Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Revolution, taught doctrines subversive of all authority, human and divine; but they clothed them in so graceful an attire, that no one, not even themselves, suspected the awful consequences they would lead to. Were they not sublime philosophers who could plant religion and morality on better foundations than priestcraft had done! So thought they, and so thought the shallow generation that applauded their wit; but when their destructive principles sunk into the minds of the common people, what a hell was let loose! Superstition, forsooth, was overthrown, but-horrid substitute -a harlot was installed as goddess of reason; and from that day to this French intellectual society has drifted to and fro in the dreary sea of Atheism, ever putting forward new theories of religion, which follow each other like bubbles on the surface of a stream. It is well shown there how hopeless it is to construct a religion when once the roots of simple faith are cut off. Having destroyed belief in God's revelation, French philosophers may revolve in vicious circles to the end of time without discovering a substitute. They may denounce in bitterest language the vices

that corrupt the nation, but they will never reach the only true remedy—the conscience awakeņed to the voice of God; and regeneration, if it ever come to that unbelieving and dissolute race, must be on the old lines of "The Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone." We conclude our argument on miracles by observing that those who seek to discredit them, are trying to pull down one of the chief buttresses of the Christian religion; and we would address to them a warning, like that which Gamaliel gave to the Chief Priests of the Jews: "Refrain from this thing, and let it alone, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God."

CHAPTER IV.

A

ARGUMENT FOR CHRISTIANITY FROM THE

GRANDEUR OF ITS HOPES.

CONVINCING argument in favour of the Chris

tian religion is the incomparable grandeur of the hopes which it opens to mankind. Alone, of all the shrines at which man has worshipped, does it afford a sure and blessed hope of immortality. The heathen religions had only dim forebodings of the future state; the life to come was rather a theme for poets than an influential belief; indced, it had so weak a hold, even on philosophers, that the Scripture simply expresses the truth when it declares that "life and immortality were brought to light by the Gospel." Till the Resurrection of Christ had unbarred the gates of death, there was no vital belief in the life to come among the Gentiles, and but a feeble one among the Jews. From that time forth the immortality of the soul has been an axiom

wherever the Gospel of Christ has been received. And how vastly superior to the pictures of human fancy is the Christian revelation of the future state! Compare the Elysian Fields of Virgil or the sensual Paradise of Mahomet with the New Jerusalem of revelation. In the first we have the Trojan heroes pursuing their former sports amid shady groves, and amusing themselves with horses and. armour, the copies of what they did battle with on earth. The Mahomedan falls below even the Pagan ideal; for his Heaven is one of gross physical indulgence, where all the appetites of the. body are gratified on an exaggerated scale. But hark what the Seer of Patmos beheld of the Christians' Home in Glory. "And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God, and God shall wipe away all tears' from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow or crying, neither shall there be any

more pain, for the former things are passed away." Again, "He carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of Heaven from God, having the glory of God, and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasperstone, clear as crystal. . . And I saw no temple cherein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it, and the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof, and the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it, and the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there, and they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it, and there shall in nowise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's Book of Life."

Where shall we find, outside the book of inspiration, imagery so sublime as this? Where shall we find hopes so fitted to elevate the soul of man,

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »