptures, and read what God 
 promised from the beginning he would do ; and what 
 he actually has done in sending his Son Jesus Christ to 
 declare his love, and turn us away from our iniquities. 
 "We have endeavored to show wherein this act of Jesus 
 Christ was adapted to accomplish the results at which 
 it aimed ; how it avails to rectify our relations to vio- 
 lated law, and what power there is in it to change and 
 control the will and affections of men. This is what 
 you may call the theory, the rationale, of Christianity. 
 And now we ask you to observe how exactly the facts 
 of this very world in which we live, and through which 
 we are passing, correspond to this representation. 
 
 Conceive what this world would have been, long ere 
 this, if it had been abandoned of God to the practice 
 and penalties of sin. If the machine could have lasted 
 so long — if the world had not been consumed in the 
 fires of its own kindling — what the spectacle it would 
 present of a race deteriorated and deteriorating, with 
 
CURATIVE PROCESS. 145 
 
 no power or prospect of self-recovery — inflamed, exas- 
 perated, sullen, despairing, self-abandoned to sin un- 
 checked and unrestrained ! Conceive what this world 
 would be if every act of sin received its just recompense 
 of reward, and punishment, in every instance, followed 
 hard after transgression ! Such is not the correct de- 
 scription of our world. Sin is here, but it is sin under 
 restraint — sin with the promise of forgiveness and res- 
 toration. The heavens have received again the form 
 of Him who has been preached unto us as the Promised 
 One, and there he abides until the restitution of all 
 things — a restitution now in progress, through the for- 
 bearance of God. So it has been appointed in his wis- 
 dom that this curative process should be gradual. In- 
 stead of being accomplished by his instantaneous om- 
 nipotence, he has instituted methods instrumental and 
 subsidiary, the successful development of which may 
 consume centuries of time. 
 
 Observe, then, the long-suffering of God. He is not 
 slack concerning his word ; he is not insensible to the 
 evil of sin ; he is not indifferent to the crimes of the 
 world ; but he is patient and full of forbearance. This 
 world is not governed on the principle of just retribu- 
 tion, immediately administered, for all sin. Penalties, 
 retributions of certain kinds and degrees, indeed exist : 
 and these are necessary to keep sin within limits, and 
 under restraint. But it is plain enough that this world's 
 
146 THE GARDEN OP GBTHSBMANE. 
 
 affairs are not conducted on the principle of a full and 
 immediate punishment for all iniquity. Many of those 
 methods employed of God under an earlier system of 
 law, when as yet the redemption of man was but par- 
 tially revealed — methods which partook of the char- 
 acter of severity and of judgment — are now stayed and 
 withdrawn in these days of God's waiting and long- 
 suffering. Many are they who defy the law of their 
 Maker, and trample it beneath their feet. But the 
 heavens do not gather blackness, and dart the bolts of 
 God upon the head of the guilty. The swift ministers 
 of divine justice do not arrest them. The earth does 
 not open to swallow them up. Instead thereof, the 
 rain falleth gently on the just and the unjust ; the sun 
 shineth on the evil and on the good ; the boldest atheist 
 enjoys the largest liberty ; his fields are not given up 
 to blasting and mildew ; God's dew and showers fall 
 upon them, and they yield their increase ; God's winds 
 waft his ships from sea to sea, and God's rivers turn 
 his mill-wheels and water his meadows ; God gives him 
 health, and home, and comforts innumerable, for God 
 is patient, and these are the days wherein God would 
 have all men come to the knowledge of the truth and 
 be saved. 
 
 In a word, the state of things in this world is pre- 
 cisely such as we should expect it to be, in accordance 
 with the revealed facts and doctrines of the New Tes- 
 
WAITING AND RESTORING. 147 
 
 tamcnt. Affairs move on under the forbearance and 
 tender mercy of that God who would restore and save. 
 Time goes on without a jar or convulsion ; days, weeks, 
 months, years, follow one another in serene procession ; 
 man goeth forth to work, and returneth to his rest ; 
 he lieth down, and his sleep is sweet; for everything 
 there is a season ; there is a time to be born, a time to 
 plant, a time to travel, and a time for all life's mul- 
 tifarious pursuits : for God is not punishing and de- 
 stroying, but sparing, and waiting, and restoring, grad- 
 ually lifting up the world to the ultimate and com- 
 plete restitution of all things. Woes, sorrows, indeed 
 are here ; but these are not alone or unmingled. These 
 do not complete the description of our world. What 
 forms of beauty, what expressions of goodness, what 
 favors of Providence, are multiplied around us ! Light 
 is sown for our gladness ; fruits, beyond all necessity, 
 are afforded for our pleasure ; flowers, surpassing the 
 glory of kings, are strewn along our path ; the birds 
 warble their songs of innocence ; the bow of God 
 arches the sky with its glorious tints ; and earth, and 
 sea, and the heavens, are crowded with all forms of 
 kindness, of love, and of delight. A sabbath in the 
 spring — the "bridal of the earth and sky" — when all 
 the recollections of early life come back in images of 
 stillness, brightness, and beauty, proclaims even to the 
 deafness of infidelity, ' Verily, God has not abandoned 
 
148 THE &1BDEM OF GETHSEMAXE. 
 
 the world, but he lores it still, and is guiding it on to 
 the restitution of all things.' 
 
 The fact is. the world is actually rising up out of the 
 waters of the deluge. The human race is on an ascend- 
 ing scale. The prospects of the world are brighter 
 than they ever were before. Those parts of the globe 
 which have been upheaved into the light, are clothed 
 with verdure such as never has been seen since the fresh- 
 if Eden. The curse has been lifted up and lifted off 
 till it is scarcely felt. The curse of sweating - , drudg- 
 ing, depressing labor, has been mitigated and ex- 
 changed for the blessing of cheerful and self-rewarding 
 work. There is more of activity in the world : more 
 of industry, more of intelligence, more of thrift, more 
 of hope, more of liberty, and more of enjoyment, 
 ss and atheistic philosophy reasons and speculates 
 as to the cause and occasion of this : but there is only 
 one cause and explanation. God has undertaken the 
 world's restoration — the times of refreshing have come 
 from his presence — He who made the world has re- 
 prieved it — He who reprieves has redeemed it — He 
 who has redeemed has promised a complete restitu- 
 tion. 
 
 The salvation of man begins here, and is consumma- 
 ted hereafter. Associate not that word only with the 
 joys and rewards of a future Paradise. Send not your 
 thoughts away beyond the judgment — think not only 
 
SALVATION BEGUN. 140 
 
 of the white throne — and the welcomed ones on the 
 right hand of the judge — of the city and the kingdom 
 of God. Salvation has its commencement here — its 
 completion there. The gospel saves men now. It has 
 changed the aspect and prospect of the world already. 
 Many, indeed, share in the general benefits conveyed 
 by the work of Christ passively and involuntarily, who 
 have no other lot or part in his kingdom. There is not 
 a merchant, or mechanic, or farmer, in Christendom, 
 not a man, nor a child, who is not enjoying a thousand 
 advantages proceeding directly from the gospel of our 
 Lord ; and this none the less because they think not of 
 the cause to which they are indebted. Humanity may 
 be recovered out of many of the ills into which it would 
 be crowded and depressed by the weight and gravitation 
 of unrestrained iniquity, without reaching that highest 
 restitution of all, which consists in the likeness and com- 
 munion of God. Nevertheless, this latter attainment 
 is never secured without comprehending and involving 
 all preceding benefits. One may be upborne into 
 many mercies, along with the world to which he be- 
 longs, rising and rising as it does by the leverage of 
 redeeming love, whose own soul may never share in 
 the spiritual restoration which is through Jesus Christ. 
 But faith in the Redeemer is sure to give man eleva- 
 tion in this present life which nothing beside can ever 
 promise. 
 
150 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 This is done by the surest and simplest of all meth- 
 ods. It is through the gospel that man learns the 
 value of his own existence. Glimpses of that he ob- 
 tains when he reads that he was fashioned by the hand 
 of God — that the inspiration of the Almighty gave 
 him life — when he studies the wonders of his own 
 frame and spirit : but it is only in the act of the Re- 
 deemer's condescension, suffering, and death, that man 
 learns the true worth and importance of his own being. 
 In this one conviction behold the seed of all growth — 
 the beginning of all advancement. Never will that 
 man throw himself away, by indulging in practices 
 which ruin, who has been taught aright, what the Son 
 of God endured for his redemption, acquiring thus 
 a^new estimate of his own nature and being. Here is 
 a power which tends to man's uplifting in all things. 
 The mind grows with such a perception, and intelli- 
 gence and knowledge are the fruit. The health of the 
 body is promoted by it also ; for sin entails infirmities, 
 diseases, and death, upon the physical frame. Industry 
 is born of it ; for man's work is animated by hope and 
 cheerfulness. His worldly estate is benefited thereby, 
 since everything pertaining to his life and person has a 
 new importance. Freedom, enterprise, energy, what- 
 ever is good and valuable, proceed from this convic- 
 tion of God's love for man ; and the race is sure to 
 improve, and the world to brighten, under such a resto- 
 
PRACTICAL QUESTION. 151 
 
 rative principle. Slowly, surely, certainly, our com- 
 mon humanity is rising under the power of that gospel 
 which promises for the future complete and universal 
 restitution. 
 
 Our personal life is briefer, by far, than the life of 
 the species. The world continues, but our days upon 
 the earth are few. Many centuries may revolve before 
 the world is completely restored ; but the question of 
 our individual salvation is to be decided within a nar- 
 rower space of time. In this matter we must separate 
 ourselves as individuals from the general life of our 
 race, and consider well the nature of the probation 
 upon which we are now passing our earthly existence. 
 
 In the course of these consecutive topics, we have 
 made frequent use of the expression, the first and the 
 second probation of human nature — the first having 
 regard to simple obedience to law ; the second to the 
 prescribed method of relief and restoration. We can 
 not be too familiar with this distinction. It is this 
 which makes and marks the difference between man in 
 Eden and man in apostacy. Involved in all the liabili- 
 ties and woes of the fall, the question proposed to us, 
 in reference to which our personal life is passing, re- 
 lates to the treatment of proffered help and a provided 
 redemption. " Wilt thou be made whole ?" Wilt thou 
 be saved ? This is the question which describes the 
 terms of our moral probation. Shall we be partakers 
 
152 THE GARDEN OP GETHSEMANE. 
 
 of this great restitution, and share in all the benefits 
 dispensed by the Son of God ? 
 
 Let us observe how our actual life corresponds to 
 this inspired representation. Surely the tender mercy 
 of God has visited us, for life is prolonged, that we 
 may have space for repentance. The substance of the 
 gospel revelation is — ' Repent, and be converted, that 
 your sins may be blotted out, seeing that the times of 
 refreshing from the presence of the Lord have already 
 come.' 
 
 Everything appears to be arranged and conducted, 
 in the providence of God, on the principle of presenting 
 this question to our minds most auspiciously. The terms 
 of probation are well defined in a written revelation. 
 There is no vagueness in their expression. That these 
 terms should not pass from the mind, God has appointed 
 that there should be a frequent declaration of them by 
 the human voice. He actually sends the offer of par- 
 don, and the invitations of his love, unto the children 
 of men. He intends his gospel to be preached. He 
 would have it heralded everywhere. He has purposed 
 that there should be a class of men whose very life and 
 object it shall be to proclaim unto their fellow-men the 
 long-suffering and tender mercy of God, and beseech 
 them to turn and live. That this might not be crowd- 
 ed or drowned out of the minds of men by the cares 
 of life, a whole day of the week, the seventh part of 
 
RENEWED MAN. 153 
 
 human life, is set apart for the express purpose of keep- 
 ing aiive in the soul of man the conviction of life's 
 great object and end. 
 
 Our salvation is not to be deferred to a distant judg- 
 ment and a distant heaven. God would save us here, 
 and save us now. He would inspire us with hope, bless 
 us with peace, and anoint us with gladness. He would 
 bring our humanity under his curative and restorative 
 power. He has actually accomplished this in regard 
 to many. We are conversant with facts all around us 
 which correspond exactly with the Christian theory and 
 doctrine. We see and know the men who are actually 
 resuscitated, and in process of being restored. They 
 are not perfect. They are not holy as man was in 
 Eden. They are not like the angels. They are men 
 — heirs of all the ills to which our nature is subject ; 
 they have sinned ; they have wept ; but they have be- 
 gun to hope, and begun to live. The diseased eye has 
 been medicated, the deaf ear has been opened, the frac- 
 tured limb been reduced, the broken heart bound up, 
 and salvation has begun. It will be carried on unto 
 perfection. That which is converted will be sancti- 
 fied ; that which is sanctified now in part, will be 
 sanctified wholly, and glorified in the " restitution of 
 all things." 
 
 Just this is what God requires and waits for in every 
 
 one of us. Wo must begin with repentance and con- 
 
 7* 
 
154 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 version, that we may go on to restoration and glory. 
 He would have us yield ourselves to the Great Physi- 
 cian of the soul, that we may be healed. That process 
 of healing may be long; oftentimes we may doubt 
 whether it is advancing at all ; but we may be sure, if 
 we commit ourselves by faith to the promised helper 
 and restorer of man, he will not leave his work unfin- 
 ished. There is no promise of exemption from all sor- 
 row. Affliction will come ; tribulation will come ; s old 
 age will come ; sickness will come ; and death will not 
 tarry. Nevertheless, the believer may hope ; he may 
 be at peace ; he may be of good cheer, for his salvation 
 is begun. Graves are all around him ; but he has been 
 taught, what Nature never could teach, to think of the 
 dead without weeping — to hope and to smile in the 
 very path and presence of Death. Mysteries are about 
 him, but the light breaks through the riven cloud. The 
 larger part of the human race die in infancy. Very 
 little is said concerning such — this great mystery of 
 Providence — in the Old Testament. What light gleams 
 upon it in the New — now that we read of the infancy 
 of Jesus — of the martyrdom of the babes of Bethlehem 
 — of Christ taking little children into his arms, and 
 pronouncing them of the kingdom of heaven ; now that 
 we read of redemption in its glorious extent and full- 
 ness ! What gladness shines in upon the mystery, as 
 we follow the majority of thoso bora into the world, 
 
BELIEVE AND BE SAVED. 155 
 
 for number like the blossoms of the spring, in their 
 early rescue and their glorious translation ! We actu- 
 ally live in a world where light shines on the very spot 
 the name of which has been changed from sepulchre to 
 cemetery, the sleeping-place of the redeemed. That 
 little grave, among trees and flowers, which seems 
 greener and more beautiful than any spot beside — 
 which the hand of a bereaved parentage loves to smooth 
 and adorn, and the heart- visits so often — is not the 
 cold, and cheerless, and dreaded place it would have 
 been had we not heard of Christ. Hope haloes the 
 head of the sleeping child; it is rescued — it is saved. 
 Who would frustrate the Saviour's purpose ? who would 
 forbid him to encircle the lambs in his arms, and gather 
 them to his bosom ? 
 
 Let redemption have its sway and success. The very 
 graves preach to us salvation. All things conspire to 
 teach us this grand drift and tenor of God's purposes. 
 The sun shines, as if it would say, " God is good and 
 gracious, and would have you to be saved/' Life is 
 prolonged, and echoes the same gospel. Business un- 
 interrupted — this going forth to buy and to gain — de- 
 clares that God is long-suffering. The sabbath returns, 
 and proclaims aloud the very terms and conditions of 
 our probation — kt Be converted, be saved !" We open 
 the Scriptures, and they say to us on every page : " Re- 
 pent ! these are days of mercy ; believe, and be saved." 
 
156 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 The ocean-current — the winds and the waves — all set 
 thitherward. "We might almost see, in these day? of 
 restitution, God's hand beckoning us from the skies, as 
 we do hear his voice, saying, " Come, come and live." 
 Nothing, absolutely nothing, do we see designed to dis- 
 courage or to destroy us ; everything is arranged to 
 hold before us this one critical question of our second 
 and last probation : Will we believe in the Redeemer, 
 and be saved ? 
 
 The last probation, did we say '? Is not this the 
 scripture statement ? Is any other probation necessa- 
 ry ': Is not this sufficient ? May we not be saved now ? 
 What other question can be proposed to us hereafter 
 than this ? What other trial is needed than this very 
 one, whether we will be redeemed and restored ? If 
 this terminates disastrously, through our unbelief and 
 folly, what other measure of relief can we conceive of? 
 
 What remaineth for such as reject a Saviour? If 
 one spurns the remedy, if one defeats redemption, if 
 one rejects the pardon, if one will not be saved by that 
 miraculous method which is interposed to break the 
 natural and constituted connection between sin and suf- 
 fering, guilt and punishment, what hope of deliverance 
 can there be ? If the gospel be hid, if the blood of the 
 Son of God be despised, if the Redeemer be scorned 
 and slighted, what remaineth, but a certain looking for 
 of judgment ? Sin unforgiven, penalties unremitted, 
 
 
NO OTHER PROBATION. 157 
 
 punishments unrestrained, must have their straight, 
 changeless, and eternal course. How can we escape 
 if we neglect the great salvation ? How can we stay 
 the worlds in their course, or stop the march of un- 
 changeable realities ? What shall the end be of those 
 who obey not the gospel ? 
 
 Let us hear the word again. The Redeemer has as- 
 cended to the skies. The times of refreshing have 
 come. The world waits its final and complete restitu- 
 tion : " Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that 
 
 YOUR SINS MAY BE BLOTTED OUT." 
 
IX. 
 
 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 
 
 In treating of the method of man's redemption and 
 restoration, we have had to deal with the miracles of 
 God's compassion and love. We have rehearsed his 
 own promises to forgive, forgive freely, and forgive unto 
 the uttermost. We read in the gospel that it is his good 
 pleasure to pardon, help, and save, all who will avail 
 themselves of his infinite mercy. A grateful theme is 
 this on which to dwell and descant. 
 
 But these are not the only facts pertaining to man's 
 recovery and God's administration. We have seen 
 how the mediation of Jesus Christ has rectified our re- 
 lations to moral government, so that the exercise of the 
 pardoning power may not be impeded. We have seen 
 that the mediation of Jesus Christ, as an expression of 
 God's love, is adapted to awaken gratitude and love in 
 the soul of man. Admitting all this, we are told that 
 there are other facts in man's history — facts of Nature, 
 
NATUEAL LAWS. 159 
 
 laws of Nature, if you will — which demand our notice, 
 and which, in some manner, must be disposed of before 
 the recovery of man can be regarded as a possibility. 
 
 We are told of that law of retribution which is in- 
 wrought with our natural constitution : not of a law 
 whose penalties may bo inflicted or remitted arbitrarily 
 at the mere pleasure of the Ruling Power — but penal- 
 ties which are inseparable from our own bodies and 
 souls — the results of laws which are as undeviating as 
 those which guide and govern the planets. We can 
 conceive, it is said, how the Most High, in the exercise 
 of his mere mercy, can remit some forms of punishment 
 which he has seen fit to connect with the violation of 
 his moral law ; but how can he arrest the operation 
 of those natural laws which connect pain and suffer- 
 ing with evil courses, without breaking in upon and 
 breaking up that constitution of the universe which 
 he has created and ordained to be fixed and immu- 
 table ? 
 
 All will agree that this is a topic of no ordinary in- 
 terest or importance. We would not overlook nor 
 slight it. We must comprehend it, before we can just- 
 ify the scriptural theory of conversion — that inspired 
 direction which requires the wicked man to forsake his 
 ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, promising 
 them exemption from all the consequences of previous 
 transgression. 
 
THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMAyE. 
 
 Let us. then, before we proceed to treat of that ulti- 
 perfection which awaits man's complete restora- 
 tion in a future life, pause a while and consider well 
 the nature and operation of the great lav: of retribu- 
 tion. Justice to the theme itself requires that we should 
 state the law in all its length and breadth. Afterward, 
 we will endeavor to show in what manner the law of 
 mercy is made to agree with the law of retribution. 
 
 The word retribution, as its etymology shows, sig- 
 nifies a paying back, and evidently intends those con- 
 sequences which are the results and rewards of evil 
 actions. It is briefly but strongly expressed in scrip- 
 tural language : " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked. 
 What a man soweth. that shall he also reap." 
 
 Differences of opinion may exist among men as to 
 the nature of retribution — its extent, its strictness, 
 verity, and its continuance; but it would not 
 be easv to find a man who will deny the existence 
 of retribution altogether. He may be skeptical as to 
 the regularity with which this retributive law may op- 
 . but he must forswear the use and evidence of his 
 own senses before he can question the reality of some 
 form of retribution in this present life. Here is some- 
 thing which does not depend upon the philological in- 
 terpretation of the Scriptures. Here is something be- 
 yond the use and import of any one word. Hebrew, 
 
PARENTAL POWER. 1 61 
 
 Greek, or English. We refer, just now, to fads, and 
 not theories — facts which are as palpable to the pro- 
 fanest of infidels as to the most devout of believers — 
 facts which the Scriptures do not originate, and which 
 would be no less real if the Scriptures never had been 
 written. 
 
 One of the first facts with which we come into con- 
 tact in this world is governing power ; and the power 
 which governs is retributive power — the power which 
 treats in accordance as it is itself treated. Xo one has 
 an unrelated or independent existence. A child is not 
 destined to live in this world free from all moral re- 
 sponsibility, as a flower, or the flower-shaped insect 
 which flutters over it. There is a power above it, and 
 around it, which controls it — governs it; and to that 
 power it must yield obedience, or suffer. Parental au- 
 thority is not a product of revelation, although revela- 
 tion recognises, sanctions, and instructs it. It is a fact 
 which the God of Nature has established prior to and 
 independent of the disclosures of Christianity. There 
 is no part of the earth — no tribe nor clan, civilized 
 or barbarous, Christian or pagan — where the human in- 
 fant does not pass under parental government ; the only 
 difference being that, where Christianity prevails. 
 government is less capricious, less cruel, and more ra- 
 tional and more benign. Xo sooner do the lungs begin 
 to play, and the limbs to move, and the intelligence to 
 
162 THE GARDEN OF GETHSE.MANE. 
 
 open, than a child finds itself in the presence of a pow- 
 er which it can not resist with impunity. Disobey that 
 power, and retribution, more or less emphatic, more or 
 less equitable, is the consequence. Resist that author- 
 ity, and childhood deprives itself of parental favor and 
 confidence, to say the least, if it does not subject itself 
 to a concussion more violent and painful. This gov- 
 erning power is a law of Nature. Nor is there any 
 escape from it for one born of the human race. 
 
 Imagine that one breaks away from the restraints 
 of his own parentage, and will not brook them at all. 
 Can he flee from the presence of law, and the power of 
 retribution ? He may dream of exemption from all re- 
 straint. Think you he can ever find it ? He goes to 
 sea, as many a wayward youth has done, in anticipation 
 of an illusive freedom. He has changed the form, not 
 the reality, of the governing and retributive power. It 
 is less patient, less tolerant, less gentle, of necessity far 
 more emphatic and decided, than that from which he 
 flees ; and, let him presume to resist the power which 
 rules the ship, and a rope's end or iron handcuff will 
 soon convince him that he has not escaped the presence 
 or the power of retribution. 
 
 Dreams he still of a perfect liberty, laughing and 
 scoffing at all laws to gain it ? Behold him, then, on 
 the deck of the bloodiest pirate which ever prowled on 
 the windward station ! He calls himself an outlaw ; 
 
QOVERNING POWER. 163 
 
 but is he beyond and above all law ? Where is that 
 dreaded, hated thing, law, so rigorous, so inexorable, 
 so merciless, as among men so atrociously wicked, that 
 they have no confidence in one another, and so, by the 
 instinct of self-preservation, are compelled to protect 
 themselves by a common principle and law of fear. 
 Let that wayward, reckless man, who has imagined that 
 he could disfranchise himself from all restraint, and 
 find a boundless liberty for his own will, but lift his 
 hand against the power which rules the crew of the 
 buccaneer, and, if he prove not the stronger, in five 
 minutes he will swing from the yard-arm, or walk the 
 plank ! 
 
 Or has he deceived himself with dreamy notions of 
 absolute freedom on the islands of the sea, remote from 
 the laws of civilization, where Nature recognises no law 
 but appetite ? Legislation, enlightened, rational, and 
 benignant, there may not be ; but power — governing 
 power, of some description — there is ; and let him, in 
 his fancy of unrestrained indulgence, bring its suspicions 
 upon himself, its jealousy or its hate, and secret poison, 
 the war-club, or the bowstring, will soon prove to him, 
 though he dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, that 
 he can not flee from the presence of retributive power. 
 
 We can dispense, just now, with all speculations con- 
 cerning the origin and prerogatives of human govern- 
 ment. We are concerned with the fact, for sueh it is, 
 
1<54 THE GARDEN OF GBTHSEMANE. 
 
 that there never was a form of society, a time, or a 
 place, where the presence of a governing power — and 
 a power which governs always implies a power which 
 repays and rewards — of some description, was not felt, 
 either patriarchal, hereditary, assumed, or delegated ; 
 and so universal is this fact, that it must be regarded 
 as a laic of Nature. Modify the governing power as 
 you will ; disorganize society and reorganize it as you 
 may; experiment -upon this form and upon that — men 
 must have their laws, and he who infringes them 
 must deprive himself of all the advantages they were 
 designed to secure. The Christian religion has its 
 own doctrine, its instructions, and its laws, in relation 
 to government of all kinds, parental and political ; 
 but it does not originate the necessity or the fact of 
 some ruling power, which would remain immutable if 
 every copy of the Xew Testament were consumed from 
 the earth. These are facts and laws of Xature. 
 
 Passing from these visible forms and expressions of 
 governing power, there are other forms of retribution 
 which are entirely and absolutely independent of all 
 human agency. There are retributive laws which are 
 altogether irrespective of human legislation. There 
 are laws of nature, and there are laws of God, which 
 are altogether distinct from the written code. They 
 are written on the fleshly tables of the heart ; in the 
 articulation of the joints ; in the fibre of the flesh : in 
 
RETRIBUTION OF NATURE. 165 
 
 the marrow of the bones ; in the meshes of the brain ; 
 in the life of the nerves ; all over and all through this 
 wonderful mechanism of the body and the soul. These 
 are not to be relaxed or mitigated by any mere impulse 
 of mercy. They are fixed and changeless ordinances 
 of God. 
 
 Conceive of a man exiled upon another Juan Fernan- 
 dez, some uninhabited island, where is neither father, 
 nor chief, nor king, nor sheik, nor ruler of any name, nor 
 law in any of its representatives, nor society in any of 
 its restraints, where there is no priest, no preacher, no 
 Bible, no public sentiment — is there no law of retribu- 
 tion which reigns invisibly but strictly over the silence 
 of the seas ? Let that solitary man indulge his appe- 
 tites to an immoderate excess — gorge himself with 
 food, stimulate and drown his every sense with intoxi- 
 cating drink — let him do it day by day, in mad defi- 
 ance of reason and experience. Is there no retribution 
 there ? The languor, the pains, the diseases which en- 
 sue, are these mere accidents ? The fever which boils 
 his blood, the delirium which whirls his brain, the 
 agonies which rack his joints, the sleeplessness which 
 holds open his aching eye, the apoplexy which termi- 
 nates his life — are these matters of chance, or do they 
 not betray the presence of a retributive law which ex- 
 tends alike over solitude and society ? We will not re- 
 hearse at this point the enactments recorded in God's 
 
166 thp: garden op gethsemane. 
 
 statute-book ; nor will we yet insist upon those declara- 
 tions of the written volume which connect sinning and 
 suffering- by an eternal decree ; but if any one is in- 
 clined to deny the fact of retribution, let him take his 
 theory and go out into the world and subject it to an 
 actual test. To make the experiment satisfactory to 
 the last degree, let him be sure to abstain from all acts 
 which will 1 (ring him into collision with, or under the 
 suspicion of, human authority. Let him trespass on no 
 man's property ; defraud no man in trade ; libel no 
 man's character ; commit no violence ; make no breach 
 of the peace. As a member of society, be honest ; but 
 as a man, under the cover of absolute secrecy, indulge 
 every appetency and propensity to the " top of his 
 bent." Think you he will not learn that there is an- 
 other statute-book besides that which was written with 
 pen and paper ? 
 
 Is there no retribution besides that which is symbol- 
 ized in juries and jailors, fines and imprisonments ? 
 When Alexander the Great plunged in violent heat 
 into the cold waters of the Cydnus, did not the illness 
 which ensued inform the monarch that there are laws 
 of nature which not even a king may violate with im- 
 punity? When the same impetuous man abandoned 
 himself to debauchery within the walls of Babylon, and 
 death was induced as a consequence, did not the result 
 proclaim that there are certainties of nature more in- 
 
NATURE INFLEXIBLE. 1GT 
 
 vincible and immovable than the far-famed ramparts of 
 the city where he died ? Some of the political trea- 
 tises of Thomas Paine, in point of wholesome thought, 
 sound argument, felicitous manner, and vigorous style, 
 are of signal merit ; but when their author abandoned 
 himself to the most sensual indulgencies, wallowing in 
 intemperance and licentiousness, though no political 
 enactment could arrest him, and no law of the state 
 could punish him, there was a stricter, juster law of 
 divine retribution in that bloated face, those uncer- 
 tain steps, that indistinct articulation, that entailment 
 of disease, that general disgust and degradation of 
 life, which repelled men from his society, making his 
 former associates to flee from his company, and which 
 denied his swollen and loathsome corpse a decent burial 
 in a Christian graveyard. Had not his iniquity taken 
 him, and was he not holden with the cords of his own 
 sins? 
 
 Carry this theory of no retribution to a city hos- 
 pital, and ask the intelligent physicians and surgeons 
 who preside over its crowded wards what is their opin- 
 ion concerning the existence and inflexible character 
 of natural penalties. See that man writhing in agony. 
 He can not suppress his frightful shrieks. Nurses 
 would soothe him, surgeons would give him all the 
 relief in their power. But there are penalties which 
 can be mitigated by no skill or medication of man. 
 
168 THE GARDEN OP GETHSEMANE. 
 
 There are consequences of sin which mercy may de- 
 plore but can not remedy. Prayer does not arrest the 
 march of those eternal laws which connect indissolubly 
 transgression and pain. There is a power which holds 
 that sufferer to his bed of anguish which no might of 
 man can resist. It is not man, but God himself, by the 
 ordinances of nature, who binds that evil-doer to the 
 rack of torture. The sinner may repent — he may 
 pray — he may reproach himself — his own mother may 
 kiss him, and the minister of religion may repeat the 
 promises of God relative to forgiveness — but how shall 
 he escape, by any repentance, by any means, from those 
 established and ordained penalties which at length 
 have got hold of him, with a grip and a grasp which 
 nothing can relax. Over that wretched pallet where 
 the victim of a dissolute life struggles with death, you 
 read, as if written with a finger of fire, that old in- 
 scription which flames out from the Hebrew Scripture : 
 " His bones are full of the sins of his youth, which 
 shall lie down in the dust with him." 
 
 If the law of retribution be so tremendous in its na- 
 ture, compacted into the very structure of the human 
 body — the very joints and marrow; if it be so inex- 
 orable in its character, and so sweeping and inevita- 
 ble in its power ; if the connection between sowing and 
 reaping is in the nature of things so indissoluble ; what 
 place is there for the operation of mercy, what hope of 
 
DELAYS AND INEQUALITIES. 169 
 
 relief, even in the tender compassions and proffered 
 forgiveness of the gospel ? This is a question which 
 demands a solution in connection with every theory of 
 man's restoration. 
 
 Before we enter upon a reply, we wish to give a 
 still fuller statement of this retributive law. Con- 
 vinced that there are penalties which overtake the 
 workers of iniquity, and this with a certainty and a 
 steadiness which might blanch the cheek of fear ; that 
 this law begins its operations with our intelligent ex- 
 istence, so that the boy on the play-ground who, in the 
 snapping of his marbles, or management of his games, 
 practises fraud and meanness, loses the confidence of 
 his mates, and is marked by them with a suspicion and 
 dislike which may follow him through life ; so that 
 the man who plays the part of duplicity and deceit, 
 if he does not come in collision with authority, cer- 
 tainly deprives himself of respect, and honor, so as 
 to blast his good name for ever ; while the man who 
 transgresses one of nature's laws — which are God's 
 laws and ordinances — is sure to have visited upon his 
 own health, and body, and mind, the consequences of 
 his irregularity ; while this is so obviously and undeni- 
 ably, it is next to be observed that this law of retribu- 
 tion, at the first, is necessarily unequal in its opera- 
 tion — all sin is not rewarded immediately and visibly ; 
 that many of its penalties are delayed and removed 
 
170 THE GARDEN" OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 for the present — but that the law itself is not arrested 
 — when it passes beyond our sight — it keeps on and 
 on in its jurisdiction, and its fullest and highest reve- 
 lation is to be made in the judgment of the great day. 
 Wishing and intending to lav down yet more fully the 
 facts pertaining to retributive dispensation, we observe 
 there are many crimes, and those of the most atrocious 
 character, which are not and can not be visited with 
 retribution in this present life. That kind and degree 
 of retribution which by various agencies God dispenses 
 in this world, was never intended to be the act and 
 expression of perfect justice, but only such a measure 
 thereof as is necessary for the continuance of this pres- 
 ent economy — restraint and penalty sufficient to keep 
 the mechanism from absolute explosion and destruc- 
 tion. Human governments take cognizance only of 
 those acts which threaten the objects for which human 
 governments are administered, while other acts a thou- 
 sandfold more culpable are of necessity referred to 
 another, a future, and a higher tribunal. A single 
 illustration will convey the distinction. 
 
 A stranger alights in the city, and is imposed upon 
 by a dishonest hackman, or a mock-auctioneer, or the 
 skilful adept in slight of hand ; complaint is made, and 
 the offender is arrested and brought under retributive 
 notice. A citizen who has amassed a fortune, with 
 a miserly heart suffers his own sister to pine in the 
 
CRIMES REFERRED. 171 
 
 solitude of friendless penury, her life dying away, 
 night and day in keenest suffering ; or his own father 
 and mother, aged and infirm, are subject to neglect, 
 and ingratitude, and taimts, and contempt, which eat 
 into their heart like canker ; and there is no tribu- 
 nal beneath the sun which can arraign and punish 
 that act of filial baseness. Why is this ? Surely not 
 because the latter act is less criminal than the petty 
 infringement of municipal enactments. But the one 
 act comes within the province of the police, and the 
 other does not. The one act is of that description 
 which municipal governments are compelled to notice 
 for their own existence and protection, and the other 
 is not. 
 
 The crime of the apostate Judas was not of that de- 
 scription which brought it under the cognizance of the 
 civil law. But a man who should trespass on his neigh- 
 bor's vineyard, or suffer an ox that gored with his 
 horns to go at large, was exposed immediately to judi- 
 cial attention. Why ? Was the latter act more crim- 
 inal than the former ? To affirm this would outrage 
 all the reason and instinct of the human race. To 
 protect the property and lives of man is the proper 
 province of civil government ; but the breach of friend- 
 ship, the violation of confidence, the mean lust for 
 money, are crimes, however detestable, which must be 
 referred to some other and higher tribunal. 
 
172 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 Will it be maintained that even these crimes of in- 
 gratitude, treachery, meanness, falsehood, which can 
 not come under the justice of municipal magistracy, do 
 nevertheless meet with their just recompense of reward, 
 and that in this present life, so that there is no need 
 of a future adjudication ? Are not those who perpe- 
 trate them the objects of universal scorn and detesta- 
 tion ? Are they not ostracized out of decent society': 
 Axe they not punished to the uttermost by the loss of 
 that respect and confidence which otherwise they would 
 have enjoyed ? This implies that such instances of 
 fraud and unkindness are not secret, but known to 
 the world in their true quality and demerit ; which is 
 not in accordance with truth. There is also another 
 fact which comes into view in this connection. 
 
 The effect of crime is to diminish sensibility to crime ; 
 so that as guilt increases, in that proportion conscience 
 becomes obtuse, and pain and remorse are lessened. 
 Shame, mortification, and remorse, are concentrated 
 upon the first acts of delinquency ; but as transgression 
 is repeated, and habits of evil are confirmed, sensibility 
 is diminished to that degree that the more one deserves 
 the less he endures. It is your bold, unblushing, hard- 
 hearted guilt which has outlived the susceptibility to 
 suffering. Where now is the theory of a perfect retri- 
 bution in this present life ? 
 
 We have not yet done with the statement of facts 
 
INSTINCT OF JUSTICE. 173 
 
 bearing on this subject. There is an instinct in the 
 human bosom — nor is this the least important of many 
 facts — -which anticipates the impartial and equitable 
 application of retribution hereafter. I call this an in- 
 stinct ; because it is not a passion for revenge, nor a 
 desire for retaliation, but a conviction of justice which 
 belongs to every tribe and family of man. The method 
 of proving and developing it is, to suppose yourself the 
 victim of the most unprovoked and intolerable outrage. 
 Your confidence has been betrayed, and your affection 
 wounded. You have been wronged out of your prop- 
 erty ; yet in such an adroit and peculiar manner, that 
 no law can reach the criminal, and your wrong must 
 remain unredressed for ever. Forever? 'By no means. 
 The most meek and lenient of men you may be ; but, 
 apart from every vindictive sentiment, you know, you 
 feel — nor can you avoid it — that a time at length will 
 come when the right will be vindicated, and the wrong 
 will be punished. Mingle among men — meet them at 
 the corners of the streets, as they converse about 
 great injuries, and oppressions, and wrongs, to which 
 they have been subject ; the theological doctrine of a 
 future retribution they may never have believed ; but 
 now you will see them, with a significant nod of the 
 head, flying instinctively to the belief of ultimate jus- 
 tice : and they and we should be ' agonized if we thought 
 that this controversy between the oppressor and the op- 
 
174 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 pressed would not, one day, be fully and satisfactorily 
 adjusted.'* It was Mr. Jefferson, and not the chaplain 
 of Congress, who on a certain occasion said in his place, 
 " I tremble when I remember that God is just !" 
 
 There can be no doubt that this law of retribution, 
 which comes into our sight here and there, now and 
 then, in this present life, and then passes, as it were, 
 under the earth and beneath the sea, will emerge again 
 beyond, in its undiverted and eternal jurisdiction. At 
 this point comes in the distinct announcement of revela- 
 tion — ' God hath appointed a day when he shall judge 
 the secrets of the heart, and render to every man ac- 
 cording as his deeds have been.' The secrets of the 
 heart ? Surely. If there is to be any retribution here- 
 after, can you believe it to be otherwise than universal 
 and impartial ? Pause and reflect. Where is the idea 
 of perfect justice, if retribution be not rendered accord- 
 ing to the exact demerit of each ? In the nature and 
 necessity of things, human retribution is limited to overt 
 acts. No such imperfection will attend the retribution 
 of the Almighty ! 
 
 Here are two men. In a sudden gust of passion, un- 
 der the very highest provocation, one has thoughtlessly 
 raised his hand, and the unexpected consequence is the 
 loss of life under the blow. It was unpremeditated. 
 It was the effect of a sudden impulse. No sooner is it 
 
 done, than generous grief and compunction ensue. The 
 * Isaac Taylor's "Saturday Evening." 
 
REAPING AND SOWTNG. 175 
 
 other marks his victim — dogs his steps day and night ; 
 cool and crafty, smooth and subtle, like a poisonous 
 snake, he follows the man he hates, determined to take 
 his life. Opportunity does not favor, and the only rea- 
 son why murder most foul is not committed is, that he is 
 disappointed in the convenience of an occasion. Where 
 is even the conception of impartial justice if, at the last, 
 retribution overtakes the former only, and leaves the 
 latter untouched ? The instincts of our nature point to 
 truth ; and God has forewarned the world that he hath 
 appointed the time when delays shall be prolonged no 
 more — when mistakes shall be rectified, wrongs re- 
 dressed, and every act and every thought, deed, and 
 intention, secret and public, shall pass under retributive 
 attention, without partiality and without imperfection. 
 We have made no attempt to evade the unbending 
 rectitude and impartiality of the retributive law. We 
 have made no effort to conceal or deny those facts 
 which belong to a strict interpretation of that divine 
 rule, reaping according to solving. Only a part of 
 these facts have now come before us ; sufficient, how- 
 ever, to convince us that there is a law of Nature, a 
 law of our own being, a law of our bodies, a law of our 
 minds, a law of revelation, a law of the universe, a law 
 of the Most High God, which never can be interpreted 
 too strictly — according to which, retribution is sure, 
 sooner or later, to overtake evil-doinsr. The instincts 
 
THE GARDEN OF GETHSEHAHB. 
 
 of humanity point to it. The old Greek tragedy re- 
 veals it. The Scripton - I declare it. The word 
 of the Almighty has ass - that heaven and earth 
 shall pass away — sun. moon, and stars, shall fall from 
 their places, like untimely figs — before that eternal 
 decree of Heaven shall ever fail or falter. 
 
 And now, in our discussion of man's redemption and 
 restoration, we must honestly meet this law of Nature, 
 and comprehend, if we can. how we may deliver our- 
 - from its irr -weep and circuit. It will 
 
 not satisfy a thoughtful man to descant in general and 
 indefinite terms on the mere goodness of the Almighty. 
 Notions of that goodness, like the soft haze of a Claude 
 ay float through the imagination of the unbeliev- 
 ing; 'Ut tell us. oh. tell us. if you can, how mercy may 
 rejoice against judgment : how men whose bodies and 
 souls have experienced the evil consequences of sin — 
 • >ns — publicans and sinners — men at the elev- 
 enth hour — thieves upon the cross — brought down by 
 the tyranny of sin to the very last limit and extremity 
 of infamy — tell us how such, how any. can ever be 
 delivered from the steady and inflexible course of that 
 retributive law which compels one to eat of the fruit 
 of his own ways, and be filled with his own dev: 
 
RETRIBUTION AND MERCY. 
 
 It was the object of the preceding chapter to present 
 the calmest statement of those facts which reveal the 
 constituted and inseparable connection between sin and 
 penalty. This connection is in the order of Nature. 
 So obvious is it, that there is no need of rhetoric in its 
 statement. It is like the laws which govern the stars. 
 Tens of thousands have gazed during the past year on 
 that celestial phenomenon which veiled the face of the 
 queen of Night with shadow, without reflecting, per- 
 haps, upon the one fact which imparted to the incident 
 its chiefest interest. It fills us with wonder to be in- 
 formed that so regular and precise are the movements 
 of the planetarium, that an eclipse is calculated scores 
 of years before its occurrence — the very second of time 
 when it would commence, and the very second when it 
 would terminate! Without the deviation of a hair's 
 
178 THE GARDEN OP GETHSEMANE. 
 
 breadth — with the accuracy of a mathematical certain- 
 ty — the result corresponds to the prediction. Yet we 
 are informed, by the Author of the universe, that all 
 this precision, and accuracy, and certainty of Nature, 
 do but illustrate the still higher precision and certainty 
 of those laws which govern his moral economy. The 
 law of retribution, therefore, is no accident. The con- 
 nection between sin and penalty is no peradventure. 
 The relation between sowing and reaping is no contin- 
 gency. It is a fixed and immutable law. If it were 
 not so, there were no place for faith, no foundation for 
 the certainties of expectation. If the statutes of God's 
 moral administration were subject to deflection and ca- 
 price — -if the word of yesterday was falsified by the 
 event of to-day — there were room enough for conjec- 
 ture and for fear, but no resting-place for rational 
 confidence. 
 
 The question, therefore, arises — ' If the law of retri- 
 bution, the law of sowing and reaping, be so steady and 
 steadfast in its operation, how can it comport with those 
 promises of mercy which form the substance of the gos- 
 pel of Christ ? What place is there for the interven- 
 tion of relief, without confusing or suspending the great 
 laws and ordinances of the universe V Ponder the 
 question honestly — ponder it well — and tell us if Rea- 
 son can solve it, and Nature give it an answer ! 
 
 The retributive law leaves no hope for the dissolute. 
 
NATURE UNRELENTING. 170 
 
 It proffers no escape to those who have grown old and 
 stout in the ways of sin. It is a doctrine designed to 
 prevent the virtuous from lapsing into sin, but extends 
 no ray of light for such as are already confirmed in 
 practices of evil. If I am compelled to believe all 
 which it inculcates, and nothing more, I should be in 
 despair. It may be true, but it is merciless. Not 
 stricter than I would wish if I were sinless as the 
 angels, and desired to be kept from falling by the high 
 ramparts of fear ; but it is terrible, it is unrelenting, it 
 is remorseless as the grave, to those who have fallen al- 
 ready. It silences the glad tidings of the gospel — that 
 gospel which Jesus Christ preached to publicans and 
 sinners ; which he whispered to the dying thief on the 
 cross ; which- we are taught to proclaim in prisons and 
 penitentiaries, to the outcast and the abject, proffering 
 salvation to all men, even to the uttermost. 
 
 It must be admitted, therefore, that it is a topic de- 
 serving our most careful and earnest attention, in what 
 manner may mercy be made to accord and harmonize 
 with the law of retribution. 
 
 We start, then, with admitting the retributive rule 
 in its strictest interpretation — its unbending rectitude 
 and impartiality. Nature and revelation agree in these 
 premises. Reason and religion are here in perfect con- 
 cord. " As a man soweth, so shall he also reap." 
 
180 THE GARDEN OF GEEHSEMANE. 
 
 Whosoever addicts himself to sin shall be visited with 
 the consequences of sin. The law presides over life ; 
 it impends over the bed of death ; it follows us into 
 futurity. The gospel does not destroy this equitable 
 ordinance. The gospel has its own penalties as well 
 as the law. Whoever, under the gospel, adheres to 
 habits of sin, will reap the retributive consequences of 
 sin. It is in the Xew Testament — in the legislation 
 of the Son of God, the merciful Redeemer of the world 
 — that we read the fullest exposition of this natural 
 and eternal enactment, reaping according to sowing. 
 It is just as true to-day, just as true under the gospel, 
 as it was four thousand years ago — as it was under 
 a dispensation of law. There are no such threatenings 
 in all the book of God as those which are uttered in 
 the gospel against those who neglect, abuse, and de- 
 spise the gospel. We hold to no theory of conversion, 
 to no belief in divine mercy, which detracts from the 
 unrelaxed severity of that rule widen denounces wo on 
 all those who take pleasure in, and who persist in, un- 
 righteousness. We can more easily conceive of light 
 without a shadow, than believe in sin unaccompanied 
 by penalty. Mercy never lifts her hand to pluck down 
 this high ordinance of God ; but she herself, when she 
 has promised hope and relief, repeats with a new em- 
 phasis the retributions which are sure to overtake such 
 as obey not her suggestions. Reason and revelation 
 
A CHANGE IN MAX. 181 
 
 still accord throughout. The two guides still walk to- 
 gether side by side, hand in hand. 
 
 But this is not all which is revealed in the gospel. 
 This is not the main teaching of the gospel. This is 
 not the substance of the joyful sound. The design and 
 the method of mercy are to work a change in man's 
 own nature, and not in the law which repays guilt with 
 punitive consequences. It converts man from the evil 
 of his ways. It promises him no exemption so long as 
 he perseveres in forbidden courses, but helps him to 
 turn from the same, so bringing him under a law of life 
 and gladness. The wrath of God is revealed against 
 all unrighteousness, but the gospel interposes itself to 
 arrest unrighteousness in the man, and not to change 
 the steadfast ordinances of the Almighty. It calls on 
 the wicked man to forsake his ways, and the unright- 
 eous man his thoughts. The summons of the gospel, 
 rung out with a clear and clarion sound, is, " Repent 
 and be converted" Jesus Christ comes to turn every 
 one from his iniquities. He that sinned is bidden 
 to sin no more — for the best and greatest of rea 
 sons, that love and mercy are waiting to deliver. We 
 can not discover the passage in the gospel which prom- 
 ises deliverance and exemption to sin, while sin is per- 
 sisted in. We read the many passages which announce 
 hope and help to the very worst, to the outcasts of 
 the human species — help to the uttermost — help at 
 
182 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANB. 
 
 the eleventh hour — if they will repent, if they will, 
 with a thorough hatred of sin, forsake it, and reform 
 of it. 
 
 Such is the message which we bear everywhere and 
 to every man. There is not a member of the human 
 family to whom we would not carry these glad tidings of 
 great joy. Tell us who is the guiltiest of men, and we 
 will assure him, in God's name, that for him there is a 
 remission of sins, if he will repent and reform. We 
 go to the inmates of prison cells ; the thief in his 
 meanness, the burglar in his boldness, the murderer in 
 his malice ; to the most brutal of their species, in 
 Christ's stead, we would bear this gospel, that for them 
 there is mercy and forgiveness, if they will repent. 
 We go to the bedside of the man who is just termina- 
 ting a dissolute life in remorse, anguish, and despair, 
 and in the name of Him who pardoned the thief upon 
 the cross, in the very act and article of death, we 
 would assure him that for him there is mercy if he will 
 repent. If he will repent ! We shall have something 
 to say before we finish as to the probabilities or im- 
 probabilities of his repentance ; but there can be no 
 doubt as to the nature of those terms proposed in the 
 gospel — mercy to all, whenever and wherever there is 
 repentance. 
 
 What now becomes of the stern and strict law of ret- 
 ribution, which, as we have seen, is so exacting and so 
 
EXEMPTION PARTIAL. 183 
 
 unbending ? Is it abolished ? Abrogated ? Nay, rather 
 is it confirmed. The child of guilt, through the great- 
 ness of a Power which surpasses nature, is himself 
 changed and converted, so that a new class of results 
 follows his new class of actions. The retributive law 
 keeps on in its high and changeless way, but the subject 
 of it, through might higher than himself, is changed in 
 feeling, act, and character, and so is delivered from 
 any further accumulation of its inflictions. His own 
 present is changed, and his own future changes with it. 
 Turning from a life of sin, he is exposed no more to 
 the penalties of sin. 
 
 But what for the sins which are already past ? What 
 becomes of those retributions already entailed by guilty 
 courses ? Does mercy arrest and suspend them at once 
 upon repentance ? Not even that. Look again at that 
 victim of disease who is dying in a hospital. Let us 
 suppose that, on the very verge of the grave, he listens 
 to the words of Christian kindness, and ingenuously 
 repents before his Maker. Does mercy in an instant 
 reverse or arrest or annul the law of retribution ? 
 Does he arise from his bed and walk as if he had 
 escaped from the sheriff-grasp of retributive power ? 
 Does the assurance of forgiveness cool the fever in his 
 bones, and serve as an opiate to that pain which is eat- 
 ing into his marrow ? Does a moral medicine cure a 
 physical mischief? Does the disabled prisoner, held 
 
184 THE GARDEN OF GETH-EMANE. 
 
 fast in the cords of his sins, spring to his feet, running 
 and leaping like him who was healed in the name of 
 s of Nazareth, at the gate Beautiful? Nothing of 
 tliis. The gospel even does not promise to do this. 
 The mercy which lays her balm to the broken spirit 
 does not hold back that pain, that sickness, or that 
 death, which are the retributive effects of former in- 
 iquities. The man, if he is a penitent, though he is a 
 penitent, may die prematurely because of his former 
 habits. The process of retribution is not delayed within 
 our sight, save in regard to the remorse and anguish of 
 spirit, which are soothed by the assurance of divine 
 forgivene— . 
 
 But how is it, how shall it be, beyond ? Reason tells 
 us that the law keeps on. even when it passes out of 
 our sight, on and on, changing all into a likeness to its 
 dread self. Nature and revelation agree in the faith, 
 that tribulation and anguish in the life to come are the 
 penalties of transgressions unrepented of in the life 
 which now is. Nature has no method of arresting this 
 decree. Reason can not prove to us how there is any 
 flaw in the chain of sequences. But what nature could 
 not do, a power higher than nature can do. "What 
 never could be accomplished by the natural, may be 
 and is accomplished by the supernatural. The power 
 which arrests and turns aside the constituted penalties 
 of sin, bv free remission, is as truly above and bevnnd 
 
POWER A.BOVE NATURE. 185 
 
 nature as any miracle which was ever wrought by the 
 exercise of divine power. 
 
 On one occasion a paralytic was brought to the Son 
 of God, helpless upon a bed. We are not definitely 
 informed that his physical malady was the result of 
 sinful courses, but our Lord immediately said to him, 
 " Thy sins are forgiven thee." When infidelity scoffed 
 at his language he said again, " that ye may know that 
 the Son of Man hath power to forgive sin," he said 
 to the sick and disabled man, "Rise up and walk," and 
 he did as he was bidden. He wrought a miracle upon 
 the body in proof of his power to heal and save the 
 soul beyond the ability of nature, beyond the power of 
 humanity. It is a supernatural power which intervenes 
 to arrest those retributive laws which would otherwise 
 crush and destroy whatever is in their way. 
 
 We perfectly agree with the deduction of Reason, 
 that nature hath no mercy, no relief, no deliverance, no 
 salvation for the guilty. Adhere to what the reason 
 proves, and to nothing 1 more, and there is no hope. 
 But this is the actual miracle of Christ's mercy, that 
 coming to the weary and heavy laden, converting them 
 from sin, turning them to newness of life, he lightens 
 the penalty — lifts off by a gradual relief the curse 
 and the burden, and with partial restoration now, by 
 his supernatural and divine achievements, promises, for 
 the life to come, entire exemption, complete and eter- 
 
186 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 nal deliverance. This ultimate and perfected restora- 
 tion of man is represented as an achievement of divine 
 power greater than that which made the worlds, and 
 broke the bars of death. 
 
 Here is a man who has been addicted to no habits 
 which have entailed suffering and pain upon the body. 
 He has not been inclined to intemperance ; he has not 
 been dissolute. But he has developed a general mean- 
 ness and dishonesty of character. He has done hard 
 things. He has a reputation for trickiness and deceit. 
 We will suppose that to such a man — even to such — 
 the gospel comes with its usual terms and announce- 
 ments — forgiveness, eternal life, if he repents. Let us 
 suppose that he does repent ; that there is a thorough 
 transformation of his nature ; that, in the school of 
 Christ, he learns lessons of honesty, and truth, and no- 
 bility, such as never he knew before. He is now a 
 sincere Christian. Nevertheless, he is not immediately 
 released from the law of retribution. For a long time 
 — it may be so long as he lives — he will suffer many 
 of the consequences of his former courses. He will be 
 suspected. He will be distrusted. Shadows will rest 
 upon him. He may, by utmost endeavor to walk con- 
 sistently with his new principles, outlive these suspi- 
 cions, and recover the confidence of his fellow-men. 
 But it would be strange if, to his dying day, he did not 
 reap many serious consequences of his earlier habits. 
 
BITTER MEMORIES. 187 
 
 It is an undoubted fact that men who have been con- 
 verted to God from habits of profligacy, sincere Chris- 
 tians as they were, have reaped, in bitter memories, in 
 impaired health, in loss of position, in social interdicts, 
 suspicions, and slights, the harvest of their early and 
 foolish sowing. 
 
 If any man on this footstool of God ever gave proof 
 of sincere conversion, of thorough reformation of char- 
 acter, life, and conduct, it was Bunyan — it was John 
 Newton. No one has read the biography of these dis- 
 tinguished trophies of divine grace with any care, who 
 has not observed how much, amid all the gladness and 
 hopes of their new life, they suffered in body and spirit 
 the consequences of their earlier irregularities. So was 
 it with Augustine. The islanders of the Pacific, in the 
 new hopes of the religion which has been sent to them, 
 will suffer to the end of life many a sad penalty of those 
 crimes which they perpetrated in the days of their hea- 
 thenism and ignorance. 
 
 When the mercy of Christ arrests and converts the 
 sinner, it does not instantly arrest all the effects of an- 
 tecedent sin. It changes the man, not the law of retri- 
 bution. It gives him new purposes, new principles, a 
 new nature, and a new character, so that he gradually 
 emerges from the power and consequence of sin. And 
 as for those ultimate and eternal penalties which are 
 revealed against iniquity in another world, we believe 
 
l vv THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 that they are arrested solely by supernatural power. It 
 is not in man to achieve that great deliverance. It is 
 not in Nature to promise it. It is not in Reason to dis- 
 cover it. He who proved himself the Author of Nature 
 — at whose advent the stars in their courses did hom- 
 age — whose word burst the bondage of graves and 
 death — whose touch wrought miracles of healing — 
 and at whose expiring the sun veiled itself in gloom — 
 he, the very Maker and upholder of this great system 
 of Nature, with its laws and compensations, its decrees 
 and its penalties — he alone is able to deliver, by a su- 
 pernatural power, and for supernatural reasons, the 
 soul of the sinner from the second death. 
 
 It would detract materially from our faith and glad- 
 ness if we were compelled to believe that the thief on 
 the cross was taken to the paradise of God, in accord- 
 ance with equitable retribution — because he was in 
 heart and life a good man, and so had always been, not- 
 withstanding the one accident which brought him to 
 execution. "We believe that he was a sinner of high 
 degree : we believe it according to his own confession : 
 " We indeed suffer justly." We believe it according 
 to the whole drift of the narrative, and the picture of 
 the scene. We believe that he repented. We will not 
 pretend to explain that repentance on principles of mere 
 reason and nature : we believe that his heart was con- 
 verted by the grace of God. just as his foot touched the 
 
MIRACLES OP MERCY. 189 
 
 threshold of that prison from which goeth out no one 
 for ever; and we believe that, as a penitent snatched 
 from the jaws of death, he was taken to the paradise 
 of God by an act as truly supernatural on the part of 
 our divine Redeemer as that which arrests sun, moon, 
 and stars, in their orbits. Leave us to Nature alone, 
 and we are in despair. Preach to us natural laws, and 
 nothing more, and we see no hope for the guilty. We 
 have what is more than Nature, what is higher and 
 mightier — the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the tri- 
 umphant mercy of Omnipotence. With such a help and 
 such a hope, we can preach the gospel to the most aban- 
 doned of men. 
 
 It is not against God, not an " irrational and unau- 
 thorized praying," when we pray for the dying sinner, 
 in the eleventh hour of his probation. All things are 
 possible with Him whose mercy rejoiceth against judg- 
 ment. We love to rehearse the miracles of his com- 
 passion — Mary Magdalen — the thief on the cross — 
 the conversion of Saul — the arrest and turning about 
 of the chief of sinners. We have no fear of exaggera- 
 ting the power and promises of the gospel, or of trans- 
 cending the bounds of soberness in describing its illim- 
 itable mercy to the penitent. " Whosoever repenteth, 
 shall be saved." That word which came down from 
 the skies is to be heralded throughout the earth, for it 
 comes from One who is mighty to save. 
 
190 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 But does not such a doctrine foster presumption ? 
 Does it not encourage to postpone repentance to the 
 latest necessity ? Is not its sure and direct tendency 
 to induce the thoughtless and even the profligate to per- 
 sist in their ways till the last moment of opportunity, 
 in the vain expectation that a miraculous exercise of 
 merciful power will rescue them when about to take 
 the plunge into a hidden futurity ? 
 
 To reason thus is to leave out of account the very 
 head and front of the whole matter. It is to drop the 
 very chief item in the computation. The gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, in all its miracles of compassion, in all its prodi- 
 gies of salvation, saves no man in his sins and in his im- 
 penitence. Its invariable terms to all are, salvation to 
 those who repent and believe. Ah, what a world and 
 weight of meaning in that small word — if he repent! 
 He must be a changed man who would be a saved man. 
 He must be brought to know ingenuous sorrow for sin, 
 and lively faith in the Redeemer, before he may appro- 
 priate to himself one promise of the great salvation. If 
 he repents ! Judge soberly, now, whether there be any 
 encouragement to presumption and procrastination in 
 any of the glorious promises of mercy, so long as they 
 stand connected with the terms and condition of sin- 
 cere repentance. 
 
 Does not this very law of retribution which we have 
 met, operating steadily under law and under grace, so 
 
MISGIVINGS. 101 
 
 affect and visit the heart of the presumptuous, that the 
 least probable thing in the universe at length may be 
 that he will repent ? The law of habit, is it not a part 
 of this law of retribution ? May it not so accumulate 
 its powers — imbedding itself in the very foundations of 
 one's nature — drawing to itself all strength from time, 
 and invigorating itself with the passage of years — that 
 at last the most dreadful form of retribution which can 
 ever overtake man on earth is in that very hardness of 
 heart which is entailed by delay, in that very impeni- 
 tence which is the response and consequence of an im- 
 penitence which went before. While this is the gospel 
 — salvation to the penitent, even in death, even to the 
 uttermost — does not this retributive law throw in its 
 doubts, its fears, and its apprehensions, about the prob- 
 ability and reality of that later and death-bed repent- 
 ance ? No misgivings have we as to God's willingness 
 to forgive the penitent at the very latest moment : our 
 misgivings are all of this kind — whether a man who 
 has lived in impenitence, through a whole life of privi- 
 lege and mercy, will be likely to become a penitent 
 after the accumulated results of life-long habit and 
 delay. Not the shadow of a doubt have we that the 
 mercy of God would pardon any sincere penitent, even 
 amid the convulsions and prostrations of death ; but 
 many a doubt have we whether he whose indisposition 
 to religious things has been growing and strengthening 
 
192 THE GARDEN OF GETIISEMANE. 
 
 from youth to manhood, even to old age, will iind him- 
 self disposed or able, at an instant of emergency and 
 fear, to counteract the adverse tendencies of his whole 
 existence. Impenitence he has sown, and impenitence 
 he is now reaping. Regrets, sorrows, spring unbidden 
 in his bosom ; but these are not repentance. These 
 convulsive moments of an affrighted spirit are not that 
 change in the heart itself which the gospel requires as 
 indispensable. 
 
 There is no place where this law of retribution, which 
 is inwrought into our very bodies and souls, puts on so 
 stern an aspect, and reveals so fearful a power, as in the 
 last days of the man who, through years of God's for- 
 bearance, has been practising himself in unbelief and 
 confirming himself in habits of impenitence, under the 
 full light and love of the gospel. God has promised 
 no miracle of deliverance to the impenitent and the 
 praycrless. One may fall from dizzy heights, and not 
 be harmed ; one may lie down in fire, and not be 
 burned ; one may be immersed in the sea, and not be 
 drowned : the imagination may conceive of such mira- 
 cles, but sober reason revolves the question whether, in 
 the gospel itself, or in human observation, there has 
 ever been discovered a promise of interposing power 
 which will make it easy for one to repent who, after a 
 hard and impenitent heart, has been heaping up, week 
 by week, year by year, the obstacles to his own return ! 
 
PRESUMPTION. 193 
 
 We have no reason for believing that the thief on the 
 cross had ever heard of Christ before he was brought 
 in contact with his mercy, in the very hour of his bitter 
 passion and death. There is no parallelism between 
 the quick repenting of such a man, in his first interview 
 with the Redeemer, and the presumptuous expectations 
 of the man who has heard of Christ from his very cra- 
 dle. Yes, we will magnify the grace of our God ; we 
 will preach its largeness and fullness ; we will repeat 
 the angel-songs of Bethlehem ; we will tell of Christ 
 lifted up to draw all men unto him ; we will rehearse 
 his world-wide promises of forgiveness ; we will point 
 to him in the attitude of stretching out his arms to wel- 
 come the weary and heavily laden ; we will take the 
 word which last fell from his lips, and Spirit and Bride 
 will herald it everywhere — "Come, whosoever will." 
 This we will do, in solemn faith that there is no num- 
 ber or aggravation of sins which outreach his power to 
 save, if they are repented of and forsaken. 
 
 But if there are any who, under sabbath skies, and 
 angel voices, and gospel songs, and pleadings of mercy, 
 and wclcomings of love, and promises of help, and vis- 
 ions of heaven, will not repent, and will not believe — 
 presuming, neglecting, trifling, delaying — then must we 
 warn them that, according to the unrepealed and stead- 
 fast ordinance of retribution, the time will come — and 
 
 it shall be when their need is greatest, even when they 
 
 fi 
 
194 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 are made to look down into the grave and the terrific 
 mysteries which lie beyond — when they shall be so 
 beset and depressed by the very difficulties of former 
 habit, that the very hardest thing to be conceived of is 
 for those to pray who never prayed before — for those 
 to repent who never repented before ; so that the mis- 
 taken man who counted on repenting in the sudden 
 emergency of fear, and necessity, and death, discovers 
 when too late that all his life long he has been treasu- 
 ring up wrath against himself — hardening his heart, 
 so that, though he smites upon it, the rock will yield 
 no tenderness. 
 
 Little need is there, as it would seem, of caution and 
 exhortation, after giving a clear and correct statement 
 of the calm and steadfast ordinance of retribution. But 
 when mercy and retribution are brought before us in 
 their proper conjunction, the heart must be inhuman 
 and the tongue speechless which would not admonish 
 men to beware how they neglect so great salvation. 
 
XI. 
 
 SUPERNATURAL RELIEF FOR NATURAL EVILS. 
 
 The impression is common that the evils and pen- 
 alties which follow transgression are, in some man- 
 ner, superinduced by revealed religion. Because the 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments recognise 
 and sanction such retributive consequences of sin, many 
 infer that they are responsible for them, and produce 
 them, by an arbitrary decree, after such a manner, that, 
 if the Scriptures had not referred to them, the penalties 
 themselves would not have existed. 
 
 It has been our endeavor, therefore, to show that the 
 law of retribution is a law of Nature. It is not in- 
 duced by an arbitrary enactment. It is altogether in- 
 dependent of a written revelation. The one true reli- 
 gion of the world is, in no sense, responsible for it- 
 The retributive consequences of evil-doing would re- 
 main the same, for both worlds, if the Christian religion 
 
196 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 were utterly and for ever abolished. These result, as 
 we say, in the nature of things. The constitution of 
 the universe is arranged on the principle of rewards for 
 the good and penalties for the evil. We speak now of 
 what is palpable to the skeptic as to the believer in the 
 gospel ; of something which is entirely distinct and dis- 
 connected from faith in revealed religion. A man vio- 
 lates the laws of his physical constitution, and the pen- 
 alty is physical suffering, disease, and death. All the 
 hospitals of the world give their proof of this. Physi- 
 cians, and not preachers, are authorities and witnesses 
 on this point. Man is so constituted, that this result 
 is inevitable. It is an ordinance of Nature, which is 
 unaffected by belief or unbelief. 
 
 Man is a member of society, and, as such, comes in 
 contact with social laws. These may be of various de- 
 grees of excellence, but society can not exist without 
 some law. Transgress these enactments of society, and 
 the penalty is fine, imprisonment, transportation, the 
 gallows. These are facts in the history of humanity, 
 and not theories of political economists — facts which 
 we should encounter did we travel to the ends of the 
 earth, even if there were no such thing in existence as 
 a written revelation from God. 
 
 So of that highest of all laws, the spiritual — it is 
 founded in the very nature of that relation which sub- 
 
NATURE AND SCRIPTURE. 197 
 
 sists between God as Creator and man as a creature — ■ 
 between infinite excellence and finite dependence. He 
 who breaks away from this law of duty, must, in the 
 nature of things, separate himself from God, lose the 
 sense of God's favor, and incur the sense of God's dis- 
 pleasure. We can not conceive that it could be other- 
 wise. It is not the written law which produces this 
 separation, or enacts this penalty. The entire volume 
 of inspiration recognises this penalty, and justifies it, 
 but never creates it in such a sense that, if it were 
 not written therein, " The soul that sinneth, it shall 
 die," that result would not come to pass. It would 
 come to pass, as we believe, by the natural course of 
 things, in accordance with the eternal constitution of 
 the universe. That men should be punished for the 
 infringement of those ordinances which govern their 
 physical, social, and moral nature, there is no necessity 
 of special legislation. All that is requisite is, that 
 things should be left to their natural course. It is not 
 because it is written in this volume that woes, and pains, 
 and shame, and poverty, are the retribution of idleness, 
 intemperance, and dissolute habits, that these results 
 come to pass ; but this is written because they do come 
 to pass — because it is an indisputable fact in Nature 
 that such results proceed from such causes. 
 
 Beyond all dispute, this is the teaching of Nature. 
 This is the law of God's created system, ordained when 
 
198 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 the foundations of the world were laid. Written laws 
 may announce this fact, but they do not originate it. 
 The fact, as a stern verity of Nature, exists where there 
 is no written revelation. If every verse, every line, 
 every word, in the entire volume of inspiration, which 
 alludes to retribution in this life or the life to come, 
 were expunged, it would be no less true, while the sys- 
 tem of Nature is undisturbed, that the violation of her 
 ordinances will be visited by her own retributions. 
 That men should suffer in consequence of sin — suffer 
 in health, if they transgress physical laws — in reputa- 
 tion, if they transgress social laws — in remorse, and 
 exile from God, if they transgress spiritual laws — 
 nothing needs to be enacted, nothing whatever to be 
 done. Let ( the natural course of things be uninterrupt- 
 ed, and these results are certain. Fire is sure to burn, 
 if it have its way. Nothing new, nothing whatever is 
 to be done to make certain this result. To prevent that 
 result requires some positive interposition, something 
 which will arrest the natural law. 
 
 Nature has many wonderful provisions and compen- 
 sations, but, if we will carefully observe, not one by 
 way of arresting the law of retribution. If one of the 
 senses be lost, there is a most kind and compensatory 
 action of Nature by which every other sense seems to 
 be quickened and endowed for the emergency. If a 
 joint be removed by a surgical operation, there appears 
 
REVERSAL OF TERMS. 199 
 
 at once a new energy of Nature to supply the deficiency 
 by some provision of her own. Nothing like this ap- 
 pears in Nature to prevent the retributive consequences 
 of sin ; nothing like a relaxing or letting up of her own 
 ordinances in the case of such as do evil. This it is 
 which makes the religion of Nature the most stern and 
 relentless for all but the innocent. The common im- 
 pression is the reverse of this. 
 
 Many associate the religion of Nature with flowers, 
 and birds, and stars — with blossomings of trees and 
 exuberance of fruits. These, indeed, are facts of Na- 
 ture, but they arc not the only facts. These are the 
 facts which teach us the care and kindness of the Great 
 Author of Nature toward all his creatures. Beside 
 these are those other facts — the pains, the maladies, 
 the woes, of all descriptions, that follow evil courses — 
 which attest that the Being who made man and the 
 world intended that sin should be visited by retribution. 
 For innocence, for misfortune, for mere accident — if 
 we may use such a word when speaking of Providence 
 ■ — there are compensations, and reliefs, and extempore 
 provisions ; but, for guilt, Nature has no relief and no 
 remedy ! Egregiously mistaken are such as eulogize 
 natural religion in opposition to that which is revealed 
 ■ — as if the one spoke only in bloom and beauty, and 
 the other in tones of terror and denunciation. The 
 terms of this common conception should be reversed 
 
200 THE GARDEN OP GETHSEMANE. 
 
 entirely and altogether. It is natural religion, unac- 
 companied by any revelation of positive relief, which is 
 terrible — terrible and unrelenting to the last degree — 
 to the guilty ; while the peculiarity of revelation is. as 
 its name imports, that it makes known the fact of some- 
 what interposed and novel. 
 
 If you would kill out all hope from the heart of the 
 guilty, leave them alone. Leave them to the religion of 
 Nature. Leave them to the natural result of things — 
 to eat of the fruit of their own ways, and be filled with 
 their own devices. If you would overwhelm, crush, 
 and ruin the guilty, leave them to themselves. Do 
 nothing. Enact nothing. Xo need of laws to con- 
 demn them. Xo need of menaces and statute penal- 
 ties. Withdraw thyself and leave them to the steady, 
 changeless, relentless order of Xature ! But if you 
 would save them, something must be interposed. Some 
 arrest must be laid upon the tendencies and workings 
 of Xature. If you would deliver and restore such as 
 have violated the eternal ordinances of Xature, then 
 something positive is to be done suited to the emer- 
 gency. Xow we look for something which is more than 
 Xature — above and beyond Nature. There must be a 
 stoppage of the natural order of things — some new and 
 positive measure introduced. 
 
 An d this, precisely, is what is done by the gospel of 
 Jesus Christ. The very word announces the character 
 
NOT TO CONDEMN, BUT SAVE. 201 
 
 of the measure. It is " news," " good news," " glad 
 tidings of great joy." It is something out of the ordi- 
 nary and constituted channel of things. It was not de- 
 veloped by nature, but revealed directly from heaven. 
 It is something brought — something given — some thing- 
 interposed. It was announced by angels — it was fully 
 accomplished by the Son of God. Many have endeav- 
 ored to reason that Christianity was a mere subjective 
 hypothesis of the human mind ; a product and fabrica- 
 tion of man's own nature ; but just this is the peculi- 
 arity of the gospel, a positive gift and interposition 
 of the Most High. To punish those who had made in- 
 fraction of God's law, nothing unusual — nothing out 
 of the ordinary course of things was necessary ; but to 
 save from punishment, to restore and retrieve, redeem 
 and deliver, required what was extraordinary and pre- 
 ternatural. This is what the gospel actually promises 
 and accomplishes. This is the sole object and design of 
 the gospel. It does this, and nothing but this. It saves 
 — it does not punish. Jesus Christ came not to condemn 
 the world, but to deliver. Condemnation was already. 
 Suffering existed already. Some of the evil conse- 
 quences of transgression already abounded ; and these 
 foreshadowed other retributions future and inevitable. 
 There was no need of anything further being accom- 
 plished by way of insuring punitive judgment. That 
 had long since begun its drear and immitigable course. 
 
 9* 
 
202 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMAXE. 
 
 The gospel was a measure of relief — a stay of proceed- 
 ings — an arrest of sentence — a suspension of the nat- 
 ural process, by adequate help. It has itself no more 
 to do by way of accounting for the sins and sufferings 
 of mankind than medicines and hospitals are responsi- 
 ble for those diseases which they design to cure. A 
 pardon does not create the penalty which it remits. 
 
 There is but one aspect, one object in the gospel of 
 our Lord — to relieve from evils already existing — de- 
 liver from woes which without it would have been un- 
 checked and unmitigated. Not only is this the sole 
 and exclusive object of the gospel, but besides the gos- 
 pel there is nothing which promises to do the same. 
 Cruel are they who would give us only the creed of 
 nature. Merciless is that religion which deals only 
 with natural laws ; for while it sometimes discourses of 
 the birds of the air, and the lilies of the fields, nay, 
 while it always discourses in images of beauty and 
 tones of gladness to the good and innocent, it has woes 
 in reserve for the guilty, from which they can not escape, 
 as they can not fly from the eternal laws which bind 
 the universe ; and if you take away that supernatural 
 revelation of interposed relief, nothing remains but a 
 certain looking for of judgment in accordance with 
 those ordinances which otherwise never are diverted. 
 
 Let us, therefore, look awhile at the operation of 
 mis curative agency upon existing evils. We have 
 
CALAMITIES AND GRIEFS. 203 
 
 already considered at considerable length the manner 
 in which the gospel of Christ applies its superabound- 
 ing mercy for the remission of sin. Let us not overlook 
 its method of relief for other necessities of humanity. 
 
 Men everywhere are exposed to calamity and grief. 
 Troubles beset man, cares depress him, and sorrow bur- 
 dens him. It has been so in all ages, since fallen 
 Adam wept over the corpse of Abel. Marble philoso- 
 phy affirms that these misfortunes are the result of fixed 
 ordinances of nature which may not be changed. It is 
 a subject on which the writers of classic antiquity des- 
 canted much. We have on record the plaintive letter 
 of the great Roman orator on the death of his own 
 daughter Tullia. In his correspondence with a friend, 
 he lays open his whole heart, under the visitations of 
 sorrow. He travels. He visits foreign scenes. He 
 seeks to divert his mind from the affliction on which it 
 preys. Here is a deep and irremediable sorrow ; and 
 the only relief which nature can promise is that time 
 will gently and gradually mitigate the grief. Ye who 
 mourn the loss of your best friends, tell us whether you 
 will accept that consolation which springs from forgefr- 
 fulness. Judge ye that the time will ever come when 
 you will wish to think less, to mourn less, than now, 
 over the graves where sleep the forms most endeared 
 to you? These bereavements are abroad in the world, 
 in all places and in all forms. Explain them, account 
 
204 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMAXE. 
 
 for them, as yuu may. Call them accidents. Call 
 them misfortunes. Call them fatalities. Reason your- 
 self into stoicism. Persuade yourself that these are in- 
 evitable events, and that you can not escape the com- 
 mon lot of humanity. In this you are in part correct. 
 The gospel promises no exemption from them. But it 
 accomplishes more than this. It consoles. It cures. 
 Like an angel-form brightening through the gloom, it 
 brings a balm to the wound. Cold Philosophy passes 
 by on the other side, or if she speaks to the sufferer she 
 says, in stately speech, " Be strong', and bear it ivell." 
 " Be brave." " Be a man." The religion of the Re- 
 deemer introduces a positive cure. It binds up the 
 wound, pouring in oil and wine. It explains to man 
 the meaning of afflictions, the source from which they 
 come, the wisdom and love of an overruling Provi- 
 dence, the benefits which flow from them, the repose of 
 faith, the sweetness of resignation, the brightness of 
 hope, and the certainty of that future state where all 
 troubles shall cease, where friends separated by death 
 shall meet again, where joy perpetual and unblighted 
 shall succeed sorrow, and tears shall be wiped away 
 from every eye. This is a positive, extraordinary, and 
 supernatural revelation. The evil is, as we say, natural 
 — the consolation is above Xature, it is a divine inter- 
 position. Xature affirms, and facts echo it, " In the 
 world ye shall have tribulation." But Christianity, by 
 
DEATH A FACT. 205 
 
 the mouth of her Lord, answers, " Be of good cheer, I 
 have overcome the world." 
 
 Then comes that grand catastrophe death, that mys- 
 tery, that shame, that terror, that abhorrence of human- 
 ity. We need no proof of the fact that man dies — that 
 all men die. The learned reason that death is in ac- 
 cordance with a natural law ; that men are made to 
 die, as trees have their time to grow, decay, and fall. 
 We believe, though there may have been death in 
 the animal creation before man was made, that death 
 passes upon all men because all have sinned. The 
 knowledge which we derive from revelation on this 
 point, however, has nothing whatever to do with the 
 resistless power and certainty of death. Death would 
 be no less inevitable if we did not know under what 
 circumstances, in what connection, it invaded the world. 
 Before revelation, without revelation, in ages past, in 
 all ages, and in all lands, the destroyer is busy at his 
 work. Call it a law of Nature or what you will, the 
 drear and dreadful fact is the same. That man should 
 die, there is no necessity that anything should be done. 
 The ordinary and changeless course of the human race 
 is to the grave. Generation after generation follow 
 each other thitherward. A skeleton hand points the 
 procession of the ages to one and the same spot — the 
 sepulchre. There is no turning back, or turning aside, 
 so as not to enter that door of gloom. This is an inev- 
 
206 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 
 
 itable certainty of Nature. That man should die — die 
 with fear, die without hope, die in mystery — to make 
 sure of this result, leave them as they are. Reveal 
 nothing, interpose nothing ; leave the race with solemn 
 and sullen march and dejected face, to their destiny. 
 
 But if you would mitigate this great evil, if you 
 would redeem man from its power, if you would arrest 
 and change all these affrights and despondencies of na- 
 ture, then somewhat which is preternatural and ex- 
 traordinary must be brought into operation. And this 
 is the very object and effect of the gospel. It comes to 
 change the whole aspect of death, reigning with terror 
 from the sin of Adam down to the birth of the Re- 
 deemer. This celestial visitant, like the shining angel 
 in the tomb of Jesus, takes her stand at the door of the 
 sepulchre, and the light she bears shines far within, 
 yea, entirely through the dark valley. 
 
 As revealed religion did not produce death, nor in- 
 flict it, but finds it as a fact already existing, so all its 
 extraordinary power is applied, not to prevent death, 
 but so to change its whole aspect and quality, that the 
 curse shall be converted into a blessing, and men may 
 be more than willing, even glad to die. It is the gos- 
 pel which extracts the sting of death, depriving it of 
 all power to harm the feeblest believer. To all in- 
 tents, death is actually abolished. By a divine revela- 
 tion we are assured that death is not the destruction of 
 
POSITIVE HELP. 207 
 
 humanity. Life and immortality are brought to light 
 in the gospel. The body itself shall be raised again, 
 and, perfected and refined itself, shall be conjoined to a 
 refined and perfected spirit. In proof and promise of 
 this great achievement, the Son of God himself became 
 subject unto death, and rose again from its power. The 
 one sweeping fact of mortality is confronted by another 
 fact, extraordinary and miraculous, the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ from the dead. Here is positive help and 
 hope for man, under the most abhorrent event which Na- 
 ture knows. It is consolation imparted in reference to 
 a pre-existing evil. From being the ghastly King of 
 Terrors, striking down the helpless into the dust, and 
 trampling upon humanity with his iron heel, Death, by 
 the intervention of the Redeemer, is converted into a 
 minister of mercy — •unclothing the child of God, that 
 he may be clothed upon with his house which is from 
 heaven. How soft and grateful the light which it 
 sheds on the grave ! It is not the Jack-o'-lantern of 
 superstition which flits and flickers there. It is the 
 halo of hope — the reflection of heaven's own peace and 
 repose. 
 
 Surely we need not pause to furnish proof that the 
 gospel is in fact equal to all these promises. The proof 
 is present to us in the memory of those who have died 
 from our own homes, and from out of our own arms. 
 There is nothing which interests us more than accounts 
 
208 THE GAKDEN OF GETIISEMANE. 
 
 which reach us of the safe and victorious death of oth- 
 ers, eveu though they are strangers to us. Our com- 
 mon nature is putting to the test this heaven-descended 
 and supernatural Helper. Afflicted humanity, doomed 
 to the grave, is believing and trying that miraculous 
 support which is revealed from God by our Redeemer. 
 Thus might we proceed to illustrate the same aspect 
 of the gospel toward other objects, and other evils, as 
 the extraordinary method of their relief or removal. 
 "Write the history of all those mischiefs which came in 
 with the apostacy. Descant on the great law of cause 
 and effect. Prove to us that this long series of events 
 is bound together by a natural order and necessity. 
 We will not dispute it ; we believe it ourselves. And 
 we wish you to believe that, according to the natural 
 order of events, there is nothing, there can be nothing, 
 but suffering and misery in the track and train of sin. 
 There is no danger, even as it has been affirmed by 
 those who have little faith in divine revelation, of inter- 
 preting this retributive law too strictly or too severely. 
 But the main thing we would receive, and that with 
 joy, is the announcement by our Divine Restorer that 
 his help is out of and above the ordinary drift and di- 
 rection of things — a supernatural and miraculous inter- 
 position, so extraordinary, so joyful, that angels are 
 sent to herald it, and the rocks and the floods are in- 
 voked to sing and clap their hands for the gladness and 
 
SPECIAL INTERPOSITION. 209 
 
 greatness of the tidings! Labor — hard, sweating, 
 drudging labor — came with the curse. The gospel 
 finds this depressing and crushing load, and offers to 
 lighten it. It converts labor into genial work, inspires 
 industry with reward and satisfaction, and teaches man 
 to sing at his toil. 
 
 The principle is the same in all cases — in regard to 
 all causes which tend to afflict, burden, and depress 
 mankind. These are all the natural and constituted 
 penalties of apostacy. The religion of Christ is not 
 responsible for them, any more than is infidelity. They 
 exist ; they could not but exist in a state of things such 
 as God has ordained. The gospel of the Redeemer has 
 but one design — to interpose a special and extraordi- 
 nary help and cure. It finds the prisoner in his cell, 
 and comes to throw open the door. It finds the eye of 
 the blind shut in night, and pours light upon the sight- 
 less eyeball. The ear of the deaf is shut already, and 
 the gospel utters its " ephphatha /" — be opened ! The 
 mind of the imbecile is sunk into idiocy, and Christ the 
 Divine Restorer strengthens the enfeebled understand- 
 ing and endows it with the capacity of knowledge. 
 Multitudes are broken-hearted and mourning, and Christ 
 brings them the oil of joy and the garment of praise. 
 The world is under the curse and condemnation of sin, 
 and the gospel proclaims forgiveness and salvation. 
 
 What, now, if this extraordinary relief were with- 
 
210 THE GARDEN OP GETHSEMANE. 
 
 held? What if all the assertions of infidelity were 
 true, so that we could not believe in the gospel of the 
 Redeemer ? What if every copy of the Scriptures were 
 withdrawn from the world, every communion-table for- 
 saken, every Christian assembly disbanded ? What if, 
 with common consent, the human race should be con- 
 verted into atheists, and there were no sabbath, and all 
 knowledge of Christ and his redemption should depart, 
 like the lost Pleiad ? Would one of the evils of the 
 world go with it ? Not one ! How have you benefited 
 the race, by removing that which promises relief — 
 which has no other object or purpose than to cure evils 
 which existed before, and exist without it ? You take 
 away the physician, and leave the disease ! You deny 
 the exercise of mercy, and leave the curse unmitigated ! 
 Grant everything which the boldest infidelity has 
 ever asserted ; admit that Voltaire, when he scoffed at 
 Christ — Hume, when he argued against the miracles 
 of our Lord — Strauss, when he philosophized away the 
 historic facts of redemption ; admit, for one blank in- 
 stant of time that they were all true — what have you 
 gained ? You are thorough infidels ; but infidels con- 
 cerning what ? Concerning the gospel which proposes 
 to relieve and restore. But what concerning those 
 great facts which entail suffering and misery upon hu- 
 manity? This is the main thing. We will speak of 
 the gospel afterward. The evils themselves, does infi- 
 
 
INFIDELITY IS NEGATION. 211 
 
 delity suspend them, arrest them, change them, prevent 
 them ? If not, what is its advantage ? It takes away 
 Christ, but leaves sin. It forbids the remedy, but leaves 
 the leprosy burning like fire into flesh and bones. It 
 takes away the gospel, and leaves the stern facts and 
 realities of Nature. Sorrow, affliction, remorse, sweat, 
 labor, sickness, bereavement, death — it leaves them all 
 in the world ! It extinguishes no evil, wipes no tear, 
 imparts no comfort ; and hence it is that, granting all 
 that infidelity ever claimed, it disbelieves nothing but 
 the remedy, and leaves man to be broken and crushed 
 by those great laws and facts of Nature which roll over 
 him more resistless than the mighty wheels which Eze- 
 kiel saw in his vision at Chebar. 
 
 If any man disbelieves the gospel of Christ, the only 
 result is, that he leaves himself in that very state in 
 which he was without the gospel. Infidelity is a mere 
 negation. It does not pretend to supply the place 
 which it has vacated. It takes away the Saviour who 
 was born in Bethlehem, but does it substitute a better ? 
 It leaves man to suffer, sorrow, weep, and die, uncon- 
 soled, unhclped, uncheered, and unblessed ! 
 
 Leaves him as before, did we say ? With one grave 
 supplement of misery ! The disease is exasperated when 
 remedies are rejected ; and the infatuation which refuses 
 the friendly offices of the Redeemer, can only treasure 
 up and aggravate the miseries of remorse. 
 
212 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMAXE. 
 
 There is no other Saviour than he whom angels an- 
 nounced ; there is no other gospel than that which was 
 preached by the Son of God. We know not where to 
 find any other consolation than that revealed to us from 
 on high. Ask us not to part with it till you have cer- 
 tified to that which is better. This has proved itself 
 divine by the miracle of its cures, the wonders of its 
 conversions, the prodigies of its saving power. Our grat- 
 itude kindles anew at the tidings. Let us sing for joy, 
 because of what it promises. In sorrow, let us make 
 it our refuge ; in fear, our trust ; in life, our help ; in 
 death, our hope and eternal salvation ! 
 
THE PARADISE OF GOD. 
 
Then said the shepherds one to another, Let us here show the pil- 
 grims the gates of the Celestial City, if they have skill to look through 
 our perspective-glass. The pilgrims lovingly accepted the motion : so 
 they led them to the top of a high hill, called Clear, and gave them the 
 glass to look. 
 
 They thought they saw something like the gate, and also some of the 
 glory of the place. 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE CELESTIAL PARADISE. 
 
 Yeaks ago, there was in your dwelling a young child 
 of surpassing beauty and loveliness. Its gleesome voice 
 was music to your ear, and its graceful motions were 
 music to your eye. Perfect in the moulding of its form 
 and the finish of its features, full of love and full of joy, 
 it seemed like a vision of light from the skies. Disease 
 touched it, and it withered in a night. It died, and 
 was buried. Though you would have given it all which 
 you had in the world, the only thing which you could 
 give it was a grave. You chose the spot, and raised 
 some simple memorial, bearing its name, a sculptured 
 flower or lamb, or other emblem -of its innocence and 
 frailty. It has gone from you for ever. " Where has 
 it gone ?" Months and years elapse. Now and then 
 you come upon some object in your home which, asso- 
 ciated with him, brings him before you as if he were 
 
21 6 PARADISE. 
 
 alive again — a toy, or a little shoe. You take it in 
 your hand, and ask again : ' Where, where is my child ? 
 He is gone ; but where has he gone ? I can not believe 
 that he has perished. Are we not living under a sys- 
 tem of divine restoration ? Did not the Redeemer of 
 the world place the highest value on the life of a child ? 
 Did he not connect infancy with the kingdom of heaven ? 
 Wliere is that kingdom? Wliat is that kingdom? I 
 read of it — I hear of it; I see it not as yet, but I 
 know there must be some other world than this, in 
 which life, so abruptly terminated here, is resumed, re- 
 newed, and perpetuated. Nature suffers nothing to be 
 wasted. She is the greatest economist. The very 
 fragments are gathered, that nothing may be lost. 
 Forms change, but substances never perish out of the 
 universe ; and the soul which God created, and Christ 
 redeemed, must be living still, though withdrawn from 
 my sight.' 
 
 There was a man in the maturity of his ample facul- 
 ties. His youth had been one of irreligion and folly. 
 By the grace of Jesus Christ, he had been thoroughly 
 converted. He begins a new life, with higher aims 
 and nobler ends. He has just discovered the value of 
 existence. His mind thirsts for knowledge, and his 
 heart for goodness. He starts on a career of Christian 
 usefulness. He is a living proof and demonstration of 
 Christ's competency to redeem and restore. His speech, 
 
PLEDGE OF THE FUTURE. 217 
 
 his daily conduct, his sweetness of temper, his religious 
 living, are objects of notice and admiration. He is a 
 model of Christian character. Just as he reaches this 
 degree of ripeness, this promise and preparation for 
 true living, Death strikes him, and he falls. " "Where- 
 fore is this waste ?" we are ready to exclaim. ' Is this 
 the end of all the expense which has been bestowed 
 upon his redemption ? Was it for these few days of 
 imperfect happiness upon the earth that the Son of 
 God consented to pay so great a ransom ? Is this the 
 end of that travail of Christ's soul, with which he is 
 satisfied — that a man should be converted, know in 
 part, be sanctified in part, and then perish for ever ?' 
 The absurdity of such an idea makes us impatient of 
 its presence. That restorative process which our Re- 
 deemer begins on earth is a pledge of its consummation 
 in another life. That which we see of Christian good- 
 ness here is but the promise of its ultimate perfection 
 hereafter. 
 
 Where have they gone — the good, the redeemed ? To 
 the Paradise of God. Redemption has its beginning 
 here, but not its end. There is another world in which 
 are gathered the perfected results of that great restora- 
 tion which is by Jesus Christ. Here he calls, he justi- 
 fies, he sanctifies ; but there he glorifies. A great thing 
 is that which he accomplishes on the earth, when he 
 
 delivers man from the power of sin and death, gives 
 
 10 
 
218 pa r:\oi 
 
 him peace of conscience, restores some measure of con- 
 fidence and love, implants new principles in his soul, 
 and I irings him under the power of hope. But a greater 
 still is that which to us is yet future, when restoration 
 is complete, every vestige of the curse removed, and 
 redeemed man is put in possession of a greater good 
 than was ever lost in Eden. 
 
 Far more has Christ accomplished for man than if, 
 in the gorgeous East — "in Persia, Araby, or Ind" — 
 he had planted another garden like that which was the 
 home of the first pair, and, forgiving and forgetting all 
 that was past, had placed man therein, innocent and 
 happy, with eternal well-being suspended upon his con- 
 tinuance. Would you count it a joyful thing if prime- 
 val paradise could be restored, and you, in person, were 
 to partake of its bliss ? More than this is actually true. 
 There is a celestial paradise better than all the glories 
 of Eden. "We are not bidden to look backward, with 
 sighs and regrets ; but to look forward, with joyful hope 
 and expectation. 
 
 The heavenly Paradise is not a myth nor a fancy. 
 Like Eden and Gethsemane, it is an historical reality. 
 When the Son of God was ready to expire, he said to 
 the penitent malefactor at his side, " To-day shalt thou 
 be with me in Paradise.'" Favored of God, with spe- 
 cial encouragements amid his extraordinary endurances, 
 the apostle to the Gentiles was once caught up into Par- 
 
ULTIMATE PERFECTION. U19 
 
 adise, and in the third heavens of delight heard voices 
 of gladness such as never before had fallen on a mortal's 
 ear ; and the promise has gone forth from the mouth of 
 our Lord that whoever shall overcome, continuing to 
 the end, shall " cat of the tree of life which is in the 
 Paradise of God." 
 
 Into this enclosure we are now to enter. From 
 the garden of apostacy, and the garden of atoning 
 sorrow, we pass to that garden of restoration, where 
 redeemed man finds his ultimate security and bles- 
 sedness. It is not on the earth. No mortal eye 
 hath seen it. We will indulge in no curious specu- 
 lations concerning its topography or material. The 
 Holy Ghost has employed a great variety of imagery to 
 describe that abode of consummate perfection. Now 
 we are told of " green pastures" and " still waters" — 
 the sweet river of the water of life — with trees on 
 either side bearing all manner of fruits, and in the 
 midst of the garden that tree of life once forfeited and 
 now restored, with no interdict upon its fruition, no 
 flaming sword deterring approach, but God himself in- 
 viting to the free use of that fruit which insureth im- 
 mortality. In that pleasant abode there is no night, 
 — the sun withdrawing not itself — rest without sleep, 
 repose without peril, activity without exhaustion. 
 
 Now again we read of the city of God, lustrous 
 with gold and precious stones, with walls, and gates, 
 
PARADISE. 
 
 and streets, and thrones, and temples, and worship. 
 Enough to be assured that there is in reserve for 
 every follower of Christ a state of absolute perfec- 
 tion, where the work of redemption finds its joy- 
 ful completion. The pleasant occupation to which 
 we are now invited is to rehearse the several facts 
 which Rev-elation has communicated concerning that 
 future condition of redeemed and restored humanity. 
 We shall indulge in no conjectures; introduce no hy- 
 pothesis, but confine ourselves most rigidly to the nar- 
 ration of those sober realities which the Eedeemer of 
 man has himself authenticated. 
 
 Redeemed man shall then attain the perfection of his 
 nature — perfection absolute and entire. He will be 
 made perfect in body. Paradise is not the abode of 
 ethereal essences. The promise of redemption relates 
 not to the disembodied spirit, but to our humanity, and 
 this is composed of body and spirit. Christ, the God- 
 man, ascended to the skies with a body. When he was 
 upon the earth, he was once transfigured in person, his 
 human form becoming invested with superhuman bright- 
 ness, that he might reveal to the few disciples who were 
 privileged to stand with him on Tabor, some glimpses 
 of man's glorified personality. And the promise is that 
 every redeemed man shall hereafter possess a body like 
 unto Christ's glorious body. It is called a spiritual 
 body. Not that it is intangible, impalpable, and invis- 
 
A SPIRITUAL BODY. 221 
 
 ible, as spirit. But so refined is it from all grossness, 
 endowed with such power and life, that no word could 
 so well express its quality as that which God has cho- 
 sen and employed — a spiritual body. 
 
 A body is essential to our personality. We hare seen 
 what skill the Almighty expended on its construction. 
 We have endeavored to imagine what was its beauty 
 when first it was fashioned by the Creator. We have 
 seen as well what effects have been produced upon it 
 by transgression. What deformities, what pains, what 
 diseases, what infirmities, came in with sin. We have 
 seen what marks and havoc are entailed upon the hu- 
 man body by the law of retribution. It is doomed to 
 death and the grave. It was not the body which was 
 the cause or occasion of sin ; it was man who sinned, 
 body and soul, one indivisible person ; and it is to that 
 personality, redeemed from sin and death by the Son 
 of God, that the promise is made of future perfection 
 and immortality. When the Redeemer assumed our 
 nature — a body like our own — when he shared in its 
 infirmities, when he bore it upward on his ascension, he 
 gave a pledge that the bodies of those who believe in 
 him should participate in his Redemption. 
 
 We broach no novel theory concerning the powers 
 of that renovated and perfected body. We are assured 
 that it will have no inordinate appetite, no law in its 
 members warrino- against the law in the mind. It will 
 
PARJLDI- 
 
 not d N r t? :n.is ab- 
 
 : - ribe it. It has positive at- 
 
 r, with t 
 . . incorraprion. wii - Imagine it 
 
 teal 1 
 . there be 
 
 mi the limbs in m 
 Q be les 
 "ipon th I ~hich Christ hath prepwired 
 
 for th 
 
 vated and immortal powers. 
 If I over man when he 
 
 him out of the dust, moul img : rm. and vitalizing 
 
 -hall Christ be 
 of 1 when ail hath ran- 
 
 1 from dc _ 
 
 _ », and i rh of 
 
 the body was 
 : _ jr. Bea: 
 
 gh it most be i aid hope- 
 
 fully. - has departed : bear it 
 
 : and f: 
 tion of th I which 
 
 germ of immortal p: The 
 
 se :\ attire 
 
 n. 
 
REDEEMED MIND. 223 
 
 The faculty of intelligence, of knowing and reason- 
 ing, was an original endowment of our nature. Sin 
 entered, and the mind of man was dimmed and dark- 
 ened. Ignorance and superstition have blurred and 
 beclouded the human soul. The rays of truth, entering 
 this dense and opaque medium, have been refracted. 
 The whole tendency of ruined mind has been toward 
 ignorance and debasement. Men like not to retain the 
 knowledge of God and of truth in their minds. They 
 will not come to the light. They love darkness rather 
 than light. Such is the mournful verdict which inspi- 
 ration has pronounced upon humanity — the image of 
 God at first — in its apostate state. The Redeemer 
 comes to restore this image, well-nigh effaced. He 
 sheds light on the darkened mind ; imparts to it a rel- 
 ish for knowledge, a taste for truth ; and gives to man's 
 intellectual being an ascendency over the earthly and 
 sensual. This result of redemption is but partial and 
 incomplete in the present life. The child of God sees 
 through a glass darkly. The eye of the blind is opened, 
 but it sees imperfectly — even men as trees walking. 
 The mind, in its process of restoration, is perplexed by 
 many consequences of the apostacy. Prejudices per- 
 vert the truth, and truth is acquired by the hardest — 
 even by effort, by care, by reasoning, and by inference. 
 
 Out of this imperfect condition redeemed mind is to 
 be recovered entirely. Something more than deliver- 
 
224 PARADISE. 
 
 ance from ignorance, from blankness and vacuity, is 
 promised. Man, a living soul at the beginning, shall 
 be God's perfected likeness at the end. Little short 
 of intuitive knowledge appears to be promised in those 
 words : We shall know even as we are known. With- 
 out pressing them beyond their truthful import, so 
 much is certainly conveyed by the promise : the clear 
 and honest intelligence of man shall answer unto the 
 intelligence of God. There shall be no refraction, but 
 a perfect reflection of the light and truth. The pro- 
 cess of intellectual recovery which began when Christ 
 applied his sovereign eye-salve, shall be perfected in 
 that future state where the last film of darkness shall 
 be removed, the last veil of ignorance withdrawn, and 
 the ransomed mind shall see " face to face," in the im- 
 mediate and intuitive perception of unmixed and un- 
 clouded truth. 
 
 Most of all, and greatest of all, man's moral nature 
 is restored hereafter to an absolute perfection. It was 
 here that defection began ; not in man's reason, not in 
 his body, but in his free-will. His affections have been 
 perverted, his likings and dislikings have not been in 
 accordance with what was right and good. We have 
 studied that wonderful method by which God designs 
 to recover man's alienated affections ; not by wrath, 
 not by menace, not by authority, not by fear — but by 
 the expression of his own love in the life and death 
 
MORAL PERFECTION. 225 
 
 of his Son. This is the method of man's change and 
 recovery. 
 
 Restoration begins where began the malady. But 
 there is no promise of its completion in this present life. 
 It goes on, but it is not consummated. Various meth- 
 ods are employed by God for its advancement. Some- 
 times, bitter medicines are needful for the cure ; some- 
 times severe surgery and painful amputations. Affec- 
 tions become detached from objects to which they have 
 clung with idolatry, by a friendly force. The Spirit 
 of God applies its curative help. By little and little, 
 by this method and by that, the enfeebled will becomes 
 vitalized with new strength, and the new man is devel- 
 oped out of the old. The believer in Christ is re- 
 deemed, is regenerated, but he is not restored. Life 
 has begun, and that is great ; but it is not yet perfected, 
 which is the greatest. Goodness in this life is the re- 
 sult of effort, and care, and vigilance. What is gained 
 is retained with difficulty. The new contends against 
 the old. That long strife at last will end in complete 
 victory. The will, now inclined to evil, will be dis- 
 posed only to good, and the soul at last is for ever de- 
 livered from the bondage of sin. 
 
 To say that redeemed man will be as holy in the sec- 
 ond Paradise as was man in the first, seems to be but a 
 faint expression of that great promise which pertains to 
 
 the ultimate perfection of humanity. He shall be holy 
 
 10* 
 
226 PARADISE. 
 
 as God is holy. Truly, literally, shall it be so. Hard 
 may it be for you, disciple of Christ, even to conceive 
 of such a result, amid the fears, struggles, and de- 
 spondencies, of your probationary life. But nothing 
 short of this would meet the wish or promise of the 
 Redeemer. You must strive to rise up to the great 
 idea, absolute holiness — duty without reluctance, obe- 
 dience without defect, affection without reserve, grati- 
 tude without alloy, the conscious doing of what is right 
 without any sense of imperfection. Judge not that the 
 conversion and partial sanctification of man — great as 
 is that achievement — is the full result which Christ 
 contemplates in redemption. He turns not from that 
 which he begins till it is amply and for ever completed. 
 He intends that every one who believes on him shall 
 hereafter be with him and like him, sharing in his own 
 immaculate holiness, and resplendent as a star in his 
 royal diadem. 
 
 I have not yet mentioned that special provision by 
 which holiness in Paradise is distinguished from holi- 
 ness in Eden — even the guaranty of the Almighty — 
 which secures it from a second apostacy. This will be 
 presented in its proper place and time ; but, just now, 
 let us receive the full impression of the revealed fact that 
 the soul of man, redeemed from sin, born again by the 
 will of God, here on earth, will, in the promised and 
 prepared Paradise, become perfect as our Father in 
 
NO MORE CURSE. 227 
 
 heaven is perfect. We falter at the great conception. 
 It seems like immodesty and presumption in us to as- 
 pire after it. But it is the calm, sober hope of our 
 redeemed nature — likeness to Him who became like 
 unto us — perfection of body, mind, and soul. 
 
 The next thing to be mentioned is, that the future 
 condition of man will correspond precisely unto his 
 character. This is never the case on the earth, even 
 with the best of our species. The promise is conveyed 
 in these words : " And there shall be no more curse." 
 
 The world in which we now are is under a curse, the 
 shadow of which passes upon all its inhabitants. It 
 marks our entrance into life, and our mode of exit from 
 it. The evil of which we speak came in with trans- 
 gression. There was no sign of it in the garden where 
 man was originally placed. Nature had no agency 
 with which to terrify and afflict, but all wherewith to 
 bless and rejoice man in his innocence. Man sinned, 
 and the displeasure of the Almighty followed, as thun- 
 der follows the lightning's flash. The curse was upon 
 man, and upon the ground for his sake. The curse was 
 upon woman : sorrow multiplied, and her own feet en- 
 tering the precincts of death to receive the life of her 
 offspring. The curse of death was upon them both. 
 " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." 
 
 The gospel of Christ has wrought wonderful changes 
 in man's physical condition, and it is destined to achieve 
 
228 PARADISE. 
 
 jet many more ; but, as long as we are in the world, no 
 quality or degree of goodness will exempt us from the 
 universal calamity which impends over our species. 
 We are born in helplessness, live in sorrow, die in an- 
 guish, and are buried in shame. In regard to the true 
 believer in Christ, this common curse is mitigated, but 
 not removed. He has been taught to hope and smile 
 amid tribulations, but tribulations are his. The spot- 
 less Son of God came under the curse himself, that he 
 might lift it off from our sad and suffering nature, and 
 restore those whom he redeems to an unmingled joy. 
 He became subject unto death, that we might die no 
 more. But that result of redemption is ultimate. The 
 prospect of a mysterious dissolution of body and spirit 
 makes a part of our present probationary experience, 
 and, through fear of it, many, through all their lifetime, 
 are subject to bondage. Nor is this strange. Death 
 is a curse ; and, though the restorative grace of God 
 overrules the evil for a higher good, yet no promise, no 
 hope, can render death itself any other than a terrible 
 evil. It is the retribution of sin. Though the retribu- 
 tive law is attempered and modified by the introduction 
 of mercy, it is not wholly suspended as yet. Excepting 
 those natural and constituted penalties of sinful courses, 
 Christian believers are subject to the same forms of death 
 as other men. No promise exempts them from the 
 physical pains of dissolution. The same cold prostra- 
 
LIFE EVERLASTING. 229 
 
 tion, the same convulsive spasms, the same acuteness 
 of pain, the same pantings for breath, for them as for 
 others. There is but one way for any to pass out of 
 the world who have once entered into it. 
 
 Entirely and absolutely reversed will be the condi- 
 tions of that future state to which the redeemed shall 
 be translated. There the retributive consequences of 
 sin will be more than mitigated — even removed and 
 terminated for ever. For thus is it written : " There 
 shall be no more curse." — "And God shall wipe 
 away all tears from their eyes ; and there shall be no 
 more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall 
 there be any more pain, for the former things are 
 passed away." 
 
 For the former things are passed away. The last 
 vestige of the curse disappears. Those evils, which piety 
 itself could not escape in this present life — which are 
 common to all in the world which sin invaded and 
 cursed — are known no more, not even in shadow, in 
 that world where redemption is complete. "We die but 
 once. Death once passed, our only concern with it is 
 in the joyful recollection of deliverance from an evil 
 which is never to be repeated. Neither shall they die 
 any more. Not a tear is shed in the celestial Paradise. 
 Life, with no abrupt or violent termination — life, with 
 no age, no decay, no infirmity, and no end — the life 
 everlasting- ! The last shadow of the curse passed 
 
230 PARADISE. 
 
 away, and humanity ransomed and restored, lifted up 
 above the reach of all those necessities, burdens, griefs, 
 sufferings, fears, which belong to this state of discipline, 
 to that very life and blessedness of God which knows 
 neither mixture, nor peril, nor change. Then, and not 
 till then, will Christ be satisfied with the result of his 
 great redemption. The greatest changes which the 
 Redeemer accomplishes on earth, marvellous as they 
 are, are only the partial fulfilment of his great purpose. 
 Toward that ultimate issue all things are tending, and 
 every benignant effect of the gospel in this life is but 
 an index and pledge of those greater results which be- 
 long to the life which is to come. 
 
 We have only begun the mention of those elements 
 of blessedness which describe the Paradise of the Re- 
 deemer. We must observe wherein it actually advances 
 and improves upon that Paradise which once was upon 
 the earth. God's ways are from the lower to the higher 
 — from the less to the greater. Not only are there 
 some ingredients in that future blessedness which are 
 never known on earth, but special arrangements are 
 provided for their continuance and perpetuity. 
 
 Enough, however, has been mentioned already to 
 excite our gratitude in behalf of those who, redeemed 
 by the grace of Christ, have been removed out of this 
 world ; and in behalf of ourselves also, that we may 
 share in the hope of so great salvation. The Para- 
 
OPEN TO ALL. 231 
 
 dise of God is open to all who believe in the redemp- 
 tion of our Lord. Instead of cherubim with flaming 
 sword, interdicting approach to that enclosure of bles- 
 sedness, every being within it, walking amid its trees, 
 and reposing in its security, He who prepared it, the 
 Spirit and the Bride, together join in inviting and wel- 
 coming all to its eternal delight. As we can find no 
 Paradise on earth, let us be sure to seek that Paradise 
 which is in heaven ! 
 
XIII. 
 
 MAN'S ULTIMATE PERFECTION. 
 
 It is one advantage of the method we have pur- 
 sued, of studying the great facts of Christian anthro- 
 pology, in their consecutive order, that man's ultimate 
 perfection, as restored by the Son of God, appears 
 to be the fitting climax of that redemptive process 
 which is in progress before our eyes. Having seen 
 wherein our common nature has suffered injury and de- 
 flection, we have been able to comprehend the nature 
 of that aid which has been supplied by the Redeemer. 
 It only remains that this work of redemption should be 
 carried on unto perfection, to give us the scriptural 
 conception of that ultimate blessedness which is in re- 
 serve for recovered humanity. Heaven is not an arbi- 
 trary bestowal, but the result, the completion, and cor- 
 onation of that which is begun on earth, through the 
 grace of the Redeemer. 
 
NOT POETIC DESCRIPTION. 233 
 
 Nothing, as we believe, is more unproductive of 
 good, than indiscriminate descriptions of the heaveuly 
 state, through the poetic faculties. One may gather up 
 all the material images which describe that world of 
 joy ; his imagination may revel amid visions of gar- 
 dens, and palaces, of green meadows, and golden 
 streets, all forms of splendor, and beauty, and security, 
 and contentment, yea, even of praise, and adoration, 
 without obtaining one definite idea of what are the es- 
 sential elements of that celestial blessedness. It is one 
 of the rudiments of our religious belief, even now, that 
 our happiness depends, not so much on our circumstances 
 as our characters ; not so much on what we have as what 
 we are ; not on what is around us as what is within us. 
 Follow the same rule of judgment throughout an inter- 
 minable existence. Tell us not altogether of the mate- 
 rial magnificence of that city of God, that metropolis 
 of the universe, which is to be the abode of the re- 
 deemed, but more of the elements which enter into its 
 great joy^ so that we may decide whether we have any 
 affinity with its glorious delights. Address our imagi- 
 nation less, and our reason and moral affections more. 
 Now, this is the peculiarity of inspired revelation on 
 this subject. Herein it differs from that play of fancy, 
 born of gorgeous Orientalism, which runs riot in the 
 Koran of the Arabic impostor, when describing his im- 
 aginary Paradise. 
 
PARADISE. 
 
 Trespassing not one step beyond the limits of actual 
 revelation, we mention as the next element of future 
 bless ss, sensible and joyful communion with God. 
 
 When man is first introduced in the inspired rec- 
 ords, living in Eden, and that Eden as yet unblighted, 
 we find him in happy intercourse with his Maker. As 
 the earth and sky seem to touch, in the breaking of 
 the morning along the eastern horizon, so did God 
 and man. actually meet and commingle in the morn- 
 ing of man's history. Without speculating as to the 
 form and method of that communication, without pres- 
 sing too far that language which describes the Cre- 
 ator as speaking to his image, walking in the garden 
 with him, we feel assured that man's intercourse with 
 bis Maker was sensible, direct, and joyful. God was 
 seen, known, and felt to be present, his existence 
 not being inferred as now by a process of the rea- 
 son. That intercourse was not only direct, immedi- 
 ate, and sensible, but it was a source of ineffable 
 delight. Loving his Maker to the full extent of his 
 capacities, man had nothing but confidence and glad- 
 ness in his presence. Apostacy disturbed this inter- 
 course, and man was afraid, and hid himself from his 
 Creator. 
 
 To say that God withdrew himself henceforth from 
 man, would convey a misconception, if the words were 
 subject to a literal construction ; for God's thoughts 
 
VISION OF GOD. 235 
 
 were active on man's recovery. Nevertheless, the 
 method of God's intercourse with man was suited to 
 those altered relations which sin had induced. At 
 length communication is re-established ; but with a 
 veiled face and intermediate symbols. Not even the 
 most favored of our race, not the chosen shepherd 
 of Horeb, into whose hands the tables of the law 
 were committed, was permitted to see the face of 
 God. Fear, as begotten of conscious guilt, was the 
 regnant sentiment of the human soul. From the cleft 
 of a rock man might catch a glimpse of the passing 
 and receding glory of God. In the august precincts 
 of the tabernacle, the high-priest, the one man who 
 was the anointed representative of all other men — 
 and death smote whomsoever beside him presumed 
 upon that sanctity — saw the Shechinah, the burn- 
 ing splendor which symbolized the actual presence 
 of the Almighty. At length God revealed himself 
 again, nearer, closer than before, not in flame, not in 
 whirlwind and tempest, not in descending chariots of 
 fire, but in a human form. He is in actual con- 
 tact with our own nature. He re-establishes inter- 
 course with his creatures on terms which excite confi- 
 dence and awaken love. He enters into man's home ; 
 sits at his table ; and converses with him face to 
 face. Withdrawing himself again, for a season, he 
 sends his Spirit into man's heart, enkindles the sense 
 
236 PARADISE. 
 
 of adoption, communicates his own love, and enables 
 the regenerated soul to say, " Truly, our fellowship is 
 with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." Nev- 
 ertheless, this sense of God's being and favor struggles 
 against many opposing influences. We have not seen 
 God at any time. If we love him, if we believe in 
 him, we believe and we love him whom we have not 
 seen. 
 
 Our faith and love are subject to manifold inter- 
 ruptions. The evidence of God's presence is much like 
 the light which shines, now and then, through the crev- 
 ices of the rifted clouds. The best intercourse of the 
 most favored men with their Maker, in the transfigu- 
 rations of devotion, is imperfect. It is unsatisfactory, 
 and provokes hungerings and thirstings after some 
 manifestation of God more direct and sensible. Mean- 
 while this process of spiritual reconciliation and recov- 
 ery is going on, and the promise of redemption is, that 
 man again shall see the face of his God. Now, par- 
 tially restored, man sees through a glass darkly, but ul- 
 timately his intercourse with his Maker shall be imme- 
 diate, uninterrupted, direct, and joyful. Through the 
 mighty power of Him who assumed our nature, we shall 
 be as truly reconciled to God, harmonized with him, and 
 associated with him, as if the shadow of sin, and fear, 
 and repulsion, had never passed upon the soul. One of 
 the great promises of Scripture is, that the " taberna- 
 
INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 237 
 
 cle of God shall be with men, and he shall be their 
 God, and they shall be his people." The promise 
 is conveyed in symbolical language. As the ancient 
 tabernacle was the place where in a special, nay, 
 exclusive sense, God made a manifestation of him- 
 self, we are to understand, by the language here 
 employed, that he will establish such a direct inter- 
 course with men that they shall perceive and enjoy 
 his immediate presence. 
 
 Of similar import is the promise concerning the new 
 Jerusalem which is to come down from heaven, having; 
 the glory of God, in which is no temple, " for the Lord 
 God Almighty and the Lamb are the light thereof." 
 Once there was a temple in which God revealed himself 
 to devout worshippers. But it was a temple with a 
 vail between man and his Maker — a manifestation of 
 God, restricted, partial, and incomplete. Hereafter 
 there shall be no such temple, no wall, no gate, no 
 court, no separation, no vail, no restriction, no mystery, 
 and no interdict ; more than what the temple was to 
 the Priest heaven shall be to the ransomed — who are 
 all priests and kings unto God. No limitations of 
 place, and mode, and form, shall obstruct the revela- 
 tion of God's glory, but his children shall see his face, 
 and he shall smile on them, and dwell with them for 
 ever. 
 
 See his face? Actually, literally, certainly. They 
 
238 PARADISE. 
 
 shall see God. What do we intend when we speak of 
 seeing objects with the eye, that most satisfactory of all 
 our senses ? The eye does not see ; it is itself a curi- 
 ous apparatus which enables the intelligent spirit within 
 to discern the images of objects without. Arrange an 
 optical instrument in imitation of the lenses of the eye, 
 and throw the images thus produced on a blank, dead 
 wall. Does the wall see ? It is the spiritual lodger 
 within which receives the impression of those images, 
 transmitted to it by means of this curious mechanism 
 of the eye. This eye, at length, will be sealed in 
 death. Films, darkness, decay, dust, will be the end 
 of those optics, the beauty and fidelity of which no hu- 
 man skill can reconstruct. But of this we may be sure, 
 in that ultimate perfection of the spiritual body, we 
 shall have not less but more of that very delight and 
 satisfaction which we now derive from the use of the 
 eye. What limited objects are those which are painted 
 on the retina of this small organ ! 
 
 In the economy of redemption things advance from 
 less to greater. Nothing good and useful in us will be 
 dwarfed in the spiritual body. That also will have its 
 media of communication. Confound not what is spirit- 
 ual with the dim, the vague, and the shadowy. It is 
 while in this body of clay, with a veil and burden of 
 flesh, that we are subject to such a misconception. 
 Hereafter we shall see God — see him as he is — see 
 
JOYFUL 'ACTIVITY. 239 
 
 him face to face. Not then, as now, shall we reason 
 out the conviction of his existence, inferring the at- 
 tributes of his nature from the attributes of his works ; 
 not then, as now, shall we believe in God by the 
 power of faith in an invisible object : but the percep- 
 tion of his presence will be so sensible, immediate, 
 and complete, that no word can so well express it as 
 sight. 
 
 And this intercourse with God will be the source of 
 infinite delight, because God himself will there be the 
 object of supreme love. Love asks no greater pleasure 
 than the presence of its object. " Brethren, we know 
 not now what we shall be." Love for God is so im- 
 perfect, so inadequate, that in its very highest exercise 
 it is now associated with a painful sense of defect and 
 demerit. Conceive what it will be when, made perfect, 
 it ejects fear ; and, greater than all, when it outgrows 
 the sense of shame, that shadow of sin, it shall live in 
 utmost confidence, in immediate intercourse, with its 
 object. So man had communion with God at the be- 
 ginning, in Eden ; so shall he again commune with him, 
 in Paradise — seeing him, walking with him, resembling 
 him, resting in his bosom. The sky and the earth touch 
 again, and man once more is brought back to the love 
 and vision of his God. 
 
 Nor is this ultimate perfection of humanity an inac- 
 tive repose. Man's eternal sabbath is not a sleep. 
 
240 PARADISE. 
 
 Next to the removal of every curse, the perfection of 
 
 . soul, and spirit, and the actual vision of G 
 the joyful activity of man s renovated nature ; or. 
 is prominently set forth among the many inspired prom- 
 
 - rtaining to that future state. •• His servants shall 
 serve him. v 
 
 It was thought not unworthy of mention by the Holy 
 Ghost, among the many sources of delight which man 
 enjoyed in primeval Eden, that he was placed in the 
 garden to till and to keep it. Occupation was the 
 pleasure of innocence. The exercise of his own facul- 
 ties of bodv and mind was essential to his blessedness. 
 Man was made for action, as streams are made to 
 flow. He was God's image and likeness, and God is 
 life and action, motion and power. Sin entered, and 
 retribution changed irork into labor. As man must 
 needs expend and employ his vital strength, and. as he 
 himself is deflected from the right way. that expendi- 
 ture is difficult and toilsome. The curse doomed man 
 to earn and eat his bread by the sweat of his brow. 
 So many are the advantages of which we are all con- 
 scious in connection with industrious habits and con- 
 stant occupation, that with difficulty we comprehend 
 how that was ever a curse which seems now a posi- 
 tive blessing. Let us remember that we are living un- 
 der a remedial and restorative system : that Christi- 
 anitv has immensely modified and changed man's con- 
 
GLEESOME WORK. 241 
 
 dition already ; that the curse has been mitigated and 
 lightened ; and we have only to anticipate the promised 
 time when there shall be no more curse, to satisfy our- 
 selves what enjoyment will spring from the brisk and 
 unwearied exercise of our immortal powers. 
 
 To understand what was meant by that curse which 
 doomed man to sweat and labor, we must go beyond 
 the genial light and benignant influences of the Chris- 
 tian redemption, where man is compelled to sustain a 
 cheerless existence, plodding on like the beasts which 
 perish, with little hope, little courage, and little re- 
 ward. The Christian religion has done so much for 
 us, that we forget the palpable fact that the immense 
 majority of the human race, at this very hour, are 
 doomed to drudgery and back-breaking labor for a bare 
 subsistence. It is as though they were forced to grind 
 in the prisonhousc of their great and cruel captor, and 
 they groan, being burdened. 
 
 The redemption of Christ plants hope in the human 
 soul, and, gradually ameliorating our condition, con- 
 verts labor back again to work, lifts off the pressure 
 which crowds and crushes, and gives free play to the 
 unfettered faculties. Man redeemed, tastes the pleas- 
 ure of occupation under the impulse of new motives ; 
 couples fervor of spirit with serving the Lord, industry 
 with religion, and so, instead of groaning, he hums con- 
 tentment at his work ; and the more busy he is, from 
 
 11 
 
242 PARADISE. 
 
 religious motives, the more blessed he becomes. Carry 
 out this idea to a consummated result ; divest work of 
 weariness and exhaustion ; restore humanity from its 
 inbred and inveterate malady of indolence ; make oc- 
 cupation congenial and grateful, and let our recovered 
 nature find its joy in the smooth working of all its 
 varied faculties. So will it be hereafter. In this im- 
 perfect state we associate work — work in good causes 
 and from good motives — even the whole matter of a 
 religious living — too much with necessity and obliga- 
 tion ; and we urge ourselves to effort where at last 
 there will be the fullness of spontaneous life. His ser- 
 vo///.-; shall serve hint. Not from compulsion, not re- 
 luctantly, not laboriously, not against opposing wishes 
 and purposes, but joyfully, as the lark springs up and 
 mounts to the gates of heaven, pouring out its gleesome 
 song in a rapture of delight. 
 
 I stood at the bedside of a most intelligent Christian, 
 waiting for her great change to come. She was full of 
 joyful anticipation. " Oh," said she, " to ' run with 
 willing- feet in the way of God's commandments,' what 
 a gladsome promise is that !" It was a most discrimi- 
 nating perception of this very element of future bles- 
 sedness — His servants shall serve him — with no draw- 
 ing back, no urgency, no idea of necessity — moving 
 and obeying because we must — but with cheerful alac- 
 rity, and with all the powers of the ransomed soul 
 
HEAVENLY REST. 243 
 
 flaming in one direction of unmixed, uncoerced, and un- 
 impeded choice. The angels who do God's command- 
 ments are as flames of fire, alert and resplendent in 
 their promptitude. Our daily prayer at last will be 
 accomplished : we shall do the will of God, as it is now 
 done in heaven. The spiritual body shall know no fa- 
 tigue, and no necessity for recruiting its exhausted 
 strength by sleep. 
 
 There are limits to action in this life. We can not 
 carry even our religious occupations beyond a certain 
 bound. Greeting the sabbath morning with gratitude 
 and joy, and engaging in its praises and delights, when 
 evening comes we find that even Christian adoration 
 and well-doing can not exceed the limits of our nature ; 
 and the last thought which passes through our minds, 
 ere sleep visits us, is of that world where there is no 
 night — not any necessity for restorative rest, but one 
 unwearied life. 
 
 It has been thought by some as quite a solecism when 
 Baxter, in his immortal description of the saint's ever- 
 lasting rest, called it an active rest. Undoubtedly the 
 idea present to his mind was precisely this : that man 
 will not rest in heaven as a stone rests on the earth ; 
 but, exempted from all which is disagreeable and irk- 
 some, all that is coerced and compulsory, he shall find 
 his highest satisfaction in flights of spontaneous obedi- 
 ence : — 
 
244 PARADISE. 
 
 "Rest is not quitting 
 The busy career; 
 Rest is the fitting 
 Of self to its sphere. 
 
 " 'Tis the brook's motion, 
 Clear without strife — 
 Fleeing to ocean 
 After its life. 
 
 " 'Tis loving and serving 
 The Greatest and Best ; 
 'Tis onward — unswerving — 
 And this is true rest !" 
 
 What forms of service await restored humanity — 
 what, occupations shall furnish occasion for its reno- 
 vated activity — to what labor of love, what ministra- 
 tions of mercy, what vigorous work, or sweet grace, the 
 redeemed shall be invited — we may not conjecture; 
 but surely He who gives us so much to do on earth, 
 and so much pleasure in doing it, will not fail, amid 
 the relations of all worlds and all beings, in furnishing 
 to man, restored to his loyalty, abundant occupation : 
 
 "For every power finds sweet employ 
 In that eternal world of joy." 
 
 Belonging to that ultimate issue and completion of 
 redemption, there will be a public recognition and pro- 
 motion of all who share in its benefits. This is ex- 
 pressed in the promise — " His name shall be in their 
 foreheads.'''' If the language be tropical, it is easy of 
 interpretation. On the fore-front of his mitre, on the 
 
PUBLIC RECOGNITION. 245 
 
 surface of a blazing diamond, the high-priest wore the 
 ineffable name of Jehovah. In the joyful worship of 
 the skies, every redeemed man shall be distinguished as 
 such. Here he wears the name of Christ in his heart. 
 In this living tablet it dwells .by faith. Yet is he often 
 disturbed with doubts and apprehensions relative to his 
 own character. With great concern and solicitude does 
 he ponder the question whether he is one of those who 
 will stand with the Redeemer on Mount Zion above. 
 Restoration being incomplete as yet, he is subject to 
 many painful uncertainties concerning himself, like one 
 in process of recovery from a long and painful illness, 
 who is sensible of much weakness, and subject to many 
 depressions. At last, when restoration is complete, 
 these doubts shall be solved, and these fears dissi- 
 pated for ever. The name of the Redeemer shall be in 
 his forehead, clear and bright as the star in the morn- 
 ing sky ; and man, redeemed and restored, stands be- 
 fore the universe the acknowledged child of God, the 
 visible crown and success of redemption. 
 
 Often are we mistaken here in our judgment of oth- 
 ers. The true followers of the Redeemer are frequently 
 overlooked and unknown, while others are exalted into 
 observation by a false promotion. Every mistake will 
 be rectified in that ultimate issue, when righteous judg- 
 ment shall prevail, and the name of the Lamb shall 
 flame on the brow of every redeemed man. The Son 
 
246 PARADISE. 
 
 of God has not expended so much for waste. Esteem- 
 ing those he redeems as his jewels, the regalia of his 
 kingdom, he will not suffer them to be lost, but will 
 gather them up, exhibit and acknowledge them, as the 
 results, honors, and rewards, with which his own soul 
 is satisfied. Redemption will not then appear the am- 
 biguous and incomplete thing which it sometimes seems 
 to our present purblind vision ; but in its manifested 
 triumphs, its complete consummation — man lifted up 
 from every depression, promoted out of every obscu- 
 rity, rescued from every shame — the image of God as 
 at the beginning — God's own resplendent child and 
 heir! 
 
XIV. 
 
 THE PERFECTED RESULT OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 As one who has been long and laboriously travelling 
 along miry roads, perplexed with gulleys and stones, 
 through dark woods, disagreeable fens and marshes, 
 overspread by dense and unwholesome fogs, at length 
 reaches the smooth top of a hill, where he finds the air 
 clear and tonic, the sky without a cloud, every obstruc- 
 tion left behind, and the landscape stretching away in 
 bright and beautiful perspective — so we, who have been 
 studying the great facts of man's moral history — his 
 temptation and his fall, the failure of all attempts at 
 self-recuperation, the griefs which depress him, the ret- 
 ributions which overtake him, the death through which 
 he must pass, the vicarious sorrows by which he was 
 redeemed, and all the varied conflicts and difficulties of 
 his gradual restoration — are now brought to a " great 
 and high mountain," where we behold man's redemp- 
 
248 PARADISE. 
 
 tion complete, himself mingling with the crowd of heav- 
 enly worshippers, and a partaker of all the joys and 
 honors of his Father's kingdom. 
 
 It is no Icarian wing of imagination to which we in- 
 trust ourselves for an adventurous flight. Divine rev- 
 elation is our guide, and religious faith with steadfast 
 and unfaltering strength shall bear us up to the " Mount 
 Zion which is above." It has well been observed : " If 
 meditation of the future and invisible world be liable 
 to any abuse, or may be likely to degenerate into in- 
 sipid or presumptuous conceits, it is only when the first 
 principles of the gospel are lost sight of. The contem- 
 platist goes astray when he forgets himself and his 
 guide — when he muses idly of heaven, as if there had 
 been no transgression and were no redemption. And 
 the difficulty also as well as the hazard of such attempts 
 to rise above the present scene, or to penetrate the in- 
 visible world, is enhanced, or is indeed rendered insu- 
 perable, when our actual position as those who have 
 been restored is not kept in mind ; but, on the contrary, 
 is obviated while we look to Him who, as Precursor, 
 has trodden all the path of existence, even from the 
 low starting-point of humanity, through death, to the 
 upper region of perpetual pleasure."* 
 
 The revelation of the Christian mystery, " God mani- 
 
 * Isaac Taylor. 
 
ULTIMATE ISSUE. 249 
 
 fest in the flesh" as our Redeemer — this, and nothing 
 but this, gives impulse, substance, hope, and reason, 
 to the meditations of the heavenly state. Certainly it 
 is in the Christian revelation that we see that door 
 opened in heaven through which we may behold the 
 throne of our Maker, and man bending with angels in 
 joyful adoration. 
 
 The place where we are now to take our stand of 
 observation is far beyond the mount of Olives, Geth- 
 semane, and Calvary. Far away is it beyond death — 
 ay, beyond the resurrection, and beyond the judgment. 
 The graves are behind and not before us. Long ago 
 have these been despoiled, and forced to give up their 
 treasures. The conflagration of the world, the dissol- 
 ving of the elements, are events which have passed. 
 All that is meant by the new heavens and the new 
 earth, whatever they arc, has actually come. All that 
 Christian men have anticipated, oftentimes with a sort of 
 incredulous and bewildered apprehension, has emerged 
 from the region of faith into actual vision. The myste- 
 ries of Christian belief have passed out from clouds and 
 reserve into the full sunshine of unobstructed compre- 
 hension. Man, as we now shall see him, in that farthest 
 point of observation to which inspiration carries our 
 power of vision, is not the form now so familiar to our 
 eyes, crippled, deformed, diseased, bent, clad in rags, 
 
 with face soiled by dust, and sweat, and tears : not the 
 
 11* 
 
250 PARADISE. 
 
 form as last we saw it when going from the earth, cold, 
 pallid, lifeless, bound about with grave-clothes : it is an 
 ethereal form — a glorious body — a form of strength, 
 and grace, and light — clothed in honor and immor- 
 tality : — 
 
 " Creature all grandeur, son of truth and light, 
 Up from the dust ! the last great day is bright — 
 Bright on the Holy Mountain, round the throne — 
 Bright where in borrowed light the far stars shone ! 
 Look down : the depths are bright ; and hear them cry — 
 ' Light !' — ' Light !' Look up : 'tis rushing down from high ! 
 Regions on regions — far away they shine ; 
 'Tis light ineffable, 'tis light divine — 
 Immortal light, and life for evermore !" 
 
 Lord Bolingbroke was accustomed to say, in the 
 way of caricaturing the Christian representation of the 
 heavenly world, that the prospect of an endless sing- 
 ing of hymns, so far from being an occasion of joyful 
 anticipation, was only a weariness and disgust. One 
 can not but be grieved at the mistakes which occurred 
 in the early education of this distinguished man. We 
 have no doubt that irradicable prejudices against the 
 Christian religion were excited in his mind by certain 
 forms of well-intended but indiscreet action of pious 
 relatives. The wonder is, that his adult reason — and 
 certainly it was of no ordinary character — should have 
 confounded tropical language with literal representa- 
 tion, to such a degree as actually to lose sight of the 
 substantial joy of the heavenly life in a dislike of the 
 
FULLNESS OF JOY. 251 
 
 figurative and extrinsic form in which it is described. 
 With little taste for religious worship himself, it is not 
 strange that he distasted the heavenly joy which is 
 symbolized in the form of gladsome adoration. He 
 should not have forgotten that there were those who 
 possessed other and different tastes. He should have 
 remembered that there were those among men who 
 associated nothing displeasing or irksome with the acts 
 of religious worship. 
 
 The author of the eighty-fourth psalm had none 
 but joyful associations with that sabbath service. As 
 on that day of gladness the inhabitants of city and 
 country flocked together to the courts of the Lord, 
 within the gates of the Holy City, young and old com- 
 ing up from the valleys of the vine and the olive — 
 from strength to strength, the confluent tribes receiving 
 fresh recruits at the opening of every glen, and the 
 descent of every hill — into their glorious temple, and 
 there, with voices and with instruments, pouring out 
 the swelling chorus amid all forms of jubilation, be 
 assured that to all who joined in that service the 
 world could present no other images or symbols of 
 equal gladness. 
 
 It is gladness which is portrayed to us in the forms 
 of celestial worship. The reality set forth by this 
 representation is fullness of joy. It is pleasure, pleas- 
 ure pure, pleasure for evermore, which is described as 
 
252 PARADISE. 
 
 the regnant emotion of the heavenly world. Praise 
 is the expression of delight. In this imperfect state 
 we discipline ourselves to look upon pleasure with sus- 
 picion and distrust ; because we have discovered that 
 there are so many pleasures which mislead us, syren 
 voices which allure to mischief and disappointment. 
 Never should we lose sight, however, of the truth, that 
 pleasure, positive pleasure, is the true law and ultimate 
 object of our existence. We were made for enjoyment. 
 
 Restraint, negation, reserve, do not define the law 
 of our being. Requisite are they, essentially requisite 
 now that we have gone astray from true happiness ; but 
 when the right way has been re-entered, and the right 
 objects have been chosen, then shall we find rivers of 
 pleasure and fullness of joy. Redemption restores and 
 more than restores that which was the chief end of our 
 being — enjoyment, positive enjoyment. 
 
 The mediation of Christ reaches its climax in irre- 
 pressible songs. Self-restraint, self-subjection, under 
 the necessities of confession and humiliation, are be- 
 coming our present imperfect condition, but they will 
 be lost for ever, when our restoration is complete. 
 Every image which denotes the purest joy is introduced 
 into this description of the ultimate blessedness of the 
 redeemed. They are clad in white, the wedding gar- 
 ments of a great festivity. Music is the natural utter- 
 ance of their delight. Nor is this a strained and artifi- 
 
POSITIVE PLEASURE. 253 
 
 cial expression. It is full-toned chorus ; it is hearty 
 praise ; it is jubilant adoration. There is waving of 
 incense from golden censers. There is the lifting up 
 of triumphant palms. There is the casting of golden 
 crowns at the feet of the enthroned. There is " the 
 voice of harpers harping with their harps." And the 
 song of multitudes, whom no man can number, ten 
 thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thou- 
 sands, is as the voice of many waters, and as the voice 
 of a great thunder : and as that doxology of the Re- 
 deemer waxes louder and fuller, the very pillars and 
 arches of heaven are tremulous with joy. Divested 
 of all that is tropical and symbolical in form, the one 
 idea conveyed to us is, that the climacteric of re- 
 demption is full, irrepressible, eternal joy. A religion 
 which falls short of positive and unfailing pleasure, as 
 the ultimate law of life, can not meet the necessities of 
 humanity. 
 
 Redemption is an advance on creation. It more 
 than regains what was lost, more than restores what 
 was original. The burden of that heavenly song 
 is salvation, blessing, and thanksgiving. The sec- 
 ond Paradise is better than Eden. The joy of man 
 redeemed, restored, and perfected, is greater than that 
 of man in the glory of his innocence. 
 
 There was a happy home, the abode of plenty, and 
 love, and confidence, and joy. Temptation invaded it, 
 
254 PARADISE. 
 
 and the young son was seduced into extravagance, 
 dissipation, and disobedience. He leaves his father's 
 house, and abandons himself to the vilest company, 
 and the worst courses. There is sorrow in that des- 
 olate home. The afflicted father sits silent and droop- 
 ing at his own hearth ; for his son is worse than dead 
 to him — lost in character, lost to himself, and lost 
 to hope. The vagrant boy at length reaches the re- 
 sult of his folly and guilt. He is reduced to beggary, 
 shame, and famine. He is far from home. He is 
 with strangers who treat him as if he never had a 
 home. Do no thoughts of that loved spot he had for- 
 saken, and of those loved ones whom he has injured, 
 ever tug at his heart-strings ? He comes to himself — 
 wakes from his dream of madness, repents before God, 
 impeaches himself for folly and sin, and resolves to re- 
 turn to his injured father. He can not think of being 
 reinstated in his place as a son, but would be con- 
 tent with the lowest place as a servant. Penitent, 
 doubtful, ashamed, heart-broken, he comes in sight of 
 his childhood's home ; and his father's love was quicker 
 than his own confession ; ere he could speak, his father 
 has caught him in his arms, pressed him to his heart, 
 kissed him, forgiven him, and with ineffable pity and 
 love, welcomed him back to safety. There was mu- 
 sic, there was feasting, there was dancing, everything 
 which could express the joy which was felt in recover- 
 
PROMISED PERPETUITY. 25") 
 
 ing him who was counted as lost and as dead. It were 
 hard for us to tell which of the twain was the happier, 
 that loving father or the forgiven son. Were not the 
 tears which streamed that night upon the pillow of that 
 penitent boy, warm, and sweet, and blessed ? "We can 
 not but think that some emotion of shame always lin- 
 gered amid his gratitude, to give it a tinge of sadness 
 — but imagine that love had deepened, and strengthened 
 to such a degree in the lapse of years, that it outmas- 
 tered all lesser emotions, would not the enjoyment of 
 that restored son be enhanced through gratitude for his 
 recovery ? 
 
 The love of restored man is to be perfect. It will 
 outlive the sense of shame. But gratitude is a new ele- 
 ment in its life. Joy on being recovered out of shame, 
 and sin, and misery, and death, is its distinctive quality. 
 Salvation is the burden of its song. Thanksgiving is 
 the key-note of its music. The rejoicing of heaven is 
 more and greater than rejoicing at creation. It is a 
 new song which is chanted by the redeemed. 
 
 Another element of that celestial joy, giving it a 
 higher tone than that of the first Paradise on earth, is 
 its promised perpetuity. No such quality belonged to 
 the innocence of man's first probation. The happiness 
 of man in Eden was suspended upon a contingency. It 
 would continue so long as his obedience continued. No 
 such uncertainties pertain to the final issue of redemp- 
 
256 PARADISE. 
 
 tion. Man in Eden stood in obedience, stood in him- 
 self, the issues of his high probation being suspended on 
 his own free will. But man redeemed and restored, 
 stands in Jesus Christ, in grace, in covenant, in prom- 
 ises, and so in fearless and eternal security. He is 
 removed from the region of conditions, contingencies, 
 and peradventures, to share in the changeless life of 
 his divine Redeemer. This idea is conveyed to us, 
 throughout the New Testament, in language and ima- 
 ges of the utmost strength. " Because I live," said 
 Christ, " ye shall live also." He bears the august 
 titles of " Lord of life," the " Prince of life," " the 
 Life" itself, and the life and joy of those he ransoms 
 are as secure, and changeless, and endless, as his own. 
 We wonder why sin was ever permitted to invade 
 a world under the government of omnipotent love. 
 That wonder is lessened when we learn the immense 
 gain and good which are to be secured by that grace 
 which overrules evil for its own shame and defeat. 
 Redemption solves the mystery and justifies the permit- 
 ted events of human history. That redemption com- 
 plete, there will be no second apostacy. The perpetu- 
 ity of restored humanity is guarantied by a special de- 
 cree of the Almighty. No tempter will be permitted to 
 enter the celestial Paradise. No serpent lurks beneath 
 the trees which skirt the river of life. The tenure by 
 which they who are redeemed from among men hold their 
 
AN INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 257 
 
 heavenly inheritance differs even from that which keeps 
 the holy angels in their high estate. Well may they ex- 
 ult who come home to the heavenly Zion with songs and 
 everlasting joy upon their heads. Members of his body 
 who sitteth upon the throne, oft as they turn a grateful 
 eye to him they are reminded of the perpetuity of their 
 new life. Long as Christ lives they shall live with him, 
 and in him. No cloud obscures the prospects of futu- 
 rity. The life which Christ restores is secured beyond 
 the reach of power, and accident, and apostacy, and 
 peril. It is a life of joy, without the possibility of fall- 
 ing away, and without an end ; for the well-spring of it 
 is not our personal obedience, but the life of the Re- 
 deemer, the very life of God. 
 
 It has not escaped the notice of the reader, as a part 
 of the inspired description of that future state, that it is 
 enjoyed by a multitude whom no man can number. A 
 fact so prominently set forth in revelation should not be 
 pretermitted in our regard. Because our Lord, with su- 
 pernatural sagacity, met the inquiry of a frivolous man, 
 as to the number of the saved, with a response which 
 turned his thoughts to his personal perils and necessi- 
 ties, let us not conclude that all knowledge concerning 
 the number of the ransomed is itself unimportant. A 
 weighty consideration is it to those who feel it to be no 
 small part of the difficulty against which faith is strug- 
 gling, that believers in Christ are at present in a fear- 
 
200 PARADISE. 
 
 ful minority ; an inspiriting thought is it to be assured 
 that this proportion ultimately will be reversed. The 
 worship of the skies will not be chanted in solo strains, 
 but by an innumerable multitude out of all nations, and 
 kindred, and people, and tongues. The paths which 
 now lead to the city of God have travellers few and 
 scattered ; but in that celestial metropolis where they 
 all converge, the concourse will exceed all power of 
 computation; more than the sands of the seashore — 
 more for numbers than the stars of the firmament — 
 more than drops of the morning dew. 
 
 Never indulge the apprehension in this unfinished 
 state that redemption will prove a failure, or that you 
 are committed to an illusion which will ultimately make 
 you ashamed. The soul of the Infinite will not be sat- 
 isfied with paucity of numbers. The large majority of 
 the human species die in infancy. They are simply 
 born, and die. They scarcely touch our earth ere they 
 are removed. This profusion of life is not waste, but 
 economy, for they all live unto God. They enter the 
 gates of being in connection with depressed and dying 
 humanity, that they may enter the gates of life, through 
 the grace of the Redeemer. "We shall be slow to doubt 
 that this is the Christian solution of that otherwise in- 
 explicable problem of nature — the untimely death of 
 the great majority of our race : it is not death, but sal- 
 vation. 
 
ANGELS. 259 
 
 The guests will not be wanting at the marriage sup- 
 per of the Lamb. Those who measure their own suc- 
 cess by the numbers with which they are associated, 
 will have no reason to be ashamed at that assemblage 
 of the ransomed. Such a gathering was never before 
 since the foundations of the earth were laid : the whole 
 family of the redeemed, from all the generations and 
 tribes, and centuries of time. All ages, all varieties, 
 all forms of humanity, will be there — the general as- 
 sembly of the church of the first-born who are written 
 in heaven. If we might select even now a congress 
 of characters, such as we have known, and such as we 
 have read of; if out of all the earth we might gather 
 them together, and listen to their wisdom, and share in 
 their confidence, and commune with their love ; it were 
 a privilege which should exceed the powers of our ima- 
 gination : but the positive promises of Christ in regard 
 to the perfected results of his redemption are that the 
 spirits of the just made perfect shall be congregated to- 
 gether hereafter as never they were before — all the 
 redeemed, all the perfected, in social harmony and joy. 
 Whatever shame there may be that day in the universe, 
 it will not be found among any attached to that " innu- 
 merable company." 
 
 In every description which inspiration has given us 
 of that heavenly state, mention is made of angels and 
 other orders of beings, who, not partakers of our nature, 
 
200 PARADISE. 
 
 are nevertheless to be sharers of our gratitude, and 
 praises, and joy. They, too, are represented as bowing 
 and singing before the throne of the Lamb. The song 
 of the redeemed is indeed a new song to angels who 
 have never sinned ; yet they join in it for ever and 
 ever. How can this be explained ? It is something 
 more than the sympathy of pure goodness with the glad- 
 ness of others. Indeed, it gleams on us, at times, as a 
 great wonder, how angels who shouted for joy at the 
 world's creation — who were eminent in wisdom, and 
 mighty in strength, before man was formed out of the 
 dust — could ever be made to harmonize with humanity 
 on any other terms than pity and condescension. Like 
 all other problems and mysteries, this is solved by re- 
 demption, and by this only. 
 
 The Being by whom man is redeemed and restored 
 is higher than the angels. He took not on him their 
 nature, for his condescension reached even to those 
 whom he would save. He took upon himself our na- 
 ture. He became a veritable man. ' Herein he crowned 
 man with honor and glory. He lifted up humanity, by 
 this divine alliance, so as never it was promoted in the 
 mere gradations of being. By this act, man is made 
 greater than the angels. What, " know ye not that ye 
 shall judge angels?" Is not humanity enthroned in 
 the person of the Judge ? Those mysterious beings 
 whom the Apocalypse describes in juxtaposition Avith 
 
ALL IN ONE. 261 
 
 the throne of the Almighty, with face of eagle and lion, 
 have they not also one face of a man ? 
 
 That great sweep and circuit of Christ's condescen- 
 sion, does it not encircle and include the angels ? Could 
 the eldest, wisest, greatest of the heavenly hierarchy, 
 pass by a redeemed man, or treat him with reserve, or 
 otherwise than with honor and love, without putting a 
 slight upon Him who sitteth on the throne ? That an- 
 gel who was sent to announce to the Virgin Mary the 
 high honor to be conferred on her, the mother of Christ, 
 will never look with cold condescension or disdain on 
 any human infant in heaven, since the Highest himself 
 was once a babe in Bethlehem. The shining ones who 
 were seen on the morning of the resurrection, sitting in 
 the vacant tomb of Christ, the one at the head and the 
 other at the foot, where his body was laid, will never 
 deem it beneath their rank and greatness to associate 
 with those who pass through the shame and darkness 
 of death to the skies, seeing that He whom they wor- 
 ship became a man, and himself was once the tenant of 
 the sepulchre. A partaker of our nature, he is not 
 ashamed to call us brethren. And this is the fact which 
 explains how all who are in heaven and all who are on 
 earth may be gathered together in one, through the 
 all-embracing condescension of the Incarnate. The 
 divine stooping far below them — the human lifted up 
 far above them — the angels, who never have sinned, 
 
262 PARADISE. 
 
 and so never were redeemed, catch the key-note of a 
 new anthem, and bear up with their strong voices the 
 common praise of the One Redeemer. It is not true at 
 all that redemption is a provincial measure. Even if 
 we knew that this was the only world in the creation 
 of God which is blighted by sin and restored by the 
 Redeemer, this act of redemption is not local and ter- 
 ritorial, for the incarnation of the Son of God is an act 
 which comprehends and includes all intermediate orders 
 of beings in its mighty embrace. 
 
 And this, by a most natural transition, leads us to 
 notice that Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of men, is the 
 central object in that world of adoration and joy. As, 
 so to speak, he is everywhere represented as the acting 
 Divinity of this world, so, when this world's affairs are 
 terminated and adjudicated, he will be the object of uni- 
 versal praise, and gratitude, and love. When we speak 
 of this great mystery of our faith, " God manifest in the 
 flesh," we ask no man to bring it down to our compre- 
 hension by an exact analysis. We leave it where the 
 Scriptures leave it — a mystery still. But this is plain 
 and luminous. Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the Re- 
 deemer of the world, is the Being whom glorified men 
 and angels adore. When first revealed to our faith, 
 he was a babe in Bethlehem. He was a man of sorrows 
 and acquainted with grief. He seemed the lowliest of 
 men — without a pillow for his head, familiar with hun- 
 
THE LAMB ENTHRONED. 263 
 
 ger, thirst, and neglect. He seemed to be passive and 
 helpless in the hands of men who put him to death. 
 Amid the memories of what he was in his humiliation, 
 lose not sight of what he is in the glories of his exalta- 
 tion. He is seated on a throne of majesty. The myr- 
 iads redeemed by his blood encircle his throne with 
 praises and adorations. They but strain their vision to 
 little advantage who study to demonstrate the divinity 
 of our Lord out of isolated texts, forgetful of the re- 
 vealed issue and climacteric of redemption. 
 
 Away beyond the shadows and mysteries of time — 
 away beyond the final judgment — we see a throne, and 
 we hear the voice of many angels round about the 
 throne ; and the beasts and the elders, those mysterious 
 representatives of the heavenly hierarchy, saying with 
 a loud voice : " ' Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to 
 receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, 
 and honor, and glory, and blessing.' And every crea- 
 ture which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under 
 the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are 
 in them, heard I, saying, ' Blessing, and honor, and 
 glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the 
 throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever !' " 
 
 In this shadowy state of mortal life, unbelief is for 
 ever crowding redemption into a corner — conceiving it 
 to be the faith of a few people, the concern of sabbath 
 days, the mere comfort of the sick and the dying : but 
 
264 PARADISE. 
 
 in the illumination of eternity, redemption will be seen 
 as the great end and unity of all things human, the key 
 of history, the harmony of events, the beginning and 
 the ending of this world's life. Then shall we attach 
 new meaning to the august titles of our Lord — the Al- 
 pha and the Omega, the first and the last, the King of 
 kings and Lord of lords — for of him, and through him, 
 and to him, are all things, to whom be glory for ever ! 
 Amen. 
 
 " Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise ! 
 Exalt thy tow'ry head, and lift thine eyes ! 
 See a long race thy spacious courts adorn ; 
 See future sons and daughters yet unborn, 
 In crowding ranks, on every side arise, 
 Demanding life, impatient of the skies !' 
 See barb'rous nations at thy gates attend, 
 Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend ! 
 See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings, 
 And heaped with products of Sabean springs ! 
 For thee Idume's spicy forests blow, 
 And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow 
 See heaven its sparkling portals wide display, 
 And break upon thee in a flood of day ! 
 No more the rising sun shall gild the morn, 
 Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn ; 
 But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays, 
 One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze, 
 -O'erflow thy courts : the Light Himself shall shine 
 Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine ! 
 The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay ; 
 Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away : 
 But fixed His word, his saving power remains — 
 Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns !" 
 
WITHIN THE GATES. 265 
 
 So redemption advances to its grand climacteric. 
 Such will be the redeemed church — the body and the 
 bride of Christ — on earth and in heaven. Our place 
 to-day is remote, in the visible ranks of that long pro- 
 cession which follows the Lamb whithersoever he go- 
 eth ; but the whole body is ever in motion, and if indeed 
 we are in that train of faith and love, we shall be ad- 
 vanced, farther and farther, in the revolutions of time 
 and Providence, till we actually enter within the gates, 
 and stand before the throne ! We know not, now, what 
 we shall be ! Lamb of God ! may we believe, love, and 
 follow thee, on earth — that we may see, love, and 
 
 adore thee, in heaven ! 
 
 12 
 
XV. 
 
 HOW IS ULTDIATE PERFECTION TO BE ATTAINED ? 
 
 It were not enough to describe what man will be, 
 when restored and perfected ; not enough to know that 
 there is a Paradise of blessedness and security, into 
 which all who are redeemed from among men shall be 
 admitted as their perpetual home : we would know, for 
 a certainty, if we can, what are the terms and conditions 
 on which an entrance there may be secured ; what is 
 the path which conducts thither ; and whether we our- 
 selves are actually walking in that road which will 
 bring us to the kingdom of heaven. Are there to be 
 no discriminations among men ? Are the human race, 
 without regard to individual character, to be borne on 
 to an indefinite perfectibility by an irresistible neces- 
 sity ! Are men, and all men, to be saved, just as they 
 are born, without choice or responsibility of their own ? 
 or are some definite forms of activity on our part indis- 
 
ILLIMITABLE PEOVISION. 267 
 
 pensable to our personal salvation ? It were only to 
 sharpen the sting of a future disappointment to describe 
 the heavenly Paradise, if we do not actually enter the 
 path which leads to its blessedness. 
 
 Visiting the country in early summer — the season of 
 freshness, and growth, and exuberant life — two things 
 impress us much. The one is the profusion and afflu- 
 ence of those provisions which the God of Nature has 
 made for the well-being of his creatures. Bread enough 
 and to spare is inscribed all over our Father's house. 
 What an infinity of blossoms, above all that are needed ! 
 what an infinity of fruits, above all that ever will be 
 used ! Light is not meted out like an artificial illumi- 
 nation, so much consumption for so many who use it : 
 it is poured all over the earth with illimitable pro- 
 fusion — over the rocks and woods, where no man liv- 
 eth ; all over the sea, where no man roameth. Who 
 can measure the waters ? There is no fear that man 
 ever will exhaust their abundance. The springs are 
 full and flowing among the rocks ; the brooks running 
 through the meadows ; the large rivers rolling their 
 magnificence to the sea ; the great lakes lifting up their 
 reservoirs of abundance ; and the dew and the rain de- 
 fying and baffling all powers of computation. The con- 
 cave of the skies, how vast! — large enough for a can- 
 opy over all the earth. And the air which is treasured 
 
268 PARADISE. 
 
 within it, for the sustenance of life, is not barely suffi- 
 cient for so many, and for so long : it seems to laugh 
 at the idea of stint or measurement. "With wings laden 
 with perfume, it flies away to kiss the hills, fan the 
 tree-tops, and play with the ocean — encircling the 
 globe, and coming back, as if it could not possibly ex- 
 haust its exuberant strength and life. The works of 
 God are distinguished by this abundance, this immense 
 profusion, this infinity. 
 
 The other thought with which one is deeply impressed 
 is, the silence of God in Nature. I do not mean that 
 sweet tranquillity which is so refreshing to a fevered 
 spirit going from city crowds and noise to rural still- 
 ness. Neither is it meant that Nature is voiceless and 
 incommunicative — for how many utterances has she, 
 which are kind and gentle ! There is an expression in 
 the face of flowers ; some distinctive lesson is written 
 on the petals of each : and the green grass, as it 
 gracefully bends its head to welcome you, repeats 
 great moral truths, which were not unworthy the lips 
 of our Lord: and the birds have a voice which is 
 wiser than man's — for they eat, and render thanks 
 in a song ; having neither care, nor barn, nor store- 
 house, yet glad and gleesome always under the provi- 
 dence of their Father and ours. The day and the 
 night, the morning and the evening, the land and the 
 ocean, all have a speech for him who will listen. We 
 
CLIMAX OF REVELATION. 
 
 mean something more than this. As the works of God 
 seem to bring you near to God, you wonder why it is 
 that God himself does not speak to you, directly and 
 audibly. He has, in a certain sense, spoken to us in 
 his word. He speaks to us in his works — in his prov- 
 idence. Why does he not speak to us himself, and 
 immediately ? One word from him, how many doubts 
 it would solve, how many perplexities remove, how 
 many mysteries it would clarify ! You go out into a 
 solitary wood, on the top of a hill, or by the side of 
 the sea, and think of Moses on Horeb, of Elijah be- 
 neath the juniper-tree, of John on sea-girt Patmos ; and, 
 ere you are aware, you have almost formed and uttered 
 a prayer that God would speak to you, and reveal him- 
 self to you, as to man in olden times. But there is no 
 response. It is the wind which touches your cheek, 
 and nothing more ; that floating form of dazzling white 
 in the deep-blue sky is not an angel, but cloud — noth- 
 ing but cloud : and you wonder, and are still — wonder, 
 and are full of awe, because God is so silent and re- 
 served. 
 
 Now, it is this last-named fact — to speak of this first 
 in order — which seems to accord perfectly with the 
 close and climax of revelation. In every way, God 
 appears to put honor on his own written word. This 
 is constructed after a visible method. It has a begin- 
 ning, a substance, and an end. This ending of revela- 
 
270 PARADISE. 
 
 tion is most befitting and instructive. As it is in keep- 
 ing with all the parts which precede, so is it a proper 
 consummation and climacteric. The whole of the last 
 chapter of the Scriptures seems to be designed to make 
 this very impression — that the one great revelation 
 from God is finished. One there is ; this is all-sufficient, 
 and this will not be repeated nor enlarged. No supple- 
 ment, no appendix, will ever be needed or added. God 
 has spoken, after his own method, once for all, and he 
 will speak no more. Revelation is complete, and it is 
 ended — the Book is closed and sealed ! Still and silent 
 are the heavens now for evermore. If men would know 
 the mind of God, they must consult his revealed word. 
 Whether they will remain holy or unholy, righteous or 
 filthy, depends upon the mode in which they are affect- 
 ed toward that one, finished, all-sufficient revelation, 
 which God has given to the world. Men may ask for 
 a sign, and no sign shall be given to them, beyond what 
 they have already. They wish that God would speak 
 to them, though it were but a word ; and the silence 
 of the heavens assures them most impressively that all 
 knowledge and all salvation are in that one system of 
 redemption which is disclosed in the inspired volume. 
 
 Concerning this method of redemption, in which man's 
 highest well-being is involved, we gather from the same 
 closing passage of the New Testament that it is ade- 
 quate, and more than adequate, for all mankind. Here, 
 
ANALOGIES. 271 
 
 again, the analogies of Nature come in to illustrate and 
 confirm. All the arrangements of Divine Providence 
 for human welfare are on a scale of immense munifi- 
 cence. That profusion and superabundance which 
 characterize the supplies which God has made for our 
 natural wants foreshadow the immeasurable quality of 
 that redemption which provides for the well-being of 
 man's higher nature. The light, the air, the water, the 
 rain, the dew, the rivers, and the ocean, are the sym- 
 bols which describe the boundless and universal fullness 
 of that salvation which is by Jesus Christ. There are 
 those, indeed, who theoretically, not practically, judge 
 otherwise concerning the extent and range of that pro- 
 vision by which men are redeemed and restored. They 
 measure its length and breadth as corresponding pre- 
 cisely and exactly with the numerical necessities of 
 those who avail themselves of its provisions. They 
 speak of the waste and useless expenditure which would 
 exist on any other method or scale of judgment. Why 
 not complain of waste and prodigality in the provisions 
 of Nature ? Why is so much of Heaven's pure and 
 effulgent light poured down on barren rocks and track- 
 less deserts ? Why so much of sweet and wholesome 
 water which findeth its way to the sea, whereof neither 
 man, nor beast, nor bird, ever has tasted ? And why 
 such an infinitude of air, beyond the use and capacity 
 of all God's creatures ? With what propriety, besides, 
 
272 PARADISE. 
 
 can we speak of waste in reference to a moral expedi- 
 ent, which was designed to produce a moral effect ? 
 Better attempt to compress the magnificence of the fir- 
 mament into the dimensions of a tent to dwell in, than 
 subject the redemption of Jesus Christ, the grandest act 
 and achievement in the universe, within our narrow con- 
 ceptions of wants, and capacities, and numbers, and ex- 
 tension ! God's own language is better than our small- 
 minded speculations. 
 
 The closing chapter of Revelation is indeed befitting 
 the grandeur of the preceding disclosures. When the 
 city of God has been described, as by the diamond 
 pen of an angel, all its twelve gates are thrown open 
 wide, and from each proceedeth voices of invitation and 
 welcome. When faith, and admiration, and joy, are 
 carried to the utmost height by a disclosure of that 
 celestial life which is the ultimate issue of redemption, 
 the word which resounds the loudest, the longest, the 
 fullest, is " Come." The Spirit utters it, and the Bride 
 echoes it. The Lord in heaven and his church on earth 
 proclaim the same welcome. It is addressed to every 
 man who is athirst. The welcome is to every one who 
 heareth — to every one who will take of the waters of 
 life. His they are, and his freely. This proclamation 
 is not made by man, who justifies its indiscriminate offer 
 on the ground of his own ignorance of the individuals 
 who may accept it : it is made by God himself, in his 
 
THE GOSPEL FOR ALL. 273 
 
 own word, with a full knowledge of the reception which 
 it will meet from all ; and who shall impute insincerity 
 to the Most High in offering to all what was insufficient 
 for all — especially as revelation assures us that it is the 
 acceptance or rejection of this proffered relief which de- 
 scribes our present probation, and will decide our future 
 destiny, at the first and last assemblage of the whole 
 world ? 
 
 The great and glorious truth, then, which breaks 
 upon us is, that the restorative resources of the gospel 
 are adequate for us all. They are commensurate with 
 the evils they would remove. Indeed, they exceed 
 them, and superabound above and beyond them all. A 
 great thing, I say, is this to break in upon a mind be- 
 wildered and perplexed by human dogmas — the simple 
 truth that the redemption which is by Jesus Christ is 
 designed for us all, equal for us all, and, if we will, 
 available for us all. There is no reserve, and no par- 
 tiality, in these offers of eternal salvation. The Para- 
 dise of God is open to our entrance. Citizenship in the 
 New Jerusalem is offered for our acceptance. 
 
 If, for any reason, we do not share in the honor 
 and glory which await our renovated nature, that rea- 
 son, be assured, will not be that the act and offer of the 
 Redeemer were insufficient for our advantage. This is 
 the first truth of the gospel, it is the very substance and 
 
 body of the gospel, that the promises of redemption 
 
 12* 
 
274 PARADISE. 
 
 are without stint, and beyond all measurement ; that 
 they are higher than the heavens, larger than the 
 earth, broader than the sea, and more free and abun- 
 dant than the flowings of the air. If any spot darkens 
 the face of this sun, if any clouds gather over its disc, 
 let them all be swept away, and take into your mind 
 this gospel truth, that the invitations and welcomings 
 of Jesus Christ, in the closing up of revelation, are as 
 large, and liberal, and munificent, as our own necessi- 
 ties could suggest, or the fullness of God supply. 
 
 God has, then, provided all the materials for our 
 highest well-being. In the arrangements of Nature he 
 has most bountifully provided for our physical welfare. 
 The same affluence and profusion are for our spiritual na- 
 ture ; and all this without our aid, and independent of our 
 prayer, or choice, or counsel. Where wast thou when 
 God laid the foundation of the earth, and spread out the 
 heavens like a curtain, and what hadst thou to do with 
 the eternal purpose and plan of redemption ? All the 
 materials essential to our well-being in both worlds, for 
 the body, the mind, and the soul, for time and for eter- 
 nity, God has provided, by his own unassisted and un- 
 modified power, in that region of his working which is 
 far above the reach of our own Anil and effort. But 
 when we come to consider the method by which we are 
 to avail ourselves of all this profusion of good, we are 
 immediately brought in contact with certain terms and 
 
TEEMS AND CONDITIONS. 275 
 
 conditions in accordance with which our actions must 
 be adjusted. However munificent the provisionary ar- 
 rangements of God, our personal well-being is never 
 secured save as we bring ourselves into normal rela- 
 tions thereto. We must ourselves comply with the 
 nature of the good to be conferred, or we shall never 
 be benefited by it at all. What though the light of the 
 sun shine broadly and resplendently over the whole 
 earth, if one blind his eyes, shut them, screen them, 
 how can he see ? The light is of no advantage to him 
 if he will not open his eyes to behold it. The birds are 
 fed by Providence, though they sow not, neither do 
 they gather into barns ; and the lilies are clad in glory, 
 even though they toil not, neither do they spin ; but the 
 well-being of man is never attained except he brings 
 himself into harmony with all the conditions of the di- 
 vine bestowal. Sowing and reaping, toiling and gather- 
 ing, are conditions with man, if not with birds and lilies. 
 Withhold these, and man never reaches that state of 
 physical well-being which was designed for him. He 
 does not comply with those terms which are insepara- 
 ble from the blessing. The sun may shine and the rain 
 may fall, spring and summer through, and all the wealth 
 of air and soil be bestowed munificently, but if man will 
 not hold the plough, nor sow the seed, nor work at all, 
 he will reap small advantage from the willing liberality 
 of God. 
 
276 PARADISE. 
 
 Precisely so is it in regard to God's spiritual munifi- 
 cence. If we should say that there were terms and 
 conditions connected therewith, we might startle some 
 who rejoice most of all in this, that the gospel is a gra- 
 tuity, without money and without price. So, indeed, it 
 is, with no meritorious conditions by which its benefits 
 may be claimed and purchased. Nevertheless, there 
 are conditions of our own nature which must be com- 
 plied with before we can adjust ourselves to the recep- 
 tion of the gospel itself. The eye must be opened, or 
 the light can not be received. The hand must be ex- 
 tended, or the gift will not be grasped. The mind must 
 believe, or redemption never will be secured. Our 
 own choice and action must coincide with God's liber- 
 ality, or we shall reap no benefit from all the materials 
 which his infinite bounty has prepared. 
 
 Verily, there are discriminations among men — dif- 
 ferences of their own creating. We read of some who 
 will not come to the light, though that light flood the 
 sky and earth. Of some who will not come to the feast, 
 though it is spread with an amplitude such as no other 
 feast ever saw ; who are inventive of excuses, even 
 though the invitations are urgent, and oft-repeated. 
 Indeed, men are not born into the kingdom of God 
 involuntarily and passively as they are born into the 
 world. It is by no means certain that all men will 
 be saved because God's goodness is so immense that 
 
COMING AND TAKING. 277 
 
 all may be saved, for the Redeemer himself, though 
 he invites the world, the whole world, to come, grieves 
 over some because they will not come unto him that 
 they may have life. Our highest well-being, therefore, 
 is not made certain, until we adjust ourselves into har- 
 mony with all the conditions which are made essential 
 as much by our own constitution as by the nature of 
 redemption itself. 
 
 What are the terms ? What is essential, on our 
 part, to securing all the benefits of this ample and 
 illimitable redemption ? Whatever is implied in this 
 act of coming. The Spirit and the Bride say come. 
 Whoever is athirst is invited to come. Whosoever 
 will is welcomed to take the water of life freely. 
 These are plainly tropical expressions. Nevertheless, 
 whatever is implied in the act of coming, and taking of 
 the water of life, is indispensable if we would avail our- 
 selves of the affluent provisions. These are the very 
 least and lowest conditions which can be conceived of 
 in the premises. Beggary itself might be content with 
 the terms here proposed, counting that free enough and 
 generous enough which might be had for the coming 
 and the taking. Anything less than this can not be 
 thought of as a condition of possession. 
 
 But what is meant by coming and taking, in regard 
 to spiritual benefits, seeing that the language obviously 
 is figurative ? If in ancient Armenia, hard by where 
 
278 PARADISE. 
 
 Eden was planted, there was another Paradise, which 
 God had prepared for the redeemed — or a palace of 
 cedar and ivory — if it were reared where once stood 
 the house of Solomon, and from out of these abodes 
 should go forth the word of invitation ; if in the fair 
 and gorgeous East there was a fountain which, be- 
 yond all ancient fable, had power to renovate wasted 
 life, and the welcome were to all to take of it 
 freely, we should know precisely what was meant ; 
 we would cross the sea, we would journey over every 
 intervening land, we would come even to the shining 
 gates, and we would knock and enter in ; we would ac- 
 tually go to that living water, and would bend over it, 
 and drink thirstily of its fullness. 
 
 But this Paradise of God is not anywhere upon the 
 earth. This river of pleasure, and this fullness of joy, 
 are not to be found anywhere beneath the sun. If we 
 should cross the sea, we should not find them ; should we 
 traverse the earth, we could not lay hold of them. They 
 are spiritual. They are invisible. They are ultimate. 
 They are celestial. Nevertheless, the word proceed- 
 eth forth from God himself — come and take freely. 
 There is a moving of the mind, a coming or a with- 
 drawing as well as of the body. The mind has 
 its takings and its losings. There are possessions of 
 the soul as well as others which are grasped by the 
 hands. What the mind receives it receives in accord- 
 
BELIEVING. 279 
 
 ance with its own faculties and capacities. It takes it 
 by the understanding, by the thoughts, by the judgment, 
 by the reason, by the affections, by the confident and 
 cordial preference. Combine these acts and qualities 
 together and you have a description of religious faith, 
 the believing of the heart which is unto salvation. All 
 the honor, and glory, and immortality, promised in the 
 gospel, may be had by believing. The disrupture which 
 was caused between man and his Maker, was not be- 
 cause God had withdrawn his love from his own off- 
 spring, but because man had withdrawn his confidence, 
 and loyalty, and love, from his Maker. By the restora- 
 tion of these, man himself becomes restored. 
 
 We have considered how admirably adapted is the 
 gospel itself to win back man's alienated confidence, 
 gratitude, and love. And now all that is needed, for 
 man to recover what is lost, to secure all which God 
 can give, is, to open his mind and heart to what God 
 has said and done, believing it, acquiescing in it, re- 
 joicing in it, and loving it. Are you startled into in- 
 credulity when informed that such vast and priceless 
 benefits are dependent on means so simple and dispro- 
 portionate ? If need be, we might remind you that the 
 same principle of faith, simple as it is, intangible as it 
 is, is essential to success in all the pursuits of this pres- 
 ent life ; but let us rather hold your thought to this 
 one fact, that the gospel itself actually does suspend all 
 
280 PAKADISE. 
 
 its gifts — affluent, munificent as they are — on this one 
 thing, and on nothing else. The Paradise of God is 
 ours by our coming and taking it. The simplicity of 
 the act, the easiness of the terms, might well excite 
 astonishment in those who have been looking for some 
 marvellous achievement which would destroy their per- 
 sonal identity. Some, in their expectation of extraor- 
 dinary and supernatural occurrences, such as took place 
 when Saul of Tarsus was converted, actually overlook 
 and despise the movements of true faith as of little im- 
 portance. They have faith, without admitting to them- 
 selves how great a thing it is. 
 
 Well do I remember the day when, for the first time, 
 I caught a glimpse of the great Alps. My imagination 
 had been excited to the highest pitch, in prospect of 
 seeing an object with which were associated such 
 wealth and grandeur of historic memories. We had 
 reached the spot whence, as we were told, the long- 
 wished-for view could be had. Unfortunately, a mass 
 of clouds hung low and heavily in the east, obscuring 
 the object on which we were so much intent. Mean- 
 while, the sun was bright in the west, and the sky 
 elsewhere was clear and cloudless. Our impatient 
 desire was that the sun might not sink beneath the 
 horizon before the clouds had passed away from that 
 object toward which every eye was bent with strained 
 and earnest vision. At length the fixed and changeless 
 
SIMPLICITY OF FAITH. 281 
 
 character of the clouds themselves attracted remark, 
 till by little and little the truth broke upon us that 
 what we had mistaken for clouds were the mountains 
 themselves — seventy miles distant — just as you have 
 seen the white fleecy clouds in the blue summer heav- 
 en, assuming castellated and mountainous shapes ; and 
 there the great and glorious Alps were lifting up their 
 heads of snow and ice into the clear bosom of the sky. 
 We saw them ere we recognised them. Even so have 
 we known many an honest and thoughtful inquirer after 
 truth, straining every faculty of his mind as if in expec- 
 tation of some great and exciting act or event — by 
 which his conversion should be accomplished beyond a 
 doubt — disappointed, perplexed, and confounded, at 
 length coming to a perception of the simplicity of Chris- 
 tian faith, recognising, at last, the reality of what he had 
 long been tempted to overlook, and astonished to find 
 that in his own bosom for which he had been gazing, as 
 with a telescope, in the uttermost part of the heavens, 
 and with suffused eye he exclaims, " Yea, Lord, I be- 
 lieve ; help thou mine unbelief." 
 
 Beyond all doubt many a man has overlaid and 
 stifled his own faith by not recognising the impor- 
 tance of that which in itself is so simple, and easy, 
 and common. Even as it was when Jesus Christ 
 came into the world — men knew him not, and re- 
 ceived him not — so is it with that faith which unites 
 
282 PARADISE. 
 
 the soul of man unto God, it often springs into life 
 so unobserved, so meekly, and modestly, that the very 
 one in whose bosom it lives is the last to perceive 
 its presence. He can not recognise what is divine 
 in a human form. He can not be convinced that 
 there is anything important, anything celestial, any- 
 thing eternal, in that sentiment of faith which now 
 trembles in his bosom. But it is the infancy of life, it 
 is the germ of immortality. Give it air. Nourish it. 
 Exercise it. Strengthen it. " King Agrippa, believest 
 thou the prophets ? I know that thou believest." 
 
 As we have passed in review the great revealed facts 
 of man's history, do they not commend themselves to 
 the conscience of every reader in the sight of God ? Do 
 they not accord with your own experience, conscious- 
 ness, and necessity ? Have you not an evidence of 
 their truth better than all that ever was formed in the 
 schools. In all the unfathomed mysteries of your own 
 being, in all the forebodings and apprehensions of futu- 
 rity, in all your shrinkings from death and the grave, 
 do you not feel your need of what is found in the Son 
 of God ? "I know that thou believest." The power 
 of sense may keep these themes from your thoughts, but 
 you can not give them your sober and honest reflection 
 without admitting that they are true, and true alto- 
 gether. 
 
 Come to them, then, even as you are bidden. Bring 
 
come. 283 
 
 your thoughts to their consideration with filial prayer. 
 If never before you could believe that Christ and 
 heaven were for you, believe it now. Take into your 
 dark and desponding mind this great truth — Christ 
 loves you, and desires your salvation. Let that be- 
 lief work out its consistent expression in the life. Be- 
 lieving that Christ has redeemed you, strive to live in 
 accordance with that great act and end. Believing 
 that there is a future and endless life, think of it, 
 seek it, set your affections upon it. Believing that 
 there is a Paradise above, pray for admittance there, 
 and live as one expectant of its blessedness. Doing 
 this, you shall be saved. This is the gospel which is 
 preached unto us. Whoever believeth in his heart, and 
 confesseth with the mouth that Jesus is the Christ, 
 shall be saved. Eden we have lost, but Paradise we 
 may secure ! We know of no terms and no conditions 
 for one which are not for all. Believe ; repent ; pray. 
 Confide in God, your Saviour. Obey him. Look to 
 him in life and in death. The last words of the Bible 
 are a blessing : " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 be with you all." The last words which came down 
 from the city of God, ere the vision thereof was ended, 
 are, " Come — whoevee heareth, whoever is athirst, 
 
 WHOEVER WILL, LET HIM COME." 
 
 The next word which we shall hear from the world's 
 Redeemer will decide and divulge what treatment we 
 
284 PARADISE. 
 
 have bestowed on his great salvation. Which shall it 
 be, Come, or Depart ? What an epitaph that would 
 be for a ruined soul for which Christ died — "Ye 
 would not come unto me, that you might have life !" 
 Come ! 
 So may we regard that word with gladness and faith 
 on the earth, that we may hear it again with exultant 
 joy when we stand before the throne of the Son of Man. 
 
 THE END. 
 

 
 
 \--/M 
 
 
 
 
 ■ft 1 
 
 ■ 
 
 ■ 
 
 ■ 
 
 ■ 
 
 v' •■ 
 
 _ 
 
 jt'-,'' -^ 
 
 I .,>£-, WAV ■ ■ TCttt * V 
 
 ■ 
 
■ 
 
 1 1 ***** I '-vtc H 
 
 I ■ 
 
 I ■ I 
 
 f 
 
 I ■