Page images
PDF
EPUB

wishes; but the tendency of these, were they supposed to have any influence, was not to produce union but diversity. Their agreement therefore must be undesigned, and on the ground of evidence. The Cardinal, so far as his prejudices were concerned, would be favourable to every reading that corresponded with the text of the Latin Vulgate, which was used by the Catholicks, and not long after this was declared authentick by the council of Trent. The reformers, on the contrary, and Beza in particular, felt no attachment to that version, and had no respect for its authority. He was the more disposed to think favourably of a reading, if it differed from the text of the Vulgate, especially if it militated with any of the peculiar doctrines or rites of the Catholick church. Yet with wishes and views so opposite, and with materials for the work drawn in so great a degree from independent sources, their agreement in the result was surprisingly great. The varieties in their text were comparatively few and unimportant, and such as not at all to affect the history, evidence, or substance of the religion.

Besides, it is a circumstance of no small importance, that those early editors, as well as their successors, the indefatigable scholars, who have since been employed with such immense labour in correcting the sacred text, have left us the means of judging of the fidelity with which they have executed the trust. The ancient manuscripts of the sacred text, with the exception of those just mentioned, which were used in forming the copy for the Complutum edition, are carefully preserved; and the works of the early fathers, and the several versions, which were made in the first centuries, remain, and must forever remain, to give us their testimony what the text of the New Testament was at that early period.

Another consoling thought is, that of the vast number of various readings, which the industry of biblical scholars has discovered, not one in ten, probably not one in fifty, makes any perceptible change in the sense of the passage in which it is found; and certainly not one in a thousand, if one in ten thousand, affects any important doctrine of our faith, or any fact that has any influence upon our religion.

[ocr errors][merged small]

CHRISTIANITY was founded in an age when war was a common profession, and military renown the principal distinction; and accordingly we find in the writings of its first preachers frequent allusions to the military life. Religion is again and again represented as a warfare. Endure hard

ness,' says Paul to Timothy, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.' To the Ephesians he says, 'put on the whole armour of God;' and he speaks of himself in this animated language, 'I have fought the good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of glory.' These comparisons have lost nothing of their clearness and force by the lapse of ages. In the Scriptures we sometimes find allusions to customs, which have passed away, and which need the study of antiquity to illustrate them. But war is not one of the lost customs of the world, to be understood only by reference to learned authors. When we are told to be good soldiers of Jesus Chirst, we need no laborious comment to explain the metaphor. The blast of the trumpet is not a dying sound, borne to us from distant ages; nor have garments ceased to be rolled in blood. The Gospel has driven from society many abuses; but to a happier age is reserved the full accomplishment of the prediction, the sword shall be beat into the ploughshare, and men shall learn war no more.

It is hardly necessary to observe, that the Christian warfare is very different from that to which civil governments call their subjects. Christianity arms us with no weapons for the destruction of our brethren. The conflict is within. It is war with our own hearts; war with those corrupt and selfish principles, which generate all other wars, which have made the earth a field of slaughter, and multiplied conquerors and murderers in every age. In proportion as we fight the good fight of faith, we shall be less disposed to turn our arms against our fellow beings. We shall be satisfied with the victories we acquire, the trophies we raise in our own breasts. Our great contest with others will be to surpass them in sacrifices and labours for the welfare of mankind.

The propriety with which religion is represented as a war must be apparent to every reflecting mind. Who of us can

look into himself, and not see that he carries in his breast very different and contradictory principles. On the one hand, we have reason, conscience, a sense of duty, a perception of excellence, and a desire of improvement and immortality; and on the other, desires, appetites, passions, which frequently resist the control of reason, incite us to forsake the path of duty, clamour for forbidden gratifications, grow strong by indulgence, and if unrestrained, lay waste and destroy the intellectual and moral nature. Who is so much a stranger to himself as not to understand this opposition between his passions and his higher faculties? Who does not know by experience the meaning of that scripture, "The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; there is a law in our members warring against the law of our minds.' In fact, every human heart is a field of battle. In every heart, virtue and vice, reason and passion, God and the world, time and eternity are urging their claims to preeminence; and the question, who shall reign in the heart, is to the individual of infinitely greater concern than all the contests for dominion and victory, which have convulsed empires and the world.

Jesus Christ has entered the world to be our leader, our captain, in this great conflict, to incite us by example, instruction, precepts and promises, to the resistance of our passions, and to the establishment of God's throne in our breasts; and it is the character of the true Christian that he enlists under the standard of the heavenly leader, resolved not to relinquish the contest until he has brought every thought and desire under the obedience of Christ. By this purpose the Christian is distinguished from other men. Other men occasionally resist their passions, occasionally yield their wishes and pleasures to conscience. No man in every instance abandons himself to the impulse of feeling, and closes his heart against the remonstrances of God and duty. But the Christian is not satisfied with this occasional and accidental self-government; he deliberately, resolutely, and earnestly resolves to deny and subdue himself, and never counts his work accomplished, whilst one enemy of his virtue is unsubdued within him.

In this warfare we are all called to take a part. No man can plead exemption here. There is no heart in which God reigns the undisputed sovereign, and all the passions and desires obey the first intimations of reason and duty. Every

man who would be holy and virtuous, in the Christian sense of these words, must fight. There is indeed an outward, negative virtue, built on human opinion and custom, which requires no toilsome conflicts with ourselves, and into which we almost naturally slide as we advance into life, and our passions lose their keenness by time and indulgence. But Christianity requires something more than this smoothness and polish of the surface of the life. It demands a vigorous action of the mind and heart on God, a cherished and profound conviction of his parental goodness, veneration for his authority, and the habit of communion and intercourse with him. It demands not merely outward courtesy, but unaffected and strong good will towards all our fellow beings. It demands a generous love of virtue, a thirst for the perfection of our nature. It demands that we cherish a sense of the great purpose of our being, that we regard this world as the beginning of an everlasting progress, and set our affections on the improved, holy, and blessed life, which Jesus Christ has revealed. And is it necessary to say, that to form and maintain this character, we must all contend with ourselves? It is not said that all men are equally obstructed by their passions, in the pursuit of Christian goodness. Some inherit from nature a milder temperament than others, a calmness of feeling, a propensity to reflection, and an openness to kind impressions; and some the hand of education has moulded to a reverence for religion, and a strong sense of duty. But there is no man for whom constitution and education have done every thing. It is God's will that every individual should contribute by his own toils and conflicts to the formation of his own character. In the most favoured and happily tempered mind there are propensities tending to excess, enemies to holiness and virtue, which unless subdued will enslave and destroy.

All men indeed are not called to contend with precisely the same enemies, the same passions. There is an immense variety in the constitution of different minds. Each man has in a sense his own warfare. Our passions are diversified by natural temperament, education, situation, society, habit, and employments. Time is wanting to describe the endless forms of passion and temptation. In some men we discover a strong propensity to levity and dissipation of mind, in others to anxiety, dejection, and corroding care. Some are hur

ried away by anger; some are preyed upon by sullenness, and in some the passion for revenge broods in silence over unrequited injury. In some, pride, vanity, ostentation, corrupt and debase the motives of their fairest deeds, whilst in others a timid, abject, self-distrusting spirit prevents all steady, resolute adherence to a course of rectitude. Here are the selfwilled and obstinate, who never recede from an errour or a vice they have chosen, and there the pliant and feeble, who are driven by every menace of opposition and breath of opinion from discharge of duty. Here you see the lovers of ease and sloth wearing out life in inefficiency; and there the busy and tumultuous, who give themselves no time to breathe from worldly pursuits, and to reflect on God and eternity. But amidst this great variety of character and temperament, there are two leading propensities, which belong to every man, and which each of us must strenuously resist. I mean selfishness and the love of the world; the first alienating us from our fellow beings, inciting us to depreciate their excellencies, to slight their interests, to invade their rights, and to neglect their wants and sorrows; and the last withdrawing our thoughts and affections from God, stifling the desire of a better world, and fixing a low and sordid character on our minds. Who of us can congratulate himself on the complete subjection of these enemies of his virtue? Who of us must not fight many battles with the love of self and the love of the world, before piety, charity, conscience, reason, the sense of duty, the love of excellence shall hold undisputed sway within him?

But enough has been said in regard to the nature of the conflict to which we are called by Christianity. Let us now consider what is required to success. And it is important to begin with the impression, that this conflict is indispensably necessary to our salvation. Let every man feel, that unless he contend with himself, he is lost. We can make no composition with the enemies within us. They are not to be soothed by entreaty or disarmed by concession. We must conquer them or be conquered by them. Whoever leaves his heart to itself, and hopes that the Christian virtues will spring up and flourish amidst its stormy passions, without shelter and defence, will want this consolation in his misery, that he had no warning of his danger. On every side of us, how many souls are lost through spiritual negligence!

« PreviousContinue »